Black Daylight Page 10

  After a minute and a half, Widow heard loud scraping noises coming from down the hall, from the office. Finally, Rousey returned carrying a plain foldable metal chair pulled out of a stack of metal chairs.

  He walked it down the hall, unfolded it, and set it down behind Shostrom, just outside the bars. He gave it a quick wipe-down as if it was covered in dust or it was meant for the king or both.

  Shostrom sat down and crossed his legs. He flipped the cowboy hat right side up, and the passport fell out onto his lap. He placed his cowboy hat on the end of his knee, hung it there. He took a pull of the coffee and set the mug on the floor. Then he thumbed open the passport again.

  He leveled his reading glasses onto the bridge of his nose and stared at the passport.

  Rousey leaned against a wall, and Roberts stayed standing. Neither spoke.

  “You’ve been to a lot of places, Mr. Widow.”

  “That a crime?”

  “No. No crime. Not yet.”

  “What is this?”

  “This is a simple inquiry.”

  “Don’t I get a lawyer?”

  “In due time. Right now, you’re not being charged with anything.”

  “I still have the right to remain silent?”

  “You do. You always have that right. But silence is as good as a confession.”

  “What?”

  “Silence is as good as a confession. At least in these parts. A man done something wrong, often he takes advantage of the law, thinking that saying nothing is the same as proving innocence.”

  Widow stared at Shostrom and then focused on the bars. He was headed nowhere, but sitting behind bars was literally going nowhere. And Widow would rather be back on his way going nowhere, over rotting there, behind bars and going nowhere.

  So he spoke.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Widow stayed standing. He towered over Shostrom. Which must’ve bothered the sheriff because he said, “Sit down.”

  “On what?” Widow asked.

  “Bring another chair.”

  Rousey didn’t wait for Roberts to offer to do the grunt work. He knew the sheriff was speaking to him. So he hopped to action and repeated the same idiotic nod, followed by a scurry back down the hall.

  Widow heard the same metal clanging sounds and the same footsteps.

  Rousey returned with another foldable, metal chair, same as the one he’d gotten for Shostrom. It was from the same stack.

  “How do you want me to give it to him?” he asked Shostrom.

  “Slide it through the bars.”

  Rousey stepped past Shostrom, who didn’t get up, didn’t budge from his seated position.

  Rousey shoved the chair through the bars. It barely fit, but it did fit. Widow wondered if this was intended when they bought the chairs.

  Widow took the chair and carted it through. He unfolded it and plopped it down on the cell floor. He rocked it to make sure it was sturdy; then he dumped his butt down on it.

  It was hard and cold like a foldable metal chair was meant to be.

  Widow looked at Shostrom and gave him a fake smile.

  Shostrom said, “Okay, Widow talk.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You know what I want to know. Who are you? Who’s the girl? Why did you bring her here?”

  “You know who I am.”

  “I know your name, but who are you? Why do you travel so much? What’s with all the stamps?”

  “I was in the Navy.”

  “They stamp your passport when you go to a new country?”

  “They do. Of course, they do.”

  Shostrom looked back at Roberts.

  “That true?”

  Roberts nodded.

  Widow looked at both men and then zeroed in on Roberts.

  “You serve?”

  “Four years on the Franklin.”

  “Four years, one ship?”

  “That’s right, and then all over a bit. You?”

  Widow said, “A little of here. A little of there.”

  “I was an E4.”

  “Petty officer.”

  Roberts nodded and asked, “And you?”

  “Commander.”

  “Terminal?”

  “It was my last rank.”

  Roberts said nothing to that.

  Shostrom said, “Commander? So, you were some hot shit in the Navy. Big deal. Get to what I want to know.”

  “I was walking along a road.”

  “Which road?”

  “I don’t know. Just a road. It was the middle of the night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Of course.”

  Roberts asked, “Why were you walking a road at night?”

  “How else am I supposed to get down it?”

  Shostrom asked, “Why were you on that road? At night?”

  “I got gas-stationed on the Sixteen.”

  “Gas-stationed?” Roberts asked.

  “Sixteen?” Rousey asked.

  “Highway Sixteen.”

  Roberts said, “Old Highway Sixteen.”

  “Gas-stationed means someone told me to run inside a gas station for something and then they drove off.”

  Shostrom asked, “Someone ditched you at a gas station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Widow shrugged and said, “Not sure why. It happens sometimes. They didn’t like the company, or they didn’t like me, or they had planned to do it, or they did it all the time to people, for kicks. Who knows?”

  “They didn’t give you any inclination that they were going to do it?”

  “Sure. I kinda knew the moment they asked me to go and grab some food for the road.”

  Rousey asked, “Your friends ditched you?”

  “They weren’t my friends.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Shostrom said, “Mr. Widow here is a drifter.”

  “You hitchhike?”

  Widow nodded.

  “That makes you look more suspicious,” Shostrom said.

  “It ain’t a crime.”

  “No crime. But…”

  “Suspicious. I get that.”

