Читать книгу The Goodbye Man - Jeffery Deaver, Jeffery Deaver - Страница 15

In ten minutes Colter Shaw’s job was over.

He found Adam Harper and Erick Young on Old Mill Road, about two miles from Hope’s Corner and still a ways to go to Snoqualmie Gap.

Shaw stopped on a narrow shoulder and looked down, to his left. Here the road was made up of switchbacks because of the dizzyingly steep grade. It descended to a valley in which a river glistened, blue and silver. On the other side, the road rose into the hills once more.

The young men were fifty feet below Shaw. They were trudging along like college kids on a weekend hike. Each had a backpack. Adam was holding a large refillable water bottle. Erick pointed to the steep uphill climb they’d have once they crossed the bridge. Adam said something and Erick nodded.

Strolling, not a care in the world.

Shaw carefully examined them; he couldn’t see the profile of a pistol, or a protruding grip, in the pockets of either.

Erick dug into his backpack pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Jerky, Shaw believed. He ate a piece and offered some to Adam, who declined with a shake of his head. The suspects came to the end of the straight portion of the switchback and followed the road, curving to the left. Shaw watched them emerge. They got halfway along this stretch of road and stopped where it swelled with a broad shoulder on a cliff. It was a substantial drop; boulders had been placed here to serve as guardrails. The two sat down on one of these, the size of a park bench. Erick ate more jerky. Adam made a phone call.

Shaw examined his Rand McNally map and discovered that they were in Hammond County. He placed a call to the sheriff’s office. He was connected to the sheriff himself, a man named Welles, and explained about the crime in Pierce County and told him that he’d just found the two suspects. The sheriff hesitated a moment, taking in the information, then asked for Shaw’s location.

“I’ll be at the intersection of State Route Sixty-four and Old Mill Road.”

“Okay, sir. Let me check this out and we’ll be there soon.”

Shaw turned the Kia around and drove back up Old Mill to the intersection, about a half-mile away. He preferred to meet the law enforcers in a place separate from Erick and Adam’s actual location. He didn’t know the procedures—or style—of the deputies here and didn’t want them blustering up, sirens wailing, acting all tough cop. That might spook the pair into shooting … or taking to the brush. If that happened it would be a true chore to track them, especially if they split up. And, equally worrying, this was dangerous territory: steep cliffs, hazardous slopes, torrential rapids. The river below was beautiful. Shaw knew it would be cold as January metal and guessed the speed of the current was twenty miles per hour.

Shaw parked where Old Mill and the state route met and soon three official vehicles and one private—a mud-stained SUV—arrived. Shaw and the men climbed out. Five of them. They varied from youthful twenties to middle age. Welles, the sheriff, was around fifty, rotund. Blond hair and—curiously, given the shade of the strands on his head—his eyes were brown as aged leather.

All wore gray uniforms, except the tallest, a lean and bony bearded man in green-and-black camo, his dark tan baseball cap sitting backward on his head. He radiated military and, at early forties, he might’ve recently retired. You serve twenty and you’re out. A faded name tag sewn onto his jacket was crooked, cut from one uniform and stitched onto his hunting garb. dodd, j. The SUV was his. He appeared to be civilian, though Shaw noted a blue light affixed to the Pathfinder’s dashboard. While the others gazed at Shaw and his sport coat and city shoes with curiosity, Dodd’s gaze was expressionless.

Welles approached. A paw of a hand embraced Shaw’s. “You BEA?”

“No.” Shaw had never considered being a bond enforcement agent, whose days were usually spent tracking down bail-jumping druggies—men, usually, who were stupid enough to hide out at their parents’ or girlfriend’s bungalow.

He explained about the reward.

This raised an eyebrow or two.

He expected the next question to be “How much?” But that query wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, one of the deputies asked, “You don’t bring ’em in yourself? Why call us?” A solid, jowly man, Welles had a fitting voice, like distant thunder.

“I don’t apprehend. I only find the whereabouts. The rest is up to the person or agency offering the reward, or local law enforcement.”

The sheriff said, “My, that sounds formal.”

“Say, Sheriff, we get any?” one of the younger deputies asked.

“Any what?”

“Of that reward?”

“Tell me, Bo: you didn’t go and find anybody, did you?”

“Just asking.”

“Now, now.” To Shaw, Welles asked, “You armed, sir?”

“I am. I’ll show you my ticket.” He slowly extracted his wallet and displayed a Utah concealed carry permit, which was recognized in Washington State.

“Do me a favor and keep your piece tucked away, will you?”

“Sure. My job’s pretty much done here.”

