The Sign Painter Page 15

  “I bet Gracie’s never had a new doll.”

  “I’m sure that’s true for a lot of the little ones in there, honey.”

  Kimmie stamped the floor with one bare foot. “I don’t have enough.”

  Behind her, Bob cleared his throat. “We could stop by the store on the way in.”

  All the objections Amy had intended to pass on were lost to the strengthening day. “You hear that, Kimmie? Mr. Bob says we can go get more.”

  Bob asked, “How many children are there?”

  “A lot,” Kimmie said solemnly.

  Amy slid back a notch, not far, just enough so she could see the man standing by the central counter, the one with the soft eyes, who replied, “Then we’ll just have to go get a lot more, won’t we?”

  Amy helped Kimmie pile the stuffed toys on the floor, then let her decide on the cereal. While she ate a bowl of Frosted Flakes, Amy spread peanut butter over the only type of cracker Bob had, something called stone-ground, which Amy assumed was another word for expensive. She laid some out for Kimmie and had a few herself, then went back to dress for work and prepare Kimmie for the day.

  They drove to the toy warehouse, where Bob pushed a massive cart down one aisle after another while Kimmie made a solemn series of choices, buying dolls and stuffed toys for children whose names she did not know.

  The toys filled the trunk and half the rear hold of Bob’s Tahoe. Amy spotted Granville in a Denton Chevrolet loaner and waved a good morning. Kimmie sang them to the church, as calm and happy as if she had been making this trip for years. As if they were a family.

  The only word to describe what happened when they entered the day-care center with load after load of brand-new dolls and toys was bedlam. Many of the children cried, their happiness tinged by a pain that lanced Amy’s heart wide open. Then she saw the tears on Bob’s cheeks and knew that logic played no part in what the morning held. Whatever she needed to say, all would have to wait for a different time.

  CHAPTER 28

  The church cafeteria had a small glass-walled atrium that had been fashioned into a café area. The atrium’s exterior walls were surrounded by palms and a small but carefully tended garden. Late morning, Paul enjoyed a meal of grilled chicken strips and salad as he related what he had learned from Juanita and her daughter. Granville and Dan Eldridge listened in silence.

  “They’re pushing,” Dan said. “Trying to see how hard they can come on before we push back.”

  Granville watched a pair of jays strut across the lawn on the glass’s other side. “This is about more than just a provocation. They fronted the kid because they want a spotter. A spotter inside means they’re after something.”

  Paul knew it was unprofessional to feel rage at this stage of an investigation. Good agents learned to keep the lid on their emotions. It was the only way to maintain a steady course over the weeks and sometimes months required to reach a successful resolution. But this time he could not help it. “I agree.”

  “They could have used a local banger to confront the kid,” Granville said. His voice sounded metallic, as though clamping down on his own anger turned him robotic. “Instead, it was a major player.”

  “Big and very black,” Paul confirmed. “Accent and knife scars. Driven to the meet. He sits alone in the backseat, two men up front.”

  “Sounds a lot like the shooter who tried to take out Amy,” Granville said. “Shame I didn’t get a look at anything except a busted taillight.”

  “He asked if the kid knew any of the other people living in the apartments,” Paul went on. “He asked specifically about the pretty blond lady.”

  Granville shifted in his seat, as if freeing up the revolver under his jacket, the unconscious response of a cop with thirty years on the beat. “What did the kid tell them?”

  “That Amy was gone. She got a job and she left. He didn’t know where.”

  “Good kid.” Granville lifted his glass and rattled the ice, a frigid drumbeat. “How are you doing with the teams around here?”

  “Fine so far. But they’re getting tired. They’re old, and the rising heat is taking its toll. Nights require extra vigilance. We need to shorten the shifts.”

  “We don’t have enough personnel.”

  Paul continued, “And we need to add more teams.”

  “Same response, doubled,” Granville said.

  Paul persisted, “A few more days on high alert, we risk seeing some kind of revolt. Either that or they’ll just stop showing up.”

