* * *
Ahead, at the curb of one of the slightly less pretentious homes, Jacob saw a yellow school bus pulling up to the figure of a man and two children. Captain Bryant seeing his kids off to school. Jacob indicated to Sesak that this was their destination.
The school bus pulled away. Bryant saw the patrol car and waited in his driveway.
Kathryn parked the unit. She approached Bryant first and shook his hand.
“Good morning, sir. I trust your morning has been uneventful.”
Bryant took her hand warmly in two of his own.
“How could it be anything but, when I’ve got goddamn suck-up cops stopping at my house every three minutes?”
Bryant let Kathryn squirm for a second then erupted in laughter.
“Sorry, Sesak, I couldn’t resist.” He winked at Jacob over Kathryn’s head. “The first female candidate on the sniper team? You gotta expect a hard time from the old boys like myself. Jacob, it’s good to see you.”
They shook hands.
“So, this is the greener grass I’ve heard so much about,” Jacob said, as though he’d never been out to the canyon before. Where they were standing, everything was flat and green and new. A bit off in the distance, some older growth trees and brush fringed the ridges that surrounded the small valley.
“Yeah, and it cost me a hundred bucks a square foot for this fucking sod. Now I’ve got Folsom Prison in my backyard and assholes all around me. I’d go back up country if I could afford it.”
Jacob said, “Yeah, Jill is still pissed about her tree.” He walked a few feet away, pointed, and said, “In fact, I think it was right about there, wasn’t it, Sesak?”
“Looks right to me,” she said, even though she had no idea what he was talking about.
Bryant just shook his head. “She knows I couldn’t control that. Doesn’t she?”
Jill never failed to point it out each time they passed by. It had been visible from Highway 50. Up on a small rise overlooking Sacramento in a large golden meadow (the “Golden State” really meant dry, dead, combustible grass each fire season) had been an ancient Valley oak, perfectly shaped, nobly present, and with a stone fence marking a boundary from the distant past. It was a living remnant of an era of fortune hunting and staked claims. What remained from settlers making a go of it, panning for pay dirt, seeking their fortunes and guarding their turf and livestock with stone and lead, not wire and plot easements. It had been a beacon for her. A place she sought out to gather her thoughts and center her mind. To commune with the past.
Then one day she had seen the usual bulldozer-wide “fire line” made in all such areas after the green meadows turned gold each year. As a former firefighter, Jill thought the fire lines were ridiculous, because for the break to work, it needed to be one and a half times the height of the fuel. With dry grass several feet tall, as in this case, a fire line the width of a single dozer blade would never stop a fire from spreading. It was just a token effort. What had caught Jill’s eye was the fact the bulldozer not only remained parked nearby, but it was between two other large, earth-moving machines.
It marked the beginning of the end for her. To her dismay, she watched as the ground was razed and stripped of any and all life—including her beloved Valley oak—in order to build yet another subdivision. Now Jill refused to come here and simply gave the area a double-barreled middle-finger salute whenever they drove by. She would not condone the insanity of ripping up perfectly aged trees only to plant new ones. She was holding a grudge on this one, and rightly so, Jacob reckoned.
But Jill, being Jill, made a joke of it, too. Come to California, she would say in the seductive tone of a tourist board commercial. Come to California. If you see something you like, we’ll cut it down, or blow it up.
Come to California.
Sesak was enjoying the captain’s discomfort and said, “I heard she’s still pretty pissed. You’re right on her tree!”
Bryant gave Sesak a look that told her she was close to overstepping her position. In fact, he was finished indulging both of them. He said, “Jacob, take a look at this,” and pulled something from his pocket. He looked back over his shoulder as he handed it to Jacob.
“Found it in my mailbox. I haven’t told Liz.”
It was a small plastic bag. An evidence bag. Jacob took it to get a better look, but he had known immediately what the baggie contained. He ought to. It was a single cartridge. It could’ve been from his personal supply.
