Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3) (7 page)

Desoto grunted, but he was undeterred by talk o
f
bears and Bigfoot. A wheel had come off Agent Desoto’s investigation because that stink
bomb, Marcus Reese, had been trusted to watch the suspect and blew it. Now their reluctant witness was dead, and almost everyone up top wanted to give up on investigating this lead, but not Desoto. There was a reason they called him
t
he Pitbull.

Desoto also knew something that Dawson didn’t.
Further digging with classified sources had paid off. It turned out that all kinds of interested parties had been soft-footing it around the little town in Canada for the last few months, some waving maple leaves, some stars and stripes. It was even possible that not everyone holding a flag was who they were pretending to be. To go in officially was to invite all kinds of bad attention, but an unofficial visit was another matter.

He had vacation coming. Desoto figured that if anyone asked he’d tell them that it was time he learned how to fish
the great lakes of Canada
. He just wouldn’t say for what.

Though exhausted
,
I was sleeping in a strange place, with strange noises, and with Chuck
—
which was nice, but different. In spite of wishing for a few hours of deep and dreamless, I was hovering in the twilight and therefor
e
heard the snap of something I took to be a lock.

Exc
ept, I wasn’t really sure what his
lock sounded like. And I had already woken Chuck when the ice
maker dropped a load of cubes in the plastic tray and when the neighbor in an electric wheelchair bumped the front door. I figured three false alarms might be too many for even Chuck to forgive.
I figured that our relationship had a short enough shelf
life without these added aggravations.

If only Max was there. He’d tell me if someone was inside. He’d have told me if someone was outside.

I closed my eyes, but after a couple of minutes lying still and imagining that I heard muffled footsteps and the stealthy sliding of desk drawers, I decided that I just had to get up and check on things.

Moving slowly, I pushed back the covers and crept from the room. I tripped once over Chuck’s shoes and froze, but he kept on with the deep breathing and I sighed with relief. It was dumb
,
but I didn’t want to get caught checking out another noise. Chuck would think I was an hysteric.

The living room was dark
;
Chuck had blackout drapes and only the thinnest penciling of light shone through the gap between curtains.
Deciding that even this small gap was too much light, I circled the desk and tried to pull the drapes together. One side moved, the other didn’t. It was bowed out around something.

I figured out the something was a man about the same moment as his hands reached for my neck. He was hampered by the heavy fabric and I was able to pull myself loose. In the movies, this is where the victim would scream. I would have been okay with that except I found that I had gasped out all my air and had nothing left for shrieking. Instead I spun and picked up the first heavy object that came to hand. It happened to be Chuck’s portable. It wasn’t one of
the
newer kind meant to fit in a purse. It was big and heavy, and when swung with panic force, it did an excellent job of cracking the intruder
’
s head.

Chuck
might have missed my tripping over
shoes, but apparently breaking his computer was loud enough that it could penetrate even heavy sleep. The bedroom light went on and he appeared almost immediately.

“Watch out for glass.”

Chuck said a bad word that I wouldn’t have guessed he was familiar with. I laughed.
It was sublimated hysteria and it
took a moment to get it under control.

On a scale of one to ten, one being mild anxiety about having your teeth cleaned and ten being a serial killer hiding in your closet, this was a about a twelve. An armed man in the living room beat a killer still in the closet any day.

Chuck and I looked at the body. It wasn’t bulky but it was muscled. The face was hard
,
like the skin had been weathered
far beyond the man’s years
and there was a rough scar at the jawline
that hadn’t been properly sutured
.
There was also a gun in his shoulder holster.
I noticed this right away. I could be taking a header off Mount Everest and still notice a man with a gun.

Chuck knelt down and felt for a pulse and then checked
the intruder’s
pockets.

“No ID.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.”

“That’s good. I guess.”
At times, Chuck’s face can be expressionless. This wasn’t one of those times.
“This has to be about my father.”

Chuck looked like he was going to argue, maybe suggest that this was a random burglary
or more surveillance from his bosses
, but decided not to bother with devil’s advocacy.
He knew it was about my father.

“How did they find us
—
oh, the license plates on the Rover.
They must have been watching the lot.
”

“
Damn.
I need to call Big John, but first we need to get dressed.” Chuck thought about this as he followed me to the bedroom and began pulling on clothes
. He
is a bright guy but not at his best when woken from a deep sleep. He
failed to come up with an answer
by the time his shirt was on
and asked why I wanted to call Big John.

“They may have
recognized me
—
especially if my father told them who I was
—
and sent someone to t
he Gulch
to look for me there
.”

