Server Down

by J. M. Hayes

  “Where are we going?” Heather said, looking over Hailey’s shoulder to read a street sign. They were headed east on Fort Lowell Road. They’d come quite a distance from the university and were in an area of mixed townhomes and horse properties, and not a single living human being as far as her eye could see.

  “Anywhere, nowhere,” he answered. “Just driving, since I can’t think of a good place for a professional assassin, a deputy sheriff, and a wolf to sit down for a chat in the wee hours of the morning. Unless you have a suggestion?”

  “No, I’m just a tourist.”

  They turned right at what might be a good spot for tourism. A bronze bugler, some old adobe buildings, and a sign indicated that they were at Fort Lowell and that it might have once been a cavalry post.

  “Okay. Then be quiet and listen. You want to save your uncle, and your family, and yourself. I want to ensure my own safety. To do that, we have to locate some people. You’re more likely to know who they are than I am, but you’re not going to be open with me until you understand what’s at stake.”

  And not then, either, Heather thought as they followed the street south. Two other cars occupied this wide stretch of asphalt, though neither within half a mile.

  “You probably think of me as some kind of psychopath, perhaps a serial killer.”

  He was perceptive, at least, Heather thought.

  “You would do well to revise that. I enjoy my work, a great deal. But I’m a quintessential businessman. I simply happen to trade in death and terror. My principal interest in doing to you the things I described earlier this evening was financial. I was told to injure you, to humiliate you, in those very specific fashions. Your mutilation was worth $78,000 to me, my dear. Someone who knows you and your family offered to pay that much to have you scarred for life. And he was in a hurry to have it done. I want you to consider who might hate you that much. And who could afford it, as well as the $120,000 I received to establish your uncle as the prime suspect in the murder of a member of the Sewa tribal police. Then, the $240,000 I was offered to scare a cop and make sure your uncle isn’t captured alive.”

  That let out everyone Heather knew. Well, maybe it didn’t. Plenty of farmers in Benteen County paid prices like that for land or the machinery to farm it. But they were cash poor. Rich in ground and tractors, maybe, but without much money on hand. The rest were absentee landlords, corporations that were wealthy enough, perhaps, but with managers who had never met her, or even set foot in Benteen County. Besides, she couldn’t think of anyone who hated her like that. She had a few casual enemies, she supposed, but $78,000?

  “Don’t focus on yourself,” he said. “You’re incidental. Just a tool to hurt or manipulate someone else—your father, I presume. But all this started with your uncle. Consider him first.”

  Uncle Mad Dog? He seemed to specialize in doing stuff that outraged most of Benteen County. Dad said he’d been an oddball almost forever. Well, at least after his football career ended with a blown knee and a lost college scholarship. When he’d come back to Benteen County, he was a hippie. One of those long-haired, peacenik freaks who outraged conservative rural communities like Buffalo Springs during the Vietnam War. Her dad had explained it was like Uncle Mad Dog to enjoy annoying people, especially when doing so made them think outside their comfort zones.

  Mad Dog had organized himself into the local Black Power movement, boycotted grapes, studied and practiced several Eastern philosophies, and then, decided he was a natural-born Cheyenne Shaman. That, at least, he’d stuck with. But along the way he’d angered, or worse, virtually everyone in the county. He’d passed petitions demanding the impeachment or resignation of almost every president. In rural Kansas, Bill Clinton was the only one she could remember him having much success with. He’d started a wolf-hybrid rescue effort that infuriated every cattle and sheep rancher she knew. Worse, he’d screwed up the wind farm project that was going to make the community rich. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d been trying to convince people the new ethanol plant would do them more harm than good…and he’d actually convinced some folks it would cause irreparable damage to the Ogallala Aquifer. But still, hiring this psycho to assassinate Mad Dog or hurt her made no sense.

  “My uncle has some enemies, but no one who would throw away that kind of money when they could just pay him a visit with a deer rifle and take him out for the price of a single cartridge. And why here in Tucson? Uncle Mad Dog wasn’t even planning to come until the last minute.”

