Hellhound On My Trail Page 4

  “That doesn’t give me a lot to go on, Mr. Cordell.”

  “I know. I’m trying to find out. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know.”

  “Or maybe I can make this Keller tell me.” Riddle grimaced. “I don’t like it. But I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  Cordell said nothing. The answer was obvious.

  Riddle sighed. “Okay. How much lead time does this Keller have? Is he already on a plane here?”

  Cordell shook his head. “No. However he gets here, it won’t be by plane. That’ll give you time to intercept him. You may even be able to catch up with him at this desert bar.”

  Riddle raised an eyebrow. “How can you be so sure he won’t come by plane?”

  Cordell signaled for the waitress. “I’m sure.”

  KATHRYN SHEA rolled over and buried her throbbing head in the pillows. The night before was a series of shattered fragments in her memory. She shuffled through them quickly. One phrase she had used in talking to Cordell leaped out at her.

  By any means necessary.

  She’d told him she knew the implications of that phrase, and she did. As her father’s daughter, she knew them better than most. But in the cold light of day, did she really want to unleash everything that phrase could mean? Could there be a way to resolve matters with Cliff Trammell short of the kind of dangerous game she’d been so willing to set in motion last night?

  She sat up in bed and picked the phone up off her nightstand. It took her a moment to remember the number, but she punched it in. Her hands were shaking as she did so. That wasn’t a good sign, but she pushed the thought aside.

  The phone rang three times before someone on the other end picked up. “Kathryn,” the voice said. It was a voice roughened with age and turned ragged by relentless agony, but she would recognize it anywhere.

  “Uncle Cliff,” she said, trying to keep her voice bright.

  Trammell chuckled, the sound quickly collapsing into a wet, racking cough that took a good thirty seconds to resolve. “Come on, Kat,” he gasped at the end of his spasm, “we can cut the bullshit. You’re not a little girl anymore. “

  No, she said to herself, her grip on the phone tightening, I’m not. Before she could speak again, he continued, his harsh voice softened somewhat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make the funeral.”

  “That’s all right,” she answered. The words, banal and meaningless, helped steady her. “Daddy would have understood. He knew you were his friend.”

  “Friends.” The word seemed to amuse him. “People like your father and I…we don’t have friends. You know what I mean.”

  She did. She knew it well. But she didn’t answer.

  “We have colleagues,” Trammell went on. “We have drinking buddies. Rivals. Sometimes blood enemies.”

  She swallowed, the dryness in her mouth and throat nearly making her gag. “And what was my father to you, Cliff?”

  That chuckle again. “All of the above. Of course.” His voice turned serious. “Which brings me to the reason I’m sure you’ve called.”

  “Yes,” she said. The next words stuck in her throat.

  “My son.”

  Her grip tightened on the phone. “Yes.”

  “You want to know if I’m going to give him a certain object.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Maybe I already have. Have you thought about that?”

  “Why would you do that?” she demanded. “What good would it do anyone to give…the object…to this Keller person?”

  “I don’t know,” Trammell said. “What harm would it do?”

  “If he chose to make it public, it would destroy my father’s reputation,” she said. “And you know it.”

  “Yes,” Trammell said. “And it would surely put a crimp in your own candidacy as well.”

  She couldn’t answer this time. The shaking in her hands had gotten worse. “Jack Keller’s a nobody,” she said, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. “No one will listen to him if he tries to…”

  “Kat,” he broke in, his voice exaggeratedly sorrowful. “You are so not the negotiator your father was.”

  The words struck her like a blow to the face. She sat there speechless for a moment, feeling the blood throb in her temples. “If that’s the way you want it, then,” she whispered, “so be it.” Before he could answer, she cut the connection. She dialed Cordell, her fingers punching furiously at the numbers.

  Cordell answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

  “The object I’m concerned about,” she said, “is a film. A reel of sixteen-millimeter film.”

  “Sixteen-millimeter?” Cordell sounded puzzled. “Who still uses…”

  “No one,” she interrupted. “It’s an old film. It may have been transferred to video or even DVD. But Trammell has the original. It…” She hesitated. “It belonged to my father. I want it back.”

  “I see,” Cordell said. She waited for the next question. It didn’t come. “Thank you for confiding in me.”

