Deviations (20 page)

Chapter 19

You wouldn’t think I was
ever interested in math, but I did like algebra. I wasn’t very good at it, but
it made sense to me. Give me a formula like
x
+ 4 = 7, and thirty
seconds later I could tell you
x
was 3. What I found out as I got older,
however, was that life rarely presented any problems like that. Almost always,
life gave me
x
+
y
= 7. I don’t know what that kind of equation
is called (besides, of course, a real son of a bitch), but I know I can’t solve
it.

That’s what I had here: a real son of a bitch. Too
many unknown variables. Start with Nick Corelli. He told us he was FBI,
consulting with Rawlings Police Department, and Chief Robert Murtaugh seemed to
agree with him. But I’d spent a total of an hour and a half with the chief, an
hour with Corelli, so neither of them qualified as my best buds. On the other
hand, I’d never worked under the new chief before, and he seemed pretty anal
about procedures. You’d think letting a Nazi impersonate an FBI agent would
count as an “unacceptable deviation” at least as bad as me letting the killer
do a swan dive off a cliff in the Hagerty case.

The night I’d spent looking at the sewer runoff on
YouTube, a healthy percentage of the people who hated Hispanics, Muslims, Jews,
Mexicans—hated anyone who wasn’t what they themselves were—were white cops. I
don’t remember seeing anyone as well dressed as Nick, with his suit and his button-down
shirt and tie, but there were one or two sheriffs and other big wheels who
weren’t hayseeds. Wearing a nice suit didn’t mean you weren’t a moron. That I
knew well, from life in general and my dating habits in particular.

Maybe Corelli was exactly who the chief said he
was, and the chief was just better at doing things by the book than the old chief
was. But if Corelli was legit, I had some questions for him. One would be, What
happened to Professor Willson Fredericks: natural causes, homicide, suicide?
And why was Ryan stonewalling me about it? Another question would be—and I
understand he might not want to answer this one, but I’m curious,
nonetheless—what the hell is he doing out here inside the fence at Nazi
Central, standing in the living room chatting with the Reverend Christopher
Barry?

Are you inside the fence, Nick?

My first instinct was to call Ryan, who’d never
let me down. When we worked the Hagerty case six months ago, he was one-hundred
percent solid. He had great instincts. He knew when to hang back if I was doing
a line of questioning that was working. And when to jump in when he saw
something that I hadn’t seen. I trusted him completely. Fast forward six
months. He seemed like exactly the same guy, completely stand up.

But one thing Ryan said might be important: how he
wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his job. After all, Ryan had, like, 1.8 kids
already and definite plans for a bunch more. If Ryan was holding back with me,
maybe that’s what he was told to do by Nick or the chief. It didn’t necessarily
mean that he was drinking the Kool-Aid. It might just mean he was trying to
stay on the job.

If Ryan knew I was out here and in some danger but
decided not to commit any unacceptable deviations from regulations to save my
sorry ass—well, that would tell me something useful about where his head and
his heart were. But I hadn’t given him a chance. I never told him where I was
headed before I left. Never told him where I was when I called him earlier
today. I’d just told him I was sick. Even if he’d stopped by my house and
knocked on the door, he’d probably assume I’d just run out to the drugstore.

I wanted more than anything to call him right now.
But I had no way of knowing whose team he was on. Couldn’t be sure who’d be
listening if I called him now. I get Ryan on the phone, Nick Corelli could have
a half-dozen buddies nearby who’d pick me up in five minutes. Game over.

No, I’d come out here on my own to do a job, and I’d
live or die on my own.

I picked up my binocs again to look in on the
white house. The kitchen was dark. The bedroom had a light on. Nick and the Rev
were still talking in the living room. They were in profile now. Barry was
talking, jabbing his finger toward Corelli to make a point. Corelli was
nodding, his palms out in front of him like he understood what Barry was saying
and wouldn’t do anything to piss off the Rev. Finally, Barry put his jab finger
down and nodded. Corelli put out his hand. They shook, the four-handed shake
complete with left-handed bicep grab. It wasn’t a hug and backslap between old
buddies who went way back. It was more like they were working on an op
together, and they’d set up this meet to review what had already gone down—and
plot out what they were going to do next.

