Same as it ever was.
Nomad couldn’t fail to note a police presence around the hospital. A cruiser was prowling slowly along Ring Road and a second was sitting at the front of the hospital where its occupants could see and be seen. Allen found a slot about mid-level up in the parking deck and pulled in. The door locks clicked open. Nomad got out and followed his new warden into the hospital. Allen carried the brown folder with him. They went past the elevators and took the stairs. Allen paused in the hallway to show a police officer his ID, and then they entered the waiting room that Nomad had walked out of early Sunday morning.
It was reunion-time. Ariel, Terry and Berke were there, all of them looking as tired and haggard as if they’d been the ones spending two nights in the lockup. Also present were three other people: a brown-haired young man in a dark blue suit and a red-striped tie whom Nomad didn’t recognize, and two others he did—Ashwatthama Vallampati and, unexpectedly, Roger Chester, the ‘RC’ of RCA. Everybody but the unknown young man, who wore a Bluetooth headset, had been sitting down when Allen and Nomad walked in, and now they stood up to show their good Texan, Oklahoman, Massachusetts, Californian and New Delhi manners.
“Dude!” said Terry, smiling as he came forward to bump shoulders and knuckles. “You enjoy your state-paid vacation?”
“No swimming pool,” Nomad said. “Not a lot of chance to sunbathe, either.” It was obvious they knew where he’d been; Captain Garza had probably told them on Sunday. Nomad saw sleeping bags folded up in a corner. He guessed the floor and sofa were not very comfortable. Maybe his bandmates had changed clothes and cleaned up in the public bathroom, but a scatter of soft drink cans, water bottles, candy and granola bar wrappers completed the story. They had been right here at UMC since Sunday morning.
Berke came over to slap him a high-five and comment on the bitch kiss he’d taken to the cheek. Suddenly Ariel was standing right in front of him. He looked into her eyes. Today—this moment—they were dark gray, the color of rain from a troubled sky. He recalled the things he’d said to her from the Pima County Jail. Your land of rainbows and moonbeams. Do whatever the fuck you need to do. If you want to try to save sick animals, go be a vet.
And maybe the worst: Stop holding onto me.
Because he knew it was the other way around, and without Ariel’s presence he feared his anger—at the world, at his father for betraying his mother and being so damned good at it, and at himself for being not nearly as talented as he pretended to be—might rise up and eat him alive.
She hugged him.
She put her arms around him and leaned her head against his shoulder, and he realized that the most awesome thing…the most totally amazing thing…
…was that he did not pull away.
Then after a few seconds she looked at him and nodded, to welcome him back to his family, and he said a little nervously, “I missed you guys.”
“John?” Roger Chester thrust a brown hand at him, and Nomad shook it. “Glad we could get you out of that situation.” He had the kind of voice that takes over a room. He was trim, in his early sixties, and was tanned year-round from either playing golf or spending time at his second home in Cozumel. He wore tortoise-shell glasses that slightly magnified his dark brown eyes. He had curly white hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. His blue jeans were the trendy dirty denims, and he wore a red cowboy-style shirt with pearl-snap buttons under a dark blue blazer. Nomad had met him only once before, on the day he and the others had signed the contract for representation, and even then it had been brief because Roger Chester had just stopped by Creedy’s office to ask a question about the new CD from Creedy’s hot zombie-goth band I Died Yesterday. Creedy was Ethan Creed, who’d been The Five’s agent for about three months before he took off for another talent group in Miami. Then The Five’s career was handed over to the new man at the agency, Ashwatthama Vallampati.
“Hello, Ash,” Nomad said, and Ash said in his clipped accent, “Hello, John.”
He didn’t really care much for Ash, and he didn’t think Ash cared much for The Five. Ash was twenty-six years old, tall and fashionably slender, was handsome in an exotic way that could slay the Texas chicks—or the Texas dicks, because it was unclear which way he swung—and he always wore black suits and white shirts with neon-colored ties. His blue-black hair was always combed straight back and fixed with glistening pomade. He always smelled of bitter lemons. He always looked to Nomad as if he wore a faint half-smile of smug arrogance. The Roger Chester Agency handled maybe thirty bands and another dozen or so single acts. They had a couple of country-western heavy hitters, the Austin All-Nighters and the Trailblazers, both of whom had won Grammys. Roger Chester handled those personally, as well as the monster heavy-metal thrash band Shatter The Sky, who’d just recently returned from a European tour. Of the rest of the bands fighting for attention and a place in the public sun, The Five was probably down in the basement with the mutts. Or at least that’s how Nomad felt Ash viewed them. To Nomad, Ash was all talk, big plans and no energy, and when something fizzled Ash just shrugged and let it go like he wasn’t responsible.
Nomad figured Ash was on his way to Los Angeles, and thought of his job as more of a babysitter for spoiled wailing brats than a professional working to break a band out. Yeah, he did some things, like getting the spot with Felix Gogo, and obviously he was doing something for the other five or six bands he handled, but Nomad always remembered that one time in Ash’s office Ash had said to him, “Your band doesn’t really make any money for us, but we keep you around because we personally like you.”
Nomad and Ash didn’t shake hands.
“I am grieved about this tragedy.” Roger Chester was standing so close to Nomad that Nomad could smell the orange Tic-Tac on his breath. “Mike Davis was a great bass player, a great musician. As for George Emerson…thank God he’s going to live.”
Nomad doubted that Roger Chester even knew who George was. “Are his parents here?” He’d directed the question to Allen.
“They flew in Sunday night. I’ve spoken to them, they’re good people.”
“Like I say, thank God he’s going to live,” Roger Chester repeated, as a way of gaining control of the room again. “All right then, Mr. Allen—or should I say Agent Allen?—where do we go from here?”
Nomad had already assumed that Allen had previously paid a visit to this room, speaking to Berke, Terry and Ariel as well as to George’s parents, but he had no idea what Chester was talking about. Nomad frowned. “Go from here? Back to Austin, that’s where. The tour’s over.” He got no response from anyone. “Listen, if we’ve got a fu…” He decided he didn’t care what Allen thought about his language. “If we’ve got a fucking sniper after us, I think we’d better go home! Don’t you?” He looked back and forth between Chester and Allen.
“It’s not that simple,” Allen told him, and those four words had the sound of doom. “Why don’t you sit down?” He motioned toward one of the folding chairs that had been brought in for the extra people. “Everyone take a seat. I want to tell you what you’re facing.”
Nomad sat down in a chair beside Ariel. He was thinking of what Allen had said at the jaiclass="underline" You’re going to help me catch Jeremy Pett. When all the others had settled, except the young man in the dark blue suit who remained unintroduced and who stood silently by the door, Allen took the central position in the room and opened the brown folder.
“I’ve already told you who he is, but I haven’t told you what he is,” Allen said to the group. “He’s a veteran Marine. He served two tours of duty in Iraq as a sniper, so he knows his business. Training to be a sniper is the toughest discipline in the Corps. They teach the doctrine of one bullet, one kill.” He paused for emphasis. “That’s the ideal. It doesn’t always go that way on the battlefield. But Pett’s record says he had thirty-eight confirmed kills and another forty-two probables. His last kill was in 2004, though, and now is now. He’s been through some hardships. They’ve worked on him. He’s probably let himself slide physically. Mentally, too. So he’s not nearly as sharp as he used to be…but…he’s given himself a cause of some kind. He’s invented a mission. Which obviously involves killing the members of your band. He followed you to Sweetwater and got himself in position across from that gas station. He must have been right behind you all the way from Dallas.”