The Homecoming

by Carsten Stroud

  The chopper had a searchlight on and the beam was lancing through the windows, the operator trying to probe the darkness inside the store to see if there was anything worth filming. The store was dark because Deitz had shut off all the lights except for a few dim ceiling spots that lit up their own sockets and nothing else.

  Chu had his hands on the railing and he was watching the bulky shadow of Byron Deitz as he moved silently down the aisles on the main floor, from Chu’s point of view a gigantic box maze packed to the rafters with every kind of testosterone-loaded manly crap the shooting hunting fishing trapping and generally buggering about in the woods dingbats could dream up.

  Deitz was a portrait in stealth, a shotgun in his hands, doing what he had described as one last “perimeter check” before they settled in to start the negotiations with whoever was out there.

  Some of the display counters had fishing rods by the hundreds standing up in holders like a forest of spindly saplings all in a row. Other counters had paddles and oars and all things boat-like. There were duck decoys and plaid hats and hip-waders and fly-tying equipment and portable toilets and cooking tents and camo-painted bows and deadly looking arrows and bowie knives the size of machetes and all of it bored Chu into a trance.

  But the creepiest part of the store, made even more creepy now that the entire cavernous interior was in near-total darkness, was the presence of hundreds of different stuffed animals—foxes, cougars, deer, wolverines, raccoons, possums, lynxes, mountain goats, beavers, owls, hawks, crows, and of course entire families of black bears and brown bears and even a gigantic Kodiak bear.

  This golden-furred monster dominated a huge central tower right in the middle of the store. It stood there, reared up and baring a set of teeth that could have been found in the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus rex, a twelve-foot-high two-thousand-pound shape ascending into the shadows near the roof, barely visible, and therefore radiating a kind of supernatural power that seemed to spread out over the entire store and settle into all the darkest places. In short, Chu wished with all his heart that Deitz would turn the goddam lights on.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  What made it all even more macabre was what was going on outside. A space had been cleared in the middle of the parking lot and a large blue police van was parked there. At least fifteen other police cars and SUVs were parked any which way around the space, their flashers on, their blue and white and red lights flickering everywhere, and everywhere they flickered they lit up armed cops milling around or standing in tight groups.

  Now and then a huge searchlight from the top of the big blue van would snap on and spear a blinding beam in through the slit windows of the store and the beam would break up into these rectangular glowing shafts that would swing through the darkness of the store like Jedi laser swords.

  When it touched on one of the stuffed animals, the glass eyes of the animal would flare up and glitter and the bared fangs in its snarling jaws would glow and the animal would look thoroughly alive and terribly pissed off by the light and its shadow would seem to move as the light passed over it. What happened when the beam hit the Kodiak bear in the middle of the store was going to keep Chu out of the woods for the rest of his life.

  Eighty feet below him, Nick, Coker, and Beau Norlett were standing at the entrance to a concrete shaft lined with disconnected cables and ventilation ducts that vented to nothing. The shaft was a square, roughly eight feet by eight feet, and it had a narrow ladder made of steel loops embedded in the concrete. The loops, really just sections of rebar twisted into curves, were ridged and looked solid enough, although they were slick with oily rust. The sides of the shaft were streaked with water trails and lime growth. Every ten feet or so, a small red bulb glimmered faintly. The rusted steel rungs and the dim red lights ascended into total darkness far above their heads.

  The floor of the shaft was littered with broken pipes, huge gears, twisted cables, and one massive heap of machinery that at one point in its career might have been an electric winch.

  “I am not,” said Beau, with an air of finality, “climbing up into that thing. It’s as dark as a dragon’s colon.”

  “And it smells worse,” agreed Coker, “but we have to do it anyway.”

  “Why?” said Beau, not really hoping to dodge the job, but ready to try anything else first.

  Since his rhetorical question got the usual answer—blank stares from Nick and Coker—he leaned in to look up the shaft again, his expression a mix of horror and disgust.

  He was in plain clothes, like all CID detectives, a pair of black slacks and a charcoal-colored shirt. His tie was canary yellow silk.

  Beau liked his ties to pop.

  “Nick,” he said, pulling his head back out of the shaft, “one slip and we’re all gonna die on that metal shit piled up on the bottom there.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Coker, who was wearing the duty uniform of the Belfair County Sheriff’s Department—crisp black and tan with a six-pointed gold star. “We’ll make it all the way to the top and die up there. Like dogs.”

  Coker felt that nothing eased the pre-fight jitters like a bit of graveyard humor. In this case he was wrong. Nick, who knew that Beau didn’t like heights, shook his head.

  “Sorry. This is it. This shaft was supposed to be a private elevator for a part of the mall that was going to be a suite of offices for the mall management. It dates back to when the Bass Pro Shop was a Dillard’s. When the Dillard’s got bought out by Bass Pro, the office part never got built.”

  “You sure Deitz doesn’t know about it?”

  “There’s a good chance he doesn’t, Beau. You saw the plans he laid out. He doesn’t even have a notation for this shaft.”

  “So basically we’re hoping he missed it,” said Coker, who was clipping his rifle to a tactical sling.

  “That’s the assumption.”

