Bones Omnibus (23 page)

“We’ll have men in the woods, but you won’t see them on your way in,” Michaels told Billy in the Derry parking lot. “We gave you the sheets on all the players we know will be there, but we anticipate there being at least six or seven times that number. But these additional participants have no loyalty to Knippa and won’t stick around if things go bad. We’ve also heard a local recording artist and his entourage may be in attendance. They may be armed as well, but they’re to be left alone.”

“Are they?” Billy asked witheringly.

“
Yes
,” stressed the field supervisor. “Part of what motivates would-be assassins is the media attention. The perceived infamy. The less the press and public know about this operation, the better. If we can control the narrative and characterize this as a drug bust, that’s a big win for us. Any questions?”

Billy tilted his head as if considering whether all his bases had been covered, but then scoffed.

“How far from the main house is your nearest man? How much time will it take him or her to get to the house in case of an emergency? It’s supposed to snow again tonight, so how will that affect their time? Will this person be listening in and have discretion when it comes to rendering aid, or will they have to wait a few seconds – or even minutes – for the order to come down the chain of command? If they come in guns a’blazing after I make a positive I.D. on Knippa, how much time have they had with my photograph to know not to shoot me? As my dog is mic’ed, but won’t be able to point out the target in court, will he be given the same no-shoot priority as me, given the number of other animals inside?”

Michaels glared at Billy but said nothing before stalking off, shaking his head. The police sergeant understood, though. When it came to matters like this, he was supposed to feel an overwhelming sense of patriotism to carry him past any of the niggling details. For a guy like Michaels, giving a lowly cop the opportunity to
sacrifice
for the greater good was a gift. Only for some reason, this dog handler wasn’t playing ball.

Billy supposed that was what happened when you’re a branch of law enforcement most judged on its failures rather than its successes.

Still, this didn’t mean a hill of beans to Billy as he left Derry for the short drive to Blairsville. Derry was to the southwest, so he would reach the city itself, then cut back west on Route 22 to reach the farm. He had to remember that in case anyone asked him where he was coming from, as it wouldn’t look like Pittsburgh.

“I’ll tell ’em I got lost,” Billy snarked to Bones as they bumped along the unmarked gravel road that left the highway and went about a half mile into the woods before reaching the farm.

Billy had been afraid of getting the Bronco stuck out in the snow or mud. But the way the slush had been packed down by the previous vehicles made it easy to stay in their tracks. It also told the cop he and Bones were among the last to arrive.

Though almost entirely obscured by trees, the Knippa compound was actually quite large. There was a large two-story Queen Anne–style Victorian farmhouse nearest the road, but as massive as it was, it was dwarfed by the barn behind it. Both structures were easily a hundred years old, the age showing in the sagging roof of the barn and the crumbling porch of the house. A newer building with cinder-block walls and a steel roof ran alongside the barn, looking like a long warehouse.

All three buildings were drab in color, which Billy took for camouflage. Even the roof of the warehouse had been painted a dull gray, which would’ve read as dirt from above. Billy figured the state police did the occasional flyover, looking for meth labs, but wouldn’t be low enough even in helicopters to see much more than an old dirt track heading off to nowhere from the main highway. He idly wondered if they changed the paint depending on the season.

There were about forty other cars and trucks parked in front of the farmhouse, including an imposing black Yukon Denali alongside a tricked-out Rolls Royce Phantom.

The recording artist and entourage
, Billy surmised.

“Think they like watching dogs get torn apart?” Billy asked Bones. “Or just betting on the outcome?”

Billy parked and clambered out of the Bronco. He pulled on Bones’s leash to get the shepherd to hop out after him. The officer hesitated, the cold winter air harsh in his lungs. But then he looked down at the shepherd, whose features were taut and alert. Bones was all business, spoiling for a fight.

“Let’s get to it.”

“There it is again!”

Henry Knippa stormed around the small upstairs bedroom as if ready to explode. His brother Timothy, standing in the doorway, had hoped he’d run out of steam by now. Instead, he’d only spun himself into more of a tizzy.

