In one powerful movement, Tom grips my hair again and jerks me to the floor like a rag doll. My elbow hits something, a pan and a paint roller, and they’re knocked to the floor along with me, making a loud commotion.
I land hard on my shoulder, turn over onto my back, and look up at my stranger danger.
He drops down on me, pinning my body. He holds my arms with his hands and leans into me, his eyes ablaze.
Need air…can’t breathe…can’t pass out…can’t lose conscious—
“I need to know everything the FBI knows,” he whispers. “You have ten seconds. If you don’t tell me, I’ll find that fiancé of yours and gut him like a fish. If you tell me, Books lives. Go. One, one thousand…two, one thousand…three, one thousand…”
“No…no…”
“Oh, you won’t tell me.” His hands grip my throat and his thumbs press down on my windpipe, everything shutting down, everything dimming—
Books. Books. I’m—
“It didn’t have to be this way, Em—”
An explosion, then another following it instantly, glass shattering above us, raining shards of the window down on Tom and me. Tom releases me and bounces to his feet.
I suck in oxygen in exaggerated, raspy gulps. Then I turn and look toward the doorway.
I see Bonita Sexton, a gun in her hand, tears streaming down her face, the gun shaking so violently she can hardly maintain her grip.
126
“WHO ARE you?” Tom Miller asks. Then, quickly recovering: “Thank God someone’s here. We need an ambulance.”
I force myself up onto my elbows.
Rabbit takes another step into the room. “You kill…homeless people? Sick people? Why? How could anyone do that?”
“What? No. No, it’s not me. Me? Are you kidding? Please—please just put the gun down and we can talk.”
Rabbit shakes her head, her mouth in a snarl, fresh tears rolling down her face.
Using the window ledge for support, I get to my feet.
“You killed so many…innocent, harmless people,” Rabbit says, her voice cracking.
“Rabbit,” I say, finding my voice, my throat scorched.
She shakes her head and takes another step closer.
“Be careful with that thing,” says Tom. “Do you even know how to use it?”
I have the same question. She’s worked at the FBI for decades. She could’ve used the firing range in the Hoover Building as much as she wanted. But did she? It’s one thing to shoot at a large picture window, another to shoot at a dangerous man like Tom if he makes a move. Which he’s going to do.
“Bonita,” I say. “Don’t kill him. Stay right where you are. Let me call it in.”
“No,” she whispers, the gun threatening to fall from her grip, the trembling of her arms increasing the more emotional she gets.
“Honey, you’re not a killer,” I say. “Don’t become one.”
Her eyes narrow; her jaw clenches. “Why not?” More tears, more sobbing. “What do I have to lose?”
Prison, she means. For the Citizen David bombings. She figures she’s going to spend the rest of her life behind bars anyway.
“What’s left for me now?” she whispers.
“I won’t turn you in,” I say. “I won’t!”
Her eyes shut, but only for a moment, the gun moving in her hand. “Yes, you will.”
“Bonita, is it?” Tom raises one hand, palm out. “Listen to me. I’m not coming any closer. I just—”
“Don’t listen to him, Rabbit. Listen to me. I won’t turn you in.”
Tom snaps his head toward me, then back to Bonita.
“Yes, she will,” he says. “But you know who won’t? Me, Bonita. I won’t turn you in. I don’t even know what you did.”
“Shut up!” Rabbit snaps, spit spraying from her mouth.
“Think about it,” he says. “Use that gun on Emmy and let me go. You blame the shooting on me. Everyone will believe that—”
“No, Rabbit, listen—”
I move toward her, but she steps back, turning the gun in my direction. “Both of you, stay where you are!”
Both of us.
“You,” she spits at me. “You know I did the right thing. I never hurt anybody. I made sure I didn’t hurt anybody. You,” she snarls at Tom. “Taking what I did and bastardizing it. Killing hundreds of people who never hurt a soul in their lives.”