  Shostrom nodded and asked Widow to continue.

  Widow did. He told him the whole story. He was abandoned at a gas station on the Sixteen and got tired of waiting for a car to appear. The clerk at the station pointed him east on the Sixteen, but Widow didn’t like the stillness of it, so he decided to take the road less traveled, which was a country road that led north. The clerk told him eventually it’d run into Interstate Ninety but warned him that it could be twenty miles or better. The clerk also told him that there were little communities sprinkled along the way.

  But the icing on the cake was the Black Hills National Forest. That was home to Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial, two monuments Widow had never seen and figured it best to do it while he was so close.

  Rousey interrupted.

  “You thought it was a good idea to wander into the Black Hills before nightfall, on foot?”

  Roberts added, “In wintertime?”

  “It’s not winter. Not yet. And why not?”

  “It’s stupid,” Roberts said.

  Widow shrugged.

  “Not to me. To me it’s life. We all gotta go somewhere.”

  Shostrom said, “But why would you go down a dark country road leading into the Black Hills? It’s clearly thick forest.”

  Widow said, “I saw power lines. And there was a road. Roads lead to places.”

  Shostrom said, “Not out here they don’t, not always. But go on then.”

  Widow told the sheriff about the car lights, the dog, and the girl.

  Finally, Shostrom asked, “That it? That’s the whole story?”

  “What more do you want?”

  Shostrom looked over at Rousey, who nodded.

  “That’s all he told me.”

  “What about Kylie?”

  “She says it’s him.”


  Widow looked dumbfounded but figured that Kylie was the name of the younger, drug-addicted-looking sister of the half-dead girl.

  “She positive?”

  Rousey stayed quiet.

  Shostrom said, “Rousey, she positive?”

  “I guess. She said yes.”

  Shostrom said, “Mr. Widow, it seems we got a witness that places you as a person of interest at the very least. I’m hoping you can give me a reason to discard her statement?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone or try to kill anyone. I told you. I found her. There was someone else there.”

  “Forgetting about what Kylie claimed for a moment. Can you tell us a license plate?”

  This gesture told Widow that Shostrom was entirely convinced by any testimony that Kylie gave. She must’ve been known as a junkie, he figured.

  “No plate. Too dark. Too far away.”

  “What can you tell us?”

  “I can tell you that you’re looking for an older model car. A sedan, probably. And you’re looking for two people.”

  “Two people?”

  “I heard two car doors.”

  “That could’ve been the driver opening the back door?”

  “It wasn’t. It was the passenger side door. It closed at about the same time as the driver’s. There were two people, Sheriff.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “I’m sure you can get me on security camera footage from the gas station I was ditched at. The car that left me was a 2015 or better Nissan. White paint. A white couple drove it. Chris and Christy Smith are the names they gave me.”

  “Chris and Christy?”

  Widow shrugged, said, “Probably fake. Happens.”

  “What was the gas station?”

  “I told you it was off the Sixteen, right off a service ramp. It was a Conoco station. It’s a truck stop too. That should help.”

  “What was the name of the road you found her on?”

  “No name on it.”

  “It had no name?”

  Widow said, “I’m sure it does have a name. But I didn’t see one posted anywhere. Told you. It was a country road. Country roads are rural and often nameless by nature.”

  Shostrom nodded and asked, “That it? That the whole story?”

  “That’s all I know of. Check the Conoco. They’ll have me on tape in the store a little after sundown. Probably fifteen or twenty minutes. Plus, the clerk will likely remember me.”

  Shostrom kept the passport in his hand and picked up his cowboy hat. He stood up off the chair. Rousey stepped forward like a manservant and took the chair, refolded it, and stepped back to the wall. He held the chair under his arm.

  Shostrom looked at Widow.

  “I’ll call over to the Conoco.”

  Widow grabbed the bars and looked out.

  “What about the girl?”

  “She’s in the hospital in Deadwood.”

  “She gonna pull through?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Shostrom started to walk away.

  Widow asked, “What’s her name, Sheriff?”

  He turned back and said, “Her name is Lainey Olsen.”

  Chapter 13

  T HE TWO MEN had ditched the stolen Chevy Impala way back in Rapid City. Well, they didn’t ditch it so much as their contact, a guy on the payroll, had met them with a cold storage biological supply van, older than the Chevy, but three times the price due to the equipment onboard, had ditched it for them.

  The contact hadn’t been the one to steal it, not in the sense of scouting a parking lot and implementing the use of a jimmy to pop the lock and using hot wiring to get the engine running.

  Instead, he stole the vehicle in the sense that the owner no longer needed it, as he was dead and buried out in the Black Hills.

  The contact chalked it up to an occupational hazard. He had a business to run. Sometimes that business called for unsavory things, like murder. If he ended up with a new vehicle out of it, what was he supposed to do? Turn it over to the cops?

  So, he’d have his guys clean it through a subsidiary in Rapid City, make the VIN number legal, put new plates on it, and the like.

