Smoke and Mirrors

28

After leaving the majority of the evidence they’d gathered from Jack Beals’s house in the sheriff’s vault, the two tired men picked up fast food hamburgers and went to Brad’s house to eat and get Winter settled. Winter had checked out the DVDs so he could watch them away from the prying eyes of the other deputies. Where Styer was involved, the less that people knew, the better.

Brad lived in a two-story brick house on a tree-lined street near downtown with a muscular-and suspicious-Labrador and pit bull mix named Ruger. Brad showed Winter to a guest bedroom on the second floor. A few minutes later, the two men were sitting downstairs in Brad’s den wolfing down the hamburgers they’d brought home. Ruger sat beside Brad’s recliner, his dark eyes glued to the new guy seated in the recliner opposite his master.

“Ruger’s a handsome dog,” Winter said. “Bet he keeps strangers out.”

“He’s actually a she,” Brad said. “She’s just big boned. Aren’t you, baby?”

Despite Brad’s continuing admonitions, Ruger growled at their guest from time to time. Deer heads mounted on the walls stared out through glassy eyes and stuffed ducks on plaques flew imaginary circles around the furniture. Framed family pictures included one of a younger Brad Barnett in Marine fatigues. In the snapshot, he was holding a scoped rifle in the crook of his arm.

“I guess you’re wondering what the friction between me and Leigh is about?”

“None of my business,” Winter said. “But she does remind me of this girl I knew in grade school. Alice Murphy went out of her way to make my life hell. Whenever she saw me, she’d either stick out her tongue, rub my hair the wrong way, or pinch me. At a class reunion years later she told me she’d had a horrible crush on me in the third grade, and when I ignored her, she gave me a hard time to get my attention. Didn’t seem like that to me at the time, of course. I mean, she terrorized me.”

Brad smiled. “I went with Leigh from the sixth grade through high school,” he said. “She was something back then. A finer, better looking, and sweeter girl never drew a breath. All the way up until I joined the Marines. I wasn’t ready to go to college, and she was, and there was no war on then.

“Leigh’s mother died from a heart attack a few weeks after I entered boot camp. No warning. She just closed her eyes while sitting in her chair watching some TV sitcom. Leigh and her father didn’t even notice until the show was over. They thought she’d fallen asleep. That’s the way to go out.”

“I like to imagine I could die in my sleep,” Winter said.

“During my four years in the corps, we drifted apart. Each time I came home, our thing was more strained and since we weren’t together like before, our differences were more obvious to us. And I picked up drinking in the corps out of boredom. Leigh rarely drank and she had no patience for a drunk. We didn’t fit the way we had before and I wasn’t the same person I was when I left. She couldn’t cope. In my defense, I was a cocky jerk with a beer in one hand and a large chip on my shoulder. I was TPP positive then.”

“TPP?”

“Tested pumpkin positive. Means if you’d shined a light in my ear my face would have lit up like a jack-o-lantern.”

Winter laughed, and Ruger growled at him for it.

“When I got back we had one last weekend in a Memphis motel to try and rekindle something. Playing couple was great at first, but we ended up fighting, said terrible things to each other. She left, and I got drunk. I met a woman in a club and she came back to the motel with me. Nothing happened-at least I don’t think it did-because I passed out in a state of undress. Leigh had a change of heart, drove back, and the gal opened the room door wearing her panties and bra. I was out in bed, and Leigh didn’t ever want to speak to me again, and so for a long time, she didn’t.”

“Man, oh man,” Winter said, shaking his head slowly, picturing Leigh standing there looking at the unsteady and scantily clad woman at the door, not to mention a naked Brad passed out across the mattress. “I can imagine that might’ve been hard to explain away.”

“Before I got out, she ran off and married Jacob Gardner, one of those handsome guys who says all the right things to everybody, but once the newness wears off you can see he’s an egotistical, insincere rooster. His family had an old name and not much money left, though nobody knew it until everything collapsed after he married Leigh. He’s the kind of guy who always has a new set of best friends, and he climbs socially, or he did as long as there were fresh rungs available. She got pregnant, they got married, and she played mother hen and ran the place with her father while old Jake played golf and dabbled in dabbling.”

“You never tried to patch it up after Memphis?”