I look at Tom, who has moved away from me. We are a triangle, each separated by about ten feet. Only one of us has a weapon, but the harder Rabbit trembles, the less in control she seems.
“You’re a good person who shouldn’t go to prison,” says Tom.
“He’s playing you, Rabbit—”
“And you can still try to catch me after I’m gone!” Tom shouts over me. “You can keep doing your good work! Don’t let her ruin your life, Bonita!”
Rabbit’s mouth opens, and she draws deep, ragged breaths. The weapon is still in her hands, but it’s not held straight out, more of a sixty-degree angle from the floor. She looks at me. She looks at Tom.
In the distance, through the window shattered by Rabbit’s bullet, we hear sirens. The cavalry is coming.
“Shoot me if you want,” I say. “But keep Tom right where he is.”
Rabbit takes a breath and gives me a look. “I’m not going to shoot you, Emmy—”
Tom is already in full sprint, rushing her—
“Rabbit!”
She raises her gun but he’s too fast; he puts his hands on the weapon as he barrels into her, pinning her against the wall.
I rush forward too—
—an explosion of gunfire, once, twice—
—and, off balance, I ram my shoulder into Tom.
We both fall, and Rabbit crumples to the floor, two bloody gashes coloring her shirt, the gun still in her hands.
I reach for her. “Bonita! Rabbit!” I shout, staring into her vacant eyes.
I hear shuffling to my right as Tom gets to his feet.
I take the gun from Rabbit as Tom starts toward me. I fire once, twice, three times.
The third shot hits him, stopping his momentum, staining the right side of his shirt red. He staggers back a step, looks down at his chest, then at me.
I turn to Rabbit. Her head has lolled to the side; her eyes are open, her body still.
Tom reaches out for the wall, wincing, struggling to remain upright.
“Rabbit,” I whisper in her ear, “I’m so sorry.”
I stand up, gun still in my hand, my body no longer on fire.
Now I feel cold.
I approach Tom Miller as the sirens grow louder, as I hear a commotion downstairs, men calling out, “FBI! FBI!”
One hand on the wound to his upper chest, hunched against the wall, Tom lets out a moan. He’ll probably survive that wound. And what he said before was right. We’ll have a very difficult time ever proving in a court of law that he killed a single person. He killed Rabbit, but now he has some kind of story to spin about her too, something about her going to prison. And if he was paying attention, he might even figure out what it was she did.
I raise the weapon. We lock eyes. We understand each other.
“If it had to be anybody,” he says, “I’m glad it was you.”
I nod and fire the gun.
127
BOOKS WALKS away from Emmy, who’s still seated in the hallway outside the conference room, motionless, her eyes vacant. Eric Pullman, with his wild hair and big ears and tear-streaked face, is nearby. Books puts his hand on Pully’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he says.
Pully doesn’t respond; he’s too choked up, a mess of emotion. “Oh,” he says, pulling a file out of the bag. “Here’s the background on Michelle Fontaine.”
“Go sit with Emmy,” he says. “You two need each other right now.”
He glances at the file on Michelle Fontaine, compiled today after the fingerprint sample was confirmed. She’d been a volleyball star at New Mexico State
and after graduation, she became a physical therapist focused on athlete rehabilitation. She moved in with a man after dating him for four months. The abuse, according to the petition for the restraining order she filed a year ago, escalated from slaps and punches to sexual assault and threats to her life. She left New Mexico and moved to Seattle. He found her and almost killed her. After his arrest, she changed her name and moved across the country to Virginia, hoping that chapter of her life was closed forever.
Books finds Michelle downstairs. She pulled into the parking lot only ten minutes after he and the rest of the FBI agents did. Books spoke with her briefly two hours ago, and she’s stuck around since.
Someone found her a chair. Her head is buried in her hands. He finds a chair of his own and pulls it up next to her.
“I seem to attract violence wherever I go,” she says with a bitter chuckle.
“That’s why you quit when Wagner got too…creepy.”
