Watch Your Back

by Rose, Karen

  ‘Good. Thanks.’ At least his people were safe. For now. ‘I want everyone checking in, every hour. No exceptions. Where are you going from here?’

  ‘To the airport. Emma’s husband’s here. I was supposed to have picked him up already. I’ll keep in contact, but I want you to do the same. Come on, Peabody.’

  Clay watched to make sure she got into her truck safely, then turned when his front door was opened by Lieutenant Hyatt.

  ‘Come in,’ Hyatt said, motioning Clay and Stevie inside. Joseph Carter and Agent Brodie from VCET’s forensic lab crouched next to one of the bodies, talking to Neil Quartermaine, the medical examiner.

  The slain officers lay on Clay’s living room carpet, near the sliding glass door that led to his deck. They’d been so young, he thought. What a waste.

  ‘Neither of them over thirty,’ Hyatt said and Clay realized he’d voiced his thoughts aloud.

  ‘What happened?’ Clay asked.

  Joseph looked up. ‘We think the attacker was standing against that wall. He hit one, then the other, before either of them could make a distress call.’

  The two cops lay on their stomachs, heads turned at an unnatural angle. Throats slit ear to ear. ‘No blood spatter,’ Clay said. ‘They were dead when he cut them.’

  Agent Brodie looked up. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

  ‘He broke their necks first,’ Quartermaine said. Still fairly new to the Baltimore ME’s office, he’d taken over JD’s wife’s position when Lucy went on maternity leave last December. His first day on the job had been that fateful day, in fact. The day Stevie had been shot.

  Now Stevie stood off to the side, her eyes sharp as she took in the bodies, the room. My things. He’d dreamed of the day he’d bring her to his home, sharing what he’d accumulated over the years. Sharing himself. He never pictured her standing over two dead bodies.

  ‘And these guys had muscular necks,’ Quartermaine was saying. ‘They were in good physical condition. Probably lifted weights regularly. Your killer is strong, likely experienced in hand-to-hand. We could be looking at a professional fighter or someone with a military background.’ He shook his head. ‘Although I sure didn’t learn that in the military.’

  ‘I did,’ Joseph said quietly.

  ‘So did I,’ Hyatt added.

  Clay shrugged. ‘Because I have an unshakeable alibi, I’ll add my “So did I”.’

  ‘I almost feel left out,’ Quartermaine muttered, making Joseph smile grimly.

  ‘Have you ever actually done it?’ Hyatt asked Clay and Joseph, more than idle curiosity in the question. ‘Broken a neck?’

  Joseph got real busy checking out the dead cops’ slit throats. The Fed had paled slightly at the question, eyes flickering like he’d gone somewhere else for a second. Clay didn’t know what the guy was remembering, but it wasn’t a happy place. Quartermaine was giving Joseph a curious look. Brodie’s was more knowingly sympathetic.

  Clay decided to take one for the team, to get the attention off Joseph. ‘Yes, I have. Why?’

  ‘Because I personally have not,’ Hyatt said evenly. ‘I need to understand what is required to break the necks of two strong officers, two in succession. When did you do so?’

  ‘In Somalia, when I was in the Corps.’ Clay wasn’t sure he believed the lieutenant’s reason for asking, but the guy could get the details of Clay’s story easily enough if he so desired. ‘But I didn’t do it to maintain stealth, like this probably was. We were under attack and I was fighting to stay alive. I used the only weapon I had at the moment – my hands. It wasn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you that. And I don’t know that I could have hit two guys in quick succession like this.’

  ‘Why not?’ Hyatt asked, his curiosity genuine.

  ‘There’s an emotional component that goes with it,’ Clay said slowly, aware of everyone in the room watching him and uncomfortable with the notion. ‘It’s still hard to admit, even after all these years, but when it was over, I staggered off and threw up. The sound of cracking wood still makes me cringe. There was certainly no joy in it. I might have been able to break two necks in a row, given the adrenaline pumping like it was, but I’m glad I never had to find out for sure.’

