After the Rain (30 page)

Name, rank, serial number.

Something to brace on. Get ready. Sound went in and out. Light rippled on the wall, the wind slipping through leaves outside. Dale had parked off the road, in the shade of some trees. Her mind played tricks, defaulting to bad trips…

Seven years ago she’d been forced down on another bed by Virgil Fret, who tried to rape her. She had mocked his manhood and driven him into a fury of violence. He burned her with cigarettes, kicked her, and then punched her with his fists. His brother, Bevode, who was a lot scarier than Virgil, cut off part of her ear and gave it to Broker as a present.

But Virgil didn’t bind her hands because he liked the back-and-forth of physical contact, the feeling of knocking her around. She’d used that to stay alive minute by minute until Broker…

She forced away the image. Nothing personal, not now. Not Broker, not Jane…

This was different from Virgil.

Unlike at the bar, now she got nothing overtly sexual off Dale Shuster, who stood in the compartment, bland and white as the Pillsbury Doughboy. It was hot in this tight space, but still Dale wore a long-sleeve blue Carhartt work shirt buttoned down to the wrists and up to his neck. The bloodless white of his skin was something you see on the inside of a seashell.

Hard to gauge reactions and focus. She thought she knew her body. Always counted on hemorrhages of adrenaline. But that old surge had turned on her, had congealed into a cold, heavy coil that pressed down on her chest. Hard to breathe with Dale studying her. His flat, patient eyes were teaching her stuff she didn’t want to know. Like how fear was a fast surface blast of pins and needles. Fear was fight or flight. Fear helped you survive. She’d swept right past fear into something deeper. More permanent. This was dread.

Dread was no way out, looking down into darkness. Getting ready to die.

To hold dread at bay she reached deep for hate. With difficulty, she forced a breath into her lungs. Let it out.

Face into the wave.
Easy for you to say.

Still, she had to know.

She forced herself to look directly into Dale’s eyes and said, “What was that you gave me?”

“Ketamine. It’s a general anesthetic. Makes you paralyzed. I hit you in a large muscle group, so it came on slow. Like, say, when you have to use the bathroom. I’ll give you half a dose and you’ll be like a puppy. Easy to handle.”

Nina couldn’t help making a face.

Dale shrugged. “I have this problem with women. Ketamine helps me get over it. You didn’t eat any breakfast this morning, did you?” he asked blandly.

Nina shook off the weird question, gritted her teeth, and said, “Do you know who I am?”

He nodded. “You’re the government. You came looking for me
because a Saudi named Rashid was arrested in Detroit earlier this week. He talked.”

That stunned her, and though she was still trippy from the drug, she had to know. She pushed up against the restraints. “Dale, is there a bomb?”

“Oh yes. Maybe you’ll get to see the windows rattle when it goes off. From a safe distance, of course.” Dale pushed the last bite of his doughnut into his mouth, and she noticed the milky flesh under his fingernails. A sign of a congestive heart. His blood was probably white too. Clots in his veins like maggots.

He chewed, took a final gulp of Coke, and set the can on the carpet. Then he lowered his bulk to the side of the bed. His weight depressed the mattress and she shifted toward him. Their hips touched. Almost blushing, he shyly moved away.

Nina started to tremble. It wasn’t his casual talk about a bomb that undercut her nerve. It was his creepy fit of shyness. The weird things he said.

You didn’t eat breakfast this morning?

After several false starts, she managed to say, “Rashid used the word
nuclear
.”

“Yes. There is a nuclear component,” Dale said.

“How”—she shook her head, concentrated, then continued—“did they get it in?”

“They?” Dale drew himself up. “
They
didn’t.
I
did. It’s my bomb. Well, actually, George and Joe made it, but it was my idea first.” His smile, though modest, showed half an inch of gum.

“George?”
her voice rose.

“Yeah. You met him last night. He faked you guys out, huh?” Dale jerked his thumb at the rear of the van. “He’s right outside, parked in back. Probably smoking one of his cigars. We’re on our way to blow it up.”

She wasn’t processing this. She was losing it to the shakes. Her hip and left leg started to charley-horse, and out of reflex she
stretched against the cords, causing her to arch her back, raise her hips to flex the cramped muscles. Dale averted his eyes and immediately rose from the bed.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

Nina couldn’t stop blinking, as if rapid eyelid movement could clarify the confusion.
On their way…
then a spasm circled her spine and she fought off a deep tremor, afraid her bladder and sphincter would let go. She had lost control and now she would lose her dignity. She would be reduced to mere fluids: sweat, tears, piss, shit, and blood. She knew if she allowed herself to think of her daughter right now she would cry.