“Scary. Whatever.” She looks up at him. “I couldn’t be around…anything like that. Then when I heard he was missing…”
“You thought he might come looking for you. That makes sense, Michelle. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing.”
“I actually had a crush on Tom,” she says, tears welling up again. “Can you believe that? What is it with me and predators?”
“He fooled a lot of people,” says Books. “For a very long time, Michelle. It wasn’t just you. Remember that, okay? It wasn’t just you. Your only crime is being a good person.”
One of the investigating agents comes down the stairs and nods to Books. “We don’t need Emmy anymore,” he says. “If you want to take her.”
“The shooting was righteous,” says Books.
“Hell yes, it was.”
Good. Emmy was ready to blame herself up there when they first arrived. She kept saying, I shot him. Books was always quick to add, After he charged you, and after he already killed Bonita.
Emmy and Pully walk down the stairs, holding hands. She kisses him on the cheek, hugs him, whispers something to him that makes him cry, and walks over to Books.
“I’m going to stay with Pully,” she says. “He needs me right now.”
“Sure, of course, Em. But…you need me.” There’s a catch in his throat as he says those last words, part statement, part question.
She puts her hand on his cheek. “I do. But someone else needs you right now too.”
Books nods.
“So go,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”
128
BOOKS PARKS the car at the Meredith Court and Gardens in Huntington. He gives his name at the front desk. A moment later, he’s buzzed in and takes the elevator to the seventh floor. He knocks on the door, softer than he did earlier today and with much less adrenaline.
The door opens. Sergeant Petty nods to him.
“Sergeant Petty.”
“Agent Bookman. You, uh, wanna…come in?”
“Only if you want me to.”
Petty backs up and lets Books in. The last time Books came through the door, he was ready to use his weapon, ready to order the SWAT team to open fire.
“How’s Mary Ann doing?” he asks, nodding toward the bedroom.
Petty shrugs. “About the same. She was glad I came back.”
“I’ll bet she was. I am too, Sergeant. We were afraid you’d run away for good.”
Afraid is an understatement; Mary Ann was terrified she’d never see her younger brother again. She told Books that Petty suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, something that didn’t really surprise Books in the abstract, but he’d never thought about it, didn’t know how that illness played itself out in Petty’s life.
“How long has your sister…been like this?”
“Ah…” Petty scratches his head. “She started getting bad last winter. That’s when I came here.”
That’s when Sergeant John Petty moved back here from California, where he’d been living since his discharge from the army, to be with his sister Mary Ann, who was dealing with a recurrence of her cancer.
“She’s lucky to have you,” says Books.
“Yeah, it works out okay.”
It does, in fact. Her insurance, Mary Ann explained, covers caregivers Monday through Friday. Her brother comes every Friday afternoon and stays the weekend. It gives her care seven days a week, and it gives her brother a place to stay that’s warm and comfortable.
“I know what you’re thinking,” says Petty. “If I got this place to stay, why don’t I stay?”
“You have your reasons.” Books raises a hand. “None of my business.”
“I can’t sit still. Mary Ann probably told you about that.”
She did. He can’t stay in one place more than a handful of days was how Mary Ann put it. Can’t put down roots. Even if he goes back and forth between the same places, he has to keep moving. Always moving.
Books saw some of that in Petty, his inability to commit to working at the store on even a semipermanent basis.
And that’s the easy part of his illness. The worst part is the paranoia.
It doesn’t happen often, Mary Ann had said. But when it happens, it’s scary. He thinks he’s back in the war being hunted. He thinks he’s in danger. He has that part of the PTSD mostly under control, but stressors can trigger it.
Stressors like an FBI agent looking at you suspiciously and then following you in his car.
“Sergeant, I’m sorry for what I put you through. Following you like I did.”
He looks away, as he often does, nodding a bit, fidgeting with his hands. “Seems like I should apologize. For what I did to your face. Looks like it hurts.”
