The Homecoming

by Carsten Stroud

  But who was helping Deitz?

  There were only two viable candidates.

  Phil Holliman, his Second in Command.

  For why?

  Loyalty, long association, abiding friendship?

  Unlikely.

  With Deitz out of the picture, as far as he knew, there was nobody around to pin his name on the Raytheon stunt—Holliman sure as hell knew about it even if he was just Deitz’s errand boy. And now he was the top guy in BD Securicom, although he might not know that Deitz was about to hand over half the company to that geeky Chinese dork down in IT. And it was a moot question how long the Feds were going to let a private security firm with a felon for a CEO handle the perimeter control for something as vital to the national interest as Quantum Park.

  Endicott felt it was reasonable to rule out Phil Holliman, at least provisionally.

  Which left Andy Chu.

  For why Andy Chu?

  Because if he didn’t help, Deitz might not be alive to sign that stock transfer, and, on a more basic level, if he didn’t help, Byron Deitz would find a way to reach out and kill him.

  Down in the lobby the curious bellman named Edgar found something plausible to do in the cloakroom until Mark Hopewell took his coffee break in the Old Dominion bar. Mr. Quan, the concierge, was off doing something diligent for a visiting potentate of the Shriners.

  Seizing his moment, Luckinbaugh stepped around to the registration desk and, with a few practiced keystrokes, tapped into the system.

  Edgar Luckinbaugh had been a deputy sheriff for Belfair County until he had suffered the misfortune of getting caught while dipping into the Belfair and Cullen County Law Enforcement Benevolent Fund.

  His misfortune in this matter had more to do with exactly who had caught him doing it.

  In the normal course of these things, he’d have been detected by a simple audit and handed over to Internal Affairs to be dealt with according to the rules. But he had not been caught by a simple audit. He’d been caught—through a fluke—by a Staff Sergeant Coker.

  In Coker’s Court of No Appeal—he sat as both judge and jury—assorted petty criminals and other flawed characters who had come to his attention were offered a choice between becoming contributors to Coker’s wide-ranging informal intelligence file on who was doing what to whom in and around Niceville and the counties, or, if they so chose, being handed over to the proper authorities forthwith, to reap what they had sown.

  Not surprisingly, everyone who had appeared before the bench in Coker’s Court of No Appeal, Justice Coker presiding, had taken Door Number One.

  This made Coker a better source of sensitive information about the darker side of Niceville than anything contained in Boonie Hackendorff’s database in the FBI office down in Cap City, which, unknown to Boonie, had already been hacked into by Charlie Danziger, who was no slouch at this sort of thing himself.

  So it came to pass that when Edgar Luckinbaugh stood in the dock before Justice Coker, he had also chosen Door Number One.

  After his honorable retirement from the Belfair and Cullen County Sheriff’s Department a year later, Coker had gotten him a job at the Marriott, Niceville’s largest and most luxurious hotel, where all the best people came to stay.

  There his bellman duties allowed him to develop a great deal of information about the people who checked in and what business had brought them to town. Most of this information was as deadly dull and boring as the contents of a United Nations press release on anthropogenic climate change.

  Some, however, was more intriguing, and Coker had been able to profit from Edgar’s researches in various subtle ways, not all of them evil.

  A few of them, such as the detection of a brutal pedophile, the exposure of several con men and fraudulent stock promoters, and the arrest of two men wanted for a contract killing in Texas, resulted in real benefit to the people of the town.

  In the matter of Harvill Endicott’s arrival at the Marriott, Luckinbaugh, an observant fellow, had noted that the airline tags attached to Mr. Endicott’s luggage were from an airline that had never offered flights into Mauldar Field, yet Mr. Endicott had arrived in an airport limousine.

  This piqued his ex-cop’s curiosity.

  Then, while shifting Mr. Endicott’s extremely weighty luggage about during the man’s arrival, Edgar had managed to pass it through the metal detector that he kept in the bellman’s locker and found that the larger case was fairly bulging with heavy metal objects.

