The Quiet Game

Kelly shakes his head. "I don't think these guys were together. They're dressed different, and their equipment's different. I think the guy with the deer gun was just in the way."

"Who knew you were coming to this meeting?" Ike asks.

"My father and Kelly. That's it."

"What about you?" Kelly asks Ike.

"Nobody knows where I'm at. How did these guys get so close if you were covering the meeting?"

Kelly scratches the side of his nose, as though to emphasize his calmness. "First of all, they're not that close. Second, the curve of the levee blocked my line of sight to the guy with the deer gun, but not his line to you. Third, the sniper on the levee followed you in. He probably drove with his lights off and parked well back, then moved up on foot." Kelly pauses, his cool blue eyes level with Ike's. "And fourth, if I was in with those guys, you'd be bagged and tagged right now."

Ike snorts and turns toward the levee. "Show me the dead guys."

Kelly unslings his MP-5 and starts jogging toward the levee. We follow him across the lot, trying to stay with him as he pounds up the spongy grass on the side of the levee. The odors of cow manure and bush-hogged grass weight the humid air. At the crest, Kelly points at a black shape lying at the edge of the gravel road that runs atop the levee.

"No wallet," he says. "No ID at all. Car's clean too. A rental."

"That's risky," Ike remarks. "He gets stopped at random without ID, he's gonna get run in."

"Unless he's willing to do the cop."

Ike walks to the corpse, bends over, and takes a long look. "Never seen him. Take a look, Cage."

I walk over and glance at the dead sniper. He's dressed from head to toe in black, and looks like he stepped off a film set. His face is pale and placid in the dark, as though he were shot while sleeping. A dead face can be difficult to identify, so I give it long enough to be sure.

"I don't know him."

"Here's his weapon." Kelly holds out a long, bolt-action rifle to Ike. "Rank-Pullin starlight scope. Fourth-generation passive amplification. Expensive toy."

"Guy's definitely out of town," Ike declares. "Nobody around here uses shit like this. Caliber looks awful small."

"It's a special twenty-two magnum. Chambers subsonic rounds. An assassin's gun."

"Christ," I whisper. "Where's the other guy?"

Kelly points into the darkness south of the warehouse, then starts down the slope.

The second corpse is lying facedown in a thicket of weeds, dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. There's a red bandanna knotted around its head.

Ike bends down and pulls a rifle from the dead hand. "An old Remington thirty-aught-six. Seen better days too."

Kelly says, "The shooter on the levee probably saw him moving up to get a shot. Poor bastard didn't have a chance."

Ike puts both hands under the corpse and rolls it over. Below the dead man's left eye is a small black hole. Small but obviously fatal.

"I've seen a hundred shitkickers just like him," says Ike. "But I don't know this one."

As I stare, the slack features suddenly coalesce into a coherent whole, and a feverish heat shoots through me. The dead man is a nightmare made flesh, a physical echo of the most terrifying night of my life.

"I know him," I say, grabbing Ike's arm.

"Who is he?"

"His name's Hanratty. I convicted his brother of capital murder. He was just executed."

"I'll be damned. That Aryan Brotherhood bastard?"

"Right. I also shot his other brother four years ago."

"No shit," says Kelly, with respect mingled with surprise.

"This one was the last." The fever heat has disappeared, leaving a chill in its wake. "The youngest."

Ike kicks the corpse's leg. "No more boom-boom for this Aryan papasan."

He kneels and starts going through the dead man's pockets, quickly turning up a wallet. "Hanratty, Clovis Dee," he says, reading the driver's license.

"Brother of Arthur Lee," I say absurdly.

"And white people make fun of African names," Ike mutters, getting to his feet. " 'Least we know what happened now. This shitkicker was out for revenge, and he picked the wrong night to try it. He was crowding that ninja assassin up on the levee, and he paid for it. The question is, who sent the assassin?"

"Portman?" I suggest. "The hardware looked pretty sophisticated."

"John Portman would definitely have access to people like that," Kelly says quietly. "Retired Bureau. Agency. Former CT operators." He looks at Ike. "In any case, I hope you appreciate this enough to take care of any problems that might arise."

"Don't sweat it," Ike replies. "We're in the county here. Me and the sheriff understand each other. Although three killings in one day is big-time trouble for this town."

"The district attorney could be a problem," I tell them, thinking of Austin Mackey.

"Fuck that tightass," Ike mutters. "We got three witnesses telling it one way, dead guys got nobody. Mackey got no choice."

"I was thinking of Kelly's submachine gun. It's illegal."

Kelly smiles and draws a pistol from his holster.

"What you gonna do with that?" Ike asks, dropping his hand to his own gun.