“No, E. I’m saying that I truly don’t know what will come of it. But I know you’re going to say yes.”
They slept then, finally, and in the morning he told Jamie Bennett that he would take the job, and then they set about finding a tow truck to deal with the damaged rental. A simple mistake, he told himself, representative of nothing.
But he couldn’t help thinking, after Allison’s warning, that the first thing Jamie had admitted to him upon her disastrous midnight arrival was that she had heard the forecast and ignored it, convinced she could beat the storm.
Up at the Beartooth Pass, chains rattled and winches growled as they pulled that mistake free from the snowdrifts.
I
an was off duty
when they came for him, but he was still in uniform and still armed, and usually that meant something to people. Badge on the chest, gun on the belt? He felt awfully strong in those situations. Had since the academy, could still remember the first time he’d put on the uniform, feeling like a damned gladiator.
Bring it the fuck on,
he’d thought then, and the years hadn’t eroded much of that swagger. He knew better than to believe he was untouchable—he’d attended too many police funerals for that, and he’d shaken a few too many of the wrong hands and passed cash to too many people he shouldn’t have—but day by day, hour by hour, he still felt strong in the uniform. People took notice. Some respected you, some feared you, some flat-out hated you, even, but they sure as hell took notice.
The single most unnerving thing about the Blackwell brothers was that they didn’t seem to. The badge meant nothing, and the gun even less. Their pale blue eyes would just roll over you, taking inventory, showing nothing. Indifferent. Bored, even.
He saw their truck when he pulled in. That black F-150 with blacked-out windows, an illegal level of tint. Even the grille was black. He expected they were still inside, and he got out of the cruiser and took a deep breath and hitched up his belt, knowing they were watching and wanting to remind them of the gun, even though they never seemed to care. He went up on the porch and flipped the lid on the beer cooler. Ice had melted but there were still a couple cans floating around in relatively cold water, and he took out a Miller Lite and drank it there on the porch, leaning against the rail and staring at the blacked-out truck and waiting for them to appear.
They never did.
“To hell with it,” he said when the beer was done. Let ’em sit, if that’s what they wanted. He wasn’t going to walk down there and knock on the damn door like he was ready to do their bidding. That wasn’t how it worked. They’d come to him, like it or not.
He crumpled the can and tossed it in the recycling bin on the porch, which was so full the can just bounced off and fell to the floor. He ignored that as he went to the door and unlocked it, hating the uneasy feeling that came with having his back to their black truck. Then he opened the door and stepped inside and saw them in his living room.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing? You broke into my
house?
”
They didn’t answer, and he felt the first real chill. Shook it off and slammed the door behind him, trying to hold the anger. They worked for him. He needed to remember that in order to ensure that they would remember it as well.
“You boys,” he said, shaking his head, “are going to get your asses in trouble someday, you know that?”
Jack Blackwell was sitting on Ian’s recliner. Had it leaned back so he could stretch his legs out. He was the older of the two, a little taller, a little thinner. Neither of them had much in the way of visible muscle, but Ian had seen the strength in those rangy frames at work, had seen the vise-tight grips of their unusually large hands, the way those long fingers could turn into steel bands. Jack had hair like a damned Beach Boy, hanging down to his collar, so light that it looked bleached. Dressed in faded, rumpled clothes, most of the time in black. His younger brother kept a different look, as if it were important to him to be separate from Jack, even if he never moved far from his side. Patrick could have passed for a Marine, had hair that was cut with a razor and not scissors, wore shirts with crisp creases, boots that shined. He was standing between the living room and the kitchen, arms folded. He never seemed to sit.
Ian said, “Stupid damn thing to do, you know that? Risky. I get one neighbor who watches you dumb bastards letting yourself in here, one neighbor who calls out a patrolman, and we’ve got major issues then. Fucking stupid, that’s what this is.”
Jack Blackwell said, “He lectures a lot.”
Patrick Blackwell said, “I’ve noticed. Most times, it’s about intelligence. Lack thereof, rather. You noticed that?”
“I have indeed.”
This was their routine. Talking to each other as if they were alone in the room. Creepy fuckers. Ian had heard it before, and he never did like it.
