The Vengeance of the Tau (18 page)

“Vietnam.”

“He was a hero over there.”

“Yes.”

“You serve together?”

“No.”

Captain Eberling seemed to take a while to digest that. “Yeah, well, I got it on good information you read a report no one outside the department was supposed to see. I don’t know how things are done back where you come from, but around here we like to keep things in the family.”

“Injun Joe was part of my family.”

“Just what is it that you do, Mr.—” Eberling had to look down to consult his notes. “—Wareagle.”

Johnny said nothing.

“Injun Joe called you in ’cause he figured he was onto something that was over our heads. Now, you’re a pretty tall guy, but not tall enough the rest of this department couldn’t do anything you could do. Thing is, I got to figure Injun Joe told you things he didn’t tell the rest of us. Things he left out of his reports.”

“Perhaps because he knew you did not wish to read them.”

Eberling’s face reddened. “We want to read everything that might help us find his killers.”

“They are things not important to you, Captain.”

“Joe Rainwater was important to me, Mr. Wareagle, and that makes whatever might have gotten him killed important to me.”

“Nothing I know can help you.”

“Did you know he got off twenty shots in his bedroom before he died?” the captain asked.

“Yes.”

“And did you know the slugs in his .357 were Glasers? Pellets suspended in liquid Teflon. Guaranteed one-shot stop. He fired six.”

“Nothing was stopped.”

“He was ready for whatever killed him.”

“Perhaps.”

“It didn’t help.”

“No, it didn’t.”

Johnny’s seemingly curt responses seemed to further irritate the captain. “What was Injun Joe on to he couldn’t share with the rest of us?”

“Nothing.”

“But he called you.”

“He thought I could help.”

Eberling shrugged. “I told him to take some time off after the Oliveras thing. Eight months he’d been on the case and, boy, the way it ended … This doesn’t happen today, I figure he’s seeing things that aren’t there. Now I know something was there, after all, and I feel like a goddamn idiot for putting a lid on this at the outset.”

Wareagle understood. “He called me because he thought he was dealing with more than he could handle, more than you could handle.”

“Which makes you kinda special, doesn’t it?”

“Joe Rainwater thought so.”

“Well, we’re running your name through Washington, see what they mink.”

“They won’t think anything.”

“Excuse me?”

“There is no file on me.”

“What?”

As if on cue, Eberling’s phone buzzed.

“Yeah,” he said, answering it, and then accepted the news glumly. “Apparently,” he said to Wareagle, the receiver buried in its cradle again, “you don’t exist.”

Johnny looked at him in silence.

“Not even a military record, even though you told me you served in ’Nam.”

Wareagle just sat there.

“Man needs a lot of pull to work something like that out. Or he was involved in stuff maybe the government doesn’t want anyone to know happened.” Eberling waited for a reaction that didn’t come. “You that kind of man?”

“I have been that, and many other kinds of men, Captain.”

Eberling shot a finger his way and kept it there. “You’re starting to piss me off, you know that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What killed Joe Rainwater, Mr. Wareagle?”

“I do not know.”

“Who did he think was behind this? Who did he suspect?”

“He did not know.”

“That’s right; he called you.”

“And I came. To help.”

“You wanna tell me how exactly?”

“He wanted my opinion.”

“On the Oliveras business. Who did he think was responsible? Did he mention names, someone in the department maybe?” Eberling leaned forward, as if he had finally gotten to the point.

“Nothing like that.”

“Like what, then?”

Johnny said nothing and watched the captain lean back.

“You got a phone call, you wanna make it,” Eberling told him.

“I thought I wasn’t technically under arrest.”

“Just extending a courtesy, Mr. Wareagle. Look, don’t take this personal. Injun Joe was a good friend of mine, too. We both want to see whoever killed him put away. But you’re a part of this now and I can’t let you go till I get everything sorted out. See, I figure you’re the kinda man might take things into his own hands, he gets the chance. I can’t have that, Mr. Wareagle, no matter how close you and Injun Joe were.”

