A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  “Also, Sheriff Wells is in, and I think you want to meet him, don’t you, Mr. Swagger?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well, the best news is, we got a paint and tire match from the state police crime lab in Knoxville. Just came in.”

  She reached over, took a file marked SWAGGER NIKKI, INCIDENT REPORT CF-112, opened it, and took out a faxed form.

  “They say it’s a color called cobalt silver, found on Chrysler Corporation vehicles, notably the Dodge Charger, the Magnum, and the Chrysler 300, their muscle cars. The tire is a standard Goodyear 59-F, and damned if that doesn’t coordinate with a stolen car of a week earlier, a cobalt silver ’05 Charger. Lots of Chargers go missing this time of year, because the Charger is the big hoss of NASCAR and every punk kid or crankhead is in a Charger kind of mood. So this one was stolen in Bristol, and my guess is, whatever kid did it got himself liquored up and went out looking for someone to intimidate that night. As I say, I have my snitches working. I will circularize, but usually folks don’t take stolen cars to body shops, so I doubt that will pay off. They just dump ’em in the deep woods and maybe we find ’em and maybe we don’t, and if we do find ’em, maybe we can take prints and maybe we can’t, and if we can, maybe we can ID the car and maybe we can’t. Probably can’t. But I know who steals cars around these parts, and I’ve got some fellas you wouldn’t invite to dinner or let your daughter date looking into it. So I’m sure we’ll come up with a name and then we’ll go visit him.”

  “I hope you let me come along on that one, Detective.”

  “Mr. Swagger, you don’t have some vigilante-kickass thing in mind, do you? We can’t let that happen and if you—”

  “No, no, ma’am, an old coot like me? No ma’am, I know my limits. I just want to be as involved in this as possible.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Can’t make any promises. Probably not a good idea, but I am noted for sometimes making the wrong decision. More to the point, when your daughter awakes, we’ll want to interview her. What’s the word on that?”

  Bob gave her a brief summary of Nikki’s medical situation, leaving out the detail that he’d moved her, leaving out as well the results of his independent investigations.

  “You will call me when she’s ready to talk, sir? I know you’ve moved her and I am not even going to ask where, because that’s your business, but I know you will call me as soon as an interview is possible.”

  “You don’t miss much, do you, Detective?”

  “Miss things all the damned time, but try not to. Supposed to pay attention, that’s what they pay me for.”

  She smiled, her face lit up, and Bob noticed what a damned attractive woman she was.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s go and see the boss.”

  The office said war. War was in the pictures, the officer in lean camouflages standing with an M4 next to Middle Eastern ruins or in front of huge vehicles with guns everywhere, some airborne, some treadborne, all desert tan, all speaking of war. A plaque with medals on the wall said war, the Silver Star the biggest of them, but there were others, impressive, a collection of a man who’d been in hard places, taken his fair share of risks and been shot at much, and had lived to tell about it.

  Sheriff Wells was tall, thin, hard, and tan, with close-cropped graying hair, sharp, dark eyes, and a languid way of draping himself, as if to say that having seen most things, nothing on earth would be of much surprise. He wore the brown of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, with a gold star on his lapel, and a stock Glock pistol in his holster, as well as the usual duty getup of the police officer: the radio unit with curly cord mic attached to his shirt lapel, the taser, the cuffs; none of it taken off, because he had to set the example to his men and women that the gear can save your life. You wear it all the time, that’s what you do, comfort is not a part of the bargain.

  “Mr. Swagger,” he said after the firm handshake and the direct look to the eyes without evasion or charm, “nice to meet you, though of course I wish the circumstances could be better. How is your daughter at this point?”

  Bob told him, succinctly, keeping it tight and straight, as if he were himself back in service, reporting to a superior.