  A moment’s work with a pick had revealed to Edgar the contents of Mr. Endicott’s case, and an inventory was duly recorded. Particular attention was paid to the Sig Sauer pistol.

  Now Edgar was at the registration desk, completing, as quickly as possible, a dossier on a Mr. Harvill Endicott that would, when finalized, be forwarded to Coker for his reading pleasure.

  The last element that Edgar managed to extract during his investigation was that Mr. Endicott, a single business traveler, had ordered up two cars, one of them a highly visible black Cadillac and the other a horrid Toyota Corolla, tan in color, that was so utterly invisible as to be a perfect surveillance vehicle.

  During his time as an investigator with the county, Edgar and his partners had frequently deployed exactly that sort of anonymous Japanese vehicle to great effect. Interesting.

  Very interesting.

  Deitz Was in the Wind

  Endicott, thinking about the Deitz thing in his hotel room the morning after the accident, got it almost exactly right. Spectacular though it had certainly been, Byron Deitz missed the part where the deer hit the windshield because he was lying in a heap on the floor of the prisoner compartment with blood bubbling out of a dented nose and his mind in a far-off world where bright blue butterflies sang arias from Rigoletto in tiny voices that sounded like wind chimes. This fleeting diversion came to an abrupt end as the leading edge of the marshals’ van hit the wall of pines and came to a sudden stop, unlike everything inside it that wasn’t strapped down, including Nick Kavanaugh and Byron Deitz.

  However, Deitz had not traveled quite as far as Nick, who didn’t come to a halt until he hit what was left of the—fortunately springy—mesh cage behind the driver’s seat. Deitz slid only thirty-nine and a half inches, since that was the length of the chain that ran from his ankle to a ringbolt welded to the floor of the van.

  The chain stopped Deitz from breaking his neck on a stanchion behind the passenger seat, but it also wrenched his ankle as it snapped taut at the end of its length. The pain in his ankle overrode the pain in his nose—it was of a far higher order—and jerked Deitz out of singing-blue-butterfly world and back into full consciousness.

  He lay there, blinking up at the side of the van, wondering for a time how the side of the van came to be the ceiling of the van. Further, how did everything get all red and sticky and why did the van smell like a butcher shop? While he was on the subject, how did he get all covered in gore and bits of squishy stuff?

  He closed his eyes, regrouped, shook his head, regretted that immediately, and opened his eyes again. He saw Nick Kavanaugh lying in a crumpled heap, jammed up against what looked like part of the prisoner cage. His chest was going up and down pretty regularly, but there was a gash over his left eye and he was covered in blood and tiny pink bits of something that could have been bone.

  Still alive, Deitz thought.

  Hopefully not for long.

  After wiggling his toes and fingers, Deitz managed to get it together enough to sit up and brace his back against the wall—no, the roof—of the van. He looked around and tried to piece it all together.

  Up front, two dead deputies.

  Wrapped around said deputies, something large and furry and shapeless, with hooves.

  Blood and chunky bits and glass all over everywhere.

  Van lying on its side.

  Conclusion: they’d hit a deer.

  Deitz figured the driver had gotten distracted by the fact that his brother-in-law over there had just pounded him into La-
La Land. With one punch.

  For a mid-sized switchblade of a guy, Nick could hit damn hard. If they ever had a rematch, Deitz was going to bring a baseball bat.

  He leaned back, touched his nose—that hurt—moved his right leg—that hurt too—and considered the current state of affairs.

  No sirens yet.

  So this just happened.

  The deputies are dead.

  Nick isn’t.

  Yet.

  I’m alive, but chained to the floor.

  Or the wall.

  Whatever.

  First thing on the To-Do List.

  Get free.

  How?

  Get the key.

  It wasn’t a pleasant task, dealing with the key, which was in the female marshal’s coat pocket, under a pile of deer bits and gore.

  But Deitz was motivated.

  He got the key.

  Andy Chu was one of those Asian guys who don’t actually have an actual age. If he wore a ball cap backwards and rode a skateboard you’d figure he was maybe twelve, a skinny butter-colored kid with big black eyes pulled up at the corners and ears that stuck out in a wonderfully presidential way.