Eberling leaned forward again. “Now let me tell you how we’re gonna play this. We’re gonna lock you up downstairs for your own protection until we can get your identity cleared up. I’m gonna know the last time you spit before you walk out of my precinct, and that won’t happen until you come clean with everything Injun Joe told you. That clear to you, Tonto?”

Johnny told him that it was.

Chapter 17

THERE WERE SIX CELLS
in the basement of the precinct building, and Wareagle was the only current occupant.

“I can’t have that, Mr. Wareagle, no matter how close you and Injun Joe were.”

Eberling’s comment confronted Johnny with the reality that they hadn’t been close at all. Johnny had known Joe Rainwater never stopped trying to reach him. He never missed a single message, but neither had he returned the few Rainwater had left for him in the past two years until the most recent one two nights before.

He used his one phone call to dial up Sal Belamo across the country at Gap headquarters.

“I got good news and bad news,” Sal started. “The list of possible next victims for your mystery killers, given what you told me, has gotta be somewhere around the size of a city phone book. That’s the bad news. Makes me think back to the ones they already hit. You remember me mentioning Heydan Larroux?”

“The woman in New Orleans.”

“Yeah, lady crime boss. Get this: turns out her body wasn’t with the others. Turns out she managed to get out of her house through an old tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad. Police down there are just itching to get their hands on her. The FBI, too. Figure maybe she can tell them something.”

“Then the killers of Joe Rainwater would know they missed her.”

“Bingo! And the way I figure it, that’s something they’re not about to take lightly. You find her first and …”

“I wait for those I seek to arrive,” Johnny completed.

“You mean,
we
wait. I’m in, big fella. Got some heavy firepower being packed up to help us handle the job. I get away from this desk, I’ll be on the first plane down to help.”

“Thank you, Sal Belamo, but—”

“Hey, I ain’t finished yet. Got a line on one of Madame Larroux’s lieutenants in the field. Guy by the name of Jack Watts, alias Jersey Jack. Apparently Mr. Watts is most eager to relocate but he’s too hot to touch. What I hear, he was with Larroux minutes before the hit at her mansion. Got an address of a bar down in New Orleans where they might know where to find him. …”

Johnny memorized it.

“Where do you want me to meet you?” Belamo finished.

“This is something I must do alone, Sal Belamo.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just me.”

Belamo was about to argue, then realized the futility of the effort. “You okay, big fella?”

“Yes.”

“You sound strange, different. You ask me …” Belamo stopped. “Look, you need anything else, you know where I am. Stay in touch. Hey, I hear from McBalls you got a message?”

“Tell him the hellfire followed us home, after all.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

Sal’s influence could probably have gotten him out of this cell in no time flat. But Johnny knew that accepting the favor would bring Belamo into this full-tilt, and this was his battle to fight. Alone. Besides, Johnny planned on being out of here long before morning. Then he’d be on his way to New Orleans and Jersey Jack Watts, on the trail of a victim who had escaped the clutches of the killers of Joe Rainwater.

Night fell, and Johnny felt it from deep in the bowels of the precinct building. He had accepted dinner gratefully and watched as the policeman carefully relocked his cell. He hadn’t been stripped down and searched; as Eberling had indicated, he wasn’t a prisoner, just a guest. Accordingly, Wareagle would wait a few hours and then set himself free.

The policeman returned for his picked-at tray one hour later, shrugging at how much Johnny had left.

“You want something different?”

“No, no thank you.”

“You need anything, just holler.” The man started to take his leave, then swung back around. “Injun Joe helped me out a lot when I was starting out. Everyone around here loved the guy. Word is he called you in ’cause you’re something special. You catch this son of a bitch, there’ll be a long line to get a piece of him.”

The policeman stepped out of the cell and locked it behind him.

“Sorry, I got to do this.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah, well, give a yell you need something, okay?”

Johnny nodded. His eyes followed the policeman down the hall and then drifted up to the video camera mounted on the wall over the entry door. He knew his picture was being broadcast up to the desk sergeant, and this would prove the largest stumbling block to his escape. Disable the camera and attention would surely be drawn. Leave it operational and he ran the very real risk of having his entire escape witnessed.