Suddenly, enveloped in shivers, she got it. He wasn’t your ordinary sexual predator. He wasn’t some high-prairie militia whack job. They figured how to use him because…

He was crazy
.

Dale edged around the bed, went to a small wicker basket by the toilet, and removed a folded sheet. Methodically he opened it, shook it out, and held it at arm’s length. It was as white as his face. He returned to the side of the bed and carefully spread it over her, pulling it up to her neck. “That’s better,” he said.

Then he reached up and closed the window and pulled the curtain shut so it was dark in the compartment.

“Movie time,” he said.

It was turning
into the kind of hot July day when you want to stay inside, draw the blinds, and turn up the A/C. Broker lit another of the cigarettes from Nina’s pack. As he smoked, he continued to hold the pack in his hand, like it was a link to her. He felt the remaining cigarettes in it, resisting the urge to actually count them. About half left. In the back of his mind a scared little kid made up a game.

As long as I have her cigarettes, she’ll be all right.

As they drove in Wales’ truck, Broker wondered if these cops had been waiting for this ever since they swore an oath and strapped on a gun—a killing in their town. Now it was on them; three people shot dead in less than an hour. One of them by their hand.

Barry Sauer was in the hospital ER getting his face stitched. The Border Patrol was in charge of the site where Joe Reed had been stopped. Kruse was searching the Shuster home. Druer, the part-time deputy, was now helping Fire and Rescue organize a search party to comb through the fields and ditches along Joe Reed’s
escape route. Looking for Nina and Dale. They were covering all the bases.

Norm Wales drove up in front of the Missile Park and parked next to the county car. Deputy Vinson ushered them into the bar with a stern proprietary admonition: “Now, nobody touch nothin’.”

The older men glared at him. He glared back. “I mean it, I been keeping this site
clean
.”

Ace and Jane lay about three feet apart. Ace was facedown, curled slightly, compact, his arms tucked under his chest. Two red rosettes had spread no more than three inches wide in the back of his T-shirt, between his shoulder blades. Jane’s position was more dynamic—pitched on her right side, her right arm outstretched. A 9-mm Beretta lay on the pine floorboards about six inches from her spread fingers. He couldn’t see Ace’s eyes, but he could see Jane’s. They were open but had become things, mere organic matter, no longer human. Hardly any blood was evident on her broad forehead, but her chest was still soggy with it. A wet copper stench hung in the musty room.

“There’s five ejected cartridge casings by the rear doorway,” Vinson said.

Broker took a deep breath, let it out. You can get used to being around the dead but you never get used to the questions they pose.

“Broker, you been around some shootings?” Norm Wales said.

“A few,” Broker said.

“What do you see?” Wales said.

Broker studied the way Jane was sprawled. She had been trying to fight, had been chopped down in the act of trying to aim her weapon. He looked at the doorway at the other end of the room, where the empty brass lay. He said, “Not much bleeding. They died fast. That guy Joe could shoot.”

“Yeah,” Yeager said. “He hit Barry twice in the Kevlar at a dead run over broken ground—from more’n twenty-five yards on the first one.”

“I’m assuming Jane was no slouch with a handgun. But she took two in a two-inch group in the chest. Pretty fancy shooting under a lot of pressure for a blown-up Indian from Turtle Mountain,” Wales said.

“Nina told me to watch out for him,” Broker said. “Said he looked trained.”

“Trained,” Wales repeated. Like it was an especially potent word.

“She meant it as a backhanded compliment, as in trained like an operator. Like her. A peer. Maybe she was right,” Broker said. “Maybe she found exactly what she was looking for.”

Wales took a step closer and stared hard at Broker. “She’s your wife. Where you at with this thing?”

Broker had to explain something. They’d all been watching closely as he cycled, by turns intense and cool, burning an icy hole in the day. “It’s like this—Nina and I have had a few moments like this, and we made a pact that if the shit hits the fan—like now—we focus on working the problem until we know something for sure.”

“For sure,” Wales repeated.

“Yeah. Like until there’s a body.” They continued to stare at him. So he said, “Bottom line? Let’s say Dale Shuster is a bad guy. If she’s still breathing and he’s dumb enough to take her along, he better watch out.”

Wales nodded, he turned to Yeager. “Nuff said. Okay. What about Ace? Taking two in the back?”

“Don’t figure,” Yeager said. “Ace never ran from anything in his life.”

