Perfect Killer

by Lewis Perdue

  He looked at me. "Here I am, an ole country deputy out in the middle of nowhere when a couple of fancy guys in expensive suits drop a thick file on my desk. Hate-crime cold cases make good headlines these days. Good publicity for everybody. Feel good. Justice wins." He shook his head. "They brought it to me because I'd nailed an old Ku Kluxer a couple of years ago.

  "But the case they brought me was too airtight. It had no holes. That simply doesn't happen unless somebody's done some creative evidence gathering like that Nathan Bedford Forrest Brigade BS. No such organization. It existed on some paper in the file they handed me and nowhere else." He sighed and drained his coffee.

  "I can make more," Jasmine offered.

  "Uh-uh." He stood up and looked out the side window toward his truck. "The higher-ups took this and ran with it. I wanted to look deeper. They said no; they wanted the conviction and the publicity." He turned toward us. "I held my nose until the Feds stopped the trial, then I sat down and wrote a letter to Vanessa Thompson describing everything I thought was rotten with the case."

  "'Fourteen pages' worth," Jasmine said. "Single-spaced."

  I whistled.

  He waved his arm in dismissal. "It was just an opinion. Mine. Didn't count for a damn thing." He walked to the front window.

  "You're going to need something other than your fire engine to drive," he said. "They're looking for it." He turned around and looked at me. "Your rental's at the impound."

  He caught my questioning look.

  "In the back of my truck," he said "A bike. Plain, good on gas, easy to

  conceal." He looked at his watch, then stood up and moved toward the front door and opened it.

  "I've got a ramp. Help me get it out."

  Jasmine and I caught up with him as he opened the passenger side of his truck and pulled out a plastic grocery bag and handed it to me. Inside were two deli sandwiches in white paper, two cartons of chocolate milk, and two cell phones.

  "Can't run if you get hungry," he said. "Phones are prepaid, untraceable. Already activated. Drug dealers love them. The Feds are camped out on your old cell numbers waiting for you to make a call."

  "You're a helluva guy" I said.

  Jasmine gave him a hug.

  * * * * * From the edge of the clearing, about where the road entered it, Jael crawled flat on her belly in the grass. The trees had given way to scrubby underbrush way short of the distance she needed to see them well through the fog. She moved, stopped, listened. The shack's door creaked open, voices leaked out. Slowly, she raised her head and watched the black sheriff cross the porch toward his truck.

  She stepped forward, then a pair of quail came racing through the grass and stopped inches from her face. Jael froze and held her breath. The moment stretched out. In a morning as quiet as this one, if the birds took to wing, they'd set up a racket pointing right at her. Quail didn't like to fly; they walked unless threatened. She assumed Stone knew that.

  Then came a rustling, a bang and rattle that sounded like a tailgate opening. Jael was ready to charge when the quail turned and scurried away through the grass.

  She raised up for a look. Tufts of fog drifted across the clearing, offering first a clear shot, then no shot at all. She moved forward with the fog and hunkered down when it cleared, watching the three of them at the back of the truck positioning a ramp for the bike.

  The view now was consistently good enough for a shot. The three of them concentrated on the bike, shoulder to shoulder, their backs to her. They moved back and forth, almost in unison with Stone in the middle. Jael decided to make him her first shot. She quickly sat up, one leg under her, the other bent, knee-up in front of her. She steadied the M21 with her elbow on her knee. With the crosshairs centered between the lower part of Stone's shoulder blades—in a position to blow the tatters of his heart right out the front—she took a breath, exhaled, held it, took up the trigger slack, and squeezed off the first round.

  CHAPTER 57

  "Damn!" Myers cursed as the motorcycle ramp shifted, then gave way, suddenly hurling Myers into me. I staggered left into Jasmine. She grabbed my arm and I caught the tailgate support cable for balance. Equilibrium hadn't begun to settle in my head when a gunshot thundered through the morning stillness.

  To my right, Myers stood approximately where I had been a split instant before. He let out a loud, pain-filled "Hoof!" as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He ricocheted off the tailgate and slumped to the ground.