A problem.

His best solution seemed to be to wait well into the night, as close to the six
A.M.
shift change as possible to maximize the desk officer’s fatigue and boredom. Remain inactive and still through the whole of the evening to lull the man behind the monitor into not paying attention.

He even closed his eyes, but what he saw in his mind disturbed him. The enemy Joe Rainwater had uncovered had exposed itself to kill him. No, it hadn’t been seen, but it revealed its very human vulnerability and fear of detection in the act of killing Rainwater.

And the only conclusion he could draw from this was that he was next on its list.

Wareagle’s eyes snapped open. He was being hunted; he could feel it. And the best response for him was to return to the ways of the hunter himself.

His mind drifted, searching for the scent of his quarry, drifted back to the Oliveras mansion. In his mind Johnny could see the guards that night springing into action at the first sign of trouble outside. They had plenty of time to assume defensive positions. No one was taken by surprise. And yet, and yet …

Johnny thought of the plaster impression of the footprint that Joe Rainwater had told him about. Might it actually have belonged to some demon or monster? Had someone with the powers of the old ways conjured one or more of them up to quell the evil running rampant in the world? He could see why his friend had begun to accept that conclusion; there seemed to be no other conclusion to reach.

Except that Johnny knew of the old ways, too, and not once in all the teaching and training he had undergone had he ever seen evidence that such a thing was possible. The stories Joe Rainwater had referred to had been of warriors visited by spirits on the battlefield, of a ghost rider saving the lives of women and children when threatened by a massacre. But the conjuring of monsters? No, it was not part of even the most mystical Indian lore, not Sioux, anyway.

Still, something was doing all this killing. He had to get out of here now to find out what it was, to find it before it found him as it had found Joe Rainwater.

Johnny rose from his cot and slid toward the cell door. He was well ahead of his planned schedule, but there was no longer a choice. The spirits had taken that from him with their insistent warnings. He removed the bobby pin that helped contain his coal black hair and separated it into the two pieces that formed his picks. He stood there for a time, hands resting on the outside of the lock, the stance innocent enough not to draw any attention. Wareagle angled his body and tilted his head so as much of the task he was about to perform as possible would be lost to the camera.

He slid the L-shaped part of the former bobby pin into the lock to keep pressure on the tumblers. Then he worked the straight part into place after it to pop the tumblers. Wareagle had worked this kind of five-tumbler lock before and figured it would take fifteen seconds.

He was working on the second tumbler when the straight tool slid from his hand and dropped to the floor. Johnny didn’t make any sudden moves to snatch at it; he just followed its roll, thankfully, back inside the cell.

As Johnny knelt to retrieve it, he heard a powerful blast, strong enough to shake the cellblock. The next sound was of exploding glass, followed by screaming, then gunfire. Individual pistol shots, by the sound of it, various calibers. More screaming ensued, horrible screaming.

The enemy was here!

Johnny began working the lock feverishly. Two more tumblers clicked into place, then a fourth. He went to work on the last one.

The enemy had come for him, here in the basement of a police station. Whatever was up there would let nothing stand in its way, not even fifteen or twenty policemen. They had killed Rainwater and now they would kill him.

Click.

The last tumbler fell into place and Johnny jammed the cell door outward. Automatic and shotgun fire were sounding from above now, the screams growing in intensity as more officers joined the battle and were wiped out.

The far end of the corridor contained an emergency exit and Johnny charged toward it. But the pushbar wouldn’t give, the mechanism triggered only in the event of a fire. The door was steel. The lock was on the other side.

He was trapped!

On the floors above him, the sounds of the struggle had already started to abate, the screams less frequent and gunfire reduced as more of the policemen were downed. A part of Johnny wanted to turn round and confront whatever was up there now, but reason prevailed. If he confronted whatever was up there now, it would kill him, just as it had killed Joe Rainwater. There would be another time, another place, when he would understand what he was fighting before confronting it.