Black Daylight Read online

  “Like that story where a man wakes up in a bathtub full of ice?”

  “No. Not like that. Although, that has happened before, but the man in the bathtub doesn’t wake up. Usually, he’s murdered for his kidneys. You get two for one that way.”

  “Someone stole this woman’s kidney and dumped her in a ditch?”

  Rower shrugged.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Widow drank the rest of the coffee, walked back to the station, and tossed the paper cup into a trashcan.

  The deputies watched him the whole time. They followed him back to the Explorer.

  Everyone loaded up, and they headed to the country road.

  Chapter 19

  M cCOBB WAITED for further instructions while sitting in the hospital cafeteria, which was a room small enough to fit inside the cafeteria back in the hospital in Rapid City. He knew that because he’d been sent there before too.

  On a TV mounted on the wall, he watched a program about the making of nuts and bolts in a factory, a sleepy affair, as it turned out. The TV was muted, but the whole thing was so boring that it almost put him to sleep a couple of times.

  The machines banged and pummeled metal into nuts and bolts. It was like closing his eyes and imagining the inside workings of an old clock.

  Suddenly, his phone rang in his pocket.

  He answered it and didn’t bother leaving the room.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me,” Holden said.

  “Did you call them?”

  “Yeah. Just got off the phone.”

  “What they say?”

  “They said to leave her there. I gotta meet them at the airport tonight.”

  “They’re coming back?”

  “Yep. Apparently, they want to handle this themselves, like a preemptive thing. Before it gets out of control.”

  “They think the cops will be onto them that fast?”

  “They do. I’m sure they think the FBI will be onto them.”

  “The Feds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Holden paused a beat because he realized that McCobb didn’t know what exactly it was the boys in Chicago did, what they took from the girl.

  He said, “Don’t worry about the details. Just know that the FBI is bad for them, bad for us. We’re the low men on the totem pole here, you and I.”

  Which McCobb took to mean that he was the low man on the totem pole.

  If the boys in Chicago get caught, arrested, and prosecuted by the FBI, they’ll get plea deals, surely, then Holden will get arrested, and he’ll probably rat out all his boys just to save his own ass. Typical.

  “What do we do?”

  Holden was quiet for a minute, then he said, “We tread lightly, but we need to know what they need to know.”

  “Which is?”

  “Who knows what? And what’s happening?”

  “What do I do?”

  “We do what they told us.”

  “Which is?” McCobb asked.

  “They want me to personally go and check around with the local cops. Like I got some kind of connections with them.”

  “They don’t want us to do nothing about the girl?”

  “Like what? She’s being babysat by a cop, right?”

  “Yeah. A local deputy.”

  “Then leave her—for now.”

  “Want me to check around with the local cops instead?”

  “They said to keep my distance from them. They said to use back channels.”

  “Back channels?”

  “Yeah, stupid Chicago pricks think that I’m like a connected man. Like I got those kinds of resources. Like Al Capone or something.”

  “So? What you want me to do?” McCobb asked again realizing that Holden was spacing out, not living up to his side of their criminal dynamic.

  Holden said, “Go down to Reznor. See what’s going on.”

  “Want me to talk to the cops?” he repeated.

  “Not unless you know someone there.”

  “I do. We got a client.”

  “We do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He trustworthy?”

  “Maybe. I sell him meth, sometimes.”

  “Okay. Poke around. But don’t push him. No specifics, either. Just cause a bored cop does meth from us doesn’t mean he’s gonna give up secrets of an investigation.”

  “Okay. What’re the Chicago boys gonna do?”

  “Told you. I gotta pick them up from the airport tonight.”

  “What are they gonna do when they get here?”

  “I imagine they’re gonna kill some folks.”

  “We could do that ourselves. Make it easier for them. Easier for us.”

  “I’m not saying to do that. But I’m not telling you not to either.”

  “Affirmative,” McCobb said, and they got off the phone.

  McCobb smiled at a woman who was staring at him like she had heard both sides of the conversation.

  He got up and left the waiting room, passed by the ICU once more and peeked in. He saw the same deputy sitting there in front of the girl’s door.

  He smiled at him too, but the cop didn’t see it.

  McCobb left the hospital back through the emergency room entrance and walked back to the annexed parking lot and to his car. He took the revolver out of his coat and stuffed it between the seat and the console.

  He started the car up and drove west to Reznor.

  Chapter 20

  T HE FORMER SAS MAN was called Paul Gade. He decided not to tell his boss about their evolving problem in South Dakota, not yet.

  Instead, he decided to send his two guys back, but by plane, not the long drive back. And because witnesses were a huge threat to their organization, he decided that it would be best if he went along.

  Normally, he wouldn’t go along for clean up, but being that time was a factor—because the first twenty-four hours were the only twenty-four hours in these matters—and being that they didn’t know what was going on, he had to go along—no reason to be a huge step behind the cops, if there were cops involved.