  “Just find out if Keller has it. Or has seen it.”

  “What if he has?”

  “Then we need to make sure he never tells anyone else about it. Completely sure.”

  “Understood,” Cordell said. “I’ll see to it. Don’t worry. And Ms. Shea?”

  “Yes?”

  “I won’t view the film without your express permission. Nor will anyone working for me. You have my word.”

  “Thank you,” she said, even though she assumed he was lying. She’d have to deal with that problem when and if it arose. She cut the connection.

  CORDELL PAUSED and held the phone down by his side as he thought about what to do next. A roll of 16-millimeter film, she’d said. That was a medium that hadn’t been used in a while, at least not widely. So whatever was on it must be old. From her father’s early career. Maybe even before he’d gone into politics, back when he had been in the military.

  “Vietnam.” Cordell said it out loud. His research had disclosed that the future Senator Michael Shea and Clifton Trammell had met when the two of them were serving in Vietnam in the late ’60s. Shea’s career had actually begun with an iconic photo of him as a young Marine lieutenant carrying a crying Vietnamese infant in one arm while the other held the hand of the boy’s seven-year-old sister as he led them away from their burning village. The village, the accompanying news story told the public, had been torched by the Viet Cong after the village elders were tortured, then crucified on bamboo crosses for giving aid to the Americans. It was a rare public relations coup in a war which had been offering few of them in those dark days. Amid growing disillusionment and exhaustion after years of war, Michael Shea became a symbol of why we’d supposedly gone to war in Southeast Asia in the first place.

  Cordell had been unable to find any photographs or film of Clifton Trammell from that era. At all. He might as well have not existed.

  “What did Trammell catch you doing?” Cordell muttered under his breath. Drugs? Hookers? He shook his head. Speculation was useless at this point without data or information. He dialed the phone again. Riddle answered. “Yeah?”

  “The object you’re looking for is a film. An old one. Sixteen-millimeter. It may have been transferred to DVD or videocassette.”

  “What’s on it?” Riddle said. “And if you tell me that’s on a need-to-know basis, I’m bailing.”

  “I honestly don’t know. But if you find the film, seize it. If anyone has seen it, make sure they don’t tell anyone else about it.”

  “Don’t, or can’t?” Cordell didn’t answer. “Stupid question,” Riddle muttered.

  “Yes,” Cordell said. “It was. Don’t ask it again.” He broke the connection.

  JACK KELLER hadn’t been in a civilian airport since 1991. At that time he’d been a prisoner, in the custody of two MPs escorting him back from Kuwait. They’d been polite, professional, but wary, clearly wishing they were traveling on a more secure military aircraft. All that was available,
however, was one of the civilian airliners drafted into service to transport military personnel during the crisis. Keller himself had been silent, docile, wrapped in the numbness that had enveloped him since the desert and which he had not yet learned to name.

  In the present day, it seemed, everyone was a prisoner in the airport. Keller stood in a long line of stoic people shuffling slowly through the winding queue that led to the first security checkpoint. They reminded him of inmates lining up for meals or delousing. He had been in line for almost an hour, but no one complained, no one looked at the faces of their fellow travelers or at the uniformed and bored guards processing everyone. Keller reached the first checkpoint and handed the agent his driver’s license and boarding pass. She glanced up disinterestedly at him, then handed them back. He shouldered his carry-on bag and moved on to the next stage. As he queued up to run his the bag through the metal detector, another uniformed agent walked up to him. This one was a large, broad-shouldered black man with a big belly and a shaved head.

  “Jackson Keller?” the man said.

  Keller was in the middle of slipping off his running shoe. He looked up. “Yeah. I’m Jack Keller.” He immediately registered something was wrong. The man was standing just a little too far away, as if he was trying to stay out of Keller’s reach. “Would you mind coming with me, Mr. Keller?” he said.

  Keller slipped the shoe back on. “What’s happening?”

  The agent held out his hands as if trying to placate him. “Nothing’s wrong, sir,” he said. “Just stay calm.”