For Timothy, this was familiar. Henry’s behavior had defied logic since they were kids. But as he got older and bolder and “realized” his medications were an attempt by the “social hierarchy” to “control him biochemically,” the younger brother had to come to terms with having a full-bore loony on his hands.

“This isn’t normal,” Henry continued. “Somebody out there’s got all kinds of equipment. It’s completely messing with my system.”

“Come on, Henry,” Timothy sighed. “We’ve got a full house back there. I finally even got Lil’ Mwerto and his posse out to look at the dogs. We get a little of
his
shine on this place, and we’re not just some backwoods operation anymore. I need you to quit winding yourself up. Have a beer.”

He held out a can of Old German, their late father’s brand going way back. But Henry just shook his head and pointed at the ever-growing pile of electronic equipment strewn around his childhood bedroom.

“You just don’t get it, do you, Timothy?” Henry said, shaking his head as if
he
was the sane one.

Though Henry had left Blairsville at eighteen, living first in Philly and then Baltimore, he’d returned to the Knippa compound after getting locked up on a battery charge. This involved a woman Henry had referred to several times as his girlfriend. In fact, Timothy had spent hours upon hours over the months leading up to the arrest listening to Henry on the phone telling him what a “vile bitch” she was. But after Henry entered the woman’s apartment and roughed up both her and a young man she’d brought home, Timothy learned the truth.

“She said she’d never seen him before in her life,” the arresting officer had told him. “If I had to guess, I’d say he was stalking her, but had all these delusions that it was reciprocal.”

“Couldn’t she be one of those crazy chicks just looking to get him busted?” Timothy had pressed. “I’ve heard him talk about this bitch for months.”

“Trust me, we get plenty of those,” the cop agreed, more sympathetic than Timothy’d expected. “Hell, wouldn’t be Bawlmore if we didn’t. But this woman was scared out of her mind, while your brother couldn’t even come up with her real name.”

“Catherine-something?” Timothy offered, figuring it would be fruitless. “Catherine Gilmartin?”

“Anna Dominguez. We finally got it out of him that ‘Catherine Gilmartin’ was the real name of some porn star he’d fixated on.”

“Aw, fuck me,” Timothy managed before hanging up the phone.

After a disastrous psych evaluation, Henry was moved from Baltimore City Detention to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Jessup for further observation. Once those doctors got Henry talking, Timothy could tell his brother was in danger of being put away for some time. So he paid the right lawyer to convince the judge to release Henry into his brother’s care.

This after paying off Anna Dominguez to the tune of $50,000 to drop all charges.

Unfortunately, the new boyfriend, Clay-something, who Henry also roughed up, came sniffing around for a payoff of his own. Tired of being treated like an ATM, Timothy had a couple of his guys drag the aggrieved fellow out to the northern branch of the Patapsco River to show him where they’d dump his bullet-riddled corpse if he kept at it. To the boyfriend’s credit, even then he tried to negotiate, offering to take half of his original request for $25,000. Over a cell phone held by his goons, including Vickers, Timothy offered the man $5,000 and his life.

The offer was accepted.

But not long after Timothy had installed Henry in a rental house in Blairsville near St. Simon & Jude Church, the young man started hearing stories about Henry raising hell and making trouble. Timothy went out to talk to Henry, inviting him to stay at the farm, take a job working the dogs, even have his pick of the girls Timothy ran from time to time, but Henry would have none of it.

“Don’t you see?” he’d say. “These are the things you use to keep the truth
away
. I don’t have any use for them. I’m not afraid like everyone else is. I see what’s coming, and I know it’s the end. I just wish you could see it, too.”

Timothy endured several dark nights of the soul in which he considered putting a bullet in his brother’s heart. But he didn’t need to see the future to know he wouldn’t be able to live with himself afterward. He’d be plagued with questions: What if Henry got better? What if there was some turn in the road up ahead where he recognized what he’d become and rejoined civilization?

As long as there was that chance, he couldn’t kill his only brother.

