Danger Close (A Breed Thriller Book 1)

by Cameron Curtis

  I meet Lenson’s eyes across the cab. Replace the rifle, take down the shotgun.

  Keller liked vintage weapons. This is a Winchester Model 1897. External hammer. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Short combat barrel, heat shield, bayonet lug. I jack a round out of the action and examine the load. Two-and-three-quarter-inch twelve-gauge, double-ought buck, twelve pellets.

  The United States Army took Winchester shotguns to Europe in World War I. Used them to clear trenches. The weapons were so devastating the Germans lodged a formal complaint. Claimed the American use of shotguns at close quarters violated the Hague Convention. Threatened to summarily execute American soldiers captured with the weapons.

  The American response was simple. “You introduced poison gas and flamethrowers. If you execute a single American soldier, we will conduct reprisals.”

  Six months later, the Germans surrendered.

  I pop open the glove compartment. Registration papers. A box of eight millimeter Mauser cartridges and four five-round stripper clips. Boxes of twelve-gauge shotgun shells. Keller kept the Winchester loaded, not the Mauser.

  There is a small travel pouch stuffed in one corner of the glove compartment. Inside the pouch is a Kestrel anemometer and barometer. An infrared thermometer, a pocket calculator, a laser rangefinder, and a GPS. A small loose-leaf notebook with data tables for the Mauser. A pair of compact, sixteen-power Zeiss binoculars. A professional sharpshooter’s ready kit.

  “Can you show us where he was found,” Lenson asks.

  “If you like,” Garrick says. “Not much to see.”

  “We’d sure appreciate it.”

  Garrick nods. “All right. Ride with me.”

  We pile into Garrick’s Jeep. Lenson rides in front beside the sheriff. I sit stretched out in the rear bed, clinging to the roll bar. The engine catches with a throaty roar, and Garrick pulls out of the lot.

  “Where does the investigation stand,” I ask.

  Garrick drives down main street, passes the hotel, and heads toward the highway. We pass the Dusty Burger, turn right, and head south.

  “It’s possible,” Garrick says, “your friend happened on illegals crossing his land. Their transportation was waiting on the highway. When he spotted them, coyotes killed him.”

  Lenson looks skeptical. “How much progress have you made.”

  “Not much,” Garrick admits. “Border Patrol checked the wall for six miles. No breaches, no sign of penetration. They covered the whole county with helicopters for three days. I called in extra deputies. Personally put up roadblocks on the main highway, both directions. Roadblocks on secondary roads, both directions. Nothing. I’ve called them off. Your friend was killed between twelve and sixteen hours before he was found. That amount of time, the killers could have been halfway to California or Florida.”

  “Coyotes like to cross here?” Lenson asks.

  Garrick shakes his head. “Funny enough, no. Border Patrol keeps the stats. Salem County has the least activity of any section of the border for a hundred miles.”

  “Did sensors pick anything up?”

  The Border Patrol have motion sensors buried the length of the wall. The sensors detect motion more than two feet above the ground.

  “Nary a peep.”

  “Do you think coyotes murdered Keller?”

  “No.”

  I drink in the mountains, north and east. If the killers were spirited away by truck, there’s little chance of catching them. But I can’t imagine Keller getting out of his pickup, unarmed, and accosting a group of illegal migrants.

  “Let me tell you boys something.” Garrick pulls off the highway and drives across open range. “Coyotes might have shot him, but they wouldn’t have cut him like that. Cartels would, but not this side of the border.”

  7

  Lazy K, 1000 Hrs Saturday

  The murder scene is a corral. A patch of range thirty yards square, fenced with wooden posts strung with yellow police tape. Garrick stops the Jeep and we get out. The earth is dusty soil and parched grass. Clumps of mesquite and creosote. There are low foothills to the north and east, taller volcanic mountains beyond.

  I turn to the sheriff. “Who found the body.”

  “Helicopter,” Garrick says. “After Mrs Keller reported him missing.”

  The investigators have finished with the crime scene. I step over the police tape. “What time was he killed?”

