The Searcher (33 page)

M
ULCAHY LOOKED ACROSS AT
T
íO.

“This your plan?”

Tío stared ahead with the same weird look Mulcahy had seen before, his eyes flat and defocused, like he was on something, saying nothing.

They had been zip-tied and bundled in the back of a DEA paddy wagon without so much as a word and were now being driven through town at speed. They both had guards on either side of them in full combat gear and tactical masks that hid their faces. It all seemed a little anticlimactic. There had to be an angle in this. Tío had bought his way out of jail before, maybe he planned on doing it again. But where would that leave him?

Mulcahy stared out of the narrow window at the town rushing past, streets he had driven down freely only a few short hours ago. He tried to think his way back and see if there was anything he could have done differently, but he couldn't see it. All roads led here. He had always been bound to do whatever Tío wanted him to do.

“Did you ever plan to let my pop go?” he asked.

Tío looked at him and smiled. “You haven't fulfilled your half of the bargain yet.”

They passed the church and the building where the police station was housed. The van didn't slow, which made his heartbeat quicken.

Where were they taking them?

He watched the mine slip past, then the chain-link fence and the lines of aircraft beyond it lit by rows of lights that cast jagged shadows on the ground. He was right back where he had started that morning, waiting for the plane that would never show. The van slowed and slipped through a gateway then under the vast expanse of an aircraft wing.

“Look at these things,” Tío said, “powerful enough to fly to the very edge of space, enough firepower to destroy a town, now rotting away in the desert. How many people you think are dead because of this one plane?”

Mulcahy shook his head. It was déjà vu. Not only was he back where he'd started, he was having to listen to the same shit too. Perhaps he'd died and this was his own tailor-made form of purgatory.

The van slowed then stopped in front of a large hangar. The rear doors opened with a gust of cool evening air, and the guards stood them up and maneuvered them outside.

Morgan appeared from inside the hangar, walked over to someone who seemed to be in charge, and spoke to him for a few seconds. The man in command nodded, then looked around, checking that there was no one else there, and walked back over to him and Tío. A knife appeared in his hand and for one moment Mulcahy thought he might kill Tío right there. Instead he slipped it between Tío's wrists and snicked it upward, cutting the zip tie free.

Tío rubbed his wrists and turned to Mulcahy. “This was my move,” he said. “If you know there's going to be DEA waiting for you, make
sure they're bought and paid for.” He turned to the commander and took the knife from him. “Go back to the church and get to work,” he said. “I want you to tear the beating heart out of this community. Just leave me a piece and a couple of your men.”

The commander pulled an FN Five-seven from his holster and handed it to Tío. “I'll stay,” he said. “You pay me to protect you, so I'd feel better if I was close enough to do it.” He beckoned another guard over, one of the soldiers in full combat gear, his face hidden and sinister behind combat mask and visor. “The rest of you head back to town.” He turned to Morgan. “You too. You don't need to be here for this.”

Morgan looked at Tío, then the commander, nodded and left.

Tío stepped forward and snicked Mulcahy's ties free then handed him the knife. Mulcahy studied it. It was seven inches long with a sturdy quillon, sharp enough for paring skin from muscle and solid enough not to bend. He didn't need to ask what it was for.

“You still want to save your father?” Tío said. He turned to the commander, who handed him the framed photographs of his dead daughters and the printout of the blackened skull. “Help me get the name of the bastard who ordered my son's death.” Then he turned and walked into the hangar.

S
OLOMON HEARD THE VAN APPROACH, THEN VOICES OUTSIDE AND FOOT
steps approaching.

He was hanging by the arms from a steel beam that spanned the width of the hangar. The rope bound his wrists and was pulled so tight he practically had to stand on tiptoe to relieve the pain in his shoulders. Morgan had ordered him to take his jacket and shirt off before stringing him up. The gun pointed at Holly had ensured he had obeyed. Holly was tied up next to him and hanging from the same beam. He had not made her strip down, which suggested to Solomon that whatever was coming was coming to him.

