The Sword of God

Chapter 1

Sheriff Lester Grogan saw the man on the shoulder of the road, hauling a heavy pack in the direction of Truth. He was a hundred yards away when he noticed him for the first time, so he slowed the cruiser in order to take a better look. From behind, he looked just like any other hiker who passed through the hills in this part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He was a little over average height, and he looked lithe. He looked strong, too, judging by the amount that he was carrying without appearing to struggle. There was a large backpack over his back with several smaller bags lashed to it and, carried on a strap so that it crossed diagonally across his bag, there was a rifle.

Grogan drew up alongside and slowed the car to his pace. He reached for the button to slide down the electric window.

“Hold up there, partner?”

The man stopped. He looked across to him. “Yes?”

“How you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

Grogan quickly assessed him. He was dirty and dishevelled, with long dark hair that reached down to his shoulders, matted and twisted at the ends, and a thick, shaggy beard. His clothes were dirty, too. His jeans were frayed at the cuffs and patched in several places, and his hiking boots were caked with mud. He had the bluest, coldest eyes that Grogan had ever seen. They burned out from beneath heavy brows with an icy fire, and as the man turned to look at him in return, he felt momentarily disconcerted.

“Lester Grogan,” he said by way of introduction. “You’re just coming up to Truth. Couple of miles up the road.”

“I know.”

“And I’m the sheriff.”

The man just nodded.

“And what’s your name, friend?”

“John.”

“John?” he said, pressing for something that he could run through the computer.

“That’s right.”

“You got a second name?”

“Sure.”

Lester started to feel irritated. “You want to stop giving me attitude and tell me what it is?”

“Have I done something wrong?”

“Not that I know of. I just like to know who’s coming into my town.”

“Milton.”

“All right then, Mr. Milton. Good to make your acquaintance. What you out here for?”

“Just walking.”

“Just walking?”

“That’s right.”

“From where?”

“Trout Creek.”

“And where are you headed?”

The man shrugged, the backpack riding up his shoulders a little as he did so. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Wherever I end up, I guess.”

Lester Grogan had been a policeman for twenty years, and he hadn’t lasted as long as that without having learned to trust his instincts. And, right here, this guy was pressing all kinds of the wrong buttons: he was evasive, he had an attitude on him, he looked like a bum. None of those characteristics made him feel a whole lot better about him, or the prospect of him coming into his little town.

“You planning on staying in Truth?”

“Thought I might.”

“You want a ride?”

The man shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

Lester reached across and opened the passenger door. “Seriously,” he said. “Let me give you a ride. Take the weight off.”

“I’m fine, Sheriff.”

“Get in the car, John.”

The man fixed him with those cold blue eyes again and, for a moment, Grogan thought he was going to call his bluff. That might have meant it would get interesting. But just as he was sliding his right hand down to his holster and his pistol, Milton shrugged the pack off one shoulder and then the other, opened the rear door, and slung it inside. He unslung the rifle and placed it carefully next to the pack, shut the door and got into the front next to him.

“All right,” Lester said. “Let’s go.”

Lester drove west, following the long straight line of Highway 28, crossed the bridge over the Presque Isle River, and continued to Truth. They passed the mailboxes of the big houses on the edge of town and kept going, passing the sign for the KOA Indoor Playground and the strip mall with the gas station, the ATV rental shop, and the Pizza Hut that had only recently been opened. He had lived here ever since he had come back from the Gulf, and every little detail about it was familiar to him, from the wide-open spaces between the businesses to the ever-present green of the forest on the fringes of town. There was the four-way junction where old man McDonald had crashed his pickup into the UPS van last week. Johnny’s Bar where, last night, he had been forced to stop a fist fight between Thor Bergstrom’s boy and a couple of hikers who had been a little too enthusiastic with their drinking. He knew it all.

It was a peaceful, pleasant town. Small, just over a thousand residents, never too busy and it rarely presented any kind of challenge when it came to policing. Lester liked to think of himself as a modest man, but he was quite sure that the firm way that he went about his job was one of the main reasons for that. He kept on top of things, never allowing problems to develop, stamping them out quickly and decisively. That was what he was paid to do and he took pride in his job.

The man sitting in the car next to him could become a problem. Lester was able to read the signs. He was going to make sure it didn’t happen that way.

They reached the junction with Falls Road, the main drag that led into the centre of town. There was a blue sign for the state police and another for Big Trout Falls. The lights changed to red and Lester drew up to a stop.

“So,” he said as he waited for the lights to change, “where are you from?”

“Here and there,” the man, Milton, said.

“You don’t say much, do you?”

“I don’t have much to say.”

“What about that accent? What is that, English?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not an accent we hear all that much up around here.”

Milton said nothing. The longer Lester was in his company, the more uncomfortable he became. His initial impression, as he had watched him on the side of the road, had been that he was a vagabond, a drifter. The kind of man who, in his experience, only brought aggravation to a place. He wasn’t so sure about that now, but, after talking to him, the initial reason for his reluctance to allow him into town had been superseded by something else. It wasn’t fear, because it took a lot to frighten Lester, it was more of an apprehensiveness that this John Milton was trouble. He was closed off, opaque to the point of being unhelpful, and it made Lester nervous. He acted like he had something to hide. The reasons for his unease might have changed, but his initial conclusion was the same: this was not the sort of man that Lester wanted in his town.

The lights changed to green. Instead of taking the right that led into Truth, he drove on. Milton turned his head to watch through the window as the glow of the town disappeared behind them, and then, when he turned back, he almost started to speak. Lester stiffened in anticipation. But Milton changed his mind, and, with a thin smile breaking across his face, he stayed quiet yet again.

Lester kept on driving west. They passed the sign that said YOU ARE NOW LEAVING TRUTH — COME BACK SOON and then, at that point, there could be no further doubt. Still Milton said nothing. Lester drove on another mile until the blue expanse of East Lake was visible on the left, and there he slowed the cruiser and pulled into the lot that served the campsite beyond. He turned off the road and crunched across the stones and gravel until he came to a stop. Dusk had fallen fully now, and beyond the wooden guard rail and the gentle slope of the terrain lay the wide tract of the water.

He switched off the engine. “I hope that was helpful.”

Milton opened the door and got out of the car. He opened the rear door and took out his gear.

“There’s a campsite over yonder.” Lester pointed down to the shore. “It’s ten bucks or something to stay the night. But if that’s a problem, you let them know that Lester Grogan sent you. They’ll look the other way.”

Still Milton did not reply.

“Goodnight, then,” Lester said, reaching across for the door handle. He pulled it shut and lowered the window. “Look after yourself.”

Milton put his right arm through the straps of his big pack, hoisted it off the ground, and settled it across his shoulders. He picked up his rifle and turned back to the cruiser. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Lester’s hand hovered over the start button. He looked back at him with a smile on his face, but he made sure there was steel in his voice when he replied, “No. You won’t.”

He stared out at the man, saw him looking down at him, felt that same jolt of disquiet and, hoping that he had just misinterpreted his meaning, pressed the button and put the cruiser into reverse. The night was drawing in quickly now, and the lights flicked on automatically, the beams sweeping out over the still water, catching the insects in the bright shafts. The gravel crunched beneath the tyres as Lester put the car into drive, rumbled away to the road, and turned right to head back into town.

Chapter 2

Milton watched the lights of the cruiser as it headed down the half mile of straight before the road bent to the left and was swallowed up in the dark embrace of the tree line. That, he thought, had been almost comical in its unexpectedness. He looked down at himself. He supposed he did look a little rough and ready, a little ragged around the edges, but he had been living off the land for the past few weeks, and modern amenities had been few and far between. What did they expect around here? A haircut and a manicure? A lounge suit?

He had started out in Ohio. That had been where the trouble had started and where he had decided that the best way to insulate himself from temptation was just to put as much distance between himself and it as possible. He had bought the things that he needed in Akron and then set out into the wilderness, skirting the southern shore of Lake Erie, turning north at Toledo and then following the water north into Michigan. He had walked most of the way, occasionally breaking up the journey by hitching or, on one occasion, smuggling himself into the empty boxcar of a freight train that rumbled north out of Flint. He stayed away from towns, skirting them when he could, and had found quiet spots to sleep in his tent. It had been peaceful and calming, exactly what he had needed to quieten the clamour in his head.

It reminded him of his time in the regiment, and especially the training in the Brecon Beacons, long days and nights living off the land even as other soldiers were trying to track him down. He had been good at it then, and he had been pleased to find that his skills had not atrophied from lack of use. His previous life, in the Group, had often occasioned a life of ease and comfort in the lulls between assignments. On other occasions, he had been required to stay in high-end hotels so as to present the right impression to the targets he had been sent to eliminate. He had never been comfortable with conspicuous excess, and he had found these last days, with their simplicity and honesty, to have been exactly what he needed.

But as he had trekked northwest through the Straits State Park, the rains had come. He had been caught on the road during a particularly heavy downpour. The rain had lanced down so hard that the noise was loud enough to obliterate the sound of the engines of the cars that had ignored his outthrust thumb. He had quickly been soaked to the skin and the rains had been constant, more or less, ever since. He had put up his tent and sheltered for a day. But when it became obvious that the weather had settled in for the long haul, he had struck camp and set off again. He needed to keep moving and if a little discomfort was the price that he had to pay, then so be it.

The rains had continued as he headed north. The tracks that he followed became muddy quagmires, and he had to be wary of flash floods, previously empty riverbeds that became rushing torrents with frightening speed. His clothes were permanently sodden, his hair and beard streamed with water, and the cold started to leech into his bones. He had not intended to stop in a town until he crossed into Wisconsin, but the more he mused on it the more he figured that he could adapt his plan. His time in the wilderness had weakened his urge to drink, and he felt strong enough to resist the temptation again. He saw from his map that the town of Truth was on his route, so he had decided to stop. A warm meal, a hot bath and a clean bed suddenly sounded particularly attractive.

And then this.

You really couldn’t make it up.

He glanced around at the parking area, the path that led down to the lake and, on the shore, the open space that was reserved for campers. There was a tent there, the beige canvas just visible in the dying light. It was a big one, pitched next to a four-wheel drive. Fishermen, Milton guessed. And as he paused there, he heard the sound of voices blown up to him by the breeze that came off the water.

He could pitch his tent down there, he supposed. The site was big enough that he could put enough distance between himself and the fishermen so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. He remembered from his map that the town of Wakewood was twenty miles to the west. He usually covered around three miles an hour and, if he stayed close to the road, the terrain wouldn’t slow him down too much. He could camp here overnight, set off early in the morning, and be in town in time for lunch.

He almost resolved to do that when the sky cracked with a deep, booming roll of thunder. He looked to the south and saw a huge jagged fork of lightning that lit up the water. The first spatters of moisture fell to earth, splashes that burst on his face as he looked up to the swirling dark clouds that were sweeping to the north. The lightning flashed and the thunder boomed again, closer now, and Milton changed his mind. He didn’t want to wait until he got to Wakewood. Damned if a prejudiced hick cop was going to tell him where he could and couldn’t go.

He rolled his shoulders to settle the straps of the pack, picked up his rifle, and crunched across the gravel to the hardtop. He turned to the east and started to walk the mile back into town.