  Simultaneous with this, another gunshot cracked through the clearing. The pickup's left rear taillight exploded inches from my hand. I laid a wicked body check on Jasmine and sent the two of us flying into the leaves and mud alongside the truck.

  Another shot followed. The slug thumped into the shack's wooden siding. Then came shots from another gun.

  "Stay down!" I told Jasmine as I got to my knees and struggled to free the Ruger

  tangled in my cargo pocket. I peered around the rear fender and saw Myers crouched in an academy firing position, his automatic pointed toward a patch of tall grass at the edge of the clearing. He fired twice, adjusted his aim, then twice more. Tatters of ripped fabric fluttered near his far shoulder blade showing pale, straw-colored tufts of Kevlar fabric from his body armor laid open by the oblique trajectory of a powerful slug.

  The Ruger refused to come free of my shorts pocket. I cursed the pistol, the pocket, life, God himself, but mostly my own damn self for leaving the holster behind.

  I yanked desperately now and tried to see where Myers was aiming.

  Through the rolling fog and gloom, I thought I spotted something in shadowy camouflage. I finally ripped the Ruger out along with the pocket's fabric as Myers's gun fell silent. Myers ejected his spent clip and expertly, quickly loaded a new one. I jerked at the cloth tangled up with the revolver's hammer.

  In the few seconds it took the sheriff to reload, the camouflage patch in the tall grass grew a rifle barrel. The cloth finally let go of the Ruger's hammer. I raised the Ruger, aimed, and fired. Wide.

  I saw the rifle's muzzle flash before I heard its sound, and I heard the sound right as John went down again, a lot harder this time.

  The muzzle of the rifle arced toward me. As I aimed, an explosive whump! resonated in my chest like the beat of bass drums in a parade. Before I could wonder whether I had been hit and how long I would remain conscious, my peripheral vision registered a long, bright tongue of fire to my right followed by the tremendous acoustic overpressure from Jasmine's .357 magnum.

  Gratefully, I saw the rifle muzzle dip, heard it fire again. A mud crater erupted less than a foot away from Myers, who rolled himself toward a wide hickory tree. Across the clearing, the rifle's muzzle remained still. I looked over at Jasmine, crouched and ever so exposed.

  "Take cover by your car" I pointed as I lunged left, scrambled past Myers, and took cover at the base of a nearby hackberry tree. When I next looked toward Jasmine, she was crouched by the rear wheel of her Mercedes. I gave her a thumbs-up, pointed at myself, and gave her a hand signal that I was going to move again. She nodded. As soon as I bolted from cover, she fired a covering shot.

  I sprinted my best erratic, broken path to the pile of camouflage, ready to fire if I imagined a twitch. Closer, I made out the inert tangled form of our assailant dressed in deer hunter's camouflage. I slowed; Jasmine jogged closer, her Ruger at the ready.

  "On your face!" I shouted.

  No movement, no response.

  "Hands out to your side!"

  Nothing.

  I waited until Jasmine took up a position maybe ten feet away to my right. I moved forward and got my first surprise: the body was a woman's. The second was her rifle, an M21. The significance chilled me. As I stared, her blood pooled on the ground, grew, and engulfed a shell casing. I circled her. Still she did not move. In the distance, Myers struggled up and leaned against the rear quarter panel of his truck, gripping his left shoulder with his right hand. Pain lined his face. He held his pistol loosely i
n his left hand.

  "Okay," I said to Jasmine. Her steps grew louder through the grass and diverted my attention to the M21 for an instant. I had trained with this weapon and used it to great effectiveness in another life. With my Ruger vaguely pointed toward the fallen shooter, I bent over to examine the sniper rifle.

  At that instant, the camouflaged form sprang up like a horror-house prop. I whirled as a shrieking, blood-soaked blond woman armed with a black automatic pistol sprang up and fired at me. I rolled to one side, and when I came up, I had my Ruger on target, but Jasmine again beat me to the punch. Jasmine's first shot hit our assailant above her right shoulder and spun her around. The second shot nearly decapitated her.

  When the Ruger's echo faded, a dead silence followed it into the clearing. Finally, the din of my own heart subsided, giving way to the whine of mosquitoes, the drip of last night's rain making its way down from leaf to leaf, and finally the buzz of carrion flies arriving to make their unmistakable statements about life and death.