  The contact had a good arrangement with the subsidiary in Rapid City. Cost him an arm and a leg, but it was worth it to have new, clean vehicles at his disposal—all part of the care package that he charged the buyers. They paid too. They paid good, straight cash money. They would probably pay in gold if he asked.

  The biological transport van wasn’t stolen. It was a state-of-the-art transport vehicle owned by the company the buyers worked for.

  After picking it up from the contact, the buyers drove all night, occasionally stopping for gas and once for a sit-down meal where they stayed in the van and ate in the parking lot of an all-night McDonald’s.

  The driver yawned and snapped to attention when his partner reminded him that Exit Fifty-One C was coming up in ten miles. They drove on Interstate Ninety, heading east, for nearly thirteen hours straight.

  One man, the driver, was tired, close to exhausted. The passenger was not. He was the kind of guy who could sleep in a moving vehicle. He could sleep anywhere, a byproduct of years in his country’s special forces. He slept on aircraft, Hummers, out in the desert, pretty much anywhere—no problem.

  The driver was not so lucky. He couldn’t sleep like that. He was more alert, which had been his byproduct of a similar background.

  Some guys were blessed with the ability to sleep anywhere, and some were not.

  The passenger said, “Want me to take over?”

  The driver shrugged.

  “What for? We’re almost out of there now.”

  The passenger shrugged and turned and looked down at his phone. He was following along on Google Maps, watching the little arrow move with them.

  The driver said, “Why don’t you just look out the window at the road ahead?”

  “I’m just making sure we’re headed the right way.”

  “We’re headed the right way. We’ve done this drive before.”

  “Not from South Dakota.”

  “We’ve gone to Wyoming, which is on the other side of South Dakota.”

  “I like staring at the map.”

  “Whatever.”

  The driver continued for another ten miles, almost exactly, until he saw the sign for Exit Fifty-One C. Then he took it.

  The white panel van with the company logo on the side slowed and yawed and merged with the traffic on West Washington Boulevard. The local time was one hour ahead of Rapid City. They were now in Chicago and the central time zone. Even though it was only an hour difference, they saw the difference.

  The early morning traffic in Chicago was brutal. They had caught the tail end of it, going almost into the early lunch traffic. It took them another thirty minutes to traverse the terrain, driving through the edge of downtown, passing it, and leaving it behind them.

  They made their way to a service drive, hidden off an industrial thoroughfare that connected hundreds of roads in Chicago’s industrial center.

  From the gate, the driver was recognized by the guards, but he had to show his ID badge anyway. Rules were rules.

  The guards wore black uniforms and carried Glock 19s in hip holsters. There were double AR-15s fastened behind the wall, side by side. They were held in place by a simple metal twist knob. There was no lock-and-key system in place.

  If the need ever arose for them to use the assault rifles, a key and lock wouldn’t make any sense. At night, when the station was closed, the AR-15s were taken inside and locked up in the guard barracks, which consisted of two rooms. One was the office, where they kept their records and employee schedules. The other was a locker room with a metal mesh weapon lockbox embedded into one wall.

  The driver nodded at the guard who took his information with a quick scan of his ID. And then the guard said a pleasant, “Good morning” with a smile.

  They were waved through the gates.

  The driver move
d the van past the guard station and into a large facility made up of three buildings and a single parking lot. The largest building was the size of a small airplane hangar and the same shape as one.

  This was the storage warehouse.

  Outside of it were huge metal boxes and various mechanical equipment. All of it was locked behind a high fence with a padlock on the only gate.

  The equipment was mostly for cooling, freezing temperature controls. The rest of it provided power for the warehouse.

  The next largest building was also a warehouse, but this one was for dry goods that didn’t need to be temperature controlled.

  The third building was an office building.

  The warehouse was the only building to have two more guards posted outside. Both were armed with AR-15s and Glocks in hip holsters. They wore the same black uniforms as the guards in the gate station.

  Standing outside the warehouse was one guy who wasn’t one of the guards.

  The driver pulled up the van and parked near the warehouse. He left the keys in and the ignition on and the engine running.

  He and the passenger both got out.

  The man standing there was six foot one, with fair hair and big blue eyes. His corneas were white like a blank sheet of paper. He was clean-shaven and well-dressed. He wore a black business suit, no tie.

  The man was good-looking, like a celebrity or actor. He was in his early forties but could pass for thirties.

  It was hard for anyone to believe it, but the man was actually retired SAS, the British Special Forces. These guys weren’t the kind to mess around with.

  He no longer worked in SAS, but he was still in the special forces business. But now it was at the corporate level, the money level.

  He waited for the driver to approach to speak.

  “Any problems?”

  The driver said, “Not so far.”

  The man asked, “You paid the donor? No problem?”

  “Our team did the extraction.”

  “Which doctor?”

  “Burke.”

  “He flew in from LA?”

  “They got another wildfire out there. Evacuated his community. He needed the work and can’t work with business closed. So, he flew out. But the crew was out of Denver.”

  “He lose anything in the fire?”