It took him twenty minutes. The rain fell heavily, another drenching deluge that defied all logic by the way it seemingly grew in intensity the longer it went on. He passed the WELCOME TO TRUTH sign on the edge of town and kept going until he reached the crossroads where they had briefly stopped for the red traffic light. He had kept a close watch as Grogan had driven him through the town and knew which direction he would need to go in order to find the centre. The rain washed down, slicking the asphalt so that the red, amber and green reflected in long, painterly streaks. He waited for the traffic to clear and then crossed over the road and headed north. It was another two miles to the town proper and, by the time he got there, another half an hour had passed.

As Milton came into the town proper he thought, with a smile, that it was pleasant not to have to concern himself with the procedures that he had lived by for so long. Normally, on arrival in a place like this, he would have conducted an SDR — a Surveillance Detection Run — a routine designed to flush out anyone who might have been following him. That was ancient history for him now, although old habits died hard.

Truth looked like a small kind of place, the kind of town that had most things that you needed, but only a few of each: a couple of hotels, a few restaurants, a few bars. Down on its luck, too, from the looks of the faded and peeling paint on the buildings and the cheap neon signs that fizzed and popped. It was the kind of town Milton had gotten used to seeing. This part of Michigan was a poor country of poor people. The young men he saw on the street corners flashed him threatening looks, crippled by divorce and schools that had failed them, driving rusting jalopies or chopped motorcycles that spluttered and coughed. Drinking beers and smoking cigarettes they couldn’t afford, snorting Mexican dope, waiting to commit the senseless crimes that would lock them away. Properties were put up for sale with no hope of selling them, faded memories and broken dreams recycled like the counterfeit shoes and knock-off DVD players that filled the second-hand stores and pawnshops. Milton had walked hundreds of miles and had not seen a Lexus or a Mercedes. Instead he saw dented Fords and Chevys left in front of Laundromats and convenience stores. Scattered homesteads were named Hope Ranch and Last Chance without a trace of irony.

He stopped at a late night Laundromat and asked for directions to the nearest hotel. The attendant directed him up the road and then to the right and, after a short walk, Milton reached it. An old neon sign, with some of the letters unlit, announced it as Perkins Village Inn. Milton went inside, wiping the water from his face.

The teenage girl behind the counter looked up at him with distaste. Milton frowned and then remembered what he must look like.

“Hello,” he said. “I need a room.”

“How long for?”

“One night.”

The girl chewed gum with lazy insouciance and radiated disinterest. She pecked her fingers against the keyboard in front of her. “Yeah,” she said. “We got a room. Fifty bucks. You pay up front.”

Milton reached into the waterproof belt he wore around his waist, unzipped it, and took out his roll of money. He peeled off two twenties and a ten and laid them on the counter. The clerk took them, slid them in the till, and fetched a key from a rack on the wall behind her.

“Room twelve,” she said. “End of the corridor, turn right, on your left.”

Milton thanked her, collected his backpack and rifle, and followed her directions. The hotel was old and down-at-heel. The carpet was stained in places, and the furniture in the communal areas had seen better days. Milton didn’t see any other guests and, as he looked out of the window onto the parking lot outside, he saw that it was empty. It didn’t matter.

He found room twelve, although the “1” had dropped off, and he could only be sure it was the right door because it was between “11” and “13.” He unlocked the door and went inside. The room beyond was tired. There were holes in the plaster, and in one corner a leak from the roof had discoloured the paint in a wide downward splash. The carpet was damp, with mould clinging to the skirting board in places, and the curtains had a tear all the way down the centre. The bureau was propped up by a folded cardboard coaster beneath one of the legs and the bed felt lumpy and uneven. The sheets were clean, though, and there were no signs of bugs. That would be good enough.

He had to fight another old urge, to sweep for cameras and bugs. That, too, was old thinking. No one was looking for him now. He was just another drifter, hardly worthy of a second glance. That, at least, was what he was aiming for, although the fuss with the sheriff suggested that he needed to work on that a little.

Milton dumped the pack and his rifle and stripped off his wet clothes. He would take them to the Laundromat to be cleaned tomorrow. There was a shower attachment fixed to the taps, but the bracket that would have supported the head had been snapped off, and there was no curtain to stop the water splashing onto the dirty tiles. Milton stepped into the bath, turned the faucet, and directed the lukewarm spray onto his body. It grew warmer the longer the tap was running and, within two minutes, it was piping hot. Milton emptied the complimentary bottle of soap into his hands and rubbed himself all over before taking the shampoo and washing his hair and beard.

He turned off the tap, stepped out of the bath, and dried himself in front of the mirror. He felt cleaner and fresher than he had for days. He reached up and stroked his whiskers. They were already thick, two inches of growth that was soft to the touch now that they had been washed. He had worn a beard before, when he was in the regiment. Most of the men had grown one. He didn’t mind it, but he knew that it was his appearance that contributed to his treatment from the sheriff earlier.

No sense in courting trouble.

He went to his pack and took out his straight razor and then worked the soap into his beard until he had a decent lather. Then, using careful downward scrapes, he cut off the first patch of whiskers. He rinsed the razor and repeated, again and again, until he had removed most of the hair. He was right handed, so the place he was most likely to cut himself was beneath his left ear because it was awkward to see. He saved that until last, applying the blade with just enough pressure and scraping it down. He left a small cut, a shallow trench that quickly filled with blood, but it would coagulate quickly, and since he kept the blade clean, there would be no chance of infection.

He examined his handiwork. It was a half decent job, and it would suffice for now. Maybe he would find a barber’s shop, have a professional do it properly, and have his wild hair tamed at the same time.

Perhaps.

He had a change of clothes in his pack. The bag was expensive, the waterproofing was good, and Milton’s experience had made him fastidious when it came to packing carefully. The fresh T-shirt, jeans and socks were dry, and, as he dressed, he felt his mood improve. Only his boots were dirty, but he spread out the copy of the complimentary newspaper that had been left on the bureau and cleaned away the worst of the mud.

He pulled them on, laced them up, and started to think about what he would have to eat. A steak and all the trimmings. His mouth watered at the thought of it.

The bored clerk was watching The Simpsons on a blurry portable TV that looked like it was a survivor from the eighties.

“Where can I get a decent meal?” Milton asked her.

She pointed out the door. “Johnny’s. East Helen Street, five minutes that way.”

“Thank you.”

Milton set off. The rain had stopped, although the clouds overhead were thick and disinviting, promising more to come. He followed the girl’s directions into a district that looked like it had, years ago, been the home to Truth’s light industry. There were several derelict warehouses, most of them empty with hopeful Realtors’ signs that had been etiolated by long exposure to the elements. One lot had been cleared entirely, the old foundations a ghostly tracing visible beneath the street’s single streetlamp.

Milton knew a little about the area. It had been the seat of the region’s mining community. The deposits of tin and copper in the mountains had invigorated the local economy for years until the seams had grown too expensive to mine and foreign imports had undercut the price so that it had become uneconomic to continue. The area had fallen back on tourism as its main industry, but that was seasonal, fluctuating and, ultimately, unreliable.

He walked until he found the place that the girl had recommended. It was a one-storey structure with wooden siding, a slate roof and leaded windows. A sign above the door, a halved rectangle, white over red, announced that it was Johnny’s Bar.

He paused on the threshold. He had known, of course, that there would be alcohol involved. He had decided that he could handle a restaurant. He would concentrate on the food, eat it, and then get out. But he had expected that it would be a restaurant rather than a bar in which food was obviously an afterthought. All the old adages he had heard in the Rooms now came back to him, the ones about temptation and why an alcoholic couldn’t prosper if he kept putting it in his way.

Unless you’re a lion tamer, you’ve got no business in the lion’s den.

He thought back to what had happened in Ohio. About how close he had been to taking a drink. He had found himself in a bar, and it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to order a whiskey. He remembered, with vivid clarity like it was yesterday, the tumbler on the bar, the ice revolving in the warm brown liquid and clinking up against the glass. It had been almost impossible to resist.

You go into a hairdresser’s, eventually you’ll get a haircut.

He stopped to assess himself. He certainly felt stronger. He had been vulnerable before, but the time he had spent alone had repaired and reinforced the buttresses that he had erected against his compulsions. It had, for a while at least, allowed him to smother his ten years of guilt without the help of the bottle to do it.

And he was hungry.

If he wanted a proper meal, there was no other choice.

The thunder boomed again, directly overhead and powerful enough to tremble the light fitting in the porch of the building. That was all the encouragement Milton needed. He took the final three paces, reached for the door, pushed it open, and went inside.

Chapter 3

Lester Grogan pulled away from the school forecourt with Billy, his oldest son, in the passenger seat next to him. They were in the scarlet Chevrolet Silverado that he drove when he was off the clock. The boy slouched down, poker faced, looking for all the world like his problem was his father’s fault. It wasn’t, Lester knew, although there were moments when he wondered whether it was.

Lester had received the call an hour ago. Billy and some of his friends had been caught breaking into the high school science lab. Lester’s deputy, Morten Lundquist, had been called out. He would have dealt with things discreetly, ensured that he could deal with disciplining the boy at home rather than something public that would go on his record and stain his character.

That wasn’t going to be possible.

Problem was, the principal at the school had been the one to find the boys and call the police.

He was called Peter Lyle and he was in the habit of beating his wife. Lester had been called to a disturbance at their house six months earlier. He found the woman with a bloodied nose in the back garden. A case with her half packed clothes flew out of the back door as he checked that she was okay. If there was one thing that Lester couldn’t stand, it was a bully. He could not abide bullies. Lester kicked the door down and hauled the man out. There might have been a couple of punches to the side of the head when he had cuffed him. And his report might have mentioned that he had resisted arrest when, in all truth, he had been pretty compliant. But the way Lester read the situation, a thick lip was the least a douchebag like Peter Lyle deserved.

Lester had been disappointed when the wife had refused to press charges.

He had been more disappointed when the local school board had refused to give the man his pink slip.

Because, as his wife quickly pointed out, his oldest boy was about to start at the school.

It had turned out exactly as she had predicted. Principal Lyle was doing everything he could to settle the score with Lester. Billy’s grades had suddenly dropped off, and there had been detentions for what had seemed to be the smallest transgressions. Lester had been ready to visit Lyle, either to try to make peace with him or to explain how difficult he could make his life, he hadn’t decided which, but now Billy had presented his adversary with his best chance yet to drive his advantage home.

“What were you doing there?” Lester started when he couldn’t stand the silence any more.

“Nothing,” the boy muttered.

“You broke the window.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Someone did.”

“Joey.”

“You know he’ll say that you are all responsible, though, right? That you just being there is enough?”

The boy gave a tiny shake of his head and kept staring straight ahead.

“What about the joint? Was that you?”

“Not mine.”

Lester sighed. “Whose was it, then?”

“Come on, Dad, have a wild guess how it got there.”

He took his eyes off the road and turned to look at the boy. “You’re kidding?”

Billy met his eyes and raised his eyebrows in an expression of ineffable cynicism.

Lester gripped the wheel tight.