“Listen,” he said, “it’s been a long day, boys. I don’t have time to serve as the straight man for your act. Tell me what in the hell you’re doing here, and then get the hell out.”
“Hospitality is lacking too,” Jack Blackwell said.
“Noticeably so,” Patrick agreed. “Man stood out there on his porch and enjoyed a cold beer without so much as offering us one.”
“Didn’t appear to be his last beverage either. So the opportunity for the offer is there, certainly. And still it hasn’t been made.” Jack shook his head, looking at his brother. “You think this goes back a while? The lack of manners?”
“You’re suggesting his parents are to blame? That it was learned behavior?” Patrick pursed his lips, giving the matter due consideration. “We can’t say that with any level of certainty. But it’s possible. It’s possible.”
“Hey, dickheads?” Ian said, and he let his hand drift down to his gun. “I’m not fucking around here. If you’ve got something to say, now’s the time. Otherwise, get out.”
Jack was still looking at Patrick, but Patrick was watching Ian. Patrick said, “If I didn’t know better, I could interpret his attitude as threatening. Got his hand on his gun, even. You see that?”
Jack turned and fixed his pale blue eyes on Ian. “I had not. But you’re correct. It’s a threatening posture.”
Ian decided he was done with them, and the feel of the gun in his hand helped build his confidence. He reached for the door, twisted the knob, and pulled it open.
“Get out.”
Jack Blackwell let out a deep sigh, then lowered the recliner’s footrest and sat leaning forward, head down, arms braced on his knees.
“The boy is still gone. You were supposed to have intel by now. A location.”
Ian closed the door. “I’m working on it.”
Jack nodded slowly, the gesture of a man both understanding and disappointed. A father hearing his troubled son’s excuses; a priest listening to the confession of a repeated sin.
“Your sources with the marshals, Ian, are not what they were promised to be.”
“A great deal of hype,” Patrick agreed, “but very little result.”
“The kid isn’t in WITSEC,” Ian said. “Trust me.”
“Well, he’s also not at home. Trust
us.
”
“I understand that. But I’m telling you, he didn’t enter the program. My sources aren’t overhyped. They’re every bit as good as promised.”
“That would seem hard to believe at this point, based upon the evidence.”
“Give it time.”
“Time. Sure. Do you understand how this situation troubles us?” Jack said.
Ian felt a dull throb building behind his temples, a pulse of frustration that usually led to someone bleeding. He was not a man who handled frustration well. He’d understood for a while now that he might have made a mistake with this alliance, but for all their strange quirks and bizarre behavior, the Blackwell brothers were good. They did professional work and they did not make mistakes and they kept a low profile. They were cold and they were cruel but he understood men who were cold and cruel and in the end all he cared about was whether they were good at their jobs. The Blackwell brothers were that, if nothing else. His patience for their attitudes, though, was fading fast.
“That kid,” he said, “is a problem for me too. All of this comes back to me in the end, you better remember that. Better remember who pays you for your work.”
“The lectures again,” Patrick said, and shook his head. “You hearing this?”
“I am,” Jack said. “Appears to be questioning our level of understanding. Yet again.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Ian said. “That shit, the talking-like-I’m-not-here shit? End it. I’ll lay this out for you once, okay? The kid is not with WITSEC. If he ever is, I’ll know about it. He’s not right now. So your job is to figure out
where
he is. And do it fast.”
“There were rumors afloat,” Jack said. “You recall those, Patrick?”
“Negotiations with prosecutors. Are those the rumors you’re thinking of?”
“Well, it wasn’t the Cubs’ possibilities before the trade deadline. So it must have been that, yes.”
Ian was listening to them and wondering why in the hell he hadn’t driven away as soon as he saw the truck. He’d always been in control of these two, in theory at least, but he’d never
felt
that control. Now he was seeing the mistake in this association. A wise man didn’t rent attack dogs; he raised them himself. Why? Because he’d never be able to fully trust them otherwise.
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about, with the rumors and bullshit. Nobody wants this done more than me. The parents know where the boy is, you can count on that.”
“Does the mother talk to us, Patrick? What do you think?” This from Jack.
“Anyone will talk to us with proper encouragement. Or so we’ve found over the years.”
