Madman on a Drum (Mac McKenzie #5)

“I don’t know, Harry. You tell me.”

A nearly imperceptible smile tugged at Wilson’s lips. I was the only person on the planet who called him Harry. I called him that because he reminded me of the character actor Harry Dean Stanton. He let me get away with it because I had once helped him bring down a gang of international gunrunners.

“It’s bad,” he said.

His words were like a slap in the face.

“How bad?” I said. “Shelby? The girls?”

He gestured with his head. I carefully set the bottles on the floor and followed him deeper into the house. A man was standing directly in front of the fireplace built into the far wall of the living room. He was leaning against the stone mantel with both hands and staring into the pit although there was no fire. He turned toward me as I approached.

“Mr. McKenzie,” he said. “It was good of you to come.” He extended his hand and I shook it. “I’m Special Agent Damian Honsa of the FBI.” He didn’t look like an FBI agent. He looked like a guy who had just broken par at the Midland Hills Country Club and decided to stop off for a few to celebrate. “I’m the case agent,” he added for emphasis.

“Case agent for what? What’s going on?”

I pivoted toward the dining room. Bobby Dunston was sitting at the table with two other men. One of them was the man who met me at the door; he had placed the wine and pop on the buffet behind him. There were four electronic machines on the table. One was a laptop. One was an enhanced radio system. The others were tape recorders. The larger one had several small speakers and was connected to the telephone. The smaller machine was used for playback. Bobby was sitting in front of it. He was wearing a pair of headphones and listening to a tape. The intensity in his eyes—it was like he was trying to melt the tape machine by staring at it. I moved toward him.

Honsa said, “Mr. McKenzie,” to my back, and I shrugged it off.

Bobby caught movement in the corner of his eye and glanced up at me. There was an expression on his face—anger, sorrow, hate, fear… I couldn’t identify the emotion, but I recognized the look. The thing about Bobby, when he’s under a great deal of stress, he becomes extremely economical in both words and action. He never speaks ten words when three will do and never three words if a nod of his head or a hand gesture will suffice. Certainly he never raises his voice or indulges in emotional outbursts. It was as if he were hoarding energy to operate that imposing computer in his head.

He slipped off the headphones.

“I need you to listen to this,” he said. “The voice is disguised, but I know I’ve heard it before.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” I said.

Bobby didn’t answer. Instead, he rewound the tape and yanked the headphone jack out of the machine. He pressed a button, and the machine’s speaker came alive. I heard a phone ringing, and when it stopped ringing I heard Bobby’s voice.

“Yes?” he said.

“Dunston?” The voice had an unnatural, robotlike quality.

“Yes.”

“Victoria’s fine, your daughter’s fine, okay? I didn’t hurt her. She keeps struggling against the ropes, and I tell her to quit it. Other than that there’s not a mark on her. I’m telling you so you shouldn’t worry, okay? We’re not sexual deviants or anything like that, okay? As long as you do what you’re told, as long as you don’t call the Feds, the girl’ll be fine.”

I didn’t hear the rest of the tape. There was a noise that blocked it out. I heard it not in my ears but in my head, my heart, my lungs. It hummed through my entire body, a siren then a bell then something else; it changed pitch and tone as it grew louder and louder. It forced me backward until I was hard against the dining room wall. I knocked a Dunston family photograph off its hook, and it slid to the floor between my body and the wall. Harry moved toward me, his arms outstretched like a spotter preparing to catch a gymnast before he falls. Without the wall to lean against, I probably would have fallen.