Carmen’s expression begged Harrow to be careful.
“Mr. Shelton—you need to put the gun down, and talk to me. I promise you will have time in front of my cameras to deliver your complete message to the public.”
“You’ll edit it to—”
“No! You are too important now. You have sent messages that have been heard all over this land, but not understood. This is your chance to correct that. To explain.”
Shelton seemed to be thinking this option over. Harrow couldn’t see much of the man, with Carmen a helpless puppet in front of him; but perhaps Harrow’s words were getting through….
“You know, Mr. Shelton, some say you killed your family.”
“Don’t ever say that!” The one eye visible flared. “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her right now and—”
Carmen was holding her breath, frozen in fear.
“I am not saying that, Mr. Shelton! I am saying that the messages you’ve sent seem to say you’d be capable of such a thing. I know all too well that you have killed other men’s families…why not your own?”
Carmen’s eyes narrowed, questioning Harrow’s tack.
“Stop saying that! Stop saying that. You’re wrong; you’re misinterpreting everything I’ve meant to say.”
“That, Mr. Shelton, is why you need to put the gun down, and go in front of our cameras and explain yourself to the world. Explain that you would never have harmed your family.”
Almost entirely hidden behind his hostage now, Shelton spoke in a clear but oddly small voice in the quiet night: “How did you feel, Harrow, when they accused you of killing your family?”
“…I felt terrible. It made an unbearable sorrow more unbearable.”
“Well…I’m sorry for that. But you did get the message, didn’t you?”
“I…I did.”
“And now you know that I didn’t kill my family. Because I know you didn’t kill yours.”
This logic was nothing Harrow wished to spend time exploring. All he wanted right now was to talk this pathetic but so very dangerous creature into giving up and letting Carmen go.
A vein twitching in Harrow’s forehead was the only hint that under his calm exterior he was fighting the urge to jump the rail of the porch and shove the nine millimeter in the man’s mouth or maybe just strangle him; the desire to destroy the monster that killed Ellen and David coursed in him like lava, burning through his every capillary, vein, and artery.
“You can take my word,” Shelton said, “as the man who killed your family, I did not kill my own.”
Carmen’s eyes were wide with fear, but managed to convey to Harrow that she didn’t understand this insane reasoning any more than he did.
Only Harrow did understand. It reflected how twisted his own path had been that he knew damn well Shelton confessing the murders of Ellen and David, freely, was a gesture of sorts, a blood-stained olive branch.
They had a bond. And only the lunatic on that porch, and the man below who’d been driven half-mad by the lunatic’s actions, could understand that bond.
“I believe you, Mr. Shelton. Why don’t I come up there, and we’ll discuss this further?”
“I like you where you are.”
“No, you need to meet me halfway. You let me take Carmen’s place, and we can work the rest of it out. It’ll be a show of good faith.”
A bit more of Shelton’s head became visible over Carmen’s shoulder as the killer got a better look at Harrow.
“All right,” Shelton said. “You take a step at a time and wait for me to say take another.”
“Fine.”
“And I want your hands up!”
“Fine.”
Harrow approached the stairs—six of them—and took the first one. Shelton moved back, closer to the front door, but the angle of the moon put him in more light. Carmen’s eyes weren’t so wide now; she seemed almost relaxed, or as relaxed as a person could be with a gun snout to her forehead.
“All right, another step.”
Harrow took it.
“Another.”
Harrow did so.
Then Shelton’s eyes darted right, and Harrow realized the killer had seen something he didn’t like.
“You stay put, Herm!” Shelton yelled. The arm around Carmen’s waist tightened and she made a sound, like a child picked up too roughly. “You stay the hell put!”
Harrow glanced over and saw Gibbons at the edge of the shadows of the house next door—he was motionless, but for the weapon in his hand, dropping by degrees.
“Back off, Sheriff,” Harrow said, loud, firm. “Mr. Shelton is complying with everything I’m asking. Let me do this.”
Gibbons dissolved into the darkness.
