The Deepest Wound

by Rick Reed

  When she finished, he said, “However this ends, we’re out of here. Wire all the money to our accounts now. I’ll be checking. If you don’t, I’ll kill the client and let the police figure it out.”

  Book hung up, proud of himself for standing his ground. They were getting a half-mil each to finish this, and the best part was, he got the green light to do something he’d wanted to do for a long time now. Kill Murphy.

  He made the boss promise to leave them alone for at least a month. He needed a vacation. Clint needed the time to heal. And by using the threat to kill the client, he had ensured the boss wouldn’t send anyone after them. The boss knew Book would never turn the man over to the authorities because that would implicate him and Clint, too. But he wouldn’t hesitate to kill the client.

  It was a shame that when this was over, they would have to find other employment, but that shouldn’t be too hard to do. America was one of the most violent countries in the world.

  He walked over to the parked cars and trucks and spotted an old junk pickup truck that he was sure he could hotwire. The café’s lot would be a good place to leave the Taurus for the time being. It blended in with the other cars.

  When Clint was on his feet, they could switch cars again. By then the job would be over. Murphy would be dead. The girl would be dead. Anyone who got in their way would be dead.

  That was fine with Book. But in exchange for the concessions the boss made, Book had promised not to kill the client. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that was a mistake.

  The client had seen their faces. If he was caught, he would sell them out. So he had to die.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  He was lying in his old bed watching Katie sleep. It was dark, but he could see her red hair spilling across the side of her face and the smooth curve of her neck. He could hear the sound of her soft breathing, and his heart swelled. He was home, and somehow he knew everything would be okay.

  A baby was crying. It was coming from Caitlyn’s room. He had to go and rock her back to sleep. Maybe she was wet. He started to get up but something wasn’t right. She had stopped crying. He felt a chill come over him at the thought of Caitlyn.

  His sense of joy quickly became an impending fear of loss, and he felt tears welling into his eyes. Katie stirred and took his hand, pulling him close against her. He instantly felt the cares of the world, and all his fear, melting away. All that mattered was holding her, keeping her close, keeping her safe.

  Then he heard loud footsteps. His gun suddenly appeared in his hand and he was moving toward the door when two big men burst into the room. They had guns in their hands and were dressed in dark clothing, their faces hidden behind ski masks.

  Katie! The baby! He felt panic rise like bile in his throat as he dove across the bed and rolled Katie onto the floor. He covered her with his body but knew it was futile.

  Bullets tore through the mattress, and he heard Katie scream. Bullets struck him like hammer blows in the back and legs. He was going to die. He couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save the baby.

  Katie . . .

  Jack woke drenched with sweat, jaw clenched tight, tears in his eyes. He took a deep breath, unclenched his hands, and sat up in bed. His T-shirt was ringed with sweat, his hair damp. Morning sunlight filtered around the sides of the window blinds. He started to get up when he saw Cinderella lying at the bottom of the bed, head down on her paws, her black eyes fixed on his face. A keening sound came from her as if she sensed his nightmare.

  Without thinking he reached down to pet the dog.

  Cinderella bared her teeth, slipped off the bed, and padded out of the room.

  “Ungrateful mutt.”

  Thirty minutes later, he was dressed, black coffee in hand, and on his way to Liddell’s house before he went to work.

  He called Garcia, and she assured him she was working on the fingerprints recovered from the murder in New Harmony. She also was keeping an eye on the reports of the Indiana State Police lab.

  “Brooke found the owner of the van,” she said.

  Jack put his cell on speaker phone. “And?”

  “It was stolen. But you already knew that,” she said. “It was parked at the airport in Terre Haute. The owner flew back in yesterday and thought it had been towed.”

  “Okay,” Jack said.

  “Crime scene found bits of flesh in the back cargo area. Brooke is getting a rush on DNA comparison with our victims. And they dug some bullets out of the dash. I’ve had them check ballistics with the gun you took from Marcie. It’s a match.”

  “Keep that kind of work up, and I’ll have to promote you to detective.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” she said, and laughed. They disconnected.

  Jack pulled into the drive at Liddell’s, waved at the uniformed policeman in a black-and-white parked in front of the house, and called Brooke’s cell.

  “Where are you?” he asked when she answered.

  “Look up.”

  She was standing in the front door, holding a mug of coffee. Today she was wearing tight-fitting dark blue pants with a short-sleeve see-through light blue top worn over a camisole. She noticed Jack checking her out, and pointed to her right side to show him she was wearing her weapon.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you, too. Would you believe I came to see Liddell and wish him a speedy recovery?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Okay. I wanted to show the pharmacy film to Marcie. You didn’t get around to it last night.”

  “Yeah, I had some late-night activities.”

  “Yeah, you did. Too bad you didn’t get a better look at the guy you chased.”

  He shrugged. “Too busy dodging bullets.”

  She rolled her eyes. “One bullet, Jack. Big deal.” Then she smiled, showing she was kidding. “I haven’t shown the video to Marcie yet. I was waiting for you.”

  Marcie came up behind Brooke and said, “He wants you to come in. I have coffee and some cherry turnovers—if you-know-who hasn’t eaten them already.”

