City of Windows--A Novel

by Robert Pobi

  And concentrated on her pulse, picking out the still place between heartbeats when her body was completely at rest.

  The two men from the sheriff’s department moved to the front door with the overbearing display of import she had seen a thousand times in law enforcement people—a physical manifestation of the foolish belief that they were the ones in control.

  The taller deputy reached out and rang the bell with a slow, deliberate motion.

  The second man hung back, near the steps. He was looking around, and for a second, it appeared as if he stared straight at her.

  The taller deputy rang the bell again.

  And once again waited.

  Inside, shadows flicked across the windows as the family roused from whatever they had been doing off camera. A light went on. Again, figures moved behind the glass, throwing shadows.

  The front door opened.

  And without even thinking about the process, Ruby squeezed the trigger.

  The first shot hit the deputy closest to the door right at the base of the skull. Before he began to fall over, she chambered another round. Zeroed in on the other officer.

  And fired.

  She acquired Page’s wife and bolted another round.

  Ruby zeroed in on the head atop the red parka. Held her breath. Waited for her heart to fall between beats. And gently squeezed the trigger.

  She brought the scope down from the recoil just as the copper-jacketed iron-cored slug drilled into the figure more than ten football fields away.

  The woman’s head was there. And then it wasn’t. And all that remained was the blowback from her brains dripping down the shingles.

  Ruby bolted another round and panned over the ground floor, searching the windows for one of the children.

  She’d settle for the dog.

  93

  South of Long Island

  Lucas was still staring at the telephone when it lit up with Erin’s number. “Erin?”

  “Luke. Oh Jesus, fuck. They’re dead.”

  Lucas tried to process what she said. “What?”

  “I … I … we’re in the basement. In the furnace room. Kathy’s dead. Two policemen are dead. What do I do?”

  Whitaker held up her hand—three minutes out.

  “I’m almost there.”

  “What do I do?” she repeated.

  Lucas thought about Ruby Quaid, about how she had been raised like a poisonous reptile in a closed terrarium where all she had learned was hatred and fear. This all hinged on what she would do next.

  The Quaid cabin had been obliterated in a fireball brought on by a sniper’s bullet. Is that what Ruby would try? There were plenty of ways to start a fire.

  Would she go into the house? Would she execute his family up close?

  He wasted valuable seconds trying to think like her.

  Until now, she had done all her killing at a distance.

  And then it hit him. “Erin, I want you to stay on the phone with Agent Whitaker here.” He nodded across the cabin and Whitaker keyed in.

  “I’m here, Erin,” she said into her mic.

  “Luke?” Erin asked.

  “I have to do something. Give me a few seconds.”

  Whitaker picked up with, “Have you got an escape route?”

  Lucas clicked off and went to the recording of the last call he had with Erin, stored on the onboard computer. The unit was basically a glorified digital recorder and operated with a poor man’s version of the same software astronomers used to analyze radio waves collected from deep space; Pro Tools for cosmic musicians. Which meant it had all the right features.

  He played back the recording of Erin and him on the phone a few moments earlier, fast-forwarding to the point where the sheriff’s deputy said, Sorry to bother you, ma’am.

  Marked off the time.

  And listened.

  He ran through it again. And again. And again. Each time isolating some other piece of the equation, until he had it down.

  Six separate sounds—three rounds hitting home and three shots ringing out.

  He marked off the sonic events, isolating the hang time between each round hitting home and the sound of its report.

  Physics was physics, and he calculated for muzzle velocity, bullet mass, powder load, and loss of momentum. He split the seconds into parts too small for the human ear. Then he did some quick calculations.

  If the rounds were the same as the ones taken from Atchison’s basement (except for the material used in the ferrous core), Ruby Quaid was roughly 1,325–1,410 yards from the front door—depending on wind.

  Lucas thought about the beach house. About the wooded drive. The 250 yards from the road to the house. The almost perfectly north-south orientation of the building. About the field across the highway where he took Lemmy to poop in the summer.

  He keyed his mic, cutting into Whitaker and Erin’s conversation. “Erin?”

  Her voice rose through the sound of the rotors and the clink-clink-clink of the machinery in his head spinning the numbers like a Curta adding machine. “Luke? Oh God, what do we do?”

  “The shooter is across the highway in the field. Near one of those shacks filled with all the old fishing shit that run off Cliff Drive. Stay in the basement—we’ll be there soon. I have an idea.”

  “How long is soon?” Her voice was shaking, but she was trying to keep it together for the kids.

  “Two minutes. Stay where you are. I’ll find you.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” she pleaded.

  “I’m right here,” he said, then muted the external mic and asked Whitaker how far out the SWAT team was.

  “They took off thirteen minutes after we did, and they’re in a bigger helicopter, so we’re looking at eighteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty-two,” the pilot chimed in over their headsets.

  “Swell,” Lucas said, then went back to Erin. “Do you hear anything?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Good.” He was trying to figure out what Ruby would do. “Tell me exactly what happened. I need to figure out what she’s going to do next.”

  “She? She who?”

  “The shooter is a girl. Please, Erin, tell me what happened.”