  He couldn’t send his men back to check it out and then wait for them to report back and then wait for them to take care of the situation. They had had incidents in the past, incidents that almost led to investigations, which would lead to the Feds snooping around.

  He didn’t want that again. Better if he went along.

  Gade’s boss, the owner of the company, wasn’t the forgiving type. In all the years that he had worked for the man and his family, he had never known them to be merciful, not one of them, and not once. It wasn’t in their DNA. After all, they were from the side of the world that still beheads their enemies, including men who fail them, and beheading wasn’t something that Gade wanted to be a part of.

  On the plane, he slipped off his coat and laid it neatly over a high-backed leather chair next to him. He sat near the window, away from the other two.

  It was late afternoon for him. They would arrive in Rapid City in two and a half hours. If they arrived in the town of Deadwood shortly after that, they could find out what was going on, eliminate the problem, and be back on the plane by midnight. He could be back in his own bed in the morning, by the time his boss woke up.

  Being that he was taking steps to eliminate the problem before it spiraled into the hands of the FBI didn’t mean that he kept secrets from his boss which was good because right then he got a text message from him.

  The name on the screen of his phone read “The Prince,” which was a nickname but was almost true as well.

  The text read: “Where are you?”

  Gade replied: “Plane. Taking off.”

  The Prince replied: “Problem?”

  “Taking care of it.”

  Gade waited for a long second for a reply. Even though he knew the Prince trusted him completely, and he knew that he was the highest man in the organization next to the Prince, he still felt fear of what might happen to him
if he didn’t resolve the problem.

  The Prince texted back: “Good.”

  And nothing more.

  Gade sat back and stared out the window as the plane took off.

  Chapter 21

  W IDOW STOOD exactly where he remembered that he had found Olsen rolled up and naked in a rug.

  Roberts and Rousey stayed back by the Explorer on the orders of Rower, who stood next to Widow.

  The snow had stopped falling, but on their short drive down the lonely road it started up again, light and inviting.

  Widow looked over the leafless trees and the terrain.

  He pointed down with two hands at tracks in the snow. They were deep, but half covered from a slow snowfall and the hours that had passed.

  “There. That’s probably our tracks.”

  “They survived the night?”

  “Sure. It snowed, but not bad.”

  “Still, how do you know those are your tracks?”

  He pointed next to the deep tracks at tiny ones that were almost gone.

  “See those?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re her dog’s. He followed us all the way to the bar.”

  “Then he ran off?”

  “After we got to the bar.”

  “Show me the ditch.”

  Widow stepped, heavy in the snow, next to the tracks he’d left to show her the depth of his boot print, which she noticed because she nodded and saw the same size track in the snow.

  Roberts started to follow behind, while Rousey leaned against the Explorer slowly. He fidgeted with his phone, which must’ve been vibrating in his pocket.

  Widow took a look back and saw Rousey texting on it, intensely.

  He turned and continued on down a ways, trying to recall the path he had taken the night before in the darkness. He stopped once, looked left, looked right.

  Up ahead he saw a tree he thought he recognized but wasn’t sure.

  He took a right and continued trying to picture where he had walked to.

  Finally, he stopped at a ditch and stepped in. His boot sank into the snow like it had the night before.

  They walked a few minutes until he stopped and stared, dumbfounded.

  “Something wrong?”

  Widow was stone-cold quiet.

  “Widow?”

  He stared down at white, wet snow, brushed from side to side, sloppily, but still fleecy and brushed.

  It was gone. The rug, the duct tape, the shape that should’ve been left behind. It was all gone.

  The only thing left was the trail of paw prints and the trail of boot prints he’d left behind.

  Chapter 22

  M cCOBB REMEMBERED what Holden had inferred. It was in everyone’s best interest to clean this up. They were at risk right along with the Chicago boys.

  He had worked as a freelancer for Holden for years. He knew the man’s tells. Holden left it ambiguous for him to not take any action, but it wasn’t ambiguous, not to McCobb. To him, it was big and bold and obvious. He was supposed to take action if he was given the opportunity.

  And the opportunity was presenting itself.

  After he got to his car in the hospital annex parking lot and stowed his revolver, he made a phone call, which led him to a voicemail. He hung up and texted instead.

  He stood and waited for a response.

  He got none, so he drove twenty miles up the road toward Reznor.

  He still waited for a response, and he should’ve gotten it. It might’ve saved someone’s life, but he didn’t get it, which made her life forfeit because unless Holden gave him a direct order not to kill her, then he was condoning for McCobb to use his best judgement. That was how it had always gone.

  Deep in Reznor’s rural areas, McCobb turned the wheel and drove over muddy snow. He slowed and turned down a dirt road that led to another dirt road.

  He passed one cluttered, unkempt lot with an old, white trailer on it. It was a doublewide. The yard had a chain-link fence boxed all around it.

  Two large pit bulls barked at him from the yard as he passed.

  He drove up another hundred yards, past another trailer and lot on the other side of the road. It was completely different in that it had a cleaner yard and different upkeep, but it was the same in terms that he could care less about either.

