Fallout

CHAPTER 23

Craig drove down the unpaved road in the dark. The turnoff to Antelope Trail had taken him a good twenty minutes off the main highway, but the view was worth every minute of the drive.

The mountains bounding the beautiful valley were black bulwarks in the night, siege walls thrown up against the lights of Las Vegas. Pahrump was a small town that had burst its seams with burgeoning housing developments and strip malls. Fast-food restaurants replaced old diners that had been called simply “EAT.”

He planned to meet Goldfarb and Jackson early the next morning to exchange information, but before then he hoped to have a long talk with the forklift driver, Carl Jorgenson.

Following the address Sally Montry had given him, he found a dirty mailbox with the number 26. Craig had tried to call Jorgenson first, rather than showing up unannounced, but the phone had rung and rung. Maybe Jorgenson was asleep — or drunk, as Sally had suggested.

Craig turned into a rutted driveway that led to a white house trailer. A red pickup was parked at the front next to a pile of discarded tires. POSTED: KEEP OUT signs were tacked to a ragged split-rail fence; an old posthole digger, rakes, and uncut firewood lay scattered in the yard. A porchlight looked like a sullen yellow eye over the front door, while a mercury yardlight blazed from an old telephone pole at the corner of the trailer.

Around back Craig could see a rotting wooden storage shed and a home-made shooting range, bales of straw with paper targets — human silhouettes rather than simple bullseye circles. Apparently, Jorgenson could sit inside his living room and practice with a rifle.

Craig could see the winking streetlights of Pahrump in the valley below, but they served only to point out how isolated he found himself up here. The night remained silent, smelling faintly of ozone — he remembered the old-timer Jerome Kostas and his prediction of an impending thunderstorm in the next day or so.

He heard nothing, not even night insects. Jorgenson’s place gave him the creeps. Pulling out his cellular phone, he saw the indicator blinking red — out of signal range.

He suddenly wished he had called Goldfarb or Jackson for backup. Paige might not remember he had gone out, since he had mentioned it only briefly. No one else knew he had driven out here. Bad idea. Even Sally Montry hadn’t expected him to speak with Jorgenson until the following day.

He wondered if the man was watching him even now, peeking through a gap in the curtain, readying his rifle to shoot a nighttime trespasser.

Recalling the booby-trapped home of Bryce Connors, how his two partners had nearly perished in the blaze, Craig felt a gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach. The man who lived alone in this isolated trailer had already admitted to causing the “accident” that had crushed Nevsky. But only Craig, Paige, and the killer himself knew the accident had actually been a murder.

He stood by his rental car and considered returning to Las Vegas. He could come back with Goldfarb and Jackson the next morning. As he had originally planned to do.

But the other two agents were busily crunching through the Eagle’s Claw case, working against their own intense deadline. Two more days until October 24 — Craig couldn’t pull them away from their work because he heard a bump in the night. Besides, just because one contract worker out of thousands at NTS had been a member of the Eagle’s Claw, he had no real reason to connect a DAF forklift driver with the violent militia group. Craig couldn’t waste time either — he had his own deadline to meet.

Focusing his concentration, vowing to keep on his toes, Craig remembered lessons he’d learned while shadowing people as a stringer for Elliot Lang, Private Investigator. One time, while watching a mark’s apartment to catch him cheating on his wife, the man’s lover showed up and caught on to Craig immediately, scuffling with him, succeeding in dumping the film in his camera. From that embarrassing incident, Craig had learned that anything could happen in a high-pressure situation.

He patted his shoulder holster, comforted by the Beretta’s weight. He didn’t dare draw the handgun as he approached. He didn’t want to look suspicious. Late-night visitors already carried their own baggage of distrust.

He slammed the car door, careful to make plenty of noise to announce his arrival. “Mr. Jorgenson? Hello, sir? This is Agent Kreident, FBI.” He walked past the posthole digger toward the front door. “I’m investigating the accident at the DAF. I have a few questions to ask you before I close out this case — just some things to clear up.”

Craig scanned the area as he spoke, taking in the trailer’s drawn curtains, the piles of debris around the outside. The bright mercury light washed out the colors, sharpened the shadows. He heard nothing louder than the soft whir of a refrigerator from inside, no TV, radio or phone.

He rapped sharply on the front door. “Mr. Jorgenson? Are you there?” He knocked again, then moved to the side, trying to peek through a curtain slit. He dreaded that Jorgenson might have skipped town.

With the passing seconds he felt the increasing sourness in the pit of his stomach. Since he hadn’t obtained a search warrant, he couldn’t just force his way in. The forklift driver was probably out bar-hopping, as Sally Montry had suggested. All this way for nothing — and his time was running shorter and shorter. Now he would have to waste part of Thursday conducting the interview as well.

Craig pounded on the door one last time, then stepped to the left, standing on his tiptoes to take a quick peek through another small window. In the darkened trailer, it took Craig a moment to realize he was looking into the bathroom.

A dark form lay slumped by the small shower stall — a body fallen just inside the door.

Craig’s nervous system snapped into high gear. He tried the trailer’s flimsy door, but it was locked, then he pulled out his weapon and stood back to kick out with his foot. The heel of his black wingtip smashed the aluminum doorknob, and the plywood door splintered open.

Craig burst inside at a crouch, sweeping his weapon from side to side. “Federal agent! Mr. Jorgenson, I’m here to assist you, sir.” His heart yammered at the back of his throat. He hoped no trigger-happy militia man would go nuts, thinking that the government was invading —

Craig trotted down the darkened hallway, searching for a light switch. An American flag was draped on the wall in the far bedroom. He kept his handgun moving, tracking anticipated targets as he expected someone to jump out from a bedroom, but nothing happened. Silence filled the trailer.

Reaching the cramped bathroom, Craig bashed the door open with his elbow, glanced in to see the body by the shower, then he backed into the small toilet area. He clicked the light, blinking as the harsh bulb dazzled him.

Keeping his weapon leveled at the door, listening, Craig reached down to pull the body around. A man in his late forties, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, rough face, slack mouth — and skin cold with death. His expression was a grimace of pain, like a rubber mask distorted and twisted.

Craig checked for a pulse, reaching up to touch Jorgenson’s neck. He bent down and put his ear by the man’s mouth, but felt no warm exhalation. Cold sweat soaked Craig’s clothes.

He quickly searched the rest of the trailer to convince himself that no one else was around. Craig thrust his handgun back in its shoulder holster and returned to the bathroom.

Jorgenson could have slipped and struck his head. But Craig could see no bruise on his face, no cracked skull, nothing obviously fatal. Had he died of something else instead? Another “convenient” heart attack?

Like Maguire’s?