Dark Web (28 page)
Bull’s Pathfinder sat parked at the mouth of a driveway that wound its way down to a dark house. A mailbox on a stake listed to one side with a frosting of snow. The driveway had been freshly plowed, scraped down to a glassy compaction of snow and ice, the banks piled high.
Mike looked out the windshield from the backseat. Something didn’t feel right. And it wasn’t the idea that he was here to kill Tori McAfferty; that felt fine. Any lingering doubts about that had passed through him and splattered onto the toilet bowl half an hour ago. This was something different. He was new to the area, didn’t know one place from another, and there were many places like this, broken down farms amid rolling hills, with dilapidated barns and unused foaling sheds, but something here tolled familiar. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what.
Then he peered through the darkness at the mailbox beside the road. He suddenly got out of the back of the vehicle.
“Hey, Mike, what the fuck?”
He shut the door on Bull and stepped into the cold, feeling the wind and snow sting his face. He walked briskly to the mailbox and swished away the snow. He read the name.
SWIFT.
Bull came around the car all hunched up in the frigid temperature, scowling.
“What’s going on?”
Mike felt hollow. Confused, betrayed, but mostly hollow. Like nothing mattered. Like nothing was sacred.
“This is the detective’s place.” He turned and looked through the night at the dark buildings strewn across the land.
“The detective? You mean the
statie
?”
“Yeah.”
“Ho-lee-shit,” Bull said. Mike wasn’t sure whether Bull was going to want to back up and get the hell out of there, or if he was going to stay with it. It didn’t matter. Bull had given him the support he’d needed, but now Mike was ready to go it alone if that was what had to happen. Nothing else mattered anymore. Nothing.
Bull looked off into the dark. He seemed to relax. “That’s pretty fucking smart, man. Guy hides right there at the statie’s house. Ballsy. Who’s going to look for you there? Right?”
“I guess,” said Mike. He turned to the vehicle. Time to get moving.
“
Or
,” Bull said following, “the detective is in on it somehow. You say McAfferty had a meth lab, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the way they operate,” Bull said. The two men got back in the car and Bull continued talking. “That’s the way it shakes out of the bag, Mikey, every time.”
“What’s going on?” asked Linda.
“That detective is probably on the take. For all you know, he’s abetting McAfferty.”
It rang true. Or, at least, possible. What else made sense?
“Whose place is this?” She was looking back and forth between the two of them.
“There’s this guy,” Mike said, “Frank Duso. I think Duso was buying from McAfferty, maybe selling a little for him. Duso was the one that called the press on the detective, Swift. The one you told me to have a look at. That video.”
Bull had been nodding his head vigorously, but then stopped. “The one I who-and-what now?”
“You texted me,” Mike said.
“I don’t text nobody.”
“He doesn’t text,” added Linda.
Mike looked at Bull, his thick neck and square jaw, limned yellow in the dashboard lights. “You didn’t send me that text, the link to the video?”
“Nope.”
Then who sent it? Mike sat back in the rear seat. He wondered if it could’ve been this Frank Duso kid. If he had called the press, which seemed likely, then he might’ve somehow gotten Mike’s number in order to tip him to watch the video. Make Swift look like an unreliable investigator.
Wherever it came from, Mike had already begun questioning Swift’s abilities. And his motives. And now this.
“There’s a massive manhunt on for this guy . . .” Mike said quietly, as much to himself as to the others. “But Swift never said anything to me about McAfferty being into a meth operation. Not even when I mentioned the emails and practically handed the cops the son of a bitch on a sliver plate did they say, ‘Yeah, we know this guy, we’ve been closing in on his operation for months.’ Nothing. It was like they’d never heard of him. And now this guy’s at the detective’s
house
?”
“Yep,” confirmed Bull. His eyes gleamed in the rear view mirror. “S’what I’m telling you, Mikey.”
Mike looked down. His head was in a fog again. There were too many questions. But did they matter? He could sit here all night debating whether or not to call the cops and tell them about McAfferty’s email, about the money taken out in Jack’s name. But he’d been warned that the girls could get hurt. And Bull was already here. Things were beyond fucked up — too fucked up to trust the cops, who’d done nothing so far anyway.
