The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) Page 5

  They had more hardware in a locked rack under the pad in the rear cargo area of Orville’s car: a pump shotgun, an M4 carbine, two ballistic vests, leg irons with chains, and four sets of cuffs. Orville was very particular about making sure they always had all the armaments they might need. He never tired of reminding her about the case down in Miami in 1986, the two Vietnam vets who had been turning over banks. Eight feds found them, but all they were packing were handguns and the robbers had AR-15s. Two of the agents had been killed and five injured. The bureau wasn’t shy about going in heavy now.

  Ellie slumped back against the stained headboard. Had they really thought that they’d use them on the trip, that they might find something in the tip-off, more than just another example of someone blowing smoke up their asses? Maybe, maybe not. Ellie was young for an agent, but she had inherited her father’s instincts and wisdom. There was enough about the girl’s story that she couldn’t just forget about it and walk away. Orville could; that was what they had been arguing about, although that was a useful cover for all the other things that they had been arguing about, too.

  Orville.

  Fuck.

  She switched channels to the game and watched as the Steelers kicked off. The return guy fielded the ball at the two, danced up to the fifteen, and then got crumpled by the gunner who had come down the field at a hundred miles an hour. He ended up on his back, the ball popped up, and the gunner scooped it up and waltzed into the end zone for the easy score.

  Sixteen-zip, and tack on another for the PAT.

  Ellie thought of Ryan listening to the game on his car radio, and allowed herself a smile. They usually arranged for the loser to buy dinner. She would gladly pay for that to spend an evening with her brother.

  Who was she kidding?

  Things weren’t so bad.

  Chapter 7

  MILTON SLEPT well and woke at six as the sun rose. He rolled off the bed and, stripping off the jump suit, worked through his usual routine of sit-ups and press-ups. He would normally have stopped with five hundred of each, but he still felt ready for more, so he pressed his back against the bars, reached up to grip the horizontal bar that joined them and, by raising his knees to his chest, added two hundred crunches. By the time he was finished he was slathered in a fine sheen of sweat and his muscles were afire.

  Lundquist must have seen that he was awake in the feed from the camera. Milton heard him as he came down the stairs, muttering to himself, as he struggled with the door handle and, after managing to open it, backing into the room with a tray. It held a plate of toast and two mugs of coffee. The bread smelled wonderful.

  “Morning, partner,” Lundquist said. He balanced the tray on the chair and passed one of the mugs through the bars of the cell. “White, one sugar.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I thought you might appreciate something to eat.” He slid the plate with the toast through the space between the bars and the floor. “It’s korppu. Cinnamon bread. You dip it in your coffee. It’s Finnish. My grandpa used to eat three slices every day, and he lived to a hundred and three, so I guess there must be something in it, right? Patti heard you were in here overnight, and she brought some over for you. We don’t get many in overnight. Patti thinks we should be hospitable.”

  Milton took a bite of the toast. It was hard, almost burnt, and yet still sweet. He finished both pieces quickly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sleep good?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that.”

  Lundquist went back to the door and reached down for the bundle of clothes that he had left on the stairs. He placed them on the chair.

  “Left them on the radiator last night to dry them out,” Lundquist explained. He took a key from his belt and unlocked the cell door.

  “Thank you.”

  Milton dressed. The clothes were warm. He pulled on his boots and laced them up.

  “The sheriff’s upstairs. He wants to see you before you go.”

  LESTER GROGAN was sitting at his desk. He was in uniform this morning: khaki slacks and a dark blue shirt with his badge pinned just below the left tip of his collar. It didn’t fit him particularly well. He had allowed himself to become a little overweight in recent years, and the shirt was stretched tight over a generous belly that sagged out a little over the belt line. He greeted Milton warmly and invited him to sit in the chair opposite. Milton did.

  “You sleep okay?”

  “I did.”

  “And Morten got you something to eat?”

  “A burger.”

  “From Johnny’s? They’re usually pretty good, right?”

  “It was fine.”

  The sheriff didn’t fit the usual profile of the rural lawman. Milton had met a few of them over the years, and Lester was different. Milton expected sheriffs to be the kings of their counties, with comfortable offices, secretaries and deputies. Their walls would be heavy with awards, photos and plaques, the sheriff grinning alongside politicians and business leaders, always thinking ahead to next year’s re-election. A display case for school kids and their mothers to gawk at, filled with hash pipes and confiscated marijuana cigarettes, guns and rusty knives. Lester Grogan had nothing. Just a crowded desk and some cardboard cartons piled on top of file cabinets in a dingy room.

  “Well, Mr. Milton,” he started, “I got some good news and some bad news for you. The big man from last night, his name is Alan Hooper, and he works in corporate law down there in Detroit. He’s a big wheel, so they say. I went to the Emergency Room on the way home last night. The bad news is you gave him what they tell me is a mandibular fracture. Broken jaw is what I call it. Two places. Wire mesh, eating through a straw for a week, the whole nine yards.”

  “The good news?”

