Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (12 page)

Flynn had never gotten much support out of the FBI. Down in Menard, their office was such a revolving door that nobody ever really got to know the community. Menard was just a way station in the drug wars. The agents who were going somewhere in the organization were all further south along the border.

The first agent took Diana’s credential to the second.

“They never know what it is,” she said.

“So how does this help us?”

“Just wait.”

He watched as the agents, their faces sharp with suspicion, huddled over a phone.

“Who’re they calling?”

“It’s a nonstandard ID. They’ve never seen one like it before.”

“Because of the secrecy bullshit?”

She nodded. “It’s not bullshit, Flynn.”

The second agent came striding over. “You can use office two,” he said. He handed Diana back her ID.

“That worked, at least,” Flynn said as they crossed the room.

“I’m sorry, Flynn, I’m going to need to do this alone.”

There were chairs along the wall, and Flynn took one of them. The plaster was thin enough to enable him to hear that she was talking to somebody, but he was unable to make out the words. Once or twice, she raised her voice. He still couldn’t discern specific words, but he could hear the emotion in them. She was reporting the deaths of her men.

Her voice stopped. He waited. The silence extended.

She came out. Her face was rigid, her lips compressed.

“You reported,” he said. “They were not happy.”

“They were not.”

“So what happens next?”

“Flynn, you’re still going to be with me, but very honestly I asked to have you relieved and was turned down on the theory that you’re all I have left. So my problem now is that you’re clueless and I don’t have the authority to bring you up to speed.” She glanced across the room at the agents. “We need transport,” she snapped.

One of the agents got up and sauntered over. “Yeah? Can I help you?”

“Get us out to Logan.”

“Call a cab.”

“There’s no time for a cab, Delta’s about to leave. We need to move right now.”

“We have motels. Not up to your standards, I’m sure, but you’ll live.”

“If you don’t want a complaint in your file, I’d advise you to stuff your ego up your ass and do what you’re told.”

Flynn was as surprised as the agent, who glared at her.

“Right now, Agent.”

He jerked his head toward a side door. They followed him down a couple of flights of interior stairs and out to a well-plowed parking lot.

There were two sedans parked in it and three black SUVs, immediately recognizable as federal cars.

“I wanta take my Subaru,” the agent said. “Better in the snow.”

Once they were in the car, a dense silence settled. Nevertheless, Flynn thought he would try asking the agent some questions that could be useful.

“What kind of crimes do you guys cover out here?”

“Us guys cover the waterfront.”

“I mean, specifically?”

“I know I don’t have any hotshot National Security clearance, but that’d be privileged information.”

An asshole for sure. He kept going anyway. “Any kidnapping cases?”

“Kidnapping? No. Is that what this is about?”

“I can’t answer that. My hotshot National Security clearance prevents me.”

This brought a slight chuckle. “We had a disappearance four months ago. Not a kidnapping case. The vic packed a bag.”

Diana glanced at Flynn, who said nothing.

They pulled up to the departure gates and the agent let them off and sped away.

“Are federal officials always so helpful to each other?” Flynn couldn’t resist asking, but he knew the answer.

“Yes.”

“So where are we going?”

“Just stay with me.”

The airport was small and intimate, a reminder to Flynn of another America, one that still clung to life, just barely, in little places like this and Menard. Steady, settled, and safe—assuming, of course, if you ignored things like the meth industry that drove lots of local economies in poor areas.

Security was no problem, just a single TSA agent with an old-fashioned X-ray device and nobody ahead in line. Not surprising, since Delta to Salt Lake was the last flight out to anywhere, and they had just a couple of minutes to go before the doors were closed. They showed their creds and got their guns passed for hold stowage without trouble. Unlike the FBI agents, the TSA worker accepted Diana’s credential without question. He passed his Menard Police Department ID card with equal disinterest.

As they walked down the aisle, Flynn took careful note of the other passengers. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened on the bus, and he thought they should assume that this perpetrator was capable of almost anything.