  Jack had forgotten to eat breakfast and his stomach was reminding him. He motioned for the ladies to go first and followed them to the kitchen. He was surprised to see Liddell sitting at the table watching a video on a Kindle on the table in front of him.

  Jack shot a questioning look at Brooke.

  “What? I said I hadn’t shown it to Marcie. I didn’t say anything about Bigfoot.”

  “Bigfoot?” Jack asked, and Liddell looked up and smiled.

  “I downloaded some of the video to my Kindle,” Brooke said.

  “Coffee, Jack? Brooke?” Marcie asked.

  “Hey, hon, after you get their coffee, I’ll take another turnover. Would you warm it for me?” Liddell asked.

  Jack turned the Kindle so he could see the screen. “How do you make it start over?” he asked Brooke, and she touched the screen a few times.

  Brooke spooned some sugar in her coffee and said, “I was on the phone with the lab before you called,” she said. “We have a possible match on the latent fingerprints from the screwdriver and the prints from New Harmony.”

  As Marcie brought Jack’s coffee, he caught her arm and pulled her toward a seat. “Marcie, forget all that. Come here and look at this.”

  Brooke set up the Kindle for a slide show of the still pictures taken from the video and played this for Marcie first. After viewing a dozen still pictures taken of the men from various angles, Marcie said, “I wish I could help more, but it was dark and they were wearing those things covering their faces. They’re dressed the same, but I can’t tell anything about their size from these pictures.”

  Brooke stopped the slide show. “I’m going to show you a video now. I’ll shut it off anytime you say, okay, Marcie?”

  Marcie took one of Liddell’s huge hands in hers, then nodded.

  Brooke began the video, and Marcie’s hand went to her throat. “Oh! They have guns.”

  Brooke and Ja
ck traded a look. “Marcie, were they wearing guns that night?”

  “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure. But I’m so used to seeing guns all the time, I may not have paid much attention. The clothes look the same. The guys are about the same build.”

  The video played on and Jack thought about the nightmare he’d had this morning. Two big men. Dark clothing that looked like SWAT BDUs. The style was favored by a lot of police organizations, as well as the military, not to mention civilian “military equipment” outlets sold it. There were three stores in Evansville alone, and probably a hundred within a fifty-mile radius.

  “Where was this taken?” Marcie asked.

  Jack had hoped to spare Marcie, but she had a right to know what she and Liddell were up against. After all, their lives might be on the line. He had already made that mistake with Moira. They would all have around-the-clock police protection now, but they needed to be alert and prepared.

  “They shot a pharmacist in New Harmony yesterday,” Jack said.

  “Was that them?” Marcie asked, and looked closer at the pictures. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the news, but I heard the officers out front talking about it when I brought them breakfast.”

  Liddell gave Jack an angry look. “They just had a shift change,” he said. To Marcie he said, “No more going outside alone.”

  She squeezed his hand and he pulled her close.

  “The officers said his wife found him,” Marcie said sadly.

  Jack put a hand on Brooke’s shoulder. For some reason she seemed shaken as well.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” she snapped at him. “Sorry,” she said, seeing the look on everyone’s face. “I was thinking about the case,” she said, but Jack could tell she was lying.

  “Okay,” Jack said at the front door. “I’m going to make sure you have extra security until this is over.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Jack. I’ve got a gun and the princess warrior,” Liddell said, and gave Marcie a squeeze.

  “You two get a room,” Jack said.

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Liddell quipped

  Marcie shooed Jack and Brooke out the door and followed them onto the porch. “You two get back to work. We’ll be just fine.” Marcie pulled Jack to the side. “Are we still in danger?”

  “Marcie, you’ve got a full-grown yeti living in your house. What do you think?”

  Marcie turned to Brooke. “Keep Jack out of trouble.”

  Outside, Jack walked Brooke to her car. She stopped at the trunk and nearly threw her weapon inside.

  “Thanks for getting the lab results and stuff so quickly,” Jack said.

  “A compliment from Jack Murphy,” she said, “Wow!”

  Unlike the day before, that came out friendly, and Jack grinned. “Don’t let it go to your head. It’s like a complimentary breakfast at a hotel.” She didn’t seem to get the comparison, so he explained. “The food is put out there, whether you want it or not. It’s nothing personal.”

  “You’re such a romantic, Jack.” She remained smiling, as though she had decided overnight that she liked him. “I’ll keep checking on the DNA. It takes a little while. But I’m sure your little computer gal has told you all that.”

  “If Angelina Garcia heard you call her my ‘little computer gal,’ you would need your gun.”

  “You’re a good friend to the people you trust, aren’t you, Jack? I hope at some point during all of this you will realize that I’m not your enemy.”

  He said nothing. She was right, of course. She hadn’t earned his trust yet. But she was making definite inroads.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  “Clint Hallard,” Garcia said over the phone. “H-A-L-L-A-R-D. That’s what I got off the prints from the screwdriver, Jack.”

  “Can we put this out to the troops?” he asked, wondering why Brooke’s people hadn’t found that.

  As she knew very well, he was really asking if she had obtained the information legally. If not, they would need to “discover” the name some other way.