  “Let me tell you about my visit to Tucson,” the psycho said. “I flew in last night with a contract. I was hired to pay a visit to a local government employee. The person in question had done favors for some local special interests, but he was coming under suspicion and considering going public to save his own skin. I was brought in to demonstrate that it wasn’t just his skin that was at risk. I spent the night in a hotel near the airport and applied some incentives to remain silent during the target’s lunch break. I didn’t kill him, I presume, because that could blow the case wide open. Then I got a call from my client asking if I’d be interested in a second job while I was in town. Double the money and it was all being set up for me. I would pass myself off as a visiting dignitary to the Yaqui Easter ceremonies—a representative of a distant Indian tribe. A package was delivered with all sorts of helpful documentation for the identity I would assume. It also contained photos and background information on my new target and your uncle—and a knife of the sort I favor that had your uncle’s name etched on the handle.

  “On Friday? All this was delivered to you on Friday? Even I didn’t know Uncle Mad Dog was coming until he got here.”

  “Someone knew. Or was reasonably sure.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” the psycho said. “Maybe they hacked into his emails. Maybe he’s got some kind of GPS device on his car. You’d be surprised how easy it is to track someone these days. And he did come, right where I’d been told he’d be. So I did my job and was about to catch a flight out of town when things began going wrong. I got another call from the same client. I got that call after disposing of the cell phone I used to stay in touch with him. I got it on a new, sterile phone that the client shouldn’t have known about, let alone been able to reach. And I was offered $240,000 to convince a local cop that your uncle might be dangerous, then ensure that Tucson police don’t take him alive. At that point, the price for my activities here was $420,000. And that was before you were added to the mix, along with the indication I might earn several more fees for later work in Kansas and Las Vegas.”

  “Kansas? Las Vegas? Then they must want to hurt Dad. And Pam Epperson, Uncle Mad Dog’s girlfriend,” Heather said.

  “It does seem that each job was intended to get at people who know your uncle. People who mean something to him. And we’re talking about serious money, here. I had the impression there would be more than one target in Kansas. My fees would have been well over half a million. But, perhaps my client decided to cut his expenses. My off-shore account had received $300,000 by then. Doing you and your uncle would have brought in another $198,000. But then our first meeting was interrupted by that coyote.”

  He was favoring his left hand, she noticed, but using it on the steering wheel. The coyote hadn’t crippled him.

  They had turned again, a few blocks back, onto another wide, empty thoroughfare. Heather had been so focused on the man who once planned to mutilate her and kill her uncle that she no longer had the foggiest idea where they were. Hailey seemed more interested in the city than the psycho, but Heather was damn glad to have her along.

  “People in my line of work require support—firms that make us reservations, rent cars, and provide research. Generally, these aren’t firms you can find in the yellow pages or by Googling the web. We get them by word of mouth, through secure internet chat rooms, and by testing what they’re willing to do for us. Not long ago I began using a group that calls itself Fick’s Internet Technologies. I have to wait f
or them, sometimes, but they’re the best I’ve ever used. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “Fick? No,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “After the coyote, I called them. They arranged treatment for me—private, unnoticed treatment. But, apparently, they arranged something more.”

  “I know,” Heather said. “We were right behind you. I saw what was in that syringe.”

  “So I assume,” he continued, “that the client I’ve been dealing with regarding you and your family decided to replace me. Or that I wasn’t needed anymore and money could be saved.”

  “But wouldn’t that mean they’d have to pay the doctor and the nurse?” Heather asked.

  “Perhaps not. As quickly as Fick’s managed to set that up, those people may have already been available.”

  “Killer doctors on call?” Heather couldn’t imagine it.

  “Not professionals like me. Not the way you’re thinking. But, maybe, part of the special interest group that brought me here in the first place. People who knew why I was here and what I am. Can you grasp that?”

  “Sure. But what would these people have to do with Uncle Mad Dog?”

