The Deepest Wound

by Rick Reed

  “Do you feel like talking?” he asked her.

  Her voice trembled and she was on the verge of fresh tears, but she nodded. “Eric asked me to get some files from the basement. I told him I had plans with you, but he said he would tell you that I had to stay. I’m sorry I just didn’t go home and cook for you, Jack.”

  He lightly tapped his stomach. “If it makes you feel any better, I wish you had cooked for me, too.”

  Moira tried to smile, but the gesture was pathetic.

  “It’s all over. You’re safe,” he assured her. No thanks to Eric. But it wasn’t all Eric’s fault. He was angry with himself that he hadn’t thought to protect Moira. He should have known that if the killers were after the flash drive, they wouldn’t stop with Liddell. He hadn’t thought that through, and she could have been killed.

  Captain Franklin walked in. The only indication he’d gone home was that his tie was loosened slightly. He went straight to Moira. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” she said. “If not for Jack . . .” Tears pooled in her eyes and she couldn’t finish.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” Franklin said, and gave Jack a questioning look.

  Jack shrugged. “They’re gone, but I’m sure they were the same guys that attacked Liddell.”

  “The two guys from New Harmony?”

  “I only saw one of them,” Jack admitted. And he wasn’t sure which one, “But if one of them was here, they both were.” His ears were still ringing from the gunshot in the stairwell.

  Brooke added. “Preliminary reports from our weapons expert state that the bullets and casings from New Harmony were fired by a Beretta nine millimeter. Per Jack’s request, I’ve asked the lab for a rush on the comparison. It’s nine millimeter ammunition, but until they can examine the bullet, they won’t be able to nail down the weapon. It’ll take a few hours.”

  “Anything on the van yet?” Franklin asked.

  Brooke took this question. “The tarp we found in the cargo bay had traces of blood and . . .” She paused, wondering how much more Moira could stand to hear after the night she’d just had, but she no longer seemed to be listening.

  “Crime scene techs collected bits and pieces of tissue, skin, and other cast-offs from the murder weapon. They must have killed at least one of the victim’s right there—in the van. I’ve got a lab crew working overtime.”

  Jack held up the evidence bag with the bloody screwdriver. “One of them might have been injured with this. A maintenance man works nights here and he was found unconscious next to an overturned tool cart. The guy who shot at me was running toward the stairwell where this was found.”

  “Could the blood be the maintenance man’s?” Brooke asked.

  Jack shook his head.

  “Can you have the screwdriver rushed through, Brooke?” Franklin asked. “We can get a comparison sample from Nova, the maintenance man, to eliminate him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And have them run it through the DNA databases,” Jack said.

  Now that they had so much evidence in hand, Brooke was being really great. Expediting all this material would help out a lot. Yet in the next moment Jack remembered why she had been assigned the case in the first place. “I guess you’ll be calling Trent now?”

  “Good idea,” she said, and, taking her phone from her pocket, she started for the door to make the call in private. As she approached the doorway, without turning around, she raised her left hand and then her middle finger for Jack to see.

  “In your dreams,” Jack muttered, but he had to admire her style.

  Franklin remarked, “I see you two have become friends.”

  Moira also had been watching the exchange. “Jack has a way with people,” she said, smiling for the first time.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Clint sat on the edge of the bed at the Sleepy Lodge while Book applied a makeshift field dressing. The wound in his leg was deep. An angry red circle surrounded the puncture.

  “I think the screwdriver hit the bone,” Clint moaned.

  “I’m going to patch it. Then we got to go,” Book said, and wrapped a strip of white T-shirt around Clint’s leg and tied it tight.

  They’d learned that lesson in the field. Never stay in one place for long. Especially after a fight. If you got comfortable, that was when haji would come out of nowhere, with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, or other makeshift weapons. And they always came for blood. Revenge was the dish of the day, the screw du jour. If you killed one of theirs, the whole family would come for you. Cops weren’t much different, in Clint’s opinion.

  Still, he was injured. His ribs were on fire, and he wasn’t sure he could put weight on his leg. He wanted nothing more than to put his head down. Just for a few minutes. But they had to find a safe telephone. Check in with the boss. Tell her of yet another failure.

  With a fighter’s determination he pulled himself to his feet, stretched the sore muscles in his back, and limped around on the leg. The pain wasn’t as bad as he thought. He picked up the car keys from the dresser. “Let’s go,” he said—and then his leg buckled.

  Book had to help him back onto the bed. He took the keys and said, “I’ll be back in an hour. Get some rest, but be ready to leave.”

  Clint, finally able to close his eyes, was out in a few seconds.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Garcia was running the fingerprints from the handle of the screwdriver through the database known as the Automated Fingerprint Information Systems, maintained by the FBI. She had already checked the Evansville police records filing cabinets to be sure they didn’t have fingerprint cards that hadn’t yet been entered into the system, and then double-checked with the State Police crime lab. They, too, had followed all the steps. Yet even AFIS pulled up a big zero.

  Garcia didn’t see how someone could commit these types of atrocities and not be in some agency’s files. Her own fingerprints were on file with both the local and state authorities, and she was only a civilian government employee. Surely someone who killed like this had been arrested or fingerprinted at some point in his life.