“That’s a .308 caliber, Federal Match round,” Sesak said.
She knew her shit, Jacob had to give her that. The Federal Match, right out of the box, was department standard for snipers. Officially, it was what Jacob fired from his Remington 700. It was what most snipers preferred—.308 with Federal Match casings and 168g Sierra Hollow Point Boat Tail bullets in them. A few holdouts still shot .223 caliber, which was great for short-range situations, but Jacob found their lack of stopping power and tendency to splinter on impact too great a liability.
For snipers, ammunition was a fetish, and Jacob was no exception. He studied and kept himself informed. He knew that the recent military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq had encouraged a compromise between the .50 cal and a .308. The .50 caliber was a heavy and bulky rifle to carry, so the military had gone to a smaller round, a .338 Lapua, that while smaller, outdistanced and outperformed the larger .50 caliber in active combat duty.
He’d fired them all, but Jacob’s purest sniper dream would be the .338 Lapua for its long-range performance, but his locale and demographics—his hunting ground—made it impractical for his normal SWAT duties. The department was worried enough about liability without added caliber and the potential for collateral damage.
Jacob handed it back.
“I’ll drop it off at Science on my way in,” Bryant said. Through the plastic, he held the brass cartridge upright between thumb and forefinger, studying it, as though he might be able to see any fingerprints with his naked eyes.
As he held the large .308 cartridge up to the lighted blue sky, Bryant’s hand exploded in a red mist. At least that’s what it looked like.
Any other observer would have thought the live round had simply exploded in Bryant’s hand, but Jacob had heard the crack of a rifle report that directly followed it—a bullet moving faster than the speed of sound had struck the cartridge in the captain’s grasp. He knew they were being fired upon. Instinct took over, and he dove for cover. The patrol car was closest. Sesak scrambled as well, huddling against the lee of the car.
Bryant remained standing. It was the goddamndest thing Jacob had ever seen in his life. And Jacob Denton had seen some crazy shit. Bryant was standing stock-still, holding what was left of his hand out in front of him, staring at the bright red blood pulsing from the stubs of his missing thumb and first two fingers.
“Sir! Take cover!”
Kathryn had climbed into the floorboard of the cruiser and was yelling into the radio, “11-99! Shots fired! Officer down!”
No, he’s not quite down, Jacob thought as he drew his .45 automatic and craned his head over and around the patrol car, scanning the wooded ridges, trying to determine the origin of the shot, aware that Bryant was still standing there, dumbfounded, staring at his hand.
“Sir! Captain Bryant, Sir! Take cover! Ben! Take cover!”
Bryant still wasn’t responding. Jacob put one foot forward, readying himself to spring out from behind the car and take Bryant down and drag him to safety. But just as soon as he put that foot forward, a bullet tore up the ground at his boot. Jacob recoiled.
Another shot and Bryant’s left ear came off as cleanly as a surgeon’s slice. Blood poured down the side of his face. But the man still wasn’t moving. Against all reason, he remained standing. He was in shock. Jacob scanned the hillside, the pockets of vegetation, estimated the distance, and thought of the calculations that would go into making a shot like that at that distance. The wind today was intermittent. Not easy to prefigure. Jacob
knew that. He was always aware of the current wind speeds, the direction. That was part of his life. The temperature. Humidity. They all factored in. The intimacy with your rifle. Knowing it. The difference between a cold barrel shot and a hot barrel shot. All of this went through his mind in less than a second. As he considered his enemy. For there was an enemy out there. They were under attack. By either an amazingly good or amazingly lucky sniper. The shooter wasn’t missing his killshot. He was picking Bryant apart. And the groundshot had been a warning to Jacob. Stay back.
He was about to attempt another lunge at Bryant, but another crack of rifle thunder rolled through the canyon. Jacob could not see where it struck the man, but the bullet spun him around and brought him to his knees. Then he saw. The lower half of Bryant’s jaw was gone. Jacob could see his upper teeth and his exposed tongue working back and forth. The upper teeth must have been dentures, because they fell out of his ruined mouth and landed softly in the plush carpet of Bermuda grass that Bryant kept watered and green.