  I had witnessed enough scenes like this one to last a lifetime, but I don't know what I expected from Jasmine. Tears maybe. Or perhaps the nausea rising from the realization that you have killed another human being, no matter the circumstances.

  When I looked at her, I saw none of this. Jasmine stood motionless for a long time, her Ruger still ready. The deep, flinty determination in her eyes took me by surprise. I'd rarely seen that sort of intense introspective stare beyond the small coterie of men I had trained and served with. Once I recognized Jasmine's gaze for what it was, I was prepared for what followed.

  Jasmine lowered the Ruger and deliberately placed it in the clip-on holster at her waistband. Then she stepped toward the mangled body on the ground and examined it in all its mortal detail. When she turned her head in my direction, Jasmine's eyes had a faraway focus that told me she had seen a place far past me, past the current moment, all the way to the province of personal reckoning where reality collides with what-does-it-mean? Traveling there was a Rubicon of the sharpest sort and allowed no ambiguity. I'd met some people who'd gone there and never came back. But even those who returned never came back unchanged. I know I hadn't.

  There was never a thing to be said in cases like this, so I held my tongue.

  Flies gathered thicker around the body; the coppery fetidness of blood and torn flesh filled my nose. In the distance, a mockingbird tossed out a tentative handful of notes. From way far away the faint staccato putts of an old John Deere tractor made one small part of me feel six years old again.

  "Y'all okay?" Myers called from across the clearing, his voice strong but laced with pain.

  Jasmine turned. It took a moment for her to process the blood on Myers's shirt and sprint toward him.

  "John!"

  I knew from the battlefield, she'd get over the dead woman faster given the chance to care for the living. Myers's wound would remind her why she had killed. The anger would more than balance the shock, horror, and mostly the guilt of the kill.

  She took the pistol from Myers's left hand and slid it into his holster. I joined them.

  "What'cha got there, John?"

  "You tell me. You're the doctor."

  I grasped the wrist of his right hand and pulled it away from his shoulder, fearing the worst. But when I pulled his hand away, there were no pulsing gouts of blood, no wildly pulsating red tributaries to indicate an artery had been hit.

  "Could be worse."

  "Easy for you to say, Doc."

  "Let's get the shirt off and take a look at the damage."

  Jasmine took control and had Myers's shirt off in seconds. He wore a white T-shirt underneath. The left sleeve and shoulder glistened bright red. I wished I had rubber gloves. John must have read my mind.

  "Rubber gloves in my right back pocket," he said "Standard kit for handling suspects these days." I nodded, pulled out a single pair, and snapped them on.

  When I pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up, I discovered a neat puckered hole in the front of a large, well-defined deltoid muscle.

  "You work out pretty regularly."

  He nodded.

  The back of the deltoid showed me what I hoped to see: a modest exit wound oozing blood. I jammed Myers's balled-up T-shirt into the wound as a compress. He sucked in a sharp, painful breath between his clenched teeth. I held my hand over the wound.

  "Well, you didn't quite dodge a bullet, but you came awfully damn close."

  "Yeah?"

  "Uh-huh. It'll take some rehab before you can pump iron again, but it went clean through the belly of the deltoid."

  Jasmine and Myers spoke simultaneously, "Thank God!"

  "Do you have a first aid kit or anything in your truck?"

  Myers shook his head.

  "Duct tape?"

  "Toolbox in back."

  Jasmine quickly retrieved a roll of silver tape and brought it back to me.

  "Tear off some strips about a foot long," I said, then bound the makeshift T-shirt compress with the tape strips she handed me.

  "Now, make a big loop of tape for a sling."

  She nodded.

  "Cool. Then tape his forearm securely around his torso and get him a blanket."

  She nodded as I went back to the dead woman.

  She looked somehow familiar, but I could not figure out why.

  Still wearing Myers's rubber gloves, I field-stripped the body, putting the loot in the woman's camouflage hat, which had fallen next to her. Training in my other life taught me to always look for intelligence. Take everything. Its significance might not hit you for a day maybe longer but you never knew what might save your life.

