Chill Factor (45 page)

Dixie braked, U-turned, and backtracked to a gravel side road marked
PRIVATE
near the spot where she’d lost sight of the Jeep. Taking the turn, she headed east into a dense thicket. Her tires kicked up brown road dust as she snaked among the trees. Ahead, traces of dust already floated on the air, showing a vehicle had passed through in the past few minutes.

The undergrowth gradually thinned out. In the distance, Dixie heard the roar of an eighteen-wheeler as the private road dead-ended into a narrow blacktop.

She scanned briefly in both directions before turning north, away from the diesel’s diminishing growl. A mile down the road, she spied another turnoff, the air thick with dust. Nearly two miles after the turn, she spied the Cherokee in the driveway of a boarded-up one-story building. Dixie slowed.

A heavy-gauge chain stretched across the drive, blocking the entrance to a parking area filled with potholes. Laskey must’ve put up the chain after driving through. The Jeep disappeared around back.

Cruising past, Dixie made another U-turn a quarter mile down and parked the Mustang off the road near a growth of yaupon. She cut the engine and considered what to do. Whatever was inside the building might be none of her business. She might be mistaken about the young man’s relationship to the sniper. Her odometer had registered thirty-six miles, which meant she could be in one of three police jurisdictions. What would she say if she called for help? “Chased the Mayor’s assistant because he was wearing suspicious clothes? Saw him stop at a deserted building?”

Climbing out of the car, she circled to the trunk and grabbed a penlight, then considered the battered case containing two handguns and a combat shotgun. If Laskey was part of a gang that had engineered the assassinations, she’d be a fool to be caught in that building unarmed. She removed a .38
Smith & Wesson Airweight, loaded it, snapped it into a belt holster at her waist, then untucked her shirttail to cover it.

Slipping a pair of handcuffs into her pocket, she sprinted down the road, staying in the shadows of the yaupon. The underbrush cleared. The building came in sight.

Shit!
The Cherokee was driving away!

What now? Jump back in the Mustang and follow?

No … she had the license number. And that building intrigued her.

Laskey had left the chain down—meaning he would likely return. Still, she might have a few minutes to explore. Ten minutes—it would take at least that long to drive anywhere from here, wouldn’t it? Anywhere with grocery stores, strip centers, eateries. Ten there, ten back, twenty minutes total.

Why would anyone drive to this remote spot in the first place—unless that structure contained secrets?

Dixie jogged back to the Mustang, opened the trunk, and removed a Lock-Aid tool, a gun-shaped device capable of opening just about any lock with a keyhole. If the building was occupied, the four-by-eight sheets of plywood covering every door and window would prevent anyone seeing her approach.

Easing down one side of the building, Dixie looked for peepholes, loose boards, any way to see inside. She found nothing. She scanned the parking area, and finally peeked around the rear. No vehicles. A wide shed with overhead doors suggested enclosed parking for at least ten cars. Dixie lifted one of the doors and looked in. Empty. But it smelled like a garage, stale oil and exhaust fumes.

Directly behind the building stood a wooden stand facing open pasture, then wooded acreage. A single-station shooting range?

She circled back and turned her attention to a plywood panel that covered the rear door. It appeared solidly nailed to the building, like the others she’d tested, but closer examination showed that it was merely nailed to lath strips. When she shoved, the whole panel glided sideways on suspension rollers to reveal a padlocked door. She inserted the Lock-Aid tool into the padlock and pulled the trigger, emitting a series of clicks.
The lock fell open. She slipped it out of its hasp, flipped the latch back, and rehung the padlock.

Anyone arriving would know instantly someone was inside—and Texas property owners had been known to shoot trespassers. Dixie glanced behind her at the empty parking area and the land beyond it, then turned the knob and pushed. The dead bolt was also locked, but a few clicks of the Lock-Aid snapped it open. The door swung inward with a creak that made her swallow a curse, even though the padlock suggested the building was empty.

Stepping inside, she sensed she was in a large open space. Only the thinnest rays of sunlight seeped through the boarded windows. She smelled cordite. Heard no voices, and no other sounds.

