The Avenged

by Charles Prandy

  Seventy-five

  WHEN THE BRIGHT LIGHT hit the boat, I immediately opened my eyes and, for a split second, thought I had a chance of making it out of there alive. But then I heard a loud bang and then felt searing heat slice the left side of my cheek. The pain was immense and I fell backwards off the boat and into the Bay. I heard the rattle of gunfire before I started sinking into the dark water. I felt semi-lifeless, worn down and beaten. I didn’t want to live anymore, so all I needed to do was wait and death would take me like it had taken Theresa. Just wait and relax. Soon it would come.

  I thought about swimming to the surface, but fought against it. They won. They had beaten me. There was nothing left to fight for now that Theresa was gone. My lungs burned as buoyancy started to carry my body back to the surface. That’s okay, I thought. I’ll be dead by the time I reach the top.

  Just then, I saw another light above, touching various angles of the water before it hit me. They found me. But it’s too late. Here I come, Theresa. I hope you’ll be waiting for me. Just as I opened my mouth and inhaled, someone crashed into the water and grabbed my arm.

  Part Six: The Sniper Returns

  Seventy-six

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I immediately felt a soreness throbbing from my left cheek. Instinctively, I raised my hand to the left side of my face and felt tiny whisker-like stubbles penetrated into my skin in the form of a long line that went from the front of my cheek to the back of my jawline.

  What happened?

  The room was dark and the bed that I was lying on was firm, similar to my bed at home. But I sensed that this wasn’t my room.

  “Theresa?” I called out. My voice was low and hoarse.

  Theresa didn’t respond. I heard Henry’s baby bark to my left. I turned, and immediately Henry was licking my lips and chin.

  The licking tickled a little, which made me smile. But soon the pressure on the left side of my face grew more intense, which forced me to turn my head.

  Just then, as if a Mack truck crashed into my brain, I suddenly remembered tripping over Theresa’ dead body, the gun aimed at me on the boat, being shot in the face, and then drowning in the Bay. But I hadn’t drowned. I was alive.

  Theresa! Oh God, my Theresa.

  I quickly sat up in bed, looking around the dark room. Where am I? If I’m not home, how did Henry get in bed with me?

  I threw the blanket off my body and realized that I was naked. Where are my clothes? I swung my legs to the right and let them hang off the bed until they touched what felt like a wood floor.

  “Hello?” I called out. Immediately, I felt a sharp pain shoot from my left cheek. I winced and covered the sore spot of my face with my left palm. In doing so, I felt something pinch the inside of my arm. I ran my fingers near the middle of my arm and felt what I believed to be a catheter.

  “What the hell?”

  I needed to find the light switch. I stood up and stretched my arms out in the dark and made my way to the nearest wall and started feeling for the light switch. I bumped into a desk and found a small lamp. I turned on the lamp, which lit the room dimly. What I saw next made me gasp and raise my hand to my mouth in disbelief.

  I was in a studio apartment that couldn’t have been any larger than five hundred square feet. To my right was the double bed that I had recently been in and where Henry was comfortably cuddled next to a pillow. The bed sat about a foot away from a window that had a navy blue blanket taped to the wall, covering it completely. On the opposite end of the apartment was a small makeshift kitchen with small white cabinets, a two-burner stove, a sink and small refrigerator. Next to the kitchen was the entrance door to the apartment. What I found shocking was what was on the wooden desk.

  Wigs, fake mustaches and beards, different style hats stacked upon one another, fake noses and a tray full of makeup. To the left of the desk was a body suit, propped against the desk on the floor, that when worn made a person appear slightly heavier than what they really were.

  Over top of the desk, taped to the wall, were large pictures of Faraji Owusu, Stephen Carter, Judge Frank Peters and the man who had killed Theresa. There were five pictures of each of them in different settings. Two pictures captured both Faraji and Stephen walking together through Dupont Circle. Two other pictures captured both the judge and Theresa’s killer walking in front of the courthouse.

  I walked to the desk, not caring that I was naked, and examined what else was there. I saw a couple of IDs that bore the same face, but wearing different disguises with different names and different states of residence. I immediately recognized the face as Harvey Lindenberg.

  I looked around the room again and saw that my clothes were neatly folded and sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. I quickly got dressed, and as I finished, I heard keys enter the door knob.

  Seventy-seven

  THE SNIPER STOOD IN the doorway and slowly closed the door behind him. One hand held two plastic grocery bags, which the sniper placed on the kitchen counter. He wore a red Washington Redskins baseball cap and black-rimmed glasses. A fake goatee covered his upper lip and chin. After placing the bags on the counter, he turned to Jacob and through the dim light, they stared at each other for a few seconds before the sniper spoke the first word.

  The sniper wasn’t sure how Jacob would react upon seeing him, but he had believed, when he pulled him out of the Bay, that this was the safest place for Jacob to be. They shared a common enemy who had taken away someone close to them. Jacob would now have to see things through the sniper’s eyes.

