“Try this,” said Meffert. “Satterfield kills Shiflett for stealing his idea about the bear—I think Brubaker’s right about that—and then Stubbs finds out about the murder. Stubbs feels guilty—after all, he’s the one who introduced Shiflett to his cellmate Satterfield, right? So Stubbs starts drinking, and the more he drinks, the worse he feels. Finally he decides he’s a sorry sumbitch who doesn’t deserve to live. Puts a gun to his head and offs himself. You buy it?”
“I don’t,” I said. “Stubbs? Killing himself out of remorse? Guys like that don’t feel remorse, Bubba. Guys like that don’t shoot themselves. Guys like that shoot other people. Guys like that blame anybody but themselves when things go wrong.” I felt a surprising head of steam building inside me. “Guys like that think they shouldn’t have to pay taxes, even though they want good roads and a strong military and a well-trained fire department and plenty of Border Patrol agents. Guys like that think it’s your fault if they break their hand by punching you in the face. Guys like that—” I stopped, because I could hear that I was getting spun up, loud and angry. “Sorry, Bubba,” I said. “I tried it, and I guess I don’t buy it.”
He gave a brief laugh. “Yeah, I was starting to get the picture. Okay, so if it’s not suicide, it’s homicide. Shiflett, or Satterfield?”
“Satterfield, of course.”
“Why not Shiflett? Maybe Shiflett shot Stubbs over some kinda disagreement, and then Satterfield went after Shiflett ’cause Shiflett had killed his buddy.”
“I don’t buy that, either, Bubba. Redneck racists like Stubbs and Shiflett—they’re mean, hateful bullies and jerks. But they’re not bad-to-the-bone monsters. Satterfield is.”
“I don’t dispute that,” he said. “And I get why Satterfield would go after Shiflett, for stealing his plan. But Stubbs—why would Satterfield kill Stubbs, too?”
I said it before I even thought it. “To cover his tracks. Satterfield needed two accomplices on the outside to help him escape, right? Stubbs and Shiflett. They killed the prison doctor’s wife and the guard’s family. They were useful to him. But once they’d done that—once they’d helped him get out of prison—he didn’t need them anymore, and they became liabilities. By killing Stubbs and Shiflett, he made himself harder to trace, and—at least at Shiflett’s place—he was able to stock up on weapons.”
Bubba heaved a sigh. “At Stubbs’s, too,” he said glumly. “Stubbs was renting a storage unit a few miles down the road. Looks like it was cleaned out within the past week or so. ATF’s coming over to check it out, but my guess? They’ll find residues of explosives and ammunition in there, just like they did in Shiflett’s shed.”
The news was bad, but it wasn’t surprising. In fact, it seemed almost inevitable. “So Satterfield’s got himself one hell of an arsenal now,” I said. “Sure would be good to know where he’s keeping it.”
“And what he’s aiming to do with it,” said Meffert. “Race war?”
“Hell, no,” I said without hesitation. “Shiflett and Stubbs might believe that crap, but Satterfield doesn’t give a damn about a race war. He was just telling them what they wanted to hear. He played those guys like fish, reeling ’em in till they were flopping on the dock. And them he stomped ’em.”
After I hung up, and feeling like I did—like a walking, talking target—I wished Meffert had chosen a different word for Satterfield’s next move.
Aiming.
CHAPTER 34
“I’M SORRY, DR. BROCKTON.” ANGELA PRICE—Special Agent Price—sounded as if she was, in truth, sorry. But not as sorry as I was.
“Can’t you request additional agents from another field office? Just until he’s caught?”
“I told you, I’ve already asked. Twice. And been turned down twice. We don’t know how long it might be until he’s caught. Maybe days, but possibly years.”
“God spare us,” I said.
“I agree. But we can’t do an open-ended expansion of your family’s security detail. For one thing, we don’t have the budget. Even if we had the money, we don’t have the personnel—here or elsewhere. We’re dealing with multiple terrorism threats these days—credible threats of coordinated attacks—and we are stretched to the breaking point. My agents are averaging sixty hours a week, Dr. Brockton. Averaging.”
I mumbled my understanding and my thanks—they were, after all, still posting agents outside my house, and at Jeff’s house and office, and even the boys’ school. Then I hung up and repeated my request to higher-ups at the TBI and at KPD. They, too, turned me down; they, too, expressed genuine regret.
“If you’d be interested in hiring some off-duty officers, I can ask around,” Decker said, sounding slightly embarrassed at the prospect of bringing money into the equation. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, “but it might make sense. See what you find out, and give me a buzz back.”
But in the end, it wasn’t one of Decker’s guys, or anyone from KPD, who came to our aid. It was Waylon—big-hearted, big-bodied, big-trucked Waylon—who phoned back to say he’d help, after I’d talked to O’Conner. “Jim figgers he can spare me for a while,” Waylon said, “seein’s how we’re all done with that Shiflett mess.”