“Fuck!” he shouted, crashing his fist against the dash.

Billy flinched and turned his face back to the windshield.

“You know you’ve given him the chance he’s been waiting for. How could you do something so stupid?”

They drove the rest of the way in awkward silence. The problem had been on his mind all afternoon. He knew that it had made him crabby and short tempered.

He pulled up outside their modest two-storey house.

“Tell your mother I’m going out.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Go and get drunk. Solves everything.”

Lester started to berate him, but the boy slammed the door, turned his back on him, and stalked up the drive to the front door.

Lester put the car into gear and drove back into town, angry.

Lester met Leland Mulligan, one of his deputies, at Johnny’s Bar. They took stools at the bar, drinking from bottles of Budweiser and watching football. Leland was trying to get him to talk about the new quad bike that he was thinking of buying. The bar was busier than usual tonight: there were the regular drinkers, the old-timers who had nothing better to do than to gradually pickle their livers and bemoan how the country was turning to shit. One table was occupied by the four hunters he had noticed when they had driven into Truth that morning. Another held three people: the two FBI agents who had been nosing around for leads on the bank robbers who had been busy hereabouts, and Mallory Stanton, the sister of the half-witted boy he’d had so much trouble with five years earlier. That table, in particular, was distracting his attention from Leland’s attempts to have him weigh in on the respective merits of the Kawasaki and Suzuki ATVs that he was considering.

“And, yes, I know they’re Japanese,” he was saying, “and I know you’ll tell me I’m crazy, that they’ll turn out to be shit and expensive to maintain and I ought to get something American, a Polaris, maybe, but the price they’ve given me is so good I got to think about it, right?”

Lester grunted in response, fading him out again and watching the two agents. They had come to see him when they had arrived and had explained what they were here to do. It had been last week, the two of them pulling up in a big GMC Denali, fifty thousand dollars’ worth of luxury SUV about as useful up here on these roads as tits on a bull. They were based down in Detroit, and they had flaunted the big-city attitude that Lester had grown to resent from the tourists that had come up here to hunt and fish, that unsaid assumption that they could get Lester to do whatever they wanted him to do just by asking.

He was still thinking about those agents and how angry they made him when the door opened and John Milton stepped inside. He didn’t recognise him at first. He had cleaned himself up pretty good, shaved off his beard and changed his clothes. But there he was, right as rain. Those same blue eyes scanned the room and settled on him for just a moment before they flicked away again. Lester felt the roil of anger in his stomach. The man had ignored him. He was the sheriff, a man of the law, and this drifter had thumbed his nose at him. Maybe he hadn’t been explicit, laid it out clearly enough so that there was no possibility of him being misunderstood.

Or maybe the guy just had a hard time doing what he was told.

Didn’t matter either way. Lester knew that if you wanted to be an effective policeman, you couldn’t have a situation where your instructions were ignored. He didn’t know Milton, but he sure knew the type. A bad attitude, the kind of man who thought he could do whatever he wanted to do and damn what anyone else had to say. You give someone like that an inch and chances are they’ll end up taking a mile.

Lester couldn’t have that.

He was about to go over to have a word with him when one of the agents, the male one — Wilson? Carson? — came over and took the seat to Lester’s right.

“Evening, Sheriff.”

He sipped his beer and looked at him with wary regard. “Evening.”

“Just thought I’d let you know that we’re leaving in the morning.”

It was Clayton, he remembered. Special Agent Orville Clayton. Older, moustache that was greying a little around the edges, could stand with losing a few pounds here and there. “You had enough?”

“We’ve done all we can.”

“You finally agree those boys aren’t here, then?”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“I won’t say I told you so.”

“We get a tip, Sheriff, we have to check it out.”

Lester looked over his shoulder. Milton had taken a stool in the area of the bar that was reserved for those who wanted something to eat and the waitress, a pretty thing called Clementine, was taking his order.

“I got to say something before we clear out,” the agent was saying.

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“We never really felt all that comfortable up here, Sheriff. Seemed to us, to both of us, that you weren’t all that pleased to have us around.”

Lester took his eyes off Milton for a moment and, after finishing a sip from his beer, said, “Well, that’s because you didn’t listen to me when I said you were wasting your time. I don’t have a beef with you or your friend over there, but the way I see it, the way my men see it, too, the federal government getting involved in something like this is a waste of everyone’s time. If those boys were hiding out in the hills like you seemed to think they were, well, we’d have found them. We could have saved ourselves a whole lot of time and energy if you people had listened to me right from the outset.”

“That may be, but the bottom line as far as I’m concerned is we’re all on the same team. I think it’d do you well to remember that.”

Lester rolled his eyes. Jeez, the attitude on this prick. It would do him well to remember? He was half tempted to give the man a piece of his mind, unvarnished, but he fought against it. What was the point? Him and his pretty sidekick would get into that shiny car that had cost fifty grand of his tax dollars and scoot back down to the city tomorrow and that would be that. What would it achieve?

Nothing, that’s what.

It wouldn’t achieve a damned thing.

But it didn’t do anything for Lester’s mood and, as he turned his attention back to Milton, he felt like he would have to do something tonight to help people remember that, around these parts at least, Lester was in charge. That boy, dumb enough to ignore his clear and reasonable instructions, he was going to find that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong lawman.

Milton kept his eyes off the bottles behind the bar as he ordered a steak and fries and took his orange juice over to the spare table in the eating area. He had seen the sheriff, and he knew that the sheriff had seen him, too. He wondered whether it might not be more prudent to turn around and find somewhere else. He wasn’t in the business of causing unnecessary trouble for himself. Indeed, for most of the recent past he had done everything that he could to stay off the grid: no fixed abode, no records, no credit cards. The risk to his safety had been mitigated by the death of Control and his replacement by Michael Pope as the new head of Group Fifteen, but old habits died hard, and Milton had made a successful career in operating beneath the surface. Antagonising the sheriff had all the hallmarks of being a really dumb move. A man like that, so obviously plumped up with the sense of his own authority, wouldn’t take very well to the feeling that Milton was thumbing his nose at him. There would be consequences.

But so what?

What had he done wrong?

Nothing.

He was just passing through town, and he wanted something to eat and a place to lay his head. That was all.

His table was next to another that accommodated four men. Milton gauged them automatically, like he did with everyone. They were dressed in expensive outdoor gear that would, he assessed, have been out of the reach of the local hunters and fishermen. Their hands looked clean and smooth and free of the calluses that he had noticed on the hands of the drinkers at the bar. Their table, away from the regulars, marked them as from out of town, too. Milton had seen an expensive Jeep in the parking lot adjacent to the bar, and he pegged it now as theirs. They were drinking heavily, finishing a round of beers before, one of them, a big blond man with a soft gut and mean eyes, called out to the bar that they wanted another. His voice was loud and unpleasant, slurred from all the drink that he had evidently consumed. The barman exchanged a look with one of his regulars and Milton wondered whether he would refuse to serve them. That might have been interesting. He didn’t, though, bringing over another four pints and taking away their money.

The blond man was sitting next to a redhead wearing a black and red chequered lumberjack shirt. The shirt was fresh and laundered, probably bought for a hundred bucks from Macy’s. He was skinny, his skin a brilliant white, and his skin was marked with a constellation of freckles. “I’ve got to piss,” Milton heard him say.

He watched as he slowly raised himself to his feet and began to negotiate the short distance from his table to the restroom. Milton’s table was between the man and his destination. The man rolled to the right and then to the left, as if he was on the deck of a ship in high seas, and then tripped, stumbling forwards two steps before falling onto Milton, bouncing off his shoulder and falling across the table.

“Are you all right?” Milton asked, reaching out a hand to help the man to his feet.

“You fucking tripped me,” the man drawled, his eyes unfocussed through slit-like lids.

“No,” Milton said. “You fell. And now I’m helping you up.”

He left his hand out. The man swept it away.

Milton told himself to be calm. “All right,” he said. “No problem.”

“No problem?” The man pushed himself onto unsteady feet, swaying from side to side. “I haven’t got a problem, friend. You’ve got a problem.”

Milton stood and took a careful step back to give himself a full range of movement.

He saw, through the corner of his eye, that the sheriff was watching.

He raised his hands. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “All right? It was an accident. You’re fine. I’m fine. No harm done. Let’s just leave it at that.”

The man squared his shoulders, still rolling. “What if I don’t want to leave it at that?”

“It would be better if you did.”

“Is that a threat?”

Milton watched the man’s friends behind him. The blond man, the biggest, had pushed himself to his feet and had taken a step away from the table. He was even bigger than Milton had initially assumed: six foot six and surely three hundred pounds, as big as an offensive lineman, a little blubbery, but that cruel streak in his eyes was unmistakeable. A bully, used to dominating others because he was bigger than they were. The other two looked less interested in getting involved although they, too, had risen to their feet. One for all and all for one, Milton guessed, especially when they were drunk.

“I said, is that a threat?”

“No. It’s not a threat. I just don’t see why this needs to go any further.”

Milton knew there had been moments in his life where, when presented with a choice of direction, the other route would have led to an easier path.

A career in the law rather than in the army.

Staying in the infantry rather than applying to join the SAS.

Staying in the SAS rather than accepting the offer to join the Group.

Staying at the campsite down by the lake rather than coming into town.

He would have avoided the possibility of antagonising the sheriff and, more pertinently, he would never have been sitting at the table into which a drunken out-of-town hunter was to fall. Some of the consequences that followed his decisions could have been foreseen and avoided. Others could not. But Milton was a stubborn man, that was one of his many faults and, sometimes, knowing that one path was likely to be more difficult than another was all the reason he needed to follow it.

“You’re a supercilious prick, aren’t you?” the man asked.

He telegraphed his right handed punch so far in advance that it was a simple thing for Milton to step back and avoid it. It was a wild haymaker and, once it had missed, the momentum overbalanced him and turned him a quarter to his left. Milton allowed him to fall away and then dropped a little and drilled him in the kidneys. The man arched backwards, clutching at his back, and collapsed to his knees.

Milton turned back just in time to duck as the blond man fired out his own punch, his huge fist scraping against the top of his crown, but doing no damage. The man had been coming at Milton, his impetus impossible to arrest, and he blundered straight into his right knee, raised with sudden and vicious force, sinking into the man’s groin. His mouth gaped open as his diaphragm contracted, the air punched out of his lungs, and Milton put him down with a short left cross that connected flush on the side of his jaw. The man was unconscious before he hit the floor, his left leg pinned awkwardly beneath the bulk of his now starched body.

Milton opened his fist and flexed his fingers. That had been a harder shot than he had intended to throw. He wouldn’t have been surprised if, upon waking up, the blond man discovered that his jaw was broken.

The other two men had backed right away, no longer interested in him after they had watched what two of his punches had done to their friends.

Milton picked up his overturned glass and, intending to have it refilled at the bar, turned straight into the raised barrel of Lester Grogan’s gun.

“Get your hands up,” the sheriff said.

“Come on,” Milton began.

“Hands up now.”

The sheriff was toting a Sig Sauer P226 .40 calibre semiautomatic, and from his easy, balanced stance, it looked like he knew how to use it.

“That’s not necessary,” he said, indicating the gun.