  As I looted the killer's body, a deep feeling of Camilla's presence filled me suddenly. I suppose the feeling should not have surprised me. Death and close calls can open our minds to the deepest levels of consciousness. I reveled in Camilla's presence; it warmed me. I struggled to feel, not to think.

  Then from across the clearing, Myers spoke.

  "Sure feels better, girl. You've got the touch."

  Camilla vanished.

  "We need to get you to a hospital," Jasmine replied.

  I stood up to survey my handiwork and used the woman's camouflage pants to wipe her blood from my hands.

  "You look like you've done this before."

  I turned; Jasmine stood a couple of paces away.

  "Long time ago. Another life."

  "But that life never lets go of you, does it?"

  I shook my head.

  "You learn anything here?" She dipped her head toward the now naked blond woman on the ground.

  "Nothing which adds up to a conclusion. Her hairline has a nasty scar from a head wound. There's some kind of pharmaceutical patch. I can't place it."

  "The head wound might connect her to Braxton," Jasmine said.

  "She's too young to be part of his program."

  "Braxton's part for sure, but suppose they never stopped? Suppose the patch you don't recognize is part of it?"

  "If you're right, we're in more trouble than we think."

  "Hard to imagine."

  "Been there. Pray you're wrong," I said as I knelt down and rolled the dead woman's rapidly cooling torso over. The head, attached only by the tendons and carotid artery on one side, flopped about and remained nearly faceup. I pointed toward the woman's shoulder.

  "The tattoo looks like some I remember from Iraq."

  Jasmine leaned over and read the tattoo. "Help a raghead meet Allah." She looked at me. "Profound."

  I shrugged.

  "So you were in the Gulf War? Which one?"

  I shook my head. "Before the Russian invasion."

  To keep the conversation from going further, I picked up the hat full of effects, which included a spotting scope, spare clips for the M21 and the H&K, rental car keys, a cell phone, and a single dog tag attached to a small Leatherman tool identical to my own, minus my little LED light. I left a matching dog tag on a ball chain around the remnants of her neck.<
br />
  "We have a set of keys to a rental car here, and a dog tag that tells us her last name is St. Clair. The first name is odd: Jael."

  "It's biblical." I turned and found Myers standing there. "Something from the Old Testament," he said. "She was an Israelite, or from one of the tribes. She tricked an enemy general or king into her tent, and after he fell asleep, she drove a tent stake through his head and nailed him to the ground."

  "Nice." Jasmine looked at him. "What kind of mother names her daughter that?" "Good question."

  "Yeah… anyway," I said, "we've got her Social Security number and a blank where religious preference goes."

  "I can run the Social Security for you," Myers said. "And the cell phone might tell you a lot from speed dials and call records."

  "Right," I agreed. "But we need to stick to our mission and get you some medical care."

  "I'm in pretty damn good shape for now," Myers said."Why don't you take my truck? I can call for 911. That'll be equally as fast and you don't risk getting caught."

  He pulled his cell from his belt and looked at the LCD display "Five-by-five signal. And this has the GPS built in."

  "We can't just leave you here," Jasmine said.

  "Of course you can." He gave her a deep smile. "You get caught, then I got shot for no good reason. I want to be here when my officers arrive so I can give them the whole story before those spooky goons from Homeland Security can steal it away from us."

  Jasmine looked uncertain.

  "Look at your watch," he said.

  She glanced down at her wrist. "Ten thirty-eight."

  "You better get ready to call Talmadge's lawyer."

  Still, she hesitated.

  "Do it for me," he said. "And for your mother."

  "I don't understand."

  "This is the most interesting case I have ever seen in my entire career," Myers explained. "If you take me to the hospital now, then the case is out of my hands. And if it's out of my hands, I have a feeling we'll never figure out who killed your mother."

  CHAPTER 58

  California's central coast snakes northward from the missile gantries of Vandenberg Air Force Base to Big Sur's relentlessly beautiful cliffs and surf south of Monterey. In between lies a vast, sparsely populated landscape wedged in between the Pacific Ocean and the fault-line mountains to the east where people grow grapes, olives, cows, and flowers, make wine and big ideas, dig for pismo clams and occasionally the truth.