Double blind

Chapter Twenty-nine

By eleven o'clock that Thursday evening, Wildlife Special Agents Mark LiBrandi and Gus Donato of Charlie Team figured they had their surveillance system down pat.

It's simply a matter of timing, Donato explained to LiBrandi as they drove into the parking lot of the Creekside Bar. Go in, find the closest thing available to a dark corner table, let the waitress take her own sweet time getting there, order a pair of drafts, put a few wrinkled one-dollar bills on the table — enough to cover the two beers plus a minimal tip, to discourage any further interest on her part — milk the beers as long as possible, then order a couple of coffees at the precise moment her patience finally runs out.

With any luck at all, they could stretch that whole process out for at least an hour — ideally an hour and a half — thereby maintaining their surveillance for a reasonable time at each bar in town without undue risk to their covers, their covert per-diem limits, their sobriety, or their waistlines.

"Hope that Sally gal isn't on duty tonight," Donato remarked as they approached the entrance. "I think she's getting kinda sweet on you. Must've come by our table at least a half dozen times the other night."

"Maybe you tipped her too much?" LiBrandi suggested.

"Fifty cents on a couple watered-down two-seventy-five beers?"

"No, you're probably right," the young covert agent conceded. "She must be hot for my bod."

"Well, try to keep it in your pants tonight. I don't think I can stand more than one cheap beer at this place, and I don't even want to think about their coffee."

As it turned out, Sally was off on Mondays and Thursdays. And while several of the easily recognizable regulars slumped in the cheap, Naugahyde®-covered booths or hovered around the pool table, the booth in the darkened far corner of the bar was available. Accordingly, the pair of agents ordered their beers, took their turns at the pool table, tried to ignore the necking couple in the adjoining booth, engaged in a few casual conversations that never quite worked around to the local militia groups, and finally ordered two cups of the bar's predictably bitter coffee at twelve-fifteen.

Ten minutes later, having dumped a good three-quarters of their coffee in the fake potted fern behind their booth, Donato and LiBrandi departed, trying to decide whether to finish the evening at the Gopher's Hole — a seedy sports bar with no apparent relationship to any kind of mammal, much less a gopher, but which offered an impressive collection of Confederate battle flags and other Civil War memorabilia — or go all out and splurge at the more upscale Gunrack Saloon, locally known for its decent beer and equally impressive collection of deer antlers.

Busy arguing the investigative merits of the two local watering holes as they walked toward their rental car, the young and inexperienced covert agents failed to notice that the necking couple had followed them into the parking lot.

A few minutes after one in the morning, Henry Lightstone slowly and carefully worked himself out of bed for the second time that night.

It was much easier this time because the panther had retreated to her tree loft, and — judging from the audible snoring — slept soundly. He and the woman had finally managed to distract the big cat by retreating to the shower. While Lightstone held his bandaged arm high above the spray of water, the woman quickly rinsed off then ran dripping to open the partially shredded door. The panther leaped into the bathroom, padded to the shower, stuck her head around the curtain, and stared bleakly at Henry Lightstone through the spray for a few moments. Then she pulled her head back out, shook off the water, and exited the bathroom with a shrug of feline indifference that left Lightstone feeling inexplicably disappointed.

And getting out of bed was also easier because Karla had fallen into a deep sleep within moments of her head hitting the pillow.

Henry Lightstone could have duplicated that trick without the least difficulty, but he needed to do something very important before he allowed himself the luxury of a good night's sleep.

It took him a few minutes to locate his clothes and put on everything except his shoes. Then he slowly worked his way through the adjoining tree-room, down the hallway, and into a small room he'd identified earlier as the postmistress's office.

He didn't dare risk a light, but rather felt his way carefully in the dark until he located the old dial phone on the standard-issue metal desk. It had been so long since he'd used a dial phone, he had to open one of the window shades to let in some moonlight so he could see well enough to dial the number of the motel that Bravo Team had chosen as a home base.

"Holiday Inn."