“I won’t tell you again.”

He raised his hands. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Turn around.”

Milton did as he was told, lowering his arms and extending them behind his back.

The sheriff fastened cuffs around his wrists. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent and anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, I’ll see that one is appointed for you. You understand your rights, Mr. Milton?”

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “They both attacked me. Everyone saw what happened.”

He leaned closer to him. “You should’ve listened to me earlier. I knew you had the look of a troublemaker, and my gut’s usually right. Turns out it was right this time, too.”

Chapter 4

Lester holstered his weapon and pushed John Milton in the back, impelling him to start walking to the exit of the bar. The rain was crashing down outside, and Lester cursed at it. He was going to get wet. He reached down for his keys and blipped the lock of the Silverado. He opened the rear door and helped Milton to slide inside.

He opened the door to the front and climbed into the cabin. He looked back at the bar. A small audience had gathered to watch the show. Both FBI agents were there. Mallory Stanton was standing alongside and slightly behind the female agent, frowning at the scene with an inscrutable expression on her face. The regulars from the bar were there, too, although they quickly went inside when they realised it was wet and that the show was over. It wasn’t as if a brawl was an uncommon event in the bar, after all. It happened most every Saturday.

He heard the siren of the paramedics and saw the blue flash against the buildings at the end of the road as the truck approached.

“That was one hell of a punch,” Grogan said.

“Yeah, well.”

“You broke his jaw, I’m guessing.”

“A bit harder than I intended.”

“You could’ve picked someone better to hit. Those four are lawyers, up from Detroit. They come every year, hunting and fishing. Can’t say I think too highly of them, the attitudes they’ve got on them. Dollars to doughnuts they’ll press charges, especially if you did break his jaw.”

“Come on, Sheriff,” he said. “I wasn’t in there for trouble. I just wanted something to eat. You saw it the same as I did. They threw the first punches. I was defending myself.”

“Maybe,” Lester allowed as he started the engine and put the car into drive.

Milton sat quietly in the back, and Lester shot the occasional glance into the mirror to check him out. He didn’t seem particularly perturbed, his demeanour just as blank and inscrutable as when he was in the back of his cruiser earlier that afternoon. He had his right leg crossed over his left, and his hands were behind his back as if it was a perfectly natural thing to sit like that. Milton was a strange one, that much was for sure. Lester thought he was pretty good at reading human nature, but he was striking out here.

He couldn’t work out Milton at all.

The Sheriff’s Office was on West Harrie Street, a five-minute drive from the bar. Lester slotted the Silverado into the lot, crammed his cap down on his head in the vain hope that it might offer a measure of protection from the rain, got out and went around to the back. Milton was compliant, shuffling across the seat, stepping out and then hurrying ahead of Lester, as he directed him to the rear entrance at the back of the building. Lester took the keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and gently nudged Milton to step inside. He followed, reaching out for the light switch. Then he took off his sodden jacket, shaking it out and draping it off the back of the nearest chair.

It was a small building with four rooms. There was a central reception area with a desk and a row of metal folding chairs against the wall. A picture of the president hung on the wall next to posters with home security tips and outdated mugshots of wanted fugitives, some of whom had been captured months ago. A door off this room led to a short flight of stairs and down there, in the basement, was the facility’s single cell. A third room was fitted out as a unisex toilet, and the fourth was Lester’s office.

“In here,” he said, leading the way.

He switched on the light. It was a simple, almost ascetic room. Lester was a plain-spoken and tough man, like the long line of hard men who had kept the peace before him. Photographs of his dour predecessors covered the walls of his office, along with the double-barrelled shotgun one of them had felt it prudent to carry. Lester liked there to be a clear distinction between his home and his office, so he hadn’t bothered to do very much to imprint it with his own personality. There was a picture of his wife and another of his kids on his desk, but that was the only concession to family that he made.

Lester went behind Milton and unfastened the cuffs.

“You know, if you looked the way you do now when I saw you on the road, chances are I wouldn’t have given you a second thought.”

Milton stretched his arms and then massaged his wrists. “That’s not particularly helpful now, is it?”

“No. I suppose it isn’t.”

“You thought I was a vagrant?”

“Yes, and I don’t like to rush to conclusions based on the way that a man looks, but we’ve had problems in the past with folks walking in and stealing things from other folks’ houses. And I’m not the sort of man who likes to take chances.”

Milton didn’t reply to that. Instead, he looked up at the framed picture on the wall.

“You served?” he asked.

Lester looked behind him. There, on the wall, was his only concession to ego. There was a line of shooting trophies on the top of a low bookcase and above that was a framed medal.

“Sure I did,” he said.

“That’s the Navy Cross.”

Lester nodded, surprised that he was able to recognise it.

Milton rose and took a step up to it. “You mind?” he asked.

“Knock yourself out.”

The citation was framed beneath the medal. Milton read it aloud: “‘The Navy Cross is presented to Lester H. Grogan Jr., First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as a Platoon Commander with Company D, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in connection with combat operations against the enemy in the republic of Iraq.’ You were out there?”

“Did three tours.”

Milton kept reading. “‘On July 10, 2003, while participating in a company-sized search and destroy operation deep in hostile territory, First Lieutenant Grogan’s platoon discovered a well-camouflaged bunker complex that appeared to be unoccupied. Deploying his men into defensive positions, First Lieutenant Grogan was advancing to the first bunker when three enemy soldiers armed with hand grenades jumped out. Reacting instantly, he grabbed the closest man and, brandishing his .45 calibre pistol at the others, apprehended all three of the soldiers. Accompanied by one of his men, he then approached the second bunker and called for the enemy to surrender. When the hostile soldiers failed to answer him and threw a grenade that detonated dangerously close to him, First Lieutenant Grogan detonated a grenade in the bunker aperture, accounting for two enemy casualties and disclosing the entrance to a tunnel. Continuing the assault, he approached a third bunker and was preparing to fire into it when the enemy threw another grenade. Observing the grenade land dangerously close to his companion, First Lieutenant Grogan simultaneously fired his weapon at the enemy, pushed the marine away from the grenade, and shielded him from the explosion with his own body. Although sustaining painful fragmentation wounds from the explosion, he managed to throw a grenade into the aperture and completely disabled the remaining bunker. By his courage, aggressive leadership, and selfless devotion to duty, First Lieutenant Grogan upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.’” Milton nodded in appreciation. “Very impressive, Sheriff.”

“What did you do out there?”

“The kind of things I can’t really talk about.”

“Special Forces?”

“Mmmm.”

“Shit,” Lester said, his cheeks beginning to flush with embarrassment. He thought of his English accent and made the connection. “SAS?”

Milton nodded.

“Now you’re making me feel stupid.”

“Why? You thought I was just a vagrant.”

Lester started to speak, but found himself tongue-tied. He really did feel stupid.

Milton waved it off. “What happens next?”

Lester didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get it over with.”

“I’ve got to book you,” he said. “What’s after that will depend on the guy you punched. If he’s injured, maybe you’re looking at a felony, but for now I’m going to write it up as a citation. That’s just a written notice to appear in court on a specific date and time. And I have to keep you in overnight.”

“And if it is a felony?”

“Then you have to make bail or go in front of a judge within forty-eight hours. But maybe it doesn’t come to that. I can encourage him that it’s not a good idea. He was drunk, like you say. And he threw the first punch. I was a witness to that.”

“Shame you didn’t arrest him instead, then.”

“Yes,” Lester said. “It is.” Milton wasn’t giving him an easy ride, but that was fair enough, maybe he deserved it. “I’m sorry, Milton. It’s not your fault, but I’ve had a lot on my plate these last few days. My boy, Jesus, I’ve got more trouble with him than I know how to deal with, and then we’ve got a couple of FBI agents in town, and they’ve been making things difficult for me. I think, maybe, I let that get on top of me, and then I saw you in the bar, after what we’d said on the road… Shit, just explaining this is making me feel worse. Look, I’ll do whatever it takes to make this go away.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Sure.” Lester looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. “It’s late,” he said. “Let’s get you booked in.”

He led the way back into the reception area. Morten Lundquist was just arriving through the rear door.

“Evening, Lester,” he said.

“Evening, Morten. You okay?”

“The same tired old bullshit with the wife, but, apart from that, yeah, I’m all right.”

Lundquist was in his early sixties and had been a deputy in Truth for thirty years. By rights he should have been made sheriff years ago, but he had never really shown any interest in the post. He was a solid, dependable man, apparently happy with his lot as he approached his retirement. A little too religious at times for Lester’s tastes, but he had still been a father figure to him, and over the course of the years they had worked together they had become close. Lundquist had recently started to complain that his wife, Patti, was becoming cantankerous at the prospect of having him around the house full time, but Lester knew that he was exaggerating the reports for comic effect. The old man was planning on spending his autumn years outdoors; he was a keen hunter, and he had been out shooting with Lester many times before.

“Who do we have here?”

“This is John Milton. He got into it with those four out-of-towners at Johnny’s.”

“The blond one, looks sort of like a big fluffy bear?”

“But still big and nasty enough to play on the line for the Lions? Yeah, that one. Put him down with one punch. Bang.”

“Ouch,” Lundquist said. “Remind me not to get on your wrong side, Mr. Milton.”

“Don’t worry,” Milton said. “I’m nothing to worry about.”

“What do you do?”

“This and that.”

“Used to be in the military,” Lester said.

“Good for you.”

“Morten was in the army, too. Vietnam.”

“Long time ago.”

“Maybe so. But that was quite a war.”

“It was that. Good to meet you.”

Lundquist offered Milton his hand and he took it. He pumped it like he was his long-lost brother or a customer in a used-car lot.

“I’m going to book him for a citation, keep him in overnight, and then let him out tomorrow. I think I can persuade the others that it’d be best if they just let this one go.”

Lundquist took off his coat and hung it on a peg fixed to the wall. “You sort out the trouble at the school?”

“No,” he said. “Not even close.”

“You want, maybe I could have a look at Lyle, see if I can dig anything up?”

“I don’t know, Morten. I can’t think straight about that at the moment.”

“Well, whatever, you go on home. I’m on the clock now. I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

“You sure?”

“Definitely. Go on. Get. I’ve got it.”

Lester shrugged. He wasn’t of a mind to look a gift horse in the mouth. He collected his damp coat from the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “I’m sorry you have to stay here tonight,” he said to Milton. “It’s not too uncomfortable down there and, you ask nicely, Morten will probably make you a cup of coffee and see to it that your clothes are dried for you tomorrow.”

Milton nodded.

“And I’m sorry about… well, about earlier. I was out of line.”

“Forget it. Just a misunderstanding.”

Lester felt like a heel as he opened the door and jogged across the yard to the Silverado. He opened the door, slid inside, and started the engine. He flicked the air to high to heat the cabin and picked the Bob Dylan CD he had loaded earlier. He put the stick into reverse and rolled out into the road as “Subterranean Homesick Blues” started to play. The rain lashed into the windscreen as he put the car into drive and started for home.

Chapter 5

The man the sheriff had introduced as Morten Lundquist opened the door that led down to the cells. It was made from metal, had bars in a little window at the top, and it opened onto a staircase with an iron banister, concrete steps, and fluorescent strip lights overhead. As soon as Milton was inside, Lundquist shut and locked the door behind them.