  McCobb reached over and jerked his revolver out from between the seat and the console and set it on his lap.

  She would know he was coming because she had seen his car before. Most of the neighborhood had. Every week, twice a week, he drove through, selling meth and collecting payments. But this was an unscheduled stop. She wouldn’t be expecting him.

  She would probably be wondering why he was stopping at her place.

  McCobb drove another hundred yards and pulled up to a fenceless yard with a doublewide trailer parked up on cinderblocks, hidden behind a shoddy lattice of thin wood.

  The trailer was green and hadn’t been painted in a decade or more. It was Lainey and Kylie’s family trailer.

  Two sisters. Their parents were dead—no other family. This was where they were born, and this was where they’d lived all their lives, and this was where they would die.

  He was sure about one of them.

  McCobb pulled up onto a snowy drive and parked the car. He left the engine running, no need to kill it.

  He got out, tucked the revolver into the waistband of his jeans.

  He pulled a beanie off his head and tossed it back into the car.

  Wisps of breath fogged out in front of his face. He looked around, scanned the yard. He knew that they had a dog, not a big thing, but a little one.

  He didn’t see it. It might’ve been indoors.

  He expected her to come out, but she didn’t, which was unusual because normally she was always the first to greet him. Usually, she came barreling out before the damn dog did. Her and her boyfriend. They would come out, smiling, foaming at the mouth like kids waiting around all day for the ice cream man.

  She didn’t come out. Neither of them did.

  McCobb checked his phone again. No messages. He was getting angry, cop or not, the guy should be texting him back.

  McCobb bent down and grabbed a lever by the floorboard and pulled it. The trunk lid popped, making an audible noise.

  He paused, looked at the front door, at the porch, and at the windows, thinking he’d see her face appear. But it didn’t.

  McCobb left the driver’s door wide open and walked back to the trunk. He pulled out a Louisville Slugger. It was made of thick brown wood. This one was old. He had used it before.

  He also left the trunk open.

  He snapped a peek down and saw a box of latex gloves and rolls of plastic garbage bags. He didn’t need the gloves because he was already wearing winter gloves, but the garbage bags might come in handy.

  He looked over his shoulder at the road for cars or pedestrians. There was neither.

  He walked past his car and over to the side of the trailer.

  On the side, he found her car, which was really the boyfriend’s car; both of their vehicles belonged to him.

  The car was parked on the side, as it usually was when he dropped by. The trunk was open, not wide, but left ajar, like it wouldn’t shut all the way.

  He folded his fingers into the lip and pulled it open. It squeaked, loud and brash.

  He looked around. No one came out of the trailer.

  He saw why it was ajar. It wouldn’t close because it was packed with an old rug. There was dirt and muddy snow all over it.

  The rug was ruined.

  He wondered what it was for.

  He looked at it once more, looked over the car once more, and left them there. Walked around to the backyard.

  He saw some grass and some snow and trees and not much else.

  There was a backdoor on top of a short set of concrete steps. The steps weren’t properly lined up with the trailer. There was no railing.

  Suddenly, he knew the dog was there,
but not because it was barking, like he had expected like anyone would’ve expected. He knew it was there because it was whining, near the back door.

  It was faint, not because it was muffled by the door, but because the dog sounded weak.

  He knew the cries of sick, weak dogs. His kid sister had fostered them. She lived in Utah. She would take in all kinds of dogs from the shelter. She made him volunteer whenever he went to visit her. He hated dogs.

  McCobb didn’t knock on the back door. First, he pulled open a screen door. It creaked open.

  He tried the knob on the back door. It was locked, but the knob shook. It had a weak lock. Why wouldn’t it? Who was going to rob them?

  He took another look back over the backyard and the trees surrounding the property. There were no neighbors to the back, and basically no neighbors within earshot. The ones she had were close enough to hear a gunshot, but not a bat.

  McCobb stepped up and propped open the screen door with his body. He reared the Louisville Slugger back and slammed it into a window on the center of the backdoor.

  Glass shattered and cracked and sent shards into the trailer.

  The dog whimpered a little louder like it wanted to bark but just didn’t have the strength.

  In an explosion, McCobb reached in, fast, and unlocked the door and jerked it open. He stepped inside and let the screen door slam behind him.

  He lowered the bat with his left hand and drew his revolver with the right, pointed it straight out. No one came out. No one came at him with a shotgun or any gun.

  He called out the girl’s name.

  He knew the boyfriend wasn’t home because his Explorer was gone. He would be busy anyway. It seemed that his job had a lot on their plate today.

  The dog was in the kitchen, whining.

  He had expected to see it unfed and scrawny, as they had neglected it. He had seen that before but with children. Sometimes, meth-head women get too high and forget about their kids. Once, he found a dead woman in her own house and a baby on the verge of death.

  He had gone to collect payment that she had been late on, only to find her dead.

  McCobb liked to do bad things. That was why he loved this job, but he wasn’t a savage. He called the police when he found the baby, anonymously, of course.