JT [02] Horns of the Devil

by Marc Rainer

  “I hope so. If this thing gets out of control, gentlemen, people with agendas that have nothing to do with justice or law enforcement are going to start playing in our little sandbox, and I’ll have no shot at controlling things at that point. Each and every problem with the case will be viewed through the political microscopes, fair or not.”

  “We know that, too, Ross,” Doroz responded, “and the last thing I want is my own headquarters breathing down the back of my neck while we try to get some real work done.”

  “Then we’re all on the same page,” Eastman said. “Bill, this is Jeff ’s only priority for now. I want you to reassign every other case on his calendar to somebody else. Give him whatever extra bodies he needs.”

  “Understood,” Patrick said.

  “Can I pass on the extra bodies for now?” Trask asked.

  Eastman looked surprised. “Why is that?”

  “Too many cooks in the kitchen, for one thing,” Trask replied, “and like you said, it will probably come to more if this gets worse. Right now, Ross, this is an investigation, not a prosecution, except for my five new friends and their assault rifles. That’s an easy case and won’t require any legal genius. I think we need to minimize the possibility of any leaks right now, and frankly, I’d like to know how you found out about our problems with Dixon Carter.”

  “A point well taken.” Eastman smiled. “My info comes from Willie Sivella. I had lunch with him yesterday.”

  “That’s reassuring then, I think,” Trask said. “Anyway, I promise to come running for help if I think I’m getting over my head.”

  “Good. Then go fix this thing. I know we’re in a reactive business, but if you guys have ever had luck with crystal balls, now’s the time to pull them out. I need to convince the freaking White House that we’re on top of this.”

  The intercom on Eastman’s phone buzzed. “Yes?”

  “It’s the Attorney General for you, Mr. Eastman.”

  “See?” Eastman said. He waved them out as he reached for the phone.

  August 19

  It was 2:27 a.m. in the house at the end of Amwich Court in the Saint Charles neighborhood of Waldorf, Maryland. Trask stared at the ceiling, unable to stop his mind from racing.

  They’d gone back to the squad room after the meeting with Eastman, and he’d listened to Doroz, Carter, Lynn, Tim, Puddin’, and everyone else thinking out loud for the better part of the afternoon. None of it made sense. Spinning wheels going nowhere. Theory after theory, each one without a firm foundation, crumbling into sand when subjected to any real analysis. A sniper, a gang raid that may not have been a gang raid. A dead ambassador’s son. White House interest.

  What the hell was going on?

  He drifted off. The dream was not a good one.

  Mom’s reading the thermometer. She’s worried. Talking to Dad. A hundred and seven. Doc Huddleston said to get me to the ER. I’m four, I think. Four or five. Burning up with fever. They throw me in a tub of ice water. I’m screaming.

  He forced himself to wake up again. The sheets on his side of the bed were soaked in his sweat. He sat up.

  He looked at Lynn sleeping peacefully beside him, the dry side of the top sheet draped across her bare shoulders. She’d struck out so far in finding out anything at all about José Rios-García, old Mr. Eye Patch. There’d been nothing on the web. A complete blank slate in the information avalanche of the digital age.

  That doesn’t make sense. Public figures can’t hide from the web.

  He was glad they’d transferred the master bedroom downstairs into the newly finished basement level. They had more room, and it was cooler. Even so, it was still too warm. A ceiling fan for the bedroom might be the next order of business.

  You’re still sweating, even down here. Go to the den. There’s a fan in there. Watch a little tube. Get a drink. Get your mind off of it. Close the files.

  He tried to bring the music into his mind, something peaceful to settle the agitation. The jukebox wouldn’t start. He sat up on the bed.

  This isn’t good. Every time the music won’t play something is really screwed up. FUBAR, in fact.

  He was reaching for the handle on the bedroom door when he heard it. A faint sound from outside the room like the brush of clothing against the drywall. He pulled his hand back and froze.

  Did you really hear something, or is your head working triple-overtime?