  “Ah, there’s the question.” He slowed for a stoplight, though there were no other cars visible on the wide rivers of asphalt. A well-lit sign proclaimed they were at Swan and Twenty-Second. “Some kind of relationship exists between a massively wealthy special interest group here and your uncle. Most of my research on him was done by Fick’s so I’m not sure it’s accurate, but I understand he’s been opposing an ethanol plant in your hometown?”

  “Yes. That’s true. He says it causes more pollution to create ethanol than to just use petroleum. But he’s begun converting people based on all the water that will be pumped from our aquifer, and the….”

  “Who? Who’s behind your ethanol plant?”

  “I don’t know,” Heather said. “Outside investors, mostly. Supervisor Macklin heads the local group, though I think nearly all our board of supervisors are part of it.”

  “Names,” he demanded. “I need their names.”

  A warning growl gurgled out of Hailey’s throat but Heather began giving them to him anyway.

  The psycho slammed on the brakes, nearly spilling Heather to the floor boards. Hailey, somehow, had set herself, as if she expected it. But she stood just behind the psycho, teeth bared, as thoroughly and regally un-amused as a princess with a pea under her mattress.

  “There,” he pointed out the windshield. “See that billboard?”

  It was a huge sign. The owner’s name and smiling cowboy-hat topped countenance dwarfed the names of housing developments he offered, restaurants he owned, and makes of automobiles he sold. It was a familiar face, though. She’d seen it on that dead doctor’s desk at the University Medical Center.

  He pointed at the sign. “Does your Supervisor Macklin have a wealthy Arizona relative named Bobby Earl?”

  Now that she thought about it, she remembered hearing something like that.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Billy Macklin, the supervisor’s son was bragging to someone in a booth behind me at our local café last fall. I thought it was all hype about the ethanol plant. But Billy said he’d arranged for an Arizona cousin to finance a business Billy would run.”

  “Get out,” the psycho said. He had filled his good hand with the gun again.

  “What?”

  “Get out. You and the wolf. Now. I’ve got what I need from you. And you’ve got what you need from me. Use it.”

  She supposed he was right, except that she was miles from her car, or Matus’, for that matter.

  She opened the door and Hailey waited until Heather was safely on the sidewalk before joining her.

  “What are you going to do?” Heather didn’t expect an answer, but she got one.

  “I’m going to ask my original target who he was working for. If Bobby Earl Macklin’s name comes up, I’ll be paying him a visit. Then, when I’ve cleaned up that part of the mess, I’ll go after Fick.”

  He popped the clutch and that slammed her back door closed. She watched, for a moment, as his tail lights faded into the distance. She turned to see if Hailey had any suggestions about where they should start. The wolf had disappeared.

  ***

  Mad Dog ran toward downtown. Not because that was where he’d been headed before, but because that was where the nearest hospital exit pointed him. And it didn’t hurt that he found cover in the form of outbuildings, trees, and bushes that screened him from whoever might be following. He ran fast and easy, because he’d been running practically every day of his life and, in spite of his age, his joints seemed to thrive on it.

  He was near the university. Esperanza had said the University Medical Center was just north of the main campus. But even without that knowledge, he would have known. The homes here were obviously rentals—lots more cars than any residential area should expect, and an unusually high percentage of sporty ones. He spotted Greek letters in front of a couple of large houses. He heard the thump of base from a stereo, in spite of the unholy hour. And then he heard the voices—not loud, but angry.

  “…call the cops,” someone said. The words should have had Mad Dog taking the first turn away, but the response made it impossible.

  “Not before I blow you to hell.”

  The second voice was male. The first had been in a tenor range that left gender uncertain. Mad Dog slowed, slipped between a sleek Porsche and a boxy Scion and onto the sidewalk.

  The first voice was speaking again. Soft, pleading. He couldn’t make out most of the words but decided this one was female.

  “Not afraid…off the drugs…gun down.…”

  A thick privet hedge separated the yard where the voices were from the sidewalk along which Mad Dog approached. He slowed and paused at the corner to peer around the neatly groomed leaves.