Another deputy: “You tracked ’em all the way here from Gig Harbor?”

“I did.”

Welles said, “I checked with the Pierce County public safety chief. He confirmed they’re fugitives and there’s a reward. He didn’t know about you.”

“I was in touch with a detective there, not the sheriff. Chad Johnson.”

“He told me these boys shot up a man of God, burned a church.”

“Partly true. There was a burning cross, and they defaced the place. Some graffiti. No fire damage to the building itself. A janitor and a lay preacher were wounded.”

“They skinheads or Nazis or what?”

“They don’t seem to be. The main suspect’s Adam Harper, late twenties. I can’t piece together Erick’s role. He’s only twenty.”

“Whatever,” Sheriff Welles muttered, waving aside one or two of the persistent mosquitos, “the warrants’re for both of them.”

“That’s correct.”

“Any trouble from ’em on the way here?”

“None that I saw or heard about.”

“Why are they headed this way?”

“No idea. Maybe meeting some friends. And I heard there’s a retreat near Snoqualmie Gap. Maybe they were headed there.”

Welles considered this. “Yeah, there is that place. I don’t know much about it. Different county, not our watch. Anybody?”

None of his officers was familiar.

Welles said, “If it’s a church thing, they might be planning to shoot it up too.”

A deputy said, “Or Thompsonville. A couple of churches there. Long walk, but they could hitch.”

Welles looked pensive. “Thompsonville. Yeah. That’d be a target for sure.” He clicked his tongue. “Men who disrespect Christ? That’s baked into the bone. They have mischief in mind, I guarantee it. All right, we’ll take over from here, Mr. Shaw. You said they’re armed.”

“Have to assume so. It’s a .38 Police Special.”

“Mule kicker,” somebody said.

“Where can we find them?” Welles asked.

“Last I saw they were taking a break. They were headed down into a valley about two klicks from here.”

“A valley?”

Shaw noted that the sheriff’s eyes met Dodd’s, whose head dipped a fraction of an inch.

Shaw said, “You have a map, I can point it out.”

Welles muttered to a deputy nearby, the youngest, “Glove compartment, kid.”

With a brisk nod the officer scurried to the sheriff’s squad car and disappeared inside. He returned with a map, handing it to Welles, who unfurled the sheet on the nearest car hood, underneath which the engine ticked as it cooled.

A lover and collector of maps, Shaw studied this one carefully. The crisp, unstained paper explained that the sheriff and probably the rest of the deputies didn’t get out here much. This rugged terrain was within the county they oversaw but much of the land was state park. Shaw supposed that the rangers were the main law enforcers. There was also a national forest around here, with boundaries that ran in and out of the county’s turf.

Looking down at the map, he tapped a site. “They were there, having some water and food. I don’t know how long they were going to rest, though even if they started hiking again right away after I left, they couldn’t be more than a half mile north.” Another tap. “That’d put them about here, at the farthest.”

Welles turned toward his men. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. They’re moving north. I want somebody to circle around to Abbott Ford, fast, get ahead of them and come back south. TJ and B., you do that.”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

“Me and Jimmy’ll go north.”

One deputy said enthusiastically, “So we catch ’em in a pincer movement.”

Which wasn’t exactly what the sheriff was describing.

“Exactly.”

The sheriff turned to gaunt, unexpressive Dodd. “And you get yourself up Scatterback. On the ridge. Get a good position. To cover us.”

“K.” The lean, laconic Dodd asked Shaw, “They have long guns?”

“No.”

Dodd gave a nod.

Welles folded the map. “’Preciate your help, Mr. Shaw. You’ve earned every penny of that reward.” A faint laugh. “Though easy for me to say; I’m not the one writing the check.” The smile faded. He looked over the deputies. “Gentlemen, I am serious now. We’ve gotta stop ’em. The chief in Tacoma told me victims at the church there were black, true, but they were still children of God. Now, let’s get to it.”

Shaw returned to the Kia. He heard a whisper of “Reward.” And some chuckles. As he sat in the driver’s seat he watched the sheriff and the uniformed deputies walk to their cars, which soon sped off, leaving a haze of mustard-colored dust behind them.

Dodd remained. The man loped to his personal SUV, lifted the tailgate and uncased a big-bore Winchester rifle, fitted with a Maven telescopic sight—an expensive one, probably equal to one of the deputy’s paychecks. He opened a metal ammunition box and lifted out a package of bullets. Big ones, .308. Sniper rounds.

The wiry, unsmiling man began loading the magazine. His eyes, which had been dead until now, brightened considerably as he clicked each lengthy, lethal slug home.