The Killing Kind (28 page)

“Son,” she said, “I’m old, not stupid—and you don’t want no such thing.” Her tone was sharp enough to chastise, but she was smiling when she said it, and her suspicion was of a benign sort. It was clear she wasn’t afraid of him— why would she be, when he’d already been cleared by the agent at the gate?

Hendricks smiled, too. “You got me,” he said. “I’m just tired of standing around. Plus, my girlfriend must’ve seen the news by now, and I’ve got no way to tell her I’m okay. You wanna help me get outta here so I can let her know I’m not dead?”

“Sure,” she said, “but it’ll cost you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, young man. I left eighty bucks in chips on the table when they made me leave, and Lord knows these yahoos ain’t gonna give it back. So if you can make it right, I’ll help you get back to your little lady-friend.”

“You want me to
pay
you?”

“Damn right I do. You’re lucky I didn’t ask you for double. I expect I-ain’t-dead whoopee’s great. And if you want some, you’re gonna hafta pay the piper.”

Hendricks laughed and took his bankroll from his pocket. The old lady’s eyes went wide. He peeled off two hundred even and handed it over.

“Shit,” she said—though it came out more
SHEE-it
—“I shoulda gone higher. You must be one lucky sumbitch.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Hendricks said.

But as sarcastically as he’d intended that, he
was
lucky in one respect: Lorraine—this was the woman’s name— went from mark to coconspirator in the time it took her to pocket Hendricks’s payoff.

She’s the one who hatched the plan. She’d toddle, addled, up to the greenest officer they could find. Hendricks—the doting grandson—would follow close behind, apologizing for her sorry state; she gets confused when she hasn’t had her medicine. It’s at home, and hours past due. No, they wouldn’t need a ride: Hendricks’s car was in the garage at the edge of the lot. That part was true, not that it mattered—Hendricks had no intention of returning to his rental car, for fear it had been burned.

Lorraine played it to the hilt, and the kid bit so hard he might’ve cracked a tooth. Hendricks had to suppress a laugh when the officer slid aside a panel of steel barricade just wide enough to let them pass, and Lorraine shuffled through, arms out like a blind man’s, headed back toward Pendleton’s.

Hendricks trotted after and, with affection not entirely faked, gently turned her around so that they faced the outer lots and the parking garage beyond. Then they strolled arm-in-arm into the distance.

They entered the parking garage just for show and exited the other side, out of sight of the casino. It was there they parted ways. “You sure you’ll be all right?” Hendricks asked her. He was reluctant to strand her so far from her group, in the vast commercial stretch that surrounded the Pendleton’s grounds.

“I ain’t an
invalid,
” she replied. “I’ve got a cell phone, and thanks to you some spending money, too. I’m gonna call a cab, and I’m gonna have him take me to Winstead’s for a bacon cheeseburger and a chocolate malt. I’m convinced that low-fat crap they feed us at the home don’t actually make you live longer—all those years of not being able to taste your food just makes it
feel
that way. I’ll cab it back when I’m good and ready.”

Hendricks smiled and peeled another hundred off his roll for her. “In case you ever feel the need to break out for a decent meal again.”

“You’re a dear. You care to split that cab?”

“That’s all right,” he said.

She looked appraisingly at him a moment. “Take care of yourself, would you?”

“I will try.”

Lorraine pecked him on the cheek, and Hendricks set out walking, heading south until he hit the Missouri River, then following its lazy eastward arc until he disappeared from Lorraine’s sight.

Hendricks walked for miles in Norm Gunderson’s god-awful, pinching boat shoes before he came across a set of railroad tracks. He knew the Feds would be covering all passenger rails out of town, as well as airports and rental-car companies, but that was fine by him, since he didn’t plan on availing himself of any of those. He followed the tracks until they crossed a roadway, then waited for a freight train to roll by. It wouldn’t take long, he reasoned— Kansas City was a major shipping hub, servicing freight carriers both local and national—and he knew that trains crossing streets were required to slow. He waited just beyond the intersection in a shallow ditch, shielded from view of the street by a stand of trees. An hour later, his waiting paid off, and he climbed onto an empty cargo car headed for Peoria—not that Hendricks knew that until he’d arrived.

The last thing he wanted was to tangle with a railroad cop, so when the squeal of brakes indicated they were approaching their destination, he hopped off the train, rolling as he landed to cushion the blow. Then he walked—filthy, stiff, exhausted—into town.

Hendricks’s first priority was to call Lester. He hadn’t dared from Kansas City, because he assumed the Feds were monitoring traffic through all the local cell towers—and by the time the train had taken him far enough away to chance it, his burner phone was dead.

His charger was in the rental car he’d left behind. That was okay—cell-phone chargers were easy to obtain; the lost-and-found bins in every coffee shop in the country were full of them. He made three stops before he found one that fit his burner. The girl behind the counter eyed his filthy clothes suspiciously and seemed dubious when he said he’d been in earlier, so he decided not to stay to charge his phone. Instead, he wandered around the adjacent neighborhood until he found a spot with an outlet private enough to suit his needs.

Hendricks plugged in the phone. It booted up. Lester answered on the first ring.

“Jesus, Mikey, are you all right? I’ve been going outta my head!”

“I’m all right,” Hendricks said, his voice just above a whisper. “Barely.”

“What the hell happened out there? The news says Leonwood went on a rampage.”

“I fucked up, Les. I didn’t get to him in time. I was jumped before I got the chance.”

“By who?”

Hendricks sighed. “I wish I knew.”

