“Not like we think,” he answered, leading her by the arm to the shooter’s body. “Look at him. He’s no drug addict. He’s clean-cut, fit, and I checked his teeth. They’re pearly white across the board. Plus his clothes are all wrong. I’m guessing you don’t see too many balaclavas in your line of work.”
“No, never. Or perps with perfect teeth.”
“I figured as much.”
“Dentists around here don’t see a lot of repeat business, if you know what I mean. Not with everyone struggling to make ends meet.”
Bunker nodded. “At this point, it seems clear. This was no simple home invasion. Whatever is going on here is something else entirely.”
“Like what?”
“Not sure yet. But there was purpose and intent involved. And skills,” he answered, kneeling down next to the body.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Daisy knelt down next to Bunker and joined in the search of the assailant’s body. Bunker started with the man’s pants, so she decided to explore his sweatshirt and then move to his hoodie.
While her fingers were busy, she couldn’t help but stare at the blood trail running down the side of the perpetrator’s face. It was all a little too much to take in, especially the gaping hole in his eye.
She’d caused this carnage with the hollow points from her Glock. Now her conscience was stirring inside, slowly taking over. Well, stirring wasn’t exactly the right word—frothing was a better term—as in foaming with guilt. Like a vat of molten steel, boiling away with ferocious intent.
Daisy sucked in a sudden, deep breath and turned her head, unable to keep a sharp gasp from leaving her lips.
“First kill?” Bunker asked her, turning the man’s right front pocket inside out—nothing but lint.
“Yes,” she said, taking a few seconds to compose herself. She swallowed hard, then steeled her nerves before looking at the body again. “In the academy, they train us how to handle almost every conceivable situation when we first arrive on a scene. But what they don’t teach us—what they can’t teach us—is how to handle kneeling over the gruesome body of someone you’ve just killed.”
Bunker stopped his hand search, focusing his attention on her. The tone of his voice changed, now slow and tender. “It’s never easy, but you did what you had to do.”
She stopped searching as well, feeling the urge to heave. The stomach bile was close to erupting, but she kept it down. “I’m not so sure about that. Maybe if we’d waited until morning, this man might still be alive and I wouldn’t feel like puking right now.”
“I know you’re hurting inside. That’s normal. But this was a righteous shoot. This man had already killed one person and did so in cold blood. Plus, it was a friend of yours. Someone you’ve known a long time. It’s going to affect you, like it would anyone.”
She agreed, but it didn’t ease the guilt raging inside her brain. “I know I had to do it, but it still doesn’t change how I feel.”
“I’ve been exactly where you are right now, so I know what you’re going through. But we both know he was going to do the same to us, unless we burned him first.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said, feeling the knot in her belly tighten even more. “Does it ever get any easier?”
“No. And you never want it to. Taking a life is the last resort. But when it comes down to you or the enemy, you have to take the shot. It’s your duty as a deputy, and as a human being, to protect yourself and those around you.”
She nodded, feeling a slight decrease in stomach pressure. “I know all that, but this isn’t how I thought it would feel.”
“It never is. The first is always the toughest.”
She appreciated his sympathy, but it really wasn’t helping. “I always knew it would affect me, but not like this. I thought I would be stronger.”
“Just take a minute. We’re in no hurry.”
She lowered her head as her breathing became shallow and rapid. A twinge of dizziness found its way into her head, making her blink rapidly to keep her vision clear.
If she’d been at home in her trailer, she would have run to the far end and jumped into bed, snuggling under the covers with a pillow wrapped between her knees until the attack faded. But she couldn’t do any of that here. Not while on the job and not with her new friend watching.
Despite how she felt, Bunker was right. She needed to suck it up and be strong. She knew the risks when she applied for this job. Shooting someone was always a possibility, even in a small town like Clearwater.
Her job was to protect and serve and that’s what she’d done. End of story. This man chose to enter Tuttle’s home and execute him, leaving her no choice but to take him out. This wasn’t her doing. It was the shooter’s.
Anyone else in my position would have done the same thing, she thought quietly, trying to convince herself she wasn’t at fault.
Right then, some of the guilt faded into the shadows of her heart. So did the dizziness.
When she looked at Bunker, a string of words formed on her tongue, then flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. “How many have you . . . uh, well . . . you know?”
“Too many,” he said in a downtrodden tone. His eyes moved away and focused into a long stare, not looking at anything in particular. “So many, in fact, it’s a miracle I can sleep at night.”
Bunker’s face turned a few shades whiter than before. Even in the flickering light from the fire outside, it was obvious she’d struck a nerve with him.
Daisy touched his hand, feeling compelled to return the favor of support. “But it was war, right? You did what you had to do.”
“At first, yes. That’s what I kept telling myself. But somewhere along the way, someone changed the rules of engagement when I wasn’t looking. All of a sudden, I found myself in the middle of an unacceptable situation—a situation that I helped create. Like you, I wanted to throw up. There were so many bodies. Bodies of innocents. I hated myself for what I’d helped them do. At that moment, I knew I couldn’t continue to lie to myself, so I walked away.”