  “Well, we all hope she’s going to be all right. I hope Detective Fielding has kept you abreast of our efforts. If you need any help, please feel free to contact us. Sometimes a criminal act is harder on the victim’s close relatives than on the victim herself. I know how the thought that someone tried to hurt your child can haunt a father or a mother. So please, feel free to call us. For our part, we’ll work hard to keep you in the loop. I know how tough it can be to go weeks without hearing a thing from the police. I’ve ordered all my officers to call each victim or next-of-kin once a week to keep them up-to-date on any investigation or legal proceedings. That’s our policy, and maybe you’ve guessed that although I am a sheriff by appointment I am still a full-bird colonel by inclination, and when I set a policy it is followed.”

  “You sound like a straight talker, Sheriff, so can I ask you a straight question or two and set my mind to ease?”

  “You surely can. Go ahead, Mr. Swagger.”

  “I expressed this to Detective Fielding, as well. I know you’re all caught up in busting meth labs and you’ve got this big race in Bristol and you’re part of the manpower commitment for security on such a big deal, and I do worry if there’ll be time to investigate my daughter’s situation hard, given all that.”

  “It’s true most of our issues are manpower issues, that plus the goddamned coal dust on everything. But given the size of the department, it’s a hard thing, patrolling a county that’s several hundred square miles in area, most of it wooded, much of it mountainous, what with our problems with narcotics interdiction and this damned race. So we’ve got a lot on our plates. But please know that I try and run a professional department, and we will give this thing our best effort as time allows. My motto is: No back burner in my department. Everything’s front burner in Johnson County. You have my word on that.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  “Now, I did want to say something to you. Detective Fielding mentioned to me that you had these doubts, which are entirely appropriate, because I know how upsetting something of this nature might be. But she also said that you had mentioned poking around on your own.”

  “That is my nature, sir. I am a physical man. Though you may still hear some Arkansas in my voice, I live in the West, and in the West, we are used to doing things for ourselves. It’s not that I doubt Detective Fielding, or the department. I just know, however, that there’s only so many hours in a day, and there are pressures on you all the time. So, yes, it was my idea to poke around a bit. Is that a problem?”

  The sheriff said, “Look, Mr. Swagger, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but that newspaper and your daughter weren’t beloved among some people around here, any more than I am. I take my chances, I suppose you could say she took her chances. She was focusing a light on methamphetamine in Johnson, and folks don’t like that. If I had known she was going to some of the places she went—she was a brave girl, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that—I might have cautioned her or sent a unit into the vicinity just in case. Now it looks like you might be poking in those places too. I’m talking the places where the meth addicts do business, where the trade is practiced, where the stuff is cooked, all of them unsavory places, all of them volatile. So I really don’t want to be worried about you too. My mission is to close these places down, not look after an older fellow in over his head.”

  “I see what you’re saying. Still, if someone tried to hurt my daughter, I’d want to get him off the street and into jail as fast as—”

  “Sir, you might rile somebody, and a fellow of your age wouldn’t stand much of a chance against young toughs with secrets to hide. Were you in the service?”

  “Did a spell in the marines a while back,” Bob said.

  “Well, don’t let that give you delusions of grandeur. S
ome of these hardscrabble Tennessee boys are tougher than nails and they can go off fast and do some bad damage. Put some liquor in ’em or some crystal or both hootch and crystal and they can be downright mean, even murderous. I’d hate to find you beaten to a pulp in a ditch or, worse, dead in a ditch.”

  “Me too,” said Bob.

  “I was a soldier for many years, Mr. Swagger. I was executive officer for an armored combat brigade and went to Iraq twice, three times if you count my time in the sand in the first war when I was a lieutenant. It’s part of my brain. And I still am a soldier, only now the war’s against crystal meth. But I have sadly seen a lot of violent death in my profession. There’s a saying—‘When the shit happens, it happens fast’—that’s entirely accurate. I’m telling you, around here in some areas, it can go to combat fast. Combat is fast and scary and it takes a trained professional to survive, much less prevail, in that environment.”