Behind him, Jacob heard Sesak let out a sound that was not quite a scream.
The next bullet grazed Bryant’s scalp, splitting it like the skin of a late summer muscadine. A huge flap of scalp—gray hair clinging to it—drooped down like loathsome bunting, obscuring Bryant’s horror-show face. The last shot took off the top of the captain’s skull, cracking and peeling it back like the shell of a perfectly boiled egg, with most of his brain going with it.
Ending everything.
The man was angry at losing another sheep. But he was more angry at having let his emotion affect his shooting. He had stemmed the anger the way a tourniquet stems the flow of blood. But a little still seeped through. He was getting old. He would teach the boy before he was too old to be any good to anybody.
They trudged forward. Breaking snow.
The animal was losing a lot of blood. The father’s shot had not been perfect, it had not been Godly, but it had wounded the Gray Wolf, almost certainly gravely. There was too much red blood on the white snow. The animal could not survive. It was looking for a place to die.
On another day, if he had been alone, the man would have let the animal be. He would have turned back to the warmth of his home and his wife’s coffee. The animal was dead. It just didn’t know it yet. He could have gone back home without guilt. Only regret for not killing the wolf cleanly.
But the boy could learn.
Ahead, they could see the animal. The wolf had stopped. It was resting. The man moved forward with caution. He knew that no matter how close to death the animal might be, it would use any last vestige of life left in it to turn and attack.
He hunkered down next to the boy and pointed. He watched and nodded his approval at the boy’s stance as he raised the weapon, the comb to his cheek, the butt snug to his shoulder, so that the telescopic sight fell in line with his eye.
The .22 was just a toy, really. Against a Gray Wolf, it was just a toy. But the animal was wounded, damn near dead. The .22 would suffice. The boy had to learn.
“Aim with your head, not with your heart.”
“I don’t understand that.” The boy had learned to always be honest with his father. It was better.
“You will. Remember, when you’re ready, half breath out and hold.”
The boy nodded minutely. His eyes took on a haunted, depthless look. The father knew that the boy had gone down the rabbit hole.
“You’re ready.” An echo from the outside world. Green light.
He squeezed the trigger. The barrel recoiled up and to the right.
The report was tiny but still shocking and lonely in the mountains. Out of place somehow.
The wolf jumped several feet in the air, and then was gone, as though it had never been there. Except for the red snow.
Father and son took off in pursuit, their breath ragged in the frigid morning air.
They came upon the place where the wolf had been. The blood patch.
“I’m sorry. I missed.”
“You didn’t.”
The man pointed up ahead, and the boy saw that there were now two parallel blood trails. Close together, but distinct. He’d hit it after all. The wolf was twice wounded.
Father and son kept after the animal.
The man was amazed that the wolf could still move. That much blood, he thought. He had already respected the wolf. Had felt anger toward it. Now he felt another, less common emotion.
They pursued.
CHAPTER 7
The ridge overlooking Captain Bryant’s Vista Canyon neighborhood was clotted with dense pockets of red-barked manzanita, sharp-bladed tall grass, and live oaks—providing ample cover for his killer. Jacob knew it was the kind of terrain firefighters hated. The tall grass could get as high as three feet, and it only stayed green for about three weeks. Then it was golden brown. Just ready for a spark. Manzanita burned longer and hotter than other shrubbery, stubbornly refusing to succumb to the water. And yet it provided perfect cover for anyone who could crawl under and into the heart of it. Once there, the manzanita itself provided a canopy of concealment.
On the ridge, two deputies strung crime scene tape around trees in an area Jacob and Kathryn had scouted out, marking it as the secondary crime scene. Technicians from Science Division were en route, as were homicide detectives. The news vans wouldn’t be far behind.