  “The police rang the bell while we were watching a movie. Maude was going to take Lemmy for a walk, and Kathy was going to join her—she put on my coat. She saw I was on the phone, so she opened the front door. I was beside the big clock by the stairs and he … um, I mean she shot the policemen, then Kathy.”

  “Kathy was in your coat?”

  “Yes.”

  And with that, his software cycled up the final line of code, and he knew what Ruby Quaid would do next.

  94

  Montauk

  The pilot came in low, lights off, using the beach and the house as cover from the shooter. The wind was blowing due south, pushing the sound of their rotors out to sea, which suggested that she wouldn’t hear them. But the Nomex blade tips were moving faster than the stabilizers, and they’d generate a subsonic shock wave; if Ruby was in the right spot, the thump-thump-thump would travel below the frequency of the wind as if it weren’t there.

  They landed on the beach in a spray of water and snow that blocked out the world for a few seconds. Lucas told the pilot to stay right where he was and ran for the house with Whitaker, who had her service pistol out.

  The house was dark, and Lucas simply punched through the window on the back door with his prosthetic while Whitaker covered his back.

  He moved low through the kitchen, which put all kinds of stress on the good knee that was doing all the work. The front of the house was lit up with what looked like their Christmas lights if you didn’t know that a police cruiser was parked out front, cherries spinning.

  Lucas tried the basement door—locked. He knocked softly. “It’s me.”

  When Erin opened it, the kids cheered, and both she and Lucas hissed for them to be quiet.

  He gave her an intense hug that he di
dn’t want to end. “Come on!” he said, motioning the kids upstairs with his prosthetic. “We have to go.”

  “What about the policemen? Kathy?” Erin asked.

  Whitaker held up her hand. “I got it.” And she disappeared into the dark.

  The kids filed up, and Lucas made sure they kept low as they headed to the back door in the dark. Even Lemmy moved with slow, deliberate motion, the benefit of pack observation serving him well. Wind and snow whistled in through the broken door, and it was impossible to miss the sound of the helicopter down on the beach.

  All the kids looked petrified except Alisha, who thought this was some sort of a game.

  They crouched below the back door and slipped on boots and coats—Maude had to use a pair of Lucas’s sneakers because her boots were at the front door from her last trip to take Lemmy out.

  Just as they were heading out, Whitaker came back, looked at Lucas, and shook her head. “All three textbook,” she said, leaving out details that might scare the kids. Or Erin.

  Lucas led his family through the path he had forged up from the beach. He went last, putting the dog between him and Whitaker, so that Ruby would have to go through him and Lemmy first. He knew it would only buy his children a few more seconds, but it was the best he could do.

  They somehow made the trek without the whistle of Ruby’s rounds coming in, and by the time they were down on the frozen sand, Lucas had a pretty good idea where she was going and what she planned to do.

  The helicopter was only designed to carry four passengers, but Lucas ushered all five children in on top of Erin, pushing Lemmy’s big ass against the far door. Then he gestured for Whitaker to get in.

  She shook her head. “If I get in, there’s no place for you.”

  “I don’t have time to argue. I know where she’s headed, and I have to beat her there.”

  Whitaker stood her ground and shook her head. “Until this is done, I’m made out of glue.”

  “That’s sentimental but unnecessary. Get on the fucking helicopter.”

  Whitaker didn’t budge.

  Lucas added, “Please.”

  She shook her head.

  Lucas let his plan play through in his head one single time, then nodded. “Okay. We both get in. But after that, you listen to me no matter what.”

  She seemed to think that over for half a second, looking for holes. “You screw me on this and I’m going to shoot you in the foot,” she said as they squeezed into the cabin.

  Lucas pulled the door shut, and the pilot turned his head and yelled into the back, “We’re overloaded, and it’s going to be a bit bumpy! Hold on!”

  They ratcheted up into the sky and swung out into the storm over the Atlantic.

  95

  Montauk Point

  Ruby focused on the spire of the lighthouse ahead, her snowshoes shish-shish-shishing as she ran. The eyeholes on her balaclava were frosted with frozen perspiration, but she was warm in the carefully picked clothing; given the right gear, she could live outside for weeks. But this wasn’t cold. Not in any real sense of the word. When it came to freezing, there wasn’t a place in the world that could compete with the hills of Wyoming.

  Her rifle was across her back, and each time she took a step, she felt it pull a little to the left. But she was making good time and wondered how much of a break she’d get before the police showed up—first the locals, then the FBI. At least she had plenty of ammunition.

  They would be looking for her by now. Even a little local sheriff’s department would know that she had been the one to kill Dr. Page’s wife and those two deputies. There would be a few standard procedures like a roadblock and house-to-house searches. But these were easterners, and they wouldn’t be smart enough to bring dogs out after her. Not that they’d be great in the snow, but they’d force her to move faster. No, using dogs required smarts, which was definitely missing in these people. They were good at killing unarmed families, but when it came to someone who knew what they were doing, their success rate dropped predictably. No matter what tactics they used to hunt her down, they’d eventually find themselves here, on this hill, facing the lighthouse.

  Facing her.