He was surprised to identify a Federal Air Marshal three rows behind him. Normally, you found these guys on long-haul flights in big planes. So why was he here? He slid into his seat between a businessman and a kid sealed up in an iPod. The FAM was carrying, which is what had identified him. There was a pistol, small, probably a .38, under the left arm of his thick jacket.

The flight was hot and cramped and seemed longer than it had any right to be. Twice, Flynn went back to the john so that he could pass the FAM. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that he was there.

Toward the end of the flight, Flynn closed his eyes for a few minutes, waking up when the aircraft shuddered as it began to land.

On the way to the next flight, he commented, “There was a FAM a couple of rows behind me.”

“Really?”

“No, I made it up.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Odd that he was there.”

“A coincidence, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re sure?”

She stopped. She turned to him. “We are alone, you and I. I know one other person, the individual I report to.”

He continued walking easily. Inside though, he was dealing with a major shock.
Only her immediate superior officer
? What in holy hell was going on here?

Their next flight turned out to be to Chicago. They were seated in first class.

“I could get used to this,” he said to her. The seat actually had room for him.

“Don’t. These were the only seats left. The storm’s headed east, and folks want to get in before it closes O’Hare. The flights are packed.”

“Why are we going to Chicago? If I may be so bold.”

She opened her mouth, seemed about to speak. Remained silent.

“We’ve got a choice of prime rib or mahi-mahi,” the steward said after they took off.

As Flynn ate, he saw that silent tears were running down Diana’s face. He said nothing. What was there to say, that it would be all right? It would not be all right, it would never be all right.

Maybe she was going to be relieved or disciplined. Maybe she already knew that. But what was most likely was that she was remembering the men she had lost, and feeling a torment of regret.

“You need to eat,” he said.

Listlessly, she took a bite of her fish and chewed.

“Flynn,” she said. Then she stopped. He’d seen grief many times, the way it takes a while to hit. Hers had hit. “Flynn,” she said again, “you’re a good cop and you have some outstanding skills and a lot of investigative experience in our area of concern, but things have changed, Flynn. We’re going to need to take a different approach now.”

“I’m not leaving voluntarily, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

She closed her eyes and he saw the tears well again, and realized to his astonishment that she was crying not for her lost men, but for him. She leaned toward him. “It’s a trap,” she whispered. “It’s always been a trap and I’ve gotten you tangled up in it, too.”

He added this to the long list of things about this case that he did not understand.

“They feel that you’ve gotten too deep. You can’t be released.”

He waited, but she said no more. “Well that’s certainly damn mysterious.”

“Security is very, very tight and for good reason, Flynn, as you will find. The thing is, there’s no going back from this. It’s marriage with no divorce allowed. You didn’t get a chance to make a decision and that’s not fair.”

“I made my decision when I walked out on the Menard Police.”

She turned to the window. But not for long. Very suddenly she turned back and said to him, “You’re going to meet people different from any you’ve ever encountered.”

“And you can’t tell me one more thing.”

“I want you to prepare yourself for the unexpected. I don’t need you gaping like a hick and asking little boy questions.”

“Do I do that?”

“When you’re in there, you may. This is going to be the strangest experience you’ve ever had. Beyond imagination.”

“I have to admit, I’m curious.”

She said no more, and the flight continued uneventfully, a plane swimming in featureless darkness.

Once they’d landed and collected their weapons and equipment, Flynn found that they had a rental car waiting. She drove, and he noticed that she didn’t use a GPS. She’d been here before. A lot.

He watched the gray sky and the gray of Lake Michigan, and wondered if there was any way to prepare to face a total unknown.

They’d been on Lake Shore Drive for some time before he understood from reading road signs that their destination was Evanston, just north of Chicago itself.

“I think you need to talk more, Diana. I’m a pro but I’m not a psychic. Narrate this a little bit.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Excessive secrecy and compartmentalization just killed three men. And yet you keep it up.”