  “I am calm,” Keller said. “I’m just…”

  The agent’s voice rose with stress. “You need to come with me, sir.” He was motioning frantically to someone. Keller looked and saw a pair of uniformed Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies hustling over. One was older, with a fringe of gray hair beneath his cap; the other looked like he hadn’t graduated high school.

  “Easy, buddy,” Keller said, “I just don’t want to miss my plane.” Other passengers were looking at him for the first time. A short guy with a backwards ball cap and a shaggy neck-beard raised a cell phone and snapped a picture. Keller shook his head. As he did, the deputies arrived and took up positions on either side of the TSA guy. “Okay, okay,” Keller said. “Whatever. Lead on.” He reached down to pick up his bag. The deputies tensed. One reached for his weapon and Keller saw that he’d unsnapped his holster. He straightened back up, very slowly. “What,” he said to the TSA guy, “you want to carry my bag?”

  The three looked nonplussed for a moment; the older of the two deputies motioned to the bag. “Go ahead and pick it up,” he said. Keller picked up the bag, keeping his eyes on the cop as he did so. The trio was clearly nervous, and in Keller’s experience, nervous cops were something to worry about.

  “This way,” the TSA guy said. He turned and walked away. Keller followed. The two cops fell in on either side of him. Keller heard the crowd behind him erupt in conversation.

  They led him down a short corridor to an office with no windows and nothing on the walls. The only furniture was a cheap wooden desk and three chairs, one behind the desk, two before it. “Wait here,” the TSA guy said.

  “I’m going to miss my…” Keller began, but the TSA guy left, closing the door behind him. Keller went to follow him and saw one of the deputies standing in the hallway. “You need to get back in the office—” Keller closed the door on the “sir” that the officer didn’t mean anyway. Keller sat down and waited. No one came. He checked the time and gritted his teeth. He waited some more. Finally, he took his cell phone out of the bag and dialed Julianne’s number. She answered after a couple of rings. “Hey, hon.”

  “Jules,” Keller said, “something really weird’s going on.”

  Her voice sharpened with concern. “What?”

  “I just got pulled out of line at the airport and shuffled into an office. Now some sheriff’s deputy who doesn’t look old enough to wipe his own ass is holding me in here.”

  “They…what? Why?”

  “I have no idea,” Keller said. “But I don’t like it.”

  “Me either,” she said. “I’m turning around.”

  “Don’t. No sense in you ending up in the same room.”

  At that moment, the door opened. A man walked in, dressed in the same bright blue TSA uniform as the man who’d stopped him. This agent’s uniform, however, fit as if it was tailored. He had close-cropped gray hair and a goatee. He frowned at the sight of Keller talking on his cell phone. “I’m going to have to ask you to put away the phone, sir,” he said. Keller considered making an issue of it for a split second, then casually stuffed the phone into his shirt pocket. He didn’t break the connection, hoping that Jules could hear everything.

  “You mind telling me what this is all about?” Keller said.

  The man gave him a tight, professional smile, devoid of any warmth. “I’m Agent Aldridge,” he said. “We just got a red flag that popped up when you went through security. We wanted to check it out.”

  “A red flag? What the hell does that mean?”

  The smile never wavered. “Tell me, Mr. Keller,” Aldridge said, “have you been overseas recently?”

  Keller thought for a moment about his recent foray into Mexico, but he didn’t see any need to share any more than he had to with this bureaucrat. Besides, Mexico didn’t exactly count as overseas. “No,” he said, “not since 1991. And that was with the Army.”

  “Ah,” the man said, and nodded. “The Army.” He didn’t say anything else. He and Keller continued to stare at one another.

  “Okay,” Keller said at last, “if that’s all that you needed to know, I’m going to be—”

  “I’m afraid we can’t let you board that plane,” Aldridge broke in.

  “What?” Keller said. “Why?”

  Aldridge gave him a look that was unconvincingly apologetic. “It seems your name came up on a list.”

  “A list? What kind of list?”

  Aldridge shrugged. “A list that says you’re not allowed to fly on a plane in American airspace.”

  Keller shook his head in disbelief. “A no-fly list. I’m on the no-fly list.”

  Aldridge put his hands up in front of him in a warding-off pose. “No, sir. There is no such thing as a ‘no-fly list.’”

  “There’s just a list that says I can’t fly.”