  “The good news is I went to see Mr. Hooper again this morning. He was burning right up to have me throw the book at you, telling me how he’d bring a civil suit against you if I didn’t have you on a felony. I explained to him how that wouldn’t be wise for him to do that because, if he did, I’d have no option other than to bring him into it, too, since he punched first, like we said last night, and how could that be good for his career and all? He fulminated about that for a good thirty seconds, got pretty agitated about it until I told him to calm down or should I take out my cuffs, and that seemed to do the trick. Bottom line, Mr. Milton, is that he’s happy that we leave this as a citation only. So you’re free to go.”

  “Thank you,” Milton said. “I appreciate it.”

  “Least I could do after we got off on the wrong foot like we did, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Nevertheless… you didn’t have to…”

  “No, I did.” He got up from his chair. “Where you staying?”

  “The hotel.”

  “Want a ride over there?”

  “Seriously? After the last ride you gave me?”

  Lester smiled. “This one will be different.”

  “Sure.”

  Milton and Lester rose. Lundquist put his head through the door. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Thank your wife for the toast,” he said.

  Lundquist waved it off. “It’s just toast. You want to try her roasts, you won’t be so complimentary. Ain’t that the truth, Lester? Patti’s roasts?”

  Lester smiled again. “Come on,” he said.

  THEY CAME out of the rear exit, and Lester led the way to the Ford Taurus he used as his police cruiser. He indicated that the doors were open, and Milton got into the passenger seat next to him. He reversed and turned around, and as he nosed carefully over the sidewalk and onto the road, Milton noticed the old Pontiac Catalina that was parked opposite them. It was a four-door sedan, at least thirty years old, dinged up in several places and with a replacement wing that was brown where the rest of the car was dirty white. Milton wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but he had noticed the girl in the woollen beanie who was half slumped in the driver’s seat. She was watching them
, her eyes following the car as Lester paused for a space in the traffic, pulling away and heading to the middle of town.

  The sheriff hadn’t noticed, but he didn’t have Milton’s experience, hardwired into him over a decade’s service when a missed detail like that could easily mean his death.

  Milton watched in the mirror as the Pontiac jerked out into the road, one car behind them. Lester drew up at the stop sign and turned to the right. The Pontiac indicated in the same direction and, as they set off down Falls Road back to the Village Inn, it turned with them and followed, keeping back at a discreet distance.

  “What are you going to do?” Lester asked him.

  “Get my gear and set off. I only really came into town for a shower and a warm bed.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “West. I take it day by day. I reckon I can get across to Wakewood if I get away quickly.”

  “Twenty miles? Stay to the road and you’ll have no problem. There’s a campsite just on the edge of town. Wandering Wheels, I think they call it. You got Sunday Lake down there, too. Very pretty. And after that?”

  “I’m thinking about going to Minnesota.”

  They passed Truth Motors, Holiday Stationstore, and a Michigan correctional facility, and still the Pontiac followed.

  “You had a rifle yesterday.”

  “Back at the hotel.”

  “You do any shooting?”

  Milton nodded.

  “What have you got?”

  “Ruger Hawkeye.”

  “All weather?”

  Milton nodded.

  “I got one, too. You want to try it with the .243 Win. Goes together like apple pie and ice cream.”

  Lester kept talking about the rifle. Milton kept enough of his attention on the conversation to know when he had been asked a question, but most of his intentness was on the Pontiac behind them.

  It kept coming.

  Milton kept watching.

  Chapter 8

  ELLIE FLOWERS woke late, at eight. She had stayed up to watch the second half of the ball game, the Steelers winning at a canter, and started to think of a shortlist of places where she could take Ryan for dinner. Applebee’s, maybe, they had that nice place that just opened downtown. When that was over, she had watched hockey for twenty minutes, then flipped channels to watch late night chat shows and trashy TV until she looked over at the clock, saw it was two in the morning, and finally acceded to sleep.

  When she got out of bed, she discovered that she had come to a decision about the situation with Orville. She often found that problems that vexed her would be resolved while she slept, and it seemed like that had happened again. She would have the conversation with him now, right this morning, rather than wait until they got back to the city like she had told Ryan last night. That was cowardly, putting it off, and she knew that she would feel better as soon as it was done. So why wait?

  She showered, dressed with purpose, and hurried so that she could find him and get it over with before she lost the conviction and put it off again.

  Orville was reading something on his phone when she came into the breakfast room, toast crumbs on his plate and a half cup of coffee cooling on the table. She went over to the breakfast bar and decided on a bowl of fruit and yoghurt from the meagre selection.

  The trouble with Orville was that he seemed to have a sixth sense about difficult conversations that he would rather avoid. If he got that premonition, and she knew that he would since she practically radiated discomfort, then he would put up his defences and it would be almost impossible to get started. She knew how he would play it: he would pretend that they hadn’t argued last night, that she hadn’t turned him down, and act like everything was fine in the garden.

  She carried her bowl across to the table.

  She said, “Morning, Orville—”

  She got that far before he said, without looking up, “Ellie, you have to listen to this.”

