It took him sixty seconds—long enough that he didn’t see the black-clad man drop a device into his jacket pocket and dash across the parking lot toward the church’s main door.
One final check—he ejected the pistol’s magazine, made sure it was full, and jammed it back into the weapon’s handle.
A Glock-19 and fifteen rounds of ammunition weighs more than two pounds. With its reassuring weight in the right front pocket of his black chinos, he bent his knees and sprinted across the dimly lit parking lot, ducking behind each parked car along the way like a soldier zigzagging through a mine field.
It took just seconds to cross the lot, climb the stairs, move to the corner of the landing, squat, and lean back against the wall to catch his breath, in the blind spot directly beneath the surveillance camera.
Fields saw the monitor’s picture shudder. He rocked back in his chair and rubbed his eyes—the picture was rock solid now—probably an electrical surge or gust of wind.
He gulped in cold damp air and held his right hand out in front of his face. Steady—it was time.
He pulled out a tiny can of WD-40, sprayed the door handles and hinges, tugged on a pair of black lambskin gloves, zipped up his black jacket, rolled the black ski mask down over his face and neck, and released the Glock’s safety.
Fields wondered if this would turn out to be a waste of time like most stakeouts. But it was a fleeting doubt because, like Granz, every cop instinct he’d developed over thirty years told him the killer would show, and soon.
He checked his pistol one more time, set it on the table, and forced his eyes back to the glowing monitor.
He depressed the latch cautiously and swung the door open slowly. It creaked almost inaudibly. He ducked into the vestibule of Holy Ascension Catholic Church.
Fields tilted his head, listened, tiptoed to the edge of the platform and listened again.
• • •
It was at least a hundred feet from the door to where the priest stood; too far to aim the Glock in the dim, flickering light and guarantee a hit. He knew he’d get only one shot and it must be perfect.
Fields listened for a few more seconds. Heart racing, he shrugged and said aloud, “Musta been my imagination.”
He closed the door, took a quick step to the left, and stood motionless.
Fields sat back down at the monitor table and, with shaking hands, slipped on a Bushnell night-vision goggle headset, buckled the chin strap, and pivoted the infrared illuminator lenses down in front of his eyes, locking them in place.
When the priest turned away, he crept down the aisle between the pews and lay on the floor, back against the vertical edge of the platform where he couldn’t be seen from above. He heard nothing—he hadn’t been detected.
Fields watched the shooter sneak toward the altar. Coughing loudly to mask any sound that might betray him, he dropped to his knees and crawled several feet to the side of the table. Hoping the shooter’s first move would be toward the monitor’s glow where he’d last been, he thumbed off the safety of the SW99 Smith & Wesson automatic and pointed the pistol at the spot he estimated the man’s masked head would appear over the platform’s edge.
When the priest coughed, he gripped the Glock in both hands, sucked in a breath, jumped to his feet, and spun toward the glow of the video monitor in a hunched-over shooter’s stance, Glock at arm’s length, sighting down the barrel.
Fields guessed right.
In the infrared goggles the assassin popped up in the exact spot he’d figured, a fluorescent pea-green silhouette against a black background in his gun sight. Fields lowered the front ramp to the intruder’s chest.
“Shit.”
The priest had moved and he could no longer see him. He knew of only one way to find his target in the dark—by sound—get his adversary to talk.
“I know you’re there.” His voice was muffled by the mask.
He spoke loudly, swinging the Glock left to right and back again, frantically searching for the bulk of a man’s body.
He turned his head sideways and listened. “Are you a cop?” he said.
“That’s right.”
Fields’ voice was calm, belying a pounding heart that hammered thunderously in his ears. His left hand tightened on the big Smith & Wesson’s Melonite grips.
“I’ve got you lined up in my sights,” Fields said. “Do what I tell you or I’ll blow your head off.”
“No you won’t. Cops’re trained to shoot second, never first—it’s their biggest weakness.”
He stepped to his right and kept talking. “I figured you’d set me up sooner or later.”
“You’re so fucking smart, why did you show up?”
He moved a couple of steps to the left, to change the angle of the cop’s voice. He thought he knew where it came from.
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me.”
Fields fought to stay calm. “Drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head.”
“I don’t think so.” He moved back to his right and listened again.
Fields knew he should shoot but figured that as long as he controlled the situation he might force an outcome other than a shootout—it could be a fatal mistake, but despite the talk about shooting first and asking questions later, the assassin was right—he couldn’t simply gun the man down.
They were fifteen feet apart.
“Last warning—you don’t have to die,” Fields said.
Blind in the dark, he triangulated on the voice, pointed the Glock toward the cop’s calculated position, and flipped off the safety.
“One of us does.”
“Bad choice.”
“On your part.”
Fields realized he had waited too long—the shooter had drawn a bead on him.
He could have shot first, but hesitated an instant before squeezing the trigger.
“Oh, shit.” Fields fired.
The Glock’s recoil jerked his arm upward a split second after he saw the Smith & Wesson’s muzzle blast.
