The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (19 page)

Olsen swallowed, his larynx bobbing in his throat. ”You pay an awful lot of attention to the way a man looks,” he said, trying to sound flippant, but the words were undercut by anxiety, aggression, and fear.

“The business I used to be in,” Milton said, “it paid to be observant.”

“The army.”

“No. Something I did after that.”

“Yeah? I was going to say, you get a man paying that much attention to how another man looks, you get to fixing that other man might be a homosexual.”

He turned his head and looked at Milton as he delivered that riposte, his lip curling in ugly pleasure, the barb a decoy to try to deflect attention from his hand as it drifted down to his holster, the retention strap already loose and the .45 calibre semi-auto ready to be pulled out and used.

Milton jabbed his left elbow into Olsen’s gut, hard. The officer grunted in surprise as he pulled the gun, catching the bump of the pistol’s rear sight on the holster, yanking it again and freeing it just as Milton swept his hand sideways into Olsen’s face. The man might have been stupid, but he was cunning, full of adrenaline and primed for action. He brought his right hand up to block the blow, their wrists clashing, and then, just barely managing to keep the car on the road, he drove the point of his elbow into Milton’s face. The bony joint connected with Milton’s cheekbone, sending a coruscation of pain into his brain, distracting him just long enough for Olsen to jerk his hand again and bring the gun out of its holster.

He tried to aim.

Milton blocked Olsen’s gun arm, but then his seat belt caught, restraining him. Olsen had leverage on him.

There was no time for anything else.

With his left hand, Milton stabbed down at the base of Olsen’s seat, his fingers jabbing into the seat-belt mechanism and releasing it, and then he pulled down as hard as he could on the wheel, clockwise, turning the cruiser against the direction of travel.

The rubber bit on the wet road even as the momentum of the big car continued along the road. There was more than enough force to skid the back end out, and then, the wheels now perpendicular to the direction of travel, the rubber bit again and the cruiser flipped over onto its side and rolled.

Milton braced his arms and legs as his seat belt pulled for a second time. His head smashed into the side window as the airbags deployed, the car striking down onto its roof and then rolling over a second, third, and fourth time. His knees were crushed against the dashboard, and shards of glass cast over him as the front and side windows crashed over him.

The car rolled again, the momentum draining away, finally coming to rest on Milton’s side.

Milton found that he had closed his eyes. He felt a heavy weight against his shoulder, and when he opened them, he saw that Olsen had been thrown out of his seat and, eventually, on top of him. His face was a bloodied pulp, with tiny fragments of glass peppering his wounds. His head, when Milton worked his shoulder away from underneath it, flopped loosely on a snapped neck.

He braced Olsen’s body and looked around. The interior of the cruiser had been badly damaged and was covered in glass, but he had known that a modern car like this would have been built around a steel alloy safety cage with crumple zones that would absorb the impetus of the roll. All seven airbags had deployed, and the talcum powder that kept them pliable was drifting down, coating the dented chassis and flattened roof in a soft white snow.

Milton reached his right hand down through the remains of the window and braced it on the asphalt as he released his seat belt. He took his weight on his arm and right leg and worked his way to a crouching position. He dragged Olsen’s body down with him until his shoulders were square to the road and his legs pointed back up towards the sky. Milton kicked out the rest of the front windshield and slithered clear.

He looked back for Olsen’s gun, but it wasn’t obvious where it had fallen, and he knew he didn’t have the time to make a careful search for it. It might even have been thrown clear of the car. Probing his body with his fingers, scouring it for pain that might signal a problem, he started to jog back to town. When all he felt were the aches and pains of incipient contusions, he picked up speed.

He was suddenly, and certainly, very afraid indeed.

THE CAR had crashed a mile out of Truth. Milton ran back, eventually coming up on the big houses that were set in spacious plots on the outskirts of town. The first house he reached had a pair of metal gates and then, behind them, a wide driveway with a Ford Explorer parked next to a closed garage. Milton tested the gates, noted that they felt secure, and so, rather than trying to force them, reached up to the top bar and hauled himself up and over. He dropped down onto the gravel and triggered a security light, the bright white flooding the driveway and the fringes of the garden.