"Larry Packer's room, please."

"One moment."

Lightstone heard the distant phone ring eight times before the operator came back on the line.

"I'm sorry, sir, your party doesn't answer. Would you like to leave a message?"

Yes, I would, Lightstone thought, but I wouldn't know where to start.

"Could you try Dwight Stanley's room, please?"

"Just a moment."

This time the operator cut in after only seven rings.

"Neither of your parties answer, sir. Would you care to leave a message?"

"No, that's all right."

Henry Lightstone pulled his watch out of his jeans pocket, then frowned at the 0132 digital display. Under normal circumstances, members of the covert team still could be out at this time of night, either working on some phase of the operation, or eating a late dinner.

But nothing about this entire operation has been normal so far, he reminded himself as he glanced down at his bandaged forearm.

He felt tempted to call Halahan or Moore, figuring a 4:30 A.M. wake- up call was the least the two Special Ops branch supervisors deserved for the red-kneed spider business. But he also realized that local post office managers often checked the phone records of the small rural locations, to discourage personal use of official phones by the resident postmasters. The last thing he needed right now was the woman getting called in to explain a 1:30 A.M. phone call to an unlisted number on the East Coast.

Nor could he use the cell phone because even if those real or fake soldiers didn't monitor calls in the middle of the night, he'd left it in the saddle bag of his motorcycle, and he couldn't get it because Karla had activated an alarm system after locking the outside doors and shutting off the lights in the restaurant. It was always possible that some of the windows weren't alarmed, but that would be difficult to determine in the darkness, and a triggered alarm would be equally difficult to explain.

Using the little available moonlight, it took Lightstone another five minutes to confirm his suspicion that an old-time wildlife officer and resident agent like Wilbur Boggs wouldn't list his home phone in the directory. The local office number for the Division of Law Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was listed, but not knowing anything about local arrangements, or the backgrounds of any other employees who might have access to the answering machine there besides Boggs and his secretary, he decided to save that option until things became a bit more desperate.

Ditto for the local FBI, DEA, and sheriff's offices. While Lightstone didn't question a local federal agent or sheriff deputy's ability to relay a carefully worded message, such a request — especially at one-thirty in the morning — would almost certainly require a personal display of his credentials or, at the very least, more of an explanation than he was willing or able to provide at that moment.

Which only left one more option, and a very interesting question.

If these military — or militant, that's always a possibility in this area of the country, he reminded himself — characters could tag a supposedly alert team of covert federal agents to what Lightstone assumed was Charlie Team's operational warehouse, what were the chances that this group had also tagged all of Bravo Team to Bobby LaGrange's ranch?

The more he thought about that, the less he liked it.

The phone rang three times before a very familiar voice answered in an equally familiar, grumpy manner.

"You never did like getting called out at one-thirty in the morning, did you?"

"What?"

"Without mentioning my name," Henry Lightstone directed carefully, "do you know who this is?"

The wild-card agent could easily visualize his ex-partner snapping wide-awake.

"Yeah, you sound vaguely familiar. What's up?" LaGrange's voice carried a discernible — and dangerous — edge.

"We may have a problem." Lightstone briefly described the sequence of events starting from the confrontation at the restaurant and ending with his purchase of the motorcycle.

"Christ," the ex-homicide detective whispered. "Do they know about it?"

"No, not yet."

"You want me to make contact with them?"

"No, too dangerous. You were the link to the old coot with the genuine Apache Indian hunting charms," Lightstone reminded him. "If everything else connects, we could easily be on a party line right now."

"Yeah, right." Bobby LaGrange fell silent for a few moments. "Shit."

"Exactly," Henry Lightstone responded, knowing what kind of thoughts raced through his ex-partner's mind. "Can you two camp out somewhere?"

A pause.

"Yes."

In the background, Henry Lightstone heard a drawer opening, then the familiar sound of a semiautomatic pistol slide slowly being drawn back.

That's right, buddy, he thought approvingly, Susan's number one, no matter what.