  He considered waking Lynn, but decided against it after listening and hearing nothing more outside the room.

  Be quiet just to make sure. The door hinges! No, they’re OK now. She had me WD-40 ’em last week. They won’t squeak. Probably nothing to worry about, anyway.

  He turned the handle slowly, silently, opening the door a crack.

  Your imagination’s running wild, idiot.

  His heart was racing anyway. He opened the door slowly and began to stick his head out to look to the left, up the stairs. The adrenaline and the last-second glimpse of a shadow enabled him to duck under the machete as it sliced the air above his head and dug into the doorframe, sticking there.

  “LYNN!” Trask screamed her name as he bull-rushed the figure in front of him. He drove his assailant back hard against the edge of the wet bar across the room and pounded his fist into the man’s face as hard as he could. The punch seemed to have no effect, and the guy retaliated with an uppercut that caught Trask square in the gut. He felt the air leave his body and the weakness hit his legs, dropping him to the floor.

  Shit! There’s another one behind me!

  He rolled instinctively to his left, grabbing the first attacker’s foot with his right hand and pulling it out from under the man, who came down on top of him. The second shadow had to halt his own machete stroke in midair as he waited for an open swing. The first man pushed off Trask, who was still on the floor.

  I still can’t breathe!

  He looked up as machete number two was rising in preparation for the downswing.

  Got to get the left arm up, shield my head and neck!

  The first shot from the Smith and Wesson .45 entered the back of the skull of machete-man number two and exited his head just below the left eye, depositing an impressive amount of blood and brain matter on the wall behind the bar. The machete hit the floor just before the lifeless hand that had dropped it.

  The second round entered the front of the skull of machete-man number one, who had started his own rush toward the shooter, dropping him eight inches from her feet. Since number one had dropped into a crouch before his rush toward Lynn, the blood and brains from his exit wound sprayed all over her husband.

  Trask caught his breath and scrambled over to her, kicking both corpses as hard as he could. “You killed ’em both, babe. They’re both dead,” he babbled, shaking.

  “I had to,” she said, pointing the gun at the corpse lying at her feet. “That one saw me naked.”

  Trask stumbled to the light switch across the room. The two bodies lay oozing blood onto the new carpet. He picked up the phone and dialed 911. After alerting the locals, Patrick, Eastman, and Doroz, he sank down in a corner of the rec room, staring vacantly at the corpses.

  Lynn came out of the bedroom wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Trask thought he heard a siren screaming from the mouth of the cul-de-sac.

  “You better get dressed,” she said. “Crime scene and everybody in the free world will be here in about a minute.”

  “I need a shower.” He stood up, looking at the red and gray stains splattered on his chest.

  “Later, Jeff. They’ll need to take some pictures. Just throw something over your underwear for now.”

  “I’ll have to redo the whole damned room. Carpet’s ruined.”

  “It’s OK. We have insurance.”

  “I need to call them.”

  “Just sit down for now.” She put her arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. He was shuddering involuntarily, as if a large spider had just crawled up his leg. “You gave me time to get the gun,” she said
. “You did good.”

  “I’m glad we bought that gun.”

  “So am I.”

  “I’m glad you can shoot it.”

  “Me, too. I love you.”

  His breathing was slowing. “I love you, too.” He kissed her on the forehead.

  She held his face. He pulled her close and held her as tightly as he could. Swirling red lights were coming through the bedroom window. The doorbell rang. The adrenaline and fury were leaving him. He was back in the present now.

  “Can you answer the door while I find some pants?” he asked.

  Chapter Eleven

  August 19, 8:15 a.m.

  Lynn made it a point to be early to the office, even after the long night in Waldorf. She’d been through it all once before, and beating the crowd to the office would mean avoiding the grand entrance. There’d be those like Barry and Carter—the ones who’d been through it themselves. Just a pat on the back or even a hug. Way to go lady, you did your job when you had to. We understand. But there would also be the looks from the new kids, the question on all their faces about the event that would turn them all into stupid TV reporters wanting to ask the same stupid question. “How did it feel to kill someone?” None of them would ever really ask it that way, of course, unless he or she truly was an idiot. They’d try to mask it, try to paraphrase it. “You OK?” would be the usual version, but they’d want more answers than the one that responded to their question. They’d want the sordid details. Over and over and over again.

