by M. P. Cooley
I felt shaky, and my muscles wouldn’t support me. Still sitting, I skidded the pipe in my hand back and forth on the floor in wider and wider circles, skimming for my gun. It hit something solid and I crawled over. Not a gun, but night-vision goggles. I put them on, the possibility of collecting DNA secondary to finding my firearm. I gathered the energy to move onto my hands and knees and crawled over to my gun. With a last push, I got myself upright, barely, and lurched out the exit.
Sweat ran off my head and across my eyes, mixing with the freezing rain. I shivered. I pulled off the goggles, stuffing them into my pocket. From the far corner of the lot one of the “abandoned” cars started up, skidding briefly before righting itself and speeding toward the exit. I put my gun into firing position and then lowered it—no way could I make that shot from here. I concentrated on the black sedan, trying to ID it, using my eyes when I couldn’t use my gun.
A BMW. And the only people in town with one of those were the Brouillettes.
I ran toward the Dodge, which sat with the door gaping wide, Barbara nowhere in sight, and crashed down on the passenger seat, using my good arm to shut the door. I slid across and started the car. No way was I going to put a seat belt across this shoulder. Shaking violently with cold I cranked the heat first thing.
I hit the HFPD radio, calling out to Lorraine as I slammed the car into reverse. The Dodge swung wide, and I only barely avoided hitting another car as Lorraine’s voice filled the interior. I pulled aspirin out of the glove compartment, opening the bottle with my teeth, and swallowed down four, the acid of pills scraping my already dry throat raw.
“Where are you? Those agents want you to answer your radio.”
“First, put out an APB on a black BMW. It’s the Brouillettes’, pull the plates. Then get a message to the FBI. I had my radio knocked out.”
I concentrated all my strength on turning the wheel and keeping the BMW within sight. Shortly before it reached the Brouillette Paper Company, it turned onto one of the side streets. I swung left onto the same street, catching a glimpse of the car as it crested the hill.
“June. Report.” Lorraine’s bored monotone was nowhere in evidence, proof of how bad this whole situation was. “June!”
“I’m here, I’m here!” I slowed but didn’t stop at the red light that was over the ridge of the hill. The BMW was almost beyond my sight. “I was in the mill—”
“Just a second,” Lorraine said. “I’ve got Hale on the other line. Let me patch him through so we can all hear.”
Hale’s voice was harsh. “I’d be interested in hearing your interpretation of ‘stay in radio communication,’ Sierra 4.”
I didn’t have time for a lecture from Hale. I told the story of my run-in with the killer.
“Get an ID?” he asked.
“It’s the Brouillettes’ car.”
“Phil?”
“It might be Amanda. And Jason has a key.” Ahead, the BMW made a quick right. I turned just as it made a left.
“I’m in pursuit,” I said.
“I’m securing the drugs and setting up checkpoints around the neighborhoods, but Delta, Golf, Hotel, and India teams will be there shortly.”
I made the next right and paused. The rain coming down made visibility difficult, and I waited for the clear views that came for a few seconds after the wiper flapped. I sped up, zooming toward Simmons Avenue, the main drag around here. I turned, and saw the BMW swerve into view six blocks ahead. I slowed, but couldn’t hide. Simmons was a straight shot.
“APB is out to all local, county, and state authorities,” Lorraine said, flat and direct, as I gave my report.
“Tell them to approach with caution. Suspect has a firearm.”
I slowed slightly as an ambulance approached from the other direction, speeding back up to sixty once it passed. I barely kept pace.
Hale came back on the line. “One bag gone, seventeen remaining. They’ve got thirty-five pounds of pseudoephedrine. The rest still at the benches.” He seemed surprised. “They just left it.”
“Is it secure?” I asked.
“It’s secure. Four guys are locking it down and the rest of us are on the move. Don’t approach whoever is in the vehicle until we’re there.”
“I’ll stay clear,” I said, even as I sped up. The vehicle made a turn onto Saint Agnes Cemetery Highway and I wondered if they knew I was following. As I reached the intersection, I hesitated, wondering how close I should get. If I turned onto the street, the lights would give away my presence.