And, if John Swift really was working secretly with McAfferty, or at least caught up in backdoor deal with Frank Duso, how would Mike know how deep the corruption spread? Who could be trusted?
Swift had seemed like an upright enough investigator. But then, he’d been busted while drinking on duty. He had a tarnished record. He lived alone, did what he wanted when he wanted, a kind of maverick cop with few people to answer to.
Plus, he knew about the 529 account. Swift and his team had been the ones to commandeer Braxton’s laptop and lift all its information. It sounded too sinister to be true — cops complicit in the death of a minor so as to cash in — but Mike knew that worse things had happened. He and Bull were both raised in a pre-Giuliani New York, they were on the streets in the 1980s when police corruption was a plague and the criminals ran the show.
Still. This was a nice small town in the North Country. There were government buildings here — a mental health clinic, a hospital, a DMV. It just didn’t seem like the type of place to harbor dirty cops, not the best place for criminals and corruption to get a real foothold. It was too policed.
Unless, of course, that was what made it work.
“Mikey, you alright back there?”
He still felt the effects of the vodka. His stomach had hardened, however, his nerves had steadied. Being with Bull, hearing the accent again, smelling the smells of the car, seeing Linda after all these years, it was doing something to him. It was making him feel stronger. More confident. More like his old self before fiber-teching and marriage and kids and domesticity. Like a man again.
“I’m good.”
The car sat with the engine idling and the headlights turned off. If McAfferty was here, he would be hyper vigilant and on the lookout. Surely he would have seen them by now; Bull had just boldly pulled into the driveway, for God’s sake. Now he was checking the firearm. Linda had one too — Bull had said it was a SIG, very compact, mean-looking. Mike felt the hard shape of his own handgun pressed against his abdomen where he’d tucked it into his pants.
“Then let’s go,” Linda said.
It was now or never.
The SUV rolled forward. The wind buffeted the vehicle, hitting against it from one side. Mike looked out over the large property at the shapes of other buildings, mere charcoal sketches in the dark. Tori McAfferty was hiding in one of those. The man who had killed Mike’s son. Hanging out. Protected by a cop, maybe multiple cops. Somehow connected to Mike’s own father. Threatening the lives of his wife and children, right now, right at this very moment.
His phone buzzed. Mike took it out and looked at the incoming number. “Speak of the Devil,” he said. He rolled down the window and threw the phone into the freezing night.
You couldn’t trust anyone. He looked at Bull and Linda, who were both turned around in their seats to face him. Not like you could trust old friends.
Swift had taken his emergency light and placed it on the dashboard where it flashed red. He careened along the highway, snow smacking against the windshield, the back of the car occasionally fishtailing in the greasy covering of snow over the road. Mike Simpkins wasn’t answering his phone. Frustrated, Swift tossed his on onto the passenger seat.
It made sense now. It all made sense if you thought like Robert Darring. If you had a reason to want to make someone else’s life a hell, to manipulate them, to choreograph a series of events that would have them right where you wanted them, thinking what you wanted them to think.
Robert Darring didn’t just want to frame Tori McAfferty for the teenage boy’s murder. Above all he wanted Mike Simpkins to think McAfferty was guilty. And then he wanted Simpkins to kill McAfferty, and so spend a life in prison. Darring had interfered with everything — he knew about the 529 account, somehow, knew the cops would look at Mike for that. He knew about the deadbeat bio dad McAfferty. That McAfferty was into cooking and distributing methamphetamines.
Why not just frame Simpkins in the first place? Why not just make it look like he did it for the money? The cops had already been looking that way, all they’d needed was a nudge. It happened all the time, all over the world, people killed for their life insurance policies, murderers out to get an early inheritance. So why not just make Mike Simpkins look guilty?
Because it wouldn’t have stuck. He maybe had problems — who didn’t — but Simpkins was basically a good guy, Swift thought. And Darring knew it. Maybe that was why he hated Simpkins. Maybe that was sufficient, but Swift didn’t think so.
