George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'Don't go makin' fun of my NVDs, man.'

'What're we gonna do when we get there?'

'Wherever they're goin', that's where we're gonna find Chris Wilson's sister.'

'Because some junkie snitch told you?'

'You go with what you got.'

The traffic lessened as cars got off the highway at the exurban exits of Gaithersburg, Germantown, and Darnestown, the innermost fringes of the new megalopolis that was Washington, D.C. Strange eased off the gas and kept the Lumina farther back than it had been. Ten miles later, he saw the right-turn signal flare on the Ford up ahead. Strange took the off-ramp, keeping the Taurus in sight.

'We lose 'em?' said Quinn.

'I don't think so,' said Strange. They were on a long curve that ran along open country and then dense forest. When they came out of the curve and hit a straightaway, the Taurus was up ahead. The driver had parked it at a gate of some kind on a gravel path cutting a break in the woods.

'Drive past 'em,' said Quinn. 'Don't even slow down.'

'I look like Danny Glover to you? Do I look like white America's pet African American sidekick, man? I'm in charge of this investigation, Terry, case you've forgotten.'

'Drive past 'em,' said Quinn. 'Punch it, man.'

'What the fuck did you think I was gonna do?'

They blew past the Taurus. The short one, standing at the wooden gate and putting a key to a padlock, glanced up as they passed, giving them a brief and unfocused hard look.

'Boy is cross-eyed,' said Quinn. 'You see that?'

'Uh-huh. Noticed when I was looking at 'em through the lens. The older one has the same look, too. Got to be his daddy, right?'

They went into another long curve running beside more woods. Strange pulled over on the shoulder, cut the engine, and grabbed his day pack off the backseat.

'Let's go,' he said.

They walked into the woods, dense with oak and pine, past a No Trespassing sign affixed to a tree and peppered with buckshot.

Quinn said, 'This way,' and pointed northeast. There seemed to be a trail of sorts, and they followed it.

'Looks like there's a break in the woods up ahead,' said Strange.

'I see it. But we can't get too close to 'em, if that's where they are. This time of year there's no foliage on these trees. We got no cover.'

'Right.'

'And watch where you walk. Don't go snapping too many branches, 'cause the sound travels in the open country. This isn't the city, Danny. I mean, Derek.'

'Funny,' said Strange.

Quinn looked over his shoulder and made a halting sign with his palm. Both of them stopped walking. Quinn looked around and motioned with his chin to a deer blind that had been built in the low branches of an oak. He pointed to the blind, and Strange nodded his head.

Quinn went up first, using the ladder of wooden blocks that had been nailed to the trunk of the tree. Strange tossed his bag up to Quinn and followed. The platform was narrow and shifted a little under their weight.

'This gonna hold us?' said Strange, keeping his voice low.

'I guess we'll find out.'

They looked through the trees to a clearing, about one hundred and fifty yards away. They could see the father and son getting out of the Ford, parked between a pickup and a motorcycle in a cluttered yard. Past the vehicles was a large barn with a ramshackle house beside it. Strange looked through the lens of the AE-1, snapping photographs of the son as he took a gym bag from out of the trunk.

'I can't see anything,' said Quinn. 'My eyes are going on me, man.'

'Got a set of ten-by-fifty binos in the bag. Help yourself.'

Quinn dug the binoculars out and adjusted them for his nose and eyes.

The two men headed for the house, the son carrying the gym bag, looking back once into the woods before both of them stepped onto the leaning porch and went through the front door.

Strange squinted. 'She's in there, I expect.'

They waited, listening to the call of crows, twigs snapping, the wind moving the tops of the tall trees. Squirrels chased each other in the high branches of the oaks. They waited some more and neither of them spoke. A doe crashed through brush and went by them, disappearing down a rise that dropped west of the blind.

'Here they come,' said Strange.

The two men came out of the house. Sondra Wilson was beside the father.

'That's her,' said Strange.

The father took her arm as they descended the porch steps. Even at this distance, Strange could see that she was near death. Beneath the coat she wore, her shoulders were like garden shears, and her eyes were hollowed out above sunken cheeks.

Now they were all standing in the yard, and the son was gesturing wildly toward the woods, the anger in his voice carrying through the trees, reaching Quinn and Strange. The older man was talking to his son in a quiet way, trying to calm him down. Then the son grabbed hold of Sondra Wilson's arm and shook her violently. Her head kind of flopped around on her shoulders, and that was when the father took three steps forward and shoved the son in the chest, sending him down to the gravel and dirt.

The son got up slowly, not saying a word, not looking at his father anymore or at Sondra. The father took hold of Sondra gently and walked her back into the house.

The son waited until they were inside. He pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and began firing in the direction of the tree line. His face was twisted into something between a grimace and a smile. Strange blinked with each shot, the rounds ricocheting metallically into the woods.

'What the fuck did we just see?' said Quinn.

Strange was thinking about the photograph packet on his desk, once again. He pictured himself in Chris Wilson's room, the items on his dresser and in his cigar box. He saw himself talking to Wilson's mother, the pictures hung on his wall, one picture…

'Derek?'

'Sorry, man. Was thinkin' of something.'

'What?'

'Wilson had a stub from a grocery store, a Safeway, I think, in the cigar box on his dresser. There was a camera on that dresser, too.'

'So there are some pictures he never got around to pickin' up.'

'Uh-huh. Also, if he was trying to find his sister… if we been covering the same tracks he was makin', I mean, then he probably has some kind of documentation related to what he was doin'. I'm thinkin' that maybe I know where that is.'

'What are we waitin' on, then?'

'It's just that I hate to leave her,' said Strange. 'You got a look at her, man, she doesn't have much time.'

'We can't do anything today. Not unless you want to pull that Buck knife off your hip and wave it at that guy with the automatic'

'You're right,' said Strange. 'But I'm coming back.'

Strange lifted the framed photograph of Larry Brown and a young Chris Wilson, and placed the photograph on Wilson's bed. As Strange had suspected, the frame covered a hole of sorts in the wall. A tablet-sized notebook was wedged inside the hole among chips of particle-board, covered with a thick coat of dust. The hole was just large enough to accommodate the notebook; it looked as if Wilson himself had punched it through.

Leona Wilson had said that Chris had become visibly upset when she'd gone to straighten the picture. From everything Strange knew, Chris Wilson seemed to be the type of young man who would need an awful good reason to rise up at his own mom. Whatever Wilson had found – and Strange was certain that what he'd found was reflected in the notebook – he had kept it from his mother, his girlfriend, and the department as well.

Strange stashed the notebook in his day pack, along with the ticket stub from Safeway. The stub was redeemable at the Piney Branch Road location in Takoma, D.C., near his church.

In the living room, Leona Wilson peered out from behind her parted curtains at the Lumina parked on the street. She released the curtain and turned as Strange walked into the room.