A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  Merle and I glanced over at Abe. His jaw was set hard, his mouth scrunched up and his cheekbones riding high.

  The TV moved on to a story about a progressive candidate named Jerome Bleeker who was running against Toby Monroe for the governor’s seat.

  Bleeker came onto the screen. He was in his forties and Black. “It’s pretty clear what happened,” he said to a reporter. “Toby Monroe’s people went out at night and stole all my signs. We had about a thousand on lawns throughout Atlanta. This morning there’s twenty.”

  Across the kitchen, Abe raised his voice. “So I took the bedrooms and the front,” he said to the chief. “P.T. had the backhouse and kitchen.”

  I shook my head, incredulous that the chief wanted to know who had inspected the backhouse, where the leaked picture was from.

  I picked up a bottled water off the kitchen table and began shaking it from left to right, popping my palm against the base, like a smoker prepping a cigarette box.

  Abe hung up and kicked at the legs of the kitchen table. The TV moved on to sports, and Merle flicked it off.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Abe. “Does the mayor want me off the case?”

  “Yeah.” Abe nodded, embarrassed. “And nowhere near the GBI as we hand it off.”

  I nodded. Between the photos of the fifty banker’s boxes on the news, the five guns at Harrington’s backhouse, and the excerpts the Register would print tomorrow, the public had some part of their “why”—way ahead of Mayor Stems or Chief Senza having a chance to break it to them first.

  And that pissed them off.

  But was it really an answer—to say that Harrington was just crazy?

  I moved back to my office, not sure where this left me and Remy. Or the case itself.

  Would the incident move over to the GBI faster than we originally thought?

  At the same time, the anxiety that I’d been carrying around for the last day relaxed just a bit.

  Harrington was a crazy man, looking for conspiracies where none existed and ready to take the lives of students. And sure, Mayor Stems and Chief Senza would’ve liked to make that announcement instead of the media breaking it. But I’d gotten it right, taking him down.

  Thirty minutes later, Chief Senza sent a group text, informing us that Abe and Merle would finish the investigation on the school shooting, with Remy and me assisting only as requested. Come end of day Friday, every detail about Falls Magnet would be turned over to the state and Feds.

  I wasn’t sure if the chief was pissed, especially after seeing the picture of the backhouse on the news.

  I started my own text chain. Just me and Senza.

  How’s Avis?

  A text came back:

  Everything A-OK. She’s with her mother and has stopped crying.

  I wrote back:

  Are you and I okay? I don’t know how those pictures got out.

  A text came back fast:

  That question came from the mayor. Don’t worry about it.

  But did you miss your therapy session?

  Shit, I thought. My appointment was first thing this morning, and I’d completely blanked. I explained to the chief that I’d been in with the teacher’s wife and that I’d reschedule.

  A minute later the phone pulsed and I saw one more text from the boss:

  You saved my girl’s life, P.T. But Fuller was right that you need to recover. Right now just make those therapy appointments. Let your partner assist Abe if he needs a hand.

  I stood up. My office windows were cranked open, and a smell like medicine had drifted in.

  The anise hyssops in the flower bed alongside the building had gotten long and wispy and reeked like an odd mix of carnations and chemicals.

  Sometimes, when I’m coming down from the stress of a case, I want a drink. It’s a reactive instinct for someone in recovery. A reward for survival. And lately when this happens, I take a drive. Being in motion soothes me in a way that AA meetings don’t.

  I left work, even though it was midafternoon. Got in my Silverado and drove home. Grabbed my bulldog.

  Purvis was eight years old and reddish-brown, with white blotches on his body and a large underbite. He also had a tendency to drool when excited, which he was by the time I unlocked the front door.

  I led him outside. Rolled out an old UGA blanket onto the passenger seat of my truck and placed my dog atop it. Within a minute of driving, Purvis was asleep. Apparently being in motion soothes him too.

  I pulled over just past a bridge along I-32.

  Grabbing Purvis, I climbed out onto a slice of grayish-brown granite that protruded over the edge of the Tullumy River.

  There are places in the world with magical value. The religious speak quietly when they enter churches. Sports fans grow silent when they walk the hallowed grounds of their favorite stadiums. And for me, this was my mystic place. A strip of forest with a river that had both saved and ruined me, surrounded by trees that transcended time and the geological diversity of northern Georgia. The truth is that Mason Falls is a place so densely populated with minerals and rocks that the only way to know it is to listen quietly as nature peels back each layer, like a hundred-year-old onion.

  Below me, the water was green and dark, and I sat there for an hour, talking to my family. Speaking words into the wind, right at the place where my wife, Lena, and my son, Jonas, had gone into the water. Where the Jeep had left the road and slid down the embankment.

  You’ve gotta let yourself off the hook, P.T.

  I glanced down.

  It was Purvis. He speaks to me sometimes. In a voice that sounds just like mine, but with a touch more sanity. And maybe some sarcasm.

  “I’ve got this itch,” I said to my dog. “There’s something unsettled.”