  “Tuesday. Between 8 pm and midnight.” Garrick walks toward the center of the corral. “We found him noon Wednesday. Truck was right there. Body about ten feet away, lying face down.”

  Four hundred yards in the distance, a small herd of cattle graze. The breeze kicks up dust, rustles the brown range grass.

  “Aren’t you afraid those animals will disturb the scene?”

  Garrick rests a hand on one of the corral posts. “We’re done here. It’ll be all right.”

  Keller’s truck flattened the grass. Tracks in the dirt from his heavy, off-road tires make it clear he drove from the direction of the border wall. Painted white, wooden tent pegs have been driven into the ground in the outline of a headless man. Three more pegs form a triangle six feet away.

  “No use marking with paint or whitewash,” Garrick explains. “That’s where he fell, that’s where they left his head.”

  There is a patch of black earth above the headless corpse. Congealed blood, soaked into the dirt. “Not much blood,” I observe.

  “No.” Garrick squats on his haunches. Points to the group of three pegs. “The shot to the chest killed him. His heart stopped pumping. They cut his head off, planted it over there. Some blood leaked out, not much. It soaked into the ground and dried up. Wind’s scattered it.”

  Garrick turns his attention to the thick tar atop the shoulders of the headless corpse. “Heart wasn’t pumping, but there was a lot of blood in the body. Some poured out through the arteries in his neck. The rest settled inside.”

  I scan the earth around the outline. “You find the brass?”

  “Nope. Reckon the killer took it with him.”

  “Killer looked for it in the dark. Pretty careful for a coyote.”

  “They get smarter all the time.”

  Lenson strokes his chin. “You said it was a pistol shot. Did it go straight through?”

  “Exit wound between the shoulder blades. We went over the ground with metal detectors.” Garrick traces an arc with his hand. “Couldn’t find the bullet. The medical examiner can’t exactly determine the caliber.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The size of an entrance wound depends on the elasticity of the skin. Bone is something else. All he can say for sure is the bullet was smaller than a forty-five caliber. Because the bullet hole in your friend’s sternum was smaller than a forty-five. Off the record, a nine millimeter or forty caliber, but he won’t swear to it.”

  “Shot in the chest and fell forward,” Lenson observes.

  “Arms at his sides,” Garrick points out. “I think he was pushed onto his stomach.”

  “That,” I say, “is so a man kneeling on Keller’s back could expose his throat.”

  I imagine the scene. The killer standing six feet from Keller, pistol extended. A nine millimeter would punch through and fall within the arc Garrick’s hand described. A quarter-mile search should have located it.

  “You should have found the bullet,” I tell him.

  Garrick shrugs. “We swept a quarter mile, a hundred and eighty degrees. The round may have buried itself. Too small and deep for a detector to pick up.”

  I look at the tracks to the west left by Keller’s truck. More tracks stretch east toward the highway. Parallel to those of Garrick’s Jeep. A heavy vehicle, with four tires in the back. “What made those?”

  “Tow truck,” Garrick says. Plants his hands on his hips. “The county lab boys photographed everything. Spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening taking samples. We weren’t about to drive Keller’s pickup, so we had it
towed to the lab. We wrapped the body in a tarp and put it on the tow truck bed. Transferred it to the ambulance at the highway.”

  “Two vehicles,” Lenson says. “Keller’s pickup came from the direction of the river. The tow truck pulled it to the highway. Nothing else?”

  “No, sir. Some boot prints, some running shoe prints. We took casts.”

  “How many pairs?”

  “Half a dozen.”

  “You see them coming and going?”

  “Ground’s dry and dusty. Wind scatters them. A lot of faint prints around the scene.”

  Not much to go on. I blink sweat from my eyes. Scan the brown grass, the parched, scrubby mesquite.

  With a grunt, I step over the police line and walk two hundred yards towards the highway. Turn right, walk a wide circle around the corral. My eyes sweep the dusty earth ahead of me. I cross the tow truck’s tracks. The tracks left by Garrick’s Jeep and Keller’s pickup.

