The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (20 page)

‘Why me?’

‘Why not you? Transfer these blankets to the back seats first, though.’

Strickland grumbled as he began pulling the blankets out, while Bishop said to Clea, ‘I’ll be lying on the floor just behind you with one of those blankets covering me, so I won’t be able to watch what you’re doing. And that means I have to rely on your intelligence here, Clea. I hope you can understand that an animal’s at its most dangerous when it’s cornered.’

Clea winced. ‘I understand. The last thing I want is any shooting.’

‘That’s the last thing any of us wants. Now I assume you’ve got a cell phone in that bag of yours, so I think you better hand it over to me for safekeeping.’

Clea pulled out an older Samsung model and passed it over. Bishop switched the thing off and stuck it in his pocket. ‘You’ll get it back,’ he said.

‘I’m ready here,’ Strickland said.

Bishop led Clea to the back of the vehicle. He looked over at the delivery truck, saw nobody was watching, and nodded to Strickland, who ducked into the back and arranged himself into a foetal position.

‘Don’t take too long, okay?’ Strickland said. ‘I got a real problem with small spaces.’

Bishop had to sympathize. He felt the same way. ‘We’ll try,’ he said.

He lowered the lift gate, made sure the shade cover lay flat, and clicked the door shut. Then he led Clea back to the driver’s side. As she got behind the wheel, he searched the dash and said, ‘No GPS?’

Clea shook her head. ‘I’ve never needed one. I know this area back to front already.’

‘Good point.’ Bishop shut the door and quickly got in the back. He reached past Clea and locked her door as well as all the others. ‘Right, let’s get moving before more cops arrive. If they stop you, just smile and give them the migraine story like we agreed. Okay?’

‘No, I’m not okay.’

‘But you’ll do it.’

‘Of course I’ll do it. What other choice do I have?’

Bishop said nothing. Just watched her take a few deep breaths before starting the engine. As she slowly pulled off, Bishop grabbed one of the darker blankets, inserted himself in the space between the seats and draped the blanket over his lower half. He stayed in a sitting position and watched as Clea drove past all the other stores before turning left at the end. Bishop could see they were now on the access road that led back to the highway. A little way ahead was the left turn he’d previously taken to get to the parking lot. Just past that intersection stood a uniformed cop doing vehicle checks. He was talking to the driver of an SUV, while two more vehicles waited their turn behind him.

Clea came to a stop behind the last car. Bishop saw the cop wave the SUV along and both cars in front inched forward a few feet. Clea followed suit.

‘I think I know that policeman,’ she said. ‘He’s been in my shop a few times with his wife.’

‘Recently?’

‘Uh, I think the last time was a couple of weeks ago.’

‘You know his name?’

‘If I do, I can’t remember it. I’m too scared.’

‘That’s okay. Just relax and try and act natural, Clea. Remember, you’re the only person in this car. Just ask what the problem is like anybody else would, and if he gets chatty say you don’t feel too good and you’re going home. That’s all there is to it. Okay?’

She took a deep breath, let it out. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Attagirl. You’ll be fine.’

Bishop looked out the window to his left and saw the two police cruisers were still parked in the same positions. He couldn’t see the other uniforms anywhere, though. They were probably searching the stores. Clea moved the car forward a few more feet and Bishop turned to look out the windshield. He saw the young cop stop the vehicle in front and lean in to talk with the driver. Bishop carefully lay down on the floor and pulled the blanket over himself until he was completely covered.

This was the worst part. It was all down to Clea now. If she freaked his only chance would be to use her as a hostage in order to get the cop’s gun. But he was in an extremely vulnerable position and couldn’t really see how that would work. All he could do was wait and see. If he heard something he didn’t like he’d just have to improvise somehow, without putting Clea in harm’s way.

The Explorer moved forward again and then came to a stop. Bishop heard the hum of an electric window being lowered, followed by Clea’s voice saying, ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Hey,’ a youthful sounding male voice said. ‘It’s Clea, right? From the craft shop?’