  You always get that itch, he huffed. Maybe you need that itch to make yourself feel good. To make yourself feel special. Needed.

  The late afternoon sun flickered through the loblollies that grew tall by the riverbank, and the air moved through the small hairs on my arms. I got up ten minutes later. Loaded Purvis into my truck and headed home.

  In the shower, I let the hot water soak into my skin. I got out, poured a Dr Pepper on ice, and put on the Braves game.

  I knew the right thing was to let the case go, but the call from the governor nagged at me.

  Monroe had asked me to shoot a man. And I’d taken the shot.

  Had losing my wife and son made me open to drawing blood whenever it was needed? Had it made me reckless?

  And then there were two other questions, the first of which was on my mind all day.

  Did I take the shot because Monroe asked me, or because Harrington was about to unload that .38?

  Whatever the answer was, it was good that the case was over.

  I mean—it was over, right?

  Because that was the second question.

  9

  I woke up four hours later to the sound of Peter Moylan on my big-screen TV. A postgame report was under way, and I saw that the Braves had lost to the Phillies 5–9.

  Out the front window, it was pitch-black, and I needed to talk to someone about what had gone down at the school. I rang up Remy’s cell, but she didn’t answer.

  After a half hour of waiting on a text, I got in my Silverado and headed to her place. At least I’d see if her lights were on.

  Driving over, I decided that if Remy and I were going to be partners again, I needed to lay it all out. To tell Remy how the governor had used his influence to find me the address of a man named Kian Tarticoft this past May. A man who wasn’t just the main suspect in our case back then, but who had also driven my wife and son off the road. To tell her how Monroe fed me that address. And how, because of that, I owed the governor a favor.

  As I pulled up outside, I saw a light on in the corner unit on the third floor.

 
Remy was up, even now at eleven p.m. Maybe like me, her head was spinning from the last thirty hours.

  I caught the lobby door as a couple walked out, and I headed for the elevator, not needing to bug Remy to buzz me up.

  There was a chance this could go sideways on me. A chance that Remy might tell me to go to Senza and lay things out for the chief to decide. What I knew of Kian Tarticoft last May. The deal I’d struck with Monroe. And the call yesterday on the roof behind the school.

  All of which could cost me my badge.

  I got off the elevator at three.

  Walking down the hall, I practiced coming clean to Remy about how I’d lied to her four months ago.

  Remember this spring, Rem? When you wondered how I found that assassin we were hunting? Found him so quickly? I had a helper. The same guy who encouraged me to kill Harrington yesterday: Governor Toby Monroe.

  I knocked on Remy’s door and heard a muffled voice. I was so anxious I paced sideways to keep myself from flying away.

  I need to tell you something, Rem. Something that’s gonna make you mad as hell. But I gotta be honest, regardless of what you’ll do to me.

  The door swung open, and I saw Darren Gattling, the blue-suiter who worked with us, standing in a T-shirt and boxers. His dark biceps looked more muscular than when he was in uniform.

  Gattling’s head dropped. “Aw hell,” he said.

  Remy appeared behind him, in black leggings and a workout top.

  “Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  I was ready to spill the beans on my relationship with Governor Monroe. And my partner was—what? Hooking up with a patrolman?

  Remy was the one who asked the boss to put Gattling on our team yesterday. Which made this a bad look, sleeping with him. Someone of a lower rank, reporting to me and her.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was looking to see if—”

  Remy looked to Gattling. “Darren,” she said. He walked away from the door.

  I gave her a look. “Jesus, Rem.”

  Remy blew air up from her mouth, and it whipped the pieces of her straightened hair away from her eyes, spreading her bangs right and left. “We grabbed a drink, and it just happened,” she said.

  I nodded, no longer sure I could go through with my speech. Not with Gattling standing fifteen feet away. “I needed to talk to you about something,” I said. “I tried to call and text, but . . . tomorrow, I guess . . . would be better.”

  I turned, and Remy followed me down the hall.

  “P.T.,” she said.

  I put my hands up, spinning to face Remy as I walked backward, away from her. “Between the shit I’ve pulled that you know about,” I said, “and the stuff you don’t . . . you’re the last person who needs to explain yourself to me.”

  “It won’t happen again,” she promised.

  I pressed the elevator button, and the door slid open. The elevator had a chandelier inside it. I always liked that about this building.

  My silence was more about me losing momentum. My nerve to tell Remy everything was gone.

  I got in the elevator and left.

  10

  When I got home, it was almost midnight.

  I walked up to the front door and noticed it was ajar.

  Had I left the door open in a rush to go out to Remy’s?

  My service weapon was in my safe in the bedroom, and I used the toe of my sneaker to push open the front door.

  Inside, the house was dark, and I slinked into the living room. No one there.

  Moving down the hall with the lights off, I felt my way into the bedroom and rolled back the area rug that extended from under the dresser and covered the floor safe. I pulled my Glock from the safe and cocked it to the ready.

  I locked the door to the back and cleared the bedrooms, turning on lights as I moved through each room. When I got back up front, I saw Purvis sitting out on the porch.