I switched off the headlights. There were no sidewalks this far out and worse, no streetlights. My radio seemed louder in the dark, crackling with Lorraine passing on messages from the FBI, the emergency vehicles, updates from the hospital, and notices from the sheriff’s office. My windshield wipers thumped unevenly, and in the streaked window all I could see was the broken yellow line of the road.
I turned.
CHAPTER 28
THE ROAD WAS EMPTY. The BMW was gone.
I skidded up the road. The Dodge veered toward the shoulder and I quickly righted it, driving right down the yellow line, figuring oncoming traffic wouldn’t be stupid enough to drive without lights. Only I was that stupid.
I lowered my already absurdly slow pace as I approached the Brouillettes’, and midway up the drive I spotted the BMW. Behind it loomed the house, dark except for a light in Danielle’s room.
I called it in, craning my neck over my shoulder to keep the vehicle in view.
“What?” Lorraine said. “I can’t hear you, June.”
Once I parked at the cemetery’s entrance, I started my third retelling, but Lorraine cut me off.
“Patching Hale through.”
“Sierra 4.” Hale’s use of my call name let me know he was still broadcasting on multiple frequencies. “We’re ten minutes from scene. Do not engage.” He paused. “I mean it.”
“Sierra 4 to Alpha. Acknowledged.” Even if I were willing to go it alone, my left arm was aching and close to useless. “I’m going to hit the perimeter but I promise not to get any closer.”
I pushed open the door with my foot and pulled myself out of the car with my good arm. I dragged myself up the road. It was quiet out here, the crunch of my boots in the snow the loudest sound. Light flickered in the front room of the Byrnes’, candlelight or, more likely, the TV, looking cozy and warm. Their minivan sat in the driveway, parked near the back door. I pushed farther, until I was midway between the properties, an old-growth beech tree grove keeping both houses invisible from where I stood on the road midway between them. I edged closer to the Brouillettes’ property line, body low and gun drawn. Every step sent a painful jolt through my shoulder, reminding me of what this person would do.
Lorraine came back on the line, low and urgent.
“The silent alarm at the Brouillettes’ house was triggered. The security company is trying to reach the Brouillettes by phone.” Lorraine continued: “They’re reporting . . . that they’ve reached Phil Brouillette at his office. They’re reporting . . . that they can’t reach Amanda Brouillette.”
Lorraine was quiet, and I moved forward, stopping on the edge of the driveway. I counted my breaths, the air sharp in my lungs, the vapor rolling out, and was at twelve when two gunshots echoed through the trees.
I was in motion.
“Shots fired,” I reported to Lorraine. Twice I slid backward, the tread of my boots no match for the thick layer of ice. Squares of light from the Brouillettes’ window checkerboarded across the snow, and I swung wide—I didn’t know what I would find when I arrived, but surprise might be my only advantage. A shadow approached, the light from the porch throwing it into high relief.
“Stop, police!” I yelled. The figure lurched up the steps to the house and I raised my gun. Spotlights came on, painfully bright, illuminating the yard. On the top step of the porch stood Amanda Brouillette. The congresswoman was in crimson men’s-style pajamas and a camel coat. Pale as her daughter had been, with b
lood running across her face from a head wound. I didn’t lower my gun.
“I saw the killer creeping up the drive, and I slipped out and stopped them in their tracks. But you need to stop that monster!” Amanda Brouillette ordered, pointing at the trees behind me. I didn’t turn around, taking in the yard and the footprints that crisscrossed the snow. In the middle of it sat a backpack, almost a duffel. The pseudoephedrine.
“That person, the person who killed my girl, came back. They shot at me!” Amanda Brouillette was almost pleading. “I’ll go. I’ll find them and kill them if you don’t!” She started off the steps.
“Don’t move!” I said. I took in the congresswoman, small in her pajamas and her too-big coat. A trail of blood led away from the pack and up the steps—her path. A second distinct trail of blood led toward the trees. Amanda Brouillette wasn’t my killer.