  “And if we’re wrong?”

  Nick smiled back at him. He liked Coker. Coker had a crocodile smile and blood to match.

  “We get the posthumous thanks of the regiment.”

  Coker grinned at that, sliding his rifle around to his back. The weapon was an SSG 550 sniper rifle, Swiss made and Coker’s own piece, not out of stores. He liked to say it was a privilege for a bad guy to get shot by a rifle as fine as this.

  “Well, that’s good enough for me. Beau, no offense, but you need to lose that tie.”

  Beau had forgotten to take it off. He did so with a sheepish grin, stuffed it into his pocket. All three men looked at each other for a moment, getting ready while they were slipping on their tactical gloves and strapping on their Kevlar.

  Nick unhitched his belt radio and gave the TRANSMIT button three clicks.

  He got two back from Mavis, in the control van.

  Affirmative. Good luck.

  “Okay then?”

  Beau nodded, looking as pale as his blue-black skin would allow. Coker said nothing. He just smiled at Nick. This was Coker’s favorite thing to do. Possibly getting to shoot Deitz was just a bonus.

  Nick did a final press check on a Beretta he had borrowed from Mavis Crossfire. His Colt was a fine piece, but for this work he needed a pistol with lots of capacity. He patted his belt for his spare mags, smiled crazily at the other two men, turned and dipped under the lintel, grabbed the first rung of the ladder, and started to climb. His shoes were grating on the rebar and they made an echoing sound that shimmered up the shaft and came back as a kind of rolling hiss. In a moment he was twenty feet up.

  Coker turned and did the After you, Alphonse bow. Beau ducked and swung into the shaft, grunting with the effort.

  Coker waited a bit to let Beau get his distance, and then he too began to climb.

  The phrase Is this the hill you want to die on? came to him from a timeless combat memory, and then he was gone into the darkness, moving like a gecko going up a wall. If he’d known that taking down the First Third Bank in Gracie was going to make life this interesting, he’d have done it s
ooner.

  Chu heard the stairs rumbling as Deitz came back up to the second-floor landing.

  “Chu,” he said, in a low whisper full of intensity, “I think there’s somebody in here.”

  Chu, whose capacity for dread was expanding rapidly, twitched visibly.

  “Like guards or something?”

  “No. Not guards. Civilians.”

  “How do you know?”

  Deitz shook his head and actually sniffed the air. In the shifting bars of the searchlight he looked inhuman and predatory.

  “Cigar. Somebody in this place stinks of cigar. It’s in their clothes. I can smell it. It’s strongest down there.”

  “Maybe somebody was smoking and—”

  “Can’t smoke in this store. There are smoke alarms all over. This is in somebody’s clothes, like his jacket or something. Wait here.”

  Chu huddled by the railing and stared down into the pit-like main floor, plunged back into total darkness now that somebody outside had killed all the searchlights. Which meant something, but he couldn’t figure out what.

  What it meant was that Nick and Beau and Coker were climbing up a shaft and about to make a combat entry, but Chu wasn’t trained to make that sort of tactical leap, and Deitz was too busy worrying about the source of that cigar smell.

  Deitz was back in a moment. He handed a complicated black headset to Chu. It looked like binoculars.

  “Put these on.”

  “What are they?”

  “Thermal and night vision imaging gear. They can read body heat as well as amplify light. Put them on. The strap’s elastic.”

  Chu put them on and Deitz adjusted the strap. Chu was now quite blind. He felt Deitz adjusting something on the headset, and then the shop floor burst into a pale green field.

  “Shouldn’t you have them on?”

  Deitz shook his head.

  “No. If somebody puts a light on you, like a flashlight, or those searchlights kick back on, the flare can stun your retinas for thirty or forty seconds. Blind you. Long enough to get yourself shot. You’re no shooter, so you just be the eyes. What do you see?”

  Chu swept his gaze back and forth around the floor. Inside the green field there were a few hot spots that showed up as red blobs. They were small, no bigger than a dinner plate.

  Chu described them.

  “No. Those are electrical signatures from the cash registers and alarm sensor nodes. Do you see anything man-sized?”

  All of this was said in a whisper, with the two of them crouching by the railing. Chu did a sweep again, this time much more slowly.

  “Yes,” he said, his heartbeat rising. “On the far wall, where the tents are.”

  “Inside one of the tents?”

  “Yes,” he said, studying the red blotch. It was showing through the nylon walls of a large blue tent that looked as if it was a kitchen shelter.

  “It’s big. Or it’s two people.”

  “Shit,” said Deitz. “That’s where the cigar smell was strongest.”

  “Not guards?”

  “No. Must be a couple of fucking civilians. Maybe they were in the washrooms or something. I missed them. Now they’ve got into that fucking tent. Fucking cockroaches.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Deitz shifted, the shotgun making a metallic clink as it rubbed against his belt buckle.

  “Keep an eye on them. If they move out of that tent, click me on this.”

  He handed Chu a small Motorola radio, showed him where to press the TALK bar.

  “Just click me. Don’t talk. Wait here.”