  Yeah, I’m the LIVE one. I’m OK. The guys I shot and killed are not OK. That’s how this works. Maybe I should feel guilty about whacking those assholes, but they came into my house— MY HOUSE—hell-bent on killing my husband and probably me with him. The truth is that I’ll never lose a minute of sleep over them or even their souls. Maybe I should, but I won’t. They gave me no choice. It’s all on them.

  Dixon Carter was already there when she walked in. Otherwise, the squad room was empty. He saw her, stood up, and came over to her desk. He offered her his hand. She shook it, and he put his other huge dark hand over hers.

  “You OK?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and grinning slyly.

  She cracked up giggling. “Yeah, Dix, I’m fine.”

  “Jeff?”

  “He’s got a bruise on his abdomen the size of a cantaloupe. Other than that, he’s good.”

  “Great. Nice work. Maybe not nice, but good work. Necessary work.”

  “I know. It’s cool, really.”

  “We’re all glad you were there. Otherwise we might have lost our favorite prosecutor.”

  “He’s a lot more than that to me, but I know what you mean. We did some cases together, once upon a time.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “You know, when I saw him fighting those guys, I had the weirdest thoughts. I mean, I know I was protecting the guy I love, but I also thought about what he means to you guys. Like you said, your favorite prosecutor. I remember working cases before I met him, busting my ass on an investigation and then handing it to some jerk who treated it like just another file. He’s never done that.”

  Carter nodded. “He cares, he’s good in court, and he’s a hell of an investigator himself. Smart as a whip.”

  “You have no idea.” She regretted saying it for a moment, but then she didn’t. She was talking to Dix, the lead detective on Jeff ’s case. He needed to know. There could be a time when it mattered.

  “How’s that?”

  “When I first met Jeff ’s mom after we got married, we talked about what kind of kid he’d been. You know, just girl talk. She said he was always two things as a boy: sick and smart. Nearly died a couple of times from fevers. Pulled through, of course.”

  She looked at Carter and put a finger over her lips. She read his eyes, and he understood. Don’t pass this on to anyone else.

  “They had his IQ tested a couple of times when he was a kid. One test came back over 200. The other one couldn’t even be scored it was so high. They never told him, and they made me swear not to ever tell him. She thought it might me too much of a burden on him. She wanted me to know because we really hit it off…anyway, she said my biggest challenge would be to keep him from getting bored. She was right. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “With you?”

  “No, not yet. Not that I could tell, anyway. We used to be in a winter bowling league. Just something we decided to try for fun. He studied the hell out of the game, like he does everything else. He figured out the right ball to buy for the lane surfaces, the oil patterns, and he practiced like crazy. He got really good. Averaged 210 in one league, then he finally rolled a perfect game and just walked away from it. We’ve never been back.”

  “Maybe he’s found the perfect job then,” Carter said. “Every case a new sport?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s the people problems that seem to interest him. He always hated math, even though he can do it all when he needs it. I think he’s bored to death by the fact that two and two always equal four.”

  “Not when you’re dealing with the devious human elements.”

  “Exactly. He loves the human variables, thinks of them as puzzles. It makes him great at his work.”

  “That all makes sense,” Carter said. “When I did my first stint in Homicide, I got real interested in profiling. You know, serial killers, criminal masterminds, that sort of thing. Went to a couple of seminars put on by the leading profilers. I cornered one guy after one of the lectures and asked if he had any tips on how to get started. He told me just to read a lot—biographies as well as case files.”

  Lynn wrinkled her forehead. “OK…and this has to do with Jeff…?

