by Hadena James
“Marshal Cain, did you ever talk to the defendant?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Not once?”
“No, ma’am. I talked to his sister and his niece at the fair a few nights before the bombing. He stood back, with his nephew. Neither wanted to be involved with the conversation I was having with his niece and sister, so I did not speak to them.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about my client?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No?” The lawyer looked confused by that. “You noticed nothing out of the ordinary about my client?”
“No, ma’am. He stood with his nephew about ten feet away from us. He watched his niece while she talked to me.”
“He wasn’t talking?”
“No, ma’am. He never said a word.”
“Would you have heard him if he had?”
“No, ma’am, but I would have seen him.”
“You would have seen him talking?”
“Yes, ma’am. He and his nephew stood about ten feet behind his niece and sister.”
“I have a report that says he stood to the side of them.”
“He was staggered in his position from his niece and sister. I had a full view of him and his nephew the entire time. However, staggered like stadium seats, is not what I would consider standing to one side. He was not in my blind spot. He was not in the blind spot of the Marshal that stood with me while I spoke with his niece.”
“And your attention was never taken off of him? Not even while bending down and speaking to his niece?”
“No ma’am.”
“Were you not looking at his niece as you spoke with her?”
“I am trained to keep a wide observational stance. Not only could I see his niece, his sister, his nephew and him, but I could see the ride behind him. It was the Tilt-A-Whirl. I also know that during my short conversation with the ladies, the Tilt-A-Whirl stopped to unload and load passengers three times. A woman walking away from a food vendor dropped her soda while attempting to eat a hotdog. Another woman, wearing a bright yellow dress, kept checking her phone. She even bumped into a teenage couple, holding hands, because she was so distracted by her phone. Yet another woman was dealing with an unruly child, no more than six years of age, who was in the midst of a tantrum. A man in a baseball cap was pick-pocketed by a young man roughly twenty-one or so.”
“You saw all that and were still able to maintain complete view of my client.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is what I am trained to do. I observe and catalogue information for future reference. As soon as the family finished talking to me, I contacted my supervisor who made sure that the pick-pocket was arrested and the man’s wallet was returned. The Marshal with me also noticed and made a comment about the woman on her phone being a menace because she wasn’t watching where she was going.”
“Can you see everything, Marshal Cain?”
“No ma’am, I’m not omnipotent, just observant,” this got me another round of nervous laughs. I turned my face to look at the jury for the first time since I had come into the court room. “As a US Marshal working for the SCTU, being observant is required. My ability to observe and process my situation, regardless of how much external stimuli is available, is directly related to my life-span. Failure to be observant, despite extraneous noise, crowds of people, and loud situations, would mean my death. Since I am very interested in living, I would have observed your client speaking if he had ever opened his mouth.”
“Are you aware that my client hears voices, Marshal Cain?”
“Claims to hear voices,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“Your client claims to hear voices. Unless you’ve heard the voices he hears for yourself, you cannot state, without a doubt that he hears voices. You can only tell me that he claims to hear voices.”
“Fine,” she looked put off. “Are you aware that my client claims to hear voices?”
“I am, but I have not observed your client having conversations with himself.”
“The night of the bombing, you are the Marshal that identified my client as the bomber. If he wasn’t talking to himself, how did you know it was him?”
“Your client did not react like anyone else at the fair. Most of the bystanders were fleeing. They stampeded towards the exits. A few stood perfectly still, shell shocked by what was happening and possibly unable to move. Even the first responders with all their training showed signs of disbelief. However, your client was very calm, like a man out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. Considering the situation was something akin to a war zone, this seemed out of place. Add in the fact that he ran only after making eye contact with me and I came to the logical conclusion that he was our primary suspect at that time.”
“Are you a mental health professional?”
“Not in the least, but I’ve had experience with how people react in stressful situations. Furthermore, if your client does hear voices, then The Fortress would be a better destination for him than a mental facility. At The Fortress, he will get a cell to himself, free time that is completely supervised and the very best medical attention available. Also, the guards are not your average prison guards, The Fortress employs US Marshals as guards. As such, the guards are more sensitive to the needs of those in their charge as well as being better paid, better trained and less likely to allow abuse.”
“My client needs mental health care,” the lawyer shook her head at me.
“The Fortress employs an army of psychiatrists and psychologists.”
“That may be, but The Fortress is an automatic life sentence. When he is properly medicated and no longer a danger to others, he could not be released.”
“Your client, properly medicated or not, will always be a threat to others. Speaking as a person who has dealt with plenty of killers, your client was particularly brutal in his method of attack, lack of care about the victim type, and lack of empathy after the fact.”
“Nothing more,” the lawyer said.
“As I attended to the dead and dying, your client meandered around, sipping a lemonade and watching as bodies were torn to shreds and blood turned the dry earth into a hellish fertile plain. He cannot be medicated enough to stop those impulses.”
“I said nothing further,” the lawyer stood up.
“Marshal Cain,” the judge looked at me, “you may step down.”
