Chapter 25
"What're you boys plotting?" Zoe sets the beer glasses on the table then flips the tray under her arm so she can put both hands on her hips. "You two with your heads together, all secrets and whispering. If there was an internationally accepted body language alphabet then this here…" – she lifts a hand and waves it between them – "…this would be 'up-to-no-good.'"
Jackson is all charm, quite taken with Tim's new girl. "We're not plotting, we're planning. There's a difference."
"And what's the difference?"
"Planning is for good. Plotting is for evil."
"That's a cute kind of bullshit you're spouting. Your burgers will be up in a minute."
Jackson grins and watches her walk away. "She called me cute."
"I think it was your bullshit she said was cute."
"I'll take it."
Jackson felt the need to deliver in person the address for Jesus Sandoval. He arrived at the end of the work day, tackled Tim a second time outside of the courthouse, nagged until he could get Tim to agree to buy him a beer so he could meet Zoe. One beer became two; two became three; three became dinner with a fourth. Tim has given up not drinking weekdays.
"I like her, buddy. Too bad about Daddy. But anyone who thinks our bullshit is cute..."
"She said 'your bullshit.'"
"If Clare had thought my bullshit was cute, we might still be together."
"I think there was a bit more to it than that," says Tim, then he explains Zoe's family situation to soften the sarcasm. His friend's still hurting. "Marriage and military – each is hard enough without fucking mixing them, dude."
"I should've waited."
"Whatever."
"Fuck it."
"You hear from her?"
"No." Jackson finishes his beer and starts in on the new one. "So…fucking whatever. We got more important things to talk about. Sandoval. What're you planning on doing with him?"
Tim corrects him. "Not planning, plotting," he says, and looks over at Zoe. "But first things first. I gotta get Taylor for his part in all this. Me and Rachel are heading down on Monday."
He thinks too much when he's driving, or sitting doing nothing. That's why he likes to be occupied, mind and body. Unfortunately today he's driving, watching an endless reel of highway scenery scroll past. It's a good backdrop for thinking. He's thinking that his whole world is alcohol, coffee, driving and sleeping, with occasional interruptions of gunfire. That's it. It'd make a lousy novel. Well, there is some regular sex now, and with a partner, and that's nice. He repeats his thoughts aloud for Rachel and she doesn't laugh. Maybe it hits too close to home to be amusing for her. Her life is pretty much the same, minus the sex since she and Joe divorced. But Tim checks that last thought and wonders if maybe she's out there on weekends hooking up. It's not hard for girls to get some if they want it, and Rachel is a desirable bundle. He peeks out the corner of his eye at her.
"None of your business," she says, raspish. Rachel, the freakish mind reader. She adds eating to the list.
"Right, eating," he says, and his stomach grumbles so he pulls over at the next rest stop and buys lunch for the two of them.
They find the old pickup where he and Raylan left it, after a few wrong turns.
Rachel doesn't look impressed. "We're not seriously driving that to New Mexico?"
"It's cool. It's vintage. And it's your favorite color."
"That's not red, that's rust."
"Yeah, well…"
"It'd better have air conditioning."
He gives her a look that draws a rare cuss from her.
"Shit. You're kidding me." A huff.
But she gets into the role quickly enough, enjoying the subterfuge of the empty hotel room, the journey, anticipating the stop at El Paso. She's never been.
It's a different trip with her than with Raylan. It seems more like a family vacation than a mission. Rachel is awake for more of it, pointing out the sights, commenting on the geography, insisting on nicer places to eat. She wants to walk all over El Paso when they finally get there, check out the bullet holes along the buildings fronting the border with Juarez. He just wants to drink some tequila and sleep for a couple of hours. He misses Raylan, stops suddenly on the sidewalk in shock.
"What?" she says, turning to see why he's halted her tour.
"I just had the weirdest thought."
"What?"
"I kinda miss Raylan."
"You two probably sat yourselves in the first bar you could find that served cheap tequila and then rented a cheap and filthy hotel room to sleep it off in."
"Uh..."
She grabs his arm and pulls him along on her walking tour.
They giggle rather than smirk. It's as if he didn't make this exact same road trip just two weeks earlier, that's how different it feels.
They have a different destination in Las Cruces this time too. An address for Deputy US Marshal Phil Taylor.
Rachel is nervous about it, but he reassures her. "I'm not gonna touch him. I won't even get close. I promised Art."