The wheel spun in his hand as the tires slid over a stretch of ice, grabbed a patch of blacktop, then hit more slush. The conditions were at their worst. The day had gotten warm enough to melt some snow and then the temperature had dropped, freezing chunks of slush into ice where the roads went high, but staying mushy through the valleys. He caught the wheel and straightened the car, pulling it out of a skid. His heart was pumping, but his foot stayed on the gas, pushing the car up to sixty through the dark, howling weather.
He passed a tractor-trailer with its hazards flashing. Someone up ahead hadn’t got completely past the big truck and was travelling alongside it. Swift’s light flashed; he slapped the horn and toed the brakes. “Come on!” He yelled. He swiped the air with his hand as if to push the vehicle aside. “Come on!” He was halfway there. Twenty minutes from his home. The place would be crawling with his troopers and the Sheriff’s Department. He had to get there. In his mind’s eye he saw Mike Simpkins going down. Torn to shreds by Swift’s fellow cops.
A dog was barking in the main house. Mike stood in front of a smaller outbuilding, a ramshackle tenant house. A remnant from when the place was a working farm and the laborers lived on the property.
“McAfferty!” called Mike Simpkins.
The wind cut across the open land from the west. Mike felt it buffet against him, heard the sound of wind chimes banging together somewhere in the distance; the dog barking. He stood in a foot of snow. He felt numb.
“McAfferty!” he called again. “I’m coming in.”
In his peripheral vision Mike could see Bull Camoine sliding up along one side of the small building, and Linda along the other, each of them with their firearms out and ready. They moved like predators in the night. He stepped towards the small, rambling front porch, its steps buried in a drift of snow. There were fresh foot prints leading up to the door.
He stopped, hesitating for one last moment, turning over the variables in his mind. Why was McAfferty here? What was Swift gaining by conspiring with a lowlife, meth-cooker like McAfferty? Was the meth industry really that powerful that someone like Swift could get taken in?
Of course, Mike rationalized, as the wind swirled around him, gusting up the snow, you never knew anything about people. It was naïve to think anyone was all good, or all bad. People were just animals, reacting, adapting, surviving.
Mike saw Braxton’s face, the mop of hair in his eyes, as he sat playing with his sisters on the carpet of their home in Florida.
Braxton had been good. He’d been unspoiled by the world. Mike had ruined him, dragging him up here, back to the place he’d escaped from with his mother so many years before. Back into the belly of the beast. The beast on the other side of that door. Mike’s hand gripped the gun tucked into his waistband and he pulled it out.
Then he launched himself up and took the door by the handle and yanked it open.
* * *
Tori McAfferty sat in a straight-backed chair, aiming a hunting rifle at Mike Simpkins.
The place was a single room, with a water closet at the back right. Opposite that there was a small kitchenette, and a back door. The floors were bare wood, with a single braided, oval-shaped rug that was probably once colorful but now worn to shades of brown. Beside McAfferty was a simple, Amish-style table. The place was cold, but smelled like propane — McAfferty had activated the small heater that stood in the unused fireplace. There were a few other odds and ends of furniture — an antique end table, a chest, and there were four dark windows.
Mike stopped just inside the room. The door slowly closed on his heels, then a gust of wind slammed it the rest of the way home. He held the gun out in front of him, pointing it at McAfferty, just as he’d pointed it at another man, all those years ago.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Mike said, his heart pounding. “I’m Mike Simpkins. I’m Braxton’s father.” He kept a close eye on the rifle aimed back at him.
Tori McAfferty sniffed, like he had a bad cold. He looked terrible. There were large circles beneath his eyes, and his skin was blotched with acne. He was in his forties, Mike knew, but looked fifty, or older. Patches of grey were scattered through his messy shock of hair. Mike couldn’t help seeing how Braxton had inherited that thickness, the wild cowlicks. McAfferty was dressed in a pair of Carhartt work pants and a Carhartt jacket, discolored all over by paint and stain and roofing tar, and wood glue and caulk.