They went down the stairs. The basement was simple, with a cement floor and plain plastered walls. There was one cell, a small adjunct to the corridor that was separated by a wall of floor-to-ceiling bars. There was a camera fixed to the wall, its lens trained on the cell, and a chair with a collection of hunting magazines splayed out on the floor beside it. The artificial light was harsh, bouncing back up off the smooth floor and glinting against the iron bars.

“Take off your boots, your pants, and your jacket,” Lundquist said.

Milton did as he was told, folding the garments and leaving them over the back of the chair. Lundquist opened a closet that Milton had not noticed and brought out an orange prison-issue jumpsuit marked MICH. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. He handed it over and, as he bent to step into the legs, the deputy whistled in surprise.

“Goodness,” he said, “that’s some tattoo.”

Milton had a pair of angel’s wings inked across his shoulders and all the way down his back. He shrugged.

“Must’ve hurt, up on your shoulder blades like that. Close to the bone and all.”

“I was drunk at the time. Didn’t feel a thing.”

Milton pulled the jumpsuit up to his waist, slipped his arms through, and pulled it up past his shoulders.

“All right. In you go.”

Milton stepped into the cell and moved aside as Lundquist closed the door and locked it. Milton looked around: there was a cot with a thin mattress and a toilet. Previous inmates had gouged out their initials in the mortar between the blocks in the wall.

“You eaten?”

“No,” he said.

“Rules say we got to get you a meal. Three squares and a cot, that’s the deal. We don’t have enough guys staying overnight for us to have a kitchen, plus there’s no way you’d want me cooking for you, but I can order takeout. You like burgers?”

“Sure.”

“They do a good burger at Johnny’s. Bacon and cheese, all the trimmings. You want, I’ll get them to bring one over.”

“Thanks.”

“You want a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?”

“Please.”

“How do you take it?”

“White, one sugar.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Milton sat down on the cot and stretched his shoulders. This would be fine. At least it was clean, maybe even cleaner than the hotel. And he had stayed in far worse places.

That’s right, he thought.

You got lucky. This could have been a lot worse.

You go into bars and bad things happen.

He sat back, pulled his legs up onto the cot, and leaned against the wall. He would stay here tonight, and, with luck, the sheriff would be able to see to it that he could leave tomorrow morning. He would go to the hotel, collect his pack and his rifle, and set off again, back towards the west. He had been working his way to Minneapolis. Morrissey was playing a gig there in a couple of weeks. He was a fan, and it immediately conjured memories of the time he had spent in the regiment. Music had always been a trigger for his memories, and, as he sat in the cell, miles and years and a hundred murders away from that time, he remembered the tunes he had listened to on that old battered Walkman: The Smiths, his solo stuff. He remembered sitting on his bunk in the barracks, not so different from this, treating the blisters that he had collected during the brutal Fan Dance across Pen y Fan, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons, and listening to his music.

Selection. Five months of Hell. Ninety percent of the men failed. Two of them died.

Milton had been one of the ten percent.

Milton heard Lundquist coming back down the stairs. He backed through the door, two mugs of coffee in his hands. “White with sugar,” he said, handing one of the mugs through the bars of the cell. “Burger’s on its way. Twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. Good of you.”

He waved that away. “‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s Hebrews.”

“Oh — the Bible?”

“That’s right. Pretty good rule to live your life by.”

“I’m not really a Bible type,” Milton admitted. “And you don’t need to worry about entertaining an angel. I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that.”

Lundquist laughed. “I’m sorry. Lester’s always telling me to dial down on the scripture. I know it’s not for everyone.”

The man paused on the other side of the bars, bringing his mug to his lips and taking a sip.

“What part of England are you from?”

“The south.”

“I went over there, five years ago.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh, trip to Europe. My ancestors are Danish. Came over here in the last century, thousands of them, thought they could make a fortune working the mines. Cornishmen, then the Irish, Germans, French Canadians, Finns, Danes, Swedes. You know, turn of the century, three quarters of the families here were born overseas. How about that?”

Milton sipped the hot, sugary coffee.

“How’d that turn out for them, though? Maybe good enough at the time, but now, everything’s closed, and all we got’s the tourists. And when we get ignorant types like those city boys you taught a lesson, well, I gotta ask myself is it really worth it. You know what I’m saying?”

Milton shrugged.

“What do you make of it, John? What’s happening to the country?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look at those government types in Washington, getting fat off the federal teat; they don’t give two shits about what happens to the people here. Look at Detroit, last time I went down there the place was dying on its feet, and they don’t do nothing about it.”

He flashed with a sudden anger that cut through his amiable exterior. Milton finished the drink and handed it back through the bars. “I don’t know, Deputy. Don’t know if I’m qualified to comment.”

“Sorry, I know I’m going on about it again. My wife, Patti, she’s always telling me that I’m stuck in the past like I’m some kind of dinosaur. Maybe she’s right, I don’t know. All I can say is that you work as a policeman as long as I have and you start to notice how things are getting worse. But I’ll leave it there.” He flicked two switches, and the strip light cut out to be replaced by dim lights that were set in sconces in the wall. “You want anything, you just need to holler. I’ll be upstairs. I’ll bring your food down when it gets here.”

Lundquist shut the door behind him, and Milton listened to the sound of his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. He heard the ground floor door shut and the sound of the key as it turned in the lock.

Chapter 6

Special Agent Ellie Flowers rode back to the hotel with her partner, Orville Clayton. She got out of the Denali and ran across the parking lot with a copy of USA Today held over her head to try to shield herself from the rain. It didn’t work, the newsprint going soggy within seconds and then little rivulets running through the creases and folds and dripping down onto her.

Orville ran after her. She waited until she was inside and then she turned. There he was, dodging the puddles in those ridiculous five-hundred-dollar shoes with the lifts in the heels that were made for him especially. Back in the office, Joey Trimble said Napoleon used to wear shoes with lifts in them like that, so Napoleon had quickly become his nickname. Orville hated it, hated everything that reminded him that he was five eight and not the six foot he listed on his profile at Match.com. Ellie had never cared how tall he was, but she had learned quickly that he was touchy about it, so she never brought it up. Didn’t mean that she didn’t find the sight of him as he splashed through the water amusing, especially since they had just had an argument.

She was tempted to just go back to her room, without saying goodnight, but her father hadn’t brought her up to be petty, so she waited for him in the lobby.

“Fucking rain,” Orville said, the water plastering his thinning hair to his crown. “The sooner we get out of this place, the better.”

“Goodnight,” she said.

He looked confused, as if he had already forgotten that they had argued and he had expected her to come back to his room like the night before like nothing had happened. “You don’t want to come in?”

“Not tonight,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“This is about what you said?”

“No, it’s about your attitude.”

“What about it?”

She was tired. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

“What’s wrong with my attitude?”

“Goodnight.”

She reached across and touched him on the shoulder. She thought about kissing him on the cheek, decided against it, and then smiled a little sadly at him and went back to her room.

She lit a cigarette and dialled a number on her phone.

“Hi, it’s Ellie Flowers, just leaving a message to say that I won’t be coming back to the office tomorrow. I know, yeah, that’s what I said. Orville’s coming back. I’m going to stick around for a couple days extra. Okay?”

She pressed the remote to switch on the TV, flicked through the channels, but couldn’t find anything she liked: ads, a show about monster trucks, a comedy that had stopped being funny about six seasons ago. She took out the phone again and dialled another number.

“Ellie?”

“Ryan. You busy?”

“Never too busy for my little sister. Where are you?”

“Up in Michigan. The Upper Peninsula.”

“With the Yoopers? Too much fun.”

“This weather’s nuts. It’s hardly stopped raining.”

“What you doing up there?”

“Those boys who’ve been robbing banks? There was a potential lead. Just a maybe, not even that, but Orville wanted to check it out.”

“You up there with him?”

“Don’t start.”

“What you call him again?”

“Napoleon.”

“That’s right, Napoleon. He’s up there, too?”

“Yes, he’s here. Mostly why I’m in a bad mood.”

“He still married?”

“Don’t.”

She finished the cigarette and fished another from the pack. The sign on the door said there shouldn’t be any smoking in the room, but the place was a dump, and she doubted that anyone had ever taken any notice of it.

“So what’s he done?”

“I think he’s got it in his head that I liked him because he was older, like it was some kind of father-figure thing, except it wasn’t, never was anything like that. Problem is, now he’s got that fool idea in his head, and he thinks he can dispense advice like he really is my old man. He’s been doing it tonight, and I’ve had just about enough of it.”

Her brother’s tone changed, becoming less frivolous. “You know what I think about that whole thing.”

“Don’t…”

“I’m not lecturing, Ellie. Just saying.”

She sucked down the smoke, listening to the rain beating on the motel window. “Fuck it, what does it matter? I’ve kind of decided it’s all over.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. It was a dumb idea.”

“You know what I think about that.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Keep your chin up, little sis.”

She inhaled and exhaled again, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. “I saw a hell of a thing tonight. We were in the local bar, talking to the girl who brought us up here, and these two guys got into a brawl with one of the other guys there. One of them was as big as a bear, mean looking, but this other guy kicked the shit out of both of them.”

“Sounds like my kind of bar.”

“I’m serious, Ryan. Two punches — one, two — they’re on the floor. Sheriff arrests this guy, though, but doesn’t do a thing about the others even though they started it.” Headlights from a car, pulling into the lot, glared through the open curtains and painted a narrow stripe across the ceiling. She heard passing traffic on the call, too. “So what are you doing?”

“I’m in the car. Outside the apartment of this shit-bird a client’s had me tailing for the best part of a week. You wouldn’t believe this guy. He’s a serious douchebag. She thinks he’s been messing around with his secretary, and she was one hundred percent right about that. Thing is, he’s been schtupping the Pilates instructor from his gym at the same time as the other one. She’s with him now. I’m just waiting for them to come out so I can snap them. Then I’m going home to drink some beer.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“Like I said, the bureau ever gets to be too much, you know I could always use an extra set of hands down here.”

“Tempting.”

“I’m serious.”

She took a beat, not wanting to sound like she was dissing the business that he had built down there. “Thanks, but, you know… no. This is nothing with Orville. I should never have let it happen, but now that it has, I’m just going to have to put on my big girl pants and get it over with. And I will. Soon as we get back into Detroit, it’s done.”

“When are you going back?”

“He’s going tomorrow. I’m going to stick it out another couple of days.”

“Why? You think your boys are up there?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. Almost certainly not. But there’s something I can’t put my finger on. I need to dig around a little.”

“Well, if you want a little distraction right now, the Steelers kick off the second half in ten minutes.”

“Shit. I totally forgot.” Ellie had been a Browns fan when they had been little kids while Ryan had always pulled for the Steelers. Ever since college, they always had fifty bucks riding on those two divisional matches each year. “Score?”

“Browns are trailing ten-zip. Big Ben’s carving them up. Double or nothing, make it interesting?”

“Fuck it. Go on.”

“Later, sis.”

“Later.”

