The White Mountain (4 page)

Light filled the room. 
Randall crossed his arms and continued to survey the area.

Mary got up, hobbled over and
stood beside him.  She said, “If you knew this was coming, why’re you still
here?  Why aren’t you hiding?”

“Home field advantage.  Don’t
matter where I am.  If they’re coming, they’re coming.  Ain’t nothing I can do
to stop them.”

She grabbed his arm and tried
to turn his body, her tiny hand barely wrapping around a third of his bicep. 
When she couldn’t budge him, she said, “Look at me.”

He turned.  Solemn.  Waiting.

“What about Jesse?  My
sister?  You’ve been leaving them here alone, for days at a time?  What in the
hell is wrong with you?”  She slapped his shoulder.  “What if they showed up
while you were hundreds of miles away?  What if you got home and one of your
stupid—one of your stupid
assassins
had put a bullet in their heads? 
What then, huh?  What then?”

She reached up to smack him
again, but with a quick flash of his hand, Randall caught her by the wrist.

He glanced down the hallway,
lowered his voice and said, “You think I’m that stupid?  I ain’t gone
anywhere.  Never.”

“But you were just in—”

“Don’t you say a word of this
to Walls.  Promise me that.”  He shook her arm.  “Promise me.”

Mary searched his face for
some meaning, hoping for some understanding.  “Okay, not a word.  But what’s—”

He released his grip.  “Sniper,
Mary.  Remember?  I hide, out there,” he said, shoving a finger toward the
field.  “I don’t eat.  I don’t sleep.  I piss my pants if I have to.  But I
wait, and I watch, hoping one of ‘em slips into the crosshairs.”

“Who?”

“Whoever’s coming.”

“You were here last night?”

He nodded.  “Yeah, but I
screwed up.  Damn it, did I ever screw up good.  First time the weakness ever
got to me.  I crawled down to the house to get out of the rain, hid my rifle
under the porch, and switched it with the shotgun.  I keep it there for close
range emergencies.”  He rubbed his forehead.  “Ten minutes of shut-eye.  That’s
it, that’s all I wanted.  By the time I woke up, he was in the front yard.”

Mary felt the realization,
the understanding, illuminate her mind as it prickled her skin.  She leaned
forward and whispered, “You were the shadow man.”

Randall put his hands behind
his head, interlocking his fingers as he looked up to the ceiling.  “I tried to
take him out with my knife so I wouldn’t wake them up, but God he was quick.  Like
if you were fast-forwarding through a Bruce Lee movie.  If he hadn’t slipped on
this baseball bat Jesse left out in the yard, y’all would be zipping me up in a
black bag right about now.”

“He tripped?”

“Fell flat on his ass and
then was up and moving before I had a chance to get on him.” 

Mary listened as Randall
explained the rest of the story.  The chicken coop, firing the shotgun and
escaping before Alice could spot him outside, hiding in the barn in case any
more came, at least until he saw her arrive.  But as a trained investigator,
she’d learned to pick out the unspoken details.  Some of his story made sense,
some of it didn’t.  She said, “Not a word to Walls, I promised you that, but
what’re you hiding?”

“Hiding?”

“One, if he’s a trained
killer, why would he be stupid enough to run into a confined space with no
escape route—”

“Didn’t make sense to me neither.”

“—and two, an expensive
business suit doesn’t seem like the best choice of clothing to sneak up on
somebody.”

Randall squinted and frowned,
shook his head.  “I don’t—what business suit?”

“Come on.  You know it won’t
work on me.”

“What suit, Mary?”

“Outside.  The dead guy. 
He’s wearing a suit.”

“A suit?”

“Listen to me, self-defense
is one thing, but whatever happened, if you murdered somebody, even by
accident, if you’re trying to cover it up with this insane story about people
coming after you, then I think it’s best that we get the truth out there.  I
can’t cover that up for you.  I can’t risk—”

“Damn it, would you hush for
a second?  He had on fatigues and a balaclava, not a suit.”