  And he was gone again, back into the darkness behind the gun counter. In a moment Chu heard the beep-beep of Deitz dialing a number on his cell. Chu kept his headset trained on the tent. Please, he was thinking, don’t move. Don’t get yourself killed, because then I’m a dead man too.

  Back behind him he heard Deitz start talking.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Hello there, Byron. It’s Mavis Crossfire. How’s it going?”

  “Where’s Warren?”

  “Mr. Smoles is currently being interviewed by the media. He is telling them that we are about to execute two innocent people because we are night-crawling eaters of the dead who lick the blades of their knives after slitting the throats of kittens because we enjoy that sort of thing.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “Regretfully, you may not. You must try to be content with my humble self.”

  “You’re the negotiator?”

  “Depends. Are we negotiating?”

  “I want to see Smoles.”

  “Then turn on a television. He’s having the time of his life out there. Four interviews with local and now he’s got the Fox crew up from Cap City. He has them mesmerized, Byron. I believe he arrived with TV makeup on.”

  “He keeps it in his glove box. You have my phone jammed?”

  “We have all cell phones in the vicinity jammed. And all the landlines too. You know the drill. If you want to talk, you have to talk to me. Now are you going to go on with all this crazy juvenile horseshit or are you going to come on out of there like a grown-up and be reasonable?”

  “You know what I want, Mavis.”

  “Please indulge me one more time.”

  “You all know I didn’t do that bank. I want those secrets-to-the-enemy charges dropped. In return, I’ll give you the guys who took down all those cops.”

  “You know I can’t make a deal like that. Not under these circumstances. You’re a fleeing felon who shot a security guard—”

  “Wasn’t me drove that van into a deer. I was back in the cage, in fucking shackles. When I came to, I thought everybody was dead. I got out of the van and I was in like a daze. I didn’t escape. I wandered off. It was like an amnesia thing. Even now I have headaches. God knows what kind of trauma I’m suffering, or how it’s affecting my perceptions. I have no clear recollection of how I got here. I’m probably gonna sue the U.S. Marshals for reckless endangerment of a person in custodial care.”

  Mavis, who, in spite of the seriousness of the standoff, got a major kick out of hearing a guy who was in chains and getting his ass transported by two enormous guards describing himself as being in “custodial care.”

  She took a moment to regroup.

  “Wandered off with two borrowed guns and bought a Hugo Boss suit and sort of sleepwalked into the Bass Pro Shop after shooting Jermichael Foley, one of your own employees, in the knee? That kind of amnesia thing?”

  “Yes, exactly that. And negotiators aren’t supposed to be smart-asses.”

  “Byron, this is Mavis. We know each other. I’m just trying to talk sense to you.”

  “Then get me that deal.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then get me someone who can.”

  “Byron,” Mavis said, with exasperation creeping into her voice, “this isn’t CSI. That line was old when Jesus got His first tricycle. What’s the story on Andy Chu? Is he a hostage or were you just lonely?”

  “Chu’s my IT guy. He’s not a hostage. He can find the guys who did the bank—”

  “Then send him out—”

  “Or else?”

  “Byron, we can’t let you sit around inside the Bass Pro Shop until Christmas Eve. Hunting season is three days off. People need their Day-Glo ball caps and camouflage toilet paper. You’re just pissing them off.”

  Deitz decided to play his ace.

  “Then how about this? I think there are a couple of civilians in here.”

  A pause.

  A significant pause.

  “I thought you cleared the place out?”

  “I thought so too. But now I think I may have missed a couple.”

  Another significant pause, which told Deitz that Mavis had reason to believe he was right.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Come on, Mavis. You got a family member out there, missing anyone?”

  Another silence.

&nb
sp; “Not that I’m aware.”

  “No? Ask whoever it is does the guy smoke cigars.”

  Boonie, who was standing behind Mavis in the blue communications van, turned to one of the uniforms and whispered something in his ear. The cop was gone and back in fifteen seconds, nodding his head vigorously.

  Mavis took note.

  “Byron, if you have reason to believe that there’s an innocent bystander—”

  “Or two.”

  “Or two—inside that store, then you know how important it is for your case that nothing bad should happen to them.”

  “Yeah. I know that. I didn’t ask them to hide out in a fucking tent, did I?”

  “So … how do you want to do this?”

  “Mavis, level with me. Are there a coupla stray civilians in this fucking store?”

  “We think there may be—”

  “Names?”

  “A Mr. Frankie Maranzano and his grandson have so far been unaccounted for.”

  “Mavis, now you’re talking like a fucking lawyer.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I am. I guess it’s the strain. What do you want to do?”

  “What do you want me to do? I don’t want them in here any more than you do—”

  Click. Click.

  “Shit. Mavis, I gotta go.”

  “Byron, listen, you need to know—”

  Click. Click. Click.

  Deitz was gone. Mavis tried calling him back, but the phone went to message.

  You’ve reached the personal line of Byron Deitz. I’m not available to—

  She clicked off.

  Mavis was going to tell him about the Dan Wesson artillery piece that Frankie Maranzano was carrying, but Deitz was gone. She picked up the radio to warn Nick and Coker but realized that they might be so close that Deitz would hear the transmission. Not being a religious person, she settled for resting her forehead briefly on the desk in front of her.