“Who was it?” I asked, turning toward the trees.
“I couldn’t see. It was dark and they had a sort of mask. A ski mask.”
“We need another ambulance,” I said into the radio urgently, turning toward the beech grove. “Amanda Brouillette’s injured.”
“Copy that,” Lorraine said. “Three minutes out.”
The Brouillettes’ floodlights cut through the trees, sharp fingers of light helping me see the trail of blood and where it led. I paused. Continuing on was probably more than I could do with an injured shoulder, and I felt brain tired, my thoughts slow and heavy. But if I waited, the killer would have the chance to do this again, set up a drug deal or hurt someone else.
“I’m going to keep the suspect in view,” I said. Lorraine protested as I spoke to Amanda Brouillette: “Stay here. Stay safe.”
I crashed forward. Branches pulled at my jacket. With the spotlight behind me, the shadow I cast was long. I wished I were as tall and as large as it made me out to be.
The beech trees were strong and solid. Some of them grew straight up, but many tilted at odd angles, swinging on their axes. As I got deeper into the darkness the trees seemed to glow silver against the off-white of the snow. The chatter from the radio was a tether to the real world as I followed the trail of blood as far as it went. Sirens wailed in the distance. Was the killer heading toward the Saint Agnes Cemetery? The road behind the house, where he’d made his escape before? Toward the Byrnes’? I didn’t know. I turned the radio as low as it would go, flipped my flashlight off, and dropped close to the ground to see the trail and hide my position.
I approached a tree that was almost horizontal, using it as cover until the very last minute. I peeked over, and a gun fired, a bullet whizzing past my ear, missing me only by inches. In the brief moment of the muzzle flash I saw the shooter: Denise Byrne.
Denise Byrne? She took another shot, which illuminated her, face pale, blood running down her cheek from a gash in her forehead.
She was ahead and to the right, crouched low behind the crook of two fallen trees.
I dropped behind the tree. I rested my body against it, soaking in some of its warmth through my damp clothes and trying to think.
“Denise Byrne,” I called, loud enough so that they could hear me over the radio. I had difficulty forming words. To my ears, my voice sounded loud and harsh. “Denise, it’s over.”
I nestled my flashlight in the curve of a tree trunk, propping it straight with my gun hand. It shook, and I realized that I might be at the very beginnings of hypothermia, the wet as dangerous as the cold. I edged my hand so that the beam would shine exactly where I thought Denise might be, and turned on my light. It hit her square in the face.
Denise fired again from behind the tree. I ducked. That was the fifth bullet.
“Don’t do that!” Denise yelled. “No light in my eyes.”
The light is the problem right now? In times of stress, people focused on odd things. I dropped the light so that it shone at Denise’s feet. I kept an eye on where she was, even if I couldn’t hit any targets right now, the mental fog that came with hypothermia dropping over me fast. The flashlight felt like it weighed two thousand pounds, and with little to no muscle control, it swung in a wide arc, hitting Denise’s feet, the trees, the ground.
I decided to appeal to her practical nature. “Denise, I want to get you out of this alive.”
“Really? To what kind of life?”
“A life with your husband, your son.”
“Please. Are they going to visit me in jail? My son wheeling my husband in on visitor’s day?” Denise’s voice sounded cruel. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
“I know what that’s like.” I worked hard to keep my words focused and clear. If Denise knew I was slipping she would move in and kill me. “I know too well. That feeling, like you’re bricked in, no choices.”
“Most folks don’t. They don’t care.”
I tried to keep her talking. “Well, I had people like you. You brought me those painkillers for Kevin. You didn’t have to. But I can tell you, he was in so much pain that it hurt me, and you fixed that. You helped me.”
In the far distance I heard sirens. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed—a few seconds or a few minutes.
“You do have choices,” I said. “C’mon, Denise. You can choose to walk out of here.”
