Death Angel (16 page)

9:05
P.M
. MDT
Shady Grove Elementary School,
Los Alamos County

Shady Grove is a suburb of the city of Los Alamos, located in the northern uplands of the Hill. It’s an affluent, exclusive neighborhood; a pleasant place, well-wooded. It sits on a height overlooking much of the city below. Handsome houses are set on extensive grounds with plenty of room between neighbors. Streets meander in lazy, looping curves.

The fire was far away from Shady Grove and neighboring communities located farther down the hill. But smoke haze was everywhere, blanketing the nightscape like acrid, blue-gray fog. Los Alamos city lights were muted, blurred behind a smoky scrim.

That same haze overspread the towns on the terraced tabletop of the Hill.

The pilot set down the copter in the heart of Shady Grove, on the parking lot of the town’s grade school. Kling had told Jack Bauer to come in quietly but Jack was in a hurry. Meadow Lane was some blocks distant from the school so it wasn’t like the copter was dropping in right on top of it. Besides, with the firestorm raging, it wasn’t necessarily so unusual for a helicopter to set down in the neighborhood—it could legitimately be ascribed to some kind of first responder plan.

The grade school was a sprawling one-story flat-roofed building shaped like the capital letter “I.” It sat on a nice tract of well-tended lawns and fields. The building was dark but its exterior was well lit up. Ground-based floodlights lit up its face. Spotlights were mounted high on the building’s corners. Tall lampposts illuminated the asphalt square of the teachers’ parking lot.

The lot was a natural for a helicopter landing pad. It was empty except for a lone minivan parked near the side of the building. The pilot set the chopper down in the middle of the lot, killed the motor. He took off his earphones, setting them aside.

“He’s good,” Jack said, indicating the pilot.

“You’re not telling him anything he doesn’t know. Name’s Ron Galvez—we use him when we’ve got Bureau business in the area. Operates out of a small private field on South Mesa. A civilian but discreet, he doesn’t go telling tales out of school,” Hickman said.

Galvez smiled, showing a mouthful of perfect teeth. “Neat and discreet, that’s me. How long do I wait for you?” Galvez asked.

“Until we return or I call and tell you otherwise,” Hickman said.

Jack and Hickman stepped down from the cockpit to the pavement. “Where’s Vince? I thought he’d be here to meet us,” Jack said.

“He took a squad out to the Blanco ranch—home base for Torreon and Marta Blanco and their gang,” Hickman explained. “Your claim that Pardee was bossing the hit squad that was dogging you gives Vince a pretext for searching the ranch. He never passes up an opportunity to roust the gang, not that it does much good. But he likes to remind them he’s around.”

“Who are these Blancos anyway?”

“They’re pretty much at the top of the garbage pile in the local pecking order. A big-time crime family that’s been working both sides of the border for generations, trading in contraband: slaves, bootleg whiskey, hot cars, guns, drugs, people smuggling, you name it.

“Torreon and his sister Marta are the last surviving members of the clan; there’s plenty of cousins and in-laws and whatnot, too, but they’re all from collateral branches.

“Their father, the patriarch, and a half-dozen older siblings are all dead—killed by rival gangs or the law; only Torreon and Marta are left alive. He’s the warlord, the enforcer; she’s the actual brains and fixer of the outfit, when it comes to keeping the books and greasing the political protection and payoffs.

“The Blancos and others like them are the Bureau’s meat and potatoes. Our priority here has traditionally been bank robbers, drug gangs, stolen car rings, and gun runners. Atom spies don’t feature much in the all-important crime stats.”

A car appeared on the road leading to the school; a police car. It came up the drive into the parking lot, halting a dozen yards from the helicopter. Its headlights shone on the aircraft and its occupants. “Here comes the welcoming committee,” Hickman said.

Blazoned on the side of the car was the emblem of the County Sheriff’s Department. The driver got out; he wore a Stetson-type hat, a uniform tunic with a star-shaped badge
over the left breast, a sidearm, slacks, and cowboy boots.

“That’s Ross, one of Sheriff Bender’s deputies. Make no mistake—he’s not dumb,” Hickman said to Jack out of the side of his mouth.

“What’s he doing here?” Jack asked.

“You planning on walking to Meadow Lane?”

“Where are your guys?”

