Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (41 page)

"Because Hester's pissed, and also scared of something. So far, Callendar has failed. We know what happens to Lees who fail."

"Oh," she said. "Should we make sure the house is secure?"

I'd already done that, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again. "Let's start with the basement," I said. I took Kitty with us and left Frick in the kitchen and Frack on the main floor. That put a dog on every level with access to the outside.

I'd secured the basement door with the same rig Callendar had used against me, after first pulling that iron bar into the basement. He couldn't get in, but we could get out. We checked the rest of the basement to make sure we hadn't missed anything, and I made Carol step into the tunnel so I could test the restraints. She seemed glad to get back in. I knew the feeling.

The lowest, partially underground floor had windows, and there wasn't much we could do about them. They were smaller than the big ones on the main floor but still large enough to admit a determined human. I'd wired up the camera we had used over in the cottage to survey the stairway coming up from the kitchen to the main floor, which was the best I could do. I'd have loved to have a few hundred feet of black fishing line and some tin cans to lay out a web on the floor, but we were fresh out.

In the kitchen we checked the access to the springhouse and secured that door from our side. We set up some pots and pans under the two windows so that anyone sliding through should drop one on the floor. I showed her the word
CALLENDAR
chiseled into the mantel rock. She ran her fingers over it and wondered what it meant.

"Cubby said it was important, but I can't figure out why. It is old, if that plaster's any indication."

"You'd think it would have been centered," she said.

I looked at it. She was right. The name had been carved left of center on the long stone.

I found the hammer Cubby had used and began to whack gently on the blackened plaster to the right of the name while Carol held a flashlight on it. Sure enough, as the plaster bits fell into the hearth, more letters appeared. When we were done, though, we still had a mystery.

CALLENDAR KILLED THEM ALL
, it read.

"Killed who?" Carol asked.

"Beats me," I said as I became aware of the rising wind outside. "Storm's coming in. We should probably get upstairs."

"You going to leave a dog down here?" she asked, pointing to Frick.

"That would be a smart move," I said, "but they're scared of thunder and lightning. No way will she stay down here if I'm upstairs."

As if to make my point, the first drumroll of thunder echoed across the river bottoms, and Frick immediately plastered herself to my leg.

"You are a useless mutt," I told her.

Her expression said,
Take me upstairs. Don't make me bite you
.

The storm lasted an hour this time, ending with the skies drained and one tremendous, crack-of-doom thunder boom that announced its
departure from the county. I'd watched the monitor throughout the storm, but I'd forgotten what a lightning flash could do to an IR camera. If Callendar had approached the house, I'd have never seen him in all the blank white screens. The good news was that the spring storm had also washed out all of the heat, and now a cool, clear breeze came through the windows. I hated the thought of closing them, but there were no screens, and there would be bugs galore if we didn't.

Carol went into the bathroom and reappeared ten minutes later in a sweatshirt tracksuit. Practical, decidedly unenticing, and warm enough for the night temps in this old house. She'd planned ahead. I hadn't, so I would have to sleep in my clothes.

"Shall we keep watch together, take shifts, or what?" she asked, sitting down on the bed she'd appropriated.

"I'm going to sit up for a while," I said. "Have a Scotch and try to figure out what his possibilities are."

"I'll join you in a Scotch," she said, "but then I'm used to early bedtime."

We sat out on the front porch again, but back against the front wall of the house behind one of the columns so as to be less conspicuous. We talked about not much, and finally she brought the conversation around to the night in the alley that had ended her police career.

"Such as it was," she said. "Four years street, then a shield. Then the shooting, and I was out."

"You did better than most," I said. "Lotta guys never leave the street."

"A fair number don't want to," she said. "You know, the politics, dealing directly with bosses. Most of my friends on the force preferred to chase bad guys."

"The sheriff warned me not to let you stay here tonight," I said. Then I told her what he'd said. I figured it might come easier if I said it instead of her. She smiled in the dark.

"He's right," she said simply. "I do not have the killer instinct. I hesitated, and killed my partner."

"The bad guy killed your partner, Carol. Maybe you could have prevented it, maybe not. Usually the way something like that gets prevented is for the cop to shoot first, and these days, there's a lawyer waiting behind every bad guy happy to make some money from any mistakes."

"Bet you could have prevented it," she said.

"At the end of my career? Sure, probably. As new as you were? When I was that age I would have gone for the hero medal and shot first--and probably missed and killed a passing nun. The key thing is this: If the incident destroyed your self-confidence as a cop, and the rest of the cops believed you owned it, then you did precisely the right thing--you got out."

"Would you have left the force?"

"Absolutely," I said. "The whole cops-and-robbers thing is usually a bluff, when you get right down to it. The bad guys see a confident crowd of blues surrounding them, they give it up. When one gets cornered and decides to actually fight, we usually lose some people. They're feral. They can smell a hesitation. It's atavistic."

"You make it sound so simple," she said, "but I still feel bad about it."

"You're human," I said. "That's almost a disadvantage when dealing with the wild ones. You have a conscience and some empathy. Most of the really bad guys we go up against have neither."

"And Callendar? Is he one of the feral ones?"

"He shot that woman practically in the face. He made her turn around first, because she was looking at the house. Yeah, he's one."

I felt her shiver in the darkness. "I think I want to go home," she said suddenly.

"Want me to escort you home in my car?"

"You're not mad?"