It was that plot-out part that was scaring me most. I
didn’t know what was going on, but I sure didn’t like it. In terms of algebra,
the formula I had to solve was
x
+
y
+
z
= I am totally screwed.

* * * *

I was nowhere near
sleeping. I packed up all my stuff in my backpack. Everything except the
binocs, because I figured I might want to check in occasionally on the doings
at the white house. I’d want to know if Nick was there alone for a sleepover,
or if members of the Rawlings Police Department were also going to stop by. The
house itself was too small for a big party, but there was space enough within
the compound for the whole Rawlings force—all the detectives, the unis, the
clerks, all their spouses and significant others, everyone.

I thought about my options. I could hoist my
backpack onto my shoulders and just walk north, straight on up to the abandoned
logging road, hang a left, and make it back to my car. I’d need three hours.
Even with my rubber legs and my blister and tail end of my dinner nearing my
own tail end, I’d be able to make it. I could get back on 53, just head west
toward north Idaho. No need to even go back home.

What did I have back there? A crappy job that I
was going to lose any day now, if I hadn’t lost it already. A crappy house that
was all the bank’s money because I’d re-mortgaged it a few months ago for the
cash to sustain my glam lifestyle of throwing up, passing out, and screwing creeps.
A crappy ex-husband who’d traded me in for a newer model year with fewer miles.
And let’s not forget my sulking, sullen, miserable teenage son, whose idea of
close human contact was to play war games with other dweebs on the Internet.
No, let’s not forget Tommy, who never tired of showing me how bitterly I had disappointed
him in so many ways. My beautiful little boy, who would be horrified if I told
him that he’d disappointed me in a way or two.

I could just head west. Start over. New name, new
identity, new job. Welcome to Wal-Mart. That wouldn’t be so bad, of course.
Nobody to fire me, nobody to lie to me, nobody to expect anything of me. A new
life for which I was totally qualified. Except for the possible downsides of
having my liver explode or get killed in a DUI or be knifed or strangled by an
adulterous psychopath who was okay with fucking me but then felt guilty so he
needed to make it all disappear—except for those possibilities, it wouldn’t be all
that bad a life.

And maybe one more except-for: putting Rawlings in
my rearview mirror wouldn’t do much to get the guy who raped Dolores Weston and
bashed her head in.

I pulled the Mylar blanket up over my shoulders,
hugging my knees to try to stay warm, even though I felt oh so cold. I sat
there behind my big rock, out of sight. The bright lights from behind me kept
blazing, but I faced north, looking into the black night. Chip and Dale and the
other local mammals started to come to life nearby now that I had stopped
moving. I heard all kinds of chirping and scratching and rustling of leaves. A
couple owls started in hooting, one to the west and one to the east. All the
animals going about their business, leaving me alone.

I was getting drowsy, so I decided to take one
more look at the house.

It was completely dark, and Nick’s car was gone.
The two guards in the guard towers were guarding. Nothing to report, sir.

I pulled my knapsack up under my head for a pillow,
wrapped my blanket around me, and lay down to drift away. I passed through my
light dreams into my full REM dream state. All of a sudden, my eyes opened as I
heard heavy steps shuffling through the leaves. I sat up. There was Fat Ricky,
shaking his head like now he was going to have to do something he didn’t want
to have to do. My head still full of sleep, I couldn’t think fast enough to say
something. Then I felt a blow to the back of my head that sent blue sparks screaming
up and down my spine.

* * * *

I started to regain
consciousness, a burning pain radiating from the base of my skull. I was lying
on my side, my hands and feet tied tight behind me with rope, the coarse hemp
tearing into my wrists. I tried to move, to test the strength of the ropes, but
was stopped by a sharp, stabbing pain coming from the right side of my ribcage,
where I assume they’d kicked me a few times. At least one of my ribs felt
cracked. I was blindfolded. The cloth smelled of engine grease, with a whiff of
gasoline.

I tried to open my eyes, the lids struggling
against the fabric of the blindfold. It was a cloth bandanna, folded over
several times. I didn’t know where I was. A bare bulb from a ceiling fixture
looked like a Ping-Pong ball through the blindfold. I couldn’t make out
anything else. The air smelled heavy and damp, like an unventilated attic.