  Put him in a pair of baggy flannel pants and a checkered shirt that flopped around his skinny ass and you’d … well, you’d have Andy Chu, sitting at his desk in the IT offices of BD Securicom playing World of Warcraft online—his avatar was a seven-foot-tall Viking named Ragnarok who had a magical battle-axe and a hauberk of solid gold and all the Valkyrie chicks were totally crazy with cyber-desire for him and Chu was about to manifest a gigantic—of course his cell phone rings.

  He picked it up with a weary sigh and looked at the call display.

  CHESTER MERKLE

  Who the hell was Chester Merkle?

  Only one way to find out.

  He hit ANSWER and complicated his already complicated life beyond all recognition.

  Chu got to the construction yard trailer that Deitz was hiding in about forty minutes later. He’d passed the scene of the crash a mile back. The big blue van was lying on its side, surrounded by cop cars and ambulances and fire trucks. Men and women in various uniforms were milling about in brisk and purposeful ways and a medevac chopper was just settling onto the northbound lane as a wide, fleshy woman tightly constricted by the black and tan uniform of the County Sheriff’s Department waved him through.

  According to the directions Deitz had given him, the trailer was being used as an office for a large quarry operation, recently shut down, probably because of the recession. The owner of the quarry was a guy named Chester Merkle.

  The actual Chester Merkle was off seeing Bruges with Mrs. Merkle and her younger sister, Lillian, for whom Chester Merkle had a secret longing that he would once again fail to consummate in Bruges, even though he was paying for the whole damn trip.

  Chu pulled up in his navy blue Lexus and stopped at the chain-link fence with the faded sign on it that read:

  MERKLE’S QUARRY

  IF YOU WANT TO POUND SAND

  YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE

  Chu shut the engine off. The trailer, a double-wide, had a sagging roof and the windblown sand had blasted off most of what may have been its pale gray paint. There was chicken wire over the windows and the door, which was shut, had a large steel padlock on it. There was no sign of Byron Deitz and Chu was giving serious thought to just starting the car up and driving away when he heard Deitz’s voice, from a distance, echoing around the huge sandy pit beyond the gate.

  “Get out of the car.”

  This is where he shoots me, Chu was thinking, but he got out anyway because what the hell else was he going to do? He stood beside the vehicle, waiting for a bullet with an air of dignified resignation that was a credit to his line.

  “Open all the doors.”

  Chu did just that, all four of them.

  “Now the hatch.”

  Chu did, although it seemed unlikely that if he had called the cops, there would actually exist anywhere on the planet a cop stupid enough to let himself get picked as the guy who has to get into the trunk.

  “Step away from the car.”

  Chu did this too.

  There was a shuffle of gravel and Byron Deitz slid clumsily down a rock pile off to Chu’s left, where he had been waiting all along.

  Since Andy Chu hadn’t been fully filled in on all the details of Deitz’s escape, this barefoot apparition in a blood-soaked jumpsuit limping towards him with blood running from his bashed-in nose and a large pistol in his hand, the muzzle pointing directly at Chu’s crotch, gave him a bit of a shock.

  “Jesus,” he said, in spite of himself. “What happened?”

  “We hit a deer,” said Deitz, as he came up, bringing with him the reek of blood and sweat.

  Up close he looked worse.

  “You bring what I asked?”

  “It’s in the trunk.”

  “Move back here.”

  Chu did, and watched as Deitz stripped out of his jumpsuit—naked he was all muscle and beef and bone—and cleaned himself off with the Wet Wipes as much as he could—brisk, efficient work—Byron Deitz was fully alive to the situation he was now in.

  Then he pulled on the Securicom uniform that Chu had taken from the change room locker, a crisp white shirt with black shoulder flashes and black slacks with a thin red stripe down the sides. The uniform belonged to Ray Cioffi, who was off duty and, conveniently, about Deitz’s size and weight. It took Deitz a few minutes to get squared away, during which Andy Chu looked into the sky expecting to see a chopper and then down the lane expecting to see red and blue flashing lights.