  Then she recalled that Jack mentioned the killers might be former military members. She wondered if the military had an automated system in place. Did the military fingerprint soldiers? She wasn’t sure, but she knew someone who would know.

  She took her cell phone from her purse and dialed a number, and although it was almost midnight, she knew he would answer if he saw her name pop up on his caller ID.

  “Hey, baby girl. What up?” the sleepy male voice said.

  She smiled. “I need you to check something for me.”

  “Anything for you, darlin’. You know that.” She heard him tell someone to go back to sleep. Lucius Starling was never alone.

  “I need you to get into the military database. Fingerprints,” she said. “I’ve scanned the prints and I’m emailing them to you right now.”

  “Whoa, girl. Slow down. That’s not something you say on an unsecured line.” Muffled in the background, she heard a female asking whom he was talking to. She heard Lucius answer, “It’s my sister. Just go back to sleep.” Then he came back on the line. “Sorry, baby girl. She can’t get enough of me. But I’ve always got some left for you.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you, Lucius. No means no.” At one time she had played with the idea—Lucius was built like a weight lifter without any of the wilt up front—but two factors kept her from doing it. First, his desire for her gave her a negotiating chip. Men were always more pliable when they were after something. Second, she had met Mark Crowley, chief deputy sheriff of Dubois County, and it was love at first sight.

  “Who says we’re going to sleep?” Lucius said playfully. She remained silent and he sighed. “Okay, just a minute.” Moments later, “What am I looking for?”

  “Just check your email.”

  She could hear him slapping the keys on his computer, and when he said he had the email, she filled h
im in—as much as he needed to know—and then turned him loose to do his thing. He didn’t really need to hack the computer, because his job as a senior consulting computer analyst for the Department of Justice carried some perks. Lucius wasn’t the typical muscle head. He was almost as good with computers as Garcia.

  He could run what she needed as a “test of the system,” and no one would be the wiser. Whereas, if she hacked into the system—and she was perfectly capable of doing so—it would set off all kinds of alarms and begin a search that might lead back to her computer.

  “Five minutes,” Lucius said, and the line went dead.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  The meal at Bone Fish was fantastic, and expensive, but the atmosphere was subdued and tense. Eric blamed the dull mood on his boss. Trent had not only spotted them upon Brooke’s hasty exit, but he also decided to join them at their table.

  Katie picked at her food and spoke very little, and then only to answer questions put to her by Trent. Eric didn’t blame her for being a little testy because it did feel like Trent was interrogating her about Jack, Moira, and the case.

  He had to remind Trent—twice actually—that Katie and Jack were no longer married, and she didn’t know anything about what Jack was doing. Then Katie embarrassed him when she said if Trent had questions, he should ask Jack or Moira.

  As Eric turned the Mercedes down her street, his plans for the rest of the evening disintegrated before his eyes. Not just because of Katie’s mood, but by what was parked in her driveway: Jack’s car. Two marked police cars were lined up on the street.

  Eric pulled in behind one of the police cars and nodded at the two heavily armed SWAT officers standing on Katie’s porch. Katie pushed through the front door and ran into the living room, shouting, “Moira! Moira? Where are you?”

  Jack stepped out of the kitchen with a steaming mug of coffee in each hand. “She’s in there, Katie,” he said calmly. “Just a little excitement at work tonight. She’s fine.”

  Realizing the situation was serious, Katie put a hand on Jack’s arm and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” She entered the kitchen and found Moira sitting at the kitchen table, a lit cigarette between her fingers. Jack left the sisters to talk and carried the coffees out to the front porch for the officers. He wanted them to stay awake. He promised them relief in a couple of hours.

  Eric was standing by the front steps with a scowl on his perfect face. The two officers accept the proffered coffee, and then moved away a respectful distance to allow Jack and Eric to talk. As they passed Eric, one officer remarked to the other, “Three to one on Jack.” The other asked, “Killing or just wounding?” The rest of their conversation was lost to ambient city noises.

  “Once again I’ve been left out in the cold,” Eric said accusingly.

  Jack wasn’t sure if Eric was referring to the fact that he didn’t know what had happened at the Civic Center, or if he was upset because he wouldn’t be spending the night with Katie. It hardly mattered, because Jack was furious with him.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Jack asked.

  “Where have I been?” Eric asked. “I have to hear from these two goons of yours what happened. That’s what you call cooperation?”

  “Well, counselor, first of all they’re not my ‘goons,’ they are SWAT officers. Second, if you’d turn your phone on, maybe someone could find you.”

  Eric wasn’t having any of that. “You knew where we were. Katie left a note for you. You could have sent a car to the restaurant to let me know.”

  “And you would have come running because Moira missed our dinner plans?” Jack was right in his face. “You promised her you would tell me she had to work late. Once again you’ve lied. You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  “I’m a piece of work?” Eric yelled, then lowered his voice when he noticed the SWAT officers looking their direction.

  “I was a little busy—getting shot at!” Jack said as Eric stomped off the porch. “Sorry if I upset your plans for the evening, lover boy.”

