Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  Some part of her was attending to his monster words. The rest of her had already moved on. From what Dobbs’s private investigator had said about Mikhailov, his underlings believed he was losing his mind and they served him out of fear, not loyalty. They would not carry on some vendetta for him from the grave, avenging his honor. Once he was dead, they’d be well rid of him.

  Except his son. What about Ivan?

  “If I make a deal with you, how do I know your son Ivan will honor it?” She was both surprised and just a little glad that she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, “You know, Ivan, the pathetic drunk who killed a mother and her baby, the son you murdered two people to protect.”

  She didn’t say that. She heard what he responded.

  “Ivan is no worry to you. He is dead.”

  “Your son is—”

  “I killed him myself, tasted his blood, and then beat him with the iron from a fireplace, buried it in his skull, hit him again and again until pieces of his alcohol-soaked brain splattered my shoes.”

  It was true, then. This man was insane. He wasn’t just a vicious killer. He was a mad dog. He should be shot on sight.

  Bailey had a gun, the one in the kitchen drawer she’d used to put Oscar in her brain last summer. She could kill Sergei Mikhailov with it.

  “As a gesture of good faith, we will make the exchange in a public place, so there is no possibility of … treachery on the part of either one of us. María will be waiting for you in the restaurant of the Nautilus, where you took the … picture that began this little drama. She will be seated in the back corner by the kitchen, across from the bar, accompanied by two men, one on either side. It will not be noticeable that the men are restraining her. But both are prepared to inject her with the cocktail of madness I have developed. No gunshot, no blood, nothing that will draw undue attention. Clean and quiet. These men are … let’s say they are similar to the weapon the Japanese used on you Americans during World War II. Kamikaze pilots. Both owe me debts. Performing this task will be payment in full. They are perfectly willing to risk death or imprisonment to protect their families from my vengeance.”

  She was sure they would. Just like she would be willing to die to protect hers.

  “You will come into the restaurant through the front entrance under the archway at exactly six o’clock. Exactly. There are no clocks in casinos, so wear a watch. I respect attention to detail. It will be a sign to me that you intend to honor the rest of our agreement. Stand beneath the archway until you locate your sister, because you must walk directly to her, not a single wandering step. You will take her place; she will walk out unharmed. I will tell you the same thing I told her. If you make any attempt to draw the attention of others, any kind of scene, if you stumble, if you sneeze, if you do anything except walk immediately and directly to her table, she will suffer the horror of a melting brain.

  “Once you have taken her place, she must leave the restaurant immediately, without pause or hesitation, go through the casino and out the front door and board one of those launches that are docked there. There will be eyes on her every second. Should she deviate from the plan in any way, a signal will be given, and you will be given the deadly cocktail I put together for her. A needle prick … devastation. But if she is obedient, if she lives up to her end of the bargain, I will … grant you a merciful death.”

  He paused and when he continued his voice was thin and reedy, as if he had himself on a tight rein.

  “You should die the death dispensed to all who betray Sergei Mikhailov. You have earned a slow, agonizing—” He stopped again, took a breath and continued in the tight voice. “If she does as she has been instructed, you will be removed from the restaurant — under disguised restraint, of course, and brought to me. Somewhere private. There, I will put a bullet in the back of your head.”

  To match the one already in the front. A playmate for Oscar.

  “I accept your offer.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Then a whispered, “Excellent.”

  “But I have one condition of my own.”

  A lion awoke on the other end of the phone and roared.

  “No one sets conditions for Sergei—”

  “You have to be there, or no deal. I have to see you.”

  “Oooooh,” he said expansively, “that is not a condition! It is my pleasure. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I will not be seated with your sister, of course, but look around for me. I will be right out where you cannot miss me. Wait until we make eye contact, if you like, before you proceed.

  “But should you decide to make some kind of plan to rescue your sister, bring with you other people, like those you brought with you to Boston … If you think perhaps to kill my men, to shoot them or somehow disarm them, you must forget it now and not think of it again. One second, less than a second and the drug will be coursing through her veins.”

  “I will come alone. I’ll honor my end of the deal.”

  “And I will honor mine. You have my word.”

  Then the phone went dead.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Bailey sat looking at the phone in her hand. Should she touch one of the handful of phone numbers on her favorites list, call Brice, tell him Mikhailov was at the Nautilus, let him handle it? That was the only safe thing to do — safe for Bailey. But if she did, Mikhailov would kill María. He had absolutely nothing to lose. He was already facing the death penalty for killing Aaron.

  And what if, by some miracle, he managed to get away? That wasn’t such a farfetched idea. He’d been eluding the police for years. He was an expert. As long as Mikhailov drew breath, she and Bethany would live in fear.

  No, even if you could catch it, you didn’t put a rabid dog in a cage. You shot it on sight. Mikhailov had to die now, today. She had to kill him. She was the only person in the world who could save her family.

  Still, she sat, looking at her phone — the unreality of what her life had become washing over her. She should be in Boston making hot chocolate while Aaron took Bethany out to build a snowman. How did she get here, calmly contemplating murder? Bailey was an ordinary woman, not some too-pretty-to-be-real television-show cop with an attitude. She was real, a normal wife and mother—

  Widow, not wife. And the mother of a dead child … unless she protected her.