After several long seconds, Shelton said, “Okay, Mr. Harrow. Take another step.”
He stepped, and in the earpiece whose occasional cop chatter he’d been ignoring, Harrow finally heard something worth registering: “Suspect in better light. Still no shot.”
The voice of the deputy, Colby Wilson.
The sniper was probably deep in the shadows of the houses across the street or possibly on a rooftop. Harrow risked a glimpse right, and caught sight of a boom mike peeking out at the back corner of a porch—either Hughes or Ingram had moved in pretty close. Harrow had gotten away with the glance because the killer’s attention was still on Gibbons, or anyway the darkness where the sheriff lurked.
So Harrow risked a quick look in the other direction, and thought he saw a part in the curtains on the first floor of the nearest abandoned house. The sniper? Or the unblinking eye of a camera?
“Mr. Harrow! What are you looking at?”
Harrow’s eyes snapped back to the killer. “I’m just nervous.”
“Don’t con me. You try conning me, and she’s dead and you’re dead. And I’m dead, but I don’t care because I died a long time ago, so don’t you con me.”
Harrow gestured easily with the upraised hands. “I was checking to see if my camera crew was in position and getting this.”
The slice of his face visible behind Carmen’s included an eye that widened. “Are they? That would be good.”
“Yes, it would. It would get your message out in a much better way.”
“Are they out there?”
“I don’t know. You said, don’t con you. I think so. But I just don’t know.”
Shelton allowed Harrow up the final few steps, and then Harrow was facing Carmen and her captor—perhaps four feet separating them. Ivory washed over Carmen, and she looked fragile and lovely and, of course, terrified.
In Harrow’s ear, the deputy said, “If Harrow’d move a step to his left, I could cap this sumbitch.”
But Harrow moved not an inch, his eyes on the slender wall of flesh that was Carmen, behind which her captor hid, only barely visible there.
What had happened to Jenny Blake? Where was her intel?
Harrow felt the situation slipping like sand through his fingers. Maybe he should dive left and let Gibbons’s man take the shot….
“Okay, Mr. Shelton. Here I am. Let her go, and I’ll be your hostage.”
“I let her go, and a sniper takes me out. Probably that shit Wilson. He’s in on it too, you know!”
“We had a deal….”
“I want a TV camera. You said I could talk to a camera.”
In his left ear, Harrow finally heard Jenny: “Shelton’s wife was named Cathy and his son Mark.”
Harrow said, “How do you think Cathy and Mark would feel about what you’re doing? About what you’ve been doing for the past ten years?”
The eye on view flinched, but the killer’s comeback was quick: “How would your wife feel about you tracking me down, all over hell and TV and gone?”
“She’d hate it,” Harrow said.
“Like mine would what I’ve done.”
“And yet you kept on.”
“I did. And you’re here, aren’t you? What our gentle wives would have done is beside the point. You an
d me, Mr. Harrow, we’re men. Screwed-up men. We do what we can. We do what we have to do. Anyway, the dead don’t get to have opinions. And your opinion is, you’d like to kill me.”
Carmen’s eyes pleaded with Harrow. He wasn’t sure what she was begging him to do. He wasn’t sure she even knew.
“Maybe,” Harrow said. “Maybe not. We both know this much—nothing brings them back. Not revenge, not justice, nothing. I’d guess you know that better than anybody, Mr. Shelton.”
“Sheriff Gibbons was lead investigator,” Jenny whispered in his ear. “Shelton was his only suspect.”
Wondering why the sheriff had omitted being the lead investigator, Harrow said, “Why does Gibbons think you killed Cathy and Mark?”
“He doesn’t—he was in on it. He’s part of the conspiracy.”
“I need to hear about this conspiracy. America needs to hear. It’s time to let Carmen go, Mr. Shelton, and get those cameras up here and—”
But Shelton was somewhere else: “They wanted the land, all the land,” he was saying. “The ones that wouldn’t sell, they drove out.”
“But you did sell,” Harrow said.
