Penance jl-1

by Dan O'Shea

Edith Jacobs opened the door and took one step into the room before she saw the rifle case open on the floor. Then the door swung closed behind her. She turned and saw a lean man with short, iron-gray hair wearing a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and tight black leather gloves. She thought to scream, meant to scream, but the man put a surprisingly slender finger to her lips, and then closed the hand over her mouth, spun her around, and pulled her back against him. The force of his grasp was gentle yet certain. And she knew she was going to die.

  “Oh my God,” she mumbled into his hand, “I am heartily sorry for having offended thee…”

  Fisher listened to the Act of Contrition, sensing its perfection, let the woman finish. Then he slid his right hand under her chin and snapped her neck. She will be with Him today in paradise, he thought.

  Fisher looked through the gap in the blinds to the church. A crowd had gathered around the body, and a patrol car was just pulling up. He would have to move quickly. He set the woman down gently, closed the lid of the rifle case, picked it up, stepped out the door, and walked down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 33 — CHICAGO

  Ferguson was in Chicago, unpacking in his room at the Palmer House on State Street, when Chen walked through the connecting door between their rooms and handed Ferguson a piece of paper.

  “Another person has just been shot leaving confession. I picked up the Chicago PD radio traffic. Here is the address.”

  “So he had this lined up before he even left for downstate,” said Ferguson.

  “It would appear so.”

  “OK. I’m going to go scope this out. Run the victim, see what we get. Also, get on the horn with Snyder, get the straight shit on what she told Weaver, see if she can update it any based on recent events. And find out what we’ve got on Fisher’s dad. This all ties back somehow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ferguson turned toward the door.

  “Chen, do we have a problem? Over the Moriah shit?”

  “Our orders were for a sterile op, which meant killing the child in the van. Your interpretation differed from mine. We took it up the chain of command, and the chain of command came down on your side. I have no issue with that.”

  “And killing the kid, you would have had no issue with that?”

  “No.”

  Ferguson just nodded and left.

  CHAPTER 34 — CHICAGO

  Crime scene already had a tarp over Tommy Riordan when Lynch got there.

  “He really crucified?” Lynch asked McCord, who was eating a hot dog out by the curb.

  “Just stepped out the door when he got hit,” said McCord. “Basal reflex threw his arms out, round hitting his sternum knocked him backward, and he ended up hanging from his pits from the door handles.”

  “Press get that?”

  “Oh yeah. Your buddy Regan got here awful damn fast with a photographer in tow. That’s gonna be the cover of the Sun-Times tomorrow for sure. One of the TV guys already did a quick standup. Your guy’s got a name now — the Confessional Killer.”

  “Great,” said Lynch. “Rifle?”

  “Haven’t got him off the door yet, but you gotta figure.”

  A sergeant Lynch didn’t know walked over. “You the guy they called in on this?”

  Lynch put out his hand. “John Lynch. I caught the first one up at Sacred Heart.”

  “Got six people were on the street out here when Riordan got popped. They’re all inside. Can’t decide whether they heard anything or not. Nobody saw nothing. He’s standing outside the door, suddenly he’s doing his Jesus impersonation.”

  “OK, thanks. I’ll get to them. You got a timeline?”

  “4.15 damn near exactly.”

  “Anybody check for electronics like we had at the Marslovak scene?”

  “Crime scene guys already got those. Same stuff, they tell me.”

  “Great, just great.”

  Cunningham walked up. “What’s with the hair, Lynch? Going skinhead on us?”

  “Whole Michael Jordan thing looked so good on you, thought I’d give it a try.”

  “White boys got ugly heads. Like the eyepatch, though. The pirate thing is cool.”

  Cunningham took a few minutes to recon the site, then identified the shooter’s likely hide. Fifteen minutes later, Lynch and Cunningham stood in the fourth-floor apartment looking through the window toward Our Lady of Martyrs. Behind them, the crime scene guys were taking pictures of a corpse on the floor.

  “Same deal,” Lynch said. “No rock this time. Glass cutter. Cuts a hole in the glass and shoots through it.”

