by Gerry Boyle
The trooper was still parked out front, lights off, the interior filled with the gray-blue glow of his laptop. I rolled by slowly and continued on to Clair’s, turned in, and saw the lights on, the house and the barn. I parked and walked down the drive past Clair’s truck, Louis’s Jeep, Mary’s Honda. I touched the hood of each and they were cold. My bodyguards were in for the night.
I went to the barn door and pushed it open. Stepped in. The music was on, Mozart’s Requiem, chorus and symphony. The lights were dim, just a small work light glowing on the bench. I peered into the gloom and finally spotted him. He was sitting on a folding chair in the far corner. I walked over, saw the whiskey bottle on the wooden floor.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” Louis said.
“Taking a break?”
“Yeah. Had some dinner. Broccoli soup. Clair and Mary are playing Scrabble.”
“She’ll whup him.”
“No doubt.”
We paused.
“How you doing?” I said.
“Fine.”
He held out the bottle of whiskey. Jameson Black. I took a swallow. Louis raised his glass and sipped.
“How are Roxanne and Sophie?” Louis said.
“Asleep.”
“You’d better take extra good care of them,” he said.
“Trying,” I said.
He sipped. I swallowed.
“Remember this time outside of Ramadi. Humvee takes an IED, the truck’s on fire. Me and the radioman, we pile out into the smoke and make this alley, zigging and zagging. We’re sitting there, he’s all blood, trying to get backup on the radio, and we hear the bastards coming. They go by us full run, carrying AKs and launchers, wanted to get there and watch us roast like marshmallows.”
Louis held out his glass. I poured. We drank.
“And then this straggler comes up, skinny kid, AK looked too big for him. He stops right in front of me and bends down to get a rock or something out of his sandal. And then he turns and looks me right in the eye. Starts to open his mouth to yell, and I clamp my hand over him, he’s biting me, trying to get his finger on the trigger. I yank the gun away, and now he’s got two hands on mine, clawing and scratching and kicking. Like trying to give a cat a bath.”
Louis paused.
“He screams, we’re dead.”
Another swallow for both of us.
“So I hold him, get my other hand on his throat, and he’s looking at me, right in the eyes. And there was this moment where he knew. That it was the end. That his life was over. That was all he was getting. And we just stared at each other until after a minute or two, he wasn’t really looking anymore. He was gone. Died in my arms, sort of.”
I waited.
“So, McMorrow, I been thinking, compared to that one, this thing today was easy-breezy. But, still, takes a toll on you.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Woulda been a toll on you, if you’d hit him,” Louis said.
“I’m sorry I missed.”
“You say that,” he said. “But you don’t know.”
Louis smiled.
“Don’t get me wrong. That bastard was evil, and I’d kill him with my bare hands before I’d let him hurt your wife or your daughter. But it’s interesting. He wasn’t born evil. Something set him down this path. And it ended here. With me.”
“And me,” I said.
I held out the bottle. Louis hesitated, then clinked his glass against it and we drank. The Requiem chorus sang, a soaring passage.
“Clair would be proud of us, don’t you think?”
I looked at him.
“The music, I mean,” Louis said.
I drove back up to the house, waved to the cop, and he waved back. I parked in the driveway and walked back to the cruiser and told him I had to get a couple of things.
He nodded, went back to his typing.
I went inside and into the kitchen and the house seemed cold, already uninhabited. I stood in the darkness and listened, heard the hum of the refrigerator. I opened it and rummaged around and found a last Ballantine, in the back behind the juice. I took out a beer and packages of sliced turkey and cheese.
At the counter, I flipped on a light and made a sandwich. The bread was from the supermarket. The turkey was from some turkey processor someplace, probably the Midwest. The cheese was made by a company that was a subsidiary of a conglomerate. I slapped it together and took a bite, washed it down with ale brewed in Texas by the tanker load.
Take that, Welt.
I stood and ate and drank, finished the sandwich, and made another half. When that was gone I considered making another but decided against it. I put the food back in the refrigerator and, with half a beer left, walked across to the study.
At the desk, I pushed the chair aside, flipped up my laptop, and, still standing, waited for e-mail to load. There was a note from the Times, asking me for an update on the “Mennonites in Maine” story. Two from Outland, one asking how things were going, another forwarding a story about some legislator in Massachusetts pushing for stiffer penalties for illegal gun possession when a gun was used to commit a felony.
Would Slick start looking for alternatives? Capping people with a crossbow?
A crossbow. Were they legal? I decided to make a note of that for the story. I reached for a pen from the mug, dropped it, and it rolled across the desktop and onto the floor at my feet.
I bent.
The window exploded.
30
A slap and a boom.
I fell to my knees. Felt glass under my left hand and moved it. Dropped to my belly and started crawling for the kitchen. I was almost there when the next shot came.
More glass-shatter, a thunk in the wall above me.
And then I was in the kitchen, raised to a crouch. As I made it to the shed door it banged open, the cop from out front pointing his gun at me.