  “Up yours,” Eric called after him, and saw the SWAT officers were smirking.

  Eric made it halfway to his car and stopped. He took some deep breaths to clear his mind. He would like nothing better than to wipe the smirks off those goons’ faces, and when he became the prosecutor. . . well, things would be much different.

  But more than that, he wanted to go back and make things right with Katie—and Moira, too. No matter how hard he tried, they resented him. It was always “Jack this” and “Jack that.”

  But he was here now, and Jack would be leaving. He loved Katie and they were engaged, so Jack should be the one leaving. He shook off his anger. “That’s right.” He put a look on his face that was both serious and supportive. “Okay, here we go,” he said softly, and walked back to the house.

  He walked onto the porch and tried the front door. It was locked.

  The officers laughed openly as Eric stomped off again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Book was in search of new wheels. The Taurus might have been seen leaving the school bus parking lot. He had almost run down a prostitute and her client or pimp or whatever when he pulled onto the street. People like that were paid by the police to keep an eye out. He couldn’t take the chance that they were giving Murphy a description of the car right now.

  A billboard on Interstate 64 read, THE OLD BARN RESTAURANT—an appropriate name for a restaurant surrounded by bean and cornfields. Book slowed at the exit ramp and saw a building with sun-bleached planks in the shape of a barn with a red tin roof and a covered porch that was supposed to be inviting. The parking lot in front had a few possibilities, but as he entered the exit lane he spotted two police cars parked side by side in the lot across the street.

  Book sped up and passed the exit. The next town ahead was just a dot on the map called Griffin, Indiana. The clock on the Taurus’s dashboard read two o’clock. He didn’t know where the boss was, or what time it was for her. He guessed it didn’t matter, because the boss never sounded like she had been sleeping whatever time he called. If he found a phone in Griffin, he’d make the call.

  He took the off-ramp for Griffin. He liked the idea that the town was close to the interstate. They might have need of the Taurus, and this way it would be easy to retrieve. He drove through cornfields so tall his headlights created a tunnel through the darkness. Just when he thought he would never find the town, the cornfields turned to soybeans and then to open fields. Soon he drew up at an intersection with a café shaped like an old-time train station.

  He pulled into the cinder parking lot, where he killed the engine and shut his headlights off. A closed sign was in the window, but he didn’t need to go in. A pay phone hung on the outside wall.

  He sat in the car and scouted his surroundings. Two dozen one-and two-story homes lined one side of the road for two blocks before cornfields closed in again. Everything was dark and closed up tight as a drum. All of the houses had shiny pickup trucks parked either in front or in their weed-strewn gravel driveways. It was a hillbilly’s dream.

  A half dozen old cars and pickups were clumped together at the other end of the parking area. If he was lucky, the vehicles belonged to over-the-road truckers. If so, no one would report their vehicle missing for a while, and he only needed it for a day.

  As he stepped out of the Taurus, he noticed the front of his shirt and pants. Even though his clothes were black, the fabric betrayed smears and streaks where Clint’s blood had soaked into the material. Thinking of Clint getting shot pissed him off. They had been to war and neither one was ever hurt this bad. Now, in the matter of two days, Clint had been shot, stabbed in the leg, and if that guy in the drugstore had reached that gun one of them would be dead. He didn’t need to wonder who that would have been.

  He mounted the wooden steps to the café and picked up the phone. He wouldn’t tell the boss what had happened tonight—he was sure the client had already heard the news and was burning up the teleph
one. It didn’t matter what the boss thought. The fact was, they had failed to finish a job. Book was mad at himself for the botched attempt, and he wasn’t going to take any shit from anyone.

  He always suspected the boss was somewhere on the East Coast. The guy that had recruited them in the bar in Baltimore had a thick Bronx accent. He was loud and laughed a lot, like everything was a friggin’ joke. The boss had the same accent, but her voice was softer, more controlled. She had absolutely no sense of humor.

  He dialed the old rotary-dial phone on the wall of the café, and when the line was answered, he nervously said, “It’s me.”

  “You let me down, Book,” she said. “We have to change the plan . . . again.” Her voice was measured, in total control.

  “I want a lot more money,” Book said before the woman could finish her thought. “We deserve more money.”

  The line stayed silent, and Book wondered if she had hung up, but then he heard her clear her throat. “Let’s see if I have this correct. You messed up, and you want more money?”

  “I know who the client is, boss. We seen him on television. Clint and me want more money. Double’s not enough.” He let the veiled threat hang.

  The line remained silent, so he continued, “We’ve got expenses. And Clint’s hurt.”

  “How bad?” she asked.

  “He got stabbed in the leg. It’s pretty bad.”

  “Clint let a girl stab him, and you both let her get away?”

  “The girl didn’t stab him,” he said defensively. “Murphy showed up, like someone tipped him off that we was there. Clint had to hightail it and he ran into something in the dark,” he said, but he knew it made them sound pretty lame.

  The line was quiet for some time, and he was afraid the boss might want him to kill Clint. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” the boss said, and gave Book his final instructions.