They do some surveillance of the man's house then drive across town and sit in an all-night diner, have a late meal and some coffee. After midnight they drive past the address again to make sure the lights are off, then they park a few blocks away and walk back. Tim has a ruck full of odds and ends that he might need – wire cutters, wire stripper, a phone with alligator clips. He checked before leaving Lexington that Taylor had a landline. He's not certain he would've asked Rachel to come otherwise. No landline would've meant breaking and entering. Instead, he only has to break into the phone box and that's not difficult. He splices the line, jacks in the old phone he's carrying, and makes a call with Taylor's number to a roadhouse on the outskirts of town.
A man answers.
"Hutter?"
"That's right."
"I have the information you're looking for."
There's a short pause. "Alright."
Tim repeats Sandoval's address from memory. He hangs up, cleans up the evidence of tampering, jimmies the box closed.
He says, "Let's porkchop," in a whisper, coming up behind Rachel standing lookout on the sidewalk.
"That's it?" says Rachel.
"That's it."
"Long drive."
"If you had a better idea, you might've let me in on it before we left Lexington."
"No, I like your plan. I can see my way around it morally. Ma would call it forced karma. I like to think of it as interactive guilt assignment."
There are flaws in the plan but he tries not to think about them. Everything that's in his control he's taken care of. What isn't, isn't worth worrying about. He has Rachel to do that for him.
She's good at sleeping in a car. She's had eight hours and now she's wide awake, her mind going. "What if he gets to Cleveland before you do?"
"I got someone watching Sandoval. He's safe. Hutter shows up, Jackson makes a call to the local police, they get arrested in the act."
"Jackson?" The way she says it suggests that she doesn't have much confidence in his choice of babysitter for Sandoval.
"He knows how to dial 911. He knows how to stop someone with a gun too, if it comes to that. He was my team leader when I moved into the sniper platoon. Awesome Ranger."
She makes a noise of disapproval.
"Rachel, he may not look like your idea of a professional, but trust me, he is."
Raylan offered to go to Cleveland and watch over Sandoval himself to ensure his safety, but it didn't make sense to Tim to put anyone from work near the WITSEC house. Jackson has a Cleveland address, an excuse for being there. But a Lexington Marshal, when you consider all the circumstances, would be instantly suspect. Even Tim has no intention of going anywhere near Ohio until this is done.
"And what if Hutter just walks in and shoots him?"
"Won't happen. He wants him to suffer."
"What if he gets spooked?"
Tim shrugs. "So, he shoots him and we get him for murder one. And there's one less scumbag in the world. Won't be crying myself to sleep." He says the last to get her riled up, hears her huff and knows, even with his eyes shut, that she's glaring over at him.
"Okay then, what if Hutter doesn't follow up?"
"That's possible."
"What's the plan then? Give the information to Washington?"
"If you're gonna keep talking then you might as well pull over and let me keep driving. This is supposed to be my time to sleep."
She huffs once more but goes silent.
He and Rachel decided ahead of time to put some quick distance between themselves and Las Cruces after the deed. They didn't bother renting a motel room in El Paso. Tim had volunteered to take the first leg, content to let her sleep and to have some time to himself to think in the dark and silent hours of predawn. He rolled the window down to let in the cool air to help stay awake, gave his jacket to Rachel for warmth when she complained. The sun crept up over the eastern horizon of the flat Texas brush land and he took out his sunglasses and put them on against the glare and kept driving. It's not something he'll admit to many people but he enjoys watching the sun come up. The air smells different at dawn than it does at dusk, something more of a promise to it, a chance for fulfillment. Dusk smells like battle, or reminds him of battle, or else bad habits, boozing and hook-ups and loosing yourself to dreaming. It's a good smell too, either way. Dusk is a craving. Dawn is an expectation.
Dawn worked well with his mood and perked him up so he let her sleep well past their agreed upon time, on until lunch when the sun warmed the car up and Rachel pushed off the jackets.
"Where are we?" she asked, drowsy in the heat.
"Between Abilene and Dallas."
"Pull over. I'll drive. You must be tired by now."
And he was tired then, back when she offered to drive, but her twenty questions after he got settled in the passenger seat has his mind going again.
The payback is moving gears now and he can't stop them – there's too much human element to predict the outcome – but it feels good to be doing something. It feels good not to hurt anymore. It feels good to be sorry he's not going to see Zoe tonight. She's so easy to be with it's like he's always known her.
