Cuts Through Bone (36 page)

“I ain't going in no army.”

“I ain't said that.”

“Then you ain't said nothing.”

Linney snorted. “This ain't time to build, if you ain't seeing the foundation around you.” The dark veteran laid out another slice of bread and twisted the lid from the peanut butter.

“All right,” Little Prince said. He stood up and dug the keys of his Escalade from his pocket. “I gonna be back.”

“Be sure to leave that bitching with some sisters, then.”

“Fuck you.”

After the trailer door clicked shut, Olsen asked, “So you don't think that'll turn into a problem, then?”

“No,” Linney said. “Child just got too much knowledge, without enough reality.”

The rented camper seemed quiet and empty with Little Prince missing. A lazy summer afternoon drifted past the windows, livened only by an argument from the two old couples angry about a pinochle game. The cards waited on their folding table until they returned with lemonade and shrugs. The dog days were over, but the summer was still hot. The black Volvo almost slipped past them without being noticed, even though they could watch a long stretch of the encircling road from their front windshield. They rushed to the windows, staring, and then to the monitors. They watched the Volvo park in front of the overgrown tow truck. A small dark-haired man climbed out and stretched. The veterans agreed that the driver was Gagneau. He walked smoothly over to the door of the large trailer and went inside without knocking. The killer was home.

Olsen and Linney began strapping on holsters, but Guthrie stopped them. He wanted more patience, because he had more backups to place. First, he called Joe Holloway again. He and David Lieberman had agreed to come up from the city for a grab. Lieberman hired on at the law firm after chasing bail jumpers for several years, when he was ready for a slower job. Guthrie expected they could help corner Gagneau.

The little detective didn't mind a risk that Gagneau would drive away before they were ready. Clean beat fast on takedowns, and he felt sure Gagneau would keep returning to the camper park, even if he left again. Another more important piece of his plan remained in the city. Mike Inglewood owed him an old favor; he burned it by asking the NYPD detective to come up to Essex County. The phone conversation was short and simple; Guthrie asked him to take lost time to come up and talk him through a personal problem. A pause threatened after Guthrie finished, but then Inglewood's response was clear: “I'm on the way.” The little detective grinned as he turned off his phone.

Before nightfall, everyone was assembled. Gagneau joined the crowds at the fires while they waited; Vasquez and the two veterans spied on him like suddenly avid bird-watchers. The house detectives didn't press for an explanation after Guthrie told them he was still waiting for another man. Seam jobs were tricky, but they were also common enough in divorce and custody cases. Private detectives caught plenty of dirty work. After Inglewood arrived, Guthrie pitched his evidence with a delivery as smooth as Sandy Koufax's. Inglewood was the insurance policy, and his part was simplest. He would watch the monitors and then call the police if Gagneau fired shots.

“You know, Guthrie, you're maybe a little bit crazy,” Inglewood said after he listened to the plan.

Guthrie shrugged. “Your boss down in the big building don't want him, and those people in Virginia don't believe he exists. What else am I gonna do?” he asked.

“I'm just saying maybe you would try something different if you were the one gonna knock on the door,” Inglewood said. He looked at Olsen and pushed his taped-together glasses back up his nose. “Right?”

The big blond man tightened a strap on his bulletproof vest. “You bet,” he muttered.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Gagneau floated around the camper park like a windblown leaf. He swirled circles around each bonfire, pulled by conversations, food, and drinking. The night darkened while they watched him, though Olsen and Linney warned the others that Gagneau wouldn't settle for sleep until the small hours. Early in the vigil, Inglewood saw their quarry for the first time, standing in firelight, arguing with a woman. Gagneau pushed her away and then she screamed at him until he drifted away to another fire.

Inglewood looked around at the other men in the camper, making incredulous gestures at Olsen, Holloway, and Lieberman, who were all big men. “That guy's about your size, Guthrie,” the NYPD detective said. “You called enough plumber butt up here to surround him, you think?”

“If you come along, we might be able to box him in,” Guthrie said.

“With these feet? That guy's too quick; he'll just get by me.” Inglewood slumped on the bench seat, staring at the monitors.

