The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Carlson jogged through the trees. McCall caught up and stayed a hundred yards behind him. Tonight Carlson was jumpier. He looked over his shoulder several times, but he never saw McCall. The moon was out and bathed the park with pale radiance. Carlson was on the lookout for police cars. McCall was certain that a police presence in the park had been very much stepped up, but neither of them saw any police vehicles on the roads they transversed.

  Carlson was taking a circuitous route that he had obviously memorized by heart. He ran across the bridge spanning a small rushing river that swept over myriad large stones and boulders. McCall waited until he’d reached the other side, then ran over the bridge after him. At the end of it McCall paused. For a moment he’d lost his quarry. Then he saw Carlson’s figure running through the dark trees to his right.

  McCall again kept at least a hundred yards behind him. The young man came to a stop in a heavily wooded area on the edge of a ribbon of moonlit road. He shrugged off his backpack and took something from it. Moonlight flared along a knife blade. He waited. McCall knelt beside a tree and brought out the Glock with its silencer. He held it in his right hand, resting the hand on his knee.

  He waited.

  Six minutes later a young woman came jogging down the road. She had long brunette hair piled up on her head, held together with a large plastic clasp. She was in her early twenties, wearing an American University sweatshirt and gray running shorts. She had on Nike Women Air Pegasus running shoes in gray with green laces and a maroon Nike swoosh. She was keeping up a good pace, regulating her breathing, looking straight ahead.

  Carlson came out of the darkness of the trees so suddenly the girl barely had time to react. He grabbed her shoulder with his left hand and kneed her in the stomach. She gasped and fell to the ground. In his right hand Carlson had a Japanese Ginsu Hanaita Damascus steak knife. He pulled off the jogger’s plastic clasp. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. He dragged her into the bushes by her hair.

  McCall ran forward to get into a better position. He saw Carlson throw the student to the ground. She tried to get up. He punched her in the mouth. Blood spit out between her teeth. She fell back. He put a knee onto her chest and the point of the Ginsu knife against her throat. He said something to her that McCall couldn’t hear.

  She stopped struggling, not that she had much choice with his knee crushing the air out of her lungs. She looked from the knife blade at her throat up into Carlson’s face. Carlson was smiling. He undid the belt of his jeans, then unzipped them. She tried to heave him off her, but he was too strong. He pressed the knife point harder against her throat. A trickle of blood ran down from it. She stayed still.

  She was terrified.

  Carlson said something more to her. She stared up at him, still gasping breath into her constricted lungs. She shook her head. He moved the knife point from her throat to just below her left eye. He spoke softly to her. The smile was gone. McCall didn’t need to hear the words to know what he said: Do what I tell you or I’ll cut your eye out.

  He took his knee off her chest and knelt at her side, the knife still below her left eye.

  She pulled down her running shorts and her panties.

  Carlson climbed on top of her, maneuvering himself to enter her.

  McCall took careful aim with the Glock and shot him in the right thigh. The phht of the gunshot couldn’t have been heard ten feet away. Blood spurted from Carlson’s leg. He grabbed at it, losing his balance and rolling off the girl. The knife fell to the ground as he grabbed his leg with both hands.

  The jogger rolled away, pulling up her panties and running shorts as she got to her feet. It looked like she was going to bolt. Then she turned back and looked down at Carlson who was writhing in agony on the ground, clutching his right thigh. The steak knife was inches away from his right hand.

  Kick the knife out of his reach! McCall thought.

  The girl stayed motionless, still gasping air into her lungs, staring down at her attacker.

  Take out your cell phone! McCall shouted at her in his head. Call 911!

  But she didn’t do that.

  The student reached down and picked up the Ginsu Hanaita Damascus steak knife from the ground.

  Carlson looked up at her.

  She fell to her knees and stabbed her would-be rapist eight times in the stomach and chest.

  McCall was stunned.

  Carlson’s body went into convulsions, then it stopped moving.

  The jogger straightened and dropped the bloodied steak knife beside her attacker’s body. She regulated her breathing. Then she took her cell phone out of the back pocket of her running shorts and calmly dialed 911.

  McCall knew there must be at least four patrol cars in Rock Creek Park, all waiting for a call like this. He was pretty sure Carlson was dead, but he didn’t want to take the chance that she’d missed his heart.

  He waited.

  A white cop car with the red stripes on it, flashing lights, no siren, drove fast down the road behind the girl. Another radio car came from the other direction, red lights turning. Both cars converged on the student and uniformed cops jumped out of them.

  Time for McCall to leave.

  He untwisted the silencer and dropped it into his pocket along with the Glock 17.

  Then he disappeared through the trees, ran across the bridge over the fast-flowing river, and made his way back to the small parking area where he’d left the rented Kia. He slid into the driver’s side, returned the Glock 17 and the suppressor to the padded envelope, and put the envelope back into the glove compartment.

  A third police car passed him, lights turning, siren on.

  McCall drove back to the St. Regis Hotel. He could not get the picture out of his mind of the student kneeling beside Carlson and stabbing him. Once or twice, okay, but eight times seemed a little excessive to McCall.

