Stephen Leather - The Long shot

She stepped into the room, a clean sheet and towel draped over one arm, and called out again, just in case he was in the bathroom. She gasped when she saw the feet sticking out from behind the bed, thinking that he was drunk again and that he’d fallen onto the floor. For the first time she noticed a buzzing noise, the sound an alarm clock might make if it was on a low setting. She walked further into the room and peered nervously around the bed. “Mr O’Brien?” she said, her voice trembling. She realised with a jolt that there were two pairs of legs, white and hairy, tied at the ankles. She dropped the sheet and towel as her hands flew to her mouth and she backed away, her breath coming in small, forced, gasps.

She ran down the stairs to reception and got the day manager, who picked up a baseball bat which he kept behind his desk. He held it in both hands as he went into the room, switching the light on and calling out the guest’s name. The manager had been in the hotel business a long time, and he knew that people did strange things in hotel rooms: they tied each other up, they took drugs, they did things to each other they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do in their own homes. He’d once found a woman swathed in polythene and tied spreadeagled to a bed after her boyfriend had collapsed in the bathroom with a heart attack. It would take a lot to surprise the manager. The buzzing noise got louder as he got closer to the end of the bed. He used his bat to gingerly prod one of the feet. There was no reaction so he stepped up to the window where he could look down on both bodies. They were men — big, heavy men — bound and gagged. There was blood, a lot of blood, and the manager could see several bullet wounds, gaping holes in the chests and heads. Flies buzzed around the wounds, feeding on the still-wet blood.

Howard drove home from the AA meeting to pack. If the snipers were indeed based on the East Coast it would be some time before he would be back in Phoenix. Lisa was in the kitchen, chopping herbs with a large knife and reading from a cookbook. “Home for lunch?” she said.

“I wish,” he said. He explained that he was flying to New York and that for the foreseeable future he would be working with the Counter-Terrorism section.

“Oh God,” she sighed, “what about dinner tonight?”

“I’m sorry, Lisa, you’ll have to handle it without me.”

“But Cole, this has been planned for weeks!” She threw the knife down on the chopping block and stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. “You’ll just have to tell them you can’t go!” Howard laughed, amused at her defiance. Only the daughter of Theodore Clayton would think of standing up to the FBI. His reaction only made her all the more angry. “You can fly out tomorrow,” she said, “A few hours won’t make a difference.”

“It’s an important case, honey, and a few hours might make all the difference. It’s the case your father has been helping me with.” Howard knew that invoking her father’s name was his best chance of defusing her anger.

Lisa shook her head, took off her apron and threw it down on top of the knife. “Cole, I don’t know why I put up with this,” she said.

“It’s my job,” he said, lamely.

“Well, it needn’t be,” she said. “You could accept the job Daddy keeps offering. Head of Security at Clayton Electronics would be a great career move. It would pay much more than the Bureau gives you. And you wouldn’t be sent off to the other side of the country at a minute’s notice.” Howard held his hands up in surrender. It was an argument they’d had many times, and it was one he’d never managed to win. “And it would mean the children would get to see more of their father,” she pressed.

“I have to pack,” said Howard, and he beat a hasty retreat. Lisa followed him up the stairs and stood behind him as he grabbed clean shirts from his wardrobe and dropped them into an overnight bag.

“How long will you be away?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“I’ve no idea,” he said over his shoulder. He had the uneasy feeling that if he looked her in the eye he’d be turned to stone on the spot.

“I don’t know what you think you’re achieving by selling your soul to the FBI,” she said.

“Better the devil I know. .” muttered Howard.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, her voice hard and accusing. “Are you saying that Daddy’s the devil, is that what you’re implying?”

Howard zipped his bag closed. “It’s an expression, Lisa, that’s all. I mean that FBI work is what I do, it’s what I do well. I don’t want to be a lapdog for the great Theodore Clayton. I don’t want him to own me.”

“Own you?” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “Who paid for this house? The car? You think we could live like this if it wasn’t for my father’s money? If it wasn’t for my father you’d still be buried in the Surveillance Department. It’s my father you owe, not the Bureau. Sometimes I think you forget where your loyalties should lie.”

Howard froze and for several seconds he stared at her, unable to believe the cruelty in her voice. “Thank you, Lisa,” he said softly. “Thank you for that.”

He walked by her, down the stairs and out of the front door. Part of him hoped that she’d run after him or call him back, but he wasn’t surprised when she let him go without a word. As he drove away, he could feel her sullen anger, sitting over the house like a storm cloud waiting to break.

It was a hot day and Joker turned up the air-conditioning in the rented Chevrolet Lumina. It was a big, comfortable American car and Joker enjoyed the way it handled. It had been a long time since he’d been at the wheel of a car and he’d forgotten the sheer pleasure it gave him to drive down an open road at speed. His eyes flicked to the speedometer and he braked to keep within the 55 mph speed limit. From his jacket pocket he took a green pack of Wrigley’s chewing-gum and unwrapped it with his left hand before popping the gum into his mouth. He’d picked up a bottle of whisky from a liquor store and had a couple of slugs for breakfast, and if he was unlucky enough to be pulled in by a cop it would be better to smell of spearmint than whisky.

His side still ached where he’d been kicked and when he’d woken up that morning it was to find the flesh a vibrant shade of green. Luckily, it seemed there was nothing broken, but it was going to be painful for some time. The dashboard clock read 13:30. Joker had been up since 8 a.m. and an hour later he’d visited the cuttings library of the Washington Post. He’d asked to see the papers for the week when Pete Manyon had been killed and had drunk a styrofoam cup of black coffee as he’d read the articles detailing the discovery of the body, its identification, and its eventual export back to the United Kingdom. In none of the papers did the story merit more than a dozen paragraphs. Joker had been surprised to find out how violent a city Washington was. He’d assumed that because it was the political heart of the country, it would be one of the safer places to be, but in fact it was the murder capital of the United States with drive-by killings and torture regular occurrences and usually drug-related. When Manyon’s body was first discovered, the police had assumed that he had been involved in the drugs trade because of the way he had been tortured. Practically skinned alive, the paper said, and suggested it had been the work of one of the city’s vicious Jamaican gangs. His fingers had been systematically cut off with a pair of bolt cutters or a very sharp knife and he had been castrated. There were rope burns on his wrists and ankles. According to the paper, Manyon had died from loss of blood.

In the UK such a killing would have been front page news but in the Washington paper it was tucked inside and was one of five murders reported that day. There had been a suggestion from one of the Homicide detectives investigating the case that the fingers had been removed to hinder identification, but Joker knew that wasn’t why Manyon had been mutilated. The first article had carried a photograph of Manyon’s face, no doubt cosmetically tidied up by some helpful undertaker, and several days later a motel manager had come forward saying that one of his guests had disappeared leaving his clothes, and passport, behind. The passport photograph matched the face of the man in the morgue, and Pete Manyon was identified as John Ballantine, a life insurance salesman from Bristol, England, who was on an extended vacation.