The Killing Kind

by Chris Holm

  Engelmann smiled luxuriously. “I confess, Michael, I’m impressed,” he said, hoping to draw Hendricks into the darkened room. “I didn’t expect to find you here when I arrived. Very kind of you to extend an invitation, by the way,” he said, referring to the open door. “You’ll forgive the impertinence of my declining your proffered method of ingress. And if I might be so bold, you could have cleaned.”

  “There’s no need to bring Evie into this,” called Hendricks from somewhere deeper in the house. “How about you let her leave so we can settle this just you and me.”

  Engelmann, realizing his quarry was not nearby, scampered low across the room, ducking into the next one down the farmhouse’s main hall just long enough to call, “My pleasure! The front door’s still open, if you’d like to send her out that way. I only hope something unpleasant doesn’t befall her—the forest is quite dangerous.” Then he ducked into the room across the hall and waited to see if his misdirection would bear fruit in the form of Hendricks chasing after.

  It didn’t. But Engelmann’s words did have an effect on Evelyn, at least, as he heard her wail in fright. Her terror gave him a quiver of satisfaction—not least because he realized it wasn’t coming from the same location as Hendricks’s calls. That meant he’d stashed her somewhere—along, he assumed, with both her husband and her dog, if the photos on the walls revealed by the lightning strikes were any indication. And unless he was much mistaken, that somewhere was not far from the spot where he’d taken refuge—closer, it seemed, than Hendricks himself.

  Thunder shook the house like battle drums, in perfect synch with the many lightning strikes. The storm was precisely overhead. Engelmann’s face tingled with excitement.

  As the storm outside raged, Engelmann rose and headed down the hallway, drawn like the hungry predator he was to the quiet, muffled sounds of Abigail’s frightened whining.

  Charlie Thompson pushed the needle of her Ford Escape past ninety, her wipers sluicing back and forth at top speed but making little headway against the driving rain. Dim yellow spots jittered in her rearview as she struggled to stay on the winding country drive. Her backup’s headlights, she hoped. She couldn’t stomach the thought of facing two stone-cold killers by herself.

  Diane had told her she’d call back in twenty minutes. It took her over seven hours—but she’d come through with the intel Thompson had asked for. Turned out Hendricks sent letters every week for most of his deployment to a woman named Evelyn Jacobs. Girlfriend or fiancée, Diane wasn’t sure. She’d married since—her last name was Walker now—and settled down in rural Virginia, about an hour from DC.

  Thompson was certain that’s where Garfield’s perp was heading—and that her ghost would follow. Which meant she had to follow, too. For the bodies carted out of Pendleton’s. For her dead partner. For herself, no matter the cost.

  Her GPS piped up with a flat, monotone command, instructing her to turn, and informing her that her destination was four-tenths of a mile away. She took the turn at speed, nearly one-eightying in her haste. She thanked God when the headlights in her rearview did the same.

  Whenever she allowed her attention to wander from the task at hand, no matter how briefly, the crime-scene photos of Lester Meyers’s ruined flesh haunted her. Shook her resolve. Whispered at her to turn around before it was too late.

  And every time that happened, she reacted the same way: by putting the pedal to the floor and moving forward—ever forward—her headlights slicing through the storm.

  In the kitchen, Engelmann rose to his full height and cocked his head in puzzlement. Sitting in the middle of the floor was a portable radio, probably thirty years old, of the type associated with break-dancers and the like. Ghetto blasters, he thought they called them. He hadn’t seen one like it in ages. It was practically an antique. And as he looked at it, a strange sound emanated from its speakers: a dog’s whine, accompanied by a woman, quietly crying.

  “Disappointed?” Hendricks asked. Engelmann looked up to find him framed by the arch that separated kitchen from dining room, some fifteen feet away, backlit by the lightning flickering through the sheet that covered the French doors. He was dripping wet and panting—the former perhaps from time spent in the torrential rain, the latter no doubt from playing the same game of call-outand-double-back that Engelmann had. “She’s not here,” he said, his right foot inching forward to distribute his weight evenly between the balls of his feet. “I got them out hours ago. You want to get the drop on me, you’re not going to do it flying commercial.”

