C Box - Below Zero

He swiped the key card, and a red light on the box switched to green. But the door didn’t give when he yanked on it. That’s when he saw the dial pad on the side of the lock box and the LED display that flashed ENTER THREE-DIGIT CODE. Damn that Lucy, he thought. She hadn’t mentioned a code.

He said to no one in particular, “Fucked again! Stenko fucked me again! ” and tried combination after combination on the box with one hand while digging for the pistol in the back of his belt with the other. He tried the most obvious codes first. After all, how complicated would they make it for a bunch of power plant workers? He tried “1-2-3” and “3-2-1” and “1-1-1” and “2-2-2.”

The night was suddenly incredibly loud and obtrusive. There was the thumping of the blades from the helicopter that still hadn’t located him, the sirens of every cop car in Rangeland bearing down on the power plant, and a high whine getting higher by the second.

When he keyed “6-6-6” he heard the lock click open.

As he reached for the handle he looked over his shoulder and saw the bike coming straight at him from the parking lot. The driver wore a war helmet and had blond hair streaming behind. Instead of slowing down for the three concrete steps to the vestibule landing, the bike veered to the right toward a handicap ramp incline and then sped up. Someone dropped off the back of the machine and rolled away. And before he could untangle his pistol from his shirttail, his vision was suddenly filled with an extreme close-up of a muddy, knobbed tire…

JOE ROLLED TO HIS BELLY and looked up as Nate shot up the stairs and jumped the bike full speed into Robert standing in front of the glass doors as if pausing before he entered. The impact made a fat hollow sound followed immediately by broken glass as Robert’s body was hurled through the vestibule into the reception area inside. Both Nate and the bike lay in heaps on the landing. The alarm system in the power plant whooped, and emergency lights on the walls flashed.

Getting his legs under him, Joe stood up uneasily in the grass. He brushed gravel and dust off his shirt and spit a pebble out of his mouth. Nate’s gun was near his feet, and he picked it up and cocked it.

Inside the building, he could see the soles of Robert’s splayed shoes on the floor. Robert was flat on his back and not moving. As Joe approached, he saw the blood-rivers of it running across the marble floor from gaping, pulsing holes in Robert’s throat, neck, and groin where he’d been slashed by the broken glass. The distinct impression of a motorcycle tire could be seen on Robert’s face, which was dented in. His pistol had been thrown to the far side of the room and was under a chair, well out of his reach.

“Is he dead?” Nate asked, scrambling to his feet and standing shoulder to shoulder with Joe on the landing.

“If he isn’t, he soon will be. We need to get him to the Rangeland ER.”

“Bullshit,” Nate said, taking his revolver back from Joe. “He sure as hell didn’t get April to the ER when she was bleeding to death. And he planted all those damned eucalyptus trees…” With one swift movement he straightened his arm and fired, blowing the top of Robert’s head across the marble tiles.

“Oh, man…” Joe moaned.

“Go find Stenko,” Nate said, holstering his gun and ignoring Joe’s pained expression. “I gotta get out of here before Portenson finds me.”

Nate righted the dirt bike, kicked it twice to start it, grinned when the motor fired up, and roared away.

THE CHOPPER WAS TOUCHING DOWN on the far side of the parking lot and the Rangeland cops and county sheriff’s convoy was pulsing through the front gate when Joe found Stenko’s dead body slumped over in the front seat of the stolen car.

Joe threw open the door and reached in and grasped Stenko’s neck and shook the body anyway, saying, “Who is she, damn you? Where did you find her?”

Stenko’s head flopped from side to side, and his eyes were cold and dead. His body seemed light and unsubstantial-the shell of the man who’d once worn tuxedos to Chicago charity events and who once bore a resemblance to a virile Ernest Hemingway.

Joe let him drop to the seat cushion.

“Damn you,” he said again.

Rapid City

Sheridan handed the battered photograph to her mother. The image of the two girls had been cut with scissors or a knife from a larger photo. Because of the clothes they were wearing and their formal smiles and the sliced-off heads, arms, and dresses of others who had been standing close to them, she thought the original might have been a family portrait of some kind.

There were two of them in the photo, two blond girls. They looked like sisters, but they weren’t.

The deputy said, “Do you recognize either of these two girls to be Vicki Burgess?”

Sheridan’s mouth was so dry she had trouble saying, “Yes. The one on the right.”

But it wasn’t Vicki Burgess’s likeness that had shocked her.

Her mother took the photo and her eyes widened. She whispered, “Oh, my God.”

Lucy reached up and took it from her mother. Her eyes moved from one figure in the photograph to the other.

She said, “That’s April,” and tapped her finger on the girl on Vicki’s left. “She’s alive,” Lucy said.

Her mom walked away, digging her cell phone out of her purse to call her dad.

Rangeland

Joe sat in the open doorway of the silent helicopter with his head in his hands. The parking lot and vestibule area were whooping with red and blue wigwag lights from the dozen PD and sheriff’s department vehicles that surrounded the death scene. Portenson was ecstatic, running from place to place, firing off orders, alerting the brass in Washington, D.C., what had happened, physically moving local law enforcement away from where they were gawking at the body of Robert in the reception area. Men and women from the midnight shift inside the plant had wandered down to the front as well and were being herded back toward the elevators before they could track blood across the floor.

Coon walked over and leaned against the aircraft next to Joe.

“I’ve got one happy boss right now,” he said. “Do you know what he screamed at me when we saw it was Robert inside the building? He said, ‘Hello, D.C.! Here I come!’ ”

Joe grunted. “Can’t say I’ll miss him.”

“Me either.”

A minute passed by. Bruises Joe didn’t know he had from falling off the dirt bike began to ache on his legs, ribs, and butt.

Coon said, “Should I even ask who it was driving the bike?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so. Any idea which way he headed?”

Joe shrugged. Hole in the Wall, he thought.

Coon said, “You’ve never seen a guy more scared than that bread truck driver when we landed the helicopter in front of him on the highway. I think the bureau will need to pay for some dry cleaning.”

Joe didn’t respond.

“That was a pretty good trick,” Coon said. “You want your phone back?”

As Joe reached for it, the phone lit up and burred.

Marybeth.

Chicago

TWO DAYS LATER, JOE, MARYBETH, AND LUCY OCCUPIED THE middle seat of a black GMC Suburban with U.S. government plates as it cruised slowly down a residential street in an old South Side neighborhood. Sheridan was in the seat behind them. The street was narrow, the sidewalks cracked. Homes that looked fifty or sixty years old lined up one after the other on both sides of the road. Most had enclosed porches and neat, close-cropped lawns. Parked cars had Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks bumper stickers. Towering leafy hardwood trees blocked out the sky. The morning was cold and dark, and the wind that had cut through Joe earlier while he opened the car door to let his family in reminded him that no matter how cold it got in the mountain west, it was colder and damper in the Midwest. Maybe, he thought, it was why they were so damned tough.