“But why
—
I mean, why follow you at all?
You have no money.
You’re not important.” I didn’t take him up on this. It wasn’t meant to sound insulting
, and he was right. I was nothing
to these people
.
“I know loan sharks can be violent, but c
ould your father have enemies that are that vengeful?
And stupid?
”

Obviously
, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud.

Chuck was a student of human nature, but I’ve done postgraduate work with real nasties and
my gut said that
this guy qualified.
Though I was glad I hadn’t killed him and made all kinds of hideous problems for Chuck, I had the sinking feeling that in the long run, I was going to be sorry this man had survived the blow to the head.

“Who knows? Maybe. But I don’t think
the
guy intended to kill us
—
at least not right away. He was searching your desk
and hid behind the drapes when I came in
when he could have just shot me
.”
I was trying to talk myself into feeling better.

“But why
—
”

“I don’t know! Because my father told them we had something they want? Maybe something he stole
from the wrong person
.
Something small that would fit in a desk.
”

“But
.
…”

“Chuck, I don’t know what they want. And it doesn’t matter
at the moment
. We need to leave right now.
The rest can wait
until we’re safe
.
”
When he didn’t react
I added urgently
,
“There could be more of them
on their way up as we speak
.”

Chuck wanted to argue. He was a policeman and this invasion
of his home
offended him. But he reasoned it through. How would he explain me or our trip over the border?
They would want to know what an American hoodlum was doing in his home
and if he had acquired him on his brief visit to
t
he States
.

And what would happen to me if I went off
on
my own and he stayed to deal with the paperwork
?
Because this guy had been after me, I was sure, and not Chuck.
I’d be safe in the Gulch, but could I get there alone?

There was also something else on his mind
,
and I knew what it was as sure as if he had spoken aloud. Law enforcement was no longer his flawless idol.
Ever since the downed airplane
fell on McIntyre’s Gulch
,
his life
had become a kabuki theater with unknown persons
in power
manipulating the puppets, pulling on his strings, too, making him dance to music he couldn’t hear. Maybe if he knew the reason for it all, he would agree with the tactics used by his employers. But the very fact that the shadow agents didn’t feel they could tell the rational men and women
of the department
they were puppeteering why they were doing it made him suspect that he wouldn’t agree with their agenda. Though they seemed to have backed off from him in the last few weeks, there was no way to
be one hundred percent
sure that this intruder didn’t have some kind of relationship with the people he would need to call
to investigate the break-in
.

We heard the elevator ding
and both jumped
. It was almost five in the morning. Maybe it was some neighbor coming off a night shift
,
but maybe not
.

We hurried
back
to the living room. Chuck tossed me my coat and
tugg
ed his own jacket off the coat tree. He opened the closet and pulled out a pistol.
He checked that it was loaded.

“The fire escape
,” he said softly
.
“
Let’s go.
We’ll get clear and then decide what to do.
”

“You’ve got your phone? The keys?”

“Yes.”

The air was cold enough to fog our breath and the light outside the window bright enough to read by
, which was convenient but not discreet
for a getaway
.
Though we were lit up like a Broadway kiosk,
parts of the parking lot were in shadow. I prayed nothing dangerous was lurking in the pockets of darkness.

Chuck
reached around me and
did something with a latch
,
and a metal ladder telescoped down almost to the ground. I began scrambling down the
aluminum stairs
.
Chuck was right behind me
, almost stepping on my hands
.

Inside, I heard a knock on the door.

*  *  *

Agent Desoto knocked on the front door of Inspector Goodhead’s Winnipeg condo.
There was no answer
, though at five in the morning one could expect a person to be at home
even
if not in the best of humor
.

“Shall I kick the door down?” Reese asked from behind.

“Good thinking, numb-nuts,” Dawson muttered. “That’ll only wake up everyone on the floor.”

Desoto reached out a hand and tried the doorknob.
The door was unlocked and opened easily to reveal a dark room beyond.
He stepped through the doorway and switched on a light.
It appeared there was no one in the room
,
though there
were
signs of a struggle.

Then the agent heard moaning coming from behind the
desk
.

“Check it out,” he said, signaling to his two agents.

Reese and Dawson drew their weapons and each stepped around an end of the large desk.
They found a man lying on the floor next to a damaged portable.
The man was semiconscious and wearing latex gloves.
Dawson holstered his firearm and bent to attend to the fallen figure. His first move was to remove the gun in his holster.

“No ID but he has lockpicks.”

“Get a photo of him
and send it off
. Let’s see if we can get a match.” There was no doubt in his mind that this was a hired thug. But hired by who
m
? He’d love to question the intruder, but there were just too many sensitive toes loitering around this case
to take him in
.