  “Disappointed?” echoed Engelmann as he shifted his own stance, too. “Quite the contrary—I’m impressed. Our encounter in Kansas City left me wondering if perhaps I’d overestimated your abilities. Had we not been interrupted, I think I might have gotten the best of you.” Hendricks shrugged as if to say We’ll never know. “But now, it seems, you’ve rallied nicely. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to this.”

  Lightning showed blinding white through the gaps in the drawn curtains, a clap of thunder on its heels. Evie’s house trembled at the sound of it.

  “Is this the part of the movie where you say ‘We’re not so different, you and I’?”

  Engelmann laughed. “Oh, no, Michael. You and I are little alike. You require a reason to kill, a motivation, one sufficient to allow you to soothe your conscience—to overcome your hesitation. And you’re prone to forming attachments, to people such as Evelyn, or dear Lester. For me, the killing is in itself enough. How is Lester, by the way? Dead, by now, I should think. If you like, I’ll arrange to have you buried alongside him, so your guilt for the pain you’ve caused him may sustain you for all eternity.”

  “Sometime, you’ll have to tell me how you tracked him down,” said Hendricks, jaw clenched. He said it more to keep Engelmann talking long enough for him to regain his composure than because he expected any answer.

  “Oh, it’s hardly a secret—I asked a lovely Federal employee named Garfield for your file, and he was more than happy to oblige. I’d say it’s funny your tax dollars pay that turncoat’s salary, but then, he’ll no longer be drawing one— and you don’t pay taxes anyway, do you?”

  “I’ve paid my share,” Hendricks said.

  “While we’re chatting,” said Engelmann, “what is the story behind this wretched stench? It’s as if you left a grocery store to rot in every room.”

  “Place was like that when I got here,” Hendricks deadpanned.

  “You’re a fool to’ve come, you know—a slave to your own sentiment.”

  “I would have been a coward not to.”

  “Perhaps. Tell me, how did your dear, sweet Evelyn and her husband react to your return? I understand that she’s with child.”

  Hendricks said nothing.

  “A shame, that—but if it’s any consolation, you won’t be around to wallow in regret much longer.”

  Hendricks held the kitchen knife in his right hand at the ready. It glinted in the storm’s flickering light. “Maybe,” he said. “Either way, I say let’s get on with this.”

  Engelmann raised his pistol. “Oh,” he said, his grin seeming in the near dark to take up half of his rain-slick face, “I think we’ve tested one another’s knife skills to my satisfaction. And my knee, unfortunately, still troubles me; I’m afraid close-quarters combat would place me at a disadvantage. So please forgive the anticlimax, but...”

  Engelmann’s knockoff Ruger spat.

  In the millisecond before it did, Hendricks cracked the faintest smile.

  And prayed.

  Thompson spied the Walkers’ mailbox, and beside it, a dirt drive disappeared into the trees. She yanked the wheel, spraying twin tails of mud behind her as her tires sunk in and finally bit. She only made it fifty yards up the winding driveway through the rain-driven muck before the night was torn asunder by a fireball four stories high, which spread warm across her face and buffeted her car with debris.

  In an instant, she realized what it would take her back
up team an hour to confirm.

  The Walker house was gone.

  Hendricks lay singed, bloody, and wincing atop the stack of mattresses on the deck. His chest hurt like hell from Engelmann’s gunshot, but Evie’s cast-iron griddle stopped the bullet and dispersed the blow enough to only bruise— not break—his ribs. Chunks of wood and bits of shingle rained down from overhead, pelting him occasionally, but he didn’t mind. He was just happy to be alive. Truth be told, he never thought his plan would work.