He shifts in his seat and chances a glance Rachel's way. She has her eyes on the road and doesn't notice him watching her. Since he's thinking about women he lets himself see her as beautiful. It's a luxury, something he works hard to suppress because she made it clear in his first week at the bureau that she didn't appreciate it. He respects that, for her sake. But she is beautiful. He grins at the idea of beautiful Rachel.
"What?" she says, eyes not only in back but apparently on the side too.
"Nothing," he says.
"That's right, mister – nothing."
"Alright, just saying."
"Just don't."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Goodnight, Tim."
"It's after noon."
"Don't sass me."
He balls up his jacket for a pillow and turns a tiny bit sideways, drops his head on the car door and closes his eyes again.
They're at a different motel than the one he and Raylan stayed in outside of Middlesboro in south Kentucky. To mix it up a bit they chose one on the Tennessee side of the State line and left the pool car in the back. They returned to it at two in the morning and are now sleeping off the long trip home in a cheap room when Rachel's phone rings and wakes them both. Tim sits up, eyes wide open, reaches for his handgun. Rachel rolls over on her bed, mumbles something inaudible, sleepy, then gropes for her cell on the side table. As he walks past her to the bathroom he smirks at the lines on her face where she had it smushed into her pillow. She gives him the finger and tells him not to take too long because she has to pee, then she answers the call.
She's sitting very still, cross-legged on the bed when he comes back into the room.
"What?" he says, sensing something out of place.
"Hutter. He walked into a police station in Las Cruces late yesterday and gave himself up. They have a recorded confession."
"Everything?"
"Art didn't say. He wants to give you the details in person. He just got off the phone with DC."
Tim sits down facing her, in the matchbox chair that goes with the matchbox hotel room. He wipes a hand across his mouth. "Huh."
"Tim?"
He looks up.
"Are you alright with that?"
He's not sure.
"I got what they termed a 'courtesy call.' They managed to piss me off before they even started. A courtesy call. Assholes. Anyway. They're arresting Taylor right now, maybe already have. Hutter would only name Taylor though. He refused to give up the other two men who…" Art pauses and takes a breath like he's short of oxygen. "He wouldn't name the other two men who helped him here in Lexington." Art watches Tim for a reaction, but Tim doesn't give him one. "If he was cooperative they might've been a bit lenient considering he gave himself up. Taylor's the main thing though, really, I think. So…that's it then."
Tim says simply, "Yup."
He leaves work early, not indecently so, but early enough that Art jogs after him. He jogs after him which alone is evidence of Art's disquiet and makes the question he's about to ask redundant, but he asks it anyway when he catches up to Tim on the courthouse lawn.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," says Tim. "I'm fine." He repeats it to make sure Art gets it. "It's not what I expected, but it accomplishes the same thing. More or less."
"More or less."
Tim turns to leave but Art stops him with another question. "You have names for the other two?"
"Wasn't hard to find them once I had Hutter."
"Tim…"
"Art, I promised you. I intend to hold to that. Nothing I do is gonna come back on me…or you or anyone else here."
"What're you gonna do?"
"I dunno."
It's not an outright lie – a lie of omission only which has its own set of unequal consequences but none as dire as those that come from an outright lie. He knows that's splitting moral hairs but life is all about splitting hairs. He has a vague idea, nothing fully formed. There's still some balancing of justice that needs to happen but he's not certain where to aim. He needs to think about it.
After he leaves Art, he finds a rare payphone and calls Jackson to tell him the news.
Jackson takes it in stride. "Meh, I didn't like this plan anyway. Not enough fucker pounding for me. So what're we gonna do now?" He adds in his best Samuel Jackson voice, "'Cause enough is enough! I've had it with these monkey fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"
"You are fucking hilarious."
"I am mother-fucking serious."
"I'll get back to you."
He walks the streets, no particular destination, just walking, walking and thinking. He walks in circles and ends up at The Chase.
Zoe is just inside the door clearing a table. "Hey," she says. She catches something in his expression that makes her stop her task and hook her arm through his and escort him over to the bar. "We just got a couple of bottles of 12-year-old Weller, new release. You want a glass?"