  Bob sat still, working hard to keep his face uninteresting. But he knew that colonels were very rarely in combat. They supervised, they controlled, they kept radio contact, they took reports, they laid plans and bawled out lieutenants and captains when things went wrong. But they didn’t look through the scope, squeeze off the round, and watch a man jack hard then melt into sheer animal death. They didn’t see what the shells did to the people they caught in the open, how it made a mockery out of any notion of human nobility when you were just looking at freshly butchered meat. They didn’t know boys who’d never been fucked, not even once, died screaming and calling for mommy. There was a whole lot about war colonels didn’t know.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you get my drift?”

  “You are trying to be polite, but you are telling me to keep my nose out of things or I might get eaten up.”

  “Just about that, yes. Let the trained professionals handle it, do you hear?”

  “Well, I’ll be careful, I swear to you. Fair enough?”

  “I’d rather have your word that you’ll go sit by your daughter’s side. That’s where you’re needed.”

  “Yes sir, I hear you.”

  “But I don’t hear you agreeing.”

  “I have a nature to follow, that I can’t deny, sir.”

  “Now you are being polite and telling me to go to hell. Mr. Swagger, you can get yourself in so much trouble so fast around here. I miss my command imperative to reassign you to kitchen duties or public information. But I do know trouble comes in two forms. Trouble with them, meaning the bad guys, trouble with us, meaning the good guys. It’s dangerous for an inexperienced man. Were you ever in combat?”

  “I did some time in—”

  “I tell you, Mr. Swagger, it’s not pretty. You cannot believe what a bullet can do to a human body.”

  “Yes sir,” Bob said.

  “Well, I’m not getting from you what I want and I can’t compel you to give it to me. But I have to warn you that we don’t recognize righteous lawbreaking, meaning I can’t cut you any slack. I can and will arrest you on a lot of silly little things like impeding a lawful investigation or disobeying a lawful order if I find you poking around. I’m so hoping I don’t have to go that route on a man of your age.”

  “Yes sir,” said Bob again. “Now let me ask you one last thing. My daughter had personal effects with her that day. I’m guessing you retrieved them from the wreck. I’d like to have them.”

  “Thelma, what’s the disposition on that?”

  Detective Thelma briefly checked her file, then looked up and said, “We recovered a laptop, seriously damaged by the wreck, a cellphone, her purse, her keys, a Reporter’s Notebook.”

  “Any of it part of the investigation?”

  “It’s all pretty much busted up, Sheriff.”

  “Then I think we can let Mr. Swagger have those, don’t you, Thelma?”

  “Yes sir,” she said.

  “Okay, Mr. Swagger, Thelma will get those for you. I’ll walk you out. Stop somewhere and blow your nose hard to get all the dust before it settles in your lungs. We’ll all probably die of the black lung. Anyhow, I’ll shake your hand, sir, and tell you once again that I hope to hell I don’t run into you in booking or the morgue.”

  ELEVEN

  Mountain City, population two thousand five hundred, was built along the stems of the crossroads of 421, 91, and 67 in a valley between mountain ridges, and it had ridden up the mountainsides in some places. Like towns anywhere, it had its nicer side and its not-so-nice side; its profusion of fast food on the big roads leading out of and into town; its shabby, ignored old main street; but also its share of beaten-down strip malls off the main drag. But in one of them he found a computer store and went in, finding it full of bustling, earnest young geeks, exactly the kinds of boys who wouldn’t end up in the United States Marine Corps. They were all gathered around a monitor that showed some kind of war scenario, mainly beefy Special Ops types with super weapons destroying giant insects with their own set of super weapons. Finally a boy looked up and lumbered over.

  “Can I help you sir? Whoa, that looks like toast.”

  He was referring to the laptop with its spidery fracture lines knifing jaggedly across the bent screen, the scuffed and cracked plastic, the keys out of whack or sprung, the whole mess looking finished for all time.

  “I don’t know if we can do much with that,” the boy said. “You might have to replace the whole unit.”

  “I’m guessing y’all have a genius here,” Bob said. “All these places do. Some real smart kid—all the others dislike him he’s so smart, he wins the alien games all the time and he doesn’t mind letting you know what a geek you are?”

  “Charlie. How did you know?”