Mary studied his face.  After
years of reading body language, picking up on micro-expressions, learning to
single out the subtle lie interspersed amongst a mountain of half-truths, she
was confident in the accuracy of her judgments. 

He had no idea what she was
talking about.

“You didn’t take a closer
look after you shot him?”

“Shit.  No.  I was in—it was
dark.  I looked in through the hole in the door, saw a body, and got the hell
outta there.”

“You didn’t check to see if
he was dead?”

“Twelve-gauge at close range,
didn’t figure I needed to.”

“And you just left him there?”

“And do what?  Bury him? 
Have some stray dog dig up a bone in a couple of years and go to prison?  You
got to admit, Henry and those other jackasses that call themselves detectives
ain’t the sharpest tools in the shed.  Seemed to me it was a safer bet to let
them screw things up than screw it up myself.”

“I guess,” Mary said.  He had
a point.  Not a good one, but a point.  Walls was capable, but he didn’t have a
pristine record of solving cases, botching more than should’ve been allowed by
his superiors.  “Then the real question is…who’d you shoot?”

CHAPTER 4

They walked together across
the yard, out to where Walls stood with the others.  Randall took shortened
strides, allowing Mary the pace she needed to limp along.  Pillowing, gray
clouds had overwhelmed the blue sky and a fine sprinkle peppered their backs as
they went.  The incoming front had pushed the humidity away and replaced it
with a cool breeze that flicked Mary’s ponytail over her shoulder.

To their left, by the old hog
pen overtaken by weeds and decades of neglect, Alice and Jesse kicked a soccer
ball back and forth.  Mary wished her older sister was thoughtful enough to distract
him in the house, out of the rain, out of the line of sight of a crime scene,
but that was Alice.  Well-meaning with a severe lack of foresight or
comprehension.   

She’d always been that way,
as far back as Mary could remember.  Like the time she tried to dry their
daddy’s shirt in the oven, and the time she decided the cat needed a haircut,
with scissors, because it was too hot outside.  Alice’s lack of common sense
left Mary with the challenge of taking care of the household after their mother
passed away from an aneurysm and their father worked three jobs to pay the
bills.  It was the role of being the protector, of being the one in charge, which
had led Mary to the blue uniform and a gun on her hip.  After Sledge had ruined
her leg, he’d inadvertently demolished her sense of purpose in the process.

The fact that he was gone,
dead and gone, had done little to reestablish the person she’d been.  Sure,
some confidence had returned after that night, but she remained broken,
incomplete, and unmotivated to do anything more than take the sparse jobs that
slid across her desk at Walker Investigations.

It was the leg.  Always the
leg.

Physical damage courtesy of
Sledge.  Mental limitations courtesy of her own shaken psyche.

Mary watched with envy as
Alice skipped to the side and stopped the soccer ball from rolling past.  She
knew that she’d never be able to play like that with her own children.  That
is, if she ever changed her mind about having any.

She turned away, looked up at
Randall and said, “Shouldn’t they be in the house?  What if he comes back?”

“Not in broad daylight, he
won’t.  Thinks he’s got me fooled, he’ll bide his time, wait until he thinks
I’ve let my guard down.  The bigger problem is, once I take care of
him
,
how many more’s lined up behind him?”

“And for how long?” Mary
added.  As they approached Walls, where he stood beside Baumgartner while
Tucker and Gordon continued to scour the area, she whispered, “Don’t forget
what I said inside.  Henry’s already suspicious, so be helpful, but don’t act
too curious about the body.”

“Quit your worrying.  Still
got my butt planted firmly on the turnip truck.”

“I’m serious, Randall.  He’s
not smart enough to figure things out on his own but don’t give him any
handouts, got it?”

“I didn’t survive a hundred
trips into the bush by not following orders and it ain’t about to happen now.”

“And your boss can confirm
that you were out of town?”