  The decision was made. What remained now was making a plan that would work.

  Bailey had to have a gun, but not to shoot Mikhailov. She needed a gun as a red herring so she could get close enough to him to use her real weapon. One he wouldn’t suspect.

  Getting up off the bed, she found that her knees were strong. Her heart was not trying to pound its way out of her chest. She was scared, of course. But that was not the dominant emotion she felt. What she felt was an almost all-consuming rage.

  Sergei Wassily Mikhailov’s days of dispensing death were over. It was time he got a taste of the dish he’d been serving his whole life.

  The gun … was in the kitchen. So was Dobbs.

  She went downstairs wearing a look of determination that T.J. would have read instantly on her face. Dobbs, too, but his back was turned.

  “I thought you were going to take a shower,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Was. Then it occurred to me that Bundy here might need to go out, and you’re busy with the chili, no reason you should—”

  “Oh, yes there is reason I should take him out! You promised, remember. You said you’d let us take care of you.”

  “Sure, I did, but this is just out into the back yard. I’ll be right out there.”

  He put the spoon down on the counter and walked to the peg by the back door where the leash hung.

  “Out into the back yard with the dog … not on my watch.”

  She knew he’d refuse to allow her to take the dog out, would demand to do it in her stead because she’d been snatched by a murderer out of the back yard when she was performing that particular innocuous task.

  A
s soon as he closed the screen door behind him, Bailey whirled around and went to the drawer where she’d left the gun. Not a particularly safe or handy place to put a gun. She’d merely stuck it in there and forgot about it.

  For a horrifying moment, she felt around in the back of the drawer and couldn’t—

  There it was! It was a Smith & Wesson Model 63 revolver. She wouldn’t allow her mind to go to the night she had held the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger. That thought would trigger all manner of other memories she didn’t have time to entertain right now. Brice had taken the gun away from her after she’d fit Oscar snug into the side of her skull, and he’d given it back to her with a handful of .22 cartridges.

  The man in the gun store had shown her how to reload the weapon, but she hadn’t been listening. Why did she need to know how to reload when she planned to use only the one round? She stuffed the pistol in its little nylon holster into the waistband of her jeans in the back and pulled her shirt out over it, deposited the cartridges in her pocket just as Dobbs swung the door open and brought Bundy back into the kitchen.

  “First try,” he said happily. “I said go potty, he looked at me like he knew exactly what I was talking about, then he sniffed around to make sure he’d picked a good spot, squatted and dropped a load. If you hadn’t come down here to let him out, I bet he would have gone to the back door and scratched, like you’ve been training him.”

  “You’re probably right. I should have given him the chance to earn a treat.”

  “Oh, I gave him a treat. Popped it right in his mouth as a reward as soon as he finished.”

  “You’d have given him the treat even if he hadn’t done what you asked.”

  The big man beamed. “Give the girl a Kewpie doll. You and T.J. are in charge of the training part. I’m in charge of the make-the-dogs-happy part. A reasonable division of labor.”

  “I’m off to get clean. Listen for—”

  “I’ve already checked on her once and you’ve only been gone ten minutes. I heard you on the phone. Was it T.J.?”

  She stumbled. “No, it was a telemarketer.”

  “You talked to a telemarketer? Don’t you know—”

  “Yeah, but sometimes it feels good to yell at a robot.”

  She turned quickly and left the room before he could engage her in any more conversation. Hurrying up the stairs, she closed the bedroom door behind her and dumped the gun and cartridges on her blue flowered bedspread. It was called a revolver because it had a cylinder for the cartridges that revolved to deliver the next round. She remembered that much from what the gun store man had told her. What else she remembered was his dogged determination to talk her out of buying the gun at all.

  “Ma’am, this gun is useless for self-protection. It’s a .22.” As if that alone should be explanation enough.

  When she’d looked blank, he’d continued. “Say somebody comes after you, you could shoot the guy three times before he grabbed the pistol out of your hand and beat you to death with it. Then he’d walk away and die from blood loss two hours later. But you’d still be dead.”

  He’d told her you had to hit a vital organ for the gun to be effective and she’d figured, in error as it turned out, that the brain was a vital organ.

  In its favor, the pistol was small. The barrel was only about three inches long. She remembered the “big hunking sight” on the end, which she hadn’t used the one and only time she’d ever fired it, but she recalled Brice commenting once that you should not close one eye and peer out over the sight of a pistol. You kept both eyes open and looked down the barrel, and placed the sight on the target. She would have to hide the gun — somewhere that wasn’t too obvious — and that would be easier, given that it wasn’t a bazooka.

  She found the catch and flipped open the revolving cylinder and loaded the cartridges into it. There were six holes and only five cartridges. The sixth was Oscar. She’d bought a box of ammo with the pistol, but they were somewhere in the kitchen … maybe, she wasn’t sure. Five rounds was enough. Even if she’d been planning to kill him with the pistol, she wouldn’t likely get to take half a dozen shots at him. She spun the cylinder, then snapped it shut and placed the weapon back in the holster.