He heard footsteps approaching from behind, then a man stepped into view, short and squat and with thinning black hair and bad skin. He walked past Solomon and made his way over to a workbench lined with neat racks of tools. He took three photographs and carefully arranged them along it, taking his time, getting it right according to some design he carried in his head. Two were framed and were of young women, smiling at the camera with some reserve and some intelligence in their eyes. The third showed a skull, blackened by fire,
a rectangle of metal bolted onto it. It wasn't framed and he had to rest this one against an oilcan and hold it in place with a wrench.

“
¿Quien te envió?
” the man asked, when the pictures were in place.

Solomon studied the photographs, the girls clearly related, sisters probably, the blackened skull still unfathomable but a portent of nothing good.

“Who sent you?” he repeated, in English this time, and turned to face him. He resembled the young women in the photographs, or they looked like him, which was unfortunate for them. Solomon guessed the skull might have resembled him too before the fire burned everything away.

“My family,” the man said, following his stare. “My flesh. My blood. My bone. All rotting now. All gone. These people called me Papa. Everyone else calls me Papa Tío. You heard of me?” Solomon shook his head. “Yes you have. Now tell me who sent you.”

“I haven't heard of you,” Solomon said. “And nobody sent me.”

Tío nodded at someone unseen and Solomon felt the rope bite into his wrists as it was pulled tighter.

The knife felt cold when it first touched his skin then flared into white heat as it started to cut. He could feel the burn of it as it sliced through his flesh—just below the skin, above the muscle—severing capillaries and nerve endings in a sensation so intense and so far beyond pain that it almost flipped over into pleasure. Solomon gasped and shuddered and tried not to howl while the waves of whatever he was feeling washed over him then gradually ebbed away. Hot blood spread down his back and dripped onto the oil-dappled concrete. It felt like someone was pouring hot water down his back.

He opened his eyes and looked over at Holly. She was staring at him wide-eyed, her shock rising to new levels with each atrocity she was forced to bear witness to. Solomon winked at her to reassure her,
or himself, because he had no idea how this was going to pan out. He looked back at the photographs on the workbench. “Who's the skull?”

Tío stared at him with his dead eyes. “You know who he was. You know who I am and you know who he was too.”

“No. I don't.”

“Then let me tell you. He was the reason I did everything, the reason I breathed in and out and got out of bed in the morning. I heard someone say that having kids gives you a reason to live the second half of your life. That's true. Only someone took away my reasons, piece by piece, and I think you know who it was. So if I have to cut it out of you piece by piece to find out what you know, I will. I got nothing left but time.”

He nodded at the knife man standing behind Solomon, the man who had sliced him and was about to slice him again, in all the same places the old man had been cut.

“Wait!” Solomon said, realizing something. He turned as much as he could and spoke to whoever was behind him. “What's your name?”

“What does it matter?” a voice replied.

“Kind of intimate, don't you think? You sliding a knife into me, slicing bits of me away. The least you can do is give me your name.”

“Michael,” said the voice. “Michael Mulcahy.”

“Are you two gonna start fucking or are we going to get on with this?” Tío said.

Solomon ignored him, chasing something down now, making sure his next question was loud enough for Tío to hear. “Tell me, Michael, why did you stage the torture of Old Man Tucker?”

Tío's eyes moved to Mulcahy. “What's that?”

“The cuts in the skin were all made postmortem. I wondered at the time why Ellie Tucker hadn't been alerted by the screams of her dying father—she didn't know he was dead when she came out to find me.
And how come you didn't lock her up more securely, kill her even—a blind girl taken by surprise should have been no trouble for someone like you. Then it occurred to me that she might not have heard any screams because there hadn't been any. You killed him quickly, mercifully even, a quick stab to the heart that made him bleed out fast and would have killed him in seconds. Then you made it appear like he'd been tortured. Why do that?”

Tío pulled his gun from his waistband and pointed it at Mulcahy. The commander and the guard pointed their weapons too. “That's a good question,” Tío said. “Why
would
you do that?”

Mulcahy walked forward so Solomon could see him. He was holding a bloodied knife in his hand and studying it like he had never seen it before. “It was the blood, wasn't it?” he said, seemingly untroubled by the fact that three loaded guns were being pointed directly at him. “The cuts were too clean because the old man had already bled out.”

