Exile Hunter (53 page)

“Looking for
something?” Deputy Eldon asked.

“Yes, the state
employment office,” Linder answered with a sinking feeling in his
stomach.

“Lost your job
already?” the deputy sheriff accused.

Linder looked at his
watch and saw that it was already quarter to five. He had only a few
minutes to find the reassignment office and locate a place from which
to observe the exit at a discreet distance. He decided to be frank
with Eldon.

“Not at all,” he
replied, avoiding a defensive tone. “I’m looking for the
reassignment center. You know, the office where they make people sit
and wait who don’t have jobs. I promised I’d be there at closing
time and don’t want to be late.”

“What do you want to
hang out with those people for?” Eldon challenged. “There’s
hardly a one of them who’s not a drunk or a junkie. You’re not
falling into bad ways, are you?”

Linder brushed off the
insinuation with an easy laugh.

“No, actually, my
boss sent me here to find one of his ex-employees. Company business,”
he lied, knowing that he could get Jay to back him up if needed.

Eldon stepped forward
and pointed to the left rear of the courthouse.

“Circle around to
your left and you’ll find it in back by the parking lot,” the
deputy directed. “But be careful around that crowd. They’re
liable to trample you on their stampede to the liquor store.”

Linder thanked the
deputy and arrived in the parking lot just in time to find a prime
vantage point behind a parked SUV before the first of the unemployed
streamed out with their pay in hand. Remembering Eldon’s comments
about the sort of people he was watching, he touched his wallet
reflexively to confirm that it still held his rent money.

While Linder mused over
how suspicious he must have looked to the deputy sheriff when he had
first queued up for work on South Main, he spotted three neatly
dressed women step out the door. His heart raced when he saw that the
dark-haired woman in the middle wore pressed blue jeans and a white
sleeveless blouse, and even from a distance bore a striking
resemblance to the person he had seen in his dream. All at once, his
mind froze and for several moments he lost any sense of what he had
planned to do next.

When the three women
were nearly out of sight at the far end of the parking lot, Linder
gathered his wits and set off in pursuit. The trio turned left and
parted from one another at the corner of Main and 50th Street North.
Linder followed the woman in the sleeveless blouse at a distance
along 50th North into a residential neighborhood.

The further she went,
the more exposed he felt. If she had spotted him and turned around
now to look, it would be obvious that he had been trailing her, and
she would likely quicken her pace. If he closed the gap, she might
take fright and call the sheriff. But if he broke off pursuit without
learning where she lived, he would have to start all over again the
next week, and he did not want to wait that long.

As for what he would do
if he caught up to her, he had no idea. How would he introduce
himself? Did he dare use his true name and risk having Patricia or
her daughter reveal it to someone else? If he did, would it be better
to feign coincidence at meeting her in Coalville or to confess that
he had taken pains to track her down? Though coincidence might seem
plausible at first, eventually the story would collapse and he would
be caught in a lie. Yet, if he presented himself as Linder and
Patricia had already learned that Warren Linder and Joe Tanner were
the same man, why would she do anything else but scratch his eyes out
or run from him at top speed?

Alternatively, taking
the more cautious approach and introducing himself as Tom Horvath
would make it nearly impossible to call himself Linder afterward. As
he considered the various options, he settled on the idea of simply
learning where the dark-haired woman lived and planning to approach
her another day. At the next corner, the woman turned right and kept
going south, across Center Street toward a school complex.

Of course, he thought,
if this were Patricia, she would be on her way to the middle school
to pick up Caroline. The school would have arrangements for
after-hours activities so that working parents could pick up their
students after work. And as they drew closer, Linder saw a dozen or
more students lined up at the school entrance for their five o’clock
pickup.

Linder crossed the
street and watched from the high school parking lot as the woman
resembling Patricia, now with her teenaged daughter, doubled back
toward the north, crossed Center Street again, and followed 50th
Street North to an apartment in an outbuilding behind a sprawling
ranch house. Despite all the thought Linder had devoted to preparing
for this moment, now that he was sure he had found Patricia Kendall,
he remained at a loss over what to do next.