“Of course, Your Honor.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nick the Carnival Bomber was sentenced to The Fortress. A group of US Marshals would be escorting him there at the end of the day. The SCTU and VCU were celebrating. We had told our armed guard that we would be late returning home. We were going for dinner, as a whole.
Surprisingly, Malachi and Gabriel sat next to each other. They didn’t talk, but somehow an easy truce had formed between them. Whatever had transpired between them in the bomb shelter had formed an alliance. Part of me wondered how many laws they had broken. I could see Malachi breaking lots of them, but Gabriel not so much. He wasn’t a die-hard, by the books, kind of guy, but he played pretty tight to them. Leading us meant he had to, otherwise we would run amok.
Dinner was served. A waitress and two waiters carried out several large service trays. They passed around plates of spaghetti, lasagna, chicken parmesan, and who knew what else. I had gotten a creamy mushroom Alfredo with extra roasted garlic. If any serial killing vampires came my way I’d only need to breathe on them.
I stifled a giggle. In a way, all vampires would be serial killers. Being immortal didn’t change that, feeding on humans would only reconfirm it and each kill would be another tally mark, even if the victim rose from the grave days or even weeks later.
Warmth sprayed my face. Screaming filled my ears. A heavy coppery scent overtook the smell of food. My creamy Alfredo was tinged a dark red and had bits of something not edible in it.
My body reacted. I rolled to the ground and under the table. As we all dove for cover, I felt the wind rush past me. The
table made a loud bang as the side of it hit the floor. The table bounced as the edge connected with the hard tiles.
My heart slowed. The blood in my body seemed to stop flowing. The calm came over me faster than it ever had before. My gaze surveyed the area. One VCU agent was dead. His body had fallen into a heap on the floor. He had been sitting directly across from me. I touched my head and my fingers came away warm and slick.
Gunshots followed. The first rattle as an empty clip hit the ground. A second followed within a second. My own gun was drawn, but I didn’t have a target.
The table splintered, showering wooden splinters on all of us. Another person gave a yelp. I didn’t turn to look, my eyes scanned the buildings across from us. Another shot would help, reveal the muzzle fire that I was now searching for.
The third shot buzzed past me, like a bee in my ear. It wasn’t close enough to hurt, just hear and feel. I hadn’t seen the muzzle fire.
“Cain!” Gabriel shouted. “Get out the back, one building over on the roof.”
I hadn’t seen it, but Gabriel had.
“We’ll provide cover,” Malachi told me.
A barrage of gunfire was now aimed at that building. I hoped no one was home in the lower floors. With effort, I navigated my way through the kitchen, out the backdoor and into a street. My feet took me forward without thinking. I moved two buildings up before crossing across the street. The sniper wasn’t facing me, I wasn’t even in his peripheral here. I found a door and went through it, setting off an emergency alarm.
Cursing myself quietly, I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Malachi would have run faster. This pushed me harder, making up for my small stature. I reached an exit marked ROOF ACCESS and shoved through it, gun drawn.
Aside from a handful of spent shell casings, the roof was empty. I moved closer to the edge.
“Clear!” I shouted down to the men below me. From where I stood, I could watch as they swarmed from the restaurant. They coordinated efforts with hand gestures and one-word shouts. I stayed where I was, taking advantage of the height. The city below me was deadly silent except for the platoon of federal officers.
Paramedics arrived, the only sign of life that kept it from looking like a ghost town. Kansas City is pretty, in its own way. The oddball neighborhoods that surrounded downtown were a mix of sketchy and great. This one was sort of Italian with a touch of Hungarian and Latvian. The front of the Italian restaurant was destroyed. Glass littered the sidewalks and streets. Next to it was a grocery store, but the writing was in a language I didn’t understand.
Residents were being evacuated on the floors below me. The federal agents would be searching their homes while they were huddled together in the chilly October evening. The chill was settling into me and I moved around to keep warm. I considered moving off the roof, but the lighting was still good. Moving into the building would cause me to lose my vantage point.
“Medic!” A head appeared out of a window two floors below me.
“See anything?” Lucas yelled up to me.
“No,” I yelled back. How had a restaurant full of federal agents lost a guy with a rifle? Was our incompetence showing through? I supposed it had something to do with being in the middle of a meal.
“Come down,” Gabriel had opened the door behind me. He was shaking his head, his face was crimson with anger. “You look like an extra in a horror movie.”
“I can see the roads from here,” I answered.
“He’s gone,” Gabriel said. “We found his rifle.”
I cursed again under my breath. Slipping my gun into the hip holster, I followed Gabriel into the warm, dark confines of the building. There was something in the way Gabriel walked and carried himself that set my hackles up. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
We exited the building and entered the street. The injured had been taken off, three bodies were still in the restaurant.
“Ace,” Gabriel looked at me. I raised an eyebrow. “He got Michael.”
I frowned. The words sounded strange, as if I had misunderstood them. Xavier was standing near one of the bodies. Blood had soaked through a cloth that had been put over it. Poison green tennis shoes stuck out the bottom with dark slacks and black socks visible.