"Dear heart, I'm relieved. You don't need another trial by fire. I loved the company, but I don't need the distraction, either."

"Ow."

I laughed. "Take off, pretty lady. You're simply using your head. Call me when you arrive at the house and you're locked in."

"I'm so sorry, Cam," she said.

I hugged her and told her it was all right. "Beat it, Pilgrim," I said in my best John Wayne accent.

"That's terrible," she said. "Really bad."

She gathered her stuff from inside, and I walked her down across the wet grass to her car. I reminded her to call me when she was safe in the house, and off she went.

Fifteen minutes later my cell phone rang. It was Carol.

"Home safe," she said.

"Thanks for dinner," I said.

"You're welcome. It was just some leftovers I threw together."

"Okay, then. I'll call you in the morning."

"Yes, please do."

I hung up the phone and went inside. I couldn't lock the door from the inside, so I wedged a chair under the dual handles. I checked on the dogs and then stopped.

Some leftovers I threw together?

She hadn't cooked anything. She'd gone to the grocery store and hit the deli line.

Fuck me
, I thought. That was a duress signal.

I called Sheriff Walker's office, got the duty officer, told him who I was, and asked them to rush a unit over to Carol Pollard's house because she might have an intruder holding her. The sheriff must have left some stringent instructions regarding any calls from me because there was no chatter, and two cars were dispatched at once.

Ten minutes later I got the call I'd been dreading. It was the sheriff himself.

"She's not there. Her ride's not there. I have a unit backtracking to your place, but there's no sign of her on the roads. What's going on?"

The sheriff showed up with two additional units a half hour later. I watched as he hurried across the grass through the light rain and then took down the barricade at the front door. I saw one of the cruisers turn around and go down the driveway, while the other crept around the hill to explore the barn area. We went into the back of the house to get away from all those tall windows.

"How'd you know?" he asked, and I told him.

"So he went to her house?"

"I think he was here, out front somewhere, and he either ambushed her on the driveway with some obstacle or got her at the gates. She would have shut the gates behind her, coming in."

"Contact?"

"Nothing yet."

Another thunderstorm was rolling across the distant countryside over on the Virginia side of the river, its thunder occasionally rattling the windows. It was going to be one of those nights.

"You know what the deal's gonna be," he said.

"Oh, yes."

He looked over at the Scotch bottle, and I went and fixed us up with two fingers each.

"You've got three options," he said. "He calls, you give it to us. That's the smart option. Or he calls and you tell him to fuck off."

"Or he calls and I go."

"That's the dumb option."

"Is it? This one's a killer. Remember the Craney woman? One round in the face? He made her turn around before he shot her. So she'd know."

"Of course I do," he said, "but one of my D's had the brilliant idea of going to his Web site, the one advertising the hunting expeditions.
Talked to a couple of past clients. Guy's known in guide circles as a guarantee."

"What's that mean?"

"If he sets the client up on a trophy buck, and the client gets buck fever and blows it? He nails the buck, and then it becomes the client's trophy. His MOS in the army was sniper. Just like you. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"Nor does Carol," I reminded him.

He finished his Scotch, eyed the bottle, but then put the glass down on the table.

"I can try to cover you with a SWAT crew," he said.

"They're urban, not field guys, right?"

He nodded. We both knew they'd be mostly useless out there in the weeds at night. The Bureau's hostage rescue team could do it, but Callendar probably wasn't going to wait.

"Lemme show you something," I said, and we went down into the kitchen. He looked at the inscription on the mantel stone.

"Any ideas?" I asked.

"One," he said. "That looks pretty old. This might be what Hester Lee is afraid of."

"How so?"

"The train robbery. Maybe the original Callendar had something to do with that."

"Like what?"

"Beats me. Maybe he was the inside man."

My cell phone began to vibrate audibly. The sheriff looked at me.

"Showtime?" he asked.

The listing in the window said
CAROL POLLARD
. He was letting me know he did in fact have her. Then the screen shifted to a text message.

YOU FOR HER
, it read.

"Showtime," I said. I texted back:
WHERE & WHEN
?

LOSE COPS
, he answered.

I showed his answer to the sheriff, who wondered aloud how he could see us and then remembered the cruisers. There was another rumble of thunder across the river, although it didn't seem to be getting any closer. The rain outside had settled into a drizzle.

WHERE AND WHEN
, I texted.

No answer.

"I've gotta do this," I said.

He nodded. "We'll leave here, go upriver to the highway bridge, cross the Dan, and come down on the q.t. to that burned-out house. I've got a boat out there. We'll muster some assets up at that carriage house and wait for your call."

That sounded like as good a plan as any. I thanked him for letting me take a shot.

"You like that lady?"

"I do, actually," I said. "We got comfortable with each other."

He finished his Scotch and then fished in his pocket for some spearmint gum. "You get this business done tonight, you better watch yourself," he said. "She'll git ya."

"I can think of worse things," I said.

"Me, too," he said.

I waited an hour while the storm across the river passed on to the east. It was still drizzling, and the occasional grumble of thunder could be heard across the entire countryside. I had everything I needed except some raingear. Wouldn't you know. Finally I turned off all the lights, called the dogs together, told Frack to assume the watch in the house, and took the other two out to the front porch with me. I was dressed in field gear and carried the shotgun and my SIG. I put my cell phone in a sock and stuffed it into my shirt pocket.