Tax Assassin (16 page)

“
You’ve got twenty-four
hours before I put out an APB on Switch.”

Seth heard a man swear rapid-fire at Deputy
Young.

“
Did you really have to
call in the Fort?” Deputy Young asked.

“
Didn’t,” Seth
said.

“
Makes you wonder,” Deputy
Young said. “You gonna tell me where they are?”

“
Hideout,” Seth
said.

The Deputy chuckled and hung up.

“
What was that?” Ava
asked.

“
Friend of my older
brother’s,” Seth said. “They found the guy Switch shot. Hillery
Bloom Jr.”

“
The father,” Ava
said.

“
Switch shot Gramps in the
head,” Seth said.

“
One down,” Ava said and
started walking down the hall. “Two to go.”

He paused for a moment. It was really five
down. Aaron Alvin, Bella, and the two marshals were dead. The
attempt on Éowyn made five down with three to go. With every
passing moment, Ava’s brush with death came closer. His heart
squeezed with anxiety.

“
Coming?” Ava smiled at him
from the doorway to the principal’s office.

Seth nodded and followed her into the
office. They stood in the entryway and tried to get their bearings.
Outside of what looked like a brand new world map, the office
didn’t look like it had been updated in a decade. It looked as if
all the people who worked in this office were either at lunch or
had fled the building.

“
Hello?” Ava
asked.

“
Be right there!” a man’s
voice called from somewhere in the back.

Seth put his hand on his handgun and his
other arm around Ava. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“
Hey! You must be
O’Malley,” A thirty-something man with a big smile came from a back
office. “Seth, right?”

Seth held out a hand for him to shake.

“
Got your message. My staff
is out for break, and I’m trying to work the copy machine. Damn
budget cuts. We have to account for every sheet, and I can never
remember my number.”

He brightened when his eyes fell on Ava.

“
This is Ava.” Unsure of
whether to use her last name, “Alvin,” he glanced at
her.

“
Ava O’Malley,” she smiled
and shook the principal’s hand.

“
You wouldn’t happen to
know . . .?” he asked her.

“
I can try,” Ava
said.

“
The numbers on this
sticky,” the principal pointed to a bright-colored note stuck to
the page.

She took the sheet from the principal and
went back into the equipment room. Seth’s worried eyes followed her
before turning to the principal.

“
You wanted to get some
information about our science department?” the principal asked.
“You police?”

“
Why?”

“
You look like police,” the
principal said.

Seth shrugged.

“
Anyway, we have two
science teachers,” the principal said. “You want to see their
classrooms?”

“
Sure,” Seth’s eyes went to
where Ava had gone.

“
You can leave your
daughter here,” the principal said.

“
What can you tell me about
Hillery Bloom?” Seth asked.

“
Bloom?” the principal
looked surprised. “He was the science teacher here
for . . . gosh, a long time. Started way before my
time. The kids really liked him. He always had some crazy
experiment for them to try. Man, I’ll tell you, did I get phone
calls from parents about that guy. ‘We went to the drive in and
child put a candy in his coke. It blew up in the car.’ Stuff like
that.”

“
You’re using the past
tense,” Seth said.

“
He didn’t teach last
year,” the principal said. “He’s got some kind of autoimmune kidney
thing. He said it was from the Army maneuver site; reaction to some
nerve gas or something like that. Their land is right on the border
of Piñon Canyon. They’re big ‘save-the-land-from-the-evil-Army’
people.”

The principal nodded.

“
You didn’t like him much,”
Seth said.

“
I . . .”
The principal blushed and didn’t respond.

“
How come?” Ava asked. She
gave the principal a big smile and handed him his copy.

“
Thanks,” the principal
looked at her. “I was just telling your dad . . .”

“
Husband,” Ava
said.

“
Oh. Sorry,” the principal
blushed. She gave him a bright smile.

“
It’s an easy mistake,”
Seth said.

“
I . . .
yeah.” The principal shifted back and forth on his feet. “You’re
right. I don’t like him. He and his family are big ‘no-tax’
anti-government people.”

“
No tax? Isn’t he a school
teacher?” Ava asked.

“
Right,” the principal
said. “He doesn’t believe in state property taxes. Didn’t matter
that state property taxes pay for schools, even his salary, his
medical insurance, or his retirement. And he wasn’t like ‘everyone
has to pay property taxes.’ It was like the state personally cursed
him and his family with the blight of property taxes. Or that’s how
he acted.”

“
Kind of odd,” Seth
said.

“
Odd,” the principal said.
“The guy had a screw loose. They ranch close to a hundred thousand
acres out of Houghton. They homesteaded the land after the Civil
War. ‘Crawled up from Texas after the battle at Palmito Hill,’
that’s what he always said, anyway. The land was pretty much
worthless until the Army wanted to expand. Soon as there was an
actual buyer for the land, the assessor increased the tax value of
the place. I mean, that’s just how land works; it gets more
valuable when more people want it. Not to Bloom. He was furious
when his taxes went up. That was just before he got
sick.”

“
Do you have his medical
records?” Ava smiled.

“
For his leave?” the
principal shifted back and forth uncomfortably again.
“Um . . . I’d get in big trouble if anyone found out
I . . .”

“
We won’t tell,” Ava said.
“I’d just like to take a look.”

“
Why?” the principal
asked.

“
Just curious.” Ava gave
him a beautiful smile.

The principal flushed. He glanced at Seth
and went to a cabinet. He dug through a drawer of folders and gave
her one. Ava took it and sat down in the secretary’s chair.

