The one exception to the grimness was the administration building, set outside the triple fencing amid grass, shrubbery, and even a few palm trees. After my brief sightseeing circuit, I parked in front and entered the glass doors. A receptionist behind glass asked if she could help me. “I hope so,” I said, introducing myself and flashing my TBI consultant’s badge — an official-looking brass shield, especially impressive if the word “CONSULTANT” was masked by a strategically placed knuckle.
“Tennessee,” she said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I sure am,” I said, smiling. “The FBI asked me to help with a case out here. I’m hoping I could talk to the watch commander — if that’s the right term — who was supervising the guard-tower staff during the graveyard shift on a night back in June.”
“Well, the night-shift watch commander wouldn’t be on duty now,” she said. “But he reports to the assistant warden for security, who is here. Could he help you with this?”
“Well, it’s worth a try,” I said.
“Walter Jessup,” said the assistant warden ten minutes later, extending his hand across a desk. “I understand you’re interested in events the night of June eighteenth, early morning of June nineteenth?”
“Yes, sir. I’m wondering if any of the watchtower guards saw something unusual, around one in the morning.”
“Any of them? All of them. Have to be blind to miss that fire on the mountain.”
I smiled. “Yeah, and I reckon you don’t put a lot of blind men up in those guard towers. Actually, though, I’m hoping somebody saw something before the fire. Before the plane hit.”
“You mean the parachute?”
I blinked. I stared. I blinked again. “Are you serious? Somebody really saw a ’chute?”
“Yep. Tompkins. Minute or so after the plane flew over. Minute or so before it hit. A little south of the usual spot, though.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not quite the same place the ’chutes usually come down.”
“Let me make sure I’m following you,” I said slowly. “Are you telling me this happens regularly? Nighttime parachute jumps over wilderness?”
“Not regularly. More like irregularly. Occasionally. Three, four times a year, maybe. But usually, like I say, usually they’re a little farther north — right over that little airstrip by the lake. And usually they’re before the plane lands, not after it takes off. Propeller plane, in the past. Not a jet. So this time was same thing, only different.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. “How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “Five years, plus or minus a year. If it’s important, we could ask some of the guards if they can pin it down closer than that.”
“Ever reported it to anybody?”
“You bet. Plane comes in at night from south of the border, drops something at a private airstrip a few miles from town before landing at a port of entry? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they’re running contraband.”
I felt my heart sinking and my anger rising. “Who’d you report it to?”
“DEA. I talked to the guy myself, face-to-face. Big fat redheaded fella, sitting right there where you’re sitting now, wheezing like he had asthma or emphysema or something. He said he’d look into it, but I never heard back from him. And those parachutes kept on coming down.”
Sitting in the car in the prison parking lot, I dialed — jabbed — Carmelita Janus’s number on my cell phone. “You lied to me,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “Right to my face, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Oh, Richard hated drugs,’ you said. ‘Richard would never smuggle drugs.’ I can’t believe I fell for that load of crap. And I can’t believe I crawled out on a limb to help you. Don’t ever call me again.”
“Wait,” she said. “I didn’t lie to you. Where are you? What’s happened? Why are you saying this?”
“I’m at Donovan State Prison,” I said coldly. “The guard towers there have a good view toward Richard’s airstrip. They’ve known about the drug drops for years. So has the DEA. Richard’s fat, crooked pal.”
“Richard wasn’t smuggling drugs,” she said. “I swear it. You have to believe me.”
“No, I don’t, Mrs. Janus. I already made that mistake. I won’t make it again. I hope they catch whoever killed your husband. But I can’t help you anymore.”
“Wait,” she said again.
I didn’t wait. I clicked off the phone, started the car, and left the prison, circling the complex one last time. This time I seemed to feel myself being watched, and I found myself looking upward: up at the looming towers. In the glare of sunlight glinting off their windows, I seemed to see only blank, blind stares, unblinking and utterly indifferent to whatever crimes and misdeeds were occurring — on either side of the triple fencing and coiled razor wire.
Chapter 40
As I neared the turnaround of the dead-end road — the spot I had come to think of as the drop zone — my small, citified, sissified car bottomed out for what felt like the dozenth time, the oil pan banging and rasping as the metal scraped across stone. When I’d rented the vehicle back at Brown Field, the Hertz agent had done a walk-around inspection with me, marking scrapes and dings on a diagram of the car. Hope he doesn’t check for dents underneath, I thought, parking in the same place where I’d parked two hours before.
The engine was ticking with heat, but something about the sound struck me as odd — as different — from the usual dry, metallic click… and it seemed to be coming not just from the engine but from the ground as well. Kneeling in the sand, I leaned on my elbows and peered beneath the car. Tick-splat, tick-splat, tick-splat. “Well, damn,” I muttered. “Damn damn damn.” Each damn was echoed by a fat drop of oil falling from the ripped oil pan and splatting into a fast-growing puddle beneath the engine. Still on all fours, I turned and looked behind the car. A thread of oil trailed down the rocky road, like greasy blood, from the wounded Impala.
Then, as if snuffling along the trail, another vehicle nosed up the road, a black Suburban with big tires and plenty of ground clearance. Clambering to my feet, I walked back toward the SUV. “I’m sure glad to see you,” I said to Maddox as the door opened.
But it was not Maddox who got out of the Suburban. It was a fat man with greasy red hair, a sweaty white shirt, a leather shoulder holster, and a stubby revolver. The revolver was still holstered, but the safety strap was unsnapped, and I suddenly wished I still had the pistol I’d thrown into the river a few days before. “You,” I said, my blood pressure spiking. Even though the air was bone dry, sweat began rolling from my scalp and seeping from my armpits. “What are you doing here?”
“Following you,” he wheezed. “I don’t believe we’ve formally met, Dr. Brockton. I’m Special Agent William Hickock. I’m with the DEA. The Drug Enforcement Administration.”
“I know what the DEA is,” I said. “And I know who you are. You’re the guy waging war on the worst badasses on the planet, right? Or are you?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your pissing contest with Miles Prescott and the FBI. I heard you and Prescott arguing in the IHOP that night. The night after somebody aimed Richard Janus’s jet — his jet and his corpse and his yanked-out teeth — at that mountainside and bailed out. Were you still in cahoots with Janus at that point, or had you two had a falling-out? Had Janus gotten greedy? Or was it you that got greedy?”