  “They’ll hang in there. I’ll see to that,” Dan promised. “Okay if I change the subject?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Soon as I heard about the attack yesterday, I knew what was coming next. Escalation.”

  Paul shared a look with Granville, who said, “I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”

  Dan nodded a soldier’s tight approval, as if head-butting the sunshine. “The bad guys have an agenda we don’t understand. It’s pushing them to ignore the downside and take serious risks. They go after a target in broad daylight, riding in a vehicle with plates stolen from another car, you got to figure it’s something mighty big.”

  Anyone who had worked with a major task force knew that organized crime was dominated by two motives—power and money. As long as neither was threatened, the bad guys preferred to go unseen. To draw them out like this meant they felt endangered, and in a significant way. “We’re missing something,” Paul agreed.

  “See, now, that’s the federal agent talking. Big-budget task force, all the time in the world to look for motive. We don’t have that luxury.” Dan’s sweeping gesture took in the church around them. “We got people over there counting on us to get rid of this problem and let them go back to sleeping nights.”

  “Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  Dan gave it to them in quick bursts, the measured fire of a man who knew how to handle an automatic rifle. Three quick taps, pause to re-aim, again.

  Paul knew his grin was hungry, and he didn’t care. “This is good.”

  Dan looked from one to the other. “You think?”

  “It’s better than good,” Granville confirmed. “It’s what needs doing.”

  Dan fished out his phone and reached for his crutches. “In that case, I better go wake up a few old friends.”

  Half an hour later, Dan stowed away his phone and asked Paul to take a ride with him. They did a slow sweep of the church buildings, and then Dan parked in the lot across from the main sanctuary. “I had twenty-eight years on the clock when a rat-tailed punk knifed me in a bar brawl. I spent two years riding a desk, stamped my ticket, and settled down in Brentonville like I belonged. Ellen loves it here. Me, I think it’s okay. But there are days, you know what I’m saying? I miss the smell of cordite on the wind. Wouldn’t say it to nobody but another old soldier. But there you go.”

  Paul sat beside the retired MP in his immaculate Jeep Wagoneer. The taciturn warrior tapped the wheel with his heavy gold ring in time to the flow of words. Paul had no idea where the man was going. Or why Dan had asked him to come along on this ride.

  “We bought our place on the municipal golf course back in the eighties,” Dan went on. “We scrimped and saved so we could have a place that was ours, not tied to the military. Ellen wanted the kids to feel like we had a home waiting for us, even when we rented it out and didn’t stay there more than a couple of weeks at the end of every tour. Now the kids want us to sell and move up closer to them. My daughter’s a doctor outside Philly, and my son is in IT with an Atlanta firm. Five grandkids. But Ellen and I, we’ve put down roots here. First time in our lives we can say that. We’re just not ready to make another move. May never be, no matter how much we miss watching the grandkids grow up.”

  Dan’s gray Wagoneer was polished to a military sheen. The trees rimming that side of the parking lot offered thick sha
de. Directly across the six-lane road rose the admin building, the day-care center, and the gym. Farther left was the entrance to the apartment block’s parking area. Over to the right was the main school building. Dan had selected his location with a specialist’s eye for cover.

  Dan scratched the point where the bandage bound his upper left thigh. “I got to tell you, getting shot leaves me feeling every one of my seventy-three years. I can still bench-press my weight, but only twice. It used to be three sets of twenty. I sit over here and take a soldier’s nap when I need, three times today. Still, I wouldn’t trade this gig for anything in the world. I hate the idle hours, man, deep down I still crave the action. There’s nothing so fine as taking down a bad guy.”

  Paul waited for him to draw breath and asked, “Why are we having this conversation?”