His face flashed from behind Carmen’s and his brow was clenched and his mouth twisted. “Only after they killed my family! That money they gave me, their blood money, that’s what’s financed my deliveries. Oh, I bought that little crummy shack on the other side of town, but the rest, the insurance money for Cathy and Mark, every dollar and cent’s been used to deliver my message to the world. To let everyone know the kind of greedy goddamn grubbing that’s been going on in the center of America.”
“And what is going on, Mr. Shelton?”
“I told you! They want all the land.”
Jenny whispered, “Shelton sold out to Castano Developments.”
“So Castano Developments wants all the land in this neighborhood?”
“Not just here! Everywhere.”
“The whole town?”
“Everywhere, all of it!”
“They want all the land.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“And they kill people to get it.”
“Yes, yes, yes—and they’re using the deputies and cops, and maybe even the state police as their hatchet men.”
“The state police?”
“Yes, them too. I went to them after Cathy and Mark were killed. They came back and said they couldn’t find anything either. That meant they had to be in on it too. Maybe even the FBI—they listened nice and polite when I drove up to Kansas City, to tell them all about it. But they didn’t do a goddamn thing. Didn’t even pretend to do something, like the state police did. No one has…not till you, Mr. Harrow. Not till you.”
Carmen’s eyes begged him: Stop him…end this….
“When did you talk to all these people?”
“In the weeks and months after the murders, but they didn’t do a damn thing. That’s why I started delivering the messages myself. I knew sooner or later someone would come to my rescue.”
Harrow knew these were the ramblings of a lunatic mind. Shelton thought the evil developers were after his land, and everyone’s land everywhere, and that all of law enforcement had conspired to kill his family.
At this point, the only remaining question was how to get Carmen away from this crazy, before the man decided to deliver one last message….
“Mr. Shelton, how long have you been after these people? Ten years?”
“Ten years.”
“Well, I’ve been investigating this for only a few months. I did look into my family’s deaths, but it took me all these years, and some corn from this county, to bring me to this porch. So if you want us to stop them, you’ve got to share the information you’ve found. That’s going to take time, and we can’t do it here, not like this. We’ll get you in front of a camera, and you will tell your story, and you will tell it in detail.”
Shelton said nothing. The hand with the gun seemed to be shaking, just a little. Was that good, or bad?
“You can’t stay on this porch with a gun to my friend’s head forever,” Harrow said. “Let her go. I’ll stay with you as your hostage, until the cameras can come in.”
Shelton swallowed. “We could go inside and talk. Where this started. Where they killed them. That would be…dramatic, right? Good for TV?”
The gun dropped from Carmen’s temple, but Shelton’s arm was still looped around her waist as the man shifted, about to ease out from behind the woman, if Harrow was any judge.
And in his right ear Harrow heard: “I’ve got a shot, do I have a go order?”
From the darkness, where he was shouting into his radio, Gibbons’s voice registered for all to hear: “Go!”
“Bastards!” Shelton said, and ducked behind Carmen again as the sound split the night and the shot thunked splinteringly into the front door between Harrow and the captor with his hostage.
Shelton’s sudden movement caused Carmen to stumble and the two went down in a heap, Carmen screaming, Shelton making animal sounds as they hit the old wooden slats of the porch. Then Shelton was on his knees, pulling Carmen’s hair as he tried to bring her up as a shield again, his gun-in-hand rising to take its place at her temple.
Looking down at them, Harrow didn’t hesitate—his hand whipped around his back and came back with the nine millimeter, which he aimed and fired in one smooth motion, the bullet punching through Shelton’s forehead, the crack of his skull audible, the gunshot itself a thundercrack that seemed to shake the old house.
The gun clunked from the killer’s hand to the porch as limp fingers released Carmen’s hair, and the self-styled messenger slumped to weathered wooden slats, dead as his family, dead as Harrow’s family, oozing brains that had been damaged long prior to the bullet.