“They’re all out at the Blanco ranch. The Bureau is understaffed in these parts; we use the Sheriff’s Department for backup a lot. Vince and Buck Bender are tight. Besides, we don’t get along with the City Police Department worth a good damn,” Hickman said.

Deputy Ross crossed to them, his boot heels clip-clopping on the pavement. He had gray hair at the temples, bushy eyebrows, and a tobacco-colored walrus mustache. He seemed stolid, phlegmatic. “Agent Hickman,” he said.

“Deputy,” Hickman said. They shook hands. Hickman indicated Jack, said, “Deputy Ross, this is Agent Bauer of CTU; he’s working with us on special assignment.”

“Glad to know you,” Ross said.

“Likewise,” said Jack. They shook hands. Jack’s hand virtually disappeared inside Ross’s pawlike grip.

“CTU, huh? We got terrorists up here in Shady Grove?” Ross asked. He was straight-faced, so Jack couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

“That’s what we’d like to find out,” Jack said, seriously enough.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

Hickman reached into the cockpit and pulled out the M–4. “Bringing the heavy artillery,” Ross observed.

“The Blancos have been acting up tonight,” Hickman said.

“Them sum’bitches!” Real malice glittered in Ross’s eyes.

Jack Bauer stuck his head in the cockpit. “Got a gun?”

“What for? I’m a flyer, not a fighter,” Galvez said.

“Just in case somebody wants to hijack you for a quick ride out of here. It’s shaping up as that kind of night.”

Galvez reached under the instrument board, unclipping a first-aid kit the size and shape of a lunch box. He put it on his lap, unclipped the fasteners, and lifted the lid. Inside were a revolver and a box of ammunition. He broke the gun, checked that chambers of the cylinder were loaded, and closed it. He stuck the short-barreled gun into the right-hand pocket of his nylon Windbreaker.

“Nobody rides for free,” he said, smiling.

Jack, Hickman, and Ross went to the deputy’s car. Hickman was the local liaison; protocol dictated that he ride in the front passenger seat. Jack sat in the back, where the prisoners ride. A wire mesh grille separated the front seat from the backseat.

Ross hopped in behind the wheel, the front seat shuddering under his weight. He pulled out of the parking lot, following the driveway and making a right-hand turn into the street.

Shady Grove was an attractive piece of property, picturesque streets winding and looping around vacant lots where stands of pine trees grew. Streetlights were bright but few and far between. A number of houses had Georgian-style white columned fronts.

It was Saturday night but the neighborhood was quiet. A respectable district where all good law-abiding middle-aged homeowners were locked up and buttoned down for the night. Not necessarily so their teenage sons and daughters, but they went to points beyond Shady Grove in search of their good time.

The patrol car made a right turn into a winding street. “Meadow Lane, gents,” Ross said.

There was money here. The proof was in the lawns. They were extensive and green, well-watered, unlike the parched
vegetation and dry yellow-brown grass to be found in less exclusive precincts.

A pleasant place, where houses were set far back from the curbs. They were sprawling, expensive, but not in the mansion class. Some were split-level ranch houses, others were more traditional two-story jobs. Most homes had more than one new or late model vehicle parked in the driveway. Lights shone through curtained windows.

“We want number ninety-seven—Parkhurst,” Jack said.

“Parkhurst? Don’t believe I know the name…so they probably ain’t been in trouble with the law,” Ross said. “Shady Grove is outside city limits so the Sheriff’s Department handles the complaints. And we get ’em, too: wife beating, breaking and entering, drunk and disorderly, peeping Toms, vandalism, you name it.”

“Really? Seems like a nice neighborhood.”

“It is, generally, but people being people, things happen.”

The patrol car glided along the street. There were no sidewalks; the neighborhood was not particularly pedestrian-friendly. They passed a house numbered 92. “Almost there,” Ross said.

Number 97 was on the opposite, left side of the street. A pair of curtained bay windows bracketed the front door; the second-story windows had blue shutters. Lights were on inside the house.

Parked in the street at curbside in front of the house was a battered Toyota Camry; Jack recognized it as having been parked in the visitors’ area near Rhee’s apartment at Ponderosa Pines. “Is that Harvey Kling’s car?” he asked.

“It looks like the kind of heap he’d drive,” Hickman said.

