Maureen and Susie had their backs to the stalker and had no idea that a would-be assassin followed them. Houston weaved through the stream of people, fighting his way toward Maureen and Susie. In desperation, he pulled his pistol out and screamed, “Police! Make way!”
People saw the gun in his hand and scrambled to get out of his way. The commotion attracted Maureen’s attention and she had a surprised look when she spotted Houston rushing at her.
The stalker reached inside his shirt and pulled a handgun. “Maureen, get down!”
Maureen looked terrified when she grabbed Susie’s arm, obeyed her brother and fell to the pavement, pulling the startled younger woman with her.
Maureen’s action startled the stalker enough to throw him off stride and for Houston to get a clear shot at him. Houston shouted, “Drop the gun!”
The gunman turned his pistol away from the women and confronted the unexpected threat. Houston dropped to one knee and fired, hitting him in the throat. The man dropped like a sack of rocks. Houston ran forward and stopped beside the mortally wounded would-be killer. The dying gunman still gripped his weapon in his right hand and Houston placed his foot on the gunman’s hand, pinning it securely to the pavement. He took the pistol out of the stalker’s bloody hand. Houston holstered his firearm and squatted over the man. He pressed his hand firmly against the side of the dying man’s neck, hoping to stem the flow of blood that gushed out with each beat of the stalker’s heart and pooled on the sidewalk. The hollow-point bullet had ripped through the man’s neck and Houston knew if he didn’t get him to a hospital in minutes, he would bleed out. He didn’t have to be a medical professional to know his attempts at first aid were futile.
The prone gunman stared into Houston’s eyes. In minutes he died, a strange smirk on his face and his shirt saturated with his blood. It was only then that Houston took time to look at him closely. Through the smeared blood, Houston stared into Larry Grey’s lifeless eyes.
In a second, Anne was beside him, her badge out. She pushed the traumatized spectators back, shouting, “Police, please, give us some room!” Turning to Houston she said, “I got here as soon as I could.”
Houston ignored the hysterical screams and commotion around him and thanked her. Then he looked at his daughter’s horrified eyes. Susie’s terror had drained all the color from her face. Houston realized she was trying to understand and cope with what she had just seen her father do.
At that moment, Houston could not blame her for looking at him with disgust and terror. Thoughtlessly, he offered her his bloody hand and the fear left her to be replaced by revulsion. She spun away and disappeared into the crowd.
24
“Take advantage of any local disturbances or distractions that may enable quicker movement than would otherwise have been possible . . . ”
—US Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Training Manual
Bill Dysart paced around his office. In his right fist he held a crumpled copy of one of the daily papers. The headline shouted out, Gunfight in Quincy Market!! Houston couldn’t recall ever having seen his boss so incensed. Then, the circumstances under which he was meeting him were not conducive to a fatherly chat. Houston honestly couldn’t blame him. The last thing Dysart needed was a shooting in the midst of another crowded tourist attraction.
Dysart was discreet with his anger though; he might have been ready to lock Houston up for fifty years, but he didn’t make a scene in front of everyone in the building. The captain respected Anne too much and, rather than chew them out in front of the other officers, he took them into his office, where he then became unhinged. As soon as the door latch clicked behind them, Dysart said, “Bouchard, what the hell is going on?”
Before she could answer, he cut her off. There was more that he wanted to get off his chest. “You two are out of control! The body count on this case is going through the roof—and if that ain’t enough,” Dysart pushed a finger at Houston, “he shoots a guy in the middle of fucking Quincy Market—on a Saturday afternoon, for God’s sake! There must have been a couple of thousand by-standers! What if you’d hit one of them? The entire city is hysterical enough without worrying about getting caught in the middle of a shootout between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
Dysart was venting and when the captain flopped behind his desk and glared at Anne, Houston knew things would settle down. Anne leaned back in her chair, grinned at him for a second, and then she looked at Dysart in a way that reminded Houston of his mother. When he would get mad and blow off steam she would sit and not say anything until he was finished venting. It was a look that said, “Okay, get it out and then we’ll talk.”
His need to unload his frustrations taken care of, Dysart opened the window of his office. Out of habit, he checked the door and lit a cigarette. He exhaled the smoke and blew it out the window. He tossed the cigarette out the window and stared after it. Dysart flopped into his chair. “All right you two. I’ll handle the heat. Now tell me what you got.”
Houston looked at Anne, hoping for a hint as to how much he should tell Dysart. He wasn’t sure how the captain would react to learning that the object of the sniper killings was to get Houston alone to go one-on-one with him. Anne returned his look and said, “Mike, I guess it’s time to lay it all out for him.”
That’s what they did.
Dysart listened as they told him everything. This time, however, they told him the complete version, not the toned down one they had written in their reports.