“For the third damn time,
yes.  That old man will do anything for an extra nickel.  Fake some paperwork,
answer some questions if he’s asked.  Lucky enough, he hates Walls as much as I
do, so we’re good there, too.”

“If you say so.”

***

Randall walked over, examined
the dead man’s face, and shrugged.  “Never seen him,” he said when Walls asked
if he looked familiar.

Moments later, a wall of rain
barreled through, sending everyone scurrying for cover inside the broken-down
tool shed adjacent to the chicken coop.  Everyone except for Tucker and Gordon,
who scrambled around, trying to complete their sweep before the deluge could
wash away any more evidence.  As the fat drops pounded on the rusty tin roof
and thunder echoed throughout the valley, Baumgartner napped on a bench while
Randall calmly answered whatever Walls asked.  He told the truth when it was
appropriate and lied when it was necessary.

Mary watched and listened. 
She realized that if she hadn’t known what the actual details were, she
wouldn’t have been able to tell if Randall was lying either.  He was good. 
Subtle.  Adept at sticking to the minutiae of his story, parrying Walls’
disbelief and probing questions with assured insistence that he was indeed
being hunted.

No, he didn’t know who the
dead man was.

No, he had no idea who
could’ve shot him.

Yes, he’d recently been in
Memphis.

No, he didn’t have any
enemies in Smythville.

No, he had no clue why the
victim exhibited signs of rope burns around his wrists.

Yes, he agreed that the
location and the timing of the shooting seemed odd.

Yes, it was confusing and
didn’t make any sense.

No, no, no, and no again, he
wasn’t lying about the list.

An ambulance arrived to
remove the body.  Tucker and Gordon surrendered to the rain, packed what little
evidence they’d gathered, and left.  Baumgartner woke up, mumbling something
about the inconvenience of another cold corpse in his morgue, pulled his jacket
over his head, and stepped out into the downpour without saying goodbye.  When
he was gone, Walls went through another round of questions, digging for some
unknown truth, and then finally gave up and left with a guarantee that he’d be
back, and insistence that Randall remain in town until they could identify the
victim.

Mary waited until the
detective’s taillights disappeared down the driveway, then said, “Where’d you
learn to lie like that?”

“Interrogation training.”

“You could’ve convinced him
you were the Easter Bunny.”

“Nah.  As much as I hate to
admit it, he’s got a few lights on in the house.  Knows something’s up but
can’t put his finger on it.”

“Don’t give him credit for
being able to find his dick in the dark.  You did a damn good job of steering
him in the wrong direction.  Almost too good.”

“Think so?”

“Good enough to wonder if you
were lying to
me
.”  She let her eye contact linger, testing him.

Randall gave her a
half-smile.  “Hell, I know better.  I’d rather be on the wrong side of Henry
than you, any day.”  He put a hand on her shoulder.  “Come on, let’s go have a
look in that coop, see if they missed anything.  You think you can get over
there without slipping?”

“Don’t baby me.  I’ll be
fine.”

Hunched over, as if lowering
their profiles would protect them from the liquid onslaught, with Randall
leading and Mary following as best as she could, they hustled fifty feet over
to the chicken coop and ducked inside.  Mary’s leg throbbed, sending each pulse
of pain shooting up into her back and all the way down to her toes.  She hoped
Jimmy would be awake by the time she got home. 

She checked her watch. 
11:30. She hated to ask after he’d spent another long night manning the
airwaves at the local country station, but the want for a massage had stampeded
into a need. 

Mary wiped her face with a
sleeve.  Randall did the same.

“They went over this place so
many times, hard to believe they would’ve missed anything,” she said.

Randall stooped down and
examined the floor.  There hadn’t been chickens on the farm in twenty years and
the dried layer of filth had disintegrated into nothing more than a dusty mess. 
“Might as well forget about finding any footprints.  Look at it, would you? 
They stomped all over the place.”