  She crossed the parking lot, steering clear of the one lone car in the corner, left here a few days ago judging by the thick wedge of snow capping the roof. The plow hadn’t come by in several hours, and she was leaving a clear trail—but what the snow didn’t fill in, the wind would take away.

  They wouldn’t know she was here until she started shooting. And by then, it would be too late.

  As long as she didn’t wait for them to surround her, she had a chance. If she controlled the high ground, she controlled them. The trick would be in keeping them from setting up snipers; if she could do that, they didn’t have a chance. At least for a while.

  She climbed the small knoll that bordered the parking lot, crossed Old Montauk Highway, and headed up Lighthouse Road toward the Christmas-light-decorated spire on the hill. She looked for tracks, but the drive was scoured bare—no one had been up here for hours.

  The lighthouse and main building looked like a postcard, and at any other time she would have stopped to admire the scene; if there was one thing Myrna had taught her, it was to enjoy what little time you had because it could all be taken away in an instant.

  She jogged up Lighthouse Road. Her core temperature was up, and she could feel a puff of hot air forced out of her collar with each step, her body now a sweat-generating piston.

  She wasn’t even winded by the time she crested the hill and made the front steps of the access building. She expected the door to be locked but the parks people left it open—they probably didn’t expect any burglars out here, which saved her a few seconds. (There wasn’t a commercially available lock that she couldn’t pick.) Once inside, she blocked the door with the Coke machine, wondering why it wasn’t plugged in. The defense wouldn’t stop a battering ram, or even a single determined man, but it would offer her protection from gunfire if she had to come down here.

  With the barricade in place, she moved through the building to the base of the tower. There were 137 steps to the top, which stood 110 feet above grade, giving a perfect 360-degree view that would make her nearly invincible. At least until they brought the siege equipment like they had at Waco. But how many would be dead by then?

  The answer was, of course, plenty.

  She shed her backpack and rifle, laying the big Remington down on the pack; she never stood her rifle against, or leaned it on, anything—Myrna had taught her that was the best way to knock it over and pooch the sights. And without a scope, the rifle was almost useless.

  And there were still bad people to kill.

  She went to the back exit and pushed the other vending machine in front of the door. The parks department had shuttered up the windows, so that was something she wouldn’t have to do; this was as protected as she would get. If they wanted to storm the hill, she had no problem with that. She’d paint the fields around the lighthouse with their blood.

  It wasn’t much warmer inside, but there was less wind, which helped. She wasn’t moving now, and in a few minutes her core temperature would drop and her sweat would cool on her skin and she’d start to shiver. But she’d fight through it. She always did.

  The lighthouse was automated, and the parks people only checked on it twice a day—the last time two hours ago. (She had seen the parks SUV pass by Page’s beach house.) So she’d be alone until the police made it this way.

  Ruby shouldered the pack and picked up her rifle for the 137-step trek to the top of the world.

  She was halfway through her second complete loop up the stairs when a voice somewhere in the dark ahead said, “Hello, Ruby.”

  96

  Montauk

  After the helicopter banked out over the Atlantic, Lucas held the headset up but didn’t put it on. “Head east, along the coast,” he directed the pilot. “A little more than a mile up on the tip of the island is a lighthouse. Drop me
on the beach below it—hook around the tip and dump me on the north side.” Across the cabin, the kids were all huddled around Erin, who was watching Lucas with an expression he had never seen on her before. Lemmy was kneaded in between the kids, head on Maude’s lap, eyes closed as he slept.

  The pilot’s voice came in over the headset. “We’ve got a strong wind on the north side. How about I drop you off at the front door?”

  “It has to be the north side. Set down on the beach, let me off, then get the fuck out of Dodge.” A helicopter left an identifiable disturbance in snow, and Lucas didn’t want her to know he was here. She would look for something like that, even at night. And Lucas and the kids had walked around up there in the summer—the north side was an easier trek up the hill.

  “You’re the boss,” the pilot said, banking the bird and swinging up along the coast.

  It wouldn’t be a long trip, and Lucas had a lot to say. He looked at Erin and mouthed the words I love you. She nodded an I know and turned to the kids.

  “You stay with them,” he said to Whitaker, who had her headset on now. “Take them somewhere safe. And I need you to get a message to the SWAT team and the local SD, which means you can’t come with me.

  “Ruby knows there’s no escape route, especially now, and she walked in here anyway. Which means she has a plan. And she’s only built for one thing.” His words warbled to the thrum of the rotors. “She will assume we think she’s left the area. Or is trying to. And the local SD will do a neighborhood sweep. We’re on a peninsula, and the only logical way would be to sweep from west to east—or to start at both ends and move in. A mile west of here to a mile east of here. Which ends up at the lighthouse, another elevated position. And we don’t want her in an elevated position. All she’d have to do is wait for a few cars to show up and she’d have her aria to go out on.”

  Whitaker shook her head. “Why would she throw her life away? She doesn’t strike me as the suicidal type.”

  Lucas shrugged. “I don’t think she cares. Not anymore. But if she gets off this island, she will cause a lot more damage. Make sure they block off all escape routes—the entire breadth of the island; a roadblock won’t stop Ruby Quaid.”