‘Oh, hello there. Did your wife like that basket you got for her?’

‘Yeah, she loved it. So, uh, you’re leaving a little early today, aren’t you?’

‘I, uh, started to feel a migraine coming on, so I thought I’d go home and rest my eyes for a while.’

‘Ah, sorry to hear that. Cousin of mine suffered from migraines a few years back so I know how painful they can get. What’s that you got in the back there?’

Bishop held his breath and remained perfectly still. Not moving a muscle.

‘Oh, uh, just some old blankets I picked up. I’m planning to convert them into ponchos and sell them in the shop. What’s going on anyway?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about. You head on home and take some Advil if you got ’em. They helped my cousin some. About the only things that did.’

‘I will,’ Clea said. ‘Thanks.’

Then the car was moving. Bishop heard the window being raised and waited a few more beats before he removed the blanket and raised his head to peer out the back. He saw the cop back there was now talking to the driver of a station wagon.

Strickland’s muffled voice said, ‘Are we good?’

‘Yeah, we got through,’ Bishop said and faced front again. They were approaching the intersection. The lights were red. ‘That was real fine, Clea. You’re a natural.’

‘I was just terrified of what might happen if I screwed up. So I did what you wanted. Now what happens?’

‘Now take us back to your place.’

Clea let out another groan. ‘God, I was afraid you were going to say that.’

Wellerby was situated about five or six miles south of Cramer and barely qualified as a town. There was a post office and a diner and a bar on the main road, and Bishop also spotted road signs for a local school and library nearby, but every other building off the main strip seemed to be residential. Once Clea turned off into a side street the gaps between the few visible houses and ranches gradually became larger, and the streetlights became fewer. There were also no road markings and no sidewalks.

Gentle suburbia in the high country.

It was ten past six and already getting a lot darker and a lot colder. Night fell fast around these parts, probably due to the high altitude. Once the streetlights thinned out to nothing they had to rely on the Explorer’s headlights to see where they were going. Clea finally turned into a narrow tree-lined street and they passed three more houses on the left side, all set well back from the road, before stopping outside a garage next to a single-storey stucco house at the end. The house looked fairly new and had a neat front porch. In the large front yard, a thick copse of evergreens obscured the view of her nearest neighbour a hundred feet away. There were no houses opposite.

‘Pretty isolated around here,’ Bishop said.

Clea killed the engine. ‘That was one of the main reasons we originally bought this place. I’m already regretting it.’

‘Don’t. We’ll be out of your life soon and you’ll be no worse for wear.’

‘I really wish I could believe you.’

‘Hey, get me out of here,’ Strickland said from the rear. ‘I feel like I’m suffocating.’

‘Christ, my back’s killing me,’ Strickland said, stretching, after Bishop had helped him out. ‘Next time
you
get to go in the back.’

‘Sure. Next time.’

Bishop motioned for Clea to go first and both men followed her over to the front porch. He still felt bad about this whole situation, but with the cops closing in he’d been out of other options. Hopefully, they could soon retreat from this poor woman’s life with the same ease with which they’d entered it.

As she inserted the key into the lock, he said, ‘You keep any guns on the property?’

She paused. ‘There’s an old shotgun in the basement, but it’s not loaded. It’s probably rusted by now.’

‘Just that? Nothing else?’

Clea opened the door. ‘Nothing else. I don’t like guns.’

‘Good for you,’ Bishop said, and followed her into the house.

She turned on the lights and led them down a long hallway with doors on either side, along with some framed photos on the walls. Some were prints, but there were also a couple of shots of Clea posing with a little girl, who had to be her daughter, Lucy. She looked a little younger than Barney, but Bishop had no idea when the photos had been taken. The click-clack of their shoes on the hardwood floor echoed throughout the house until they finally entered a large kitchen and dining area at the end. Bishop noticed the room was as neat and tidy as the vehicle they’d just left.

Bishop spotted the large refrigerator against one wall and said, ‘How are you stocked for food? We haven’t eaten anything solid in a while.’