“What the hell happened?”
Bunker hesitated, then brought his eyes back to the corpse before resuming his search again, this time with the shooter’s back left pocket. “It’s a long story,” he said in a breathy voice, sounding like he wanted to talk about something else.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s really none of my business.”
“It’s okay. I know you’re just trying to make sense of all this. But killing never makes sense. It’s just something that happens in the line of duty. And as it turns out, it needed to. You just gotta push it aside and move on. Otherwise, if you dwell on it, the ghosts will never stop haunting you. Trust me, you can never let your guard down. Not for a moment. If that kind of guilt ever gains a foothold inside your soul, it will never leave. It’ll change you in ways you never imagined. I’m not sure if that makes any sense—”
“—I think I know what you mean,” she said, looking down at the man she’d killed. She let Bunker’s words sink in and fester for a bit, until they resonated with her logic. “We all have something inside us that we can’t stand. You know, that part of us that makes us sick to our stomach when it comes out. The Sheriff calls it our inner demon.”
“Exactly. But that same part—the part we can’t stand—also keeps us safe in situations like this. It’s who we are as humans, whether we like it or not. We all have a primal beast inside. It’s part of our DNA and has been since we first crawled out of the oceans and walked upright. The trick is to not let it take over. It’s a tool, nothing more. And every tool has its place. When you’re done with it, you put it away so it doesn’t—”
“—consume you.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what happened to me. The guilt took over and turned me into something worse, sending me off the deep end. It almost killed me inside and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Not even my worst enemy.”
She nodded but didn’t res
pond. She couldn’t find the words.
Bunker continued, “Nobody should ever have to walk the path of shame like I did. And do it twice. Those who do almost never recover. They spiral completely out of control. In the end, you either eat your own bullet or spend the rest of your days in jail. Somehow, I managed to crawl out of it, but the beast is still there, inside me. Fighting to gain control. I’m gonna have to live with it for the rest of my life, and I’d never want that for you. So please, give yourself time. You’ll get through it, but you can’t dwell on it. You did the right thing here. This man was going to kill both of us, like he did Tuttle. He had to be stopped.”
Before she could respond, Bunker ended his hand search. “What’s this?” he said while digging around the inside of the man’s waistband. His fingers pulled out a pouch that had been hidden inside the pants.
He opened it and pulled out a thin card. It was the size of a cigarette pack and shaped like a playing card, except its corners were dual tapered, giving it eight sides instead of four. Bunker held the item up. Its purple and yellow cartoon characters were frozen in some kind of action scene.
Daisy recognized it. “A Pokemon card?”
“That’s a first,” he answered, looking like he was about to start laughing. He turned the card over and examined it closely.
“Why would an assassin have a Pokemon card?” she asked, the tone of her voice a few octaves higher.
“He wouldn’t. It has to mean something.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll have to figure it out later,” Bunker answered before tucking it into his pocket. His fingers went into the pouch again, this time pulling out a pair of thin metal pins.
“Now that’s more like it,” she said in a steady tone. “A lock pick set.”
“This is how he got the jump on Tuttle. He snuck in through the door and then went down the hall to Tuttle’s bedroom. How many meth-heads do you know who walk around with a lock pick set?”
“There’s no doubt now,” she answered, feeling a tiny lump inside the man’s hoodie. “Hey, I think I found something. Hand me your knife.”
Bunker gave it to her. It only took a few seconds to insert the tip into the black cotton material and cut around the bulge she’d found.
Her fingers pried the material open and dug out something flat and hard. It was about the size of a flake of instant oatmeal and perfectly square. She held it up for Bunker to see. “What the hell is this?”
Bunker took it from her and studied it. After a short pause, he announced, “I think it’s a micro tracker.”
“As in GPS?”
He nodded, tucking in his lower lip. “I’ve never seen one this small before.”
“Military issue?”
“Probably. But where’s the power source?”
She fished around the shooter’s hoodie for another item, but didn’t find anything. “Could it be powered by his body somehow?”
“Maybe, but microelectronics is really not my thing. Plus, I’ve been out of the game for a while now. Who knows what they’ve developed since then?”
“So it’s one of ours?”
“Can’t tell for sure, but that would be my guess.”
The revelation took her by surprise. She ran it through her mind for a bit, then asked, “Why would our military break into Tuttle’s place and execute him?”
“That’s the million dollar question. And let’s not forget, it happened immediately after an EMP blackout and a plane going down.”
“What does it all mean?”
“It means we’ve stumbled onto something big here.”
She agreed. “Something we weren’t supposed to see.”
“What I really need is a magnifying glass,” he said in a matter-of-fact way before standing up.
Daisy did as well, then followed Bunker down the hall to Tuttle’s room.
The overhead light was on when Bunker sat on the edge of the bed and reached over for a magnifying glass sitting next to a yellow marker. He snatched it, then held it over the micro tracker lying flat in the palm of his hand.
Daisy sat next to him, waiting for the results of the man’s investigation.