After walking to the
end of the block and back again, keeping his eyes on the apartment
all the while, he decided to leave and return the next day. Only then
did he notice a hulking figure dressed in denim bib overalls emerge
from the side door of the ranch house and approach the outbuilding.
The man knocked and entered without waiting for a response. Linder
approached for a closer look despite the risk of no longer appearing
to be a casual passer-by. Two minutes later, Caroline burst out the
door with a panicked look on her face, scanning the street as if
seeking help. At the same time, he heard raised voices inside the
apartment.

“Help!” the
teenager shouted, looking straight at Linder. “Somebody help us,
please! Mister, over here!”

Linder ran to the girl.

“It’s the
landlord!” she cried. “He’s hurting my mom!”

A moment later,
Patricia Kendall burst out the door with the man in overalls in hot
pursuit. His face was livid with rage.

Linder let her pass but
stepped forward to block the path of her pursuer. The man, who was at
least an inch taller than Linder and more than fifty pounds heavier,
grabbed Linder by the shoulders and attempted to push him aside. But
Linder, having had basic martial arts training early in his CIA
career and having used it more than once to defend himself, put the
man off-balance, threw him to the ground and held him there.

“Get off me!” the
man spat in frustration, his face pinned to the dirt. “Let me up!”

“Settle down,”
Linder replied from astride his broad back. “First you’re going
to tell me why you’re all riled up chasing a woman who’s half
your size.”

“That woman is a
thief!” the big man protested. “She owes me two hundred dollars!”

“Is that so?”
Linder questioned. “How did she steal it? Did she take your
wallet?”

“Don’t be an
asshole. She’s a month behind in her rent, and the next month’s
rent is due today.”

“Do you have a lease
to back that up?” Linder demanded, unsure what to do next.

“I’m not answering
any more questions,” the landlord sputtered. “Get off of me or
I’ll call the sheriff on the both of you!”

“Now you listen to
me, fathead,” Linder spoke in a low growl directly into the man’s
upturned ear. “You’ll get your rent money if it’s due. But if
you so much as touch that woman, I’ll come back here and personally
take your head off.”

He released the man’s
twisted arm and removed his knee from the small of the man’s back,
then rose and stood aside.

By now a cluster of
bystanders had appeared as if out of nowhere, and a doughy-faced
woman dressed in a loose-fitting lavender fleece pantsuit waved a
finger in Patricia Kendall’s face, haranguing her over the unpaid
rent. To Linder’s surprise, Patricia looked slow-witted and
flustered in response to the woman’s demands that she pay in full
or be evicted. Could something have happened to impair Patricia’s
brain while in captivity? It hadn’t looked that way during her
brief conversation with the women outside the reassignment center or
her chat on the way home from school with Caroline. Could she have
knocked back a drink or taken a hit of weed or something stronger
during her few minutes alone before the landlord arrived? It hardly
seemed possible.

Caroline went to her
mother’s aid at once, interposing herself between Patricia and the
doughy-faced woman and attempting to draw her mother back to the
shelter of their apartment.

Meanwhile, Linder
noticed the beefy landlord retreat toward the curb, where Deputy
Eldon’s squad car had pulled up as if it had been lurking around
the corner all the while. Eldon left the car without a word and
approached the quarreling women at a brisk walk with the jabbering
landlord in tow.

“What seems to be the
problem?” he demanded sternly of the landlord’s wife.

“The problem is that
our tenant owes us two weeks’ back rent and won’t pay,” the
woman complained.

“Is that correct,
ma’am?” the sheriff asked Patricia with more sympathy than Linder
might have expected.

“It’s not that we
refuse to pay, officer,” Patricia responded slowly. “You see, I
just started a new job and they pay every two weeks. I have some of
the money now but I won’t have the rest till next Friday.”

“Pay us by tomorrow
or you can find someplace else to live,” the landlady warned.