‘I’ve got some T-bone steaks in the freezer,’ Clea said. ‘And some eggs, I think. And there are some canned vegetables in the cupboard. So should I now consider myself your prisoner?’

Bishop took a seat at the table and brushed his hand over his head. ‘If you want. But we’re not here to hurt you so put that out of your mind. All we need is a place to lay low while I think through our next step.’

Strickland said, ‘We’ve sure had a day of it, all right. And it isn’t going to get better anytime soon.’

‘And how long are you planning on staying here?’ Clea asked.

‘An hour or so,’ Bishop said, ‘no longer. We really need to keep moving.’

‘In my Explorer.’

‘Afraid so. Unless you got another vehicle stashed away in the garage.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Got any atlases or maps in the house?’

‘Yes, I have a few in the garage.’

‘Good, I’ll need those. And do you have a satellite dish?’

She frowned. ‘Yes. Why?’

‘Because I want to check the news.’

The three of them watched the TV in the large living room at the front of the house. As expected, the massacre in Vegas was the hot story on all the major news channels. Bishop finally decided to stick with CNN, but it didn’t make any difference. They were all showing pretty much the same thing anyway.

For example, film of the destroyed house on Gulliver was almost always used as a backdrop while the studio anchors attempted to give their own spin on what had happened. The footage was obviously taken not long after the incident, with police barriers already set up and plain-clothes detectives, uniforms, and crime scene technicians moving around the devastation, taking photos and marking evidence.

As for the story itself, there was plenty of conjecture and not much in the way of real facts, but one thing everybody seemed to agree on was that it had been a witness safe house, since the dead were all federal marshals. Clearly, nobody from the USMS was going to confirm any of that yet, but they didn’t need to. Three residents – one male, two female – living directly across the street each gave interviews saying that they’d overheard one of the first uniforms on the scene comment to his partner that all the dead bodies inside had federal marshal identification. The media simply worked out the rest for themselves.

And the body count was six, not seven. The same male eyewitness from before said he’d seen just one victim being loaded onto the first ambulance with an oxygen mask over his face, and that he’d been missing part of his left ear. Another reporter had found out where he’d been taken and somehow confirmed that the unnamed victim had lost a lot of blood and was still unconscious, but that there was a half-decent chance he’d pull through.

The ear part was enough for Bishop, though. The survivor was Frank Lomax. It had to be him.

After that, they moved onto the subject of the SUV speeding away from the scene, which had everybody buzzing with all kinds of theories. This was accompanied by the damning photo Clea had mentioned and, of course, it was the one taken by that jogger on his cell, which he’d immediately posted on his Twitter account for the whole world to see.

It showed both doors on the driver’s side, each one riddled with bullets, along with a three-quarter view of Bishop’s face as he was turning away from the camera. It was far from a perfect likeness, but anybody who knew Bishop would know straight away it was him. Strickland could also be seen clearly in the back as he said something to Bishop, but it was a profile shot so it wasn’t quite as obvious. And behind Strickland was the silhouette of a boy who could have been anyone. That was something to be grateful for, at least.

It got worse, though. Much worse.

The jogger, whose name was Amos Martin, was actually interviewed on camera, still wearing the same red tracksuit, and he said, ‘Just before I took the shot, the driver lowered his window and I could hear the guy in the back saying, “
Just let us out of here
,”
or something like that and the driver tossed this GPS tracker out of the window and said
,
“
Forget it, there’s no way I’m letting you go
,”
then he saw me and just sped off like a bat out of hell
.
But it was obvious to me that he was holding the guy and the kid against their will, man. I mean, you can see clear as day that those two in the back have been cuffed. It was only later on I found out about the shootout a few blocks away and put two and two together.’

It wasn’t quite clear as day, but Bishop could see how anybody might get the wrong idea. In the photo Strickland was leaning forward with his arms down at his side and his hands out of shot, and Barney was in a similar position. And the dialogue Martin had spouted wasn’t a million miles away from what had been said, but taken out of context it could easily be conceived as meaning something entirely different, which was clearly the case here.