by Thomas Perry
He came to the doorway and took in the scene. The man had light, thinning hair so Schaeffer could see his pink bald spot from there as the man straddled Waring on the floor. He was in the process of tearing Waring's clothes off. He had already gotten her top off and had her bra around her waist and had her black sweatpants down to her knees, so with her pale, sun-deprived skin she looked like a classical statue that had been broken. He could tell from her eyes that she could see him.
As he stepped forward, she showed a burst of energy and tried to immobilize the man's arms by throwing hers around him in a bear hug. Two more steps and Schaeffer was there. He wrenched the man's head around to the left to break his neck, then pushed him off Waring.
Elizabeth was shaking and wide-eyed, with blood running down in streaks from her broken nose and her split lip, but he put his head close to hers and whispered. "Are there two more of them upstairs with your kids?"
She nodded. "Yes. Two." She pulled up her sweatpants, and he turned and picked up her T-shirt from the floor where the man must have tossed it. Then he handed it to her.
He stood, pulled out his pistol, and moved toward the door.
"Wait," she whispered. "I have a gun in the laundry room."
"Where's that?"
"Stay here." He could see she had a hard time getting to her feet. He could tell her arms and legs were tired from wrestling her vastly stronger opponent. But she went to the door, and he noticed that she was barefoot. She must have been hauled out of bed. She was a mess, just running on adrenaline now, and fear for her kids.
She padded into the room again, this time carrying a Glock 17 pistol and a magazine that he could see held sixteen gleaming bullets.
He took the gun and the magazine, inserted the magazine, and pulled the slide back to get a round into the chamber. He whispered, "Tell me the truth. Are you really good with this?"
"I'm okay. I've kept up my qualification for ten or eleven years."
"Do you have any reluctance at all to kill one of those guys up there?"
"No. None," she said.
"Okay." He handed her the gun. "I think they've got your kids in different rooms. They're probably tied or cuffed. If I go in and kill the guy in one room, his buddy will fire on your other kid. So we have to go in both rooms at once. You don't say, 'Stop or I'll shoot' or 'Freeze' or 'Drop it.' You step in and shoot him. And you have to shoot him enough times so he's beyond shooting back." He held her arm to keep her from going. "If you can't do it just like that, tell me."
"I can do it. I want to do it," she said.
He picked a piece of paper and a pencil off the desk and put it on the hardwood floor where they sat. "Draw me the two rooms. Show the door, the back window, the bed, any chairs."
He watched her draw, then nodded. "You take this one—your son's room. I'll get the girl. First we go up as quietly as we can. If anybody comes out of a room, kill him. It won't be your kid."
He put his arm around her shoulders to help her up and they began to walk. At the doorway he whispered, "Quiet, now. Remember, we step in shooting."
"Let's go." She stepped across the big oriental rug in the living room, letting it muffle the footsteps. When she reached the foot of the staircase, she didn't hesitate. She began to climb. Her bare feet made no noise.
He followed and realized that what he was seeing was probably something she had learned when she'd gone up the stairs when her kids were babies. Nobody knew how to go through a house as quietly as the owner. He was tempted to make her stop halfway up to listen for the men, but she was doing so well he waited until they were a step from the top to put his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and looked back at him. He held his hand up to his ear, and they both listened.
There was a steady, low-level hum of talk coming from the boy's room. That seemed good. What worried him was that he wasn't hearing noises from the other room where the girl was. He hoped she wasn't dead.
He looked at Elizabeth and nodded in the direction of the boy's room. She stepped up to the second floor hallway and sidestepped toward the open door. Schaeffer moved toward the other door. He felt a sudden chill. He hadn't taken the time to tell Elizabeth some of the things she needed to know about this situation. She had to step into the middle of the doorway boldly with her eyes wide and the gun out in front of her. There was only the search for the shot and no conceivable reason to hold fire. He reminded himself that she had said she was "qualified" with her pistol, and he had to assume that federal officers were given situational training. If not, then it was too late.
He held her on the edge of his field of vision as he stepped closer to the girl's room. When he was beside the girl's room, he leaned forward just far enough to see that the door was open. He turned to meet Elizabeth's eyes.
She stood with her left shoulder touching the woodwork around the doorway, holding the gun up with both hands and her finger on the trigger. But her eyes were closed. What the fuck was she doing? She opened her eyes and they met his. He could tell that she'd been praying. He swallowed his irritation. He nodded to her and saw her begin her pivot into the doorway.
