April Smith - Judas Horse

“Maybe you’re working for the cops.”

“Why would I?”

“To destroy the movement from the inside. They pull that shit, you know.” Dick Stone rubs his forehead, shiny from the warmth of the night.

“No need to freak, little sister. I came up here just to say ‘Right on.’” What is that in his amber eyes — besides middle-aged fatigue, glazed by the lateness of the hour? Something I haven’t seen before: Amusement?

He lays a heavy arm across my shoulders.

“Darcy, I would have done the same damn thing. Looked through Daddy’s drawers when the folks weren’t home. You know, I did that once when I was a kid, and guess what I found? In my father’s nightstand? A heap of condoms and a huge fucking kitchen knife he kept right by the bed. That was a shocker.” “Which? The condoms or the knife?”

“The knife, man. What was he thinking?” Stone shakes his head.

“Protecting the family, just like you.”

“We lived in suburban Connecticut.”

“Gotta watch out for those serial stockbrokers.” Dick Stone snorts with laughter. “You’re not far wrong. He was a competitive old bastard.” “You’re not mad about the cabinets? I see a lock, I can’t help thinking there must be something righteous inside, worth protecting.” He nods. “I dig it. You’ve got skills, girl.”

“Used to be a pretty good thief. Got busted for stealing data, served my time, but a regular padlock — that’s just too tempting.” Dick Stone’s face is now so close, I can see the tiny bristles on his cheeks.

“One question. Where did you hide the tools? You can’t just pick a lock.” “Have you been going through my stuff?”

“Regularly.”

“That’s why I kept moving them.”

I reach under the bed, pull out a small bundle that was duct-taped to the frame, and toss it over.

This open display stops him. Could anyone actually be so guileless?

I’ve pasted on a casual smile but I think I’ve stopped breathing. For several long seconds I watch Dick Stone waver, like a high school coach who discovers his best starting pitcher smoking weed in the locker.

Screw it. He likes the kid.

“Darcy,” he says slowly, “you’re okay. You’re the same as me. All you want is to have some fun. You like to start little fires, don’t you?” I rest for a moment in enormous relief. He hasn’t made a move on me, hasn’t doubted my story. And there is truth in what he says — sitting butt-to-butt on the edge of the bed, seemingly at ease in the heart of the night like father and daughter, or supervisor and agent, we recognize something inside the other that is the same.

A paradox is unfolding. The longer I stay under, the larger Dick Stone becomes. Rather than working his way into ordinariness through everyday contact, he grows more vivid, and my own sense of self-cohesion fades. The boundaries between Darcy and Ana seem inconsequential, not worth defending, as we are swept toward the Big One by some inner momentum of Stone’s that the meticulous procedures of the Bureau are powerless to stop. Donnato’s voice on the Oreo phone and my former life in Los Angeles dwindle and disappear like radio signals moving out of range.

The first time I drove through the Marine base at Quantico as a new agent, there was that orgasmic surge of ecstasy: This is what I’ve always wanted! Now, out of this cozy intimacy with Stone, the same words echo, but with a newly ominous tone: This is what I wanted, going undercover, isn’t it? To forget the past and my mistakes and the larger-than-life figures who dominated, even as the realization creeps at the edge of my mind that I have replaced one despot with another.

There is no retribution here. Dick Stone believes what he has said — that he and I are somehow the same — and now that he is done saying it, he simply gets up and leaves.

And the Darcy part of me experiences a rush of feeling for the old bandit that Ana, still the FBI agent, could never admit: Affection.

The panic in Donnato’s voice brings Ana Grey back instantly.

“You breached Stone’s security system?”

“I was looking for the sniper rifle.”

“What’d he do?”

“He laughed.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He likes me, or he’s nuts.”

“Or he’s made you and is playing for time.”

My stomach flips. “I have no way of knowing, do I?”

Neither of us speaks. I am up in the hazelnut trees again, fussing with the traps for moths, and not liking the symbolism one bit.

“This is not a disaster,” Donnato muses, as if to assure himself. “We can piggyback on his wireless signal. Hear everything going on inside the house.”

“If he made me, he wouldn’t let you do that,” I remind him.

“Tell me this — where does he go every morning?”

“He started running and lost fourteen pounds. I told you, it’s a new ritual. I think he’s preparing for the Big One.”

“Does he always go by the front door?”

When I first came to the lost farm, the agent in the cherry picker who was dressed like a repairman, aside from wiretap devices, installed cameras on the telephone poles. Command center in Portland can see everything that comes and goes.

“Because we don’t always get a visual until he’s a quarter mile away from the house,” Donnato says. “How does he get out? Suddenly he pops on-screen, heading north. We don’t know how he gets there or where he’s going. Find out.”

At 7:45 a.m. the next day, Stone, wearing a fluorescent yellow Grateful Dead T-shirt, running trunks, and a belt holding a water bottle, heads out through the kitchen door. No big mystery about that. I watch from the second-floor window — careful to stay beyond the range of the camera installed in the German clock — as he jogs twice around the soft track of the orchard, then veers into the wooded parcel behind the house.

I’m out the kitchen door, across the overgrown garden, and on the trail, keeping a hundred yards between us. As we move through the woods, I can see his shirt flashing up ahead. Then I lose him, but he has to stay on the trail or run through scrub. When we come out at the cottonwood trees, I duck below the wash. Now he’s in open territory, looking like any other fitness runner, tuned in to his iPod, dark stains on the T-shirt, churning muscular calves. The music keeps him focused — eyes ahead, not even thinking of watching the rear — so I stretch out and match his pace as we come up to the muddy tracks of the wildlife sanctuary.

Against the sky, the matrix of power wires becomes more defined as we draw close. To my right is the plain where the blind foal was found. As Stone keeps on moving through the maze of manzanita, an epiphany of logic breaks over me like a cold shower: He’s heading for the shooting range where I found the.50-caliber shell.

This is where he practices shooting his weapons. Including the sniper rifle that killed Sergeant Mackee.

I am getting excited now. I wish to call Donnato, but I know there is no cell phone service here. The hard-furrowed roads are hazardous for turned ankles, and Stone is slowing down. No shots echo — it’s too early for your ordinary amateur shooter. I take a spur trail and circle around to where I suspect he’s going, accelerating to beat him and duck into a concealed position behind the Dumpsters overflowing with trash and flies.

He stops in the center of the firing range, heaving and throwing drops of sweat. He swigs water and spits it out while turning around in a 360, checking the perimeter.

Where does he hide the guns? A chest buried somewhere? A cave in the wash?

Now he slides a black-and-silver phone from the belt holding the water bottle and glances up at the sky, moving until there are no power lines above him. The phone is way too big to be a cell. I can make out the profile of an antenna, like a little finger pointing up. He is using a satellite phone to get past our wiretaps.