The Garbage Man

by Candace Irving

  "Not yet. But I agree; he had a reason for the change."

  Kate nodded. "This is still about revenge, just not Grant's. Somewhere along the way, this guy has a connection to one or more of Madrigal's victims. We ferret that out, and we'll understand him." She was certain of it. The man she'd seen interacting with that disabled vet's wife and son in the Fort Leaves cafeteria loved his brothers-in-arms, cherished them even. Despite the six murders he'd committed, she didn't doubt that for a second.

  But a man, especially a vet, didn't do everything this one had done without a very good, very personal reason.

  She sat up straight. "That's it—personal."

  Family. Friends. Co-workers. Without the killer's real name, she didn't have a Vietnam vet's chance at a ticker-tape homecoming of locating any of their faux Fremont's friends or relatives. But with a bit of judicious digging with an Army CID-honed spade, they would be able to find someone's.

  "You've got that look, Holland."

  She tapped the laptop Joe had closed. "Yeah, well, you get to do the finger and phone work. I need you to fire that thing back up and print out Sergeant Fremont Wright's record."

  "But you said it's not him."

  "True. But I think our guy knew him. The man I had breakfast with is the real deal." That scripted De Oppresso Liber tattoo wasn't just for show. "He was Special Forces. And who works with and hangs out with SF, but—"

  Joe nodded. Grinned. "—other SF."

  His gaze dropped to the tags dangling from her neck. Kate fisted them as deftly as she could to prevent him from reading the name. She was hanging by a thread as it was. She didn't need a man with Joe Cordoba's insight tugging on it. With the day she'd had, she was certain to unravel.

  To her relief, Joe hefted his laptop and stood. "I'll start my labors at the desk Carole set me up at. It's got a supply of hot coffee an arm's stretch away."

  Lou tipped his head toward the tags still secured within her grip as Joe left, and Agent Walker gathered his tablet and pen to return to his own laptop at the other end of the table. "I've never seen you wear those before."

  Crap. "They're not mine."

  His brow shot up.

  "It's a long story. Another day, okay?" Kate tucked the tags home before he could snag them. Knowing Lou, she wouldn't put it past him. And, frankly, she just couldn't deal with the fallout right now.

  It must've shown.

  Lou's sigh filled the conference room. "It's been a shitty day, Kato, for this whole blessed town—but especially you. It's dinner time. Go home. Spend an hour or two with Ruger. Feed yourself and the mutt. Let him run around a bit, too. He needs it...and so do you. Just do me a favor and be damned careful, okay? I wish you'd let me send someone with you, but since you won't, make sure Ruger stays on the alert—keep that Glock of yours at the ready."

  She thought about arguing about the reprieve, but didn't. Lou was right. About Ruger, and her. Besides, those muffins were starting to look good, and she couldn't afford the resulting sugar crash that would hit the moment she caught her second wind.

  As for his concerns regarding her safety, they were valid. But whoever she'd dined with that morning had blown his one chance of getting close enough to her to take her down. She had no intention of providing another.

  That said, in light of recent developments, Lou had capitulated to her stance on bodyguards far too easily. Which only meant one thing. The moment she left the room, he'd be phoning Seth or one of the other boys and asking her fellow deputy to step up—and extend—the timing of his "coincidental" drive-by of her place. Which, of course, would necessitate her offer of a complimentary cup of coffee inside the house.

  Fine with her. And definitely not worth arguing about.

  Not if it gave Lou peace of mind.

  She nodded as she stood to retrieve her jacket from one of the spare chairs. "Okay. I'll be back in an hour to crack the whip over Joe."

  "Take the full two, or you're fired. I hate to be the bearer of obvious news, but you look like you could use five times that. Now get out of here, Deputy."

  She saluted the man and left.

  Twilight had set in by the time Kate punched the button to lower her garage door. She thanked Lou in absentia for the reprieve as she crawled out of her Durango. Not only did she need this break, so did Ruger.

  She could tell from the tone of his barks that he'd had his fill of the day, too.