He launched himself into the middle of the other doorway, staying low, his right arm extended. The man was young, broad shouldered with spiked bleach-blond hair and a tan that looked as though he'd acquired it on a tanning bed. He held the girl on his lap, and his hand was under her tank top. She was crying. There was a shot from Elizabeth's gun in the next room and he jumped, saw Schaeffer in the doorway, and tried to pull his hand back and push her off his lap so he could reach his gun where it lay on the pillow.
Schaeffer fired a round into his chest, then one more into his head as he toppled back. The girl ran past him out of the room and toward her brother's room. Schaeffer picked up the man's pistol and walked after her into the other room.
Elizabeth was beside her son's bed, trying to tear at the strips of duct tape that had been used to tie him to the iron rails of the bed. Schaeffer stepped to the man lying on the floor. He had been shot twice in the chest, but there seemed to be some movement. He was breathing. Schaeffer fired a round through his head.
"You killed him! Aren't you supposed to call an ambulance?" the daughter said.
"Quiet," Elizabeth said. "We'll talk later." Elizabeth's hands were shaking so much that she couldn't get the tape off her son's wrists.
Schaeffer said, "Go talk now. I'll do this."
Elizabeth put her arm around Amanda and they went out. Schaeffer opened his pocketknife and cut the tape at the wrists and ankles. The boy sat up and then stood.
"Thanks. When he tied me up, he said it was so I wouldn't do anything stupid when I heard what they were doing to my mother and sister."
"We were all lucky they were overconfident."
The boy left the room, and Schaeffer put his small pistol away and took the one the dead man had in his belt, then found two spare magazines in the man's pocket. As an afterthought, he rolled the body over, took out the man's wallet, looked at the California driver's license, then put it back.
He walked out into the hallway and found the three standing on the hardwood floor, their arms around one another, rocking back and forth. The mother was the shortest of the three, even shorter than the daughter, who still had that sylph look that some girls had even into their late teens, that made them seem to be something thinner and lighter than flesh and bone.
"I'd better get out of here," he said.
Elizabeth let go of her children, took his arm, and walked with him down the stairs. "Nobody's coming yet."
"They don't usually call ahead. I should go."
"Not yet. I want to—"
"Stop. Jesus didn't send me. I'm here because this was the best place to hunt for those guys. And you saved your own kids." He turned to head for the back door.
"Wait, please," she said. "I know exactly what to do. You just have to trust me."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because everything changed tonight. All three of us would be
dead by now, instead of the three of them. We're alive; they're not."
"I've got to go."
"On your way out, stop by the man you caught trying to rape me. Do what's necessary. Skin the fingertips, shoot him in the face a few times so they can't use it to identify him. You'd know what to do better than I do, but make sure they can't tell who he is by looking. Afterward, leave the gun here. If you need another one, take his."
He studied her for a moment.
"Go ahead. I swear you won't be sorry."
34
AT THE END of the third week, he was back in her house. She watched him looking around as he stepped in the door. "Where's the rest of your furniture?"
"Some of it is in storage, and some of it was ruined by the blood or the crime-scene people and their fingerprint dust," she said. "I'm doing some remodeling."
"What are you changing?"
"I'm having the walls knocked out in the little office and adding that space to the kitchen, which is behind it. The real estate man said having a big open space there would add to the value when I sell it."
"They know what sells."
"I decided I didn't want that room to be in my memories, or my dreams, for the rest of my life. It will help that in a few weeks it won't exist. The bedrooms upstairs are being redone, but I can't make them go away completely. So we're going away instead."
"Have you started looking for a new place?"
"Not officially, but we've seen some. Jim will be off at college in nine months, and then in another year so will Amanda. We decided that for the next phase of life a condominium with three bedrooms and a metro station nearby would be just about right."
"There must be a few of those around."
She stood silent for a few seconds, looking at him. "I've got the stuff you're going to need."
"What is it?"
"It's what I promised you." She went to the big briefcase she had left by the door. She carried it to the dining room, then stopped. "They've already moved the table out." She stepped into the kitchen and set the briefcase on the counter.
"You're not living here anymore, are you?"
"No. That first morning we checked into a hotel. The police had the run of the house for a few days, and they had it closed off. Then there was a cleanup crew, and then painters. Next it will be contractors and carpenters, more painters, and then realtors. The department is actually paying for a rental for the next couple of months until they're sure no more killers are coming back for us. We only come here to pick up things we actually need. It's surprising how few there are."
"I'm sorry my problems ruined your house for you."
"We voted, and it was unanimous that the good memories we all had would survive better without the physical house to remind us of the bad things."
"I understand."
She opened the briefcase and pulled out a big accordion file. She pulled out a blue passport, and then another. "This one is in the name Paul Foster. The second one is also you, only your name is David Parker."
He looked at the passport. "You used the picture you took of me that night."