Tío shook his head and pulled a phone from his pocket. “You know the only reason I haven't put a bullet in your head is because I want to see your face when you listen to your piece-of-shit father die in agony.” He pressed a button to speed-dial a number and put it on speakerphone. The sound of ringing echoed in the hangar. Nobody picked up. “The fuck?” Tío checked his phone and dialed the number again.

“They're not going to answer,” Mulcahy said, looking up from the knife. “My father has been safe for about an hour now. The guys who were holding him don't work for you anymore, Tío. None of us does. Things change. People change. You're not in charge any longer.”

The commander and the guard shifted position so their guns were now pointing at Tío. Tío looked at them then back at Mulcahy like he had just sprouted horns. “Are you serious? Who is in charge then? You?” He laughed and pointed at Holly with the barrel of his gun. “Her?”

“Me,” the other guard said, his voice sounding muffled behind his full-face mask. Tío whirled around and pointed his gun at him. “You don't want to shoot me,” the guard said, and the gun dipped as Tío recognized something now in the voice.

The guard crouched slowly and laid his automatic rifle on the ground. Then he rose back up and unclipped the side fastening of the mask. He slipped it off along with his visor and helmet, revealing a six-inch scar on the side of his head. “Hello, Papa,” Ramon said. “Did you miss me?”

Tío stared at his dead son. Mouth open.

“Put the gun down, Papa,” Ramon said. “I think we need to talk.”

C
ASSIDY WATCHED THE TRUCK PULL UP BY THE CHURCH AND THE SOLDIERS
get out.

He was standing by his study window, the lights switched off, the shutter open enough for him to see outside but not enough for people to see in. He didn't want anyone to know he was there. He told himself this was sensible, given the situation, but in some deep-down part of himself where he buried the things he didn't like to look at he knew the real truth. And the truth was, he was scared.

He had thought that with the arrival of the DEA task force he would have felt secure, that this would have drawn a line under his fears for the town. Morgan certainly seemed happier. He could see him out of his window now, talking to one of the soldiers and pointing at the church. More soldiers appeared next to him and began unloading things from the back of the van, big black boxes that took two men to lift. They carried them down the path, shuffling toward the church with straight backs and bent knees, and started stacking them by the door.

Cassidy considered heading out and offering to help, partly be
cause he wanted to be more instrumental in the defense of his town but also so he could find out what was in the crates. Morgan glanced over in his direction and Cassidy froze. He didn't want to give away with a movement the fact that he was there. He didn't know why he felt this but he did, and he indulged it. Morgan studied the house for a few minutes then looked away again.

Cassidy let out a breath and realized he had been holding it. He watched Morgan walk away, following the shuffling pairs of black-clad soldiers as they carried the crates toward the church. Morgan reached the door and opened it for them using a key only a few people in town had in their possession. Pete Tucker had been one. Jim Coronado too, briefly. It suddenly struck Cassidy that he was the only one of the three sheriffs left. Again, it put him in mind of the old-time westerns where some lone marshal played by Gary Cooper or John Wayne stood up to the outlaws for the sake of his town, though he didn't feel much like either of them at the moment. He felt more like the coward who hid in the barn until the shooting was over.

He watched the soldiers carrying the crates into the church and glanced over at the paneled door by the fireplace that led down to the tunnel connecting the house to the church. It had been built by Jack Cassidy in his later years when his fame had become a burden to him. The tunnel meant he could leave the sanctity of the residence library, appear like an apparition among the townsfolk to preach his weekly sermon, then be gone again before the prayers had ended.

Cassidy looked up at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. It had been painted in Jack's later years when success and money had softened the edges of him a little. His eyes had never softened though, and they seemed to be staring straight at him now, challenging him to stand up and be brave.

Cassidy took a deep breath then walked over to the paneled door
and felt inside the edge for the hidden catch. The door sprung open and he listened for a moment, trying to hear any sound that might have been communicated down the tunnel from the church. He heard nothing, not even distant voices.

He started down the stone steps, careful not to make a sound, and headed down into the earth and onward to the church.