The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(28)

“Goddamn it, I’m trying to be helpful,” said Peter.

“So you say,” said the detective. “So keep being helpful. Get in the fucking car before I have four cops put you in. With handcuffs.”

Peter felt his muscles tense, his pulse rising. He turned and bent and sat, leaving his legs out. It was awkward. The plastic seats were formed to fit a person with his hands cuffed behind him. He could still hear the wind in the trees. It helped, a little. But the back of a police car was just one step removed from a holding cell. And the white static didn’t like it.

He shifted on the seat, heart going hard, knee bobbing faster as his interior metronome went into overdrive. The tall detective was looking at him. Peter’s shoulders rose and his neck tightened up. An error in judgment. He should have kept going. He should have come back tomorrow. The space got smaller around him. He took deep breaths, in and out, in and out, trying to keep the oxygen moving. The headache would come soon.

The detective leaned on the open door. “You okay there, pal?”

Peter shook his head. “I’m really hungry,” he said. “My blood sugar gets low.”

The detective eyed him skeptically. “Uh-huh. Listen, when they go through your truck, are they going to find anything? Weapons? Drugs? Pills? Needles? I don’t care about a little weed, because, hey, it’s practically medicine now. But anything else, you better tell me, because they’re going to find it.”

The detective leaned over him and Peter felt the disadvantage. Which was why the detective did it. The white static was just a fringe benefit. But the police were unlikely to find where he’d hidden the plastic explosive without putting the truck up on a lift.

“No,” he said. “No drugs. Just tools. Some food, camping gear.” He was glad he had gotten rid of the gun.

“So,” said the detective. “You’re living out of your truck.” But he seemed sympathetic.

Peter really didn’t want to have this conversation. But it was manifestly true, down to the sleeping bag and coffeepot. And it put Peter in a certain category for the man. Maybe that would be helpful.

So he nodded. “Just for a few days,” he said.

“The address on your driver’s license: that’s your parents’ house, right?”

Peter nodded again.

“So why aren’t you there? Why are you here, living out of your truck?”

“I’m working,” said Peter. “Helping out a friend. I don’t have a lot of money.”

The detective’s gray eyes looked right through him.

“You get panic attacks? Nightmares, maybe? Or it takes a pint of bourbon to get to sleep?”

“I sleep fine,” said Peter. Which was true, as long as he could see the sky before he closed his eyes. And hear the wind in the trees. Goddamn it. He kept breathing. Maybe it was getting easier.

The detective’s face softened a little. “The VA’s just a few miles from here. They have some pretty good people. Sometimes it just helps to talk.”

Peter opened his mouth and closed it again. How had this cop put him so off-balance?

“No offense,” he said, looking up at the detective, “but you don’t look like my mother. So what the fuck is it to you?”

The tall detective’s face was carefully calm. “Let’s just say I’ve had my share of nightmares.” He stuck out his hand. “Sam Lipsky. Rangers, Somalia ’89, Iraq ’91.”

The Rangers were the Army equivalent of the Marines’ Force Recon, Peter’s group. Somalia was an ugly little war. Mogadishu warlords shot down a Black Hawk helicopter, dropping Rangers in the middle of a hostile city. Then the rescue went bad.

Peter shook the detective’s hand. It was lean and hard, like the man.

“So tell me,” said Lipsky. His eyes like X-rays, looking under the skin. “Do I gotta worry about you? Like that poor schmuck shot up that recruiting office last week?”

Peter shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s not me.”

“You’re not pissed off, frustrated, unemployed, maybe got something going that’s not quite legal?”

“All of that, yeah, except the last one.” Peter spread his hands. They were shaking slightly. “Listen, I’m really starving. Can I get something to eat?”

“Sorry. Not yet.” Detective Sam Lipsky pinned Peter with a glance. “Sit tight. I’ll leave the door open. You’re not going anywhere just yet. Better give me the keys to your camper, or we’ll just pry off the lock.”





14



While the cops combed through his truck, Peter talked to other detectives who asked the same questions in different ways, over and over. Peter gave them more or less the same answers. This wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew to vary his answers enough to be believable.

And all the while, his heart beat too fast, the white static buzzed and crackled in his brain, and his feet twitched for a lonely mountain. Breathe in, breathe out.

When they were finished with their questions, they left him alone to sit. He thought about the last time he had an official interview. He’d been back in the States for three days, and he sat in the small cluttered office of a Navy shrink.

It was part of the discharge process. The Pentagon wanted every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine to have at least one session with a mental health professional before returning to civilian life. The idea was to make sure that veterans weren’t emotionally or mentally disturbed, or if they were, to get them into treatment. But in reality, almost nobody admitted to problems. It was part of the culture. Man up and keep going. And you sure as hell didn’t want anything on your record.