He didn’t notice the footsteps behind him.
“Need a hand?”
Brent started at the voice, hitting his head on the open trunk lid. He turned around quickly. The man was a mere shadow in the darkness a ways down the road, just beyond the reach of the flashing taillights. “Yeah,” he said nervously. “Got a flat. Two of ’em.”
“What a shame.”
The tone hardly put him at ease. Brent could barely see in the darkness. At this distance, the blinking orange taillights were actually a hindrance, playing tricks with his eyes. He squinted to focus, but he didn’t see another set of car lights. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even heard him pull up. The man seemed to have come from nowhere.
Survival instinct took over. He reached for the tire iron inside the trunk.
In one fluid motion, the stranger’s arm came up, the gun came out. A single shot pierced the night. Brent’s head jerked back. He fell to his knees, then flat on his face. Blood pumped from the hole that was once his right eye, spilling onto the asphalt. It gathered in a pool that drained to the shoulder, then gradually stopped.
All was quiet, save for the corn leaves rustling in the gentle breeze.
The gunman lowered his weapon and took a dozen steps forward. He stepped only on the pavement, not on the gravel shoulder, so as not to leave footprints. In the orange blinking lights his huge hands looked prosthetic, covered in the rubber gloves of a surgeon — there would be no fingerprints. He took aim at Brent’s head and squeezed the trigger once more, shattering the back of his skull. The job done, he pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and placed the weapon inside.
He walked toward the car and stopped at the left front tire. On one knee, he reached up inside the wheel well and yanked out the tiny transmitter he had attached while Brent was on the witness stand. The electronic pulse had allowed him to track the Buick all the way from Denver, telling him when to place the spiked board on the highway.
He rose and opened the car door. He reached inside and flashed the car lights. On cue, a car pulled onto the highway about fifty yards ahead. It had been parked in a narrow agricultural side road, sufficiently hidden by shoulder-high cornstalks. It raced toward him and stopped alongside the Buick. The passenger door opened. He jumped in.
The car sped away, back toward Denver, leaving the bloody corpse in the highway. He glanced back at his work, then took the murder weapon from his coat. He admired it in the dim light from the dashboard, leaving it in the plastic bag. A Smith & Wesson revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle. It wasn’t his, but he sure liked the way it had performed.
Frank Duffy had himself one fine piece.
49
Ryan’s pager chirped just north of Eads, about an hour from home. He kept one eye on the lonely highway as he checked the number on his belt. He didn’t recognize it. A Saturday evening page usually meant someone was awfully sick. Something told him, however, that this was no medical emergency.
He stopped at a gas station, went straight to a pay phone, and dialed the number. The rain seemed to fall harder with each push of the button. He moved closer to the phone, beneath the small overhang. It wasn’t much shelter. Thankfully, it took only one ring to get an answer.
“Brent’s dead.”
The pattering rain made it hard to hear. “ What did you say?”
“Your brother-in-law’s dead. Shot twice in the head. His body’s laying on Highway 287, about a half-hour from your house.”
Ryan recognized the voice. It was that security guy at K &G. “You killed him.”
“No. You killed him. With your father’s gun.”
He immediately thought of the break-in at his mother’s house. “You broke in and stole the gun.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Like the police are going to buy that one.”
“How’d you find it? How did you even know my father had a gun?”
“Registration records. And let’s face it. Isn’t the top drawer in the master bedroom the first place you’d look?”
“You bastards. You won’t get away with this.”
“Don’t be so sure. Listen to this.”
There was a click on the line, followed by Ryan’s own voice. It was a tape recording of his conversation with Norm after the hearing. Ryan listened in stunned silence as Norm’s words were played back to him. “My advice to you is to stay clear of your brother-in-law.” He braced himself for his own reply: “I will. Just as soon as I break his friggin’ neck.”
The recording was over. Ryan closed his eyes in disbelief. “You bugged Norm’s truck.”
“Not me. It probably was that bum who bumped into you outside the courthouse. Must have dropped something in your coat pocket. We heard the whole courtroom disaster — and everything since.”
Ryan reached frantically into his coat pockets, left, then right. A tiny microphone was buried at the bottom. He pulled it out and crushed it, erupting with anger. “Stop this! What do you people want from me!”
The reply was smug, unemotional. “Stay away from the FBI. And forget you ever heard of Joe Kozelka.”
“Or what?”
“Or the police are going to find this gun. They’re going to hear this tape. And they’re going to come knocking on your door.”
Ryan had no chance to speak. The line clicked, followed by the dial tone. He put the phone in the cradle but didn’t let go. The rain started to blow, soaking his hair and face. He didn’t know who to call first. Sarah. His mom. Norm. As he lifted the phone, he was certain of just one thing.
Definitely not the FBI.
Nathan Rusch hung up the pay phone and started back to the car. As an added precaution, he was taking the long way back to Denver, west to Pueblo and up I-25. He’d driven as far as Rocky Ford, the self-proclaimed melon capitol of the world. Banners and painted signs along the road heralded the upcoming Arkansas Valley Fair, held every August when the melons were in season. All the water-melon hoopla reminded Rusch of those old David Letterman shows where the host would drop big twenty-pounders off buildings in Manhattan, splattering them on the pavement. The result was not unlike Brent’s head on the highway.
Melonhead Langford. Twenty years in the business, he gave all his jobs a name. He especially liked this one.
The parking lot outside Denny’s restaurant was nearly full. Melons might have been the local claim to fame, but the Grand Slam breakfast was apparently a Saturday-evening hit. He crossed several rows of parked cars, then stopped alongside a white Taurus. The driver’s window slid down. His partner was behind the wheel. She wore neither the black nor the blond wig tonight. She was her natural brunette.
“Did you reach him?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” She slid across the bench seat to the passenger side. Rusch opened the door and got behind the wheel.
“I guess we’re a pretty good team, huh?”
He started the engine, showing not a hint of friendly agreement as he steered out of the parking lot. “You fucked up again, Sheila.”
“No way. I did everything I was supposed to do.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be such an obvious break-in. The whole key to the frame-up is that Duffy used his father’s gun. If it looks like somebody broke into the house and stole it before Brent got whacked, we got nothing.”
“The house was locked. What was I supposed to do? I thought I did a damn good job of finding the gun as quickly as I did.”
“It wasn’t that brilliant, Sheila. Nine out of ten people keep their handgun in a bedroom dresser drawer.”