  “So I sit over here, put a little distance between me and everything that’s going down. And my old brain keeps coming back to the same two things. Do me a favor, will you? One warrior to another. Just think them through. Give it a little time, see how they settle.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What’s happening here is some kind of wonderful. You and Lucy and Bob and Granville and Amy, the lady’s got some kind of spark, I tell you. We’ve all become part of something bigger than any one of us.” Dan pointed at the corner of the apartment block that could be seen from their vantage point. “The church should walk tall over making all this happen. Not slink around, afraid of what might spring from the next shadow. When you come right down to it, that’s our job. Give us the reason and the safety to walk tall.”

  Paul saw where he was going and said, “I’m just a hired gun.”

  “See, that’s true only if you want it to be. Because the reality is, you’ve made yourself a home. And I think that’s what you need more than anything else right now. Seems to me your heart already knows this. But your mind is still running.”

  Paul felt the quiet yearning he had spent too long ignoring. He had no idea what to say beyond “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think about this as well. I’m not saying stop your work. Because truth be told, there’re a lot of churches out there right now who could use the sort of talents you bring to the table. But why do you insist on doing it alone?”

  “I don’t see anyone else stepping up.”

  “Have you asked? Because I got to tell you, there are four or five of us who wouldn’t need to think twice before signing on to your next tour of duty. We’re not leaders. But we’ve found ourselves a skipper we’re willing to follow. Right into the line of fire.”

  Paul was still trying to shape a response when his attention was snagged by a glint of sunlight off a car slowly emerging from the side street. “The SUV turning the corner beside the church apartments. Silver-green Escalade.”

  “I see it.” Dan squinted through the sun-splashed windshield. “You sure it’s green?”

  “It’s them. Look, they’re slowing. Taking a good look—” Paul felt the adrenaline rush of incoming danger. “The day-care center!”

  Dan already had the motor started. He roared, “Hang on!”

  Dan’s Wagoneer was powered by a six-liter supercharged monster that developed over four hundred horsepower. The Escalade’s engine was more powerful, but it carried a ton of extra weight. The four-wheel-drive Wagoneer zoomed from zero to sixty in under six seconds as Dan left his shaded parking space and took the most direct route toward the culprits. He carved a deep furrow through the shrubs that bordered the main parking lot, scraped his way between two imperial palms, and burst through the blooming oleander with such force that he catapulted over the curb and did not even meet the asphalt until he had soared across the first lane and a half.

  Whoever sat hidden behind the Escalade’s dark-tinted windows must have had their attention focused on the day-care entrance, because they made no attempt to avoid impact until the very last moment. Then the Cadillac’s motor roared to life and pulled forward. Not much. But enough.

  Dan was powering forward so fast that if he had tried to swerve his car, it would have toppled over. Instead, he tilted the wheel just a fraction, enough to keep the Escalade in his sights but not so much as to lose control. It was a specialist’s move, and Paul’s adrenaline-amped brain decided the man’s heart rate was probably thumping somewhere around forty beats per minute. Calm and cool and totally in control. Even when his face was tight against what must have been some considerable pain from aggravating a fresh wound.

  The Escalade jerked forward like a racehorse from the starting gate. Dan’s tight maneuver meant they made impact, but not by the nearside doors, as he had intended. Instead, he struck the rear fender.

  The collision rammed them both up hard against the seat-belt restraints. Dan released an involuntary groan, and Paul felt his own stitches tear open. The Escalade kept roaring forward, the metal whanging and shrieking. The bolts holding the bumper in place gave way like four gunshots, and the chrome strip clattered as it hit the pavement. The Escalade ran the red light, threaded through traffic, caromed off an air pocket, and disappeared around the corner.

  CHAPTER 29

  Amy picked up her little girl and drove back to Bob’s house. She went through the motions as she loaded the coffeemaker and turned it on. Her thoughts swirled like heat rising from the deck out back. Paul had phoned her from the hospital where he and Dan had gone to have their wounds checked. He passed over that little tidbit with the casual ease of a man discussing the afternoon thunderstorm. He gave her a brief rundown, cautioning her that they had no idea what precisely the green Escalade was doing on the road in front of the day-care center. His calm was maddening.