Ryan was thirty-three, two years older than her. He had been an all-state linebacker in his teens, and there was talk of a full scholarship to Penn State until a defensive lineman rolled up his knee and tore all sorts of ligaments that were never meant to be torn. He’d bummed around for a couple of years, worried Ellie with a string of unsuitable women and what was pretty obviously a drinking problem, until he’d accepted that digging his nose into other people’s affairs was his family inheritance and set up Ryan Flowers Investigations, Inc., working out of Melvindale, just south of Detroit. It was a solid business, doing work for insurance companies for the most part, getting evidence on drivers who arranged to have someone crash into the back of them and then claimed for whiplash or other injuries that couldn’t be disproved until Ryan snapped candid pictures of them shooting hoops, out for a run, or picking up their little girl and flinging her into the air. The claims were always dropped pretty quickly after that, and Ryan pocketed a nice percentage of what would have been paid out. He’d made enough for a down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in Riverview, a second-hand Lexus, and cable TV. He appeared to be happy with all of that.

Ellie had never fought her genes. She’d always known that she would end up working for the government. She’d wavered about which branch she might go into for about six months, had even considered the Secret Service until she had figured out that it was full of wannabe jocks, who got off on wearing black sunglasses and running beside limos, until she eventually accepted that she was always going to follow her old man into the bureau.

Ellie was five eight, the same height as Orville, and knew that she was something to look at when she bothered to make an effort. She had a small, delicate face, smooth white skin with a scattering of freckles, thick hair that she had to work on all the time, and hazel eyes that sparked with life. But she hadn’t been bothered tonight, and then she had been half drowned by the rain; she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door and grimaced. She unbuckled her belt with the holstered .40 Glock 22 and rested it over the back of the chair. She removed the pistol and laid it under the second pillow on her bed. Strange town, strange people, she didn’t take chances.

They had more hardware in a locked rack under the pad in the rear cargo area of Orville’s car: a pump shotgun, an M4 carbine, two ballistic vests, leg irons with chains, and four sets of cuffs. Orville was very particular about making sure they always had all the armaments they might need. He never tired of reminding her about the case down in Miami in 1986, the two Vietnam vets who had been turning over banks. Eight feds found them, but all they were packing were handguns and the robbers had AR-15s. Two of the agents had been killed and five injured. The bureau wasn’t shy about going in heavy now.

Ellie slumped back against the stained headboard. Had they really thought that they’d use them on the trip, that they might find something in the tip-off, more than just another example of someone blowing smoke up their asses? Maybe, maybe not. Ellie was young for an agent, but she had inherited her father’s instincts and wisdom. There was enough about the girl’s story that she couldn’t just forget about it and walk away. Orville could; that was what they had been arguing about, although that was a useful cover for all the other things that they had been arguing about, too.

Orville.

Fuck.

She switched channels to the game and watched as the Steelers kicked off. The return guy fielded the ball at the two, danced up to the fifteen, and then got crumpled by the gunner who had come down the field at a hundred miles an hour. He ended up on his back, the ball popped up, and the gunner scooped it up and waltzed into the end zone for the easy score.

Sixteen-zip, and tack on another for the PAT.

Ellie thought of Ryan listening to the game on his car radio, and allowed herself a smile. They usually arranged for the loser to buy dinner. She would gladly pay for that to spend an evening with her brother.

Who was she kidding?

Things weren’t so bad.

Chapter 7

Milton slept well and woke at six as the sun rose. He rolled off the bed and, stripping off the jump suit, worked through his usual routine of sit-ups and press-ups. He would normally have stopped with five hundred of each, but he still felt ready for more, so he pressed his back against the bars, reached up to grip the horizontal bar that joined them and, by raising his knees to his chest, added two hundred crunches. By the time he was finished he was slathered in a fine sheen of sweat and his muscles were afire.

Lundquist must have seen that he was awake in the feed from the camera. Milton heard him as he came down the stairs, muttering to himself, as he struggled with the door handle and, after managing to open it, backing into the room with a tray. It held a plate of toast and two mugs of coffee. The bread smelled wonderful.

“Morning, partner,” Lundquist said. He balanced the tray on the chair and passed one of the mugs through the bars of the cell. “White, one sugar.”

“Thanks.”

“And I thought you might appreciate something to eat.” He slid the plate with the toast through the space between the bars and the floor. “It’s korppu. Cinnamon bread. You dip it in your coffee. It’s Finnish. My grandpa used to eat three slices every day, and he lived to a hundred and three, so I guess there must be something in it, right? Patti heard you were in here overnight, and she brought some over for you. We don’t get many in overnight. Patti thinks we should be hospitable.”

Milton took a bite of the toast. It was hard, almost burnt, and yet still sweet. He finished both pieces quickly.

“Thanks.”

“Sleep good?”

“Like a baby.”

“I’m pleased to hear that.”

Lundquist went back to the door and reached down for the bundle of clothes that he had left on the stairs. He placed them on the chair.

“Left them on the radiator last night to dry them out,” Lundquist explained. He took a key from his belt and unlocked the cell door.

“Thank you.”

Milton dressed. The clothes were warm. He pulled on his boots and laced them up.

“The sheriff’s upstairs. He wants to see you before you go.”

Lester Grogan was sitting at his desk. He was in uniform this morning: khaki slacks and a dark blue shirt with his badge pinned just below the left tip of his collar. It didn’t fit him particularly well. He had allowed himself to become a little overweight in recent years, and the shirt was stretched tight over a generous belly that sagged out a little over the belt line. He greeted Milton warmly and invited him to sit in the chair opposite. Milton did.

“You sleep okay?”

“I did.”

“And Morten got you something to eat?”

“A burger.”

“From Johnny’s? They’re usually pretty good, right?”

“It was fine.”

The sheriff didn’t fit the usual profile of the rural lawman. Milton had met a few of them over the years, and Lester was different. Milton expected sheriffs to be the kings of their counties, with comfortable offices, secretaries and deputies. Their walls would be heavy with awards, photos and plaques, the sheriff grinning alongside politicians and business leaders, always thinking ahead to next year’s re-election. A display case for school kids and their mothers to gawk at, filled with hash pipes and confiscated marijuana cigarettes, guns and rusty knives. Lester Grogan had nothing. Just a crowded desk and some cardboard cartons piled on top of file cabinets in a dingy room.

“Well, Mr. Milton,” he started, “I got some good news and some bad news for you. The big man from last night, his name is Alan Hooper, and he works in corporate law down there in Detroit. He’s a big wheel, so they say. I went to the Emergency Room on the way home last night. The bad news is you gave him what they tell me is a mandibular fracture. Broken jaw is what I call it. Two places. Wire mesh, eating through a straw for a week, the whole nine yards.”

“The good news?”

“The good news is I went to see Mr. Hooper again this morning. He was burning right up to have me throw the book at you, telling me how he’d bring a civil suit against you if I didn’t have you on a felony. I explained to him how that wouldn’t be wise for him to do that because, if he did, I’d have no option other than to bring him into it, too, since he punched first, like we said last night, and how could that be good for his career and all? He fulminated about that for a good thirty seconds, got pretty agitated about it until I told him to calm down or should I take out my cuffs, and that seemed to do the trick. Bottom line, Mr. Milton, is that he’s happy that we leave this as a citation only. So you’re free to go.”

“Thank you,” Milton said. “I appreciate it.”

“Least I could do after we got off on the wrong foot like we did, wouldn’t you say?”

“Nevertheless… you didn’t have to…”

“No, I did.” He got up from his chair. “Where you staying?”

“The hotel.”

“Want a ride over there?”

“Seriously? After the last ride you gave me?”

Lester smiled. “This one will be different.”

“Sure.”

Milton and Lester rose. Lundquist put his head through the door. “Good morning,” he said.

“Thank your wife for the toast,” he said.

Lundquist waved it off. “It’s just toast. You want to try her roasts, you won’t be so complimentary. Ain’t that the truth, Lester? Patti’s roasts?”

Lester smiled again. “Come on,” he said.

They came out of the rear exit, and Lester led the way to the Ford Taurus he used as his police cruiser. He indicated that the doors were open, and Milton got into the passenger seat next to him. He reversed and turned around, and as he nosed carefully over the sidewalk and onto the road, Milton noticed the old Pontiac Catalina that was parked opposite them. It was a four-door sedan, at least thirty years old, dinged up in several places and with a replacement wing that was brown where the rest of the car was dirty white. Milton wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but he had noticed the girl in the woollen beanie who was half slumped in the driver’s seat. She was watching them, her eyes following the car as Lester paused for a space in the traffic, pulling away and heading to the middle of town.

The sheriff hadn’t noticed, but he didn’t have Milton’s experience, hardwired into him over a decade’s service when a missed detail like that could easily mean his death.

Milton watched in the mirror as the Pontiac jerked out into the road, one car behind them. Lester drew up at the stop sign and turned to the right. The Pontiac indicated in the same direction and, as they set off down Falls Road back to the Village Inn, it turned with them and followed, keeping back at a discreet distance.

“What are you going to do?” Lester asked him.

“Get my gear and set off. I only really came into town for a shower and a warm bed.”

“Where you headed?”

“West. I take it day by day. I reckon I can get across to Wakewood if I get away quickly.”

“Twenty miles? Stay to the road and you’ll have no problem. There’s a campsite just on the edge of town. Wandering Wheels, I think they call it. You got Sunday Lake down there, too. Very pretty. And after that?”

“I’m thinking about going to Minnesota.”

They passed Truth Motors, Holiday Stationstore, and a Michigan correctional facility, and still the Pontiac followed.

“You had a rifle yesterday.”

“Back at the hotel.”

“You do any shooting?”

Milton nodded.

“What have you got?”

“Ruger Hawkeye.”

“All weather?”

Milton nodded.

“I got one, too. You want to try it with the .243 Win. Goes together like apple pie and ice cream.”

Lester kept talking about the rifle. Milton kept enough of his attention on the conversation to know when he had been asked a question, but most of his intentness was on the Pontiac behind them.

It kept coming.

Milton kept watching.

Chapter 8

Ellie Flowers woke late, at eight. She had stayed up to watch the second half of the ball game, the Steelers winning at a canter, and started to think of a shortlist of places where she could take Ryan for dinner. Applebee’s, maybe, they had that nice place that just opened downtown. When that was over, she had watched hockey for twenty minutes, then flipped channels to watch late night chat shows and trashy TV until she looked over at the clock, saw it was two in the morning, and finally acceded to sleep.

When she got out of bed, she discovered that she had come to a decision about the situation with Orville. She often found that problems that vexed her would be resolved while she slept, and it seemed like that had happened again. She would have the conversation with him now, right this morning, rather than wait until they got back to the city like she had told Ryan last night. That was cowardly, putting it off, and she knew that she would feel better as soon as it was done. So why wait?

She showered, dressed with purpose, and hurried so that she could find him and get it over with before she lost the conviction and put it off again.

Orville was reading something on his phone when she came into the breakfast room, toast crumbs on his plate and a half cup of coffee cooling on the table. She went over to the breakfast bar and decided on a bowl of fruit and yoghurt from the meagre selection.