  Cunningham nodded. “She’s got these thick drapes, too, and he’s got them pulled most of the way shut. Help keep the sound down, and anybody looking back this way isn’t going to be able to see anything inside.”

  “How hard a shot?”

  Cunningham shrugged. “Little closer, little more wind today. Figure a wash. No stretch for our boy.”

  “They’re saying he got him through the heart again.”

  “Looked like.”

  Lynch turned to look around the room while Cunningham stood at the window. Cunningham took out his scope again, looking toward the church with the same view the shooter had.

  Hadn’t been any kind of fight. Small room, maybe thirteen feet from the door to the window. The woman had been some kind of unicorn nut, glass and ceramic unicorns everywhere. Must have been a couple dozen of them in the tall, skinny curio cabinet to the right of the door, couple of them on the coffee table in front of the sofa, more on the end table. Nothing knocked over, nothing on the floor.

  Looked like she barely got in the door. She was stretched out on the other side of the coffee table from the sofa. She must have walked in on him after he took the shot. Way she was lying, he wouldn’t have been able to stand and line himself up with the hole in the window. Neck was broken. Lynch didn’t need the ME to tell him that. He could smell urine, too, and shit. Lots of times that happened, dead people not being real big on muscle control. Pissed Lynch off, her having to lie there like that, stinking in her own filth. You could look at the place and see she liked things clean, could see she took the time to bleach her blouse and starch the crap out of it. And she had to end up on the floor, her pants full, while guys took pictures of her.

  “Hey Lynch, get over here.”

  Lynch stepped around the corpse and joined Cunningham by the window. Cunningham handed him the scope and pointed toward the east edge of the crowd. “Cubs cap, khaki jacket, shades. Standing next to the garbage can. See him?”

  Lynch picked out the guy. He was drinking a can of Dr Pepper. “Yeah, I got him.”

  “I’ve seen that guy before, Fort Campbell. Turned up a couple of times when Gulf War I was getting going. Had an agency smell on him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Scout/snipers, we got paid to notice things and remember them. And shoot them.”

  “OK, let’s scoop him up.”

  Lynch got on the radio to the uniform sergeant handling the crowd. “We got a guy we’d like to talk to. Six foot, one-eighty or so, Cubs hat, shades, tan jacket, blue jeans. East end of the crowd, north side of the street, standing by the garbage can next to the bus stop. Be cool. Don’t want to spook him.”

  Lynch watched the sergeant call a uniform over. Nobody pointed, but the uniform took a look as he crossed the street. Soon as he did, the guy in the jacket dropped his soda into the garbage, turned around, and headed around the corner. The uniform took off running, going around the building maybe twenty seconds behind. Too long. The guy was gone.

  Lynch called down to the sergeant again. “Get that garbage can sealed off. There’s a Dr Pepper can in there, should be right on top. I want the prints off that.”

  In the apartment, the crime scene guys were getting ready to roll the body over. When they did, the piece of brass the woman had lain on stuck for a moment, then fell to the carpet.

  “Maybe caught a break here, Lynch,” a crime scene tech said. More photos of the
brass, then he bagged it.

  “Let me see that,” Cunningham said. He took the plastic bag, held it up. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Son of a bitch what?” Lynch asked.

  Cunningham kept looking at the casing. After a moment, he handed the bag back to the tech.

  “Nothing.”

  “Didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “Thought I saw something, but it was just the light.”

  Lynch looked at Cunningham, who was working hard at looking at anything but Lynch.

  “What’d you think you saw?” Lynch with a little edge in his voice, pushing it.

  CHAPTER 35 — CHICAGO

  Lynch had just gotten back in his car when his cell buzzed on his hip. He snatched the phone up.

  “Lynch.”

  “It’s Liz Johnson at the Tribune.”

  “A little formal, Johnson, considering I’ve seen you naked.”

  “This isn’t a social call, Lynch. I just heard about Riordan, wondering if you have anything for me.”

  “Nothing I can give you.”