  Her mind had been leaping ahead of her at every stage of this plan, coming up with what she had to do next before she was finished completing the previous task. She would have to play the few cards she’d been dealt. Mikhailov had had bodyguards even before he went nuts. Now he was paranoid. She couldn’t imagine he’d allow anyone close to him without searching them for a weapon.

  But he’d picked the location — out in public. She’d carry a clutch purse and they’d immediately, though perhaps surreptitiously, search it. And they’d find the gun. That was the purpose of putting the gun in the purse — because they’d search it. And when they found the gun, they would smugly assume they had disarmed her.

  At least, that was the plan.

  All she had going for her was the element of surprise. You didn’t expect a shark to bite you after you’ve taken out its teeth. You let down your guard. In theory, anyway.

  How and when she would use the real weapon was something she’d have to improvise. She’d arrive in the slinky green dress and it would be clear — even without an in-the-middle-of-a-crowded-restaurant pat-down, which they surely would not be so crass as to perform — she carried nothing dangerous. Eventually, they’d leave the restaurant and take her to whatever non-public, private location Mikhailov had selected for her execution, and he would be there. Close. He had promised he would do the honors and she believed him. He wanted to kill her — it was personal. Though she didn’t believe a syllable of what he said about a “merciful death,” she did believe that he would be within striking range for her to use her real weapon.

  For that, she would have to count on blind providence. A moment when everyone’s back was turned. The dark interior of a back seat. She could stumble and fall and grab it as she got to her feet.

  Besides, it didn’t matter what she planned. It was T.J. who had told her that “no battle plan lasts after the first shot is fired.” Battle was improvisation. She would have to wait for her opportunity to present itself, then take the opportunity when it did. The truth still in the husk, as T.J. would call it, was that her plan had almost no chance of success. But it was the only one she had.

  And the other truth still in the husk was that there was almost no possibility she would survive the encounter. Say she got in close, struck and killed him. What next? Duh. His bodyguards would kill her on the spot.

  Brice had turned the Watford House into a virtual fortress, determined to keep her safe this time. Guards had been stationed all around to protect the occupants of the house, but their presence imprisoned the occupants at the same time. How could Bailey meet Mikhailov at the Nautilus restaurant if she couldn’t even get out of her house?

  Deputy Sheriff Raleigh Fletcher was stationed in a cruiser in front on the street. Her “nondescript blue Honda” was parked in the driveway. Two other deputies were positioned on opposite sides of her back yard.

  She would have to get past “Fletch” out front or the two deputies out back.

  Fletch. Definitely Fletch.

  She wasn’t actually aware of making plans, of figuring things out, basic trial and error. Try this, no, this would work better. She was following a plan that her mind was devising on the fly, staying just barely out in front of what she was implementing at that moment.

  The Watford House was old, and attaching a functioning garage door opener on the heavy wooden garage door had been a challenge, and nothing former owners had tried ever functioned very well or for very long. She’d had it repaired only a couple of weeks ago and the man from Doors, Inc. pointed up to the complex weight and counterweight system, affixed to the door by a chain, and told her, “Ma’am, that’s a clusterf—” He caught himself and coughed.

  He proceeded to explain to her how it was a jerry-rigged system so temperamental t
he slightest “hitch in the git-along” would put it out of service.

  “‘Tween you and me, I’d park my car outside and use this for storage.”

  She had taken his advice. The garage door opened into the laundry room, which opened into the short hallway — T.J. called it a mudroom — between the laundry room and the door into the kitchen. No way to get there without passing Dobbs, who was bound to be wondering by now why she still hadn’t gotten around to that shower. Picking up her hand mirror off the vanity top, she banged it a couple of times against the side of the bathtub until the plastic handle broke off. She took the two pieces downstairs with her and flashed them at Dobbs as she hurried past him to the garage.

  “Superglue’s in a box on the workbench,” she said and didn’t wait for his reply.

  The door into the garage from the house was solid wood — not a hollow-core door anywhere in the building — with a knob lock and a sturdy deadbolt. She closed it behind her and went to the storage closet on the back wall. It was about fifteen feet deep but stretched the whole length of the garage with shelves lining both walls. The door was on the end close to the door into the house. There were two lights in the storage room ceiling, one directly above the door and another at the other end of the room. She flipped the switch — both lights came on.

  There was a burned-out bulb in one of the four workbench lights. She unscrewed that burned-out bulb, took it into the storage room, and using the step ladder, swapped it out for the functioning bulb in the light at the end of the room. She put the bulb she’d removed out of sight on the bottom shelf of the workbench.

  Looking around, she quickly found the other things she needed — a big bottle of superglue and a pair of spring-action garden snips for trimming rose bushes. Using the snippers, she clipped off the whole top spout of the superglue bottle, making an opening an inch across. Then she set it carefully out of sight beside the light bulb, stepped into the storage room, placed the snips on a shelf and went back into the laundry room.