  But nothing came.

  It would.

  Within an hour the state chopper had overflown this site and shortly after that a cruiser came down the lane to check the trailer and the grounds, but Deitz was ex-FBI and he knew how to clean a scene. The troopers walked around the site, rattled the lock on the gate, climbed the fence to check the door of the trailer, but there was nothing to see. Since they didn’t think that anyone had gotten into the trailer they didn’t look inside it, and it followed that they didn’t find Chester Merkle’s phone inside, and therefore they didn’t check whether any calls had been made from the phone, because if they had, they would have seen a number that, shortly afterwards, they might have discovered belonged to a man named Andy Chu, who worked at BD Securicom. And that would have been that. But they didn’t, so it wasn’t.

  Back at the scene of the rollover they had brought in the dogs, who got one snootful of all the guts and gore scattered all over the place and, after a whispered conference, expressed their regrets and respectfully declined to participate.

  So, all in all, a bit of a failure on the part of local law enforcement.

  By the time they were fully into the challenging work of failing to detect anything remotely useful, Byron Deitz and Andy Chu, taking the side roads, were well on their way to Andy Chu’s neat wood-frame rancher at 237 Bougainville Terrace in the Saddle Hill neighborhood of southwestern Niceville.

  Chu had a garage with an automatic door, so Deitz stayed low until Chu got the Lexus parked inside and shut the engine down, his heart going like one of those miniature gas engines they put in model planes. Much to his surprise, Deitz didn’t shoot him as soon as the garage door powered down.

  “Got anything to eat?” was what he said.

  Well, not quite exactly.

  Because of his nose, it actually came out as, “God addy ding doo ead?”

  Either way, it eased Chu’s mind.

  For now.

  The Shocking Price of Arugula

  Around noon on the same Thursday that Mr. Endicott was reviewing his options in his suite at the Marriott, pain brought Nick back out of the dark. He was dimly aware of previous periods of consciousness occurring randomly through a long and difficult night, fragmented images of doctors frowning at him under cold blue lights, and two large nurses standing over him, talking across his naked body, in Italian, about t
he shocking price of arugula.

  This more recent awakening, into a milky light pouring through a window, seemed nearly normal, as if he were coming out of a sound sleep.

  He opened an eye and Kate was looking back at him, her face drawn and pale.

  She smiled at him, leaned forward, and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled wonderful. He hoped he did too, but he doubted it. Kate leaned back in the chair, still holding his hand.

  “You’re supposed to say ‘Where am I?’ ”

  Nick tried a smile.

  It hurt, but he did it anyway.

  “Where am I?”

  “Lady Grace. It’s about noon Thursday. The day after you were in the accident. Basically, they say you’re fine. I have no idea how, but they say you are. Your eye is okay, they just put a bandage on it to protect the bone around the socket. You cracked something called the supraorbital process. You’re only groggy because they sedated you. They had to. You were thrashing around a lot and they couldn’t get any X-ray images. You also have an injury to the knuckles of your right hand that the doctors—and I—believe may have been acquired just prior to the rollover.”

  Nick lifted his right hand.

  The knuckles were swollen and there was a spreading bruise along the back of his hand.

  “I may have punched Byron in the nose.”

  “That’s what I thought. Good for you.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Like a public service announcement.”

  “That bad?”

  “No. Not really. As I said, you’re basically okay. The doctors think you’re made out of hickory. The X-rays showed nothing. They say anybody else would have cracked a rib or broken his neck. But not you.”

  This was said with a tremor, but she rode on over it.

  “You have a lot of Niceville friends, Nick, for a boy from Away who’s only been in town for three years. Your partner, that nice lad Beau Norlett, he was here earlier, but he had to go on a call. Tig Sutter looked in. Jimmy Candles and Marty Coors and Mickey Hancock. Lemon Featherlight was here, out in the hall, talking to Rainey. Mavis Crossfire phoned to ask about you. And I saw Charlie Danziger in the lobby and he was asking after you.”