This was before Henry went off and shot Jim D’Leo. Timothy had told his brother a dozen times that the rat-faced fuck was an informant and that he should leave him alone while the organization figured out what to do about him. When word got back that D’Leo was found dead in the very spot they’d threatened to dump Clay-something, Timothy wondered if he’d waited too long to deal with Henry.

That was less than a week ago. Now the fight dog entrepreneur just had to get through that week’s event before settling on a course of action.

“All right, Henry,” Timothy said, a calming tone in his voice. “Run it by me one more time.”

Henry sighed and smiled condescendingly, the teacher having to explain a simple problem to a recalcitrant student for a third time.

“These are parabolic mics and radio receivers,” Henry said, indicating the various pieces of equipment. “You aim one of the mics at anybody within five hundred yards and you can hear what they’re saying, same as if they were in the room with you. The radios pick up cell phone transmissions almost anywhere in the county. I know before you do when anybody gets close. Even better, I know what your men say when they’re talking shit about you behind your back, but don’t think anyone’s around.”

Maybe there is something useful in Henry’s mania
, Timothy thought.

“You open a window around the Washington, D.C., say, at the Hay-Adams Hotel, a building that faces the White House, and a mic like this is the first thing the Secret Service spotters on the White House roof aim in your direction. They want to know if you’re taking a shot at the President, so they listen in.”

But as soon as I think that, it’s this President-thing again
, Timothy sighed inwardly.

“Get to the point,” he prodded.

“Well, about fifteen minutes ago, a helluva lot of radio equipment showed up on Route 22,” Henry enthused. “At first I figured it was folks coming to the fight.”

“It wasn’t?”

“The signals split up, half rolling into place in the east woods about a quarter mile up and the other half to the north. Now it’s just sitting there. I was just trying to figure out why when I picked up even more interference from the parking lot and ended up following one of your dog fighters into the barn.”

“Wearing a wire?”

“Bingo.”

Shit
.

“You’re sure about this?” Timothy asked.

“Sure as I am standing here. Even better, I can use this stuff to point him out to you.”

“That was my next question.”

“All right, you’re good,” Vickers told Billy, the money counted and placed in an envelope. “The kennel’s that concrete outbuilding beside the barn. Drop off your dog and grab a Bud. They’ll call you over the speaker when it’s time to bring your dog to the fight pit. Cool?”

“As a witch’s tit,” Billy replied, giving Bones’s leash a tug.

Vickers offered a final scowl before the police sergeant walked off.

As they walked to the kennel, Billy got a look inside the barn, its two sliding doors wide open. Spectators were already gathered on risers around three of the building’s four walls. In the center was the fight pit, which Billy assumed was a converted cellar, its ceiling removed. Though the floor would be a good ten to twelve feet down, it would keep the dogs from leaping into the crowd while still allowing the crowd a good view of the action.

As he and Bones moved on to the kennel, the police sergeant glanced toward the woods. He wondered which Secret Service agents or local sheriff’s deputies had him in their sights at that moment. He wished he could get some kind of sign off them, though it would be worse in a moment. With Bones at his side, he still felt invincible, the biggest weapon in the woods by his side and at his command. But putting the dog in the kennel was akin to turning in his gun and stripping naked. Four dozen armed men guarding his back from the woods didn’t make him feel an iota less vulnerable.

Though he’d seen the kennel when he parked, Billy only now realized how deceptively large it was. It might have only been a single story high and about twenty feet wide, but it extended back into the trees more than twice that.

“Checking in a dog,” Billy told the young man at the door.

When the fellow looked up, Billy recognized him from Michaels’ files as Paul Amis, whose first run-in with law enforcement came a month before his twelfth birthday when he’d stabbed another kid on his front lawn. For the rest of his teen years, Amis was in and out of state facilities until he met one of Knippa’s crew while awaiting trial in Latrobe. After that, the arrests petered off. He was being mentored by a better class of criminal.

“That a shepherd?” Paul scoffed, eyeing Bones.

“Nah, an Irish setter.”

“Name?” Paul sneered.

“Bones.”

“Cute!” Paul laughed, bending down to the shepherd. “You’re about to get your fucking heart ripped out, Bones? That cool with you?”