  Joseph’s jaw clenched and Clay somehow knew that whoever the Fed had disposed of in his past, he had taken joy in the action. Or if not joy, then at least satisfaction. Which meant that whoever Joseph had killed had to have been a monster, because Joseph Carter was one of the good guys. One of the few men Clay trusted as much as he trusted his old friend Ethan Buchanan.

  ‘If you only broke one of their necks, how did you dispose of the other seven?’ Hyatt asked.

  Clay narrowed his eyes, his suspicion confirmed. Hyatt had known to ask the question. ‘How did you know there were others?’

  ‘I read up on you two years ago, Maynard. We weren’t sure what kind of man you were and what, if anything, should be done about you back then. You’d obstructed justice, by your own account unknowingly, but there were those who thought you should have been charged with it.’

  ‘I probably should’ve been,’ Clay said bluntly. He’d known the identity of the man who’d killed his former partner, Nicki Fields, and he’d wanted to make the man pay. Personally.

  ‘You’re fortunate that I didn’t happen to agree,’ Hyatt said.

  Only because you don’t know the whole story. Clay returned his gaze to the bodies. ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Hollinsworth and Locklear,’ Hyatt said. ‘Both had exemplary records.’

  ‘What time did they arrive?’ Stevie asked.

  ‘They reported their arrival to Dispatch at twelve twenty-four,’ Hyatt said, then added grimly, ‘and at twelve twenty-eight Dispatch received a report that it had been a false alarm and they were breaking for lunch.’

  Surprised, Clay did a quick visual scan for the officers’ radios. They were gone. Whoever killed them had bought himself a few more minutes by filing a false report. ‘That narrows down the time of death considerably,’ he murmured. He looked up at his sliding glass window, specifically at the hole in the glass where the lock had been. ‘That was hurricane glass,’ he said. ‘Whoever came through there would have needed a Sawz-all with a diamond bit blade to get through it. They came prepared. Have the neighbors been canvassed?’

  ‘I have Novak and Coppola doing that now,’ Joseph said. ‘Since this is related to the attempts on Stevie’s life, it’s linked to the restaurant attack, the drive-by shooting, and the safe house attack last night – all under the umbrella of VCET jurisdiction. You’ve got camera surveillance, I assume.’

  ‘Of course. Can I have some gloves? Thanks,’ Clay said to Brodie when she handed him a pair. He opened his coat closet, dropped to his knees and removed a sports equipment box from the shelf that sat eight inches off the floor and ran the width of the closet. Below the shelf were several pairs of shoes. Tossing them into the box, he tugged the shelf back from the wall enough to run his finger through the gap, unlatching a panel that served as the closet’s back wall.

  ‘Do you have backup batteries?’ Joseph asked. ‘Because they cut your power and your secondary power. They also cut both alarm sirens – both inside and outside.’

  ‘The alarm runs on a different backup system. Once the alarm is tripped or the primary power is cut, it sends me an alert. The backup power they cut from outside is used when there’s a legit outage, like from a storm. The cameras, thermal and cellular alarms have their own backup power sources. One’s behind this wall and the other is in the basement.’

  Clay cleared away the coats hanging from the closet pole, then gingerly gripped the panel and pulled it free, revealing his security system.

  Joseph whistled. ‘Do you have a Bat Cave, too? With a fire pole? Please?’

  ‘Just a normal basement,’ Clay said dryly. ‘The cameras cover
the entire interior of the house and run twenty-four/seven.’ He popped the DVD from the recorder. ‘I can run it on my laptop or you can run it on yours.’

  ‘Mine’s set up right here,’ Brodie said, reaching for the DVD.

  ‘Start it at noon.’

  ‘Paige didn’t call 911 to get a cruiser out here until twelve twenty,’ Hyatt told him.

  ‘But the first alert hit my cell at twelve ten. Because I didn’t acknowledge it, the next alert went out at twelve thirteen, to both my cell and Paige’s. She called me several times and when I didn’t answer, she called 911 and started driving here herself.’

  ‘She called me right after she called 911,’ Hyatt said, ‘but then I got the all-clear from Dispatch so I didn’t come out. Now we know that all-clear was fake.’

  ‘I’ve got the video cued up,’ Brodie said and everyone crowded around her laptop.

