Dead on Arrival

68

Emma assumed that when Lincoln received the blackmail demand from Jubal Pugh, he would try to kill Pugh. He wouldn’t, however, do the killing himself.

‘Lincoln had somebody kill Rollie Patterson,’ she’d told DeMarco. ‘And maybe that same person killed William Broderick.’

‘And maybe tried to kill me too,’ DeMarco said.

‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘You got lucky.’

Emma’s plan was to catch the killer that Lincoln sent to murder Pugh in the act of killing him, hopefully before he succeeded. The killer, to avoid a long jail term for attempted murder, would give up Lincoln, and Lincoln, in return for a reduced sentence, would give up whoever had paid him to organize the terrorist attacks. The other thing that Emma figured was that Lincoln’s killer wouldn’t just shoot Pugh with a rifle from three hundred yards away or blow up his mobile home. He could, but Emma didn’t think he would. Lincoln needed to know if the photo Pugh had sent him was a fake and he needed the name of the witness that could place Lincoln and Pugh in the restaurant together. To get that information the killer would have to torture Pugh, and while he was being tortured, they’d catch the killer. But they might have to let Pugh get tortured for just a little while to make the case, which didn’t bother Emma at all.

Yes, it was a pretty simple plan: one killer after another falling over like a row of dominoes. However, neither Emma nor DeMarco thought it was going to be easy. And something that neither of them said out loud was that keeping Pugh alive wasn’t as impor tant as catching the person who tried to kill him — or succeeded in killing him.

DeMarco had never been involved in anything resembling a military operation, but he was involved in one now. And Emma was the general.

The same day Patsy Hall mailed the photo to Oliver Lincoln, DeMarco, Emma, and four men arrived in Victor, Montana. The four men were ex-military, men that Emma knew, and they were professional bodyguards. Usually their clients were celebrities worried about lovesick stalkers or wealthy people visiting countries where kidnapping was a cottage industry.

Emma introduced the men to DeMarco as Bob, Stan, Harry, and Stew. They didn’t look alike, yet at the same time they did. Stan and Stew were both short and stocky and had weight lifter’s muscles. Bob was tall and rangy and bald. And Harry was just sort of average — average height, average build. The thing that made the men look alike was their eyes, eyes that said they’d been to hell and back when they’d worked for Uncle — and they weren’t afraid to make the trip again.

And Emma’s guys came well equipped. They had binoculars and night-vision goggles and.22-caliber pistols machined for silencers. They had sniper’s rifles and radios and bulletproof vests. They were a mini-militia; they were ready for anything.

Patsy Hall had told Pugh to tell Lincoln to send the four million to a post office box in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in two weeks. Jubal had asked why she wanted to give Lincoln so much time and she explained that Lincoln would need that long to round up the money. She didn’t tell him the real reason was so Lincoln would have time to plan Pugh’s murder. Hall would then pick up the cash, telling Jubal it would be best if she made the pickup because (a) she was a trained government agent and (b) Lincoln had never seen her. Jubal, being the trusting guy that he was, wanted to know what was to keep Hall from absconding with his half of the money and leaving him to rot in Montana. Hall explained that if she did, all Jubal had to do was place an anonymous phone call to the DEA and tell them that a certain unpopular agent had suddenly become very rich.

Hall introduced Pugh to his security detail over the phone. She told him Stan was the man in charge as Emma figured that Jubal — being the redneck that he was — wouldn’t like it if a woman was responsible for his safety. So Pugh thought that four people were protecting him, not six; DeMarco and Emma stayed out of sight.

After four days of watching Pugh, DeMarco was about to go out of his mind from boredom and he had grooves in his hands, arms, and neck from scratching at bug bites. He didn’t know what kind of bugs they were, but they were vicious little bastards. But if sitting around doing nothing and getting eaten alive by insects bothered Stan and his crew, DeMarco couldn’t see it. These guys, you could drop them into a swamp at night and they’d stand there in the water, never moving, while leeches vacuumed out their blood.

DeMarco was teamed up with Stan and Harry; they had the day-shift watch, from six in the morning to six at night. Emma was on the back-shift watch with Bob and Stew, because she figured Lincoln’s assassin was more likely to come at night. When Jubal went to work at the scrap yard, they followed him then hung around all day while Jubal ripped parts off cars. DeMarco figured working in a scrap yard had to be a pretty boring job; it was definitely a boring job to watch.

After Jubal finished work, usually about four every day, he went to his favorite bar and drank beer for three hours, then went back to his trailer and drank more beer. Stan had instructed Jubal not to change his routine in any way. Emma had told Stan to tell Jubal this. She wanted to give Lincoln’s killer every opportunity.