Jacob and Lieutenant Cowell hunkered to the ground to peer down the hillside toward Bryant’s house. Kathryn stood behind them.
“The shooter could have ended it in one shot,” Jacob said. “But he shot the cartridge in Bryant’s hand first. That was purposeful. The shot in the ground was to warn me back. All the rest of it was just torture by bullet.”
Cowell asked, “Why?”
The two men looked at each other. Jacob shrugged.
Kathryn said, “Maybe he was showing off?”
Cowell grunted. Noncommittal. He thought more about it, then said, “For Jacob?”
The two men exchanged another look. She was right on the money.
“Our counter-snipers are anonymous. Nobody knows who they are. It’s unlikely the shooter would know Denton was anything but another officer checking on the captain. And why would the shooter want to show off?”
“To make me think he’s better than I am,” Jacob said. He already believed Kathryn was right. It had been a show.
Jacob lay on his stomach, facing down the hill, over the ridge. Below, he could see detectives, a CSI van, gloved men in suits, and police tape at the primary crime scene.
“Based on the trajectory, I’d say he shot from up here somewhere.”
Jacob slid over a few feet.
“If it were me, I’d shoot from right here.”
Jacob held his arms out in front of him as if holding his own weapon. He looked to his right.
“Here we go.”
Jacob got up, took a pen from his pocket and inserted it into the end of a shell casing on the ground. Once he had it, he rotated the pen in his hand, examining the casing from different angles.
“Looks to be the same ammo we use, L.T., Federal Match casing, and probably a Sierra Boat Tail bullet. When we recover one of the bullets on the scene, I’ll know for sure.”
“Why Sierras?”
“Because that’s what all the cool kids shoot.”
Off in the distance, they could hear the low, almost tribal sound of rotor blades beating the air. News choppers.
“Just the one casing? He fired, what, six rounds?”
“Six, yes sir.” Jacob looked around. “I only see the one. I’m sure Science will bring metal detectors. But I doubt they’ll find any more. The single casing was probably left on purpose. The shooter is far too disciplined to be messy.”
Kathryn pulled an evidence bag from her pocket, and Jacob dropped the casing inside. Cowell reached for the bag and said, “We should keep this to ourselves. Just for a bit.”
“Why?” Kathryn asked.
“It’s one of our own.”
&nb
sp; “Hold on. That’s a hell of a jump. All I said was it’s the same ammo. Any hunter can buy it.”
“It’s one of us.”
“How, L.T.?”
“The marksmanship, the ballistics, the target, the note.”
“Note?”
“Earlier today. Said Bryant should never have given the green light. That he should have known what would happen. The term ‘green light’ was specifically used.”
“You have someone in mind?” Jacob asked, but of course he knew the answer. He’d been thinking the same thing, long before it occurred to Cowell. Maybe ever since the second bullet went in the ground at his feet, warning him off.
“I do.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Why is it his name came to your mind, too?”
“Not Lee Staley. No.”
“It got pretty ugly at the end. It might be you next.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“The man has a grudge. And you took his job.”
“Oz didn’t do this.”
Kathryn’s radio crackled to life in the background. She spoke into her shoulder mic and had to raise her voice to be heard above the helicopters now overhead. She turned to Jacob.
“SWAT activation.”
The homicide detectives would be handling this case from here on out, so even though he wanted to, Jacob had no real reason to stay. He realized this was going to be one hell of a long day.
CHAPTER 8
Wallace Biggsby was a good man. All of his life, he had been a good man. He prayed to God. He was true to his wife. He was an attentive, involved father to his children. He worked hard at his job. He was a manager at McDonald’s. Not a shift manager, but a restaurant manager. And he had every expectation that within three years he would be promoted to district manager, with fourteen restaurants under him. This was not the kind of career path people went on Facebook and posted about so all their high school friends could see. But Wallace Biggsby didn’t care. Wallace Biggsby did not have a Facebook account.
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