She slid the plywood panel back in place. At least no one would spot the intrusion from a distance, and the noise of the panel sliding back might give her time to take cover.

Flicking on the penlight, she saw a polished hardwood floor. Folded chairs leaned against one wall. Above the chairs, a poster read:
WE ARE THE PEOPLE
,
WE ARE THE POWER
,
WE ARE PROTECTORS
. Another poster showed a famous battle scene from the Civil War.

Her penlight picked out white letters on a blue background. She played the light over the writing.
We, the People of the United States …
the Preamble to the Constitution.

Preservation Society
, the kid had said. The Civil War poster, the Preamble, both would certainly fit such a group.

She moved forward ten yards to a raised carpeted platform, with steps leading from one side. Mounting the steps, she looked down at the open floor space. She stood on the stage of an old ballroom. Judging by the lectern, with dials and buttons marked for audiovisual presentation, meetings were held here. The wall behind the stage was painted with a large graphic. She aimed her light around the edges and after a few sweeps recognized a letter “P” enclosed in a triangle.
Preservation Society.

A videotape protruded from the VCR play slot. Locating the volume control, Dixie slid it all the way left, toward mute. She pushed the video in. Instantly, the
PLAY
indicator lit up, and a
twelve-foot movie screen descended from the ceiling, covering the logo wall.

After a short lead, a mountain scene appeared on the screen, snowcapped peaks, then a waterfall, a hiking trail, cotton fields, lakes, streams—preservation of natural resources? The collage might’ve been taken from a travelogue, with a bit of the History Channel edited in.

As Dixie reached for the
REWIND
button, the scene changed abruptly to fires, explosions, street fights. News coverage of the Kennedy assassinations. Then a swift series of party photos, wealthy homes, men in tuxedos, women in furs and diamonds.

With a rough splice, the video jumped to still shots, and this time Dixie felt a thump of apprehension.

A smiling photo of Lucy Ames appeared, a close-up, with corner tabs to hold it in an album. The image remained onscreen longer than others had, then a similar one of Edna Pine took its place. The photo was obviously recent; Edna wore the calm, determined expression Dixie had noticed during the bank robbery.

Another abrupt cut brought a grainy black and white video segment: a police car in the foreground. Rapid movement. A figure falling. The camera zoomed in on Lucy Ames, dead.

Cut to a highway scene: police cars racing to a halt, lights blazing. A cluster of cops. It took another instant for Dixie to realize she was viewing Edna’s death—footage more graphic than any she’d seen on TV news.

The camera’s eye lingered on the pooled blood, the blood-spattered car, the body, until Dixie longed to rip the images off the screen. Why would anyone want to watch these women die over and over again?

Then the screen flooded with color—a head-and-shoulders snapshot of Avery Banning, another of Chief Wanamaker standing beside the Mayor, the two men laughing. A rush of gray snow signaled the tape’s end.

The footage of the shooting appeared to be the work of an amateur, but with a good eye, Dixie thought, and a good camera. A private citizen brazening along behind the cops? A photographer who stumbled on the scene by accident?

Dixie punched the
EJECT
button and stepped down from the
stage. She swept the side wall with her penlight. Posters showed young men in competition and combat. Interspersed among the images, captions proclaimed:
HONOR THY COUNTRY
,
HONOR THY CONVICTIONS
, and
UNITED WE ARE ONE FORCE
,
THOUSANDS STRONG
. Another cautioned:
WATCH BIG BROTHER
.

Had she stumbled on a paramilitary counterculture? No swastikas or hate slogans. No obvious racial separatism. But the message clearly celebrated a readiness to do battle.

Following the sharp odor of cordite, she found a door. It opened easily, and she peered down a long hallway flanked by closed doors on either side.

She glanced back at the entrance, at a sliver of outside light seeping through a crack. Here she was creeping around in dark forbidden places for the second time in less than twelve hours. Maybe Parker was right, teasing her about being a snoop. These people were seriously into concealment, and she was poking into their secrets. Once she entered that hallway, there’d be no chance of hearing Laskey return behind her.

