The Hell's Angels Brandon. Trace said the name with a specific quality. Not fear exactly, but the specific sobriety of someone saying a name that carries actual weight. Full colors. They're all in Patty's diner.
Brandon's coffee mug sat on the table. He looked at it. He picked it up and drank from it and set it back down. And whatever was happening in his face, he kept internal, which Will would have respected as a quality if it were applied to anything more useful than what Brandon Keller applied it to. How?
Brandon said it wasn't a question with a destination. It was just the single word of a man hitting a wall he hadn't known was there. The old man, Decker said from the corner of the room where he'd been standing silently since Trace came in. He'd been thinking about it since the name of the organization landed in the room, running his memory backward over the encounters at the shop. And something was connecting that he should have connected sooner, and he knew it.
Carter, I told you there was something. You told me it was a feeling, Brandon said. It was a feeling that was correct, Decker said. He wasn't saying it to score a point. He was saying it with the flat precision of a man doing a debrief identifying where the analysis failed.
He was never afraid of us. Not one time. I put that in the category of old man stubbornness. It wasn't stubbornness. Brandon stood up from the table.
He walked to the window that looked out over the lot and stood with his hands on his hips and thought about 31 motorcycles on Main Street of Silver Creek, Montana, and what that meant for the calculation he'd been running for 6 weeks. Does he know about Billings? He said. Decker was quiet for a moment. I don't know what he knows.
He I need to know what he knows, Brandon said. Because if he's brought in the Hell's Angels on a local business dispute, then maybe he's got evidence. Maybe he's got connections to Hutchkins, maybe. Or maybe, Decker said with an evenness that cut across Brandon's line of thinking, he's someone they'd come for because of who he is to them, not because of what he knows, because of who he is. Brandon turned from the window.
He looked at Decker. Decker had worked for three different people in the last four years and he was the best at what he did that Brandon had ever encountered and he did not say things without reason. Who is he to them? Brandon said. That's what I want to know.
Decker said before we do anything else. Brandon stood at the window for a moment longer. Outside the lot was quiet. Main Street two blocks away was not. He could feel it from here.
The different quality of the town's silence. The way a room sounds different when it's full. Make some calls, he said to Trace. Find out who will Carter is, not what he looks like in Silver Creek. Who he was before.
Trace took out his phone and went to the other side of the room. Decker watched Brandon. He said nothing, but he was thinking what he always thought when a job began to deviate from its original parameters. There was a cost to this deviation and someone in this room would pay it. And it was his job to ensure it wasn't him.
He wasn't scared. He was something more useful than scared. He was recalculating. Will and Marcus walked into Hutchinson's office at 10:15. Hutchkins was behind his desk with a coffee he clearly needed and an expression that managed to be both controlled and transparent at the same time.
He stood when they came in and put his hand out to Will first, then to Marcus, and all three men sat down in the particular configuration of people who need to establish what they are to each other before anything useful can happen. Marcus Hayes, Hutchkins said, looking at the man across from him. Not putting threat in it, just naming him with the directness of someone who'd looked him up in the 3 hours since Will's phone call. "Sheriff Hutchkins," Marcus said in exactly the same tone. "I know your organization's history," Hutchkins said.
"I'd be surprised if you didn't," Marcus said. "I also know that what Will has described to me about what Keller's been doing in this town is criminal, and I haven't been able to touch it," Hutchinson said. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. I'm not going to pretend I'm comfortable with 30ome members of your club sitting in my town, but I'm also not going to pretend that what's been happening here for 6 weeks is acceptable and that I've managed to stop it on my own. So that's where I am.
Marcus looked at him steadily. That's an honest position, he said. I try to work from honest positions, Hutchkins said. Then here's mine. Marcus settled back in the chair and Will had the odd experience of watching two men who operated by entirely different codes discover that they were more fluent in each other's language than either had expected.
We're not here to run your town. We're not here to operate. We're not going to do anything that puts you in an impossible position. What we're here to do is make a situation very clear to a young man who has not understood the situation he stepped into. Clear how, Hutchkins said.
Clear in the way that things like this get clear. Marcus said, "We show, we talk. He understands that what he thought was a quiet corner of Montana with no one watching is in fact a place where someone has people and those people showed up and the calculation he's been making is wrong." And if he doesn't take that understanding and leave, Hutchin said, "Then we help you build the case," Marcus said. Because we know how men like Keller operate and we know what he'll do when the pressure changes and we know how to document it.
He looked at Hutchkins without blinking. 31 witnesses to whatever he does next, several of whom have been around long enough to know exactly what to look for. Hutchkins looked at Will. Will said nothing. He'd said what he had to say.