High road or low road?
And then he knew the answer.
He’s a sniper. He’s a shooter. He works by seeing. His whole life is built on seeing. The input he gets from the world is all visual information, which he processes and from which he makes his decisions. He sees and he likes to see things a long way off. He doesn’t like surprises. He likes to be the surprise.
The high road.
A plan formed in his mind. Three cars and a truck, coming from different directions, snaring Bob in the middle, ramming him off the road, burying him with full automatic fire. Ten men firing full automatic in the first second after the crash.
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Sir?”
It was the lawyer in Oklahoma City.
“Yes?”
“They just left.”
Ray looked at his watch. Jesus, it was after five. They weren’t going to drive home tonight. He’d won!
“Good work.”
“Sir, we found the rooms they rented. The Holiday Inn, near the airport.”
“I told you—”
“Very discreet, Mr. Bama. No direct inquiries were made. We were able to get into the chain hotel computer directories. They reserved their rooms for two nights. Checkout time ten . tomorrow.”
“Good work,” said Bama. “Are you looking for a job?”
“Mr. Bama, I’m very happy where I am.”
“The check is in the mail, then.”
“I know your word is good.”
“It’s good in every city in this country,” Red said, hanging up. He quickly dialed Jorge de la Rivera.
“Yes?”
“The team is ready?”
“Yes sir. All stood down, relaxed. The girls you sent over went over real nice. They all been fucked or sucked, they all been fed, their weapons are cleaned.”
“Here’s how it’s going down. It’ll be tomorrow, midafternoon, on Oklahoma 1, about ten miles east of the 259 crossroads. It’s called the Taliblue Trail. Nice high mountain road, not heavily traveled, should be nice and private and wide open. You site your cars in opposite directions and let him get in the middle, then you close in on him so he’s got no place to run. You’ll want to take him off the road and get the guns working overtime right away. You want to bury him. You’ve got the advantage of both surprise and firepower.”
“It sounds very good. Muy bueno. Easy to do. We get him for you. But sir—how will we know he’s coming?”
“Oh, I’ll let you know over the radio. I’ll be watching.”
“You’re going to get involved in this, Mr. Bama?”
“You can’t miss me,” he said. “Just look up. I’ll be the one in the airplane.”
25
am woke in a fog after a dreamless but restless night. He had the nagging feeling that something important was scheduled for today. Was he due in court? Did he have to file a motion? Was some defense lawyer deposing him for an appeal? But nothing snapped into clarity and the goddamned maid had forgotten both the coffee and to pick up. That woman was getting sloppier and sloppier. He had half a mind to fire her, but he couldn’t remember her name. Then he remembered that he did fire her—twelve years ago. Then he remembered Mrs. Parker.
That was the woman he should have fired. When did the colored get so uppity? They had no respect anymore. It was a case of the rules simply eroding away until nothing was left but chaos and anarchy. Then he remembered little Shirelle.
He got up, straggled through a shower and got dressed, remembering his undershirt, forgetting his underpants. It went on like that for several hours: he felt a deep and mournful pain that he was not all there, he knew he was not all there, but somehow he could not get out of the track, which was a kind of infantile literal-mindedness, an unwilled concentration on petty things. He wanted to cry: Where did my mind go? Who took my mind?
Finally, a squall of clarity blew in by midafternoon, and everything popped briefly into place. He felt sane, cool, smart again. Taking advantage, he quickly went to his basement and remembered that he had originally committed to discovering his brief to the Coroner’s Office on the Earl Swagger shooting for Bob Lee Swagger. But that would have to wait. This was so much more interesting. He seized the file that he’d looked at the day before and this time he really bore down, sliding through the documents with a professional’s easy authority, examining the case against Reggie Gerard Fuller.
It held together. It might not hold together today, when the evidentiary rules were much tighter and the fact that Reggie’s initials were RGF and that those initials were found on the pocket crumpled in Shirelle’s hand might not constitute probable cause for a search warrant. But it sure as hell did then, as even Judge Harrison confirmed. Sam had a moment of pleasure: I did it by the book, by God. I don’t have to look back and be ashamed that somewhere I took a shortcut, I cut a corner, I faked this or that or lied about the other: no sir. The law was the law. The law was always right.
And the law looked at the shirt and the blood and Reggie’s absence of an alibi and said: Reggie Gerard Fuller did it.
He was satisfied. What else could he do? He had no other files. The actual evidence was burned in that damn 1994 fire. Nothing else could be learned.
But then … oh, little niggle of doubt. Little qualm, little tremor, little twitch.
He thought back on that night and his actions. What cast the longest shadow over the case was the RGF initials. Once they’d identified RGF—done, really, before he’d put his full concentration on the matter—the case developed a peculiar momentum that could not be stopped. It was such a fat, huge piece of evidence, like a proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla, that it sat anyplace it wanted to. It shaped all thought, all interpretation, all investigation; it became the central organizing principle of the case, a perceptual reality that could not be avoided.
In fact, Sam had even played that one out straight. He’d spent one whole day with Betty Hill, the town’s switchboard operator, going through the phone listings to ascertain if just possibly there wasn’t another RGF, of any color or sex. There wasn’t. He’d gone to the town registry looking for other RGFs who might not be on the phone list. He’d gone to every motel in a hundred square miles looking for another RGF in the area. No such thing.
That RGF: that was the monster.
It occurred to Sam: Suppose there was no RGF? Suppose we never found that RGF? Would we have ever tied the killing to Reggie? No, he thought not. If it weren’t for the dying girl’s spasm and the angry boy’s fury, the case might never have been solved.
But then he thought: Imagine an investigation without the weight of that discovery, that wasn’t misshapen or guided by it, that progressed quite naturally and led where it led, if anywhere. Of course he couldn’t imagine such a thing: RGF made that impossible.
Little tingle, little tremor, little buzz. Where did it come from?
What was he feeling?
He couldn’t pin it down: nothing. Forget it.
Then he had it.
Earl.
Earl Swagger had discovered the body. Earl had investigated the crime scene. Earl took notes. Earl made observations and suggestions. All of it untainted, or untouched, or unseduced by the mighty power of the RGF initials pointing the finger right straight into the heart of Reggie Gerard Fuller. Earl was dead before they ever linked anything to Reggie Gerard Fuller.
Too bad Earl hadn’t lived long enough to …