Dysart took it all in, saying nothing. Nevertheless, they knew, from the expression on his face that he was having a hard time with certain facts. He got up twice to sneak a smoke through his open window, observing his ritual of one or two drags then tossing the burning cigarette out the window onto the lawn below, which had so many cigarette butts on it that it was starting to resemble the bottom of a bird cage. Each time Dysart tossed one away, Houston listened for the indignant shout of someone hit by a burning butt falling from the sky. The captain was lucky—he did not hit anyone.
Finally, Houston finished by relating what he had learned in Gloucester, that apparently he was being enticed into a sadistic game of sniper versus sniper. Dysart finally reached overload and interrupted him. “Let me get this straight—these shootings are only preliminary bouts for some sort of championship shootout between you and this whacko?
Houston nodded. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Well, Houston,” Dysart’s voice elevated in anger, “for once, I’m going to ignore protocol and regulations. Please, make my life easy. Take this asshole up to Maine—hell, take him to Rat’s-ass, Kansas, and expense the trip, I don’t care—just get it out of my jurisdiction and do whatever you have to do to get the bastard!”
“Cap, you can sleep well knowing I’ll do my best.”
“I know some guys in SWAT. You want me to get you some back-up?”
“I don’t think that’s wise. People up in Maine may think we’re an invading army.”
Dysart didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor.
“It’s best if we do it his way—I have some experience with this.”
“Yeah, right, only I seem to recall that was some time back.”
“It’s like riding a bike, Cap.”
“Sure, it is.” As Houston reached the door, Dysart added, “Mike, you be careful . . . ”
“You know me, Cap.”
“That’s the problem. Now, get out of here—both of you. I’ve got to clean up the mess you’ve made.”
As Anne and Houston walked through the squad room, they passed Corso and Bullard.
“Hey guys,” Houston said, “you still sore for not getting lead on this case?”
The two detectives stared at him as if he were crazy. “With all the political bullshit going around this? No way.”
“Are you working anything interesting?”
“Naw, just some gangbanger. They found his body in the marshes near Squantum. Somebody worked him over good. Pulled all his
fingernails out.”
“Yeah,” Bullard added, “then cauterized the wounds with what looks to be a blowtorch.”
Anne and Houston walked to a nearby diner for lunch. They ordered and Anne stared at him.
“Okay, out with it,” she said. “What’s eating at you?”
“Susie . . . I don’t like not knowing where she is and I sure as hell don’t like her being on her own right now.”
“I thought as much.”
“I haven’t talked with her since—”
“Mike, give her some time. Do you have any idea where she’s staying?”
“She’s back in her dorm.”
“I’ll call her and offer to let her stay with me.”
“Jimmy offered her a similar deal. She turned him down, saying her dorm was safe. Jimmy figured what the hell. She’s at that age where they want to show that they’re mature enough to take care of themselves.”
“Jimmy just accepted that?”
“On the surface he did. He knows that it’s bullshit and that she’s still a kid. He’ll keep his people on the job. What I keep remembering is the look on her face in Quincy Market. She was scared to death.”
“Well, it was the first time she’d ever seen anything like that.”
“That’s not what she was afraid of.”
“Suppose you tell me what you think she was afraid of.”
“Me.”
“Come on, Mike. You’re her father. She knows you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Does she? I’m not so damned sure. Her mother and I went through some scary times. First there was my return from Somalia then for a while I was drinking a lot and finally the job.” Houston didn’t have to tell her what he meant by the job. She’d been a cop long enough to know.
Anne sipped on her diet cola. “Suppose you lay it out on the table.”
“Pam could never accept the fact that I had been a sniper. That the boy she’d dated in high school and the man she married could stalk and kill another human being in cold blood. I didn’t help matters any when I returned full of anger and my head crammed to over flowing with bad dreams.”
“So, a lot of veterans are in the same boat. Post-traumatic stress disorder is more prevalent than anyone knows. The mess going on in the Middle East is only going to make things worse.”
“You ever wake up with someone choking you?”
“Can’t say that’s an experience of which I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Well, it happened to Pam. Luckily, I woke up before I hurt her. She threw me out the next day. I went to work and when I came home, she had piled all my clothes on the lawn. The next time I heard from her was when her lawyer served papers on me.”
“And you dove into a bottle.”
“Yeah, I dove into a bottle. However, it wasn’t as if I was diving off a cliff in Acapulco. I was already drinking heavy so it was just a short leap into the deep end of the pool.”
Anne swirled her straw around and ice clinked against glass. “Do you think it would do any good for me to talk to Susie?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem; she was thirteen years old when her mother took her away. Hell, she doesn’t know me, only what Pam told her, and I’m sure that wasn’t a stellar endorsement. If I’m correct, after the shooting at Quincy Market, she probably has me as being somewhere between Jack the Ripper and Charles Manson.”
“I think we were hitting it off pretty well. I’ll see if I can have a woman-to-woman talk with her.”
“I’m at the point where I’ll try anything.”