A ten-thousandth of a second later Fields felt the impact knock the air out of his lungs, fling him back, and slam him to the floor. It probably saved his life—the Glock’s second slug whistled over his head, smashed into an urn of holy water, and showered him with liquid.
The Smith & Wesson’s huge, 10-millimeter hollow point magnum slug smashed into his chest just right of the sternum, ripped through his internal organs, blew a hole in his back, and took out two ribs as it exited.
Before he collapsed he heard the cop struggle to his feet. He tried to lift his arm, but it refused. The Glock fell to the floor.
Fields felt wet but not sticky, and all his parts seemed to work—as near as he could tell, the Kevlar vest had caught the first bullet and the second had missed. Wheezing to catch his breath, he climbed to his knees and crawled to the edge of the platform.
Rising up on his elbows, he peeked over and spotted the assassin sitting upright against the front row pew, head flopped onto one shoulder, legs stretched out in front, arms dangling uselessly at his sides. The man’s knuckles were immersed in black shiny blood that had pooled under his buttocks, and was spreading across the hardwood floor.
Fields raised the S&W, then decided a second shot wasn’t needed. He climbed to his feet and kicked the shooter’s Glock as far as possible.
Suddenly his legs gave out and he began to tremble violently, as his body stopped consuming the massive doses of adrenaline it was still pumping into his bloodstream.
He collapsed, more than squatted, over the injured man.
He tried to speak but nothing came out except a soft moan and stringy globs of bloody, foamy spit.
• • •
Fields peeled off the ski mask, aimed a Mini-Maglite in the assassin’s face, then lurched back.
“Oh God! Oh Jesus! Oh my God!” His voice was hoarse with tension, anger, fear, and shock.
“Goddammit, why?” Fields demanded.
Frothy red oxygenated ai
r spilled out of his destroyed lung, gurgled past his lips, and dripped off his chin. He felt cold.
Summoning one last burst of strength, he laid his hand on the cop’s arm.
The cop stared back wordlessly.
He fought back the insidious blackness long enough to whisper, “I’m sorry.”
Fields grabbed the man’s shoulders and shook him hard, flopping the head on the limp neck like a rag doll.
“Don’t die, goddammit!” Fields screamed and shook his attacker again. “Tell me why, damn you!”
It was too late. Sheriff David Granz was dead.
Chapter 50
MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 10:30 P.M.
SANTA RITA COUNTY MORGUE
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE.” Morgan Nelson turned his gaunt face toward James Fields, removed his skull cap, and ran a hand over his buzz cut.
He, Fields, and Miller stood in the hallway, backs toward the open door to the autopsy suite where Granz’ sheet-draped body lay on a stainless steel table.
“Sure I do, Doc.”
Fields’ jaws clinched, rippling the muscles under his pockmarked cheeks. He still had on the slacks and clerical shirt he’d worn under the cassock, cell phone hooked to his belt by an empty holster, his pistol having been seized as evidence.
“And you know why—he was my friend.”
“Ours too.” Nelson was dressed in green surgical scrubs and rubber-soled shoes with plastic booties pulled up over the tops.
“And his wife, the best friend I’ve ever had, is in a goddamn hospital bed four floors above us, in shock.”
Nelson fought back a tear. “Autopsies are my job, not yours. You don’t look like you’re up to it.”
“I’m all right.”
Nelson stared at him. “It’s your call, but you don’t look all right.”
“I have to be.” Fields’ voice trembled. “I put him on that table.”
Nelson shook his head. “From what I learned at the crime scene, Jim, I’d say he put himself on the table.”
“Either way, Doc, observing his autopsy might help me make sense of it.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Nelson removed his bifocals, knotted his hands into fists, and with his knuckles massaged his eyes, already bloodshot from grief and exhaustion.
He pulled paper scrub suits and booties, masks, and latex gloves from a drawer and handed them to the two cops. Backs still toward the autopsy suite, they wordlessly slipped into them.
Nelson led them into the autopsy suite. He switched on a bright overhead halogen light fixture with built-in video and audio recorders. When the tapes started winding he keyed the headset microphone, hesitated briefly, then slid off the sheet.
Granz’ eyes were closed, his face relaxed in what looked like a smile. Except for the bullet hole in his chest, whose ragged edges had begun to crust over with coagulating blood, he might have been asleep.
Nelson exhaled loudly, then started dictating his external examination.
“The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished, forty-seven-year-old white male, seventy-two inches in length, weighing one hundred eighty pounds.”
He rolled the body from side to side to examine the torso, lifted the arms and legs, checked the underlying tissue, then inspected inside the ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and other body orifices.
“Rigor and livor mortis onset is absent—hair is short and brownish blond, irises are green, nose and ears normal, teeth natural. The chest is symmetrical, abdomen flat, external genitalia unremarkable. Upper and lower extremities exhibit no tattoos, scars, or deformities.”
Nelson stopped and yanked a paper towel from a dispenser, wiped his brow and face dry, then wadded up the towel and threw it hard at the wastebasket, but missed.
“Son of a bitch!”
He picked up the towel and kicked the wastebasket across the room. It smashed into a cabinet on the opposite side of the room with a metallic clunk and landed upright, its sides caved in, lid hanging lopsidedly from the broken hinge.