“Two shots,” I said, standing. “Through the sliding-glass door to the deck. Rifle.”
“What’s out there?” he said.
“Woods,” I said. “For miles. A trail that leads north, branches out different places along the way.”
He backed out and ran, talking into his radio. “Shots fired . . . ”
I ran after him, said, “Wait.”
He slowed and I trotted with him.
“Two friends of mine. Clair.”
“The neighbor?”
“Yeah. And Louis.”
“The guy with you in the Jeep.”
“They might go out there. To find the person. Don’t shoot them.”
“If you see them,” he said, “tell them to stay put.”
And then he was on the radio again, saying, “Two friends of the subject targeted . . . ”
I turned around and trotted to the truck, got the Glock from under the seat. Racked a shell into the chamber. I was backing out of the truck when I heard a scratch, a boot on gravel.
“He’s running,” Clair said.
“You heard it?” I said.
“Two shots from a deer rifle. But you know what I didn’t hear.”
“A car or truck starting.”
“He’s on foot in the woods. Louis is driving around to the main road, see if he can see something parked.”
“The cops will want to talk to me,” I said. “I can’t chase him.”
“Not gonna run him down, not in the dark,” Clair said. “Only chance is to cut him off before he can get out of the woods.”
“Cops will bring a dog.”
“They won’t go in there,” he said. “Not at night. Sitting ducks.”
We stood, listened to the voices on the radio in the deputy’s cruiser. Cops calling in. Motors roaring. Sirens. A dog barking.
“How close?” Clair said.
“Very,” I said. “I dropped a pen. If I hadn’t bent to get it . . . ”
“Second shot?”
“Just over me. I was on the floor.”
“Lights on in the room?”
“Yes.”
“Like shooting fish in an aquarium,” Clair said.
“Baby Fat? Revenge for Billy?”
“Be my first guess.”
“What’s your second?” I said.
“Semi’s back.”
“Payback for being humiliated?”
“And maybe he thinks you’re the rat. The one who twisted the kid’s arm. The one funneling info to the cops.”
“Interesting theory,” I said.
“A lot of people have been killed because of theories,” Clair said. “Interesting or not.”
Clair jumped in his truck as the sirens approached, hit the throttle, and was gone when the first cruiser slid to a stop, killed the lights.
It was a trooper and he went to the trunk, popped it, and started getting into SWAT gear. Body armor. Rifle. Helmet. Night vision. Camo.
He looked at me, then trotted to the deputy, who was on the radio by the car. The deputy pointed to the house, said a few words, and the SWAT guy trotted to the left of the house and disappeared into the darkness.
Another cruiser, then a state police SUV, then a second one, a dog barking inside the truck. They parked in the road, shut off their lights. The guy in the first SUV was the same sergeant from the scene of Abram’s murder. He slipped out of the car, strode over to the deputy. The third guy joined them and they turned in unison and looked at me. I started over and we met in the middle.
“Sergeant Rousseau,” the older guy said. The name tag said his first name was Kevin.
“Jack McMorrow,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”
I did. Finished at the end. It didn’t take long.
The cops turned and gazed at the woods. As they stood there, the first trooper came around the end of the shed. As he joined them, he said, “Black in there. Can’t see shit.”
“His story fit?” Rousseau said after I repeated myself.
“Two shots through the window. Consistent with a high-powered rifle.”
“Distance?”
“Pretty heavily wooded. I’d say he was in close.”
“Isn’t anymore,” Rousseau said.
“I’d say not.”
They looked at me, then at each other.
“Contain him,” Rousseau said, and to me he said, “How far does this tract go?”
“All the way to the main road. Two miles. East to west, four miles.”
“Access?”
“Trails run through it. Four-wheelers. My walking trails.”
“Access points from the main road?”
“In the four miles? A couple you could put a four-wheeler on. Two or three more you could do on foot.”
“Show us,” Rousseau said. He nodded to the second trooper and said, “Take him.”
I sat in the front seat, the trooper, a big, rangy kid who looked like a Boy Scout in the wrong uniform, swiveling his laptop out of the way. He whipped the cruiser around, took off up the road to the east. At the first rise I said, “My friends are already there, looking for somebody coming out.”
“What friends?” he said.
“My neighbor and another friend of ours,” I said.
“What are they going to do if they see somebody?”
I hesitated.
“I don’t know. Maybe apprehend him.”
“They’d better leave that—”
He looked at me.
“What did you say your name is?”
I told him.
“And your friends?”
I told him that, too.
“I’ve heard of you,” he said. “So who’s armed?”
“Everybody,” I said.
“You call them,” he said, not a kid after all. “Tell them to stand the hell down. I see somebody with a firearm, they don’t want to be that person.”
So I did and Clair answered. I passed the message on and he said he’d call Louis. They’d covered the trailheads, driven the four miles twice.
“Nothing,” Clair said.
“So he’s still in there?” I said.
The trooper listened.