  The coffeemaker gurgled softly. Kimmie hummed as she played with her ratty doll and the Barbie and the one teddy she had kept for herself. Amy could not stay still. She walked out the front door and down the walk to where the unmarked cop car blocked the drive. The same two stocky men with their regulation crew cuts who had followed her from the dealership to the day care to Bob’s home watched her approach. She forced herself to shape a smile and asked if they would like coffee and how they took it. She went back inside and poured their mugs and brought them out and said that Paul and Granville and the others would be arriving soon. The men thanked her and said they’d already been informed. Everything calm and polite and orderly. The road was empty and quiet. The sky overhead was clear and the air cloying with humid heat and tropical blooms. From the distance rumbled a faint threat of another storm.

  By the time they all arrived, the day had grown almost black. Thunder rolled and crashed. Granville and Consuela joked with Paul and Dan over the new dressings, as though there was something funny about the men’s return to the hospital. Lucy’s mouth crimped tight in disapproval; she clearly felt that their humor was out of place. But Amy did not mind. Their soft chuckles helped keep the lid down tight on her boiling internal state.

  Bob brought in extra chairs from somewhere in the back. They gathered in the living room and gave a moment to watching the storm’s sudden wrath. Kimmie crawled up into her lap and buried her face in Amy’s chest as the lightning grew so close that the blast and the sound came as one. The water fell so hard that it formed a translucent wall off the patio roof.

  When the storm passed and Kimmie was back in the dining alcove, playing house, they discussed what had happened. Amy listened to them rehash the events with the terse ease of pros. She had not felt such intense emotions since Darren’s illness. Back then, she had forced herself to stifle the worst fears, the metallic rage at the hand life had dealt her. Whether or not God meant all this to happen was a discussion best left for the safety of Sunday school. All she wanted, all she could handle, was surviving the next day, the next hour, the next breath. For Kimmie.

  She jerked slightly when she realized that Bob had settled onto the sofa beside her. He handed her a clean handkerchief. For an instant, she did not rea
lize why, until she felt the wet on her cheeks. He looked at her with such grim intent that she thought for a moment he was angry with her. But when she had cleared her eyes, Bob gripped her hand and said, “Nothing is happening to you, your job, or your little girl. You hear what I’m saying?”

  Amy found herself so swollen with emotions that she could not speak.

  “You are safe here. For as long as you need. No one is touching you or Kimmie. That is not happening.”

  From across the low table, Granville said, “Those people are going down.”

  Consuela said, “Brentonville’s finest are on duty twenty-four-seven. You’re safe, and you’re going to stay that way.”

  Amy felt an astonishing bond with this group. Lucy and Granville and Bob and Consuela and Dan and Paul. Her new friends. She managed, “Thank you.”

  The conversation shifted to what came next. The mood lightened. Dan took a couple of phone calls about some piece of equipment that Paul said was important for the next step, something they were bringing in from Patrick’s air base. Amy had no idea what they were talking about, but their quiet strength and determined confidence were immensely reassuring. Bob Denton held her hand and said nothing at all. Amy knew she would probably never be entirely free of everything she carried from the past two years. But here in this moment, surrounded by people who considered her safety worth risking their lives over, holding the hand of a man who had offered her a lifeline, she could honestly draw an easy breath. When the others were busy discussing whatever plan Dan’s phone calls had drawn into focus, Amy turned to Bob and said again, “Thank you.”

  Paul drove back from Bob’s home with Granville and Dan. Lucy traveled in Consuela’s car. Bob had elected to remain with Amy. Paul was glad for that, both because it kept civilians away from the action and because Amy had looked about half a breath away from coming totally undone. Paul thought about how the two of them had sat on the sofa holding hands. The guy had a good twenty years on her, but what did that matter? They looked solid, as if they fit together. And when they had finished up, as they were getting ready to leave, Bob had suggested they close with prayer. Amy had studied him with a new intensity before bowing her head with the others. Paul liked that, too.