  “But something you can give Dickey Regan?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You see Regan’s story today? ‘Mystery of the Olfson Factory and the Magic Bullet’? All this inside forensic shit on the Marslovak shooting and the whole mess in the basement there? And I got people around the office knowing I’m seeing the lead on the case and wondering why I’m getting my ass handed to me by your buddy Regan. So maybe I’m a little sensitive, wondering, you know, am I mostly good for taking you home from the hospital and cooking you breakfast.”

  Lynch took a breath, not sure where to step. “I haven’t talked to Dickey in weeks, first off, so if he’s getting shit, it isn’t coming from me.”

  “He’s getting it from somebody.” A little tone in her voice said she wasn’t sure.

  “And somebody’s gonna be unhappy when I find out who.” Lynch was pissed now, not needing this. “And I wasn’t calling anybody yesterday on account of I was busy watching my mom die.”

  Silence. “Oh Jesus, John, why didn’t you call me?”

  Lynch feeling like shit, having put the knife in and no way to take it back.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Liz. It was late, I was with my sister. Then I got the callout on this first thing. Probably shouldn’t even be on this. Honest to God, whatever Regan’s getting, it’s not from me.”

  “Oh Jesus, Lynch, I guess I knew that. I was just pissed.”

  “Look, Riordan’s old man used to run the Red Squad for Hurley the First — might make an angle for you, not that it’s a secret. And you can quote an anonymous source saying it’s the same guy.”

  “John, I just… I feel like shit.”

  “Me too. Look, I got to go.”

  “Yeah. No harm no foul?”

  “Sure. We’re good.” Not sure they were.

  Lynch thought for a moment after Johnson hung up. No way McCord was leaking shit. Novak. He’d have the info, and he felt right. Lynch scrolled through the directory on his phone, found Regan, hit dial.

  “Hey, Lynch,” answered Regan. “Hear you’re sleeping your way through the press corps. Hope you’re not looking to get in my pants, too.”

  “Why would I want to when Novak’s already in there?”

  Little pause, all Lynch needed to hear. “What the fuck you talking about?”

  “Just tell me why I shouldn’t have the asshole canned, Dickey.”

  “Canned for what? You ain’t got shit.”

  “Got all I need. Better start shopping for a new snitch. I’m shutting his act down.”

  “Whatever, Lynch. Hey, saw the video feed from the Riordan shoot. Like the Kojak look. You just need a little lollipop.”

  “Fuck you, Dickey.”

  “Right back at you. You gotta buy me lunch soon.”

  CHAPTER 36 — CHICAGO

  Cunningham ran steadily along the bike path by the lake shore. Cool night, breeze out of the north pushing a little drizzle. Kind of night that kept the crowds down. Kind of night Cunningham liked. And the running helped him think.

  It was a 54mm casing, that was the thing. Only one long gun Cunningham knew of chambered a 54. The Dragunov SVD. Standard Soviet sniper rifle starting back in Nam and for a while after. Not really a top-drawer weapon. It was based on the AK-47, even looked like a stretch version of one. Meant more for infantry support. Have one guy in the weapons squad, train him up, he can give a unit longer-range capability. But, even with training, five hundred yards was good with the Dragunov. Now you got some guy taking two targets dead through the ten ring, one from nearly six hundred, the other from better than seven hundred. And he was saboting his rounds, which wasn’t making the shot any easier.

  That, and even through the plastic bag, Cunningham could tell the casing wasn’t off-the-shelf. Somebody had taken some time on the neck, turning it, making sure the slug would get a nice, clean release. No way to tell in the time he had, but he’d bet the primer hole had been deburred as well.

  So a pro. Knew that already. But the Dragunov? Not the type of thing a pro would choose.

  Except one.

  You didn’t spend twenty years playing scout/sniper for the Corps without getting out some. Cunningham had been out some. Wondered one time if he could get through the whole alphabet — Angola, Beirut, Cambodia, Djibouti… Sometimes things you might hear about on the news — Lebanon, Somalia. Most of the time, though, places nobody’d ever know he’d been, doing stuff nobody’d ever know he’d done. Sometimes you were wearing the uniform, lots of times you weren’t. Lots of times you were dressed up like a Bedouin getting chauffeured around Eritrea in a twenty-year-old Land Cruiser by some guy who said he was Agency for International Development, except he was packing a 9mm with custom grips and had Agency stink on him so bad you couldn’t get it out with a bottle of Febreze.