He raises both eyebrows in appreciation, an honest smile because things aren't that bad, not really. He got Hutter. He got Taylor. He's batting five-hundred. That would make him happy if this were baseball. "That'd be nice," he says. "Thanks."
The place is quiet, Wednesday evening. They're clearly overstaffed. He can tell because two of the servers are helping to clean shelves behind the bar, pulling down the liquor bottles and glasses and lining them up on the counter below. The manager waves a hello over at Tim then motions for Zoe to join her and they have a short conversation. Zoe nods and disappears into the back. She comes out in her street clothes, slips behind the bar and pours two glasses of bourbon and with her head indicates to Tim to join her at a table. Tim follows and sits down across from her and she slides him his drink.
"Alright," she says. "What's up?"
"Hi?"
"Nope, not buying it. You've got a look. Can't read it yet. I don't know you well enough."
"I'm just thinking."
"Oh, that's your thinking look. No wonder I didn't recognize it."
"That's great. I get sass all day at work, sass from my friends, sass from my girlfriend."
"You must like it then if you come asking for it."
"I asked for bourbon."
"No, I offered you the bourbon."
"Yeah, well..." He twirls his glass in his hand. "They letting you off early?"
"Good behavior."
They have sex and dinner and are sitting in his yard. There isn't much conversation. She slides her feet up on his lap and yawns. He runs his sweating beer bottle up her bare legs.
"That feels nice," she says.
He stops. "Where's the fun in that?"
She chuckles. "Sorry."
He runs the bottle up her other leg because she likes it. Then he starts talking. It begins slowly, tentative. "One of the guys who abducted me turned himself in today, confessed to his part."
"Why would he do that now, after all this time?"
"I guess because I made him," he says. "In a way. I figured out who he was and paid him a visit."
She looks over at him but doesn't say anything.
"Sometimes I'm not so good at being a Marshal."
"Sometimes I'm not so good at being a friend. Sometimes I'm lousy at being a daughter. Sometimes I make a terrible waitress. I actually did spit in a guy's food once."
"Wasn't mine, was it?"
"No."
"Probably wouldn't mind now."
She licks her finger, leans over and sticks it in his ear.
He hardly reacts.
"What'd you do?"
"Nothing too bad."
"But bad?"
"I don't really know."
And then it comes out faster. He tells her about the first visit to New Mexico, and the second. He tells her about Hutter's daughter. He tells her about Taylor. Then it's just as easy to keep talking until he's told her the entire story. She interrupts just once to say, "You'd better explain what they did to you so I have a clear picture of both ends of this." So he does. When he's done he realizes it feels good to lay it all out at once, and to one person. He's doled out portions to everyone close to him, but never in its entirety and always without the complete narration that is his thoughts, his fears. He even lets her see his insecurities. Those he's kept to himself until now. He tells her everything. Everything.
And then it's quiet again with the sweat dripping off the beer bottle onto her shin and the breeze stirring their hair just a little. It's getting dark. When he looks at her she's chewing on her lip and staring up at the blue that's turning to shadow at the eastern edge of the sky.
"Shit," she says eventually. "What a mess. I can't stop thinking, what if it'd been me that he raped and threw out of a car. What would my daddy have done?" She covers her eyes briefly. "Jesus, I can just imagine. You would've been justifiable collateral damage to him. Anything to achieve his goal of getting to that man. It makes me sick thinking about it, but on the other hand... And then there's that poor girl. What hasn't she lost? And now her daddy's in jail. Jesus." She pulls her legs off his lap and draws her chair beside his, wraps her arms around his neck, pulls him over awkwardly and kisses the top of his head. "I'm sorry you got caught up in it. There's nothing you did to deserve what you got." She kisses his cheek. "Seems to me that you and her are the only innocent parties in it all."
"It's gonna be hard for me to stay innocent and do what I need to do."
"You gotta be true to yourself." She kisses him once more, on the mouth. "Shit, I'm dating my father, aren't I?"
"No. I don't own a hardware store."
"Stick around, buster, and you might. I'm gonna inherit it someday. He's already talking about retirement."
He thinks running a hardware store might be a good thing. He wouldn't have to leave Lexington when the Marshals Service eventually gets around to moving him on to another bureau.
"And the Marshals Service is protecting him because why?"
"He has information to bring down a drug distribution ring in New Mexico."
She chews on that for a bit. "How is it that rape and assault is ranked lower in their minds than drugs? I'm not sure I get that."
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