“Let me see,” I told Xavier. Michael was my friend. I wasn’t sure of his role in the SCTU, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. It also didn’t mean that I didn’t value him. Plus, he’d helped keep me sane more than once. Xavier moved slowly, pulling back the cloth. Whatever I had expected, this wasn’t it.
A small hole dribbled blood from below Michael’s left eye. However, the floor was slick and sticky. Someone had bothered to close his eyes. His jaw was slack, his mouth hung open just a little.
There would be no miraculous resurrections, no misidentification of bodies, and there weren’t hundreds of dead clogging the system, making identifications sketchy at best. Gabriel would be notifying Michael’s family, if he had one. He’d never spoken of them. Like the rest of us, his secrets were his to keep until he decided otherwise. We had never pried. No, I had never pried.
Death was a very finalized state. Grief was more fluid. Right now, I was stuck in the calm. No emotions came to me, despite the fact that I knew there should have been.
Thankfully, Lucas had no such problem. He yelled wordlessly, grabbed hold of a table and flipped it. It crashed to the floor, breaking into pieces. Malachi stepped into the room. He lifted the sheet on the other two bodies. One had been a driver for us. The other was a VCU agent.
This sniper had just made it personal, very personal. Not just for me or the SCTU, but for Malachi Blake and the VCU. It didn’t matter who caught him, he’d suffer a bit before being put in a cell. Possibly a lot, depending on who actually got their hands on him. I was far less inclined to vigilantism than Malachi, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t knock out a tooth or two by accident putting him in cuffs or trying to get him into a car.
“Malachi,” Gabriel said his name like it was warning.
“I’m fine,” Malachi answered, standing. He walked over to me and touched my head. The blood had dried and I hadn’t bleed all that much, especially considering it was a scalp wound. However, I felt the urge to jerk away from his tenderly prying fingers and give him a piece of my mind. I didn’t. It would only enrage him further. Malachi’s rabbit hole was a lot deeper and darker than my own.
Xavier walked over, grabbed my hair and turned my head roughly. He pulled out a flashlight as he kept my neck curved. The light danced at the edges of my vision as he ran it over the wound. I knew he was angry, partly at me, partly at the world. I hadn’t told him I’d been grazed. Michael had died. He had every right to be angry, but taking it out on me was not a good idea.
I jerked away from him. His face softened as he realized why. Xavier closed his eyes and sighed.
“It’s closed, you can live without stitches,” he said softly.
“And you?” I pointed to his hand.
“It’s literally a splinter from a piece of table. It will stop bleeding on its own,” Xavier answered.
“What now?” Malachi asked.
“Now,” Gabriel sighed. “We track. Aislinn, Lucas and Xavier go home.”
“I refuse,” I told him.
“It was an order.”
“Not one that I’m going to obey. If you and Malachi can go, so can I,” I told him.
“Me too,” Xavier said.
“You’re bleeding,” Gabriel pointed out. “Ace hasn’t been cleared to resume work and neither has Lucas. I can’t have either of you in the field.”
“I’m bleeding from a splinter,” Xavier protested.
“But someone has to take them home,” Gabriel said.
“To hell with that,” Lucas turned to look at the smaller man. He moved and it felt like the earth shook with him. “I’m going.”
“Fun,” Malachi said, heading out the door. “We have armored SUVs. I’ll take one with Marshal McMichaels
and Agent Smith. You three can take the other one.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
For three days, we didn’t sleep. We ate only when necessary. Tracking dogs had been brought in and sent home. The news had posted a reward notice for information. All we had to go on was that he was a white male that was good with a rifle. Not much of a description for an APB.
We came home shortly before dawn on the fourth day. Kansas City had been searched by the SCTU and VCU like never before. More than one person would be filing reports with civil rights groups. We’d chased every lead and come up empty.
Now, we had a few hours to sleep. My bed was welcoming as I slipped between the blankets and sheets. I set an alarm on my phone and put it next to me.
Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers woke me up. My body moved without my mind thinking. My fingers turned off the alarm, grabbed a gun and my phone, then my feet took me to the bathroom.
The water was hot and felt good on my tired muscles. It eased my mind about our failure, at least temporarily. When the water began to run cold, I turned it off and stepped back into my bedroom.
A black dress lay on the bed. It hadn’t been there earlier. I wrapped the towel tighter. Black tights and short heeled black shoes with silver buckles finished the ensemble. Picking up the dress, a silver necklace fell onto the bed. An effigy of Set hung from the chain. It was cold in my hand. I fastened it in place first, foregoing my usual talisman.
The dress had long sleeves with small, silver buttons on the front. The neckline was rounded and tastefully cut so that it didn’t plunge or show too much cleavage, even on me. The material was soft and felt cool against my skin. The tag had been removed for my comfort. The tights were a lightly more difficult. I tugged them into place, hating the things, but realizing that they covered the scars. Finally, I added shoes.
“Under different circumstances, I’d tell you how beautiful you look,” Trevor said as I stepped from the bedroom.
“Thanks,” I told him.
“The pendent was Malachi’s idea.”