"Then you'd better do it, just to be safe. What about Justin?"

"He's with his… relatives for the rest of the week."

"Can you keep him there?"

"Sure, no problem. What about you?"

"I'm staying put. If I've got a tag, there's no point complicating things at your end."

"Yeah, right," LaGrange acknowledged. "Are you secure?"

Translation: do you want help? Just say so. I'll get Susan tucked away somewhere safe, and then be there with the cavalry ASAP. Lightstone smiled. Good old Bobby. Hell of a partner.

"I'm fine, but I'm out of contact with everyone else right now, so if Larry calls, tell him what's going on, and that I'll connect up with them sometime tomorrow morning."

"Will do. Anything else?" Bobby's question came out a little faster than usual.

In a hurry to get Susan out of there. Good thinking.

"Still got your beeper?"

"Yeah, somewhere. I'll find it."

"Okay, get going. I'll be in touch."

Lightstone was in the process of hanging up the phone when he sensed a presence in the doorway.

He turned around slowly, trying to decide what he could say, and then saw — to his immense relief — what, under any other circumstances, would have absolutely terrified him: a pair of glowing yellow eyes hovering at about waist height.

"Christ, you scared the hell out of me, Sasha," he whispered.

The panther responded with a deep-throated growl that sounded more like a cough.

It occurred to Lightstone that he'd never been alone with the fearsome animal for any significant period of time before, and that the panther might consider his presence in the woman's office an unacceptable transgression.

But then the big cat made another noise that sounded both familiar and demanding.

"What do you want? Something to drink?" Lightstone hazarded a guess.

The panther immediately turned, walked down the hallway, and waited patiently for a disbelieving Henry Lightstone to open the secured door to the restaurant's kitchen.

"We could both get into serious trouble for this," he whispered as the cat proceeded to rub the side of her head against the edge of the commercial refrigerator. "But you don't care, do you?"

Apparently deciding an answer to such a dumb question constituted a waste of a perfectly good growl, the panther sat silently and waited patiently for Lightstone to open the refrigerator, find an already-opened half gallon of milk, and locate a bowl.

He poured about a half pint of milk into the bowl, put it down on the vinyl floor, and stared expectantly at the panther. She stared right back at him, unmoving.

"You want more?"

He poured another half pint or so in the bowl and got exactly the same response.

"Christ, what are you, picky or — ?"

At that moment, it occurred to Henry Lightstone that a hundred-pound panther probably wasn't all that much different from an eight-pound Manx… especially in terms of self-serving attitude.

Accordingly, he opened the refrigerator, rooted around until he found a quart of cream, glared at the panther once more, dumped the milk into the nearby sink, and replaced it with the cream.

He barely managed to get the bowl on the floor before the panther butted him aside and began lapping happily at the cream.

Muttering to himself, Lightstone returned the milk and cream to the refrigerator, noticed a partial loaf of pumpernickel and a plastic-wrapped plate of sliced turkey on one of the upper shelves, and realized he was hungry.

Five minutes later, as he chewed a first large bite of the thickly stacked turkey sandwich, something else occurred to him.

The letter.

It took him another two minutes to find his way past the public rest room to the door of the back room of the tiny post office, which the woman apparently had forgotten to lock.

Fortunately, enough moonlight came in through a skylight to illuminate the area.

Lightstone found two envelopes in box number fifteen, a manila one about an inch thick, and a second plain mailing one — identical, as best he could tell, to the envelope Karla had sold the man with the strange eyes — that felt like it contained a single, folded piece of paper. The addresses on the envelopes, each obviously written by a different individual, were both block-printed. And even more interesting, Lightstone realized, both individuals used the adjacent Dogsfire Inn Post Office Box Number Fourteen as a return address.

The covert agent momentarily considered opening both envelopes, but then immediately rejected the idea. Tampering with US mail was a fairly serious felony, and he well knew that the probable-cause information he possessed was circumstantial at best — and certainly far less than any federal judge would require to issue a search warrant for a subject's private mail. Meaning that any leads he might obtain as a result of opening and reading those letters would inevitably fall under the "fruit-of-the-poisoned-tree" rule.

