The Brotherhood of the Wheel (40 page)

 

EIGHTEEN

“10-20”

Cecil Dann, FBI special agent in charge, stepped into an interrogation room in the Atlanta Police Department. Jimmie Aussapile was alone in the room, deprived of his baseball cap, his belt, and even his chaw. An empty Styrofoam cup sat in front of the trucker, and he was sitting back in his chair, napping. When the door opened, Jimmie yawned and sat up.

“Took your sweet time,” Jimmie said.

Dann took the chair across from Jimmie and sat down. “You're lucky I came at all,” he said. “You and your friends are in a hell of a lot of trouble—suspicion of murder, possibly kidnapping, firing on police officers, high-speed chases, reckless endangerment on the highway. You just bring a shit-storm around with you wherever you go, don't you, Aussapile?”

“How soon they forget,” Jimmie said. “I handed you the Marquis a week ago, remember, Cecil? I'm trying to stop another one, and I need your help.”

“It's not your job to stop them,” Dann said. “Your job is to deliver produce, or batteries, or Tampax. Your job is to drive a truck. You're not a cop, Aussapile.”

“We do what the cops can't do, what the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and everyone else who thinks they're such a BFD can't,” Jimmie said.

“And again with the ‘we,'” Dann said. “I'm tired of you jerking me around. Who is ‘we'? Who hacks the Justice Department's systems and leaves no trace? Who can access my secure, encrypted phone? Who knows the things you people know? Who
are
you?”

“The good guys,” Jimmie said. “And we need your help, because you're a good guy, too, Cecil. It's really that simple.”

“Nothing is that simple,” Dann said. “Anyone who thinks it is isn't just a fool but, in this kind of work, they're a dangerous fool. I'm done getting stuck with the check for you ass clowns.” Dann stood and walked to the door.

“The Pagan,” Jimmie said. Dann paused, his hand on the knob. He released it and turned.

“Ancient history,” Dann said.

“You never caught him,” Jimmie said. “He's still out there, making you guys look like ass clowns every time he kills another victim.”

Dann sat down again. “The Pagan is dead or wearing a diaper somewhere in a nursing home. He's got fans who study the cases on the Investigation Discovery Channel and read the paperbacks, and a few of them are batshit enough to go copycat.”

“He's one man,” Jimmie said. “He doesn't age normally, and we were damn close to catching him. I need your help to stop him. Please.”

The trucker and the federal agent stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Dann stood again and walked out the door. On the other side of the door was a door off from the hall. Dann knocked on it and stepped inside. The room smelled of cigarette smoke, had an old, worn couch and a few metal folding chairs. There was a desk, and above the desk was the two-way window on the other side of the mirror in Jimmie's interrogation room. A speaker hung on the wall above the window. A tall, muscular man with a shaved head and a goatee leaned against the table, his back to Jimmie. The lanyard around his neck held his Atlanta PD detective's badge and credentials identifying him as Captain Lewis Keegan. “Well, that was worth the plane trip down from DC, huh?” Keegan said to Dann, who smiled and shut the door. “I have to say, I'm surprised you came down at all, Agent Dann.”

“Aussapile and I have a brief but colorful history,” Dann said, nodding toward the trucker, who had gone back to sleep in his chair. “Have you got the phone call yet?”

“What phone call?” Keegan asked.

“The one from a superior, or someone way, way, way up the food chain that instructs you to drop the charges and let them go, no questions asked.”

“You kidding me, right?” Keegan said, crossing his arms. “That punk Sinclair that's with Aussapile—he opened fire with a goddamned machine gun on a street full of Atlanta PD. Then wrecked about a half-dozen cars in a high-speed pursuit. There is no way in hell they're going anywhere but to arraignment and then, most likely, remanded until trial.”

Dann sighed and sat down on the ratty couch. It was the source of the cigarette-smoke smell, and reeked vaguely of old farts. He imagined this was a crash room for detectives who couldn't head home yet because they were on a hot forty-eight-hour run to close a homicide, waiting to interrogate a suspect who was being processed downstairs, or waiting on the lab or the crime-scene guys for some tiny crumb that would allow them to close a case. This nasty couch was probably the next best thing to heaven if you were that beat. It was lumpy but soft. He groaned a little as he settled into it.

