Stephen Hunter - Night of Thunder

Bob’s puzzled expression evidently communicated a truth to the minister.

“Possibly it has metaphorical meaning to your daughter. She’s saying, ‘I can walk.’ Her sickness has been cured. She’s had a revelation of sorts. Was she in spiritual or physical pain?”

“Sir, I don’t think so. In fact, this muddies up the waters considerably. Could it be a code, a code word, a signal?”

“Mr. Swagger, I don’t think God talks in code words. His meanings are clear enough for us.”

“You are right, sir, and I am very grateful for your wisdom. I have to think on this and see how it fits in.”

“How is your daughter?”

“She’s recovering. I would ask her, but she’s still unconscious.”

“I will pray for her.”

“I greatly appreciate it, sir.”

“I will pray for you, Mr. Swagger. I hope you solve your riddle and straighten things out. I see you as a man who is good at straightening things out.”

“I try, sir. Lord, how I try.”

Leaving the church, he checked his watch and saw it was time to head to the sheriff’s office. He contemplated whether he should slip the Kydex holster with the.38 Super on, and in the end concluded it would be a bad idea, a careless move, an accident. Detective Thelma would see that he was armed, which could lead to embarrassing questions, even charges.

He got there at eight, pulling into the lot.

Agh, that perpetual shroud of coal dust that hung over this neck of the woods hit him. In a second he’d have a headache. No wonder they were getting the hell out of here. Bob walked into the station and a clerk nodded him back to the bullpen area where Thelma stood by in her polo and chinos while three SWAT officers with MP5 submachineguns and AR-15 shorties were gearing up for the night’s event.

“Mr. Swagger,”

“Detective Fielding.”

“This is our Fugitive Apprehension Team.” The guys, beefy cop types. Two white, one black, in their twenties with short hair, thick necks, and the look of middle linebackers, nodded at him without making any sincere emotional commitment.

“Wow, you must be expecting some kind of gunfight. You look like you’re going on a commando raid.”

“You just want to take precautions. I doubt Cubby has a fix on going down hard. He’s a gentle soul, as long as he isn’t lit up on ice.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“All right, sir, you drive with me, and the FAT guys will follow in their van. Let me brief you. I will park down the way and you will stay in the car; we’ll wait for the van to park and the boys will take up entry positions in the rear. Then I’ll signal Air and my brother Tom, who’s the sheriff’s helicopter pilot-”

“Your brother’s the pilot?”

“Tom was shot down as an army aviator three times in two wars. The last one, in Baghdad, was bad. He had some problems and had to leave the army. Maybe I started this whole drug-war thing, because I put through the Justice Department grant paperwork to get us the bird so my brother would have someplace to go.”

“I see. Impressive. You helped him.”

“I tried, but you know the law of unintended consequences. Now I worry that-oh, never mind. Let’s get back to it. Tom will bring the ship in, and his copilot will work the high-intensity beam in case Cubby tries to run. I’ll go in and knock and tell Cubby he’s coming with me. It should go fine, but if he bolts, he’ll just run into these fellows and if he goes violent on us, then we’ll have to run him down. But I’m not betting on trouble.”

“Okay.”

“You just stay in the car. When we bring him in and book him, I’ll let you listen from the next room to the interrogation. Cubby’s no master criminal, believe me; he’ll give it up fast and I’ve set it up with the Prosecutor’s office to have him indicted in the morning. Paperwork’s all done. Then it’s just a matter of making sure Tennessee justice don’t drop the ball, and I will watch that one very closely.”

“I thank you for taking me along. I appreciate it.”

They sat on a tree-lined street in what could never be called the nicer side of town, a run-down section east of downtown where the old houses-shacks more like it, maybe at best bungalows-leaned this way and that. And you had the sense that a lot of police action had taken place there before.

“I’ve been busting Cubby for ten years, off and on,” Thelma said. “He’ll go clean for a while, maybe as long as six months, but he’s always gone back. Sad to see such a handsome man give his life away for nothing. He’ll gin up a lab, he’ll deal a little, he’ll snitch out somebody to buy more time, just scuffling along, waiting for a way to amp the scratch to buy another bag of the stuff. Man, it’s the devil’s business, what it does to folks. You have any addiction problems in your family, sir?”

“Detective, I am not proud to say that I had some troubles with the bottle years back and to this day I miss my bourbon, but one sip and I’m gone. It cost me, and I finally beat it down, though now and again, under trying circumstances, I will break down and have a drink. I usually end up in the next county engaged to a tattooed Chinese woman.”

She didn’t acknowledge his joke.

“But my daughter’s never had a thing to do with it, and only now and then drinks a glass of wine. We’ve been so lucky.”

“Yes, you have. The wrecked families I’ve seen.”

“Let me ask you: You’re sure on this boy?”

“Sure as sure is. He has a brother who has a car that matches the vehicle ID’d on the state forensics reports, the cobalt ’05 Charger. I checked this morning-it was a busy morning-and in fact Cubby had the car and in fact it’s banged up where he hit your daughter. I looked at the car and I think we can make the presence of your daughter’s paint in the gash along the side of the Charger.”

Bob was thinking, What the hell is she talking about? Who is this Cubby? Is he working for Eddie Ferrol, or some mysterious Mister Big, the Godfather of Johnson County? How’s it all connected? What does this detective know of his connections?

“You’ll check on his associations once you get him locked up? Be interesting to see if he was-”

“Working for somebody. Last person he worked for was Mr. McDonald, of the hamburger chain, who fired his worthless ass in three weeks. He was never able to master the deep-fat fryer.”

“Maybe he has other connections, criminal connections.”

“Doubtful, Mr. Swagger, but if so, we’ll find out tonight when I run the interrogation.”

“Yes ma’am. Now on another thing, this sheriff’s making a big splash with his chopper. But I hear the price of the stuff hasn’t gone up, which you’d expect if all the labs were being closed down. What’s the feeling?”

“Nobody knows. Maybe there’s a superlab somewhere, but you’d think you’d smell it, because manufacturing crystal meth in quantity produces a terrible, rotten egg smell. Or maybe it’s being trucked in from somewhere. Don’t know if you know it, but there’s a shooting last night, some grocery clerk got lucky and killed two robbers. The robbers were interesting: real serious bad actors, your white-trash professional heavy hitter, with rumored contacts to a batch of mobs all over the South, and participation suspected in a dozen armed robberies. Them boys ran out of luck in the worst possible way last night. Anyhow, way my mind works, I’m thinking, maybe they muled a load of ice from somewhere deeper south, and that’s where the stuff is coming from. I don’t know what else would explain their presence here. It would go to someone who knew the area, had ambitions, and a lot of criminal skills. Don’t know who that would be. You see any criminal geniuses hiding at Arby’s on the way over?”