  “Yeah, it’s clean,” she said, and yawned. “It had better be or my contact is in deep doo-doo.”

  She told Jack about Lucius in the Defense Department. She had emailed him the prints and he had called her back ten minutes ago. When he called he was excited and insisted that she come to his apartment or he wouldn’t give up the name. They had quibbled for ten minutes before she was able to negotiate a more open meeting place.

  They finally agreed on the Tennessean downtown, and she had paid for and watched him shovel down breakfast before he finally took a napkin and wrote two names on it. Clint Hallard and Trafford Book. That’s who the fingerprints matched.

  “We might have a picture of his partner, too,” she said. “I got a driver’s license from Idaho on Clint Hallard, and I just found an Illinois license on Trafford Book. They don’t exist in any law enforcement records, and the licenses were issued two years ago.”

  “Angelina,” Jack said. “Before I grow old, please.”

  “Sorry, Jack. Let me tell it my way, before I forget.” And she began with the job description of an Army mechanized infantryman, an MOS of 11 Bravo.

  Jack knew basically what the job of an infantryman was, and assumed the mechanized infantryman was one that rode in a tank or other heavily armed vehicle.

  “In a nutshell, Clint Hallard was a gunner on a tank in Iraq and later in Afghanistan. He reenlisted twice, both three-year hitches, and moved up a grade in rank. He was an E4, like a corporal in rank, when he left the Army. And there’s more.” She told him about Clint’s friend, Trafford Book.

  Book grew up in a Chicago project called Cabrini-Green. He probably learned to fight before he learned his ABC’s. Trafford had enlisted during the first push into Iraq and volunteered for an extra hitch to boot. He also served in Afghanistan, where he was promoted to sergeant, and as far as Garcia was able to ascertain, he served at the same times and locations as Clint Hallard. The 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry redeployed from Iraq to Fort Hood, Texas, in December 2006, and Trafford Book and Clint Hallard ended their service there in June of 2008.

  “Both men’s records are sealed,” she said.

  “If the records are sealed, how did your friend get them?”

  “My friend is a computer programmer for the DoD. He can basically get into anything he wants. He said their files contained some interesting details, but he couldn’t give it to me. He suggested we subpoena their military records, so I need you to call whoever you think will have some pull. Maybe someone in the governor’s office can get these guys’ records faster and we won’t need a subpoena. I have pictures from the driver’s licenses, but Lucius hinted that we wouldn’t get anywhere. He said, quote, ‘These two are ghosts.’”

  “I’ll call Captain Franklin and ask him to make a call. It will look better coming from someone with higher rank.”

  “I’ve got their dates of birth, last known addresses, that kind of stuff off their licenses, but again I don’t think the information is any good. No police record, not even a parking ticket, and the military went to great lengths to make these guys invisible. I can’t even find birth certificates.”

  Jack didn’t have to ask if she were churning all that info through the system. She was the best intel analyst he’d ever seen. “No one else is to know about this until we have those military records. Okay?”

  They now had pictures and names to go with the fingerprints. With any luck, they would soon have the killers. He didn’t think they would leave because their job wasn’t finished. Moira was still alive.

  The attack on Liddell was planned and executed like a military maneuver, and was successful because they had taken the flash drive. Attacking a cop was a risky move, but exactly the type of boldness you would expect from a soldier.

  They had been expecting to find Moira in the basement of the Civic Center, alone, defenseless. It explained their hasty retreat when Jack showed
up. The fact that they brought guns told Jack that they intended to kill her. The only reason she would be a threat was because she had seen the flash drive. But then, so had Jack. They were eliminating anyone with connection to that thing.

  He dialed a number. “Garcia got the names of the killers, Captain,” he said. He then passed on the names of the two killers that Garcia had sent to his phone. He ended with, “And I think this should stay between you, me, and the chief for the time being.”

  Franklin didn’t ask why. That wasn’t good. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Chief Pope was just in my office. He is going to summon Garcia. He said she had been making some unusual inquiries, and he suspected she was committing computer crimes. Something about hacking a secure military database. Since I’m her direct supervisor, he told me as a courtesy.”

  “What!” Jack said. “How did he find that out?”

  “I don’t know,” Franklin answered.

  Jack couldn’t believe this. Garcia had said that her friend at the Defense Department had just called her ten minutes ago.

  “I’m going to see the chief myself,” Jack said. “Garcia has just helped crack this case wide open.”

  Jack hurried toward the chief’s complex, hoping he hadn’t done something stupid, like firing Garcia. As he passed into the chief’s outer office, the secretary, Jennifer Mangold, said, “He’s expecting you.”

  He knocked on the chief’s door, trying not to make too much thunder, even though he was incensed.

  “Come in,” said the harried voice.

  Jack did, but he remained near the door. He didn’t plan on staying. “What’s this I hear about Garcia?”

  Pope looked tired. “Homeland Security is investigating her. I had to send Garcia home, and quite frankly, that may be the best place for her right now. I don’t think I can help her if the Feds file charges against her.”

  Pope shook his head wearily and looked up at the ceiling, as if for divine help.