Then Carmen was in Harrow’s arms, sobbing, holding him tight, as they sat on the bottom porch step. For his part, he just stroked her hair and let her cry.
Chapter Thirty-six
Hathaway and Arroyo were next to Harrow and Carmen, filming even before Gibbons and his men got there.
“Byrnes broke in on America’s Wackiest Wedding Videos,” Hathaway said, obviously stoked. “That’s the network’s second-biggest show, you know.”
Arroyo said, “Whole thing went out on the network live—seven-second delay, of course, in case somebody got shot.”
“That’s entertainment,” Harrow said, and Carmen interrupted her crying to snort a laugh, then returned to her tears.
Even as the cameramen spoke, they never stopped shooting. The audio personnel were moving in now, as well.
Laurene and Choi appeared, and managed to each get in the way of a camera as Harrow helped Carmen to her feet. With Laurene, getting in front of a camera was accidental; with Choi, Harrow wasn’t so sure.
Finally he asked Carmen, “How are you doing?”
Her tear-smeared face had a bitter cast. “You talked him down. They didn’t have to take that shot.”
“I know. Bastards risked both our lives.”
“You gonna do something about that, boss?”
“You bet your…paycheck.”
She managed a feeble smile. “You think I could go back to being a PA now? Stardom suddenly doesn’t look so good.”
“No going back, Carmen. We’re both stuck.”
“Are your ears ringing? Mine are.”
“You were close to that gunshot. It’ll ease up.”
That was when Carlos Moreno came up and cornered them, microphone in hand. Apparently Gibbons’s perimeter was as secure as a sand castle at high tide.
Moreno thrust the microphone at Carmen.
Harrow was about to slap the goddamn thing aside when she pulled away from him, stood upright.
Moreno said, “Carmen Garcia, we’re on live on UBC. How do you feel?”
And the former hostage was instantly “on.”
“Well, Carlos, I can tell you this—it’s good to be alive. I owe everything to J.C. Harrow, who has to be th
e bravest man on the planet.”
“What about the alleged killer who held you captive?”
“Carlos, I feel bad for Mr. Shelton. He was a very troubled soul. He lost his family, much as J.C. did….”
Harrow had heard enough. He moved toward the sidewalk, where various official vehicles were pulling in.
Sheriff Gibbons came up to him. “You did good, J.C.”
“You didn’t,” Harrow said.
The sheriff’s expression might have been the aftermath of a slap. “What the hell…”
“Your goddamned deputy tried to gun him down just when I’d talked him into coming in peacefully.”
Gibbons took a step back. “We didn’t know—we couldn’t hear….”
“Hell you couldn’t,” Harrow said. “You were right next door and heard everything. And the second your guy Wilson had a shot, you told him go for it—risking my life, and Carmen’s, needlessly…and robbing us of a suspect who might clear up countless murder cases.”
“Goddamnit, Harrow, he had a gun on the Garcia woman! You would have done the—”
“Same thing? Don’t think so. He was surrendering, you dick. Your man, and your go order, put the two of us in the line of fire. Then I had to do your dirty work for you.”
“Well, J.C., I’m sorry you feel that way, but I feel we did the right thing. You’ll cool off, and you’ll think about it, and—”
Harrow had heard enough of that bullshit, too. He walked away from the increasingly noisy scene, needing some silence. Heading toward the crime lab semi, he felt someone fall in next to him.
Laurene Chase.
She gave him a sunny smile. “Rough day at the office?”
He shrugged. “Same-o, same-o.”
“Carmen’s alive,” she said. “That’s a good day at the office, no matter what else went down.”
He nodded, not knowing if he really agreed. He was thrilled Carmen was alive, but he had been so close to bringing in the suspect the same way….
Up ahead, Pall and Anderson were pacing like expectant fathers. Jenny Blake stood off to herself a little, arms folded. They all fell in line behind their boss and his number two, following like puppies.
Harrow’s cell vibrated. Checking the caller ID, he saw: DENNIS BYRNES.
You Can’t Stop Me Page 24