  I dropped into one of the blue Adirondack chairs outside.

  No one was in the house, and I touched my bulldog’s skin, trying to tell if he’d been out the whole time, wandering the neighborhood.

  But Purvis ran hot, and his coat gave no clues.

  I was wired, even as my body was shutting down from fatigue. My mind was still racing through the moments on the school roof, and I craved the taste of rum. Some Papa’s Pilar Dark that I could mix with Coke. Keep me focused.

  I heard a noise and looked up. Remy’s red ’77 Alfa Romeo Spider was pulling up to the curb.

  My partner came up and took the open chair on the porch.

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then turned to me.

  “So what’s so damn urgent a girl can’t get an inappropriate booty call with a subordinate?”

  She smiled, and we both cracked up, with neither of us saying a thing afterward for a few minutes.

  The sounds of the night filled the space between us, the frogmouths and night herons that did their business after the diurnal animals fell asleep. When only restless detectives with guilty consciences were awake, trying to find words for actions that, in retrospect, felt unexplainable.

  I pulled my chair closer to hers. “It was a righteous shoot, Rem,” I said. “At the school. I’m sure of it.”

  My partner squinted at me. “Nobody doubts that,” she said. But I put my hand on her forearm, as if to say, Let me finish.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Remy listened, and I started back four months earlier, when we realized that the killer we were hunting in May was not a one-time offender. Our suspect was a paid assassin, a man who’d been killing and hiding his tracks for years.

  “I know all this, P.T.,” Remy said.

  “There’s parts you don’t know,” I said. “Remember the last day of the case? I went out to a junkyard? I had a lead on an El Camino?”

  “Sure.” Remy nodded. “That’s how you found Tarticoft. You told me this.”

  “I left a few steps out,” I said to my partner. “Tarticoft drove out of that junkyard in the El Camino. But he drove in a year earlier in a Dodge Aries. The same car that pushed Lena and Jonas off the road.”

  Remy blinked. “Wait, I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought you never knew the car that hit them. I thought you weren’t even sure if Marvin was—”

  “Marvin’s the one who figured it out,” I said, referring to my father-in-law. Lena’s dad. “He’d been working with a P.I.”

  Remy’s face was twisted now. She looked bewildered.

  “Rem,” I continued, “Tarticoft wasn’t just our killer in the Fultz case. He took out my family.”

  I explained to her that I’d found Kian Tarticoft’s business address, but the assassin had abandoned the place three days earlier.

  “May eleventh,” I said. “I finally found out who drove my family off the road. Problem was—Tarticoft was one step ahead of us.”

  “No.” Remy shook her head. “You found him. I shot him at the cabin.”

  I stared at her. “You did,” I said. “But I had help finding him. Governor Monroe. He took some scrap of information I had about Tarticoft being a taxidermist. And a P.O. box number. He used his resources and got me the address of that cabin. That’s how I found the place.”

  My partner stood up. “In exchange for what?”

  “A favor,” I said. “Something in the future. His choice. Anything.”

  “You gotta tell the chief,” Remy said immediately. “Monroe’s a snake, P.T. He could call you tomorrow. Ask you to hide evidence—cover up an investigation.”

  “Rem,” I said. “I was up on the roof at the middle school. Ready with the Remington, and Monroe called me.”

  “No,” she said. Shaking her head vehemently. “No, no. Don’t tell me the governor ordered that shot.”

  11<
br />
  An icy breeze moved over the porch, and Remy muttered to herself, her head shaking.

  Maiden grass and yellow tickseed grew wild near the edge of the porch, and my partner had turned away from me. I heard her nervously pull at the leaves of the plants, still processing what I’d told her about the governor’s call.

  “It was a good kill, though,” she said, turning. “Harrington was a murderer. He’d already shot Leaf Tanner.”

  I nodded, knowing this was true.

  “It was,” I said. “The art teacher verified the events and the order, including Harrington turning with his .38 toward the kids.”

  Remy was pacing. Her head bobbing in agreement. But her mind was elsewhere. Racing back and forth in time.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

  “Fuller from I.A.D. was there.”

  “No, back in May,” she clarified. “Why didn’t you tell me about Tarticoft and your family?”

  I thought of the moment I’d found out the truth about the assassin. It was a scorching-hot day, and I’d pulled out of that junkyard.

  I’d vomited a mix of vodka and quail eggs at the roadside, finding out the truth about my family. Then I made one call.

  “You were the one person I did call,” I said. “But you wouldn’t listen. I’d screwed up in other areas. So you just kept telling me you were coming to get my badge and gun.”

  Remy lowered her eyes, remembering the moment. And now she was embarrassed.

  “P.T.,” she said. “The governor calling yesterday . . . did you take the shot because he told you?”

  “No way,” I said. “Harrington had a .38 to the teacher’s neck. He turned toward the students and Kelly Borland. All that was true.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So be it then. Harrington brought a loaded gun into a middle school and murdered a teacher. He was about to shoot our boss’s kid. You did the right thing.”