  Kate stepped inside the kitchen, not bothering to remove her jacket, much less close the door as she held out her arms for their nightly hug. Ruger's half was as enthusiastic as ever, but disappointingly brief. He thunked down from her arms far too quickly and spun around, surprising her further as he bypassed the fridge and its tub of cheddar to lope across the den. He came to a nail-digging halt smack in the middle of the mud rug.

  There, he waited, impatient for her to follow.

  When she didn't move fast enough, he punctuated her boot falls with a series of yips and barks.

  "You trying to tell me a big guy like you can't hold his water?"

  A string of louder barks underscored her arrival at the slider. "Okay, okay, I was kidding. I guess I wouldn't want to hold it all day either." She unlocked the glass door and slid it wide. "There. Happy? Go whiz to your heart's content."

  Lou's warning in mind, she followed the dog outside. Stopping at the edge of the deck, she closed her eyes and pulled the twilight air deep into her lungs. Even with the year's crop of deciduous leaves beginning to decay into the ground, it just smelled fresher out here than in town.

  Cleaner.

  She opened her eyes as Ruger let out another round of barks. He was sitting in the middle of the clearing and looking at her expectantly. Obviously, he wanted her to follow.

  But why?

  The frosted breeze drifting across the clearing intensified the chill already rippling down her spine.

  Yet another bark filled the quasi night.

  "Okay. I'm coming." She checked her pocket for her phone, relieved she hadn't instinctively dumped it on the counter on her way through the kitchen as she usually did. Her coincidental bodyguard hadn't shown up yet, but her Glock was still holstered snugly beneath her left arm, her backup piece attached to her right ankle.

  She doubted she'd need either, but with Grant missing and her unknown breakfast companion still on the loose, she wasn't taking chances.

  Besides, though Ruger believed she needed to see something, he wasn't on alert.

  Another, sharper bark forced her to pick up her pace. As she reached his side, Ruger turned to lope to the head of the path she'd helped her dad clear of stragglers and underbrush all those years ago. Ruger punctuated this latest pause with his loudest bark yet.

  "I said, 'I'm coming', and I am."

  Along with her Glock.

  Kate slid the 9mm from her holster as she followed Ruger into the thicket, straining for any unusual sounds as she made her way along the darkened path. She couldn't make out any. From his stance, neither could Ruger. The latter reassured her, until she followed Ruger out of the trees, smack into a line of crisp, yard-waste-sized brown paper bags.

  There were fifteen in all, strung out along the opposite edge of the pea-gravel drive with the same eerie precision she'd noted on three other backroads around town.

  But this road was hers.

  There could be only one reason why. One possible victim.

  Kate had no idea why she kept walking, but she did. She just kept staring, moving, step by step, buffered by the fog swirling into her brain, until she reached that first sack. It might've been the fog—or perhaps the denial that seemed to hammer in harder with every beat of her heart—that allowed her to kneel down and carefully pop the staples. Or perhaps this had all just become some sort of morbid habit.

  Either way, she reached inside and slowly removed the shrink-wrapped hand, and laid it on the sack.

  The denial continued to pound through the second sack and the second unbagging, only to falter at the stap
les of the third, disintegrating altogether as she slowly withdrew the forearm within. One look at the distinctive, snake-seducing sword impaling that blood-red heart, and she could no longer deny the truth.

  And, yet, she pushed on.

  The cop in her fought hard as she popped each subsequent row of staples. She knew she was destroying evidence. But she couldn't seem to stop.

  And her wrist had begun to itch.

  Badly.

  If she didn't make that call now, she never would.

  It was the certainty that gave her the strength to pause in front of that final bag. To retrieve her phone and punch the top entry in her speed dial list.

  "Lou, I'm at the cabin. You can cancel that APB for Grant. He's here...in fifteen pieces."

  15

  They found her at her house. Out on the back deck, sitting at the table in her father's chair. She had no idea how she'd gotten there. The fog had closed in completely, obscuring the entire world. Numbing her. All she knew for certain was that Ruger was at her side, and that she'd shed her Braxton PD jacket.