“
I have to say,” the
principal said. “He’s real sick. He spent most of last summer in
the hospital . . . uh . . . in
Albuquerque, I think. I do know he went up to Denver to that
allergy hospital.”

“
National Jewish?” Seth
asked.

“
That’s the one,” the
principal leaned into Seth. “I’ll tell you, though. His doctor told
me that he didn’t think he was sick from some Army thing. He
thought it
was . . .”

The principal looked around to make sure no
one was there.

“
Inbreeding,” the principal
nodded. “Those old ranch families out there have been
inter-marrying since they moved here. And the treatment? Something
simple like taking a pill or something.”

“
Is he on disability now?”
Seth asked.

“
Trying for it,” the
principal said. “I’d never say this to anyone else, but I’ll tell
you it really pisses me off that he’s all up in arms about paying
his taxes and now wants disability. But Bloom says he was cursed by
the U.S. Army. ‘The U.S. government should pay.’ That’s what he
says; like he’s not a U.S. citizen or something.”

“
I heard they sold to the
Army,” Seth said.

“
Probably to move into town
for his medical treatments,” the principal said. “We graduated his
oldest in May. Those girls . . .”

The principal shook his head.

“
Sounds like you’ll be glad
to be rid of the lot of them,” Seth said.

“
You said that, not me,”
the principal said.

Seth smiled.

“
Did he have access to a
computer?” Ava said.

She walked toward them and held out the
file. The principal grabbed the file and jammed it back in the
drawer.

“
Computer?” the principal
asked. “Not here. Too paranoid. We have a strict policy on computer
use for teachers and students. We have a guy who reviews everything
and we turn any suspicious computer use over the Homeland Security.
We have a few federal grants and that’s part of getting the
money.”

“
He wouldn’t happen to be a
ghost hunter, would he?” Seth asked.

The principal turned to look at Seth and
then shook his head.

“
That’s weird,” the
principal said. “How did you know that?”

“
Lucky guess,” Seth said.
“Why?”

“
He was big into
reconstructing the Civil War,” the principal said. “Every summer,
he’d load up his entire family and take them to some Civil War
battlefield in Alabama or Georgia or wherever. They’d do paranormal
investigations to get information from the soldiers’ ghosts. Helps
them in their recreations of the battles. That’s what I mean. Who
does that kind of crap?”

“
A lot of people are
fascinated,” Seth said.

“
Send ‘em to Iraq,” the
principal said. “Two tours with the Colorado Guard cured me of any
interest in war. You ever go?”

“
First Infantry,” Seth
said. “Caught the end of Vietnam.”

“
Yeah? My old man was on a
bomber crew over Laos. Where were you?”

“
Cu Chi.”

“
Tunnel rat?”

“
Something like that,” Seth
said.

“
They have guys in tunnels
in Afghanistan,” the principal said.

“
Marines,” Seth said. “I
met a few a couple of years ago. At least they don’t have to deal
with Agent Orange showers.”

“
Shit, you really are a
rat,” the principal said. “Lots of guys say they went down
but . . . Then you know what I mean.”

“
I know what you mean,”
Seth said.

“
You still want to see the
science rooms?” the principal asked.

“
We’re mostly looking for
Bloom,” Ava said.

“
He used to make a lot of
his ghost hunting gear here,” the principal said.

“
Did you ever see it?” Ava
asked.

“
Sure,” the principal said.
“The school newspaper highlighted his ghost hunting adventures.
There’s a
picture . . .”

The principal went to his secretary’s desk,
logged in, and looked around.

“
Here’s a photo,” he
clicked on the picture. “This was taken right after he got back
from Denver.”

“
When was that?” Seth
pointed to a long-distance thermographic camera. Ava
nodded.

“
Early fall,” the principal
said. “Thought he was better. He came to work, got sick, came back,
and then took leave. This was around Halloween.”

“
Can I have a copy of the
photo?” Ava asked.

“
If you can figure out how
to print it,” the principal said.

“
Sure,” Ava
said.

The principal stepped away from the
computer, and Ava sat down in the secretary’s chair.

“
We’re going to pass this
information on to the Denver Police,” Seth said. “They’ll probably
call.”

“
Sure,” the principal said.
“You won’t tell them about looking at the records, or that I don’t
like Bloom or the disability thing or . . .”

“
We won’t,” Seth
said.

“
What’s he supposed to have
done?” the principal asked.

“
Killed a few people,” Seth
shrugged.

“
Shot them?” the principal
asked. “Bloom has a shooting range on his land. I’ve heard he’s a
great shot. He was always after me to come out to the range, but
you know how it is.”

“
Shooting people cures your
desire to shoot targets?”

“
You think I’ll ever get
over that?” the principal asked.

“
No,” Seth said. “You
won’t.”

“
Did you?”

“
Never,” Seth
said.

“
Have you had to shoot
people since . . .?”

“
Yes,” Seth said. “But I’m
not a high school principal. You’re smarter than I was.”

Reassured, the principal nodded.

“
You wouldn’t know if he
has any friends who work at Sandia National Laboratory, would you?”
Ava asked. She folded over the photo of Bloom’s thermographic
camera and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans.

“
In Albuquerque?” the
principal asked. “Sure. His wife, Meldy, works there. Or did until
he got sick.”

“
Kind of a long commute,”
Seth said.

“
Four hours or so,” the
principal said. “She’s home on the weekends.”

“
But?”

“
They never seemed that
close,” the principal said. “I was kind of surprised when she quit
work because he was sick.”

“
Marital problems?” Ava
asked.

“
Different species,” the
principal put his hand over his mouth. “Did I say that out
loud?”