“When I met Jimmie Aussapile, I thought he was the Natchez Trace Parkway Killer. I was wrong. He helped the bureau and the Mississippi State Police close that case, though. I was going to hang him out to dry for being some kind of vigilante, but then I got the call, and I let him go. A few years later, I ran into him again, sitting in a holding cell after getting mixed up with a series of murders in New Mexico. Victims were being found off Route 375 in the Franklin Mountains State Park, mostly men. Aussapile said it wasn't a serial killer, at least not a mortal one. Said it was something called a Cegua, some kind of Mexican monster that ambushes travelers on lonely back roads—has the body of a woman and the head of a horse's skull.”

Keegan laughed. “You're shitting me, right?”

Dann's face was placid. He gave a small smile, as if remembering a private joke, and shrugged. “I know, I know, but the murders stopped. The National Parks guys and the local PD were going to hoist Aussapile up by his balls—”

“But then they got this mythical phone call,” Keegan interrupted, a grin on his broad face. “Maybe it was from some guy with the body of a dolphin and the face of a horse's ass.” The detective laughed.

Dann mustered a chuckle. “I know how it sounds,” he said. “But every time I hear the name Jimmie Aussapile a very weird murder case related to my task force gets closed shortly thereafter. And that makes it worth a trip out here.”

There was a knock at the door. Another, younger detective in a sweat-stained button-down and shoulder holster poked his head inside the room. “Cap, you got a call on line three.” The detective's head slid from view and the door shut. Keegan's face dropped, while Dann's remained as serene as the Buddha's.

Twenty minutes later, Dann walked back into the interrogation room. “You and your two friends are being cut loose,” he said. “Your luck holds for another day, cowboy. You knew that was going to happen, so why did you really ask for me down here?”

“I was serious about the Pagan,” Jimmie said. “I'm going to find him and bring him down. I need help. I need to know what you know about him.”

“Why not just have your hacker buddies plunder our network again?” Dann asked as he sat down.

Jimmie shook his head. “Believe it or not, there are channels I have to go through, too,” he said. “And, just like any other organization, we don't always play so nice with one another. That kind of hack requires more juice and more time than I got. That's why I asked you to come—because I know that, to you, saving lives is more than just an equation on some damned spreadsheet.”

“Saving lives?” Cecil said, leaning forward. “Whose lives?”

“We got put onto the Pagan by that dead man you found in that hotel room—Mark Stolar,” Jimmie said. “He was a kidnap victim from Louisiana, along with his journalist buddy, Dewey Rears. The Pagan killed Rears, sacrificed him. He still has two college students from Kansas, and he plans to kill them next. Not to mention a hell of a good state cop from Louisiana that's gone missing, too, chasing the son of a bitch.”

“The Pagan has been sacrificing his victims since he first got on the bureau's radar in the fifties,” Dann said. “Always near highways, always on traditional Wiccan holidays. He always leaves a mark carved on them somewhere, the same mark. That detail has been kept out of the press for over fifty years. We tried to keep the sacrificial angle out, too, but it got leaked in the late seventies.”

“So no copycat would know about the symbol,” Jimmie said, leaning across the table, his voice low, “but the symbol kept popping up, didn't it, Cecil? For over fifty years?”

Dann nodded. “Yes, it did. But the logical answer is the symbol got leaked. Damned if we've ever been able to confirm that, though. Cops hate weird shit, Jimmie. They like things that have boxes to check on a report form. The Pagan has been a boil on the butt of the bureau and a lot of other law-enforcement agencies for decades. It's high weirdness.”

“Can you show me the symbol?” Jimmie asked. Dann sighed and slipped a small notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket. He drew the mark and slid it across to the trucker. It was circle with a crescent above it, barely touching the circle—points out. It was the same symbol Lovina had told him and Heck about on the road to Memphis—the same symbol found on the website where Karen Collie, Shawn Ruth Thibodeaux, and their friends had seen the video of the strange rite in the woods, the shadowy man with antlers.

“Our cryptography unit out at Langley,” Dann said, “says that the symbol is pagan, that it represents—”

“The Horned Man,” Jimmie interrupted.