  OK, so Cunningham wasn’t a super-spook. Most of his fun and games, that had been early on. Usually in Africa cause a kaffir who can shoot, there’s always a place for one on the dark continent. But Cunningham, he’d done a few things. And he hung around guys who’d done a few things. And these guys, you’d trust them with your life — hell, trust them with your daughter, even if she was liquored up. So he’d heard things.

  And he’d heard about the Dragon.

  First time was around 1980, just when Afghanistan was heating up for the Reds. Arms dealer in Peshawar named Abdul the Fat, an honest one, which pretty much made him Mother Teresa in that neighborhood. You name it, he could get it. SAMs, Stingers, C4, Claymores, M-whatevers, from Garands to 14s to 16s to 81s. Probably had more Lee-Enfields in his shop than the Brits had in the Raj when Kipling was stomping around. You made a deal, it stayed made. You set a price, it stayed set. Didn’t matter if you were Mujahideen, Ivan the Red, some Agency puke, a Kurd with a bug up your ass. Abdul the Fat was the honest broker, the market-maker for mayhem. Among certain circles, he was probably the best-loved man between Riyadh and Delhi.

  What Cunningham heard was the Agency wanted Abdul the Fat out so that the Islamic whackos who were getting their rocks off playing with the Ruskies would have to get out of the open market and start swapping their unswerving fealty to US policies for every case of bang-bangs the US could send their way. But leaving Uncle Sam’s fingerprints on Abdul the Fat’s corpus delecti would be beaucoup bad PR. So the Agency pukes, they set up a trap for this Russian Spetsnaz shooter who’d been leaving lots of dead Mullahs around the Hindu Kush. They took him out real quiet-like, and they turned his Dragunov over to this hot-shit trigger jockey who had earned his bones doing really whacked-out shit in Nam the last couple of years. So this guy pops Abdul the Fat right in the middle of a handoff to some of the local ragheads. Slug gets tied to the same barrel that’s been leaving the dead Mullahs all over, the whole thing gets charged to Moscow’s account, and the Agency corners the market on selling arms to Fundamentalist Islam — which, and this was the part Cunningham had to admit got ha
rd to believe, actually seemed like a good idea at the time. Typical Langley three-rail shot.

  OK. So that was so much fun, they start using the same gun and the same guy on lots of hits that make the Politburo look like they have their heads up their zhopas. He plugs some Solidarity guy in Gdansk, pretty much handing the keys to the Warsaw White House to Walesa. Couple dozen hits on priests and other lefty troublemakers in a fruit salad of banana republics in Central America. People start calling the guy the Dragon. Thinking is he’s Soviet, or ex-Soviet, but either way he’s got Ivan seeing, well, red.

  Then the wheels came off the Big Red Machine. Nobody needed a fake Russian anymore. But the shooter? He gets some weird religious attachment to his Dragunov. He is doing God’s work, and the Dragunov is God’s instrument — some such shit, like it’s Excalibur or something.

  Dead guys start turning up with clean rounds in em. No rifling, no nothing. Word among the Fort Campbell types was that the Dragon was saboting his rounds so he could keep using his toy.

  And now you got people pierced by magic bullets turning up outside churches in Chicago. You got a 54mm casing that somebody who loves bullets more than he loves his mother has honed like a fucking scalpel. And Cunningham had to decide what he was going to say and to whom.

  On the one hand, it was a no-brainer. Cunningham was a cop and anyway you sliced it, this was murder. On the other hand, Cunningham had, by the legal definition, murdered people before — and done so on the orders of the sort of people who might be ordering these kills, if it really was the Dragon at work.

  But why would they be ordering these? Hard to see Riordan as Al-Qaeda or anything. Harder still to see the old lady who caught the first one. But Cunningham had been around a lot of funny-shaped blocks.

  What he had to do, he figured, was call in. Had to be somebody he knew still far enough inside that they could talk to somebody and get the word back. And if the word was national security, then Cunningham would have some thinking to do.