  It was in her lap, wrapped up around something large, round and solid. Liz was trying to take it away from her.

  She clutched it closer.

  "Katie, please. You have to let it go. You're scaring me. And you're scaring Lou."

  "Lou?" She tried to focus on the features fading in and out of the tunneled shadows. But just as she caught sight of a man's worried smile, it was gone.

  "I'm here, kiddo. Right beside you. I'd be even closer, but Ruger won't budge enough to give me room."

  Ruger.

  She looked down. She could definitely make out those warm brown eyes and soft muzzle, even part of the Shepherd's neck. She blinked and caught a bit more.

  She blinked again and lost it. Lost him.

  Someone tugged at her hands. "You need to give it to me, hon. Please. You have to let it go."

  No. She might not know what was wrapped up in her jacket, nor was she sure she wanted to know. But she was absolutely certain she shouldn't let it go. Ever.

  I will never leave a fallen comrade.

  But she had, hadn't she? Part of him anyway.

  And others.

  "You sure you can't give her somethin'?" Lou again. But his voice sounded uneven, distant. As if he was moving away from her.

  Or was she the one moving?

  "No, Sheriff. She doesn't need drugs. She needs time. Patience. She has to process it. Accept it." Liz. At least, she was pretty sure that sounded like Liz. Except her friend's soft, clear voice had turned husky and ragged, as though the woman was upset about something and fighting tears. Desperately.

  But why?

  Drugs. Lou wanted Liz to medicate someone.

  Her.

  The certainty penetrated the fog still clinging to Kate's brain. The mist thinned a bit as she shook her head. "I don't need pills. Or a shot. I'm fine."

  But she wasn't. Somehow, she knew that. This was the same numbing cloud she'd had to push through when she'd woken up in that room at the combat support hospital in Afghanistan. Fugue. That's what the doctors had called it.

  For some reason, it had happened again. Here, now. Four years later. In the States.

  While she was working a case.

  Fuck.

  Pull it together, soldier. Before Liz was forced to medicate her. Or, worse, lock her in one of those quiet rooms.

  The tunnel widened as she fought the fog. Shadows coalesced into discernible swaths of fur and frowns, and then into faces. Ruger. Liz. Lou.

  All friends. All family.

  What she had left of it.

  Kate shook her head as she saw the sheriff whisper something in Liz's ear. "I'm okay now, guys. Just...a little rattled. How—" She licked her lips, stunned to find them parched, even cracked in a few places. "How did I get here? What happened?"

  But she knew. Grant. She could still see that tattoo on his arm when her eyes were closed...and when they weren't.

  "He's dead."

  Liz nodded, the tears Kate had heard now visible in that bright blue stare. "Yes, hon. Grant's dead. You found his body out by your cabin. You called Lou. He called me. That's why we're here. That's why you need to give us your jacket."

  Her jacket? Why were they back to that?

  Kate stared at the bundle in her lap. The navy blue nylon was wrapped around something heavy. The shape was odd. Round, yet not quite. Suddenly, she knew the reason for that too. Grant.

  Liz wanted her to let him go. Kate managed a nod. "I need to see it first. Him." She needed to say goodbye.

  "I don't think—"

  "Please." She heard the desperation in her voice and didn't care. She had to find the strength to do this.

  To end it.

  Liz's nod was no less shaky than hers had been. It was sincere, though. Supportive. "Okay."

  Kate pulled in her breath as she gathered her courage. She could feel Ruger pressing into her knees, as if he was loaning her his strength as she slipped her fingers into the edges of her jacket and slowly unwrapped it.

  Despite the plastic shrink-wrapped to that hair and face, she could make out those striking features.

  It was Grant...until her vision wavered. And then it wasn't.

  "Oh, Max." Hot tears trickled down. They multiplied so quickly, they flooded her eyes until she couldn't see anything anymore. It no longer mattered.

  Because she remembered.