  Aldridge nodded. “Exactly.”

  Keller resisted the urge to grab the man and shake him until that artificial smile fell off. “You mind telling me why I’m on the list?”

  “Oh, we don’t know that,” Aldridge said. “We’re not privy to that information.”

  “Look,” Keller said, “I paid for that ticket, and now you’re saying I can’t use it, but you can’t tell me why. Do I at least get my money back?”

  “I don’t know, sir, you’ll have to take that up with the airline.”

  “God damn it.” Keller picked up his bag and moved toward the door. Aldridge moved to block his way.

  “Wait a minute,” Keller said. “Am I under arrest?”

  Aldridge looked pained. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “But I’m going to have to ask you to stay here.”

  Keller’s eyes narrowed. “And what happens if I say no, I’m not staying?”

  Aldridge looked stern and his voice took on a martial tone. “You need to stay here, sir.”

  “I’m getting tired of this game,” Keller said. “If I’m not free to go, then I’m under arrest, and get me a fucking lawyer. If I’m not under arrest, get the fuck out of my way.”

  Aldridge looked smug as he reached for the radio on his belt. He was on familiar ground here. Even if the so-called “subject” was doing nothing actually wrong in the first place, resistance, even to petty bullying, was always a crime. Before he could raise the mic to his lips, Keller pulled his own cell phone out of his shirt pocket. “You getting all of this, Julianne?”

  The reply came back, small and tinny, yet distinct. “Every word, honey.�
��

  Aldridge froze. “You….you’re recording this?”

  Keller had no idea if Jules’ phone had that capability, but he knew one thing every bad cop feared most was being recorded. He decided to bluff. “No, but my girlfriend on the other end of this line is. Every word. So like the song says, Agent Aldridge…should I stay or should I go?”

  Aldridge’s mouth opened, then closed. Finally, he stepped aside. “You may go. But you’re not getting on that plane, Mr. Keller.”

  “Guess not,” Keller said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel. He picked up his bag and walked toward the door. Aldridge hesitated a moment, then stepped aside as Keller strode past. The deputy in the hallway gaped at him, then glanced at the doorway where Aldridge stood, looking grim. Neither one made any move to stop Keller as he walked down the corridor and back out into the airport lobby. He stared at the long line of passengers trudging through the queue, toward the concourses that now might as well be on the moon for all his ability to reach them. He pulled his cell out of his shirt pocket again and spoke into it. “I guess I need you to pick me up.”

  “I’m almost back at the bar. I’m gonna stop and use the ladies’ room, then head back. I’ll be there in a little bit.” Her voice brightened “So, I’m your girlfriend now?”

  Despite his anger and frustration, Keller had to smile. “Yeah. Let’s go with that.”

  RIDDLE STOOD in the parking lot of the bar and looked it over. A handwritten paper sign on the heavy wooden door said “CLOSED FOR FAMILY EMERGENCY.” He tried the handle anyway with one gloved hand. As expected, it was locked. He glanced across the desert road at the dilapidated motel. He saw no signs of life or movement there, but he ruled out trying to pick the lock in such an exposed location. He walked around to the back of the sand-scoured old cinderblock building. A rusting camper trailer sagged on its tires next to a shed that looked near collapse. Both blocked the sight lines to the back door. That door’s lock yielded to his picks in moments.

  He stepped into a dimly lit storeroom lined with shelves. A dented ice machine grumbled and sweated in one corner. Moving silently, as much by habit as by any idea that someone might be present, he moved to the doorway of the storeroom. It led to a short hallway. Directly across the hallway, a desk piled high with various papers took up almost all of a tiny, untidy office. Riddle performed a quick and unsubtle search, picking up and tossing papers and catalogs onto the floor as he determined they were no use to him. He wasn’t concerned about covering his tracks. There was no film reel or canister in the office. There was what looked like a side table against the wall, covered with a tablecloth. When he lifted the tablecloth, he saw the heavy green metal door of an old-fashioned safe. Riddle leaned over and tried the handle. Locked, of course. He straightened up and stared at the safe. There were any number of ways to get into a locked safe like this, but they took time. The most efficient way, he’d found, was to find someone who knew the combination and “persuade” them to open it. But there was no one around.