  Carter laughed. “I know he’s not a serial killer. No, what interested me is the sickly kid and fever part tied to the super-smart adult. When I was reading all the bios, that was a very common theme, for both the suspects and for some very famous non-crooks.”

  “Really, like who?”

  “Let’s see. Scientists and math wizards? Isaac Newton, James Watt the steam engine inventor, Edison, Nikola Tesla. Writers? Robert Louis Stevenson. Politicians? Teddy Roosevelt. Even athletes like Bobby Jones, the great golf pro. Several more, but I wasn’t a sickly kid, so I can’t remember ’em all.”

  She smiled. “Who were some of the killers?”

  “John Wayne Gacy, Patrick Kearney, the LA freeway killer, a serial killer from Cleveland named Eric Olson, Adolf Hitler.”

  “Gacy and Hitler?”

  “Yeah. The health battles seemed to make them more determined to succeed in something later in life, good or bad. Anyway, they were all sickly kids with amazing minds in one way or another. Tesla said he kept seeing images in his mind throughout his lifetime; he called it ‘picture thinking.’ I’m no doctor or shrink, but I always had a theory that some of those with the childhood fevers may have had their brains locked open in some fashion by the high temps. Maybe they kept a creative or memory function that the rest of us lost as we got older. I do know that some of the literature on super-memories said that some children who have it seem to lose it as they mature. It also said that some kids get diagnosed with autism or other problems.”

  “Jeff ’s mom said the shrinks wanted to medicate him while he was in grade school. She wouldn’t let them.”

  “I love her for that. I also love the fact that he’s on this case, and I love the fact that his wife can shoot like Annie Oakley.”

  Doroz walked in and was surprised to see he was not the first in the office.

  “You—” he said, pointing to Carter, “ought to still be asleep. And you—” he pointed at Lynn. “What the hell are you doing here at all?” He paused. “You OK?”

  “I’m good, Bear,” she said, laughing. “Really.”

  “Here’s your vest.” The deputy United States marshal handed Trask the new black body armor, still wrapped in plastic. “Wear it to and from the building, and while driving. You’re required to go through our firearms trai
ning course in order to carry a weapon on your person.”

  “We’ve got a .45 at home,” Trask said.

  “Can’t use it. The regs say you have to carry what we carry. We’ll issue you a Glock .40 cal after you go through the training.”

  “We’ve done the paperwork on that already, Jeff,” Patrick said from behind his desk. “Main Justice has the application, and it’s approved.”

  “Am I still on the case?” Trask asked, wincing as he shifted in the chair. The bruise on his abdomen made sitting uncomfortable.

  “Yep. I had a long talk with Ross this morning. I’m not sure he’s gotten used to you and your bride whacking bad guys on an annual basis, but he said he’d rather see them in the morgue than you, and he’s not sure any other of his assistants would have survived the attack. We also agree with FBI’s assessment that this wasn’t an attempted gang hit, so no conflict of interest.”

  “I’m still sorting all this out myself.”

  “That’s natural,” the marshal said. “I’m on our SWAT and fugitive apprehension teams. I’ve had to take subjects down the hard way three times. You wonder why you were the one who had to deal with it at all. You didn’t ask for the dirty work. You have to realize that they gave you no choice.”

  “I figured that out last night about the time I ducked under a machete.”

  “Two recommendations,” the marshal continued. “One, get a house alarm.”

  “OK.”

  “And get a dog.”

  “That sounds redundant, and expensive.”

  “They are redundant to a point, but alarms don’t have incredible senses of smell, hearing, and loyalty, and dogs can’t get taken out with one snip of a pair of wire cutters. If you have to pick one, get the dog. A big one, preferably.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  “We don’t have the manpower to watch your residence 24/7, but between our guys, the FBI, the Maryland State Police, and the Saint Charles County Sheriff ’s Office, we’ll be doing enough spot checks on your house to make people think we’re there all the time.” He handed Trask a sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of all the phone numbers you need. Call the Saint Charles County guys first if there’s any more trouble. It’s their beat, and they’re closer.”