In all, three very good reasons to put both envelopes right back where he found them.

Lightstone started to do exactly that, but then noticed an assortment of letters and flyers in box thirteen. A quick check confirmed that mail had been accumulating there for several days.

Smiling maliciously, he put the thick envelope back into box fifteen, but slipped the thin envelope — the one he was almost certain the man with the cold gray eyes had addressed and sealed — into the middle of the mail stack in box thirteen.

Then he hurried to the nearby counter, pulled a sheet of paper and an envelope out of the supply stacks, picked up one of the available US government pens, block-printed five words, folded the paper and placed it into the envelope, block-printed the appropriate P.O. Box Fourteen and P.O. Box Fifteen addresses on it, tore a first-class stamp off one of the available sheets, put the appropriate change in the stamp tray, and was looking around for a cancellation stamp and ink pad when he heard footsteps.

Lightstone quickly tossed the envelope upside down into box fifteen and was heading for the door when he heard a voice outside.

"Henry?"

He barely had time to duck behind the counter before the door opened and the light came on.

He sensed Karla moving toward him, then heard a loud yowl that also caught her attention.

"Sasha?"

Another yowl, this time louder.

"What did I do, forget to lock up out here, and forget to feed you, too?"

If anything, the third yowl sounded even more insistent and demanding.

"Is that right? So what did you do with your buddy? Stash him up in the tree house?"

Henry waited until the sensuous young woman stepped back into the hallway and began walking toward the restaurant kitchen. As she did, he quickly and quietly stood up, slipped around the partially opened door and into the darkened hallway, and cautiously nudged the public bathroom door open. Then he lunged for the urinal, hit the flush lever, ran some water over his hands in the sink, wiped them with a paper towel, and hurried out into the hallway and around the corner..

"There you are!" Karla yelled as she stepped into view.

Lightstone froze, his eyes wide-open in surprise.

"Christ Almighty, that's a good way to give a guy a heart attack!" he complained as he stared down at the enticing body that was barely concealed by the thin cotton nightgown.

"Good. You deserve one."

"Oh yeah? How come?"

"I thought you might try to sneak out on me, which is about what I can expect from men these days. But then I find out you're even more devious."

"You call taking a leak in a portion of a house not inhabited by a bathroom-door-shredding panther devious?" Lightstone tried, uncertain of how much of his movements Karla had actually seen.

"No, this is what I call devious." She slapped the partially-eaten turkey sandwich into his hand.

"Oh, that. Well, uh, I can explain that," he began hesitantly.

"Go ahead. Explain to me why you only made one, and then didn't bother to wake me up to share it?"

"Well, uh, you looked tired." He looked down at the sandwich and then blinked. "Hey, wait a minute, I only took one bite out of this."

"I was tired, and I still am, but I'm also hungry." She gracefully led the way into the kitchen. "You ought to be grateful I only took the one bite and gave it back. And speaking of lucky," she added as she turned on the lights, "I'm amazed you found your way through this maze in the dark."

"I had help." Lightstone glanced meaningfully at the panther.

"So I see." Karla nodded as she watched the panther stare back at Lightstone, and then emit a much softer, protesting yowl.

"She complains a lot, too," he added.

"Life's tough when the men in your life won't cooperate."

Lightstone's brow wrinkled in confusion. "What do you mean by that?"

"She likes you."

"Yeah, so?"

"I mean she likes you. As in a lot."

Henry Lightstone blinked.

"You're kidding."

"I don't think so."

"You mean…?"

"Uh-huh."

"But I'm… I mean, she's…"

"Nobody ever accused us females of being smart or practical in our relationships, Henry. However," she added thoughtfully as she glanced down at the sandwich in his hand, "we can be distracted."