“This the guy who left the message on the ambulance?”

“Yeah,” Hendricks replied.

“I thought that mighta been directed at you,” Les said. “Gave me hope you were still kicking.”

“What’s the press saying about the guy?”

“Nada. Official story is, he’s an accomplice of Leonwood’s.”

“I don’t think Leonwood knew any more about him being there than I did.”

“You want me to do some digging? Maybe poke around the Feds’ system? I could see how much they’ve got on you, while I’m at it.”

“No,” Hendricks said. “It’s not worth the risk. As good as you are, Les, you can’t make me disappear from Pendleton’s security-cam footage, and it’s too late for that anyway. By now, my picture’s probably been circulated to every airport, train station, bus terminal, and rental car agency from Colorado to Kentucky. But there’s no way they’ve got my name, since as far as Uncle Sam knows, I’m dead and buried. Which means right now, there’s nothing that connects this fucking mess to you; the last thing you should do is stick your neck out and change that.”

“Let me hook you up with a new ID, at least.”

“What’s the point? My face will still be the same. Don’t worry about me—I can make my own way home. I’ve been through worse than this.”

“But this dude’s still out there, hunting you.”

“All the more reason for you to keep clear. Whoever this guy is, Les, he’s bad news—I don’t want you on his radar. Promise me you’ll lie low until I get back.”

“Aw, listen to you, all cute and worried-like. We’re gonna hug it out when you get home.”

“Sure,” Hendricks said. “Then, when we’re done, we’re gonna find this guy and end him.”

Hendricks disconnected the call and left the phone in the bushes to recharge. Then he looked around for somewhere to lie low and get some sleep. He found a boat out back, behind the house—a twenty-footer that looked like it hadn’t seen the water for a couple years. He undid a couple snaps on its canvas cover and crawled inside. It was musty but dry, and the tiny cabin had cushioned benches.

Tired as Hendricks was, he dropped off almost immediately. As he slept, he dreamt of dying. Of rebirth.

And as the sun crested the horizon to the east, Hendricks awoke and braced himself for the long journey home.

33

The blonde at the bar wasn’t Garfield’s type. Big, fake basketball tits. Dime-store acrylic nails. Brown roots showed beneath her peroxide locks, and a quarter acre of spray-tanned skin bracketed either side of her tube-top-and-miniskirt combo. At first, he couldn’t tell if she was even winking at him, or if the gobs of mascara that made her lashes look like gothic Venus flytraps had gummed up, hindering her ability to reliably open both eyes. But Garfield had struck out with the first two women he’d approached, and this DC dive bar didn’t boast a lot of prospects at one thirty in the afternoon. Turned out this chick had a fondness for whiskey and men with badges, so he figured she was as good as he was gonna do.

Garfield and Thompson had been summoned back to DC late last night. They spent all morning in the director’s office. A debrief, he called it. It felt more like a dressing-down.

The director called the Pendleton’s disaster—his phrase—their biggest clusterfuck since Waco. Said the balloon drop—which had popped up in shaky cell-phone footage on YouTube and gone viral—made a mockery of the Bureau. Said Congress would likely have his head for his agents letting a suspect escape.

Thompson did her best to deflect the director’s ire, pointing out Pendleton’s was her op, but it was clear Garfield was largely to blame for what had happened— and anyway, she was ahead of the rest of the Bureau on her ghost, which made her valuable. By the time they broke for lunch, Garfield was pretty sure he was on his way to being scapegoated, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of spending the next four hours playing party to his own professional demise. So he told Charlie he needed to step out for some air and set out walking until he found a place that looked as shitty as he felt to drink his lunch. He eventually found a romantic prospect bleak enough to match.

“Lemme see your gun,” she slurred, her breath whiskey-sweet and tinged with a bitter menthol bite.

“Maybe later,” he replied. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It was his partner texting him for what must have been the tenth time this afternoon. He ignored it and returned his attention to his drunken companion.

She leaned in close. Large pores caked with makeup loomed before his drunken gaze. “Aw, c’mon,” she said. Her hand ran up the inside of his thigh.

Garfield tossed back his drink and closed his eyes. It was a gesture of self-loathing more than anything, but she mistook it for pleasure and slid her hand up farther. “That ain’t my gun,” he said.

“Coulda fooled me,” she said. “How ’bout we head back to your place, and you can at least show me your cuffs?”

Garfield looked at this woman—whose name, he realized, he’d never caught—and then around the bar, wondering idly at his chances of scoring something less likely to leave a rash. If she noticed, she didn’t let on that she cared.

Garfield snapped and wagged his fingers at his empty glass, and hers as well. The barkeep poured Beam straight for each of them without a word. “Fuck it,” said Garfield, a glass in his hand and a strained grin on his face. She clinked with him, they tossed back their drinks, and then they staggered out of the bar together, Garfield grimly resigned to do just that.

Charlie Thompson stood in the bustling hall of the Hoover Building, thumbing another desperate message into her phone. They were supposed to be back in the director’s office forty minutes ago, but Garfield was nowhere to be found. Thompson had begged the director for a brief delay, claiming aspects of the investigation needed tending to. He agreed—reluctantly—to extend the lunch break another half an hour. As it stood, she was officially ten minutes late.

“Charlie!” came a voice from down the hall. Thompson looked up to see her supervisor, Assistant Director Kathryn O’Brien, walking briskly toward her. She wore a crisp gray suit, a white silk blouse, and heels. Her hair was swept into a bun that suggested authority without tipping to severity. “I was hoping I’d catch you.”