“I read about what happened,” McAfferty said from behind the rifle.
Mike blinked, kept the Glock level. “Oh, you read about it?”
“Saw it on the news, too.”
The room smelled foul, closed up for too long. And now it also stank like McAfferty, of a man who hadn’t washed in several days, a man on the run.
“So, I’m here. What’s the deal, Tori?”
“The what?”
Mike narrowed his eyes. Bull and Linda were waiting on the other side of that back door. The plan was to let Mike talk to McAfferty first — he’d insisted, much to Bull’s disapproval. Bull wanted to rush in and dispatch the guy straight away. Any delay only invited complications. Mike figured he was right, in principle, but he needed something from McAfferty first. He wasn’t quite sure what he needed, only that he did. Maybe it was atonement.
“What did my father say to you? How long have the two of you been talking?”
McAfferty scowled. “How am I gonna talk to your father if I don’t even know you?”
“You know me,” Mike said. “I’m the guy who said I’d kill you if you ever did anything to hurt Braxton. And here I am.”
McAfferty’s scowl turned into a bitter smile. “Oh you’re a tough guy. You and Callie probably fit just right together. How’s she doing, that psycho bitch?”
“You’ve got one minute — one minute — to tell me what you want from me.”
McAfferty’s grin widened, and he threw his head back and laughed. The laughter was short, and turned into a coughing fit. He leaned forward again, doubling over, with a fist at his mouth, coughing and gagging. He dropped the rifle onto his lap, and spat out a gob onto the bare floorboards. His face was hectic, and red from the coughing, but his eyes still glinted with amusement. He spread his legs out wider, boots planted firmly on the floor, lifted the rifle and edged forward in the seat. Mike wondered for a moment where McAfferty’s laptop was. Surely he had an internet phone. He saw neither. “Somebody’s been fucking with you, huh?”
“Tell me, Tori.”
McAfferty’s expression changed. He looked both hurt and angry at the same time. His lips curled back in a sneer, revealing dark places where molars were missing. “You giving me orders now?” He renewed his grip on the rifle and aimed it straight at Mike’s chest. Mike felt something flutter in his stomach; the muscles in his legs and arms emulsified. They were both just a squeeze away from putting a round into one another.
“Look,” McAfferty said, “I don’t know what you think you know. I blew my fucking house up.”
“Why?”
“Why? Cops. So I took my shit and ran.”
“Why the hell would you come here? This property belongs to a state police detective.”
McAfferty looked around for a moment. “No wonder it’s a dump.” He pressed his face to the rifle again, glaring down the barrel at Mike.
“Somebody told you to come here. Who?”
“Who? My guy, that’s who. He’s supposed to be here, standing right where you are.” McAfferty looked worried. “What the fuck is going on? I’m supposed to be on my way to the city tonight. And you’re standing here.”
Mike’s arm was shaking, but he kept his aim tight. He asked through gritted teeth, “Why did you do it?” The nerves in his face were stretched tight. “Why did you kill Braxton?” Suddenly he exploded. “You worthless fuck!”
The back door crashed open. Bull charged in, followed by Linda. McAfferty tried to spin around, but it was too late — in a couple of giant strides, Bull had closed the gap between them and slammed McAfferty in the head with the butt of his gun. McAfferty sprawled forward and hit the ground, his rifle clattering across the floor, where he landed in a heap and was still.
Bull towered over him, chest heaving. He righted the handgun in his grip. Linda was pointing her own firearm down at McAfferty. Bull glanced at Mike, a worried expression on his face. “Cops, Mike. Fucking cops are on the way.”
Mike stood there, confused and unable to move. He could hear it, in the distance, the sound of sirens. His gaze fell on McAfferty’s gun, which had slid across the floor towards him.
“Pick it up, Mikey. Quick. Pick it up and let’s finish this thing and get the fuck out of here. Might as well use the rifle. Keep the Glock clean.”
Mike remained motionless for a moment, and then forced his body to respond. He slid the handgun into his pants. Then he bent forward and picked up the rifle.