  Sets of tire tracks extend from the highway. The same direction as Garrick’s. Steel-belted radials, narrow-gauge. Sedans. Probably police and other investigators. No footprints in an arc a hundred and eighty degrees south. The ground a hundred and eighty degrees north looks like it’s been trampled by a herd of elephants. Boot prints. Deputies searching for the bullet.

  My eyes are drawn to a clump of dusty mesquite. Snipers are trained to track, and detect anomalies in a landscape. As much as they are trained to not leave tracks and anomalies in a landscape. This mesquite has been disturbed. Branches have been hacked off with a knife, leaving a section looking more regular than the rest. Regular outlines are not natural. They draw a sniper’s eye.

  Perhaps the deputies wanted to scan the earth beneath the clump.

  Perhaps not.

  I complete my circuit of the crime scene. No vehicle tracks to the north or south. Lots of boot prints to the north. No footprints of any kind to the south. No boots, running shoes or street shoes. The wind has erased all trace of illegals swarming across Keller’s land. It has not erased the prints of deputies.

  The deputies arrived a day later.

  I make my way back to the corral.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  Lenson squints with his good eye. “It sure don’t.”

  “I’m out of ideas, boys.” Garrick kicks at a scorpion with the toe of his boot. “If you think of anything, I ain’t too proud to ask for help.”

  “If Keller wanted to head off illegals,” I say, “he wouldn’t leave the vehicle without a gun.”

  “Roger that.” Lenson turns to Garrick. “Don’t make no sense at all, Sheriff. Keller wouldn’t head them off. What was he supposed to do with them?”

  8

  Salem, 1130 Hrs Saturday

  “Why did you pull those roadblocks?”

  We are back at the sheriff’s station. Hands on hips, a big man has squared off against Garrick. Six three and two hundred eighty pounds, his bulk fills the reception area. He wears a cream-colored Stetson, a pale blue linen blazer, and cowboy boots. His white shirt has been buttoned up to the collar, fastened with a bolo tie. He might shop at Big ’n’ Tall, but I have a feeling he has his clothes tailor-made.

  “We kept ’em up three days,” Garrick fumes. “Highways and secondary roads. If the killer caught a ride, he was gone the first night.”

  “He could have gone to ground,” the big man says. “Waited you out.”

  “Where. It’s flatter than a parking lot out there.”

  “There’s hills north, south and east of the Lazy K. Hundreds of draws and gullies a man could hide.”

  “Border Patrol helicopters covered those hills.” Garrick’s tanned face darkens. “As for roadblocks, I don’t have the budget.”

  Lenson and I approach the pair cautiously. The dispatcher, who had been struggling to look busy, flashes us a warning look.

  “You authorize the over-run.” Garrick stabs the man’s chest with a finger. “In writing. Then I’ll set the roadblocks.”

  The big man blinks. For the first time, he notices us. “Who are you?”

  Garrick swallows hard, remembers his manners. “These gentlemen are friends of the victim,” he says. “Mr Breed, Mr Lenson, this is Mayor Posner.”

  Posner takes my hand and squeezes it. A firm handshake from a man who isn’t trying to impress me. He’s thirty pounds overweight but wears it well. He turns, shakes Lenson’s hand.

  “I’m sorry.” The mayor is in his fifties, with broad features. “Mr Keller was a respected member of our community.”

  “Keller was a good man,” I tell him. “One of the best.”

  Posner grunts, turns on Garrick. “You get those roadblocks back up.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” Garrick drawls. “Once y’all authorize that budget.”

  Lobster red, the mayor stalks from the sheriff’s station.

  “Could he be right?” I ask. “Maybe the killers have gone to ground in the hills.”

  Garrick shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Hills are too low for trees, and the mesquite don’t grow tall enough for shelter.”

  “The Border Patrol have called off their helicopter search.” A woman joins us. She’s the one from the hotel last night, the one who checked me out. Her voice is husky. “The sheriff’s right. If the killers made off in a vehicle, they are long gone. If it was a drug deal gone bad, the killers will not be hiking cross-country.”

  The woman is an attractive brunette, slim in a black pantsuit. I could cut myself on those creases. Her open-collared white blouse reveals a pale throat. Sensible, low-heeled office shoes. An Ivy League lawyer, a senior government or corporate executive.

