Free Spectre Black by J. Carson Black Page B

duffle.
    Pretty sure.
    And if he had, what were the odds of him talking about it? He’d remarked on the box of tennis balls on the seat and the racket in the trunk—that was all. But maybe Landry’s memory was faulty and the man had unzipped the bag and looked inside.
    No, his memory wasn’t faulty. The guy did not look inside the duffle. One, he didn’t have time to, and two, Landry would have heard the duffle zipper open.
    Even if he had looked through the duffle, he had been killed shortly after Landry went through. He might have remarked to the other two about something he saw in the duffle, but again, Landry was sure he didn’t open it.
    Another car, another white subcompact, could have come by within the hour, and that car could have contained the shooter. The two other militia members struck Landry as not too bright. He doubted they had seen that kind of carnage before. A man being blasted by a shotgun—a man they knew. A man they spent time with.
    They would have been in shock.
    So were the police interested in his car? After all, it was a white subcompact.
    But no one knew Landry in this town. No one could have looked at the white Nissan Versa and known he had rented it. He had used a different identity to check in to the motel.
    The only person he had spent any time with in this town was Agent Carla Vitelli. Perhaps she suspected him and somehow found a way to link him to the car?
    It was hard to think in here. There were a number of mentally ill people around him. All of them claiming to be innocent. Some of them screaming, some of them crying, one of them vomiting, some of them just sitting there staring into space. A few talked casually to one another, as if they were in bleachers at a ball game. Landry sat quietly and nobody talked to him. To his right was a homeless man who hugged himself and sang under his breath. To his left was a big hulk of a man, Hispanic, with the concentrated visage of a sumo wrestler. Except he wasn’t naked, fortunately for everyone there. He wore a tank top and those long, sloppy shorts that only looked good on basketball players, and blinding white top-of-the-line running shoes.
    The homeless man smelled. The hulk smelled good. But both smells were overwhelming. Between the two of them Landry could survive only by breathing through his mouth.
    Chains rattled. Someone snored. He could smell cigarette smoke clinging to a lot of unwashed bodies. Time dragged by. A fly lit on the homeless guy and he freaked, and someone dragged him away. The Hispanic guy did not seem to notice. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, fists cuffed together, staring straight ahead.
    There were madhouse cries every once in a while, and shuffling feet, and chains.
    Finally Landry was walked over to the intake desk. There was plenty of shame to go around, and a police jail was the perfect place to showcase it. The man at the desk looked at his ID and driver’s license: “Chris Keeley.” He went through the contents of his wallet and confiscated money. He paid particular attention to Chris Keeley’s one credit card. Landry wondered if this small-city police force in New Mexico pulled the scam that many others did. If they would trump up a charge and confiscate his assets.
    Good luck with that. Chris Keeley had the credit card but nothing in a bank account except enough to keep the savings account open. One hundred dollars, in a bank that nobody had ever heard of.
    The man processing him had a placid expression. He must have seen every possible permutation of man, and gave off the impression that nothing fazed him. He had an indoor pallor that went with the artificial light.
    Next up, Landry thought: fingerprints . Only the man didn’t take fingerprints. He didn’t take a mug shot, either.
    Good thing.
    Or maybe a bad thing. If there was no record of him, they could do anything.
    I’ve got twenty-four hours .
    The undersheriff had treated him as a special case.
    This arrest was off the books.
    As