“True. But do the parents say what we need them to say in the course of our conversation?”
“A far more difficult question. They have, after all, nothing but the boy. In such circumstances, even the most persuasive approach may not be effective. It would depend upon the depth of their affection.”
“My point exactly. The parents also have watchers now. Law enforcement support, a prosecutor who is determined to use that boy as a critical witness and who probably has conned them into believing the boy can be kept safe, and all the boy has to do is simply appear in court. You might remember that we were told by Ian here to leave the scene without the boy, that we couldn’t waste time on a kid who, quote, ‘might not even have seen a thing.’ And that allowed the parents time to seek help. I would say, and you may correct me if you feel it’s necessary, that the parents are a very poor opening option.”
“I would concur,” Patrick said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ian. Lord, they were pale eyes. Ian hated their eyes, their stupid verbal games, their general demeanor. Even when you tried to piss them off, you couldn’t. He hadn’t succeeded in rattling those flat monotones yet.
“Then find another option,” Ian said. “That was your job. Go do it. Get the hell out of my house and do it.”
“For how much?” Jack said.
Ian stared at him. “For
how much?
”
“Yes. What pay rate, Ian?”
“You expect me to pay you to kill a witness
you
left alive? Pay you to clean up your own damned mess?”
“The mess,” Jack said, still looking at the floor, “occurred while we were already in your employ. This mess is part of a previously existing mess. One that you paid us to clean up. For you.”
“I expected it done better.”
Jack glanced to his right, at Patrick, who was some ten feet away. He had drifted farther from his brother by a few steps.
“We’ve disappointed him, Patrick.”
“It seems that way.”
Jack turned to face Ian. Now both brothers were staring at him, two sets of those glacial gazes. Ian suddenly wished he hadn’t closed the door.
“The new mess is part of the old one, Detective O’Neil,” Jack said. “You own one, you own the other. Can you follow that? Consider us…” He waved a hand between himself and his brother. “There was one payment. There were two Blackwells. You got the one, you got the other. Are you with me here? Do you see the correlation?”
“I’ve got no money for you,” Ian said. His mouth was dry, and his hand was all the way over the pistol grip now. Neither of them had so much as blinked at that. He knew that they had seen it, and he wanted them to care. Why didn’t they care?
“If there’s no money in it,” Jack said, “then why on earth would we kill this boy?”
“You’re serious?”
Jack gave a patient nod.
“Because he can put you in fucking prison. Both of you. Get one, get the other, you tell me? Well, bud, he’s going to get you both. Get all of us. Me? At least I got a chance. But you two? He
saw
you two.”
“Your thesis, then, would be as follows: We kill for money, or we kill to protect ourselves. There are those who pay, and those who threaten. Correct?”
“Correct,” Ian said.
Jack looked at him for a long time and didn’t say anything. It was Patrick who finally broke the silence by saying, “And you, Ian, are no longer one who pays.”
The problem was that there were two of them. You tried to watch them both but they never stood together. There was always the distance. So one spoke and you looked at him and the other you could see only out of the corner of your eye. Then that one spoke and you’d look at him and now the other could be seen only out of the corner of your eye. Ian had been speaking with Jack, had been focused on Jack, had been looking at Jack with his hand on his gun, ready to pull it and fire. Then Patrick spoke, and Ian did what instinct told you to do—he looked in that direction.
He was facing the wrong way when the rush of motion came from Jack then, and by the time he spun back and drew the Glock, there was already a suppressed pistol in Jack Blackwell’s hand and it bucked twice and Ian was down on his knees in his living room with blood spilling rich and red onto the hardwood floors. He wasn’t going to die like that, without even getting a shot off, but now he was looking at Jack and there was Patrick on the other side, Ian saw him out of the corner of his eye, and when the shots came from that direction, Ian was facing the wrong way yet again.
You got one, you got the other.
Detective Sergeant Ian O’Neil was dead on his living-room floor when the Blackwell brothers left his house, making sure to lock the door behind them, and returned to their truck.
“He made some sense,” Patrick said as he slid behind the wheel. “That bit about reasons for killing? Money or threat? He was a convincing man.”
“He had his moments,” Jack said, putting the pistol into the center console and leaving the lid up until Patrick added his.