  He laid his head back on the mattress in exhaustion, but lifted it again in pain as soon as it connected. When he probed at the injured area, his fingers came back red. A piece of glass was wedged into his scalp, thanks to his trip through the French doors. Not for the first time, he wished he could’ve knocked the panes of glass out ahead of time, but then the gas would have escaped, and all his preparation would’ve been for naught.

  He had to hand it to that Genovese hitter—his trick had worked. Between the gas oven leaking steadily once he’d blown out its pilot light two hours ago, and the propane tanks Hendricks had scavenged from the grill, the house was so full of noxious fumes, moving around inside it was difficult—he wound up dizzy, disoriented, euphoric. But as it turns out, the odorants they add to gas so folks can tell they’ve got a leak only work if people realize what they’re smelling. Saturate the air with potent scents—like whiskey, or pickles, or rotting garbage—and the warning scent of rotten egg is masked. Handy if you’re a hitman trying to make someone go boom.

  Also helpful were the cans of gasoline Hendricks had stashed in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, and the microwave full of aerosol cans beside it. He’d turned Evie’s kitchen into an IED. Engelmann’s gunshot served as the detonator, and the force of the explosion—guided as best as Hendricks could manage by the doorway to the dining room and the bits of plywood he’d rigged up on either side to channel it, a large-scale version of the countless shaped charges he’d employed while in Afghanistan—had thrown Hendricks clear as if he were the bullet and the house were the gun. He’d staved off the worst of the burns he might’ve sustained by dousing himself with a bucket of cold water just prior to his little showdown. Heat boils off moisture before flesh—the explosion left him red and tender, but unblistered and intact. Engelmann, at the center of the explosion, was not so lucky. Investigators would no doubt be picking charred bits of him from trees a mile around.

  Stuart, Evelyn, and Abigail were holed up in the root cellar, protected from the blast by a layer of stone and earth. He’d told them not to come out for any reason until an hour after they heard the sirens. That way, even if he’d failed and Engelmann had bested him, they would have still been safe—and if his plan worked, he’d have time to get away. To disappear. To leave Evie to pick up the pieces of this life she’d built for herself—a better life than he ever could have provided her.

  Stuart’s ATV was all gassed up and stashed behind the garage. Even sitting atop it, Hendricks could scarcely hear it start—partly the aftereffects of the explosion, partly the twin roars of the storm and the fire that consumed what little of the farmhouse still stood.

  Hendricks sat there for a moment, tears threatening, while debris from the ruined house rained down upon the root cellar. His last moments with Evie—as he loaded her inside—played through his mind.

  Stuart had entered first, carrying Abby. Evie’d followed close behind. She was filthy and exhausted after their frenzied preparation of the house, and her expression was clouded with frustration because Hendricks had refused to tell her what he had planned. Still, he thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

  He’d guided her across the threshold—his hand gripping hers, Stuart glaring from the darkness all the while. When she was inside, she’d turned to him and said, “This is it?”

  The words were tossed off for her husband’s benefit, but in that moment Hendricks caught the pain, the hurt, the implicit plea written across her face: How can this be it?

  “I’m sorry,” he’d told her.

  “Me, too,” she’d replied. And before she released his hand, she squeezed it tight.

  Hendricks thought about it now and felt something suspiciously like hope.

  He thumbed the throttle, and the four-wheeler lurched forward. He rode alone into the rain-swept countryside, once more leaving Evie behind.

  42

  It was a beautiful October day in Washington, DC—the air cool and crisp, the sky cloudless, the leaves all brilliant reds and yellows against the blue. The National Mall was flush with tourists and locals alike, the former snapping photos of the foliage with the monuments as their backdrop, the latter simply enjoying a moment of peace amid the city’s endless bustle. Charlie Thompson and Kate O’Brien strolled arm-in-arm down the crowded promenade, admiring the view.

  Times like these, Thompson thought, I can almost imagine the events of last month happened to someone else.