"Are there any others?"
"None that I know of. How did you get passports made?"
"Through WITSEC. You know, the witness protection program. Nobody in the FBI or Justice had ever seen you. The man you killed when you saved me seemed about the right size and age and coloring. The others were too young. You had never left prints or DNA at any of your scenes so..."
"So he's me."
"He's you. Rest in peace."
"I will. How did you explain the condition of my body?"
"You ruined your fingerprints before you got here. Nobody knows if it was to keep from being tied to your recent killings or in preparation for this one. The facial damage was caused by your being shot by an inexperienced, terrified shooter who didn't know when to stop. You've been examined and documented and cremated."
"Who killed me?"
"A man named Pete Stohler, who worked for me as a gardener and handyman. Very strong, not too bright. Afterward he ran off. When he calmed down a couple of days later, he turned himself in to me at the Justice Department. Everyone agreed that the best course would be to get him out of the country right away for his own protection."
"What about the police?"
"They actually helped us cook up a cover story for him, so nothing about him had to go on the record. That story is that FBI agents killed you to rescue us. All three of you, actually. It's quite a story, only nobody will ever read the details because it was intentionally miscoded as highly classified. It's somewhere in the system, and we can prove it was entered, but you can't retrieve it. The State Department has duplicates of your picture for the passports, but they're under Foster and Parker, whom they think are real people. Only WITSEC knows they're Pete Stohler, the man who killed you."
"All these people are lying to cover up that I'm alive?"
"Oh, no. To cover up that Pete Stohler is the one who killed you so he won't have to fear retaliation from your friends in organized crime. It's hard to overestimate the amount of lying law enforcement officers will do to protect an innocent person who's saved a colleague and her kids from the Mafia. All I had to do was tell an FBI friend named John Holman something close to the truth, and he helped me navigate the bureaucracies. I had a connection with WITSEC, and he had a connection with the State Department, and we both knew people in some of the other agencies. Want to see what else is in there?"
"Sure."
"Here. A couple of driver's licenses, some credit cards, and all the other stuff people carry around—frequent-flyer cards, library cards, discount cards for supermarkets. I don't imagine you'll need them but you'll need something, so here they are."
"I hope you won't regret this."
"I'm going to be ashamed of it, but I'll never regret it." She paused. "See, I had a husband. He was something special. What's left is those two kids that we had together. I'm doing the little I can to repay you for their lives, and I'll take the guilt."
"I mean I don't want you to get caught."
"That's the least of my worries. I've involved some smart, dedicated people who now have a big reason to keep this buried. Even if there were a real Pete Stohler, doing this to protect him violates a lot of rules."
"What can I do for you?"
"You've done it. Of course, when you get in the mood to tell a few more stories, I'd like you to send me a letter or an e-mail or something. I'm sure you know how to do it without getting caught."
He picked up the file. "I'll do that." He turned and walked toward the front door.
"I told you."
"What?"
"That you'd be my informant."
He smiled at her and nodded his head, then went out the front door and closed it quietly. After a few seconds she knew that if she went out to watch him go, she'd be frustrated because he would be nowhere to be seen. And she knew that soon he'd fly to some random country as Paul Foster and then dissolve into nothingness. He would fly to wherever he was actually going under some identity she didn't know. None of the credit cards or other ID would ever be used after that first flight.
She also knew that where he was going, there was a woman waiting. He had taken off his ring before he'd come to this house to see her for the first time, and let the hand get some sun so the white band didn't show. But the indentation was still on his finger today. If he had left the ring on, she would have said it was a part of his disguise, another attempt to seem like a normal man. But since he had tried to hide it, she knew the woman must be real.
She had not told him that the guilt she felt was a problem. Probably the last emotion that he could understand was guilt. She was not going to be allowed to go on as she had been. The attorney general had already told her that he had chosen her to replace the current deputy assistant, now that Hunsecker had handed in his letter of resignation. At the end of thirty days she would be moving to a large office at the corner of the building. The two
murder charges she had filed on men the Butcher's Boy had told her about had already resulted in indictments. And now that she had drawn several perfectly good FBI agents into her deception, she had become the Bureau's favorite person. What was making her uncomfortable wasn't just the shame of having done wrong. She had anticipated that. What she hadn't expected was to thrive and prosper from the lies and dishonesty. The guilt for that was much worse. After twenty years of genuine effort, she had suddenly become an impostor.
She picked up her briefcase and turned on the light that was plugged into a timer in the kitchen, reset it to go on at dusk, and walked toward the front door. She stopped and looked out through the front window before she opened the door. She had known it would be a wasted motion. He was gone, and there was nothing more to see.