The Explorer was locked, so he took a stone from the garden and used it to punch through the window. He opened the door, swept glass off the seat, and slid inside. Working as quickly as he could, he pulled off the plastic housing and hot-wired the engine.

Lights flicked on in the downstairs windows, and then the owner of the house threw open the door and rushed out into the driveway, his dressing gown flapping behind him.

There was a remote control stuck to the dash, and Milton pressed it, the gates splitting apart. He spun the wheel, sliding the car onto the road and punching the gas. He saw in the mirror that the homeowner had followed him out into the road. The man disappeared behind him as he raced away into town.

Milton tried to guess what must have happened. Olsen had intended to take him out, that much was clear. Why? He thought of the tattoo that he shared with the men in the jail. They must all be connected. He had been right: they
were
getting support from the town.

Did it stop with Olsen or were the local police complicit, too?

Lundquist?

That seemed likely.

Lester?

He would have to assume that they were all swept up in it until he knew better.

And that would mean that the young men were free or were about to be freed.

So, choices.

He could go back to the Sheriff’s Office.

But they would be armed, and he had left his rifle behind.

Ellie?

What about her?

It might be too late to help.

And then he thought of Mallory and Arthur, alone and oblivious to what was happening.

If the conspirators were intent on taking him out, the Stantons would be next on their list. If there was a conspiracy, Mallory and Arty were witnesses to it. They would need to be put out of the way.

He fumbled in his jeans pocket for the address that Mallory had given him.

The field out back of a trailer park.

Milton pressed the pedal all the way to the floor, the dial touching sixty and still climbing.

Ellie
.

She was tough and smart. She wouldn’t do anything stupid.

He would go back for her as soon as he had brought the Stantons to safety.

And if they had hurt her, he would make them pay.

He prayed he wasn’t too late.

MORRIS FINCH arrived in his van five minutes after Lars had taken Milton away to dispose of him. Finch opened the door and Lundquist pushed Ellie Flowers into the back. They had cuffed her in the office and taken her out the rear exit, out of sight, just in case someone was walking by. He considered himself a quick thinker, but people in town knew that Flowers was an FBI agent, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to come up with a good reason why he had her in custody. Much better to keep it all on the Down Low.

Finch was a big man, red faced, and heavy around the waist. Checkered suspenders strained to hold up his jeans. A huge scar zigzagged across his bald head. The pockets of his plaid western shirt bulged with pens, his spectacles, and packets of More cigars.

“You ready, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“Yes.”

“Up to the farm?”

“No,” Lundquist said. “Change of plan.”

“Where to?”

“The Stanton RV. Head over there. Don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t trust Michael as far as I can throw him. He gets excited, and then he’s not liable to think straight. Same thing goes for his boys. I should have gone there in the first place, got those kids my good self.”

“Right you are. You coming in the van?”

“I’ll take my cruiser.”

Lundquist looked back at the office as he pulled out into the street. He thought of Lester’s body laid out on his back, his eyes still open. That was that. He loved the History Channel and he especially loved their shows on old battles. He thought of how Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, leading them beyond the point of no return.

No retreat for him and the militia now, either.

Whatever came next, they were committed.

No turning back.

MALLORY STANTON cracked four eggs into a bowl, added milk and cheese, and whisked them together. She hadn’t eaten properly since the morning, and she was hungry. Arthur said that he was hungry, too, that the boys only fed him now and again when they felt like it. She was in the galley, and she turned to look down into the RV’s salon. Her brother was sitting on the bench, staring intently at the Packers game on the small TV that sat on the table. She felt a sudden blast of love and affection for him. He had no one apart from her. She had no one, either.

She would do anything for him.

She took a loaf of bread from the cupboard. It was stale, only barely edible, but she figured it would be better once it was toasted. She dropped two slices into the toaster and pulled down the slider when there was a knock on the door.

