by Ethan Cross
When Ackerman’s calls had first begun, Marcus had thought that the killer was taunting him, trying to prove his superiority. But now he realized that Ackerman really just wanted a friend. A part of him pitied the killer for the terrible things that had been done to him and for his distorted perceptions of the world and right and wrong, but in the back of his mind, Marcus knew that either he was going to kill Ackerman or Ackerman was going to kill him. He cringed, thinking of the number of opportunities that the killer might have passed up. The bottom line was that if Ackerman wanted him or anyone he cared about to die, there was little that he could do to protect himself or his friends.
And where was Ackerman getting his information?
All those situations, questions and worries, combined with the details of the Anarchist case, created a constant twisting vortex of information that assaulted his mind every time he closed his eyes.
Frustrated, dejected, and exhausted, he watched the buildings, lights, and pavement flow past. He wished that he could block out the barrage of data—sounds of the city, people, vehicles, groans and creaks of the Yukon, sloshing of the tires through the snow pack on the road, Andrew’s breathing, the hum of the heater, a rattle in the dashboard. His mind broke the dashboard and heating system apart. Analyzing how the components fitted together, their interconnections, their weak spots. A three-dimensional blueprint appeared in his head, spinning, twisting.
He resisted the urge to pound his fists against his skull. He was so tired. He thought of a ranch he had spent some time on in Asherton, Texas. It had been so calm there. Not as many distractions. It had been the last time his mind had felt even slightly at ease. But Asherton was also where he had met Francis Ackerman and where his indoctrination into the Shepherd Organization had begun.
“Do you think we should stop by the hospital and check on Allen?” Andrew said.
“I don’t know.” Marcus wanted to make sure that Allen was okay, but he also assumed that the Brubaker family had arrived in force by now. It was his fault that Allen was confined to that bed. His fault that his mentor might never walk again. Ackerman had been after him, and Allen had just stepped into the crossfire. He wasn’t ready to look into the eyes of Allen’s wife and children and see the pain and fear that he had caused. “He should rest tonight. We’ll stop in and see him tomorrow.”
Andrew changed lanes, and Marcus’s gaze wandered to the rear-view mirror. He suddenly sat forward in his seat. “Take your next left,” he said in a tight, urgent tone.
“Okay. What’s up?” Andrew said.
“Three cars back. White Ford Taurus. I’ve seen it three times today.”
“Are you sure?”
“Last time I spotted it, I memorized the license plate. I’m sure.”
Andrew took the left turn onto a side street. The Taurus turned as well, but it kept a good distance back. Andrew said, “How do you want to play it?”
“Take the next sharp right you see that’s hidden by a building. Hug the right-hand sidewalk and slow down just enough for me to hop out. Then make sure that you get stopped at the next light.”
“Okay. Get ready.”
Marcus prepared himself as Andrew took the next turn and followed his instructions. Marcus stepped from the vehicle onto the sidewalk as soon as the Taurus was out of sight. Andrew barely slowed. Marcus pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up and blended in with the other pedestrians. At that hour, foot traffic was sparse, but the Taurus’s driver wouldn’t be looking for him on the sidewalk anyway.
He kept his stride casual, quick and purposeful but not hurried. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Taurus slip past. Andrew sat ahead of him at the next red light. It was a four-lane road, and a red Jeep with a soft top waited directly behind Andrew. Next in line was the Taurus.
Glancing around at the passersby and not seeing anyone close, Marcus decided to make his move. His right hand slipped beneath his leather jacket and pulled the Sig Sauer P220 from its holster. With his left, he whipped out a spring-assisted knife. It was a quality weapon designed for quick one-handed access and had a Tungsten DLC coated blade and a grip with fiberglass inserts. The bottom of the knife was also equipped with a seat-belt cutter and a glass-breaker, a sharp metal cone designed to provide rapid entry for first responders in emergency situations. He used the tool now as he rushed up to the passenger window of the Taurus. In a swift and violent movement, he swung his left arm and the tip of the glass breaker against the window. The result was an explosion of glass shards bursting into the vehicle and a startled yell from the man inside.