  ‘Wait a sec.’ Clay carried her laptop to his fifty-two-inch TV and connected the two. ‘Hit play. Camera three will give you his approach from the backyard to the slider. Camera five—’

  Brodie motioned him to her laptop. ‘Take the wheel, Clay.’

  ‘Okay.’ He chose the camera that focused on the slider from the outside, fast-forwarded until a man came into the picture, dressed in coveralls and carrying a toolbox. He wore a baseball cap low over his face, hiding his features except for his ears.

  ‘He’s big enough to break two necks,’ Hyatt commented.

  ‘He’s a wrestler,’ Clay said. ‘Or was. He has cauliflower ears.’ He changed to the camera pointing toward the street and skipped back to a minute before the man had shown up around the back. The curb was empty until the man drove up in a nondescript Toyota Sequoia, its front plates obscured by mud. ‘Shit. Can’t make out the plates.’

  He switched back to the camera focused on the slider and watched as the intruder boldly climbed the stairs to the deck, and using his toolbox as a stepstool, reached up to snip the siren wires. ‘That’s the first alert I got at twelve ten.’

  ‘Why didn’t you see the alerts?’ Joseph asked.

  Because I was almost having sex with Stevie. Clay avoided looking at her, lest he give them away. ‘I was working out.’ Not entirely untrue. He’d been sweaty and out of breath. ‘Got in the shower and didn’t get out until twelve twenty-five. That’s when I saw all the texts and calls from Paige.’ He pointed to the TV screen. ‘Sawz-all.’ The intruder was working at the glass with the handheld electric saw, cutting through in less than a minute. ‘That’s got to be one hell of a blade.’

  Joseph shook his head. ‘He came prepared, just like you said.’

  ‘He’s even wearing eye protection,’ Quartermaine added bitterly. ‘Gotta love the safety-conscious killer.’

  The man unsheathed a knife as he entered the house. His next move was to locate the siren inside the house and snip its wires as well. Then he began slicing the sofa cushions, methodically searching. The goggles he wore covered half his face, the lens distorting the view of his eyes. A scarf covered the lower half of his face, rendering him unidentifiable.

  ‘Safety-conscious and cocky as hell,’ Hyatt murmured as the man looked straight up into the camera and gave two gloved thumbs up. ‘Sonofabitch.’

  ‘He didn’t even try to turn the alarms off. He just wanted the sirens silenced.’ Clay changed cameras, following the man through his house, gritting his teeth at the path of destruction he left in his wake. He dumped desk drawers and closet contents, knifed up mattresses, yanked pictures off the walls, breaking the glass and leaving photos strewn. In his bedroom closet, the man easily found Clay’s firebox. He tucked it under his arm and kept searching. ‘Shit,’ Clay hissed.

  ‘What was in it?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘Nothing to tell him where Stevie and Cordelia are hiding.’ Clay blew out a breath, tamping his temper. ‘It’s my baseball card collection from when I was a kid. Which is wrong to get angry about, considering he’s about to kill two cops.’ He hissed another breath when the guy approached the model boat he’d built with his grandfather St James eons ago. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t—’ The guy reduced the model to a pile of splintered balsa. ‘Goddammit.’

  Joseph briefly squeezed his shoulder.

  Clay’s fists clenched at his sides when the man picked up a ceramic vase on his nightstand. He wanted to close his eyes, dreading what was probably coming. He flinched when the vase hit the floor and broke into dozens of pieces. Dammit.

  A warm body moved close to Clay and he didn’t have to look to know who it was. He’d know her scent anywhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ Stevie whispered. ‘Who made the vase?’

  ‘My mom. Right before she died.’

  Stevie exhaled. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He wondered what she was sorry for, but didn’t ask. Didn’t trust his voice. The bastard was crouching next to the broken pottery, flicking the pieces with his finger. He picked a few items from the rubble and held them up to the light coming through the window.

  Impotent rage rushed through Clay as he watched the man toss his mother’s watch and ring into his toolbox without care.

  ‘You didn’t have them in your safe?’ Brodie asked, sadly.

  ‘It was a twenty-dollar Timex. The ring I gave her when I was a boy. They’re worth nothing, really.’ And yet, everything. Goddamn that cocksucker. If I ever get my hands on you . . .

