by Diane Capri
“Let me guess,” Otto said, sardonically. “Weston was hauled in looking like he’d been run over by a bus, right?”
Danimal shrugged and said nothing.
“What persuaded Reacher to abandon charges against Weston?” Gaspar asked.
Silence again.
Otto asked, “So what happened after Weston’s arrest?”
“Case was over, as far as we were concerned. The situation moved up the chain of command, out of Reacher’s purview. He returned to his regular post.”
“Where was that?”
“Texas, maybe?” Danimal said.
“But that wasn’t the end of things, was it?”
“Pretty quickly, local detectives concluded Weston’s family had been killed by a cheap hit man.”
“How cheap?” Gaspar asked.
“Five-hundred dollars, I think, for all four hits.”
“Anybody could have paid that,” Otto said. “Even on Army wages.”
Danimal didn’t argue. “They couldn’t tie Weston to the killer, so charges against Weston were dropped. Reacher had no say in the matter. Even if he’d still been on base, the result would have been the same.”
Gaspar said, “Reacher had to love that.”
Danimal laughed. “Exactly.”
Otto tilted her head toward Jess Kimball, who was still sitting with the press off to the opposite side of the stage. “Reporter over there says Weston’s family was killed to send him a message. Any truth to that?”
“Probably. But that made him a victim, not a suspect. We couldn’t prove anything more,” Danimal replied.
“How hard did you try?” Gaspar asked.
“If the evidence was there, Reacher would have found it. He was a good cop and he did a good job on the case.”
After thinking a bit, Otto said, “After Weston was released, Reacher kept looking for evidence, didn’t he? And he let it be known. He hounded Weston, figuring he’d crack. Or do something else Reacher could charge him for, right?”
Danimal said nothing.
Otto said, “A few of your guys maybe helped Reacher out with that project.”
Danimal still said nothing.
Weston was a scumbag through and through. Reacher wouldn’t have let that go. Gaspar wouldn’t have, either.
“How’d it end?” Otto asked.
“Weston was arrested frequently. Jaywalking. Spitting on the sidewalk. Whatever,” Danimal replied.
“Didn’t matter as long as Weston was getting hassled and locked up for something and sporting a few bruises, right?” Otto asked.
He shrugged. “When Weston came up for his next promotion, he got passed over. His CO suggested he’d be better off outside, away from, uh, constant surveillance.”
“So Weston retired,” Otto said.
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
Danimal replied, “And then he got worse.”
Gaspar figured Reacher had been counting on that. Reacher had sized Weston up and concluded he was a scumbag. Guys like Weston don’t get better with age.
While Danimal was briefing them, Gaspar had been preoccupied with Reacher and not watching Weston closely enough. For Gaspar’s assignment, Weston was a source of information and nothing more. After he told them what they needed to know, Weston could stand in front of a firing squad and Gaspar wouldn’t have cared. Because he agreed with Reacher. Weston killed his family, one way or another. Weston was not the victim here.
Until he was.
6
The service concluded. The chaplain returned to the microphone and asked everyone to stand and bow their heads. Weston, his wife, and the others on the stage did so, along with the audience. Hushed whispers from the respectful crowd stopped. The only noises Gaspar heard were muffled by distance. The chaplain began his benediction.
A split second later, the first gunshot shattered the quiet. Automatically, Gaspar’s gaze jerked toward the sniper nests he’d located—was that a rifle’s glint he saw snugged up against that HVAC unit?—then back to the stage. He counted two more rapid shots. Like a crazy break dance, Weston’s body lurched forward, propelled by the force of each impact from behind, not from any identified nest. Had Gaspar imagined the rifle’s glint?
After the third shot, Weston crumpled like a marionette whose strings were abruptly severed.
When Weston fell, he opened a window for the fourth shot, which hit Samantha Weston.
The fifth bullet struck the chaplain.
Gaspar and Otto were already rushing the stage with their weapons drawn after the third shot, but their sightline behind the stage was still obscured. They’d left Danimal behind with his own weapon drawn, scanning the crowd for the shooter as he got on his radio.
Like a brief time delay on live television, the audience began screaming and chaos erupted just as Otto reached the stage with Gaspar half a step behind. As Gaspar followed her around the left side of the stage, he counted five additional, rapid shots originating from the parking lot behind. Followed by no further shooting.
When they reached the parking lot, two men were down and two more stood over the bodies.
The chaos became choreographed as moves practiced during countless drills were automatically performed almost simultaneously as Danimal’s base security took charge.
Weston was approached, triaged, and rushed into one waiting ambulance. Mrs. Weston was rushed to a second ambulance.
The chaplain’s injuries were either fatal or minor, judging from the medics’ lack of urgency when they reached him.