  But if you want a job done right …

  All she had needed to do was step away from him and call 911. There was no way Carlson could have got to his feet and attacked her again. If McCall had wanted the rapist dead, he’d have shot him in the head. As it was, the police would be looking for an accomplice. Who else could have shot him in the leg? Maybe an accomplice who had got cold feet or a sudden attack of conscience.

  McCall had made a mistake with Carlson. He should have killed him when he’d had the chance, not allowed him to go on and rape other young women. McCall hadn’t thought it was up to him to make that judgment call. He had only been protecting Karen Armstrong, someone he knew, and not even that well. But he should have taken care of business. Now this AU student would have to live with the fact that she’d killed a man for the rest of her life.

  McCall brought back the image of her stabbing the sadistic rapist.

  Maybe it wouldn’t bother her that much.

  * * *

  Emma Marshall picked McCall up at the St. Regis the next morning. He’d left the Kia Rio in the parking lot for the Hertz guy. Emma drove a 2007 Cadillac XLR Convertible in metallic silver. On their way to Dulles, McCall handed her the padded envelope with the Glock 17 and the silencer in it.

  “Don’t forget the most important item.”

  McCall handed her her iPad. She put the iPad and the Glock 17 and silencer into the glove compartment.

  “How many bullets out of the magazine?” she asked him.

  “One.”

  “I’ll replace it with a full mag. Control will count.”

  She didn’t ask him who he had used the bullet on.

  “Things are quiet in Prague,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “So you’re not going to be Chatty Cathy on the way to the airport. Fair enough. I guess I can talk enough for both of us. Just ask my friends. Did you hear about our serial rapist? They got him last night.”

  “I heard something about it on the news in my hotel room this morning.”

  “Yeah, he attacked another AU student on one of those jogging paths in Rock Creek Park. Why do young girls j
og at fucking midnight in a dark park? It’s like when they run back into a creepy old house in the movies where they know there’s a maniac in a scream mask wielding a big knife. Or Sigourney Weaver going back into the spaceship to get her fucking cat when there’s a monster in there ready to eat her.”

  “No one thinks it’s ever going to happen to them.”

  “Yeah, well our rapist picked the wrong jogger. She turned the tables on him somehow. Stabbed him to death.”

  “That’s what I heard on the news.”

  “Good for her. I presume I’m not to tell Control that you were in contact? I mean, not that you borrowed the spare Glock he keeps in his safe, but you were passing through D.C. and met me for a drink?”

  “He’d know there was something more to it than that.”

  “Why? You could fancy me. I always thought you did.”

  “You could be right.”

  “And that’s where you’re going to leave that little bit of sexual innuendo?”

  McCall didn’t answer. She smiled and shook her head.

  “Control says you’re a bartender now in New York City. How’s that working out for you?”

  “Hard on the legs.”

  “You have highly trained skills. You should be using them.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  He didn’t elaborate and she knew better not to push. She stopped talking, which for Emma was a feat of self-control. Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to the terminal at Dulles.

  “Thanks,” McCall said.

  Emma looked at him.

  “When was the last time you got laid?”

  “Four nights ago.”

  A grin spread over her face. “That puts me in my place. Lucky girl.”

  She gave McCall a chaste kiss on the cheek.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me to take care of myself?” McCall asked.

  “You always do.”

  McCall got out of the Cadillac, picked up his carry-on bag from the backseat, and walked into the terminal to catch a 12:40 P.M. flight to New York City.

  * * *

  McCall took a cab from JFK to Crosby Street and asked the driver to wait. He went up to his apartment, dropped his carry-on bag in the bedroom, and made sure the apartment was exactly as he’d left it. It was. He took the cab to Seventieth and Ninth Avenue. He waited across from the high school on the corner. Katia was not in the crowd waiting to pick up their teenagers from school. That probably wasn’t unusual. McCall had not got the impression that she picked her daughter up every day. She was seventeen.

  But most days.

  A bell rang shrilly and the front doors to the school were thrown open as if a hundred students had been waiting breathlessly just inside for that bell to ring. McCall watched them all stream out, some of them going up to parents, others walking down the street, others hanging in groups, some of them lighting up cigarettes, most of them on their smartphones.

  The last ones came out. The whole process took about twenty-five minutes.

  Natalya was not among them. That, in itself, was also not startling. She was a fragile girl. There were any number of reasons she might not have gone to school today. When no more students came out of the double doors into the Manhattan sunshine, McCall hailed another cab and took it to Chase Granger’s apartment building.

  McCall had no trouble breaking into Chase’s apartment. It was in shadows. McCall didn’t have a gun with him. He’d given away his Sig Sauer 227 to Danil Gershon in the subway tunnels below the city and he’d lost the Beretta Storm 9 mm and the Ruger .357 Magnum in Prague. He could’ve taken the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver out of the microwave in his kitchen, but he liked leaving it there. He hadn’t been expecting to find anything wrong.

  He’d need to get another firearm.