“Mallory?” Arthur said nervously.

“You expecting anyone?”

“No.”

“Perhaps it’s Mr. Milton.”

She wiped her hands on a dishcloth and went to the door. She opened it. Leland Mulligan was standing there. He was holding a large flashlight, and his first movement was to bring it up and point it at her. She shielded her eyes and looked away. “Fuck’s sake, Leland, point that thing somewhere else.”

“Sorry, Mallory,” he said, with that same awkwardness that she had always found so irritating.

She had never quite gotten used to the idea of Leland Mulligan as a sheriff’s deputy. She was no expert on such matters, obviously, but she would have imagined that a man like him was about as useful for keeping the peace as lips on a duck. Leland was four years her senior, but Truth was a tiny town, and it was inevitable that their paths would cross. Mallory had been to high school with Leland’s younger brother, Kurt, and it had become something of a standing joke between her and her limited circle of friends that the older boy had a crush on her. From what she had been able to gather, Leland had been a poor student, disruptive, something of a bully and not particularly bright. He had graduated with no qualifications and had worked in his father’s autorepair shop for a year, spending his wages on booze, smokes, and a collection of the most awful tattoos that Mallory had ever seen. And then he had joined the police.

He was wearing his uniform tonight, and it looked, as it always did, both ill-fitting and incongruous.

“What do you want, Leland?”

“I need you to come with me,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m serious. I need to ask you some questions.”

“You need to?”

“That’s right.”

“About what?”

“Your brother. What he saw, those fellas he was up there with. It’s him I really need to talk to, but, the way he is, you know, I guess I probably need you to come, too.”

“The way he is?”

He picked his words carefully. “You know. The retardation.”

“Arty’s not the retard, Leland.”

The barb flew right over his head. “I’m trying to be sensitive, Mallory. To his needs. I don’t want him to be frightened.”

“He’s got nothing to be frightened of. And anyway, it’s irrelevant because he’s not going anywhere tonight. We just got back. I don’t know if you heard, Leland, but we just trekked down from the lake in this shitty weather. We’re both cold and hungry, and we just want to get something to eat and go to bed, all right? If you need to speak to him, we’ll come by the Sheriff’s Office tomorrow morning.”

Irritation flickered across his face. “No, Mallory, not all right. You need to come right now. I’m not asking you, understand? I’m speaking as an officer of the law.”

She laughed in his face. “Oh, fuck off, Leland. You can’t get us to come tonight, and you know it.”

The colour in his face darkened, and she was reminded of the bully in him. He was ready to insist again when he was shouldered out of the way. He dropped the flashlight onto its end, and the light fired straight up for a moment, throwing a sick yellow glow up onto the face of Michael Callow. The batteries spilled out and the light went off. Callow reached up into the doorway, grabbed her wrist in a strong hand, and yanked her out and down to the ground. She caught her toe on the paving stone they had in front of the door and fell onto her hands and knees. Callow yanked on her arm again, throwing her behind him. Her face splashed through the mud, and when she looked up, she saw Callow climbing into the RV and the three other men in his gang coming towards her.

“Arty!” she screamed.

There was the sound of a scuffle inside the RV, something falling to the floor and shattering, and then raised voices.

“Arty!”

“Shut up,” Eric Sellar said, knotting his fist in the fabric at the back of her T-shirt and hauling her to her knees. He was tall and gangly, with a dramatically cleft chin; thin, slicked-back hair; and long sideburns.

She heard Arty’s voice from the RV, angry, and then the sound of an impact and a heavy weight dropping to the floor, squeaking the suspension. Callow reappeared in the doorway, backing out, his arms wrapped around Arty’s chest. Callow dropped him outside into the muck and jumped down after him.

“Arty!”

He was dazed, his eyes swimming.

“He hurt my fist,” Callow said, shaking out his fingers. “What’s he got in that spastic head of his? Sand?”