An Absence of Light

“Hey, Rick,” Redden shouted, and jerked his head for Ledet to come over. Ledet hesitated. The fuel tanker was approaching the wing of the plane, and he didn’t want to be anywhere around Redden when the guns came out. Inexplicably, he just pointed to the fuel truck.

Murray was pulling to a stop, and when he saw Ledet pointing at him he grabbed a clipboard off the dash of the truck and raised it and pointed to it Redden looked toward the truck and saw the driver waving the clipboard. He laid something in one of the passenger seats, lowered the steps, and stepped down out of the plane. He was sandy-haired with a light, sun-flushed complexion. Though he was not a heavy man, he had a well-developed beer gut which was hardly camouflaged by his loose-fitting guayabera, a common garment for convenient handgun concealment. He wore cowboy boots and faded blue jeans, one leg of which was caught on the top of his boot revealing the boot’s red leather top which served as the background for a hand-tooled Mexican eagle, its wings spread out on either side of the boot.

Murray and Remberto got down out of the truck, slammed their doors, and came around the end of the wing as Murray again raised the clipboard.

“They said you had paperwork to clear up before you could take on fuel,” Murray said.

Redden looked around at Ledet “What’s this shit?”

Ledet shrugged.

Redden and Murray approached each other as Murray held out the clipboard, turning slightly as he did so to allow Remberto to approach Redden a few steps later than Murray and on Redden’s blind side.

“I’m paid up. What the hell’s the matter?” Redden said, grabbing the clipboard.

As soon as he jerked it out of Murray’s hand, Remberto’s arm went inside his bright orange overalls and came out with the Sig-Sauer, the muzzle of which went instantly into the fleshy reserve covering Redden’s left kidney. Redden flinched, and as he did so the muzzle of Murray’s. 45 screwed into his stomach while at the same instant Remberto’s left hand gripped his left arm just above the elbow.

“A forty-five and a nine-millimeter,” Murray said, his face right up in Redden’s. “And a Mac-10 right over there in the hangar.”

As Redden rolled his eyes cautiously to look at Ledet, Neuman came out of the hangar with his gun leveled at Ledet who simply raised his hands in the air.

“Son of a bitch,” Redden said. “Jeee-sus, I’m not believing this.”

“Believe it,” Murray said and his thick hand went around behind Redden and relieved him of the gun he had jammed into the back of his waistband. “Nine-millimeter… Beretta,” Murray said before he had even brought it out in the open.

The instant Remberto’s hand had gone into his overalls, Graver started the car and drove quickly across the tarmac, pulling up between Ledet’s Alfa and the plane. He got out and came around the front of the car to where Redden was still trying to absorb the past twenty seconds. Graver handed a pair of handcuffs to Murray who stepped around behind Redden and cuffed him.

“Who the hell are you?” Redden demanded, leveling his dark lenses at Graver. His nose was hawk-beaked and raw from the sun. Graver guessed it didn’t take much sun to be too much sun for Redden.

Graver reached out and took off Redden’s sunglasses to reveal pale blue eyes and an extraordinarily woolly pair of ginger eyebrows. Redden immediately grimaced in the bright light.

“Shit,” he said.

Chapter 73

On the spur of the moment Graver decided not to take Eddie Redden back to his house in Seabrook for questioning. Instead he sat him down in the center of the empty hangar, his hands handcuffed behind his back, his legs crossed yoga fashion. He placed him so that he faced the hangar’s sliding doors that were pulled wide open so that he had a good view of his precious Pilatus PC-12 fifty feet away. Graver stood just to the side of the plane so that Redden just about had to look at both of them when he spoke to Graver. The sheet metal hangar was at its maximum heat level, having soaked up the coastal sun all day long. Even though the huge doors were wide open, the occasional breeze that slipped in was only a different way of feeling the heat, and caused the hangar to function very much like a convection oven.

Everyone removed their coats and hung them wherever they could find a place, on a nail or over the handle of an hydraulic jack, or on the hasp of a door latch. The empty hangar magnified their voices so that no one really had to talk above a conversational tone to be heard. Outside, the droning of cicadas and grasshoppers was interrupted occasionally by an airplane approaching or taking off. And occasionally, too, when there was a pause in the talk, you could hear the sheet metal walls of the hangar crackling and popping as they expanded in the heat.