Judas Horse_ An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery - April Smith [76]
Meanwhile, the new one, Darcy, keeps to herself, staring at the suburban night. Dick Stone smiles at some reverie and rolls his window down, dropping an arm out of the truck, letting the cigarillo hang, wasting good Dominican smoke as a rush of air tears hot embers off the tip, leaving a trail of extinguishing sparks. It satisfies him, like pages burning in time.
“Hey now,” says the boy, “what’s that asshole doing?”
Slammer jumps up and hits the horn and a van in front of us swerves to a stop. The driver of the van throws the door open, shouting in Farsi.
Stone turns his head very slowly toward the boy. His graying stubble looks Halloween raspberry in the cold red intersection light.
“Don’t…do…that.” He accelerates, but not too fast.
“I really feel like slapping someone right now.” Slammer pounds a fist hungrily. “I really feel like getting into a fight.”
Dick Stone ignores him.
“That’s what I mean!” Slammer agrees, as if the old dude had said anything. “There’s two chicks in the car, know what I’m saying?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“We should hit ’em.” The boy is pointing and alert. “McDonald’s, man.”
The drive-thru is bright as an alien spaceship. There is a line of cars.
The bandit asks, “Why?”
“Babylon profits by killing animals,” Slammer chirps. “Why not?”
The bandit sighs. “It’s a cliché.”
I guffaw. He cocks an appreciative eye. He loves Darcy for being a little rebel, and right now, stoned as the rest of them, Darcy loves him.
Sara sits upright in the backseat. “McDonald’s is too corporate. Too big.”
Slammer scowls. “You’re a freak.”
Kindergarten.
The bandit makes a U-turn and heads out of town.
“Sara has a point,” he instructs, and pulls out a well-worn piece of rhetoric: “Evil needs a face.”
The road becomes a country lane, no lights. The houses are spread farther apart. Only by slowing down and scanning the fences caught in the hard white headlights do we notice a small metal sign that says THE WILKINS. Stone turns down a road that bisects a pasture and leads to a newly constructed four-bedroom home with a spindle-post porch—just the kind of hypocritical western touch that ticks the bandit off.
He pulls off the road, beneath a stand of juniper trees, and cuts the lights.
“That’s the target.”
“Who are the Wilkins?”
“Our friend BLM Deputy State Director Herbert Laumann’s in-laws. The government whore is mooching off the grandparents now.”
Because someone destroyed his house and his kid is still in the hospital.
My stomach tilts with the sickening recognition that old obsessions die hard.
Slammer whispers, like he’s seen a prophetic city: “Babylon.”
Beneath the dashboard the prudent bandit has mounted a sophisticated scanner that picks up encrypted radio signals used by law-enforcement agencies. He fiddles, listens to the static. Nothing threatening on the airwaves.
The bandit holds up the bag of tricks. “Who wants it?”
Slammer: “Me!”
Perversely, Stone hands the bag to Sara instead, watching the disappointment grow once again in Slammer’s face. But then, another whiplash turn of mood, and he offers the boy a Colt .45 pistol.
Like the scenario in undercover school, reality shifts to a perilous key. A screaming siren wakes me from this loopy daze. The kid is armed.
Slammer handles the gun. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Figure it out, genius.” Stone gives me the video camera and unlocks the doors. “You have three minutes. Go.”
We scamper down the driveway, past a couple of bicycles and a redwood tree house with swings, along a path to the backyard. A raccoon darts from the shadows. The yard is open, no cover. We hunker against the garage wall.
Sara, indignant: “Why’d he give you the gun?”
“Because you