Zero Option

54

Carrothers walked into the sheriff’s office just as Warren was hanging up the phone. The senior FBI-man, Kiesling, came in right behind him. He still looked unhappy.

“So where the hell is he?” Carrothers asked.

“Anybody’s guess,” Kiesling said disgustedly. “I thought the deal was that you were going to stay at Fort Gillem, General.” “I received new orders,” Carrothers said. “The Pentagon wanted me to talk to Stafford.” “You could have told me. I still think our boy Stafford is rucking with us.”

“To what end?” Carrothers. “If he were.part of this, he’d be long gone with Carson and your money, not.sitting up here talking to us on the phone.”

Kiesling frowned, then went back out the door to check on his people in the square. The sheriff explained that there were three cars out there, each with two agents, positioned to close in on Carson as soon as he showed up. Carrothers noticed that the sheriff was standing at his desk, looking distractedly at the phone.

“What?” Carrothers asked.

“Something Stafford just said. I asked him if everything was okay out there at Willow Grove. And he said, ‘You mean is Carson here with a gun at my head? No such luck.’ “

“Maybe he was just being funny. He’s out there by himself, right?”

“Effectively. One of the night nurses is there, plus the kids, of course.”

“Is there any reason Carson would go there?”

The sheriff gave him a studied look from underneath those huge black brows. Carrothers though the sheriff appeared to be about the same age as he was, but with a much better poker face. “Not that I can think of,” the sheriff replied finally. “You want some coffee, General?” “Yes, please,” Carrothers said almost automatically. He was living on caffeine these days. They walked out into the hall, where the coffeepot was. The offices along the hallway were darkened except for the deputies’ dayroom. “How much have the FBI told you about this business, Sheriff?”

“Not very much a-tall,” the sheriff said. “Although that is their style.

But basically this Wendell Carson is supposedly a bad guy, armed and dangerous, and he’s got something the government wants back, and the government’s willing to deal. That about it?”

“Yeah, that’s about it,” Carrothers said, wanting to tell the sheriff the whole story but remembering his orders. Right now, only Kiesling, Sparks, and Stafford knew what Carson was carrying.

The sheriff was giving him a peculiar look, as if he was trying to decide something. Then he nodded to himself.

“That is total bullshit, I do believe,” he said matter-of factly. “I believe the real story is that this Carson’s run off with a container of some kind of Army nerve gas, which Mr. Stafford learned about with the help of one of the children out there at Willow Grove — a girl who is a psychic. And the reason Carson might go there instead of here is to silence that little girl, along with Mr. Stafford. Now, is that about it, General?”

Carrothers didn’t know what to say. He just stared at the sheriff for a moment, looked up and down the empty hallway to make sure no one had been listening, and then nodded. “Almost,” he said, and then told him of the FBI’s role in Carson’s original attempts to sell the cylinder.

The sheriff grinned and shook his head when he heard that story. “Now there’s federal screw up of the first water for you,” he said. “First y’all misplace this thing, then a government employee steals it and tries to sell it to the FBI, who keeps it a secret from you? Ain’t no wonder the bad guys are doing so well these days.”

Carrothers could only nod his head.

“And both of you have to get this thing back. You can’t admit you lost one, and the FBI can’t admit that their guy had a hand in Carson getting loose with it, right?”

“Plus the fact that they lost a guy during the incident at Fort Gillem.”

The sheriff stopped grinning. “They did? Tell me, does Stafford know that? Or about the Bureau’s role in the original scheme?”

“Not to my knowledge. Stafford tried to warn us that Carson had it. Told his boss first, then even told me. We didn’t listen so good. Problem was, nobody could figure out how he could know about it until his boss, Sparks, told us about the girl. That was after Carson got away, of course.”

“The girl, yes,” the sheriff said softly, sinking back down into his desk chair. “See, we were all sort of worried that this thing might come here to Graniteville. So earlier tonight, we sent the girl off with the lady who runs the school, Owen Warren. She’s my ex-wife, by the way.”

“Where did you send her?”

“Somewhere’safe, General,” the sheriff said, giving him a look that said, That’s all I’m going to tell yorf. “So if Carson is going up to Willow Grove, he’s going to be disappointed.”

“But he can get to Stafford. And he may very well want to.”

The sheriff thought about that for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “He could get to Stafford. You know I don’t like the way he talked about having a gun at his head when I talked to him. I think I’m going to take a quiet ride out there. Have me a look-see.”

“Nothing beats personal reconnaissance, Sheriff. In the meantime, we wait some more, I suppose.” And try to mollify Kiesling and his troops, he thought. Kiesling had undoubtedly already called the Justice Department to report Carrothers’s presence in Graniteville. Need to do some damage control there.

“Yes, sir, General, that’s what I’d recommend. I was you, I’d keep your people out of sight up at that quarry and let the FBI take him. They want him pretty bad.”

Carrothers was getting worried about that. Based on the way Kiesling was acting, the FBI wanted Carson in a body bag. As probably did General Waddell.