  She was back in that mud-brick hell, bending down to check for a pulse at the neck of the first of the two soldiers who'd survived that ambush with her and Max. The soldier was dead. So was the second. Both men had been shot through their temples with a large caliber weapon similar to the one in her left hand.

  Kate tightened her grip on the AK-47 she'd culled from her would-be second-round rapist and crept out of the hovel where she'd located the bodies of her fellow soldiers.

  Within minutes, she'd cleared three more buildings in the compound. Each had been empty.

  Max. Where the hell was he?

  Another two buildings, and still no sign of him—or the bastards who'd ambushed them.

  All too quickly, she had one building left. The only building she'd yet to clear. The largest one in the compound. Max had to be inside, along with the rest of those zealous assholes. Confirmation came in the chorused shouts of "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!"

  Another voice cut in behind the chorus as she reached the wooden door. A man's. He was speaking Arabic so quickly, she couldn't make out what he was saying. Just the solid slaps of human flesh smacking against human flesh as they punctuated his shouts. The slaps turned to thumps as someone switched to fists.

  The crack of bone followed.

  This was it, then. It was now or never.

  Since her first deployment, she'd often wondered when and how she'd die. Now she knew. All things considered, it was a decent way to go. She'd die at Max's side while taking as many of those bastards with them as she could.

  Kate flipped the AK-47's switch to full auto, pain searing in as she braced the rifle's butt against the pocket of her shoulder and shattered collarbone. Clenching her teeth against the agony, she breached the door.

  What she found on the other side was not what she'd expected.

  Time simultaneously pushed and pulled at her senses, twisting and folding in on itself as it dragged her into a bizarre, almost slow-motion movie that split and sputtered in spots. She caught sight of a bright green and white Islamic flag tacked up against the far wall of the room, a camera held aloft by one of the eight armed and bearded bastards to her left. The ninth stood four yards away, directly in front of her own AK-47 and to the right of a naked, kneeling Max—and this one was brandishing a sword.

  Her best friend's resigned mutter drifted across the sweat and blood-laden air as that gleaming blade swung up, crested...and began to fall. "At least I can have that Arlington burial."

  And then the soft, chilling click to her left of another AK-47 switching t
o full auto—and another.

  She instinctively turned and fired, sweeping the barrel of her stolen rifle from left to right, picking off the first gunman, then the others in rapid succession, until she'd reached the final bastard still holding that now-glistening sword.

  A split second later, he too was dead.

  But it didn't matter. Max's head had already hit the woven mat with a sickening thunk that reverberated straight down into her soul...and then his body was falling too.

  She stared at that surreal scarlet line of severed muscle and skin at the base of her best friend's head, transfixed—a moment later, almost as an unforgivable afterthought, it started to bleed.

  She knew it was over. She had to go. Now. Find friendly territory. But she couldn't. She couldn't leave a fellow soldier behind.

  She couldn't leave Max.

  The next thing she knew, she was dragging off the top of the jihad jammies she'd stolen and wrapping the grimy white cloth around Max's head. She started to turn, only to halt as she spotted the arm of that goddamned murderous bastard flung outward on the dirt, still gripping the hilt of that stained sword. On the bastard's wrist: Max's dive watch. The watch her friend had treasured so much.

  She leaned down and wrenched it off, carefully securing it to her own wrist.

  Then she picked up her bloodied shirt, cradled the precious cargo within and began to walk.

  "You sure she don't need somethin'?" Lou again.

  She must've really freaked Lou out for him to want her sedated.

  Then again, discovering that your most experienced deputy had destroyed a crime scene and made off with a crucial piece of evidence—namely, the victim's head—and was now huddled up on her deck with it, would probably have freaked anyone out.

  "I don't need to be drugged. It appears I forgot which continent I was on for a while, but I've got it all sorted now. Promise. Even better, I can report that I've finally found my missing marbles. I just need a few minutes to organize them all and slot them back into place."

  From the tension thinning Lou's lips, he had no idea what she was referring to—but Liz did.