Books laughs. “It does.”
“Mary Ann told me why you did it. You thought I was…the serial killer.”
“It was just…well, your schedule, leaving every weekend—”
“Homeless people are either lazy or crazy, right?”
“No, Sergeant, it’s not that—”
“Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.” He glances at Books, a quick peek, before looking back at the floor. “It’s okay. Everybody thinks that way. A homeless guy can’t carry on an intelligent conversation. A homeless guy can’t read War and Peace.”
There’s no point in getting into a debate. Petty lives this life every day, sees the looks on people’s faces as they pass him.
“You’re welcome to stay at my store anytime, Sergeant. My house too, if you ever wanted.”
Petty doesn’t look at Books, but his eyes fill with tears.
Books puts a hand on his shoulder. “Sergeant. John. I’m your friend. I’m here if you ever need anything. A job. A place to stay. Something to eat. Anything.”
He acknowledges the statement, a tear rolling down his face. “Mary Ann, she doesn’t have long. I’ll probably try to spend some more time with her. Y’know, try to sit still a little more. When it’s over, I’ll probably go back to California.”
“Sure. Well, I’d like to be at the funeral, if you could let me know. Or maybe you could stop by the store to say hi sometime.”
Petty peeks at him again, his eyes narrowed. “Is there still gonna be a store?”
“Is there—you mean—”
“I mean that I never seen you so happy as this last week, when you were back to being an agent.” He shrugs. “None of my business, I guess.”
“Well, that’s…complicated.”
“If you say so.” Petty points a finger to his head. “I mean, if I didn’t have all this going on inside? If I had a woman I loved and a job I loved, I’d grab both of ’em and never let go. It wouldn’t be complicated,” he says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t let go.”
129
“BONITA LIVED her life as a hero,” I said, “and she died a hero.” That’s how I began my eulogy, before an overflowing crowd in the Baptist church in Alexandria. I spoke first, before her two boys, Mason and Jordan. They asked me to do it. They said she would have wanted it.
&nb
sp; “Heroes are people who go out of their way to help others, who make sacrifices to help others, who reach beyond themselves to make the world a better place. I can’t think of anyone who fits that description more than Bonita.”
When it was over, we spilled outside into mild weather, a shiny blue sky and a gentle breeze. It felt unfair that the weather would be so beautiful on a day like this, but then, I figured, Rabbit probably would have smiled.
The funeral was this morning at nine. I told Books I wanted to head into work afterward. He tried to talk me out of it, but he knew he couldn’t.
So I went home, changed out of my funeral attire, and drove to the Hoover Building. Which is where I am right now. I have only two goals today, and then I’ll go home and see what comes.
First: I delete all of the data files we initially received during the Citizen David investigation, all the data containing license plates caught on cameras and readers at all the bombing sites. Rabbit couldn’t delete them. She didn’t have that level of access. But I’m a supervisor; I do. And besides, Rabbit took all the bulk data and collated it into a workable format. That, we’ll keep. Only Rabbit and I will ever know that there is a single license plate missing from that data.
I press Delete and watch all evidence of Rabbit’s crimes disappear from our records. The Citizen David investigation will remain unsolved.
That’s okay. Rabbit made it clear in her last Citizen David posts on social media that there would be no more bombings. David’s already dying down as a story in our short-attention-span, all-news-all-the-time world. And the Bureau certainly has plenty of other things to work on. Sooner or later, Citizen David will be a distant memory, the answer to a trivia question.
I look around our little area, usually bustling, sarcastic zingers flying back and forth, nervous energy as we hunt for tiny gems buried within reams of data. It’s quiet now, with Pully taking off the rest of the day after the funeral and Rabbit gone forever. I’m going to miss what we had.
I hope Pully will be okay. He’s a rock star in terms of talent, but both Rabbit and I filled some kind of maternal role for him. Losing both of his coworkers at once will not be easy for him.
Unsolved Page 32