Wales shook his head. “ ’Cept maybe success.” He turned to Vinson. “You’re doing it right. Keep everybody out till the state crime guys get here.” Broker and Yeager followed him outside. He stood in silence for a few moments on the porch, staring at the equipment shed across the road. “Shuster and Sons,” he said under his breath. “I’m going to have to call Gene Shuster, tell him about his boys. Question is, tell him what, exactly?” He collected himself
and faced the other men. “Okay. We plan along two tracks. Until someone convinces me otherwise I’m treating Dale’s nine-one-one call like what it appears. A murder-kidnap. So I got search parties started to go over every inch of ground on Joe’s route.” He looked directly at Broker. “You understand.”

Broker nodded. “If they’re dead, he had to dump the bodies.”

“At the same time we’ll give your misdirection theory some play. We’ll dig up a photo of Dale, put out an all-points, and fax out the picture of Nina off her military ID.”

Wales turned to Broker. “Okay, you come up with any bright ideas, you let me know. I’ll let Jimmy spend some time with you. There’s a couple carloads of people on their way from Bismarck and other counties, so it’s not like I’ll be hurting for help. All I ask is you two stay out of their way.”

“You going to tell the state guys who Jane was?” Broker said.

Wales folded his arms across his chest. “Not right off. “ ’Cause all I got is hearsay, right? Nobody’s going to confirm her, or Nina. And there’s this—we haven’t had a shooting in this county for a long time. This here’s news. There’ll be reporters coming. Loose talk about Army Delta and black helicopters could get real nuts real fast. Get way out of hand.” Then he squinted at Yeager. “Jimmy, now you’ve got a taste for this weird shit, how you going to go back to writing speeding tickets and counseling domestics?”

Yeager shifted from foot to foot. “Norm, what about a shooting board? Do I turn in my sidearm and go off the clock?”

“And reduce my full-time staff by thirty percent? Anyway—you fire that Colt on your hip?”

“Nope.”

“Then turn in the rifle. We’ll start the paperwork. Everything going on, it’ll probably be a week before we have a sit-down.” He pointed his finger. “Don’t do anything to antagonize the state guys.”

Broker and Yeager nodded.

Wales started for his car. “I’ll be at the SO,
coordinating
,” he said, cranking some irony and awe into the remark.

As soon as Wales pulled away, Broker reached for his cell and called Holly.

They agreed to meet in the parking lot of Shuster and Sons Equipment, across from the bar. Holly drove up in his undercover rig, the dust-blasted gray Chevy truck with the Arizona plates. With his pale eyes and shaggy hair he projected an aura of a spooky wind blowing off the Superstition Mountains. He wore faded jeans, cracked dirt-whitened leather boots, and a colorless T-shirt frayed from too much sweat and too many washings that bore a small line of type over the heart: John McCain for President.

“Holly, you remember Yeager. He dropped the guy they think killed Jane.” Holly and Yeager shook hands.

Holly studied the deputy. “We met out on the highway last night.”

“Sorta. You arrived in the helicopter,” Yeager said. He nodded across the road. “State crime agency is on the way to process the scene. You want to identify her?”

Holly shook his head and gazed across the road to where Vinson was stringing yellow crime scene tape. “I go in there, the forensic investigators’ll want to know who I am, and I can’t tell them.” He paused, then said softly, “SOP. If it was me in there, Jane would say the same.” He cleared his throat and planted his hands on his hips. “So I got one down and one missing.” He swung his pale blue eyes on the deputy, waited a couple of heartbeats. “So…with us here—are there any rules?”

“Whatever you cook up, I go along. How’s that for rules?” Yeager said.

“And if I don’t like it?” Holly asked.

“Then I take you in for questioning.”

“Well, then I guess I agree.” He turned to Broker. “Whatta you think?”

“I think Dale and Reed were your smugglers. I don’t know if Ace was involved. Somehow Nina and Jane bumped into them this morning and they panicked. If we find Dale, we might find what you came looking for,” Broker said.

“Great,” Holly said. “My crew is gone, my assets are gone. Any minute now, my chopper will be gone, too. I spent all morning getting chewed out on the telephone for running a cowboy operation. Now I’ve got casualties. And this ain’t exactly my turf. So where do we start?”

“Right here.” Broker pointed to the equipment shed, then turned to Yeager. “I saw something yesterday I want to show you. C’mon, it’s out in the back.”

Holly and Yeager followed Broker around the large shed. The weeds were chest high and still wet in the shadow of the building, and the dew drenched their trouser legs and footwear. They picked through a rusty junkyard: cast-off machinery parts, orange and flaking with rust, weeds growing in and around them. They came to a disturbed area, the dirt churned up and gouged by huge tire treads. The weeds in the dirt were dwarfs compared to the other weeds. Recent growth.