Anne stood up and grabbed her purse, “That’s good enough for me. Now, all I have to do is see Susie. You got the tab?”
Houston nodded. “Good luck. I need all the help I can get.”
She smiled and touched his arm. “You’re sure that you’re going to be all right?”
“Yeah, I got to go see Jimmy O.”
“What for?”
“I need some tools of the trade.”
“I’m not even going there,” she said. “Here . . . ” She tossed the keys to their squad car on the table. “I’ll grab a cab.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
Houston snatched the keys from the table. “Thanks, kid. You’re too good to be my partner.”
“Everyone knows that—just as long as you don’t forget it. Now pay for lunch and go get your tools.”
25
“The USMC M40A1 Sniper Rifle is the finest combat sniper weapon in the world. When using the Lake City M118 Match 7.62 mm ammunition it will constantly group to within . . . one inch at one hundred yards.”
—US Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Training Manual
Houston walked into O’Leary’s office, waved his hands in front of his face to part the smoke and flopped into the chair in front of his desk. “Think I’ll ever walk into this joint without everyone looking at me like I was a walking syphilis epidemic?”
“Nope, not a chance.”
Houston faked a hurt look, “I’ll try harder not to look so much like a cop.”
“Speaking of which, what brings you back here? You need something?”
“Yeah, but first I got a couple things I want to say.”
O’Leary smoked in silence and waited for Houston to get to the point.
“First, last night the body of a gangbanger—kid named Jermaine Watts—was found in the marsh. Looks like someone worked him over good. All his fingernails were gone, apparently yanked out, and his fingers were burned, probably with a cutting torch. If that wasn’t enough, someone popped him in the head with a twenty-two. Don’t suppose you’d know anything about it?”
“Nope. I just know what I hear on the street. He and some of his homeboys molested and killed a thirteen-year-old girl. I guess that maybe she had some relatives who took care of it when you cops did nothin’.”
“Jimmy . . . ”
“Your case?”
“No.”
“Then ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“How many more bodies are going to show up?”
“Couldn’t say, but you know how it is—what the cops can’t or won’t take care of, someone in the hood will. When you consider all the gang shit and drugs sold there, it doesn’t surprise me people are taking things into their own hands. What’s there been seven, eight murders there this summer?”
Houston knew he had gotten all the information that he would on the subject and dropped the line of questioning.
O’Leary lit another cigarette. “Now, what else you wanna talk about?”
“Pam.”
“Pam . . . ”
“Yeah, I know that you took our divorce pretty hard . . . ”
“Let’s finally get this out, okay? First of all, Pam was my sister and I loved her. You were like a brother to me and I loved you too, but you two just had bad chemistry together and everyone knew that. Everyone that is, but you two. Was I pissed about the divorce? Yeah, I was . . . but not as bad as I was when Pam went against my wishes and married you. Now as for her death . . . you didn’t pull that goddamned trigger, Mike. Some psycho son of a bitch did that. Whether or not this goes back to your past I don’t know. Why he shot her ain’t all that important right now . . . the fact that he did is. Now we got to pool our resources, you and me, and bring him down. Once this puke is dead and buried we’ll deal with our issues. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Alright, now what is it you need from me?”
“Just a few things. Like an M40A1 rifle with a Unertl scope, a couple hundred rounds of Lake City M118 Match 7.62 mm ammo. I want an A1, Jimmy, not the revised A4.”
O’Leary remained silent for a few seconds, rolling his cigarette back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “You wired?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Did you come in here wired? You ain’t tryin’ to hang an illegal gun beef on me are you?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you get t
his shit from the PD?”
“I’d never get it in time. The fewer people involved in this, the better. Believe me, Jimmy, this is not a sting. I’ll never let anyone know where I got the stuff.”
“All right, I’ll see what I can do. That’s a pretty specific piece, only made by Marine armorers and not for public sale. What else?”
“A Ghillie suit.”
“A Ghillie suit?”
“It’s like a poncho, only made from jute.”
“I’m supposed to know what in hell jute is?”
“Jute’s what they use to make burlap, only it isn’t woven like a sack, it hangs in strands that create corded netting. It allows a sniper to camouflage himself similar to his surroundings.”
“So, you’re going after this guy.”
“Not if I can avoid it, even though I can’t think of any other way to get him. Nevertheless, if he calls me out again I want to be ready.”
“I hope you know what you’re doin’. He’s had a couple of chances to kill you already and has let you walk. This guy has the advantage of knowing who and where you are and when to strike.”
“That’s why I need this stuff as soon as possible. If I’m going to take him on, I want to be ready. I’ve got some practicing to do.”
O’Leary looked at him as if he were out of his mind. “You’re going to practice?”
“Yeah, I’m going to hone my skills.”
O’Leary ground out his cigarette and scratched his head. “Are all ex-jarheads stubborn like you?”
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