  “You must be hungry,” the sniper said. “You haven’t eaten in two days.”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” Jacob solemnly responded.

  “Well, soon you will be. I got us some food.” The sniper motioned to the two grocery bags.

  “So you pulled me from the water?”

  The sniper nodded.

  “Why?”

  “You didn’t deserve to die like that. I saw what they did to your wife, and I couldn’t allow them to kill you as well.”

  Jacob’s head sunk and he staggered to find the bed. “You saw…Theresa?” His words were partially covered by sobs.

  The sniper nodded again. He felt Jacob’s pain. He knew how it felt to lose someone close at the hands of another person.

  “Where are we? Jacob asked.

  “In Silver Spring, Maryland.”

  Jacob rubbed his eyes and looked up at the sniper. “What happened to her? Where’s her body?”

  “Listen,” the sniper said, “you can’t go back. They think you’re dead. Your name has been smeared all through the media.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been here for nineteen hours. I kept you unconscious with a drug called Diprivan so that your body could rest from the wound.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I used to be a nurse.”

  Jacob rubbed his left cheek again and realized that he was feeling stitches.

  “For the past nineteen hours, the Coast Guard has been scouring the Bay for your body. Your name has been linked to the Gomez drug family and they’re saying that you were one of the men that opened fire on the Coast Guard before you were shot and killed. They’re also saying that there’s strong evidence that you killed your wife. The media has made a circus of all of this.”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I have someone on the inside who told me what was going down. I knew they were going to try and set you up on the boat. ” The sniper lowered his head. “They’ve done this before,” he softly said.

  “What do you mean?” Jacob asked.

  The sniper raised his head, “My brother…they killed my brother.”

  Seventy-eight

  I WASN’T SURE HOW I felt at the moment. The life that I had once known was gone. The beautiful wife that I had loved since the day we met was dead. My career as a police officer was over, and if I showed my face in public, I’d more than likely be arrested
and charged with murder, drug trafficking and a host of other offenses.

  What complicated things more was the fact that I was now face-to-face with Harvey Lindenberg, who had killed Faraji Owusu in cold blood. But he was also the single reason why I was alive. If it wasn’t for Harvey, I would have been shot in the church or drowned in the Bay.

  “Why did they kill your brother?”

  The sniper took a step back, leaned against the kitchen counter and stuffed his hands into his front pockets.

  “He used to work for the law firm of Owusu and Carter. His official title was paralegal, but unofficially, he helped them smuggle weapons in and out of the country. Before working for the firm, he was in the military; worked for the Army as a sniper and could shoot a fly off a cow’s nose from a thousand yards away. After he got out of the military, he met a guy named Mac Truck.”

  “Mac Truck?”

  “From what I understood, Mac was a big black guy, about six-four, and over three hundred pounds, hence the name Mac Truck. He was small time compared to the law firm. He fenced stolen weapons across the city and brought my brother in as a partner. He thought that my brother could help him attract a broader clientele.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to picture in my head what Mac Truck would have looked like. Washington, D.C., was no stranger to its gun problems, but it was making a valiant effort at gun control and getting guns off the streets.

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” I replied. “We’ve busted dozens of weapons smugglers in the city but none of them fit that description.”

  “It helps when you have connections from the inside,” the sniper responded. “Which leads me to the law firm.”

  “Stephen and Faraji?”

  The sniper nodded. “Stephen worked with Mac a few times, helping him out with some,” the sniper formed quotation marks with his fingers, “legal matters. Mac introduced Stephen to my brother, and within a short period of time, my brother had proven his worth and then was introduced to the firm. Because of his military background and good understanding of weapons, my brother was a perfect fit. He was dumb, willing and able.”

  “So what happened to get himself killed?”

  “The bastard finally got a heart. He had just come back from a trip to Africa and he told me how he witnessed a boy, no older than twelve, shoot down a family with an AK-47 machine gun he’d gotten from the judge’s weapons. He told Mac what he witnessed and said that he couldn’t be a part of the operation anymore. He made the mistake of telling Mac that he was going to go to the Feds to turn himself in and bring down the whole operation. Two days later, my brother and Mac were found shot to death in an apartment.”

  A thought suddenly popped off in my head. Nearly two years ago, I remembered two men that had been murdered in an apartment, execution style, with their arms tied behind their backs, shot in the head. The case was thought to have been a drug deal gone bad, as cocaine and marijuana were found throughout the house.

  “I think I remember the shooting. A big black male and a white male were shot execution-style about two years ago.”

  I stood up and paced in front of the bed as I recalled the investigation.

  “The black male victim’s name was Reginald Johnson, and the white male’s name was Scott Duffy.”

  “Yeah, Scott,” the sniper responded.

  I visualized the crime scene photos as I paced the floor. The white male wore a military-style crew cut and was fairly built. The black male was bald with a thick beard. I hadn’t handled the investigation, but had read the reports due to the way the men were killed. I remembered believing that the men were killed by professionals, but that theory was never proven. The case went cold, and like a lot of homicides in D.C., was forgotten.