Assuming I was still in the compound, I was either
in the Rev’s white house or in his log-cabin church. I could feel a bare cement
floor, rough textured. I shivered from the cold. My head and ribcage ached. I
tried to think back to what had happened, but I couldn’t remember anything
other than looking at the white house through my binoculars.

Although I’d had a couple of rough sessions with
guys in motel rooms, I’d never been attacked like this. I thought of all the
movies and TV shows where the hero had been hit from behind with a pistol,
losing consciousness. A moment later he would open his eyes, shake the cobwebs
out of his head, get up, and go after the bad guys.

I tried to sit up. I raised my head a few inches
off the cement floor, but the pain was too great. My head fell back to the
floor with a thud.

I cried out as it hit, then I threw up.

As the vomit pooled in front of my face, I started
to cry. I must have sucked some of it in—I began to choke. I hacked big time,
finally blowing it out of my windpipe, but that just made me vomit more. My
breathing was heavy as I lay there, my cheek scraped up pretty bad from the
cement but warm in the vomit.

I drifted off, either to sleep or into
unconsciousness—I didn’t know and really didn’t care. Not sure how long I was
gone. I didn’t hear anyone come into the room, but all of a sudden I felt myself
being pulled backwards from behind.

I cried out in pain as the skin on the back of my
left hand tore on the rough floor. A man’s voice said, “Ah, shit, look at
this.” Another voice: “Get the bucket and the mop. Clean up the puke, then
we’ll come back.”

Now I was fully awake. I couldn’t raise my head,
but I heard two men working on the vomit. One of them took the bucket and mop
out of the room, then returned a minute later with a can of air freshener. He
sprayed it, and a moment later I felt the droplets fall on my face. I
recognized the pine smell. It was the same air freshener Bruce and I used at
our house a long time ago. I heard the two men leave the room.

I tried to think back to what happened, but it
only seemed to intensify the pain at the back of my head. I knew I had to
remain conscious and try to remember what had occurred if I was to have any
chance of escape. But I had to fight hard to resist the impulse to just let
myself slip away into unconsciousness.

A little while later I heard a door open and two
sets of feet come in. One of the guys bent down and untied my hands, then my
ankles. Then he yanked my blindfold off.

Even though the bulb at the ceiling was dim, it
seemed bright as ten suns. I closed my eyes reflexively.

I opened them a moment later. The log walls with gray
plaster on two sides of the room told me I was in the church. There was a card
table and two folding chairs in one corner, a stained mattress in another
corner.

One of the guys was Fat Ricky. He was wearing blue
jeans—carpenter pants baggy enough for his huge ass and stomach—and a dark blue
t-shirt underneath a quilted nylon liner, the kind that zips into a hunting
jacket. He had removed the rubber band holding back his thin blond hair, which
now hung limp, like vertical blinds obscuring half his face. I couldn’t read an
expression, the way his baby fat puffed up his cheeks, making his eyes real
small. I’m not sure he had an expression.

The other guy I didn’t know. He was about forty,
thin and wiry, maybe six one or two. He had short brown hair, thinning out on
top, parted on the side. He wore glasses, no-nonsense wire-rimmed, in silver.
His nose was sharp, and he was clean shaven, except that he was starting to
grow a mustache. His expression scared the shit out of me: he was calm and
resolute. He was like those patriot guys who make YouTube videos. Not the
idiots shooting off guns. Not the guys who put up film of Nazis goose-steeping
down the wide Paris boulevards.

This guy was more the kind who read a speech right
into the camera, or—even worse—typed in the words so that they crawl up the
screen silently. What frightened me about these guys is that they’re past being
pissed off. They’ve done their research. They’ve given it a lot of thought. They
know who the bad guys are and what their motives are. They see patterns that
other people don’t see—patterns that other people haven’t been permitted to see.
They know that everything is linked up with everything else. They know, for
instance, that Jews are evil because of something that happened five thousand
years ago that they learned about from getting hold of this particular 1934
edition of the King James Bible and reading the third word on every fourth page
of this particular Gospel, which clearly shows that Jews intend to take over
Hollywood and eat Christian babies.