Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

Burt: “How are the windows looking?”

I told him he’d missed a spot by the house’s front door.

“Just in case my phone and I don’t get out of here in one piece, you should have these pictures.”

“What’s in the freezers?” I asked. “TV dinners?”

“I doubt that. I couldn’t contract for the interior windows, so we can’t get inside. Later if ever, boss.”

I watched and wondered. Looked at the pictures on my phone again, shading the screen with one hand, trying to make sense of the freezers, suits, gloves, and gas masks.

A steady string of cars began arriving at about eight forty, all with children aboard. They parked near the main house and the kids hopped out with their backpacks and lunch pails. Several men, women, and children began emerging from the bunkhouse and the cottages.

The adults were all young, well groomed, and conservatively dressed. Something of an earlier America about them. Their children likewise. Backpacks and book bags. Some had hair still damp from the shower. Most of them stopped for a moment after getting out of the vehicles, as if stunned by the fierce morning sunlight. Then hustled to the big red barn.

A middle-aged couple stood before the open barn door and welcomed the children in. He was large and burly and wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie; she was almost as tall but slender, in a long summer dress. Her hair up in a bun. Much talking and shaking of hands among the adults as the kids disappeared inside.

The drop-off cars headed back toward the gate.

Two men in khaki pants and black golf shirts, wearing black boots and carrying duffels, came from the main house and got into one of the silver Expeditions. Adam Revell and another young man, both in blue SNR security guard uniforms, climbed into a second Expedition and followed the first down the road.

Everybody coming or going, I thought. Neat people. Brisk people. They seemed to have a purpose. Or at least a routine.

The dove hunters stumbled onto me a few minutes later, following a steady stream of birds flying straight over my position.

“Oh, sorry,” said the older one. “Didn’t even see you here.” He eyed me suspiciously from behind yellow shooting glasses, considered my shotgun, and looked in the direction of my telescope, well hidden under dead branches and a handy tumbleweed.

Up came his son, certainly, same shape and sharp eyes, same yellow glasses. “How you doing so far?” he asked.

“A little slow here,” I said.

“They’ve been flying right over you for twenty minutes,” said Dad.

“Are you sure?”

“You should have your eyes checked,” said Dad. “Seriously.” His eyes roamed my face.

I shrugged.

A drone flew past in front of us, west to east, a couple hundred yards out. Right along the Paradise Date Farm fence line.

“Fish and Game,” said Son.

“We don’t know that for sure,” said the father. “Those drones don’t come out past the fence.”

“Are they out here often?” I asked.

“The drones? Now and then,” said Dad.

Took my time, didn’t want to seem too interested. “Do you ever talk to the date farm people?”

“No,” said Son, shaking his head. “Dove season is harvest time for them.”

“There must be lots of trucks heading out for market,” I said.

“Trucks come and go all the time,” said Dad. “So do a lot of nice silver SUVs, and plenty of passenger cars. People living there. Not just workers. More than you’d think.”

We exchanged hunters’ pleasantries for a minute or two: How’s the twenty-gauge Red Label swing? You shooting seven-and-a-halfs or eights? They had killed a rattler last week early morning, a big one, and told me to watch out.

“Well, nice talking,” said Dad. “But get those eyes of yours checked. You could have had your limit by now.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Later,” said the son.

Burt and Frank finished up work at two. Loaded up the old white truck and stood in the front-porch shade for a few minutes, awaiting pay. Burt wore his sweat-soaked painter’s cap in a mission-accomplished style, bill upward.

Finally a man came out and handed Burt a check. I recognized him. I’d watched him through the window of Pastor Reggie Atlas’s office last Sunday, tidying up the Cathedral by the Sea courtyard after the hot dog, burger, and donut extravaganza. Same clothes. Same blond buzz cut, ruddy face, and pit-bull ears. Same black golf shirt and khakis and shiny black duty boots.

Burt examined the check and seemed to be trying to get Pit Bull Ears into a conversation, but no luck. The man looked down at Burt with undisguised amusement and I wondered if things would escalate. Burt hates being treated like he’s short. It’s one of the few things that gets to him.

But the man went back inside without incident, and the front door closed silently. Burt slid the check into his wallet with the bills. The window washers got into their truck.

A moment later the dust and the shimmering waves of heat swallowed that truck whole, and it was gone.

Burt’s hard-won pictures jumped to life on the computer monitor in my home office. Seven images in all, counting the mystery freezers. Burt was unhappy that he couldn’t shoot the farmhouse interiors because the house was full of people. And that the barn windows were shuttered.

But he had managed to sneak four shots of the hangar’s interior. Behind the tractors, ATVs, and other work vehicles that had been visible through the roll-up doors stood two long work benches. Hard to tell what kind of work, if any, was done on them. Bench vises, electric sanders/polishers, a drill press, a band saw, coffee cans of what looked like nuts and bolts, soldering guns, toolboxes.

Burt frowned at the screen, scrolled back and forth between the images. “I could only get four shots before the big guy came back in,” he said. “Every time I tried again, there he was. A lion tattoo on one palm. He introduced himself as Connor Donald.”

Connor Donald, I thought. Muscle Blond. My attacker. Leader of the pack.

I booted up my tablet and entered his name in the IvarDuggans.com search field. Then set the dedicated wasp-cam laptop on the desk.

And once again let my eyes roam Burt’s shots of the inside of the Paradise Date Farm hangar.

“What’s that in the background, Burt? It looks like a security-screen door. The perforated steel ones you can see through from inside but not from the outside.”

“That’s exactly what it is. Donald went in and came out four times that I saw. Used a key each time.”

“No one else?”

“Just him.”

How I would have loved to see through that security-screen door.

Burt and I turned our attention to the custom laptop that Dale Clevenger had built and loaned us. It was dedicated to receive the live feeds from his four wasp cameras. It was large for a laptop, very heavy, and encased in red aluminum. I’d opened it and propped it up at one end of the desk.

Clevenger’s four wasp-cams were motion-activated and the batteries were good for eight hours of streaming. The power shut down automatically after thirty seconds of inactivity. You could check the remaining battery life for each camera. Dale had programmed the laptop computer so all four cameras could stream at once, the screen quartering itself to accommodate them. From Dale’s computer, the live video could be sent to other devices, either live or later.

Wasp-cam one was up now, a view of the main house. We watched a silver Expedition roll into a parking place in front of the house and stop on a pillow of dust. Adam Revell and his partner got out and headed into the house.

“On the left is Revell,” I said, “Daley’s acquaintance from Alchemy 101 nightclub. And possibly one of the six helmets who put me in my current condition. The other guy I don’t know.”