  The intruder checked his watch and peeked out Clay’s bedroom window at the street. Shrugging, the guy left the bedroom and went to the kitchen where he proceeded to empty every canister in the garbage. He rifled through cookbooks, leaving them on the floor. Then he snatched the picture Cordelia had drawn with crayon from Clay’s refrigerator door.

  Don’t do it. Don’t you even touch it. But the guy was, turning the paper over, examining it closely. His shoulders moved as if he laughed. Carefully he ripped the paper, then reaffixed it to the fridge with more magnets.

  ‘What is it?’ Hyatt asked.

  Brodie patted Clay’s arm. ‘I’ll get it.’ She came back a few seconds later, as the man was rifling through Clay’s coat closet, the very one that held his surveillance equipment. He crouched, checking for a panel, coming perilously close to finding it.

  ‘It’s a threat,’ Brodie said.

  ‘To who?’ Stevie asked.

  Clay looked at the two halves of the drawing Brodie held. ‘To you, Stevie.’

  Stevie gasped. ‘That’s . . . me. And . . .’ She bent closer. ‘And you?’

  Cordelia had drawn her mother in a hospital bed and Clay standing next to the bed, a halo over his head. One knew the participating players because Cordelia had been considerate enough to write their names with bold arrows pointing to the people who were basically stick figures.

  ‘Cordelia made it for me when you were in the hospital,’ Clay said gruffly. At least it was salvageable, once he got it back from BPD’s evidence room. If he ever did.

  Mr Cocksucker had torn the page, neatly severing Stevie’s head from her shoulders.

  Clay forced his mind back to the cameras. The man was in the basement but there was nothing for him to destroy down there. Within a minute, he was back upstairs and leaving – this time through the garage. The front facing exterior camera showed him tossing Clay’s firebox on the passenger seat, getting in, and driving away.

  His whole ‘visit’ had lasted no more than seven minutes.

  ‘Okay,’ Joseph said slowly. ‘He just left? I mean, just like that?’

  ‘He’s gotta come back,’ Stevie said. ‘Hollinsworth and Locklear didn’t kill themselves.’

  Clay fast-forwarded the video, slowing when a sand-colored Chevy Tahoe stopped on the curb. A different man got out, also dressed in workman’s coveralls. This one had a backpack slung over one shoulder. He, too, wore a ball cap pulled low over his face.

&nbs
p; Mr Backpack walked up to Clay’s house, knocked on the front door. When there was no answer, he jogged around to the side, where he opened the door the first guy had left unlocked.

  ‘What the hell?’ Clay muttered.

  Mr Backpack waltzed in through the laundry room, taking a moment to do a turn, taking the place in. He pulled the brim of the ball cap down to cover his face while he reached under the cap to tug a ski mask over his face, the movement fluid. Like he’d done it many times before.

  Beside him, Stevie flinched.

  ‘What?’ Clay asked and she shrugged fitfully.

  ‘It’s just . . . There’s something about that guy creeps me out.’

  Mr Backpack followed the same path Cocksucker had, checking through the debris. In Clay’s bedroom, the man sifted through the photos that Cocksucker had left on the floor, brushed off the glass, and put them in his pack.

  ‘Sonofabitch,’ Clay bit out.

  ‘He took your photos,’ Brodie said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Other than the pictures of my mother, I don’t even really remember all the ones I had out. They become kind of background noise.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Stevie murmured again. ‘They’re irreplaceable.’

  ‘Not really. I’ve got the photos scanned to a flashdrive which is stored in my safe deposit box, along with anything else that he might have actually been interested in.’

  ‘Well, what do you know about that?’ Hyatt murmured. ‘Look.’

  The man had paused, pulling a shadowbox-style frame from the debris. ‘My medals,’ Clay said. ‘My mother had them framed for me, years ago.’

  Then the guy stunned him by carefully setting the frame against the dresser. ‘We found them there,’ Brodie said. ‘I wouldn’t have even considered that one of these guys would do that.’

  ‘Most definitely former military,’ Clay said. ‘The way he was careful with the medals? This guy saw combat. He may have even been wounded.’