Ten seconds later, Bunker finally spoke, his voice energized. “I’ve seen some impressive tactical gear in my days, but this thing is off the charts. The circuitry is absolutely microscopic and I think it even has an onboard battery unit. Plus, there are two antenna wires on the end.”
The words antenna wires brought a new idea into her brain. “Bunker? I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah, shoot.”
“If this man was being tracked, who was doing the tracking?”
Bunker stopped his examination immediately. His eyes shot wide and all the color drained from his face. He grabbed her arm. “We gotta get out of here. Right now!”
The two of them ran out of the bedroom and tore down the hallway. After a quick left and a few more strides, they bolted through the front door of Tuttle’s home, with Bunker leading the way.
The instant Daisy’s feet landed in the dirt outside, she caught a glimpse of at least a dozen silhouettes standing just beyond the old Ford trucks. Before she could redirect her focus, someone with an automatic rifle opened up on their position from the right, strafing the ground in front of their feet.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.
Bunker stopped and ducked his head. So did Daisy, just as a bank of vehicle lights snapped on, stinging her vision with beams of powerful energy.
“On your knees with your hands up,” a commanding male voice said from the darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Dustin Brown rolled out of bed and planted his feet on the chilly wood floor. It took a second for his vision to clear before he remembered where he was—a spare bedroom in a country home belonging to Albert’s mom.
He hadn’t planned to spend the night at his new friend’s house, but Albert talked him into it after they’d acquired the items from the high school’s chemistry lab.
The room was maybe ten feet square and sparsely decorated, with a three-drawer vertical dresser directly in front of him. Its top was smothered with loose stacks of faded baseball hats, plus a glass jar sitting next to the edge, half full of coins.
The single bed under his rear end had a thin white sheet, ergonomic pillow, and pastel-colored comforter that smelled dank and musty. The walls, painted an off-white color, were barren except for a three-foot-wide mirror with a flock of fingerprints dotting the bottom.
The strangest item in the room was the lamp next to the bed. It featured a howling dog’s head as the base. Dustin wasn’t sure if it was homemade, but the intricacy of the carving was impressive. The lampshade, not so much. It was faded yellow, with a fist-sized hole along the back.
The closet to his right was empty and missing a door. The hinges were there, hanging, but the rest of the frame had been orphaned. He counted eleven hangers dangling from the rod across the middle. The metal kind.
The antique hardware on the bedroom door matched the gaudy crown molding encircling the room. So did the amenities in the hall bathroom he’d used the night before. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a seashell-shaped sink, or used a toilet with an overhead tank and pull chain.
Right then, a tickle rose up in his nose. He tried to quell it but couldn’t. He sneezed, sending the tiny dust particles on the lampshade spewing into the air. They floated through the air in random patterns, swirling around each other like a swarm of bees.
Everywhere he looked, it was more of the same—dust covered everything. It was clear Albert wasn’t much of a housekeeper. But Dustin wasn’t surprised. His new pal and fellow deputy didn’t take very good care of himself, so why should his deceased mother’s home be any different?
Dustin stood up and stretched out his back. It creaked and popped, thanks to the mattress he’d slept on. It was beyond uncomfortable, especially the lumpy middle, leaving his rail-thin physique begging for an eight-hou
r do-over.
When he went to the bedroom door and pulled it open, a slip of white notepaper smacked him in the face. Albert must have taped it to the door while Dustin was sleeping, and done so precisely at eye level.
Dustin took the note and read it. The handwritten message contained a single sentence scribbled in blue ink: Meet me in the basement when you get up, Amigo.
He crumpled the note and tossed it into the corner, adding to a pile of empty plastic bottles and torn candy wrappers. The last person to stay in this room must have had a serious fetish for Ensure protein drinks and Almond Joy bars.
Dustin walked past the kitchen and found the door to the basement. He ducked under an overhead beam just inside the threshold, then started down the stairs.
The instant his foot landed on the fourth step a pungent odor punched him in the nose. It smelled of cleaning chemicals, making his eyes water. He covered his face. “Jesus, what the hell is that?”
Albert turned around and gave him an abrupt hand wave, revealing a dual respirator mask and a lab apron lashed around his generous middle.
Dustin couldn’t see much of the man’s face, but he thought Albert was smiling. The blue cleaning gloves on his hands were a new addition, but the rest of his ensemble was the same as the night before: jeans and an oversized shirt.
A string of foldout banquet tables stood behind Albert, stretching from one side of the basement to the other. They were sprinkled with lab equipment and supplies, looking as though they’d been meticulously placed and arranged, not like the junk scattered throughout the rest of the home.
Dustin wanted to continue down the stairs, but the fumes convinced him otherwise. He went to turn around, but Albert stopped him by pulling the mask off to speak.
“Grab some gloves. We got a lot of cleaning to do,” he said, snatching a second gas mask sitting on the table next to him. He tossed it like a saucer, spinning it into Dustin’s hands. “Be sure to tighten the straps on the back. Wouldn’t want you passing out before we get the lab up and running.”
Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 1, 2, and 3) Page 24
