The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (109)

One of the militiamen had stepped toward them, overheard that, smiled and said, “He’s doing fine. Couple more hours and we’ll be all done.”

Another militiaman overheard that comment and said, irritated, “Hey . . . Reg . . .”

“Oops. Sorry,” Reg said.

Letty thought, Really? A couple of hours?

In the continued gabbling of talk around them, Letty asked Parker, “Any hint they’re going to hurt any of you guys?”

He shook his head: “No. They seem to think we’re more or less on their side.”

“Are you?”

“Fuck no. But we’re being nice,” Parker said.

“Do you have any access to weapons? Any hidden weapons?”

“They took them all,” Parker said. “They were all over us, they body-searched us.”

“Would you want one?”

He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Not right now . . .”

Letty nodded toward the windows at the far end of the room. “If things get . . . desperate . . . in here, if you think they’re going to start killing you guys, get three guys and all of you line up and lean against those windows. Put your shoulders right against the glass. We’ll try to help.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Before Letty could answer, a militiaman near the door shouted, “Okay, that’s all. Let’s get you ladies out of here.”

Alice and Letty both gave Parker a hug, and they went back outside and rejoined the crowd. Hawkes was walking away from the TV truck and called to Low and the nurses, “They’re saying ten or twelve minutes.”

Alice asked, quietly, “Are you DHS? Really?”

Letty smiled and patted her on the arm. “There’s a bumper sticker I saw in El Paso; it said, heavily armed and easily pissed. That’s more or less me.”



* * *





Letty lingered with the crowd. Ten minutes later, she heard the helicopter coming in, and the nearby militia pressed down to the bridge. Rodriguez and Ochoa went down with them, working remotely from the truck, recording the evacuation scene. As people shuffled around to watch the helicopter come in, Letty joined the group near the bridge, edging closer to Ochoa.

When they touched elbows, Letty said to Ochoa, in a near-whisper, “Another message, when you can. Say, ‘Message from Letty. They will break out tonight.’?”

The camerawoman: “You’re sure?”

“Send it.” And she moved away, watching the helicopter circling the potential landing zone on the bridge.



* * *





The militia’s pickup trucks were lined up around the parking lot, all facing the entrance, as if prepared to make a break for it. Letty walked down the line with her cell phone held to her face, as if listening to music, snapping photos of the trucks’ windshields. With everybody’s attention on the helicopter, she got more than twenty shots, she thought, though she wasn’t counting.

At the end of the line of trucks, she walked off a short distance and looked at the photos. They’d been taken from six or seven feet from the windshields; the stickers were shown clearly enough, and when she used her fingers to spread the photo size, she could clearly read the tag numbers on all but four trucks. Those trucks had a hot spot from a sun reflection; she could go back later, she thought, and try again.

As she was doing that—and the whole photo walk took no more than two minutes—the helicopter came in, hovered, turned, landed on the bridge. Two paramedics got out and checked the wounded man, unfolded a gurney, loaded him in the helicopter, and two minutes later, the chopper was gone over the mountain. Rodriguez and Ochoa hurried up the hill to their truck and Ochoa caught Letty’s eye and nodded.

Two militiamen had been watching the chopper go, and Letty eased up to them and asked, “When’s the caravan get here?”

“Maybe three hours, I guess,” one of them said. “Maybe . . . six o’clock or a little after?”

The other one asked, “So . . . what’re you up to? You live here?”

“Up the hill,” Letty said.

“You ever make it to El Paso?”

“It’s kind of a long trip with the baby, the bottle warmers and diapers and all . . .”

“Okaaay . . .” The interest vanished and Letty ambled away.



* * *





The afternoon dragged: even the militia seemed bored, waiting for the caravan to come in. Letty continued taking renewal tag photos whenever she could do it inconspicuously. When she’d gotten most of the trucks around the lower part of the town, she went back to Jeff’s diner, ate a very late lunch, checking in with Kaiser on the half-hour. Neither of them had anything to report except that they were still alive and operating.

Letty went back to the motel and lay on the stripped bed. She’d been down for five minutes when somebody knocked on the door with a key, like housekeepers do. Letty rolled onto her feet, put her hand in her gun pocket, looked out through the peephole she’d forgotten to plug, and saw the old man who managed the place. He was unhappy, but alone.

She opened the door and he said, “I saw you come in. The housekeeper checked your room and your friend’s room and she said you’ve stolen the blankets and sheets and pillows.”