  Garrick introduces the woman as Anya Stein, from the Department of Justice. That can mean anything. She could be FBI or the Marshal’s Service. From under her suit jacket peeps a SIG P226 automatic. A solid, reliable weapon. The SIG is favored by army CID, military police units, and some special forces.

  “Sheriff,” she says, “may I borrow these gentlemen?”

  “That’s up to them, ma’am.”

  Stein turns to us and smiles. “Help me get to know the victim.”

  I glance at Lenson. He nods, and I say, “All right.”

  The woman says to Garrick, “Can we use your interview room.”

  “Y’all may as well use my office.” Garrick adjusts his belt. “I have things to see to.”

  He wants to cool down after his encounter with Posner. I don’t blame him. The Salem County sheriff is an elected official. But Salem is the largest town, and the county seat. Garrick has a degree of autonomy, but the mayor wields the power of the purse.

  Stein leads us to Garrick’s office and motions us to seats in front of the sheriff’s desk. Throws herself into his old wooden recliner and makes herself at home. She leans back, and the springs in the recliner squeak. The effect is not what she intended.

  I suppress a smile. “What do you do at the DOJ?”

  “I have a flexible mandate.” Stein looks amused. “I was asked to look into your friend’s death.”

  She chooses her words carefully. No indication which branch of the DOJ she works for. I bet she’s from another service, seconded to the DOJ.

  “How did you know Keller,” she asks.

  “We served together,” Lenson says.

  “I pulled his file.” Stein folds her arms across her chest. “Ex-Delta. What one might call a very heavy dude. Are you two still in the service?”

  “We’re retired.”

  Stein looks like she is making a mental note. I glance around Garrick’s office. Dented metal file cabinets stand beside the desk. There’s a wooden gun rack with a neat row of lever-action rifles and pump shotguns. Winchesters, Marlins, Remingtons. Above the rack is the sheriff’s trophy wall.

  High on the wall are mounted plaques with deer and elk antlers. Pride of place has been given to an exceptional bull elk.

  “When was the last time you saw him alive?”

  Lenson shrugs. “A few week
s ago. I live in El Paso. Come down when I can. Sometimes, he comes to visit.”

  Stein shifts her gaze to me.

  “Last year,” I tell her. “We all came to visit.”

  “Why did he leave the army?”

  “He said he wanted to watch his son grow up.”

  “What was he like?”

  “That tells you what he was like.” I cross my legs. “He was a good man. Loyal, patriotic, loved his family.”

  “Special Forces screen their people carefully.”

  “We don’t recruit the best men,” Lenson says. “We recruit the right men.”

  “That’s a nice slogan. Is it still true? The number of special operators in the army and navy has exploded in the last ten years.” Stein picks up a pencil from the sheriff’s desk and twirls it absently. “I’m sure there is a broad spectrum of personalities in special forces units.”

  Lenson and I say nothing.

  Rows of black-and-white photographs of Garrick have been plastered on the wall. Almost all are hunting photographs. Garrick with friends and animals he bagged. Photographs of Garrick and friends at a hunting lodge. One winter photo shows Garrick and a friend standing at the gate of a ranch called El Diablo. Garrick is wearing his Stetson and a long sheepskin coat. The photo must have been taken high in the Rockies.

  “Am I boring you, Mr Breed?” Stein jerks my attention away from the wall.

  “No. I’m just admiring the sheriff’s hunting photographs. Looks like he spends a lot of time in the Rockies.”

  Distracted, Stein looks at the photos. “Yes. Some people find slaughtering animals fun.”

  I want to ask Stein if she is a vegetarian. She has the look. Pretty and slender, like she doesn’t eat. Probably does yoga.

  Stein taps the pencil on the desktop. “I have a problem with this case.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Sheriff Garrick’s theory makes sense as far as it goes. Keller stopped a group of illegals making their way across his land. He got out of his truck, challenged them, and was shot for his trouble. But… Can you see a Delta walking into that? Would either of you have walked into that?”