The displays didn't cover the entire camper park. Guthrie hadn't installed that many cameras. Vasquez went from window to window with video binoculars to watch Gagneau in the blind spots. The trailers in the back near the tow truck had the best coverage; two cameras crossed over them. They watched as the nightly celebration slowed.

Gagneau went in and out of his trailer a few times, and once, the young woman he had argued with tried to follow him inside. Another screaming fight ensued, until an older couple pulled the young woman away. The older man stood quietly outside afterward, looking disappointed, his hands on his hips. He had a bushy black beard and a chest like a beer cooler, without a belly beneath it. At 4:45
A.M.
, Gagneau disappeared into his trailer and didn't return. Guthrie watched the clock for a half hour, then was satisfied.

The early morning felt cold after hours spent cramped in the trailer. A slice of moon lit the ground enough to keep it from disappearing beneath their feet. The watchers looked like a string of shadows; Guthrie threaded them between campfires and trailers to avoid sleepy people. On the monitors, filters made the images bright, but the ground around Gagneau's trailer was dark. The nearest campfire was about forty yards along the encircling road, closer to the front entrance of the camper park. The little detective sent Linney and Vasquez behind the trailer, and the rest paused to allow them to settle.

“Door back here,” Linney whispered on the radio. All of them wore headset walkie-talkies and bulletproof vests, and they carried Tasers, pepper spray, handcuffs, and firearms loaded with blue bullets. The older men had one magazine each of hard bullets for their pistols. “Two windows.”

“All right,” Guthrie said. “Maybe he wants to bolt from the door, so be sure to mention he's surrounded.”

“You bet,” Olsen muttered.

The big veteran marched up to the trailer door with a Garand slung over his shoulder. Guthrie crept along the length of the trailer and stopped outside the window closest to the door. Lieberman, Holloway, and Little Prince stood back, waiting. Olsen pounded on the trailer door after a glance at the little detective. His task was simple: goad Gagneau into violence, using himself as the bait in the trap.

Olsen pounded heavily on the door again. The blows rocked the trailer. “Open this door, Sergeant! You been working for the devil long enough! Now it's time to pay the taxes! Alpha's ghosts are out here surrounding you, Sergeant! Come on out!” The big man stretched the words out with a parade-ground voice. The crickets fell silent around the trailer, leaving the night eerily quiet when he paused. The trailer creaked. A question made wordless by distance drifted from the group at the nearby fire.

“Captain, you a brave man,” Gagneau called from inside his trailer. “But you should not have come here.”

“Come on out of there, then!” Olsen roared, and pounded on the flimsy trailer door.

The killer answered with a fusillade. Muffled shots emitted holes around and through the door. Olsen dived into the dirt, cursing. Guthrie shattered the window glass with a hard rap from his can of pepper spray, then began spraying blindly into the interior of the trailer. Shouts rang out from the campfire. People rushed toward Gagneau's trailer. The sleepy summer morning erupted; lights snapped on in every direction, followed by outraged voices.

“That's enough, Guthrie,” Inglewood said on the radio. “I'm on the phone to the Essex County sheriff. Just back off and hold him.”

The little detective kept spraying into the broken window. Olsen rolled and found cover beneath the edge of the trailer. People rushed up, coming to sudden halts when they saw the house detectives and Little Prince waiting in the darkness. Tall oak trees stretched their limbs above the trailer from the back, blotting out the sky. The big black-bearded man emerged from the gathering crowd. His plaid shirt looked almost black without the light filters on the computer monitors.

“Here, what's you're doing there?” he demanded.

A young woman darted glances at the waiting detectives and shouted, “Marc! Marc! Here's people out here!” More men rushed up. Their shouts blended into a basso chorus of anger.

The window on the other end of the trailer shattered and an arm snaked out, holding a pistol. Gagneau fired at Guthrie. The little detective ducked for the bottom edge of the trailer. Little Prince drew his Colt and fired a string of shots at the dark window. Gagneau dropped his pistol and his arm whipped back through the window. Running feet hissed through the dusty leaves all around them as some of the onlookers scattered, but even more rushed forward to replace them.

“Under the trailer, Marc!” someone shouted.