“I have orders, I follow my orders.”

“Following orders is good. But what that means is making them work. Your orders were to stop a dangerous criminal. You didn’t make those orders work, so whatever it was you thought you were doing, it wasn’t following them.”

After a few turns in Evanston, she drove down a street lined with big old houses that looked like they were worth a lot … and Flynn became concerned. There were no official buildings around here.

They passed those houses and drove into a less grand neighborhood. Here, there were stark oaks lining the street, and the tall row houses were as dreary as the sky.

They pulled up in front of one of the houses. In the driveway there stood a Chrysler 300. Other than that, the place was silent, the windows dark.

“So where are we? Not your ancestral home, surely?”

“Police headquarters.”

“Not a good answer.”

He got out of the car when she did, and followed her up the front walk. The air was bitterly cold, tanged with the sharpness of chimney smoke, a gusty breeze coming off the lake.

When she pressed the doorbell button on the jamb, there issued from deep inside the house the faint bonging of an old-fashioned bell.

This was not a police headquarters of any kind, but there was certainly something unusual involved here, because as Flynn had stepped out of the car, he’d seen a flicker of movement from a window in the house across the street.

“Does it bother you that we’re in gun sights?”

“You’re very observant.”

“Always been my problem.”

She rang the bell again.

“What’re they doing, sending our faces to Washington?”

She glance at him, frowning.

He continued, “There’s a camera in the door. Another one between the bricks to the right. Whoever’s in there has been able to watch us since we turned onto the block.”

“I did not know that.”

“Yet you’ve been here before.”

“As I said, this is our headquarters.”

He thought, “you look, but you don’t see,” but didn’t comment further. No point. Noted, though, was the fact that her lack of practice as an observer was a liability that must never be overlooked.

The door swung open on a woman of perhaps thirty. She wore an orange jumpsuit and had a plastic net on her hair. Her skin gleamed and Flynn realized that her face was covered with a film like petroleum jelly. On her hands she wore latex gloves.

He was still trying to make sense of this when she stepped back and let them in. She ushered them into a living room with an old couch, a coffee table, and a couple of easy chairs. A gas log burned in the fireplace.

“Sorry,” she said, “we’ve been working on him.”

“Anything?”

Whoever they were interrogating, her expression said it all: they were getting nowhere.

“Flynn, just try to be open. I can’t tell you anything about what’s going to happen because no explanation would do it justice. I can’t even answer any questions, because any question you would have would be unanswerable.”

“I know what it is.”

“I don’t believe that. Tell me what you think.”

Flynn said nothing.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Two more of the jumpsuits lay folded on the couch. On the coffee table was a silver canister about a foot tall.

“We need to put these suits on over our clothes,” Diana said. “And do this.” She dipped her hand in the canister and scooped out clear gel. “Put this on your face and neck. Make sure you’re well covered. Don’t forget your ears.”

“What is it?”

“Something that’s necessary.”

He wasn’t objecting. He was here to learn. He slathered the stuff on himself.

“First, you’re going to meet the person our agency has managing this case.” She paused. “This is a unique person.”

He pulled on the jumpsuit, which was supple and light and felt like paper. But it was a lot stronger than paper. Sort of like silk with a paper-like finish, he decided.

Diana slathered herself with the salve and put on an elastic cap of the silken material.

Flynn finished by putting on his own cap.

The woman reappeared. Flynn said, “Hi, we didn’t get introduced. I’m Flynn Carroll, Menard City Police, Menard, Texas.” He put out his gloved hand.

She looked down at it, then back up at him. Usually, people’s faces told him something. Not this time.

“Follow her,” Diana snapped.

Shuffling along in his baggy jumpsuit, his face covered with Vaseline that smelled like cinnamon, he followed the woman down the central corridor of the old house, past an umbrella stand and a photograph of a family from about fifty years ago.