“Or covered a lot of ground in a hurry,” Clair said.
By the time we hit the main road, there were blue lights coming from both directions. By the time we pulled in behind Clair’s truck, it was turning into a strike force. Waldo County Sheriff’s Office, times two, the second a K-9 unit. A game warden coming from the west, blue lights flashing in the grille of his truck. And then Rousseau, pulling up, getting out, taking charge.
We all got out, faces illuminated by the strobes. Rousseau went directly to Clair, said, “Mr. Varney. What was your time on scene?”
“Nine minutes from shots fired,” Clair said.
“And nothing showing?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s four-minute miles through the trees carrying a rifle in the dark,” Rousseau said.
“Look for the guy in the track shorts,” I said.
“He’s still in there, most likely,” Rousseau said. “We’ll contain him, hit it hard at first light.”
Another trooper arrived, a grim-faced woman who joined the circle. They nodded to her and Rousseau started giving orders, establishing the cordon. He asked who had night vision and my trooper nodded. Rousseau told him to park at the main trailhead. Two others were to head back to the house. The game warden said he’d move into the woods by the secondary trail and wait.
And then they dispersed, tires spinning in the gravel, radios squawking. Moths flailed at Clair’s headlights, like they were wound up about it all, too. Clair said, “I’ll get Louis up to speed.”
We both turned to the wall of trees, a twisted weave of shapes and shadows. There was the soft crackle of stuff moving in the undergrowth: mice, voles, moles, snakes. Then a snap, a branch cracking. A rustle of leaves.
Clair moved to the truck, killed the lights, and pulled his shotgun from the scabbard behind the seat. I slipped the Glock out.
“Don’t shoot,” a voice said. “It’s me.”
A shape materialized out of the blackness like an apparition, and then Louis was standing with us, a rifle at his side, muzzle down.
“Anything?” Clair said.
“A couple of broken branches where someone came through,” Louis said.
“So he did beat us out?” Clair said.
“Or maybe got this far and saw us and turned back in. But he’s big. Stuff was up high.” He put his hand across his throat.“I’d say well over six feet.”
We looked at the black woods, then up and down the road. To the east we saw headlights reflecting off the trees, a pale flicker in the dark tunnel between spruce and firs. And then the headlights came over the rise. We moved back, guns kept low as we waited for the car to pass. But it slowed, blue strobes blipped in the grille, and it swung in, slid to a halt beside my truck.
State police. Unmarked Impala. The door popped and Cook climbed out.
He strode around the front of the car, directly to me. Clair and Louis stood stock-still, like a general had just walked into the room. Cook looked at them, the firearms, and said, “Put ’em away. I’ve got enough going on.”
They looked at him, then started walking back to their vehicles. I started to turn, too, and Cook said, “Not you, Mr. McMorrow. It’s time for us to talk.”
I stopped, turned back to him, and said, “I thought we had been talking.”
“We’ve been dancing around each other. We’re done with that.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I say how ’bout you come with me. Voluntarily, of course. We’ll go where we can start at the beginning and get to the end.”
“Doesn’t appear like the end is in sight,” I said.
“Now, Mr. McMorrow,” Cook said.
“I have to call my wife.”
“Call her from the car,” he said, so I did.
31
Roxanne answered on the first ring.
“I didn’t wake you?�
�� I said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
I heard footsteps, not hers.
“Where are you?”
“Where am I? In the kitchen. Welt was up, too. He’s making tea.”
Pajama party.
“How is Sophie?”
“Out like a light. Where are you? At the house?”
I glanced at Cook, from the backseat. He’d turned down the radio when I took out the phone, but it still made a faint scratchy hiss.
“With the police,” I said.
“Still?”
“Something else happened.”
“What?”
I hesitated, felt like our life was being buried and this was another shovelful of earth. I let it fly.
“I’m fine. They missed.”
“What? Where?”
I told her.
“Did they catch him?”
“No. It’s dark and there’s a lot of woods out there. They’re trying to contain him, drive him out in the morning.”
“So—”
“So I’m going to meet with them, tell them what I know.”
“Okay. When will you be done?” Roxanne said.
“I don’t know. It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On what they think about what I say.”
“Jack,” Roxanne said. “They don’t think—I mean, you’re not some kind of suspect or something, are you? That’s crazy. We’re the victims here, for God’s sake. A madman in our house, somebody shooting at you—”
“I’ll text you. So I don’t wake Sophie.”
A pause.
“Yeah, text me. That would be better.”
I put the phone down. Cook didn’t turn the radio back up. I turned to the window, watched the woods flash by like the side of a subway tunnel. When I turned back I could see he was watching me in the mirror.
“Your wife okay?” he said.
“Not really,” I said. “It’s been a bad day.”
“Could’ve been worse. That dirtbag wasn’t in the closet to watch somebody get in their pj’s.”
“No.”
“One bad dude,” Cook said.
It sounded funny coming from him. Dude. Like a dad trying to be cool.