“Yeah,” Dann said, looking up from the piece of paper to the trucker's face. “The embodiment of the masculine aspects of nature. Yeah.”

“Cecil, did the Pagan ever kill anyone in Kansas?” Jimmie asked. “Maybe in or near a place called Four Houses, Kansas?”

“Never heard of it,” Dann said, as he tapped his smartphone and accessed the Justice Department's database. “Here we go … one victim authenticated—his first discovered, in fact. June May Hollinger, nineteen. Her remains were found by a highway-construction crew near Lebanon, Kansas, on May 3, 1957. Her body had been covered with soil, and the police were certain the killer expected her to be found, since the crews working on U.S. 281 were headed right to where the body was dumped. She was the first one to bear the Horned Man's mark. Historically and chronologically, the Pagan's first victim.”

“And his only one in Kansas,” Jimmie said. “Thank you, Cecil. I owe you big.”

“You owe me an answer,” Dann said, putting away his phone. “Why are you and this … whatever the hell it is you work for, contacting me? You know, sooner or later someone's going to insist that I bring you in, bring you down. And I'll have to, Jimmie, I'll have to.”

“I understand,” Jimmie said, standing. “Maybe that's when you'll get your answer. I need a few more things from you, Cecil, and I'm sorry to ask, but I got no one else.”

Dann sighed. “Go ahead,” he said.

“I need you to check out George Norse, the broadcaster,” Jimmie said.

“You mean the guy who does
Paranormal America Live
—the TV show? My wife loves that shit,” Dann said.

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “Mine, too. He's here in Atlanta. The Pagan made Stolar act as a courier for him before he killed him. Stolar gave Norse something from the Pagan, something the asshole wanted Norse to have. Can you find out what it was?”

“Sure,” Dann said. “Done. Might even get the wife an autograph in the process.”

“And if anything goes bad,” Jimmie said, “I'd appreciate it if you could tell my wife and little girl—”

“Stop that, right now,” Dann said. “You are staying alive until I get my answers, Aussapile, so shut your piehole. Now, get going.”

*   *   *

Jimmie's truck sped down I-75, headed out of Atlanta. It was sixteen hours to Lebanon. Heck's motorcycle was strapped and chained to the back of the cab, and the biker and Max were riding along with him. Max was in the passenger seat, while Heck sat behind and between them on a foldable bench seat, eating a bag of chips. Skynyrd's “Simple Man” was playing softly on the cab's sound system.

“Jail was nothing like I expected it to be,” Max said, almost cheerfully, as she typed on her tablet. “It was so … clean, and the officers were so … polite.” Jimmie and Heck traded glances but said nothing. “Well, if the gang at the Wednesday Night Bookclub and Whovian Appreciation Society could see me now—booked, fingerprinted! I'm an ex-con now, right? I've been on the inside.”

“We're just lucky she didn't get a jailhouse tattoo,” Heck said. “So, tell me where the hell we're going, and how does it help us find Lovina and the incredible disappearing dirtbag?”

“Max, did you find anything on Four Houses?” Jimmie asked.

“Nothing definite,” the professor said, scanning the page on her tablet. “Some historical references, indicating a frontier trading post and fort, but, historically, it seems not to be anywhere near where we're going. It also says the place was abandoned after only a few years.”

“So Karen Collie and Mark Stolar are both talking about a place that's not real,” Jimmie said. “A place on no maps—that exists and doesn't exist. That sound familiar to you at all, Max?”

Max paled a little and looked up from the tablet. “Metropolis-Utopia,” she said softly.

Jimmie nodded. “Yep,” he said. “And that makes me think we're dealing with viamancy.”

“Agreed,” Max said, “which is fortuitous, because I've been developing some theories about that very subje—”

“Okay,” Heck said, waving a hand and cutting Max off. “What the hell are you guys talking about? I can follow about every third word of this. Me caveman, okay? Does all this shit have to do with Lovina and Captain Puckernut vanishing into thin air?”

“Yes,” Jimmie and Max said together.

“Good,” Heck said. “Now, with very small words, spoken very slowly, talk to the caveman.”

“The best we can figure,” Jimmie said, “the Pagan used viamancy to cut out. Then it looks like Lovina used it, too, to follow him.”