  She felt her stomach go tight and tense. She was right; he was going to pretend that nothing was wrong.

  “I was reading this story”—he tapped his finger against his phone—“right, about Julius Jenkins, this old black dude down in Florida, down Jacksonville way, about how he’s been charged with knocking off a payroll run. Says here he went up to the two ex-marines who were transferring the cash from the van to a warehouse, pulled out a sawed off out from underneath his coat, puts them on the ground, and makes off with the cash. Can you believe that? This guy—”

  “Orville,” she said.

  “—this guy, says here he’s in his fricking eighties. He puts these two thirty-year-old goddamn marines on the ground and robs them blind. Gets better, too: says one of the marines saw a disabled parking sticker on the dash. I tell you what, Ellie, this world gets crazier and crazier—”

  “Orville.”

  “—would never have happened ten years ago.”

  “Orville,” she said harshly, “will you just shut the fuck up and listen to me?”

  He stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open.

  “Thank you. Jesus.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look, there’s no easy way to say this. But this thing with you and me, I’ve been thinking on it, and I’ve decided that it’s come to the end of the road. If you’re honest about it, you know it hasn’t been fun for weeks. Not for you and not for me. We’re always arguing—”

  He somehow managed to look shocked, like this wasn’t a conversation he had already seen coming for days. “This about last night?”

  “No. Yes, partly, but no.”

  “Because last night, maybe I went a little far. Throwing my weight around a bit, like you said, and maybe you were right. I been thinking, too. You want to stay up here and nose around a little more, you go for it. Knock yourself out. I can give you a couple days. You speak to that girl again, and if you think it’s worth it, you can go up in those woods and have a look. A couple days, three days, maybe, no problem.”

  “Orville,” she said, “it’s not just about last night, and anyway, I already spoke to Dillard and told him I was going to stay.”

  His mouth gaped. “You spoke to Dillard?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went over my head?”

  “You and I were never going to agree.”

  “But that—”

  “Let’s not get sidetracked by what we said last night. That was a symptom of the problem, and treating the symptom isn’t going to cure the sickness. Fact of the matter is, I’ve made up my mind, and there’s nothing that’s going to change it. We’ve come to the end of the road. That’s just all there is to it.”

  “All right,” he said. “I hear you. This is what we’re going to do. You go up into the woods and do what you’ve got to do. I’ll go back to Detroit this morning. When you’re finished, you come back, and we’ll go out and talk about this properly, like adults. I’m not going to talk about it here.” He waved a dismissive hand at the shabby room, the peeling wallpaper, the folding table with the breakfast things.

  His voice was firm and patriarchal, as if he was addressing a rebellious teen who was insistent that she was going to leave the house in that dress. It was as if his way of dealing with it was to try to ignore everything that she had said. It made her grit her teeth with frustration, but there were other people in the breakfast room now, and she didn’t want to cause a scene.

  “All right?”

  She really couldn’t be bothered with it. She didn’t have the energy, and as far as she was concerned, what was done was done. He could continue on with his own deluded version of the truth if he wanted to. It made no difference to her.

  “Ellie?”

  “Fine, Orville. That’s what we’ll do.”

  Chapter 9

  MALLORY STANTON kept to a careful distance. She knew Lester Grogan just like everyone in town knew him. He wasn’t a bad man, but he could get so that he was intoxicated with the idea of being sheriff, drunk with the notion of his authority, t
hinking that everyone else ought to have respect for his office. Mallory didn’t hold all of those views. Truth be told, she didn’t believe in any of them, especially not since Arty had disappeared into the woods and Sheriff Lester Grogan and all of his cronies in the Sheriff’s Office had been about as useful as lips on a chicken.

  No, she thought. You boys aren’t going to help me out one bit.

  The cruiser’s brake lights shone bright red through the misty morning, and it turned off into the parking lot of the Village Inn. Mallory wasn’t sure what the protocol was to follow someone, but she figured that it wouldn’t do to turn into the parking lot too, so she drove on another quarter mile, turned in the forecourt of Pizza Place on Truth Road and came back up on them again.

  The cruiser was pulling away, headed back into town, and, for a moment, Mallory wondered if she had lost her chance. She followed, driving past the inn and staring hard at the Ford Taurus until she was as sure as she could be that the passenger side was empty. She turned around again in Woodland Road and, as she approached the Inn for the third time, she slowed and drove into the lot.

  She had just reached down to turn the ignition when the passenger door opened and a man slipped into the seat next to her.

  She mishandled the door handle in her panicked attempt to get out.

  He reached across and fastened a strong hand around her right shoulder.

  “Easy,” he said.

  Her heart thumped as she turned her head and looked over at him. It was the man from the bar, the man Lester Grogan had arrested.

  The man she wanted to speak to.

  “Why are you following me?”

  He had clear blue eyes, and there was steel in them. She had noticed that at the bar last night. Those two men, especially the big one, would have given most people pause for thought. But he had been implacable, steady, as if possessed of an unshakeable confidence that this was nothing that he couldn’t handle.

  Turned out he had been right about that.