The trouble with Orville was that he seemed to have a sixth sense about difficult conversations that he would rather avoid. If he got that premonition, and she knew that he would since she practically radiated discomfort, then he would put up his defences and it would be almost impossible to get started. She knew how he would play it: he would pretend that they hadn’t argued last night, that she hadn’t turned him down, and act like everything was fine in the garden.

She carried her bowl across to the table.

She said, “Morning, Orville—”

She got that far before he said, without looking up, “Ellie, you have to listen to this.”

She felt her stomach go tight and tense. She was right; he was going to pretend that nothing was wrong.

“I was reading this story”—he tapped his finger against his phone—“right, about Julius Jenkins, this old black dude down in Florida, down Jacksonville way, about how he’s been charged with knocking off a payroll run. Says here he went up to the two ex-marines who were transferring the cash from the van to a warehouse, pulled out a sawed off out from underneath his coat, puts them on the ground, and makes off with the cash. Can you believe that? This guy—”

“Orville,” she said.

“—this guy, says here he’s in his fricking eighties. He puts these two thirty-year-old goddamn marines on the ground and robs them blind. Gets better, too: says one of the marines saw a disabled parking sticker on the dash. I tell you what, Ellie, this world gets crazier and crazier—”

“Orville.”

“—would never have happened ten years ago.”

“Orville,” she said harshly, “will you just shut the fuck up and listen to me?”

He stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open.

“Thank you. Jesus.”

“What is it?”

“Look, there’s no easy way to say this. But this thing with you and me, I’ve been thinking on it, and I’ve decided that it’s come to the end of the road. If you’re honest about it, you know it hasn’t been fun for weeks. Not for you and not for me. We’re always arguing—”

He somehow managed to look shocked, like this wasn’t a conversation he had already seen coming for days. “This about last night?”

“No. Yes, partly, but no.”

“Because last night, maybe I went a little far. Throwing my weight around a bit, like you said, and maybe you were right. I been thinking, too. You want to stay up here and nose around a little more, you go for it. Knock yourself out. I can give you a couple days. You speak to that girl again, and if you think it’s worth it, you can go up in those woods and have a look. A couple days, three days, maybe, no problem.”

“Orville,” she said, “it’s not just about last night, and anyway, I already spoke to Dillard and told him I was going to stay.”

His mouth gaped. “You spoke to Dillard?”

“Yes.”

“You went over my head?”

“You and I were never going to agree.”

“But that—”

“Let’s not get sidetracked by what we said last night. That was a symptom of the problem, and treating the symptom isn’t going to cure the sickness. Fact of the matter is, I’ve made up my mind, and there’s nothing that’s going to change it. We’ve come to the end of the road. That’s just all there is to it.”

“All right,” he said. “I hear you. This is what we’re going to do. You go up into the woods and do what you’ve got to do. I’ll go back to Detroit this morning. When you’re finished, you come back, and we’ll go out and talk about this properly, like adults. I’m not going to talk about it here.” He waved a dismissive hand at the shabby room, the peeling wallpaper, the folding table with the breakfast things.

His voice was firm and patriarchal, as if he was addressing a rebellious teen who was insistent that she was going to leave the house in that dress. It was as if his way of dealing with it was to try to ignore everything that she had said. It made her grit her teeth with frustration, but there were other people in the breakfast room now, and she didn’t want to cause a scene.

“All right?”

She really couldn’t be bothered with it. She didn’t have the energy, and as far as she was concerned, what was done was done. He could continue on with his own deluded version of the truth if he wanted to. It made no difference to her.

“Ellie?”

“Fine, Orville. That’s what we’ll do.”

Chapter 9

Mallory Stanton kept to a careful distance. She knew Lester Grogan just like everyone in town knew him. He wasn’t a bad man, but he could get so that he was intoxicated with the idea of being sheriff, drunk with the notion of his authority, thinking that everyone else ought to have respect for his office. Mallory didn’t hold all of those views. Truth be told, she didn’t believe in any of them, especially not since Arty had disappeared into the woods and Sheriff Lester Grogan and all of his cronies in the Sheriff’s Office had been about as useful as lips on a chicken.

No, she thought. You boys aren’t going to help me out one bit.

The cruiser’s brake lights shone bright red through the misty morning, and it turned off into the parking lot of the Village Inn. Mallory wasn’t sure what the protocol was to follow someone, but she figured that it wouldn’t do to turn into the parking lot too, so she drove on another quarter mile, turned in the forecourt of Pizza Place on Truth Road and came back up on them again.

The cruiser was pulling away, headed back into town, and, for a moment, Mallory wondered if she had lost her chance. She followed, driving past the inn and staring hard at the Ford Taurus until she was as sure as she could be that the passenger side was empty. She turned around again in Woodland Road and, as she approached the Inn for the third time, she slowed and drove into the lot.

She had just reached down to turn the ignition when the passenger door opened and a man slipped into the seat next to her.

She mishandled the door handle in her panicked attempt to get out.

He reached across and fastened a strong hand around her right shoulder.

“Easy,” he said.

Her heart thumped as she turned her head and looked over at him. It was the man from the bar, the man Lester Grogan had arrested.

The man she wanted to speak to.

“Why are you following me?”

He had clear blue eyes, and there was steel in them. She had noticed that at the bar last night. Those two men, especially the big one, would have given most people pause for thought. But he had been implacable, steady, as if possessed of an unshakeable confidence that this was nothing that he couldn’t handle.

Turned out he had been right about that.

It had been one hell of a demonstration.

Mallory had decided she had to speak to him.

She remembered what she was here for and found a little composure. “I need to talk to you.”

“And so you followed me all the way here? What was wrong with the Sheriff’s Office?”

“Grogan thinks I’m nuts. I can’t speak to you when he’s around.”

“Did it cross your mind that I might think you were nuts?”

She found herself smiling at that: the absurdity of the situation, despite the desperation that had driven her to it. “You don’t know what I want to talk to you about yet.”

“No,” he said, removing his hand from her shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Mallory.”

“Mallory?”

“Mallory Stanton. Who are you?”

“John Milton.”

She put out a hand uncertainly. “Good to meet you, Mr. Milton.”

He took it gently. “You mind me asking how old you are, Mallory?”

“Nineteen,” she said, the forced categorical answer coming across as unconvincing.

“How old really?”

“Sixteen,” she said.

He stared at her, hard.

“Fifteen.”

“And you’re driving this bucket?”

“You can drive when you’re fourteen in Michigan,” she said indignantly.

“With an adult.”

“Yeah, well… like I said, I’m fifteen, okay? Have you finished questioning me? You’re not my father, Mr. Milton.”

He regarded her again shrewdly, and then a little forbearance broke across the impassivity of his face. “Go on, then, Mallory. Why don’t you tell me what you want to speak to me about?”

“Here? In the car?”

“Where else?”

“I bet they didn’t give you breakfast in jail, right? I thought maybe we could get breakfast. There’s this place down the road a ways… anyway, I thought we could do that. And, like, I’m paying.”

“I’m not a vagrant, Mallory. I can pay my own way.”

“So you’ll come? You’ll listen to me?”

“Sure,” he said. “If you give me a ride back here afterwards, we can have breakfast.”

The café was on Main Street and was famous locally for its grits. Mallory’s father had been friendly with the proprietor, and she gave her a nod as she led Milton inside. Mallory ducked her head, not because she was ill-mannered, but because she didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions about how she was doing. There had been sympathy in the aftermath of his death, but now, the questions and the comments just raked up the memories that she had tried so hard to bury with him when they laid him in the ground. Others were worse, the religious types who she knew were thinking that because he had done it himself that he had damned his soul to Hell, or purgatory, or wherever it was that people who killed themselves went to suffer. Mallory had no time for any of that nonsense. She was a practical girl, and there were practical things that she needed to deal with.

The most pressing issue, the one that stopped her sleeping at nights, was Arthur.

They went to a table in the window and sat down. Mallory took the menus and passed one to Milton.

The waitress came across. “What can I get for you?”

“Pancakes, eggs, sausage, potatoes and bacon, please.”

“How’d you like your eggs?”

“Over easy.”

“And to drink?”

“Coffee and orange juice.”

She turned to Mallory. “What you want, sugar?”

“A cup of coffee, please.”

“You’re not going to eat?” he asked her.

“Not really hungry,” she said, although that wasn’t true. Her stomach was empty, but the roiling sensation was more from nerves.

The waitress went to the back with their order. Mallory knew why she was nervous: this man was likely her last chance, and she didn’t want him to think that she was crazy, like the sheriff and some of the others she had mentioned this to so clearly did. There was a lot riding on this conversation and on the first impression she gave him.

She summoned up the courage to begin. “Thanks for this, Mr. Milton,” she said, waving her hand vaguely. “For coming, I mean.”

“Call me John,” he said.

“I’d rather call you Mr. Milton, if that’s okay?”

“You can call me whatever you want.”

“I know you probably think I’m weird, following you and all that, but I’m not. Weird, I mean. This, what I’m about to tell you, this is all straight up.”

He nodded. He was paying attention, apparently taking her seriously. That was good.

She took another breath. “I live out on the edge of town. We’ve got an RV. It’s me and my brother, Arthur. I call him Arty. He’s what you’d probably call simple. There were problems when he was born, the cord got wrapped around his throat, and he didn’t get enough oxygen until they were able to get it cut away. He got brain damage because of it. It’s not terrible, I’m not saying he’s a vegetable or anything like that, but he’s slow. He’s twenty years old, but he acts like he’s a big kid most of the time. But he’s sweet and honest and trusting, and he’s my brother, you know?” She swallowed. “Yeah, he’s my brother, so I love him.”

Milton was still looking at her. “Okay,” he said, encouraging her on.

“Last week he went out into the woods north of town, and he hasn’t come back. And I need someone to help me find him and bring him home. That’s why, well…” She gestured towards him. “That’s why I need your help.”

“How many days has he been away?”

“Four.”

“What about your parents?”

“My mother died when I was little. The cancer got her. My daddy died six months ago. It’s just me and Arty now.”

“The police?”

“They won’t do a thing. They say he’s a full-grown man and that means he can come and go as he pleases. But he’s not an adult, least not in his head. He can barely look after himself most times. He’s not fit to be out there in the woods.” She felt the tears come and furiously fought them back; she had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry in front of him. “It’s on me, Mr. Milton. I have to look after him.”

“It’s all right,” he said, smiling at her.

She stiffened her lip, determined not to show weakness in front of him.

The waitress came back with Milton’s food and her coffee, and the pause gave her a moment to compose herself again. Milton sprinkled salt and pepper over his eggs and cut his bacon into smaller pieces. He put one of them into his mouth and chewed.

“You know where he is?” he asked between mouthfuls.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“And the sheriff won’t go up there and get him back?”

“If he’s in the woods, he’s right out in the woods. You’d have to trek to go find him. It’s not as simple as driving up there.”

“So why me?”

“You’re an outdoorsman, right?”

“I suppose so.”

She shrugged. “So that’s what I need.”

“There are others, though, right? There are dozens of people here who know what they’re doing out in the woods. People who know these woods. I don’t know them at all. Why don’t you ask one of them?”