Taking advantage of the thoroughly stunned expression on Henry Lightstone's face, Karla snatched the sandwich out of his hand, took another large bite, handed it back, went into the refrigerator for a gallon jug of water and a half gallon of milk, and then noticed the bowl on the floor.

"I see she conned you into letting her into the kitchen."

"Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact, she did," Lightstone admitted. "Is that a problem?"

"Only if the county health inspectors find out." She smiled. "Grab that bowl, hang on to these, and we'll get her out of here."

She handed him the jugs of water and milk, got the sliced turkey and pumpernickel from the refrigerator, and picked up two empty glasses. Then she led him into a private employee's lounge consisting of a wooden table, two chairs, and an ancient refrigerator.

Kneeling, she poured about a quart of the chilled water into the bottom of a large stainless-steel bowl, then nodded in satisfaction when the panther quickly thrust her muzzle into the bowl and began lapping away.

"What?" the woman asked when the stunned expression on Henry Lightstone's face shifted to one of total disbelief.

"Let me guess. She conned you out of the milk, didn't she?"

"Uh, well…"

"Don't tell me. You gave her cream?"

Lightstone nodded glumly.

Karla closed her eyes and sighed. "Henry, do you have any idea what can happen when you feed a cat milk or cream?"

"I vaguely recall my grandmother saying it wasn't a good idea," Lightstone volunteered tentatively. "Will she be all right?"

"You mean Sasha? Oh, she'll be fine. You may not be, though, after you get done cleaning up."

"That bad?"

"A panther with the runs is an impressive sight, my friend. So much so, I strongly suggest you cross your fingers and pray to whatever gods you think might take an interest in your problem."

"Seems to me that sort of problem would probably rate pretty low on the old deity-response list."

"If I were a god, that's certainly the way I'd see it," the sensuous young woman admitted agreeably as she filled the two glasses with milk. "But then, too, I always thought you XYs were too damned gullible for your own good… especially when it comes to double-Xs."

She opened the ancient refrigerator, took out a large butcher-paper-wrapped package, unwrapped its contents, deftly hacked the hindquarters of a good-sized deer in several chunks with an ominously sharp cleaver, and dropped them into the large stainless-steel feeding pan next to the panther's water bowl.

"That's an interesting perspective," Lightstone commented as he watched the panther tear into the hide-covered meat with her teeth and claws.

"Don't ever forget what she is, Henry. A hundred-pound panther with very deep-seated predatory instincts," Karla reminded him very seriously. "And speaking of self-preservation," she added, looking down at the significantly reduced stack of turkey slices, "it's a good thing you left some of this for me, or you'd have to fight both of us for what's left of that sandwich."

"I think I'll stick to fighting the human XYs, if it's all the same to you two," Lightstone replied, eyeing the temporarily distracted panther uneasily.

"Good idea. You'll probably live a lot longer." Karla quickly built herself a sandwich just as thick as Lightstone's, then tossed the remaining scraps of meat into the panther's bowl.

"As long as we're on that topic," Lightstone ventured as they sat down at the table and started in on their sandwiches, "you got any suggestions about how I should deal with my problem?"

"By 'my problem,' I assume you refer to the common male fantasy of having two adoring females on your hands at one time, both of whom happen to live in the same house… as opposed to her problem, of course?" Lightstone could see a glitter of pure amusement in the young woman's eyes.

"Uh, no, that's not exactly what I meant."

"Well, Henry my friend" — Karla handed him the last two bites of her sandwich — "as one of the interested parties, I'm not sure I'm the best person to advise you on how to handle your 'problem.' However," she added, "I would say that I'm probably the best person around here to advise you on what you shouldn't do."

"Which is?" Lightstone asked warily.

The woman glanced fondly down at her pet snapping the deer femur like a toothpick with her powerful jaws, "you really shouldn't go wandering around with Sasha at night all by yourself anymore. Unless, of course, you take along a nice big picnic basket full of deer meat and turkey sandwiches."

"A picnic basket?"

"Like I said," she added with an ambiguous smile as she picked up her glass of cold milk, "we can be distracted."