He’d been gone … what, fourteen minutes?

Moving quickly to the first door, she put her ear to it, tried the knob. Inside a narrow room, her beam fell on metal lockers. No padlocks. She opened a few at random … men’s gym shoes, pieces of clothing. Continuing, she found a shower space, a one-stall rest room with lavatories, urinals, and another closed door that opened into a gymnasium. About forty feet square, it looked as modern as any commercial gym, with free weights and punching bags at the far end—nice stuff—and a door that led back into the hall.

Only two doors left. Dixie checked her watch. Laskey’d been gone sixteen minutes. Staying longer increased the odds of discovery. If this group turned out to be involved in the assassinations, being discovered could taint any evidence she found. Under Texas law, evidence obtained by cops
or
civilians during the commission of a crime—such as breaking and entering—could be ruled inadmissible.

But if she could locate the office, a letterhead or business card might tell her who owned this place—and why they possessed a video of the Granny Bandit shootings.

She turned the next doorknob and peeked into shadows
stinking of cordite. Three stations, ear protectors hanging on wall hooks.

Meeting room, gymnasium, shooting gallery …
a training facility? Located far away from any neighbors who might take offense, soundproofed—Dixie hadn’t heard any road noise since she entered. And a rifle range out back.
For sighting in an assassin’s high-powered scope?

She could be wrong. The videos of Lucy Ames and Aunt Edna might be as innocent as the shoot/don’t-shoot films used for training police officers.
This is what can happen … here’s how to avoid it.

As Dixie turned to leave, her beam streaked across a face. She stifled a yelp. Then, slowly, she played the light over a life-size poster of Avery Banning. Another of Chief Wanamaker. Not one copy of each but several, hanging from clips.

Suitable for target practice.

Jazzed with sudden conviction, she swooped her light around the room. In a trash can lay a discarded poster riddled with holes. A tight firing pattern centered on the Chief’s face. Any of the shots would’ve been a kill.

She’d found the sniper’s lair.

The puzzle pieces chinked into place. A gang of middle- to upper-class boys, with enough money to outfit this building as a training center, an education that included plenty of video war games, and a notion of superiority. Wasn’t it always the educated youth who protested the sorry mess the older generation had made of their world?

Dixie’d been only a child during the turbulent sixties and seventies, but she recalled the college campus riots. Today’s youth took violence a giant step further—manufacturing bombs, shooting up schools.

Whatever else they might be, the “Preservation Society” boys were cop killers.

She had to get out of here. She could use the cell phone in the Mustang to call … who? With no legal right to be here, how could she report what she’d found without compromising the evidence?

Out in the hallway, she stared at that final door. What more might she learn in there? Did she really believe a few young
men had planned and carried out the assassinations alone? The setup here—the gym, the AV equipment, all of it—was too sophisticated, too well thought out. Not to mention costly. If she had a
name
, a face … if she could link Laskey to a known terrorist or criminal …

Two minutes. I could be in and out of that room in two minutes.

The small office contained a battered metal desk with a wood chair and computer, a butt-sprung sofa, a bookcase, a four-drawer file cabinet with a thirteen-inch portable television on top of it, a water dispenser, a guest chair, and another damn door. That one opened into a bathroom, complete with shower. Dixie went straight to the computer.

While she waited for it to boot up, she searched the desk drawers. She found stationery with the triangular “P” emblem, but no name or address. No business cards. She found pencils, pens, rubber bands, computer disks. A cell phone. She looked behind the CPU for a cable connection to a wall jack … none. The building probably had no telephone service. Everything was remarkably neat, no stray Post-it Notes, loose paper clips, or other clutter. In a bottom drawer, she found three letters, identical except for the names at the top: Chief Edward Wanamaker, Councilman John Jason Gibson, Mayor Avery Banning.

Each letter was signed in a careful script, “The People.”

More proof linking the building occupants with the assassinations. But where were the names she needed? Maybe she could choke them out of Philip Laskey.