Marcus wasted no time in unlocking the door and slipping into the passenger seat with his gun pointed at the vehicle’s occupant. The light turned green. “Drive,” he said.
47
Schofield watched as Melissa Lighthaus slumbered peacefully. Her skin was smooth like silk and the color of home-churned butter. Her arm was draped over the side of the bed. She wore an oversized white men’s T-shirt.
The whole scene reminded him of a painting by Henry Fuseli entitled The Nightmare. He had seen the disturbing piece at the Detroit Institute of Arts while on a business trip, and it had stuck with him. The painting depicted a young woman asleep in bed and clothed all in white. Her long hair cascaded down, mirroring a set of red blankets that were also disheveled, giving the impression that she had been tossing and turning. A small demon sat upon her chest with its legs curled up. It was half-shrouded in shadow and had its hand resting on its chin as if in thought. Its grotesque countenance and piercing eyes faced outward, toward the viewer. According to folklore, the crouching monster was an incubus, a representative of the devil that would come to women in the night and engage in sexual relations with them. The wall behind the creature showed its shadow, suggesting that it existed not only in the mind of the dreamer but had substance within the real world.
But if Melissa was the woman in white, that made Schofield the incubus. A monster born of nightmares charged with sowing the seed of the devil. A grotesque and evil creation. The thought filled him with sadness, but he resisted the urge to cry.
He walked back to the foot of the bed and prepared his instruments. But just as he was slipping back the covers from the woman’s feet, a car alarm sounded from just beyond her window. The keening wail pierced the walls of her bedroom and filled the space with an air of urgency and panic.
His eyes went wide, and reacting on instinct, he dropped out of sight at the foot of her bed. The bed frame shook slightly against his back as the covers stirred. She had sat up.
Schofield’s heart thundered, and his fingers snaked around the grip of the P22 Walther .22LR caliber pistol mounted with a Gemtech Outback IID sound suppressor that he carried in case of glitches such as this.
It was too early. He never should have attempted to operate at this hour. The risks were greater. The variables racked with inconsistencies.
But he needed what Melissa had. She possessed a beautiful and caring soul. One that he envied in every way. Most of all, she had strength. She had been abused in her life, first by a drunken father and then by a controlling husband, but she had come through it all intact. He would need her strength for the confrontation he knew was coming, when he would face his own abuser. And her work hours had dictated moving up his timetable.
He waited. If her feet touched the floor, he would have to kill her right then and there. No choice. He visualized his movements, choreographing how he would react.
A groan of the boards beneath her feet. He pushes off the floor with his left hand, getting to his knees, aims the gun with his right. The angle would be bad. He’d be shooting across his body, but there wouldn’t be time to adjust his position before she spotted him. He squeezes the trigger. The pistol pops with a muffled retort. He keeps firing until she’s down. She may fall back into the lamp, making a loud crash, but it doesn’t matter. But what if he missed? What if the first bullet caught her in the shoulder, and she had the presence of mind to run? Maybe he could force her to
inject herself with the drugs? But wouldn’t flight be her first instinct? What if she made it out of the house? Across the yard, to the neighbor, to a phone, calling the police …
Variables, outcomes, assessments, risks.
His lungs cried out for air, but he hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath. The bed vibrated again, and his grip tensed around the gun. But she didn’t get up. She was going back to sleep.
Gently, he allowed himself to breathe. Then he waited.
48
The interior of the Taurus was slate gray with black and wood-grain accents. It reeked of burnt coffee and fast food. On the radio, Lennon and McCartney sang about A Hard Day’s Night. Two extra-large cups of generic gas-station coffee, one filled with candy-bar wrappers and one full of liquid, rested in the cup-holders of the center console. The man behind the wheel wore jeans and a black and white Chicago White Sox jersey beneath a puffy brown North Face coat. He was in his early thirties with a shaved head and acne-scarred cheeks covered by two days of brown stubble. And he was big. Not fat, but large and muscular. Marcus guessed by the way the man’s big frame was crammed inside the Taurus that he was at least six-foot-five and probably two hundred and seventy-five pounds.