  “I just figured it out. Anyhow, Charlie should be at Caltech or MIT except he flunked out of community college or got busted for marijuana or some such and he don’t mind telling you how much more he deserves.”

  “That’s Charlie. He flunked out of Vanderbilt. Math scholarship. It was the games. He is good with the games. He’s the best. You can’t beat him.”

  “I’d like to see Charlie, please.”

  Soon enough, Charlie was put before him, a surly kid in a hooded sweatshirt, still wearing a smear of acne, but no needles or pins through his flesh.

  “Charlie, I hear you’re pretty smart.”

  “Know a thing or two. Can’t help you with that box, though, mister. It’s completely wasted, I can tell you that.”

  “I don’t want it fixed, Mr. Charlie. I want it mined.”

  “Mined?”

  “Yeah, I want you to dig out the hard drive and salvage what information you can—”

  “Data.”

  “Data, yeah. Whatever you can, particularly in the last few days. It was beaten up in a car accident last Thursday. Today is Tuesday. I’m particularly interested in the day of the accident.”

  “Mister, I don’t know. Looks like someone took a hammer to it.”

  “Does, doesn’t it? Maybe the FBI could tell me, but maybe you know more than the FBI, wouldn’t surprise me. And you’re here and the FBI is in Washington, D.C.”

  “Are you with law enforcement, sir?”

  “No, just an amateur at all this.”

  “Well, I can make a try. It would be expensive. I charge—”

  “Charlie, wait a second.”

  He pulled out a stockbroker’s checkbook, dated it, signed it, but left the name and amount blank. He handed it to Charlie.

  “You start now. You work hard. You say goodbye to blowing up monsters from space for a while. This is a maximum effort. And anything you learn, you call me ASAP on my cell, no matter the time. And when you’re done, you’ll know what you’re owed. You fill it in on the check and go cash it and that’s all there is to it. Are we on the same page?”

  “Yes sir. I’ll get busy right now.”

  “Good man, Charlie, knew I could trust you.”

  Bob checked into the Mountain Empire Motel, and set about the melancholy task of examining wha
t remained of the effects his daughter carried that day. The first, of course, was her key ring, which held the Volvo key—thank God he’d bought her a strong automobile for her first job; maybe it had saved her life—and what had to be the key to the Kawasaki he saw parked out in front of the apartment building. That one was particularly biting, as it recalled many happy hours he’d spent bombing across the prairie outside Crazy Horse on his own bike, where he’d built the new house, and she’d joined him. She couldn’t keep up on horseback, so she’d bought a bike, a Honda 250, and the two of them went on bounding rides over the low hills, under the huge sky in the baking heat. Those were good days, maybe his best, and, he remembered thinking, maybe more necessary than he acknowledged.

  It was about then his hair started to turn; it was about then he started having the dreams.

  He saw the yakuza swordsman with his perfect English and his smart, feral eyes, and his swordsman’s ambition, and he knew that what everyone told him was true: when you saw this man, you were looking at death.

  The last face-off in the snow, on the island.

  What was he doing there? What had consumed him with the idea that with his week of training, suppleness from six months of cutting back brush on his desert property, and his anger, that he could stand against this guy? It wasn’t David against Goliath, it was little Davy the three-year-old against Goliath-san. But he’d waded in, delusional, and learned in seconds he was overmatched. Now and then, as the fight wore on, he’d unleash a good combination, his four-hundred-year-old Muramasa blade cleaving dangerously close to the Japanese killer.

  But the man was playing with him. It was killer’s vanity. It was a little game. He knew he’d die when the man tired of it, when the macho chit-chat between them no longer amused him, when the magic hour came, and civilians started coming into the zone.

  There was a moment where he had nothing, he’d lost everything. His lungs were blown, he was bathed in sweat, fatigued, as the other swordsman stalked him. It was all gone. He remembered the despair: why did you ever think you could do this? Why didn’t you bring a gun? Pull it out, blow a 230-grain hardball through the guy and that was it. But no, you had vanity too. You could be in this game too. Fool. Bitter fool on the slippery edge of extinction.