Emma figured that the killer would watch Pugh for a couple of days, then break into his trailer at two or three in the morning and start ripping out his fingernails. He might try to snatch Pugh and take him someplace to talk, but it seemed more likely that the killer would take him at his home. Emma and her guys spent a lot of time looking for anybody who might be watching Pugh, but didn’t see anyone, and this Emma found disconcerting. Stan and his guys were too good to miss somebody following Pugh, and she started to wonder if Oliver Lincoln had decided he didn’t need to kill him.

Emma said later if they hadn’t all been sexists, including her, they never would have blown it the way they did.

On their eighth day in Montana, DeMarco sat with Stan in a clump of weeds on a small hill watching Jubal work in the junkyard. Stan, pro that he was, kept searching the surrounding area with his binocu lars, and every hour or so he’d talk to Harry on the radio to make sure nothing was happening on the side of the junkyard that Harry was watching. DeMarco mentioned to Stan that sitting in the weeds was maybe a good way to get bitten by a snake, which earned him a what-a-wuss look from Stan.

Jubal was currently taking the mirrors off three cars that had just been towed into the junkyard. DeMarco figured side-view mirrors were probably a pretty hot commodity in the junk business, as people were always ripping off their mirrors when they didn’t pay attention going in and out of their garages. At least that’s the way DeMarco had ripped the mirror off his car three months ago.

About 11:30 A.M., they saw Jubal wipe his hands off on a rag he kept in his back pocket and walk toward the main office to eat his lunch. Ten minutes later, a Ravalli County sheriff’s car drove into the junkyard. DeMarco figured the cops probably came to places like this fairly often to check on stolen cars being stripped for parts. He picked up his binoculars and looked at the cop. She was wearing a peaked hat, sunglasses, and a brown uniform. Around her waist was a wide black belt with all the usual cop stuff on it — handcuffs, radio, nightstick, Mace, and gun. DeMarco figured a skinny man, a man with no hips, would have a hell of a time keeping the belt from falling down around his ankles with all the crap there was on the belt. But this cop, she had nice hips. A nice ass too. She didn’t seem to be having any trouble keeping the belt up.

Fifteen minutes later the cop left.

DeMarco pulled a can of Coke out of his knapsack — he was getting pretty tired of drinking warm Coke — and checked his watch. ‘Looks like Jubal’s taking a long lunch break today,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Stan said.

Yeah. DeMarco had tried talking to Stan but gave up after a couple of days. It was as if the guy was saving his voice for something; maybe he and his pals were some sort of lethal barbershop quartet.

Half an hour later, Stan said, ‘Something’s wrong here.’

‘What?’ DeMarco said. He’d just seen something that looked like a centipede, and he’d been checking the weeds to make sure there wasn’t another one around close enough to crawl up his pant leg.

‘I said, something’s wrong here,’ Stan said. ‘This guy’s never taken this long a lunch break before, and his boss, he’s always outside walkin’ around, doin’ something.’ Stan was silent a minute, then picked up his radio. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘is everything okay on your side?’

‘Yeah, haven’t seen a thing. But why the hell is this guy still inside the office?’

‘I don’t know, but I don’t like it,’ Stan said. ‘I’m going down there.’

Emma, DeMarco, and Stan were standing in the parking lot of the motel where they were all staying. Harry was making a phone call.

‘Emma, I’m sorry,’ Stan said. ‘I just never figured, in a place like this, that she’d impersonate a cop. I never figured it would be a she. Jesus, I fucked this up. I don’t know what to say.’

‘I never thought it would be a woman either,’ Emma said. ‘She’s probably been watching him for a couple of days, and if we hadn’t had mental blinders on, we would have seen her. Son of a bitch!’

‘And, Jesus, she just shot the shit out of him,’ Stan said. ‘He sure as hell told her whatever she wanted to know.’

When Stan had entered the junkyard office, he saw the owner first, the Indian who owned the place. He had a single bullet hole in his forehead. He’d been lucky. Jubal had also been shot in the head, but before that he’d been shot half a dozen times in both knees with small caliber bullets. The killer had used a silenced weapon, probably a.22, and it looked like she’d just kept shooting Jubal in the knees until he told her everything she wanted to know.

As soon as Stan saw the bodies, he called Emma, then called 911. Calling 911 may have been a mistake because it was three hours before the cops would let Stan go. He didn’t tell the cops that he and DeMarco had been watching over Jubal or that they’d seen the killer. All Stan told the cops was that he’d come to the scrap yard to get a part for a car and that just as he’d driven into the place he’d seen a sheriff’s car leaving.