  As I started remembering the reports, I curiously stopped pacing and looked at the sniper.

  “Wait a minute, something’s not right. Scott Duffy wasn’t survived by a brother. He only had a sister. His parents were deceased and there was no other next of kin. If I remember correctly, his sister’s name was–”

  The sniper stood up from the counter and took off the hat and glasses and removed the fake goatee. Her voice rose an octave when she said, “Angela. His sister’s name was Angela Duffy.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. My eyes went wide and my mouth hung open. “Now I really need a drink.”

  Seventy-nine

  DUMBFOUNDED, STUPEFIED AND BLINDSIDED were the best words to describe my emotions. I just couldn’t believe it. All of my time and energy had been spent looking for a man when, in fact, the sniper was a woman. Brilliant. I looked at the desk and at all of the makeup, wigs, fake beards and now everything clicked. The bodysuit that made her build look broader faked everyone into thinking she was a man.

  If she had left the city after killing Faraji, no one would have been the wiser. Every resource had been spent looking for a man.

  Now, as I looked at her without costume, I saw the feminine features of her face that I previously hadn’t noticed. Her forehead wasn’t squared like most men’s and her jawline was soft, not rigid. She wasn’t as husky as she was in the bodysuit, but I saw that her build was hard under her shirt, as if she were a gym rat. However, the voice—how could she have disguised her voice so I wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was a woman trying to sound like a man?

  “I can see that you’re trying to figure it out,” Angela said. Her voice still didn’t quite sound like a woman.

  “Yeah, you got that right.”

  “For the past seven months, I’ve been taking testosterone injections, a hormone that women take when they want to change their gender. I’m not a transgender or anything like that, but I knew that if I made the police think that I was a man, I’d have an easier chance of getting away after I’ve done what I came to do.”

  My mind instantly went back to the office building when Harvey Lindenberg had escaped from under their noses.

  “So that’s how you did it. That’s how you got by all the police after the first shooting? You changed into a woman’s clothes and walked right out of the building?”

  “It would have been much easier if you weren’t right there. You’ve made things more difficult for me these past few months.”

  “Sorry to have been the thorn in your side,” I sarcastically responded. “But you killed a man in cold blood. Doesn’t matter what your motive is. You’re still a killer and I can’t overlook that.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Angela brought her hands to her front and held them out as if waiting to be handcuffed. “Take me in? Well I’m right here.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Angela lowered her hands and sat next to him on the bed.

  “I’m still not finished. Not until the judge and Nathan Hunt are dead.”

  “Nathan Hunt?” I asked.

  “He’s the big guy who killed your wife. He’s the judge’s trigger man. My brother personally saw him kill two people in the street without even thinking about it.”

  I felt my heart sink when I thought about Theresa again and what her last thoughts could have been before she died. Was she scared? Did she know that she was going to die?

  “I believe Nathan’s the one who actually killed Scott,” Angela said. She lowered her head and spoke more softly, “but they’re all guilty of his death. In my mind, they all killed him, regardless of who pulled the trigger.”

  She turned to me and I saw her eyes begin to tear. “And then that prick took away my chance to kill Stephen.” She slammed her right fist against the bed and turned her face. “I can’t wait to put a bullet between his eyes.”

  “No, you can’t do that. There’s got to be another way to end this. No more killing.”

  “How can you say that? They killed your wife and destroyed your life. Those fuckers have to pay for what they’ve done.”

  Now it was my eyes that started to tear. What I wouldn’t give to steal the last breath away from the man who had taken Theresa’s life. But
by doing that, I wouldn’t be any better than them. I’d be a murderer as well. Then I thought, maybe some people deserve to die. Maybe legal justice just wasn’t enough. No, I quickly wiped away the thought. I’d sworn to uphold the law, not break it. My job was to serve and protect the people, not kill them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just can’t do it. There’s got to be a way for me to clear my name and bring those assholes to justice.”

  “You won’t have a chance to. They’ll be dead before you figure it out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The judge plans on retiring and leaving the country in the next couple of weeks. My best chance to get to him is now before he disappears.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I told you, I have someone on the inside who’s been helping me.”

  “What…like a mole?”

  “You can call it that. She has intimate knowledge of the judge’s every move.”

  I shook my head. “You know I can’t let you do that. I can’t willingly stand by and let you kill another person.”

  “I wasn’t asking for your permission. Besides, I don’t think you’re in a position to stop me. I don’t want to pull any cards here , but if it wasn’t for me you’d be dead, twice. Let’s not forget that.”

  I didn’t respond, couldn’t respond. The room fell silent with the exception of Henry’s sleepy breathing. I didn’t want to admit it, but Angela was right. The judge was too connected in the city and any means of trying to bring him down through the legal system would be fought at every angle.

  “So let’s just say that I agree with you,” I finally said. “What do you have planned? And before you answer that, I have to ask a favor?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How good are you at hiding other people’s faces with that makeup?”