“The ice never thawed and I went to Ole Miss. Once Leigh decides something, that’s it in stone. My father’s reputation here gave me an initial edge with voters because he brought about half the population of Tunica County into the world. All I need to stay in office is to have his patients vote for me.” Brad smiled and patted his dog. “I expect the people around here vote for him, not me. I’m trying to change that.”

They talked on, about their friends in common, their law enforcement experiences, farming, and county politics. Winter told Brad about how he’d met Faith Ann and explained how she had become like a daughter to him and Sean. After that, he excused himself and called Sean’s cell phone.

“Hey, cowboy,” Sean answered. “Where you staying?”

“Call me Deputy Massey…again. I’m staying with my new boss, the sheriff. Where are you guys?”

“Have you leveled with him about Styer?”

“I haven’t decided how much to tell him. I think I’ll wait for the DNA comparison.”

“Tell him, Winter. Don’t let him be vulnerable because he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”

“Maybe it’s time.”

“Yeah. Just in case, he should know. Faith Ann wants to visit Graceland, so I thought we’d stay a couple of days.”

“I’d rather y’all would go on home. I’d feel…”

“I thought we’d eat at that rib place you told me about.”

“Rendezvous. Yeah. It’s close to the Peabody.”

“Any objections to our staying over? He won’t bother us. Besides, he’s there, right?”

“You’re right, Sean. But I’ll be worried and if I’m worried…”

“Okay. We’ll leave tomorrow morning at eight,” Sean said. She was the strongest woman Winter had ever known, but she also knew when to give in. It was one of the things he loved most about her.

“Styer won’t go after you guys at home.”

Winter spoke briefly and wistfully to Rush, Faith Ann, and Olivia before he hung up and returned to the den.

“I think it’s time you knew who I think we’re probably dealing with,” Winter said quietly. “How much do you know about me, what I’ve been involved with in the past?”

Brad fed Ruger what was left of his burger as he spoke. “I’ve heard some things. The Tampa courtroom shootings. I know there was some kind of big incident outside New Orleans a few years back with Sam Manelli’s gang, and another one there a little over two years ago. And I know there was an incident in South Carolina involving the trial of Colonel Bryce, some rogue military intelligence officers, and the kidnapping of a judge’s daughter and her child.”

Winter nodded and said, “Brad, what I am going to tell you has to remain between the two of us. If you tell anybody I told you what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Styer is a professional assassin from the Eastern Bloc who used to trade in seemingly impossible-to-kill targets, first for the KGB’s elite Special Situations Unit, and after the wall came down, for a private murder-for-hire organization. When I sent your toothpick to the lab, I also sent them Styer’s DNA. I got it from a scented toothpick he left in a rental car in New Orleans. I’m having that sample compared to your toothpick, and if it matches, we’re going from bad to worse real fast. I’ve gotten what little I know about this guy from people who know things I don’t. They talked to me because they hoped I might somehow lead them to him.”

Brad crossed his legs at the ankles.

“Paulus Styer was born in East Germany and sent to the Soviet Union where he was groomed to be a weapon of selective destruction. He became a world-class professional assassin-a human chameleon who vanished two years ago after failing to kill me.”

“You were his target?”

“He was told I was his target. The CIA used a hit on me to get Styer in the field so they could take him out when he made his move on me. They underestimated Styer and sent a single professional to kill him, but Styer found out the hit was a ploy and escaped. Faith Ann’s uncle, my friend Hank Trammel, is a cripple, and his wife, Millie, was killed. Faith Ann saw Styer run them over with an SUV merely to manipulate me into a death game. He has a compulsion to show his victims, just before he kills them, how amazingly talented he is. I guess since he can’t show the world his genius, he plays to an audience of two-himself and his target.”

“He tried to kill you and failed?”

“He easily could have, but he decided not to. Look, nothing he does is without purpose. Maybe he killed Sherry Adams for another reason, but he definitely used that murder as bait to get me here. It’s all a game with him. He isn’t part of the same reality normal people share.”

“Seems really farfetched,” Brad said. “He knew I’d go right to you?”

“He is a grand master of manipulation.”

“Can you take him?”

“Only if the playing field is slanted in my favor. Styer is way out of my class. In a toe-to-toe gunfight, I’d have an even chance. But outside that scenario, my odds crash.”

“Could you…I don’t know…contact the CIA for help getting him?”

Winter sat back and shook his head. “Asking the part of the CIA I’m talking about for help is the last thing we want to do. Be like asking a pack of starving wolves to guard your henhouse.”