“We know our rights,”
the husband echoed. “The padlocks go on tomorrow if we haven’t
been paid.”

“And what about the
911 call for assault and battery?” the deputy countered. “Would
someone like to tell me about that?”

Caroline stepped
forward and pointed her finger at the landlord. “He hit my mother!”
she accused.

“The dispatcher
didn’t say anything about a woman being hit, only that there was a
fight between two males. Did the dispatcher get it wrong?” Eldon
asked with arched eyebrows, as if accustomed to such cross-charges.

The landlord cast an
anxious look at Linder.

“I think I might be
able to clear up that part,” Linder interjected. “If you’ll
give the big guy and me a moment alone, I think we might be willing
to work something out.” Linder gestured for the landlord to step
aside with him.

“Okay, but make it
fast and keep your hands off each other,” the deputy answered,
looking directly at the landlord. “I’m getting awfully tired of
coming out here every few months to break up your fights with
tenants. This crap has got to stop.”

Without waiting for a
reply, Eldon took Patricia and Caroline aside for a private
conference of his own.

“Okay, here’s my
offer,” Linder said to the landlord when they were alone. He spoke
with an aura of barely restrained violence that he had learned to
project when addressing terrorists and insurgents. “Whatever she’s
already offered to pay, I promise you’ll get by tomorrow. Anything
else you’re owed, you’ll get next Friday. Meanwhile, she stays
put till sunset Friday, unless she finds a new place before then. And
in return for your leaving her alone, she won’t press assault
charges against you. How about it? Do we have a deal?”

“Okay by me,” the
landlord answered with a sullen look. “But if they’re not out by
next Friday, I’ll call the sheriff and have them both evicted. I’m
through with this.”

“Fair enough,”
Linder answered, and the two men shook hands.

He approached the
deputy sheriff next. “I think we may have a solution that will work
all around. Would you mind if I had a word with the tenant?”

“If she doesn’t
mind, I won’t,” the deputy replied. “But be quick about it.”

Linder took a few steps
toward the apartment door and Caroline followed with Patricia close
behind.

“Listen, this is
obviously not the right apartment for you any more,” Linder began.
“The landlord will give you till next Friday to pay what you owe or
go somewhere else. Now, I believe my landlady might have something
that would suit you. I’m on my way back there now. Would you like
me to check with her?”

“We can only afford
$150 a week,” Patricia offered dully without making eye contact.

“No problem. That’s
more than I pay now,” he answered.

Caroline cast a hopeful
glance at her mother and responded for both of them.

“Then please do,”
she said. “And thank you ever so much for helping us. And, by the
way, I’m Caroline and this is my mother….”

But before Caroline
could complete the sentence, Patricia turned on her heel and rushed
back into the apartment as if she had left something burning on the
stove.

“I’m Tom Horvath,”
Linder replied. “Never mind your mother. I can understand her being
upset. I’ll come back this evening and introduce myself to her
then.”

* * *

Sharon Unger was not
as receptive to Linder’s proposal as he had hoped.

“Tom, you’ve been a
very good tenant here,” she objected. “But what do either of us
know about these two women? How can I be certain they’ll pay the
rent if they take your room?”

“You don’t need to
worry about that,” Linder answered. “Since I’m recommending
them, I’ll guarantee their rent until they establish their credit.
In fact, here’s a down payment for their first week’s rent.”
And with that, he pulled out his wallet and counted out a hundred
dollars in cash.

“That’s a mighty
generous thing to do for someone you’ve just met,” Mrs. Unger
observed drily. “Have you always been so charitable? Or might this
mother and daughter have some, well, special qualities?”

“Let’s just say
that they remind me of someone I used to know,” Linder replied.

Mrs. Unger, apparently
moved by Linder’s kindness toward strangers and his consideration
for her own financial interest, seemed to soften.

“All right, bring
them over and let me take a look at them,” she replied.

Linder thanked her and
set off promptly to the apartment on 50th North. When he arrived,
Caroline came out alone to meet him.