“Where there’s hope there’s life, huh?” Denise growled. “That’s a nice little platitude. But the congresswoman got the last of my hope of a clean getaway, a clean getaway with money, back there when we tussled in the backyard. She wasn’t even supposed to be there, the newspapers going on and on about how toxic the land was. And then you had to come along.” Denise made it sound as if what I had done was impolite, rather than the breakup of a crime.
“I know.” My body sagged a little. I half shoved and half fell away from the trunk, slumping—I couldn’t hold a crouch for long.
Denise was talking. “My future is in the bag in her backyard.” She sounded calmer. “But that’s okay because I got my gun.”
“No hope? Ish tha—” I concentrated, and made my words clear, while bracing myself. If Denise fixed her eyes on the light, then I might be able to surprise her. If I kept her talking. “Is that why you killed Danielle and Ray?”
“Oh, Danielle, a little hood rat. Thinking she was street smart. She certainly didn’t get that from this street.”
I moved myself to a point where the trunk dipped. I would be exposed, but it put me within six feet of Denise.
“So why did you kill her?” I asked.
“She was greedy. She told me over tea that she ‘didn’t need my services anymore,’ like if she was civilized I wouldn’t mind. Like five thousand dollars would make it all right. And when I got mad, she said that if I didn’t keep my mouth shut she was going to tell everyone I cooked meth.”
“She made you mad,” I said. “It wasn’t premeditated. Your lawyer could plead you down.”
“Plead down for the death of a congresswoman’s daughter?” Her laugh was harsh, echoing off the trees. “Like that would happen. Plus Ray. My life is worth less than nothing if his family gets ahold of me. He couldn’t even cook meth, wasn’t smart enough to look on the Internet to figure it out, which is how I learned. He sent a text to my phone—didn’t even know who he was sending it to—telling me where the drop was and asking me to cook it for him. I guess all his low-life family are really proud of their meth-making skills, and he wanted to keep face. The coward cried when I hit him, so I hit him again and shut him up.” She paused. “At least the girl was smart.”
“Stupid and greedy and young is a bad combination.” I thought of poor Ray, with his grape soda and video games and his unborn child.
“I wasn’t greedy,” Denise said. I held my position. I could hear help arriving, but the sirens sounded distorted and hard to place, as though they were bouncing through water. Should I stay or should I go? Denise was agitated, her Smith & Wesson flashing in and out of the light as wildly as she was talking.
“I just took enough tonight so that I could dig out. I was goi
ng to pay off our debts on the store, pay off the mortgage we took on our shitty house. I wanted my little piece. Not like Danielle. She wanted everything.”
“That is greedy,” I said.
I edged the light higher so that it reached Denise’s waist.
“I was going to let you have the glory, you know,” Denise continued. “Going to call in the rest of the junk, let you find it, be the hero. I didn’t want that in my community. Did you know how much they were going to make?”
“But you can still help me be a hero. Please, let’s make it so we can both get out of this alive. Jason’s safe. So is Greg. . . . So are you.”
“We don’t have anything now that I’ve lost my reputation. I don’t have anything to give them. I can never escape this.” Denise’s gun hand dropped into the light, gesturing, making her point. “Don’t you understand?”
She raised the gun and took aim. Without thinking, I jumped. I hit her middle, throwing her off balance. Denise twisted in midfall, and I found myself half underneath her, my injured arm pinned. The pain gave me a burst of adrenaline to roll her.
Now Denise lay half buried in the snow. I gripped her gun hand at the wrist, but my right was weak, and Denise was bucking. I lifted up, restraining Denise’s free arm under my knee. I had her for a second, but she wrenched away, putting me off balance, and raised the gun straight up, inches from my head. I propelled the arm down, pressing it against her chest. She closed her eyes and pushed up.
The gun fired.
Blood poured from Denise’s chin and neck, crimson spattering the beech tree behind her.
I pulled off my scarf, staunching the blood with it. The wound spurted sideways, soaking into the snow, into my clothes, a brief bit of warmth before the coldness, the wetness, overwhelmed the feeling. I struggled to stay upright. In the distance I could hear Lorraine calling for me to report, report now! Jason could be heard over all of them.