  A couple stood on a large porch—one with several chairs and a glider. The man was about six feet tall and wiry. She wasn’t much smaller, but the hand he had wrapped in her hair and the chrome-plated revolver he held to her temple put her at a noticeable disadvantage. The base note boomed out the open door behind them from somewhere inside the house.

  Englishman had often complained that the only duty calls he truly dreaded answering were domestic violence cases. And that’s what this was, whether they were college students or faculty members, lovers or a wed-until-death-did-them-part pair. If the guy was on drugs, the until-death thing might not be far away.

  “Cheating bitch,” the man hissed, yanking her hair with each syllable. She stumbled and her head hit one of the plastered pillars that flanked the front steps. Hard enough to hurt, Mad Dog was sure, though she didn’t cry out. The pistol stuck with her and the change of angle allowed Mad Dog to see that the guy’s face was twisted with rage. The light from one of the windows was enough to reveal a little spittle running out of the corner of the guy’s mouth. He wore only a pair of shorts. She had on an oversized t-shirt and a pair of jeans. A backpack lay at her feet. She was leaving him but he’d stopped her, Mad Dog guessed.

  “Let me go,” she said. “Come on. We can talk about this in the morning.”

  “You won’t see morning,” he said. He banged her head against the pillar with each word and Mad Dog could see that the pistol was cocked.

  Shit, he thought. But he smiled like some evangelical door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen as he stepped around the hedge and started walking toward the house. “Hey,” he called. “It’s a boy. I wanted you to be the first to know, buddy.”

  The rage on the guy’s face didn’t quite disappear, but it took on a hint of puzzlement. The girl swung her eyes, since she couldn’t turn her head, and caught sight of Mad Dog advancing across the yard. If anything, she seemed more afraid of him than the guy with the pistol.

  “He’s got dark eyes,” Mad Dog said. “Cute little nose.” Mad Dog ran a hand across his shaved head and added, “And his mother’s hair, thank goodness.”

  �
��Who…?” the guy with the gun started to ask, but at least the gun had swung away from her temple. The man behind it was no longer sure which of them to target.

  As he neared the porch, Mad Dog reached for his pocket and said, “Here, have a cigar.” He didn’t have any cigars, of course, but he fished around in his jeans and then pulled his hand out as if it held something precious. The man’s eyes followed and Mad Dog snapped out his other hand and snatched the gun from the guy’s grasp. He used the hand that was supposed to have had a cigar to punch the man’s throat. Sudden breathing difficulties forced Mad Dog’s “buddy” to let go of the woman’s hair.

  “There,” Mad Dog said. “Now isn’t that better?”

  Which came under the heading of counting your chickens before you even build the coop, since the girl came at Mad Dog, swinging and shrieking.

  Luckily, the guy who’d been about to blow her brains all over the front yard just stood there with his jaw open in confusion and the effort to get his breath back. And that, of course, was the moment when the police cruiser pulled up out front and hit them with its spotlight—and another welcome-to-Tucson moment for Mad Dog.

  ***

  The sheriff jotted notes as he talked to the technician at War of Worldcraft. In the background, Mrs. Kraus argued with someone at the phone company about switching the sheriff’s calls to the clinic while she loaded her copy of the game on Doc’s computer.

  “Eight clients in your zip code,” the tech was saying. “I’d start with this nut who signed up under the name Mad Dog.”

  “Right.” The sheriff decided it would take too long to explain about that. “I know him. Who are the others?”

  “Well, you already know Mrs. Kraus, of course. The rest are Kevin Peirce, Frank Ball, Isaac Miller, Dana Miller, Cole Macklin, and—a relative, maybe—Billy Macklin.”

  The sheriff knew them all, though mostly not well. He’d just succeeded in insulting Billy’s and Cole’s supervisor father. Isaac Miller was a nephew of the corpse Doc was working on. Dana, his big sister, had been Billy’s date tonight. Suddenly, the sheriff wanted to know, real bad, what Billy and Dana had been doing out by Mad Dog’s place when it blew up.