“I didn’t tell you all of it yet. Not the worst part.”

He started on his eggs. She found that she was clenching her fists, her fingers curled in so tightly that her knuckles were raised and red.

“About six months ago, after my daddy died, these four young men came into town. I hadn’t seen them before, and none of the kids I went to school with had, either. Then, maybe a week after they showed up, they vanished just as fast as they arrived. Then we started hearing the rumours. People were saying that they were part of the gang who’ve been robbing banks around here, Michigan and Wisconsin, and over in Canada. Do you read the newspapers, Mr. Milton?”

“Not for a few weeks.”

“There was a robbery three months ago; a gang of four men went after a bank in Marquette. Took fifty thousand dollars, they were saying, but, this time, instead of getting away on motorbikes like they usually did, they had a problem. This security guard came out of the bank with a shotgun and told them to stop except they didn’t stop, they shot and killed him stone dead.”

“And you think the men in town were the same as the men who’ve been carrying out these robberies?”

“I don’t think it, I know it.” She paused to make sure it all came out right. “Arty has a job in the gas station. Well, he had one, before he went off up there, I doubt he’s got it now. There’s a store, a little one that sells things for cars, drinks and candy and stuff like that, and he’s in the booth serving people. One day he came home, and he told me that these four guys had come into the place to get gas for the car they were driving. He said that they started to talk to him and, the way he said it, they treated him like he was their best friend in the whole world. The thing with my brother, people normally just make jokes about him, try to make him look stupid, and so if anyone is even halfway decent to him, then he thinks that they’re going to end up best friends. He’s trusting, Mr. Milton. He doesn’t see the bad in people even when it’s obvious to everyone else.”

“What does that have to do with them being the robbers?”

“The day after he first started out with this, he came home again, and I swear, he was drunk. He doesn’t ever drink because he says he doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, but when you lived with someone like my daddy, then I promise you that you get to know the signs when someone’s drunk pretty quick. He was slurring his words, and he couldn’t hardly stand straight, so I got him into bed and told him we’d talk about it in the morning. But before I could get him straightened out, he told me that he had a secret and that he’d tell me if I swore to keep it between us. He said that one of them said his name was Tom Chandler. He told Arty that him and his friends were the robbers. Arty said he told him that they’d been hiding out in the woods, up at one of the empty copper mines near the lake where no one goes nowadays.”

“He was drunk, like you said. People say all sorts of things when they’re drunk.”

She felt her anger flash. “I know that,” she snapped. “My daddy was a drunk, I told you. I know you can’t trust drunks for shit.” She stared down at her mug until she composed herself and then, frowning, looked back at him again and said, “I got him to sit down and talk to me about it the next morning. He denied it at first, denied even telling me it, but I wouldn’t let him out of the door until he said it all again. And he did. Every word and then he told me some more. He said that they had a trailer on the back of the truck that they brought to the gas station, and they had a couple of motorbikes on it.”

“So they were four boys out riding their bikes in the woods. I expect that happens a lot around here.”

She felt a knot of frustration in her gut. He was going to disbelieve her, just like everyone else had disbelieved her. She shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out the crumpled page of newsprint that she had torn from the Truth News. She smoothed it out and spread it on the table. It was a police mugshot of Thomas R. Chandler Jr., taken by the state police in Wisconsin, after he had been arrested for assault six months earlier.

“This was in the paper,” she said. “I showed it to Arty and asked him who it was. He said it was the man called Tom he had met.”

“That doesn’t say very much, Mallory. Maybe he said it because he wanted you to believe his story.”

“He can’t read, Mr. Milton. How would he know who it was?”

Milton paused, looking at the picture, thinking. She found that she was holding her breath.

“All right. Let’s assume that he did see them. Why is that relevant?”

“Because we had a big argument about it. I told him he mustn’t speak to them if he saw them again. He was to call the sheriff as soon as he could. He said I was a stooge, that what they were doing was right, that they were taking money from the people who could afford to lose it and giving it to those who needed it more. He loves myths and legends, see? DVDs and books and games, he loves it. They’ve got it into his stupid head that they’re something like a modern-day Robin fucking Hood!”

The curse was fast and unbidden and it even surprised her.

“You think he’s gone to find them?”

When she spoke, it was with quiet abashment. “I said he wasn’t to leave the RV. We argued about that, too, but then he went to bed, and I thought the worst was over. But then I heard him talking to someone on his cell, and he wouldn’t tell me who it was. Then, an hour or so after that, I heard a motorcycle engine from outside. He was on the back of a bike as it drove away. And that was four days ago. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

Milton placed his knife and fork neatly on the table.

“Those people I was talking to last night, at the bar, you see them?” she said.

“I did.”

“They’re FBI. They’ve been in town a week because they heard that the four boys were up here. I explained to them what happened, but they didn’t really believe me, either. They won’t help me. I’ve struck out. That’s why I need someone like you.”

“You still didn’t tell me why you think I can help you.”

“I’d go out there on my own, Mr. Milton. I know the woods a little. My daddy used to take me up there. But I know you need to know what you’re doing. I mean, really know. People go missing up there all the time, and there’s no point pretending, I can’t follow a map. You can get lost if you go five minutes off the trail.”

“I don’t know…”

“And these boys are murderers, Mr. Milton. They know the FBI is after them. Let’s say I could find them. What would I do then? It’s just me. How am I going to do anything? But I saw what you did last night to those two men. You know how to look after yourself. You could handle them, I know it.”

“No,” he said.

“Please.”

He shook his head. “I can’t help you, Mallory. You need to persuade the police or the FBI to listen to you. If those are the four men up there, and maybe they are, and they know they’re wanted for murder, the odds are that they’re not going to be well disposed to people going out and sticking their noses in their business. But the agents can send an armed team up there and round them up. And if Arthur is up there, they’ll bring him home.”

“You haven’t been listening to me. Sheriff Grogan thinks I’m a troublemaker. He said he doesn’t want to hear another word about it from me.”

“I could talk to him?”

“He arrested you last night. Why would he believe you any more than me?”

“The FBI, then.”

“They’re going home today. That’s what they were telling me last night. You, or someone like you, you’re my last chance.”

He shook his head. “It’s not something I can help you with. I’m sorry.”

She took a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her jeans pocket and dropped it on the table.

“I told you…” he started to protest.

She stood up with a suddenness that put surprise on his face.

“Come on, then,” she said in a flat and emotionless voice.

“What?”

“I said I’d take you back to the hotel. Let’s go.”

Chapter 10

Milton went to his room. He collected his razor from the bathroom and took the bottles of shampoo and soap that he hadn’t used in the shower, putting them into the toilet bag and shoving that into his pack.

He was troubled.

He needed the comfort of an old routine.

He took his rifle, laid it on the bed, and then found his cleaning kit from the pack. It had gotten wet yesterday and, besides, he hadn’t cleaned it properly for a couple of days. Milton was fastidious about making sure his weapons were always clean. That was another habit he had learned in the regiment and, after that, while he had worked in the Group. A misfire when you didn’t need it could very easily turn out to be fatal. Milton had always considered himself a craftsman, and any good craftsman treated his tools with respect. He was no different.

He put a cotton ball on the end of his chamber rod and slid it into the chamber. He rotated it left and then right, working methodically to remove any brush bristles that had been left behind and excess solvent that had gathered between the rod guide snout and the end of the chamber. He made sure that the chamber was dry, and then he moved on to the lug recess area, usually the place on a bolt-action rifle that was the dirtiest. He took out a recess tool, wet both ends with solvent, and rotated it in the recess area, moving it in and out, so that he cleaned the breech face, too.

The process was habitual and, over the years, it had almost become meditative. As he worked on the bolt and the action of the rifle, he thought about the things he had done since he had fled from England, the people he had met along the way. He thought of Caterina and Beau in Mexico, and Eva in San Francisco, and then what had happened with Michael Pope and Beatrix Rose in Russia. He thought of the hours he had spent in the Rooms, listening to other drunks baring their souls, scouring their testimonies for a palliative that would ease the clamour of the voices in his head. Something that would ease his guilt, the never-ending, brutal, discordant blare of his guilt. He thought about the meetings and the people who had offered to be his sponsor and how he had declined them all. He knew that they would eventually press him on his Fifth Step.

We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

That was something he would never be able to do. He heard the others, about how they had cheated on their husbands and wives, ignored their children, hid bottles of booze around the house, soiled themselves or wet their beds, and he knew with the perfect grandiosity of the inveterate drunk that his sins were of a different magnitude altogether. But the thing was, they were. He had mentioned some of it to some of them, but only in the vaguest terms. The classified, horrific details he had bottled up and stored away. And that was how it would have to stay.

My name is John Milton, and I am an alcoholic. I am also an assassin. I killed one hundred and thirty-six men and women in the service of my country.

It meant that the meetings would only ever be able to offer him partial solace.

The program had been good for him, but there were moments when the deep well of his shame had risen up and overflowed, breaching his makeshift defences. It had been that way in Ohio, only this time his defences had failed. He didn’t feel the guilt when he was drunk. He could drown the reproachful voices with booze, obliterate them for as long as he had a bottle in his hand and, like a sailor hearing the beauty of the siren’s song, he had almost submitted.

He had gone into a bar, ordered a whisky and stared at it for what felt like hours. He watched it for so long that the cubes of ice had dissolved into slivers, and then the slivers had dissolved into nothing. What harm could it do? he asked himself. What harm? Just one, that would be all it was.

But it wouldn’t be just one. Never was. Never would be.

He had tossed his money on the bar and left, taken a bus to a mountain sports shop, bought everything he thought he would need, and had set off that same day.

The journey had brought him here.

He thought about Mallory.

He began to worry that she might have been brought to him for a reason. Drunks in the program were urged to believe in a Higher Power, but Milton had seen too much death to believe in God or Buddha or Mohammed or anything else. Those men and women with no time for religion interpreted GOD as Group Of Drunks and used the Rooms as their Higher Power, but that needed absolute honesty, and Milton couldn’t do that. He had tried to fill the void in his soul with a spiritual outlook, and there had been moments where Providence had seemed to play a role in bringing him to a certain place at a certain time to take advantage of an opportunity that, eventually, brought him peace. Coincidence, probably, for he would always fall back on the rational, but a part of him couldn’t discount the possibility entirely.

Maybe Providence was at play here.

He had been too hasty. The chances were that Mallory’s brother had just gone out to camp in the woods. Kids ran off all the time, it would be something as simple and innocent as that. It was no skin off his nose to divert north for a day or two. He had plenty of time to get to Walker. And if he missed Morrissey, so what? There would be other gigs. He had no itinerary. He would go wherever the wind blew him.

He finished cleaning the firing pin, replaced the spring with a new one, and put the rifle back together again. He slung it over his left shoulder, swung the heavy pack across his right, and went to check out.

He stepped out into the damp morning. The sunlight sparkled off the pools of water that had gathered across the pocked asphalt of the parking lot.

The Pontiac Catalina was still waiting in the same space. He saw the wide blue and white stripes of Mallory’s woollen beanie through the dappled glare on the windshield.

Yes, Milton thought. Providence.

Tenacity and determination, too.

He would help her.