The driver said, “Listen, buddy, I—”
“Shut up. Pull over into that lot.”
The man complied, flipped up his turn signal, and pulled into the nearly vacant lot of an office building. The big man threw the Taurus into park and said, “Okay, I’m going to reach for my wallet. I’m a cop. Just take it easy. Don’t shoot me.”
Slowly, he took out and displayed a faded brown leather wallet containing a Jackson’s Grove PD badge and an ID stating his name was Erik Jansen. Marcus reluctantly placed the Sig Sauer back into his shoulder holster. But he kept the knife in his left hand near the center console and knew that he could have the blade buried to the hilt in the guy’s throat before he could draw any weapon.
“Why have you been following us?”
Jansen raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just doing my job. Belacourt told me to keep an eye on you.”
“I didn’t see you at the briefing this morning.”
“I didn’t come in until this afternoon.”
“Call him.”
“Who? You mean Belacourt?”
“No, I mean Papa Smurf.”
“Come on, man. Let’s just forget about this. He’ll be pissed.”
“Not my problem. Make the call.”
Jansen reluctantly grabbed for his phone and dialed, his face a mask of frustration. Marcus could hear the ringing on the other end of the line. When a voice came on, he snatched the phone away from Jansen’s ear.
“Don’t you think you have better uses for your resources than following us?” he said.
The other end was silent for a moment, but then Belacourt’s voice came over the airwaves. Surprise still resonated in his tone, but he covered it well. “I wish I did. Unfortunately, I can’t force you to leave, and you won’t take the hint.”
Marcus didn’t get this guy. In his experience, local law enforcement usually had no huge problems cooperating with federal agencies. Sure, there were pissing contests and times when someone got their toes stepped on, but nothing like this. Nothing with this much ferocity and venom. “Why do you care so much about me? We’re all on the same team. All I want to do is stop this guy.”
“Let’s get something straight. You are not on my team. You are nothing but a distraction and a hindrance to this investigation. I know your type. I could tell what you were from the first second I saw you. You’re nothing but a—”
Marcus hung up the phone and cursed under his breath. Belacourt was nothing but a brick wall of closed-minded ignorance. If the Anarchist was going down, it would be without the cop’s help. To Jansen, he said, “I know it’s not your fault that your CO is an asshole, but trust me, there are more important things you could be doing right now rather than following me.” As he stepped outside, he added, “Besides, you need to get that window and tire fixed.”
“Tire? Oh come on …”
Marcus buried the blade of his knife in the front tire of the Taurus and then walked over to where Andrew was waiting to pick him up. At his back, Jansen called, “Was all that really necessary?”
49
Having administered the drugs and wrapped Melissa in a black blanket, Schofield scanned the backyard and the path to his waiting vehicle. There were no signs of life, but his view was obstructed by a detached garage, a white fence with cracked and flaking paint, and a row of snow-encrusted lilac bushes. A pole light on a neighbor’s garage lit the alley, so he couldn’t hide within the darkness. He couldn’t be sure that his route was clear of complications.
It’s too early. Too many people still out and about.
But he had little choice. He had to take the risk, so he punched the button on his keychain to automatically open the trunk of the Camry. Taking a deep breath, he scooped Melissa up. Out the door, across the yard, hugging the wall of the garage, staying out of the light, dumping her into the trunk, closing the lid.
It was done. He had made it.
A little snarl and a yap sounded behind him.
He turned around slowly.