“Dirty rotten goddamn son of a bitch!”
He snatched up the wastebasket with both hands and slammed it back down on the floor. The lid flew off. He ripped the towel into shreds and dropped them into the mutilated receptacle, then stormed back to the autopsy table.
He took several deep breaths and wiped his face with another towel, which he set on the bench behind him.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You gonna be okay, Doc?” Miller asked.
“Absolutely—I feel much better now.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned his attention back to the body.
“The only apparent injury is a single gunshot wound, the center of which is forty-five centimeters from the top of the head and three centimeters to the right of the anterior midline of the chest.”
He leaned over the body and adjusted his bifocals.
“The entrance wound is approximately one-point-five centimeters in diameter with a slightly ovoid entry defect, surrounded by eccentric abrasion.”
He rolled the body to its left. “Exit wound is through the posterior skeletal muscle of the right subclavian region. The projectile tracks front to back and slightly downward.”
Nelson slid two black plastic body-blocks under Granz’ back, then sliced deep V incisions that started at each shoulder and met at the bottom of the sternum.
A second cut connected the V to the pubis, diverting slightly around the navel. A third ran from hipbone to hipbone, intersecting the leg of the Y.
He laid back the abdominal skin, exposing a layer of pebbly yellow subcutaneous fat that looked like shiny, blood-streaked marbles, then peeled skin, fat, and soft tissue off the chest wall to reveal the rib cage.
Finally, he ran two cuts up the outer sides of the rib cage with the Stryker saw, lifted out the breast-plate, and laid it on the table.
Visually examining the internal organs, he cut the pericardial sac and pulmonary artery.
After removing the heart he tied strings to the carotid and subclavian arteries, snipped out the larynx and esophagus, cut the pelvic ligaments, bladder and rectal tubes, and lifted out the organ block, which he inspected and laid aside.
“Preliminary cause of death,” he dictated, “is massive hemorrhage due to penetration of the bullet through the right heart auricle and right lung—”
Everyone looked up as Escalante rushed in carrying a paper scrub suit, mask, booties, and latex gloves.
“How’s Kathryn?” Nelson switched off the recorders, removed his headset, and hung it around the back of his neck.
Fields and Miller watched her expectantly.
“Kathryn’s conscious and stable.”
Escalante struggled into the gown, then leaned against Miller while she pulled the boots over her shoes. He patted her affectionately on the shoulder and she leaned her head against his big hand for a moment.
“What happened?” Nelson asked.
“After Lieutenant Miller and I secured the crime scene, I drove to The Shadowbrook, where she and Emma were meeting Sheriff Granz to celebrate the adoption.”
“Adoption?”
“He adopted Emma. Judge Keefe signed the adoption order, and his clerk filed it at nine o’clock this morning.”
“I had no idea,” Nelson said softly.
“I didn’t either, until Emma told me on the way to the hospital.”
“How little we know even about our closest friends.” Nelson spoke more to himself than to the others. “I’m going to change from now on, pay more attention to the things that really matter.”
Escalante laid her hand on Nelson’s shoulder.
“Tell me about Kate,” he said.
“When I first told her about the shooting, she didn’t believe me, just sat there without saying anything, like it was some sort of sick joke. When she saw I was serious, she grabbed her head, started to stand up, but passed out.”
“Shit. Her blood pressure fell dangerously low. How lon
g before paramedics arrived?”
“A couple of minutes—they were dispatched from Central Fire, three blocks from the restaurant.”
“What’d they do?”
“Started a saline IV drip and transported her to the ER immediately.”
“Damn lucky. If her blood pressure stayed that low for more than about five minutes, she could’ve suffered permanent brain damage—not to mention the damage it might’ve done to the baby in a hell of a lot less time than that. Did she fall?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
Escalante pushed the paper mask up onto her forehead. “Her stomach hit the corner of the table, then her head hit the floor.”
“Damn! Has she miscarried?”
“Not yet. When I left to come here, they were monitoring her.”
“What about Emma?”
Escalante managed a tiny smile. “Bravest kid I ever saw—stayed calm, directed traffic in the restaurant to keep people out of the way, kept telling paramedics to be careful, that her mother was carrying her baby brother.”
“She’s a hell of a kid. Where is she?”
“Sitting in a chair holding her mother’s hand. I can take her home with me tonight if you think that’s a good idea.”
“No.” Nelson shook his head. “I’ll arrange for hospital staff to set up a bed in Kate’s room so she can spend the night with her mother. I’ll drop in from time to time.”
He looked around. “Let’s finish up.”
Escalante slid on the latex gloves.
“Put on your face masks, too,” Nelson advised. “Some aerosolization is unavoidable when I open the cranial cavity.”
He pulled the body-blocks from under Granz’ back, set one aside, and slid the other under the head. With a scalpel he cut a deep, straight incision through the scalp, over the crown of the head from the top of one ear to the other, peeled the front skin flap down over the face, and the rear flap over the nape of the neck.
Until Judgment Day Page 19