Ross pulled in at the curb in front of the Toyota. He radioed in to the dispatcher, reporting that he was going out of service to make a routine inquiry at 97 Meadow Lane.

He killed the engine and switched off the lights; he and Hickman got out of the car. Hickman held the M–4 in one
hand along his right side, pointed downward. Jack knocked on the window to get his attention. This was a police car; the backseat being relegated to prisoners, the back doors couldn’t be opened from the inside. Hickman had to open the door from the outside to let Jack out.

Ross reached into the front of the car, pulling out a riot gun, a police model twelve-gauge pump shotgun with a special chopped-down barrel and shortened stock. “Just in case the Blancos crash the party,” he said.

“I been looking to clean up on that crowd for a long time,” he added.

The driveway was on the right-hand side of the house. It led to a garage whose door was closed. “I’ll cover the rear,” Hickman said.

“Don’t shoot Kling if he gets spooked and takes it on the run. Remember he’s on our side,” Jack said.

Hickman went up the driveway and around the right-hand corner of the garage, heading for the backyard.

A flagstone path curved across the front lawn to a brick stairway. The treads were made of rough-hewn slabs of gray stone and there was a black iron rail banister on the left. Jack and Ross climbed the stairs to a square-shaped stoop.

An electric fixture resembling an old-time black iron lantern was mounted over the top of the front door, shedding a cone of light. Small white moths fluttered around it. Jack rang the doorbell; chimes sounded inside the house.

Nothing happened. Nobody came to the door. He rang the bell two more times, to an equal lack of response. Jack opened the screen door and tried the front doorknob.

It turned easily under his hand.

He and Ross exchanged glances. “I’ll go in first,” Jack said. Ross nodded, stepping aside. He snaked his pistol out of the shoulder holster into his hand. His free hand pushed open the door.

Beyond it lay a front hall with a handsome wooden floor
covered by a woven Navajo-style rug. Opposite the door, on the far side of the hall, a carpeted staircase led to the second floor. To the left of the stairs, an archway opened into a living room. To the right of the stairs, a corridor led to the rear of the house.

A dead man lay sprawled on his back in the front hall. Jack came in sidestepping to the right. Ross came right behind him, riot gun leveled. Ross covered the living room, Jack covered the corridor.

The air smelled of gunpowder, blood, and death. It sounded like a television was playing somewhere in the direction of the living room.

The body in the front hall was that of a middle-aged man dressed in casual clothes: a sport shirt, slacks, and rubber-soled canvas shoes. He was a stranger to Jack. The unknown man was unarmed. He looked like an ordinary, respectable householder who’d been taking his ease on a quiet Saturday night at home—Parkhurst?

He was balding with short brown hair fringing the sides of his head. His eyes were wide open, staring. A bullet hole marked the center of a broad expanse of forehead. A single small-caliber slug had drilled him through the brain.

Ross moved off into the living room, stepping very quietly on large-sized, cowboy-booted feet.

Jack moved off to the right, down the corridor. He moved sideways, his back to the right-hand wall. The corridor was twenty feet long, opening on to a kitchen at its far end. A light was on in the kitchen. From where Jack stood he could see a round dinette table with several chairs grouped around it.

Midway in the corridor was a corpse. Another stranger, one cut from decidedly different cloth than the dead man in the front hall.

He sat on the floor with his back propped up against the left wall and his legs stretching out. He was in his late twen
ties. His scalp was shaved; he was thick-featured, with small round eyes closely set together. The eyes were circled with dark rings. The stubble of a three-day beard failed to hide the pallor of a lumpish, oval face. A diamond stud sparkled in his left earlobe and a swirling, near-abstract tattoo decorated his neck.

He’d caught two slugs in the left breast over the heart, the entry wounds spaced closely together. A nice bit of shooting, thought Jack.

The corpse’s eyebrows were raised and his mouth gaped open as if he was surprised to be so completely and irrevocably dead. His arms extended out from his sides, right fist gripping a gun, a .22 Colt Woodsman pistol with a silencer attached to the barrel.

The weapon was one favored by professional killers. Jack figured it had been used to kill the man in the front hall. But who killed the killer?

A vertical blood track smeared the wall, mute testimony marking that the killer had been shot, fell back against the wall, and slid down it to the floor. He sat facing an open doorway on the opposite side of the corridor. Jack went to it, investigating—carefully.