  He walked into Granger’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made and had not been slept in. McCall opened the closet door. Not many suits or coats hanging in there. He opened a few drawers. Bereft of underwear and socks. McCall nodded. Granger had moved in with Katia and Natalya for the time he was gone. Their new apartment at the Dakota had four bedrooms, two main ones and two guest rooms, so that wouldn’t have been a problem. He’d told Chase to observe them, not move in with them. A little overkill, but that was Chase, and it did keep him close to them.

  McCall glanced at his watch. Just before 6:00 P.M.

  He took another cab to the Dolls nightclub.

  There was the usual crowd outside being held back by the bouncer. McCall moved to the front. The chunky Brooklyn kid didn’t even make eye contact this time. He just stepped aside and McCall walked in.

  The nightclub was jammed with clones of the young people waiting outside. There was the usual crowd of good-looking movers and shakers at the cocktail tables, at the bar, a few of them dancing with the girls. Abuse was playing his music at levels only dogs should be able to hear.

  McCall saw Melody at the brass railing separating the cocktail tables from the area in front of the bar. He walked toward her, sweeping the big room. He did not see Kuzbec, or Salam or Rachid, any of the usual suspects. He glanced into the big alcove as he passed it.

  Bakar Daudov was in there with three men McCall had not seen before. They looked Chechen. No one was saying anything except Samuel Clemens, who was talking animatedly, with his usual energy, but without the forced camaraderie. He wasn’t telling a crackle-barrel homespun story for the amusement of the Chechens. He was earnest and demanding. Probably wanted to take over the Manhattan nightclub. Add it to his new nightclub in Fort Worth. Start an empire. The atmosphere in the alcove seemed deadly.

  McCall was sure this postmortem was over the demise of the boss, Borislav Kirov. They must know by now he had been shot to death outside Prague.

  Bakar Daudov glanced up as McCall passed. His eyes were sunk in his head. His complexion was sallow. Their eyes locked, but there was no expression on Daudov’s face. He didn’t move.

  Then McCall was past him. He walked up to Melody at the railing.

  “Is Katia here?”

  “No, her shift doesn’t start until eight o’clock. Is something wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine,” McCall said. “When you see her, ask her to call me.”

  “Bobby Maclain, right?”

  “That’s right. She has my cell number.”

  McCall started to turn away. Melody caught his arm, turning him back.

  “I was very ashamed that you saw me with that man,” she whispered.

  “I’m not here to judge you.”

  “I only want to dance, like Katia, but Daudov says if I don’t do what he tells me I’ll be kicked out to the street.”

  “Mr. Daudov might be worried about his own job right now.”

  McCall gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and walked out of Dolls and caught a cab to the Dakota.

  He took the elevator up to the fourth floor and walked down the corridor to the corner apartment. The door was very slightly ajar.

  McCall slowly pushed it open. He was greeted with silence, except for the ponderous soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. The kind of silence that said no one was home. He walked through the hallway into the big living room. He had never actually been to Katia’s new apartment. He looked around at her furniture and paintings on the walls. There was a trace of her distinct perfume in the air.

  McCall walked into the master bedroom. The bed was made. Everything was spotless and tidy. But it did look lived-in. There was a pile of books on the bedside table to be read, bottles of perfume on the bureau, and her midnight-blue dancing dress for Dolls lying at the foot of the bed.

  He was about to leave the room when a framed picture on the other bedside table caught his eye. He walked to it, his pace slowing as he recognized the people in the photograph. He picked it up. There was Katia, looking virtually the same, standing outside the Vienna Opera House. Beside her was Natalya at eight years old. Holding her hand was Alexei Berezovsky. Across the bottom of Katia’s figu
re she had written, “I love you, Alexei.” Across the bottom of Natalya’s figure, in a child’s scrawl, was written, “Love you, Daddy.”

  Now McCall understood why Berezovsky had instructed Kirov to send his enforcers to kill him. Not just because Berezovsky thought he was back in the game and threatening his imminent assassination mission. Because he had stepped over the line and had been with his wife, or ex-wife; McCall couldn’t know if they’d ever divorced. Probably not. He had rescued Berezovsky’s daughter from Bakar Daudov, an irony McCall was certain Berezovsky could not live with. McCall was an old enemy. Interference with his family, even if they were estranged from him, was an insult that the Chechen could not tolerate. Katia had never mentioned him to McCall, but why would she? He was a well-meaning bartender who had come to her aid. Even when she realized he was something more than that, she would never have associated him with her vicious husband.

  McCall set the photo back in its place on the bedside table and walked into Natalya’s bedroom. Not so neat and tidy. Video games and DVDs were strewn around a PlayStation and a TV set, clothes scattered on a bed, not made up yet, and piled up on an old antique chair.

  McCall moved down the corridor to the first guest bedroom. Empty. He walked into the second guest bedroom. This one had been lived in. The bed was not made, the sheet rumpled and splattered with flecks of blood. Bottles from a bureau were smashed on the floor. There was the overpowering scent of Granger’s cologne.