  She and O’Brien had been shacking up for weeks. It happened almost by accident—after Pendleton’s and losing Garfield, Thompson couldn’t stand to sleep alone. Her apartment was too quiet, and after seeing what had befallen Garfield in his, she felt too vulnerable. By daylight, she was okay, but every time her head hit the pillow, Leonwood and Engelmann came knocking. She woke up screaming most nights, scrambling for her gun.

  O’Brien’s stately white brick Federal proved a respite from her dreams, and Kate’s gentle breathing beside her every night as she drifted off to sleep felt like home. The first night there, Kate gave her a toothbrush and a drawer. Two weeks later, they decided to let Charlie’s lease lapse and go public, the assholes at the Bureau be damned.

  As they walked, O’Brien pointed out a food truck she’d been meaning to try—donuts, made to order. “You want? I hear their cider donut is to die for.”

  “Sure,” Thompson said. “Get two. I’ll grab a bench.”

  O’Brien got in line. Thompson cut through the crowd toward the nearest set of benches, looking for a free one.

  She was stopped by a hand grabbing her wrist—not forceful, but insistent.

  Thompson wheeled.

  It was Hendricks.

  He was dressed to blend in with the autumn crowd: barn coat, work boots, jeans. A Georgetown baseball cap sat low atop his head, shading his eyes. His face was grim, drawn, tight.

  “I know it was your partner who led Engelmann to Evie,” he said. “It’s because of him that my best friend is dead.”

  Thompson looked around, her heart galloping in her chest. But though the promenade was crowded, no one was paying any attention to them. They were surrounded by people, but alone.

  “And he paid for it with his life. You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” she said, defiantly. “Half the Bureau’s looking for you as we speak.”

  “Let them look,” he said. “I came because I need a favor.”

  Thompson let out a nervous laugh. “You need a favor,” she said, incredulous. “From me.” Her right hand crept toward her purse. Toward the gun inside it.

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” she said, as much to keep him talking as to find out what he wanted. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I need you to get Evie and her family into WITSEC. I need you to keep her safe.”

  “And how do you propose I do that?” she asked.

  “Convince her to testify against me,” he replied. “After what I put her through, it shouldn’t be hard. Then, once she’s agreed, you need to sell your bosses on the notion that she’s in danger. From folks like Engelmann. From me.”

  “Wait—is that why you blew up her house? To get her to hate you so she’d agree to testify?”

  “Evie’s stubborn,” Hendricks said. “Given the choice, she’d dig in her heels and defend the life she’s built for herself. So I took away that choice. I did what I had to do to ensure her safety.”

  “What makes you think I’d help you?”

  “Because you understand how important Evie is to me. Much l
ike I understand how important your sister Jessica is to you. Or your girlfriend, Kathryn. I’m glad to see you’ve been sleeping better since you moved in with her, by the way.”

  Thompson flushed with fear and anger. Her stomach felt like it was full of crawly things. “You’re bluffing,” she said, praying Hendricks wouldn’t notice her slowly unzipping her purse. “You wouldn’t dare hurt them.”

  “Maybe I’m bluffing. Maybe I’m not. But the hand you’re holding’s not strong enough to call and find out.”

  “If you touch them, I swear—”

  “Save your breath,” Hendricks said. “There’s nothing you can do to me that’s worse than what I’ve already been through. As for your loved ones, I’ve told you what you need to do to keep them safe. You’ve seen what I’m capable of, so I know you respect what’s at risk.”

  Thompson fell silent for a long moment. As surreptitiously as she could manage, she slid her hand into her purse. “But what if I fail?”

  “Don’t fail.”

  Thompson heard O’Brien calling her name from somewhere in the crowd. First puzzled. Then worried.

  “Kate!” she shouted, eyes darting toward the sound— toward the promise of backup. As Kate came trotting over, Thompson drew her gun.

  Kate saw the gun. Dropped the donuts she was carrying. Went for the piece she wore on her left ankle. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”

  Thompson scanned the busy promenade, her eyes wild, but it was no use.

  Michael Hendricks was gone.

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