Twenty feet away at the edge of the alley, a middle-aged man in blue Adidas windbreaker pants and a thick brown winter coat stood holding the leash of a little orange Pomeranian. The man’s coat was entirely too small for his frame and looked like it was made for a woman, as if he had simply grabbed the first jacket he had seen before taking the dog out to the bathroom. The Pomeranian couldn’t seem to make up its mind on how to react to the newcomer. It snarled and showed its teeth, but its tail was wagging.
The two men just stared at each other.
Time seemed to stand still. Neither of them moved.
But then the man with the dog took a furtive step backward. Schofield tried to speak, but the words came out jumbled and his voice sounded an octave higher than normal.
“I, ummm, we, it’s … not what it …”
Schofield realized that he was dressed all in black, was wearing a black balaclava, and had just dropped a body-shaped bundle into his trunk. There would be no explaining it away. No reasoning with this man. No excuses could be made, and he lacked the capacity for such subterfuge anyway.
He raised the P22 Walther and fired three times into the man’s chest. The dog yapped out a string of high-pitched barks, and the man screamed for help. The smell of gunpowder filled the night air, and stuffing from the interior of the man’s coat floated in the breeze. The man rolled onto his front and tried to crawl away.
Moving purely on instinct now, Schofield rushed forward and kicked the man over and onto his back. Stains of blood streaked across the snow, and a trail of ruddy brown liquid flowed down the man’s chin. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were red. “Please,” the man forced out in a wheeze. One of the bullets must have punctured a lung.
“Look in my eyes!” Schofield said.
The man fixed him with a disbelieving stare as if he couldn’t comprehend that this was truly happening, that his life was truly over.
Schofield fired twice into the man’s forehead and once more into his chest.
The little dog still yapped and growled ferociously at his back. Its retractable leash trailed behind it as it ran back and forth from one side of the alley to the other, the plastic handle scraping and bumping over the rocks.
He aimed the pistol at the Pomeranian and said, “Be quiet!”
The little dog’s incessant yipping pierced his ears like needles. His finger tensed over the trigger. He willed himself to fire, to stop the noise. The neighbors would hear. The dog was drawing unwanted attention. It had to be silenced.
But he couldn’t kill the poor little animal. He groaned and chased it around the alley, eventually catching its leash beneath his foot. Scooping the dog up, he spoke to it in a calm and comforting voice while he stroked his fingers through its orange fur. Its tai
l wagged furiously from side to side, and it licked his face.
“Okay, okay,” Schofield said, with a laugh. “You have a new family now.”
50
Dark brown brick and a row of shrubs and small flowering trees stripped bare by the cold bordered the office for the Northern Oaks Psychiatric Group. Out front, four bronze statues of children danced in a circle on a raised and illuminated concrete pad. The address was displayed prominently on the building’s right corner, written in two-foot-tall white letters. The office of Dr. Henry Burkhart occupied the southeast corner of a building that rested within a large group of medical offices. Marcus knew that it was the kind of place that would contain all sorts of prescription drugs and expensive equipment, a prime target for junkies and thieves, which meant that it was undoubtedly patrolled by uniformed security. Stan had hacked the security company’s records and obtained the alarm code, but he wouldn’t be able to help with the human factor.
They parked down a block in the lot of a Presbyterian church and made their way across the well-manicured church grounds toward their target, then up a concrete walkway, past the four bronze statues playing ring-around-the-rosie, and to the glass doors of the psychiatric office. Andrew picked the lock while Marcus kept watch. Within a minute, they were in the building. Andrew tapped in the code on a panel to the left side of the door, and they headed off to find their prize.
They passed through a waiting area scattered with magazines and children’s toys and into a long corridor stretching to the end of the building. Lighting their path with adjustable spot-to-flood flashlights, they checked the labels for each door until they found one marked Records Room. Inside, they discovered rows upon rows of blue and white shelving stacked full of multicolored folders. Marcus had no doubt that some gray-haired nurse who had managed this office for the past fifteen years would have no problem making sense of the color-coded filing system and locating the proper patient records, but he wondered if he and Andrew would manage the task before the staff showed up for work in the morning.