‘What do you think Jubal told her?’ DeMarco said.

Before Emma could answer DeMarco’s question, Harry walked back to the group. He’d been using a pay phone near the motel office. ‘She didn’t kill the cop. They found the patrol car, and the cop was inside the trunk, gagged, in her underwear, out cold. She’d been hit on the head, hard. Right now she can’t even remember her own name.’

‘Could you identify her?’ Emma asked Stan.

‘The killer?’ Stan said. ‘Yeah, no doubt about it. I got a good look at her.’

‘I saw her too,’ DeMarco said. ‘But in profile and she was wearing sunglasses. So-’

‘No!’ Emma said. ‘You can positively ID her. And don’t you dare say otherwise. When we catch her we’re going to say we have two eyewitnesses who saw her walk into that office in a cop’s uniform, and that nobody went in there again until Stan found the bodies.’

‘Got it,’ DeMarco said. ‘But what do you think Jubal told her?’

‘I know what he told her. He told her the picture was a fake, that Patsy Hall had the picture made by some NSA guy, and he told her the name of that waitress in Winchester. I’ve already called Hall and told her that we blew it …’

‘Oh, man,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll bet Patsy was pissed.’

‘… and I called someone to go pick up that waitress and hide her and her kids until we can figure out what to do next.’

‘Do you think Hall’s in danger?’ DeMarco said.

‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. ‘Maybe.’

‘So now what?’ DeMarco said.

Emma didn’t say anything. The four of them — Stan, Harry, DeMarco, and Emma — just stood there in the motel parking lot like a small group of friends trying to decide where to go for lunch. Or maybe like friends who had just eaten a very bad lunch.

‘What will Lincoln do?’ Emma said. DeMarco could tell that she was talking to herself, thinking out loud, playing a game of chess with Oliver Lincoln two thousand miles away. ‘He could kill Patsy, just to eliminate a threat. Same with that poor waitress. Or he could have Patsy snatched and tortured and make her give up the NSA guy who made the picture.’

‘But Patsy will say you made the picture,’ DeMarco said.

‘But Lincoln doesn’t know that,’ Emma said. ‘Lincoln knows only what Patsy told Pugh. So Lincoln will think — assuming he can even get to Hall — that the best thing that will happen is she’ll give up the name of the NSA guy that made the picture, which he now knows for sure is fake. But then what? Does Lincoln go after the NSA guy? Does he try to kidnap and torture him and get him to hand over all the files he used to make the fake picture? No, it’s just too much. It’s just too hard.

‘Plus Lincoln thinks Patsy’s just a blackmailing cop, not someone trying to put him in jail. He’ll think that once she hears Pugh was tortured and killed, she’ll be too scared to come after him again.’

Emma kicked at the parking lot asphalt with the toe of her boot and chewed her lower lip for a moment. ‘Lincoln’s not going to do a damn thing at this point,’ she said. ‘With Pugh dead, there’s no solid connection between him and the attacks. And Lincoln now knows the picture’s a fake. Certainly an expert could either prove that or make a good enough case to put doubt in the mind of a jury. So, Lincoln’s just going to wait and see what happens next. I would if I was him.’ Emma paused, her brain spinning, looking for a way to recover from their failure, then she just shook her head in disgust and said, ‘Shit!’

‘Maybe we can use Hall for bait,’ Stan said. ‘You know, get her to spook Lincoln somehow and when he takes a shot at her … Well, I swear, Emma, we won’t-’

Before DeMarco could object, Emma said, ‘No. I’m not putting her and her family at risk. Or at any more risk than they already are.’

DeMarco looked over at Stan. ‘Are you sure you got a good look at that woman, the shooter? I mean, she was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and you saw her for only a few seconds.’

Stan stared at DeMarco. As Stan was wearing sunglasses, DeMarco couldn’t see his eyes, but he didn’t have to see Stan’s eyes to know that Stan was pissed.

‘I said I saw her,’ Stan said to DeMarco. ‘When she stepped out of the car, she looked straight at me. You would have noticed if you hadn’t been worried about bugs crawling up your leg. Then, when she turned to go into the office, I saw her in profile.’ Stan paused before he said, ‘If I saw that broad again, I’d recognize her.’

‘Okay,’ DeMarco said. ‘Then I think we have maybe one chance — and it’s a long shot — to tie Lincoln to this woman.’

‘What’s that?’ Emma said.

‘Well, Lincoln had to talk to this woman. Maybe he contacted her by phone or by e-mail or through a middleman, but he’s been under continuous surveillance by the FBI ever since Pugh was arrested.’

‘Ah,’ Emma said.