More security personnel arrived. Two men were confirmed dead.
Within minutes the entire base was locked down. The voice came on the speaker advising everyone to “shelter in place.” Meaning hunker down until the situation was secured.
Otto and Gaspar hung back from the working professionals.
“We should go,” Otto said, her attention focused on the crime scene. “Those two authorized FBI agents will be around somewhere, maybe calling backup. We can’t be caught here.”
Though Gaspar agreed, he told her to wait there a minute and slipped around the edges to reach Danimal, who was questioning Weston’s bodyguards. The same bodyguards who’d failed to protect their boss. Danimal stepped aside to give Gaspar a brief account of the shooting according to the first witnesses.
“Looks like a lone shooter. That guy,” he pointed to one of the two dead men. “No ID yet. He approached the back of the stage about halfway through the service as if he was authorized to be there. When Weston stood for the benediction, he pulled his pistol and shot Weston in the left shoulder, and both legs. Mrs. Weston was shot in the right femur. The other victim is one of Weston’s bodyguards. These two guys say the shooter killed their buddy and then they killed him.”
Gaspar reviewed the crime scene briefly, then nodded. “It could have happened that way,” he said. “Where did they take Weston?”
“He requested Tampa Southern,” Danimal said. “Call me later and I’ll fill you in. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Thanks,” Gaspar said, then approached the two bodies for a closer look.
The bodyguard lay face down, lifeless, unmoving in a lake of his own blood. Black hair. Bulky guy. Maybe six feet. Maybe 200 pounds of pumped-up shoulders and biceps. Big, but not big enough to stop bullets fired dead on target at close range.
Less than three feet away, the scrawny shooter was face up on the tarmac, one glassy eye still open and the other covered with a black patch. Like several others attending today’s memorial, grotesque scars from a healed wound gouged his forehead. One cheek was sunken because half the upper jawbone had disappeared some time ago. His Army BDUs were well worn and oversized for the wasted body inside them. Boots polished but old and scuffed as if he’d had trouble lifting his feet to walk. His deformed right hand still gripped the FN Five-seven pistol he’d meant to use to get up close and execute his target.
Brain injuries manifested in unpredictable ways
. It was possible the shooter had been unable to control his homicidal impulses and simply lashed out at the nearest targets, but the whole scene felt darkly, undeniably intentional to Gaspar. Shooting Weston in the back. Shooter knowing he’d die trying to kill. Hitting Weston three times before the two wild shots injured others nearby. A crowd of military families and personnel watching.
It felt very, very personal.
No question the shooter was a man with vengeance on his mind.
But he wasn’t Jack Reacher.
Gaspar wondered if Reacher would experience a pang of regret for having his unfinished business with Weston finished for him by this damaged, deranged soldier.
After he’d absorbed all he could about the situation, Gaspar returned to Otto and said, “Let’s go.”
They slipped weapons back into place and merged with the audience as security herded them to their cars and eventually exited the base though the nearby Bayshore Gate.
While they waited in the long line of traffic, Gaspar told her about the glinting rifle barrel in the sniper’s nest, the bodyguard, and the shooter.
“The shooter’s definitely not Reacher?”
“Definitely not. Although it could have been him in the nest. Impossible to know.”
Otto nodded, thinking. “So. Disabled veteran? Maybe served under Weston’s supervision?”
“Iraq has been Weston’s location for long enough. They could have crossed paths there, even if Weston wasn’t the guy’s CO,” Gaspar said. “The shooter was disabled, for sure. Likely a vet. But if we’re betting, I’d say he was focused and lucid when he planned and executed this plan.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons. First, logistics. Getting close enough to Weston to shoot him required stealth and cleverness, but also logic and planning. He had to get on base, locate the best shooting position, have a weapon, and a long list of other things. None of that could have been accomplished if he’d suffered from a significant mental deficiency.”
Otto nodded, considering. “Maybe. One thing we know: the number of vets who suffered head injuries during both Iraq and Afghanistan is staggering. In earlier wars, they wouldn’t have survived wounds like that. We can keep so many more alive now, but the treatments aren’t great and definitely don’t fix the damage.”
Gaspar said nothing.
“Sometimes, they suffer strokes and seizures. Behavior can be erratic, even violent,” Otto said, running through her internal list of possibles. “Maybe he had a grievance against Weston. And maybe he was just not rational. What’s your second thing?”