A shot boomed into the air, then a slim, longhaired man in the crowd leveled a pistol at the house detectives. “Here's enough now!” he shouted. “Get on away, you!”

Little Prince turned and fired at the longhaired man. His gunshots lit the night like strobe lights, capturing images of scattering gawkers, shocked faces, upraised pistols, and returning shots. Shooters dived for cover and hid behind trees, while the unarmed scattered. A few people in the darkness paused to hurl stones, adding curses to keep the silence at bay. On the radio, Inglewood swore softly, watching the riot on the video monitors.

“Ah jeez,” Holloway said. “Forget a vest—shoulda brought my bulletproof underwear.”

“You hit?”

“Ah jeez,” Holloway repeated.

Hovering trees darkened the ground behind Gagneau's trailer to invisibility. The aluminum trailer floated like a long, pale boulder of limestone on dark water. Vasquez broke from behind the tree she was using for cover and trampled through the light underbrush to reach the trailer. Linney hissed at her. She ignored him and peered through one of the trailer windows. She hammered the glass out with the barrel of her Garand. The sound seemed lost in the gunfire and shouting beyond the trailer. Linney hissed again as she leaned the rifle against the trailer. She coughed a few times, then hauled herself through the window. The dark veteran cursed as her feet disappeared.

Under the front edge of the trailer, Olsen unslung his rifle and then rolled back onto his stomach. The Garand was loaded with blue bullets, but they still carried a knockout punch. Along the encircling road, shouts and screams formed a melody for the bass line of cranking engines. Some of the visitors had decided to leave. Pistol shots cracked like misplaced drumbeats.

Little Prince threw shots at a line of underbrush along one of the camper lots, but Olsen didn't see anyone there. The big man shot a bare-chested man as he flourished a pistol, aiming at one of the detectives on the other side of the road, and snapped another pair of shots at crouching shadows. The shooter and the shadows fled, yelping in pain. The rifle had a big sound, with a muzzle flash like a fog light.

Guthrie slid along beneath the edge of the trailer and rose to a crouch at the door. He tested the knob; it was unlocked. He grinned at Olsen while the big man reloaded his rifle. Escaping visitors raced in the depths of the park, their headlights crossing like sword blades. A band of half-dressed youths crept from among the campers beyond the encircling road, threw rocks, and faded back into cover. Little Prince cursed, and his pistol fell silent as he spun to his hands and knees.

“Maybe you oughta get out of there, Guthrie,” Inglewood suggested.

Lieberman banged away with his Colt at some creeping shadows, where muzzle flashes had winked a few moments before. Wood smoke drifted on the cool morning breeze. The camper park was a crazy quilt of darkness, dim sides of trailers and vehicles, and blotches of greenery that drank the light from faint pools cast by campfires and lamps beyond windows; rushing arcs of headlights made fleeing people wink like fireflies as they ran through slices of light. The house detective could've been shooting at ghosts, but the strobe of his muzzle flashes pinpointed him. Gagneau poked the tip of an AK from his window and sprayed a burst—the chopper had found a place to land. Lieberman pitched over.

“Ah jeez,” Holloway groaned, and fired at the window.

Pepper spray tainted the air inside Gagneau's trailer. Vasquez slithered over the sink onto a carpet of glass on the tiny kitchen floor. Both windows in the kitchen were broken. A partial wall screened the rest of the camper. One narrow door was open on the front side, and a countertop opening doubled as the kitchen table and a breakfast nook in the middle room. The young Puerto Rican detective rose to a crouch, pulled her Colt, and extended the gun over the countertop. Gagneau was kneeling at the window on the other side of the front door, peering along the length of his AK, partially silhouetted by faint light from the window. His cough sounded like a stutter.

Vasquez shot Gagneau. The blue bullets flung the little man away from the window; he tumbled like an acrobat, disappearing behind a couch along the back wall of the middle room. His curses were interrupted by a fit of coughing. Then he slid from behind the other end of the couch and sprayed the kitchen wall with the AK. Vasquez dived back onto the glass-covered floor, deafened. Guthrie peeled the front door open and fired his Taser across the small room. The probes caught in the corner of the couch. Gagneau opened the door to the back room and rolled through as the little man drew his Colt and coughed.