“He had a big loader in here,” Yeager said.

Broker pointed to a slick of yellow metal among the churned dirt. “I’d stepped out the back door and just looked around, and I caught this flash of yellow. See that? I was wondering why he’d bury something like that.”

Yeager stooped, scooped dirt away, and uncovered the top of a thick slab of yellow iron about two feet long and six inches deep. He moved closer, going down on his knees, and started to paw away the sand and dirt. “We need something to dig with.”

Immediately they spread out and started searching around the
large pole barn and its outbuildings. Yeager went to a nearby utility shed, kicked in the door, and returned with two dusty old shovels. He gave one to Broker and they began to clear away the soil.

After a few shovelfuls Yeager was panting and sweating profusely. He staggered and leaned on his shovel. “Don’t know what’s wrong.”

Holly took his shovel, drove it into the dirt. “Delayed stress,” he said quietly. “You ever kill a man before?”

Yeager shook his head, mopped sweat from his face.

“Kind of weight you pick up and never put down. Takes some getting used to. Hello…” His shovel twanged on hollow metal.

They looked at each other. “That ain’t right,” Yeager said. “It’s a fucking counterweight, it’s solid iron.”

They went back to work and got it exposed. The weight was squared off on top and a slightly wider trapezoid on the bottom. Three large bolt holes were drilled into it, and an oblong opening through the side and out the top, like a handhold.

“What kind of weight?” Holly asked.

“Counterweight for a Deere loader. A 644C. Common enough machine around here,” Yeager said.

Broker curled his hand around the opening in the top and yanked. It heaved slightly. “Jesus, what’s it weigh?”

“Yeager squinted. “Something’s wrong. You shouldn’t be able to move that thing. Sucker should weigh over four hundred pounds.”

“Why bury it? It’s not like they wear out, like tires,” Holly said. Real curious now, his shaggy white eyebrows drew closer together, his forehead wrinkled. Broker cleared away more dirt, tossed the shovel aside. With Holly, he squatted, grabbed handholds, and together they upended the weight.

“No shit, lookit that,” Holly said.

The three of them explored the cast-iron slab with their fingers. More than a third of its volume had been cleanly machined to create a cylindrical cavity, open on one end.

“A hollow counterweight?” Broker said as he and Holly turned to Yeager.

“See here,” Yeager said. He pointed to one end of the cavity, where the edge of the weight had been thinned down to less than a quarter-inch. It had cracked and shattered. “If it was bolted on the machine, with another weight in back of it, you could never see it was drilled out. But they screwed up milling out that thin edge to the hole and it cracked. Woulda gave it away, so he tossed it.”

“Dale Shuster is sounding more and more like a tricky guy,” Broker said. “What do you suppose he had in mind to put inside this thing?”

Yeager squatted, ran his thick fingers over the steel. “I seen a lot of smuggling tricks—false bottoms in gas tanks, compartments in trucks. But this is way too much work to get on and off a machine unless it was for something real special.” He looked at Holly. “Would what you’re looking for fit in here?”

Holly shook his head, tapped his teeth together. “Not sure.”

“Still, it’d be one hell of a chore to get the weight on and off. You’d need a hoist, air wrenches for the bolts. And only one fella around here has the gear to do millwork like this,” Yeager said. He looked at Broker, then at Holly. “Eddie Solce. He’s done a lot of repair work for the Shusters, going way back.”

On the ride out, Yeager explained how Eddie Solce lived south of town. He’d failed farming and had sold off half his land and had the rest in the Crop Rotation Program. He’s always been the local guy to repair farm equipment in his metal shop. “And he’s only got one hand. Lost his left hand in a corn picker, ’bout twenty years ago. Got him one of those old-fashioned Trautman farm hooks—just this clamp, but he can practically pick his nose with it.”

Yeager wheeled into a long driveway leading up to a white
foursquare farmhouse in need of a paint job. Pointing toward a green F-150, he said, “He’s home, there’s his truck. Another thing, Solce always liked Ace. He was a little disappointed Ace didn’t marry his oldest daughter, Sally. They dated pretty heavy during high school.”

At the front door, Eddie Solce came out to meet them in blue jeans and a Chambray work shirt. Lean and rawboned, he’d shriveled into one mean nest of wrinkles after sixty and now it was impossible to tell his age. But he still looked strong, especially his right hand—as if the loss of his left hand had pumped twice the strength into the right. Broker thought he looked garrulous and he was.