“He pulled it off. He reached Weston, armed, on a military base designed to stop him. He shot five times before a private bodyguard took him out, but not before he mortally wounded the bodyguard. And he had physical disabilities beyond the head trauma. All of that says logic, planning, knowledge, focus.” Gaspar took a deep breath. Discussions about the abilities of the injured and disabled were bound to lead somewhere he wasn’t willing to go. “My money says the guy specifically planned to kill Weston and he was willing to die trying. But with nothing more to go on, it’s impossible to know. And, more to the point, not our case. We’ve got our own problems. So now what?”
“Assuming Weston survives, those two FBI agents will execute his arrest warrant today, no matter what,” Otto said. “Let’s see if we can get any more out of him about Reacher before we lose the only good lead we’ve got.”
“Okay. But what about Reacher?”
“What about him?”
“If he was the one in that sniper’s nest, he knows Weston wasn’t dead at the time he got into the ambulance. And he knows where to find Weston now.”
“And he’s at least thirty minutes ahead of us,” Otto said.
Gaspar increased the sedan’s speed to tailgate the car in front of them. Maybe today was the day to face Reacher after all. Get some answers right from the source. Finish this assignment and move on.
7
Tampa Southern Hospital was located about six miles from MacDill Air Force Base near the opposite end of Bayshore Boulevard. Gaspar stretched out as he settled into the oversized seat and drove along perhaps one of the most beautiful stretches of pavement in Florida.
Immediately outside the Bayshore Gate they passed residential property on the west side of the winding two-lane. At the first traffic light, Interbay Boulevard, more than half the traffic turned west.
Gaspar continued through the residential section, past the streets that led to the Tampa Yacht Club entrances on the right, past Ballast Point. After the next traffic light at Gandy Boulevard, the two lanes separated into a wide divided linear park that ran along the entire shoreline of Hillsborough Bay toward downtown.
Otto seemed to enjoy the scenery, too. As they passed Plant Key Bridge, she said, “I’ve never been to Tampa before. What’s that little island out there?”
“It’s called Plant Key. Privately owned. It was originally built by a railroad baron named Henry Plant.”
“He built an island?”
“Well, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the bay and piled up the dirt, but Plant did the rest. That Moorish looking building was his home, called Minaret. Maybe built in the 1890’s. Plant was constructing the Tampa Bay Hotel, now the University of Tampa. He was competing with Henry Flagler for the rich and famous vacationers of the time.”
“Don’t try to tell me about competition, Chico,” Otto said. “I’m from Detroit, where the weak are killed and eaten. There’ve never been rivals bloodthirstier than the Fords and the Dodge brothers.”
He laughed. “Now, there’s a great restaurant out there called George’s Place. If we get a chance, we’ll have dinner there. The chef is amazing.”
Otto glanced toward him and smiled for the first time today. “You mean we’d eat something that doesn’t come out of a ptomaine cart? What a sweet-talker you are.”
He felt a grin sneak up on his lips and some of the unrelenting tension released. “Stick with me, Susie Wong. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You’ve never tried a gold brick sundae, I’ll bet.”
When she laughed like that, she seemed younger and prettier, Gaspar realized. She was so serious most of the time that he’d never noticed that about her. She was young. She could still have a normal life with a family. He wondered if she ever thought about that.
“The homes along here across from the waterfront are amazing, too. I’ve stayed in hotels smaller than that one,” she said, pointing to an 8,000-square-foot Georgian-style mansion. “Reminds me of a similar stretch along Lake St. Claire. In Grosse Pointe, just outside Detroit. I drive out there on weekends sometimes in the summer. Beautiful.”
She sounded homesick. Interesting, Gaspar thought. Until now, she’d never seemed to care that she wasn’t on her way back for Thanksgiving.
There was no further landmass in Hillsborough Bay until they reached the bridge to Florida Key where Tampa Southern Hospital was located. Gaspar merged onto the bridge and crossed the water before entering the driveway between the hospital and the parking garage.
“Drop me off at the entrance and park the car, okay?” Otto said. “I’ll find out what’s going on and meet you inside.”
“You got it, Susie Wong,” he replied. She left the car and he watched her sign in at the information desk and head toward the elevators before he drove to the garage alone.
8
Four people occupied the small waiting room when Gaspar arrived upstairs. Two men he’d never seen before. Two women he recognized. The men sat a few chairs apart and directly across from the wall-mounted television tuned to a football game. If they noticed or cared about his arrival, they didn’t betray themselves.
He was relieved to see both women look up when he entered, which meant he hadn’t become invisible since they’d seen him last.
Jess Kimball, the Taboo reporter, sat closer to the entrance, as if to ensure she’d be the first to pounce when worthy prey arrived. There was something about her that suggested
barely contained anger. Given her feelings about Weston, maybe she was annoyed that the shooter had failed. She was intense, which made Gaspar want to know her story. She was young to be so driven. Usually that kind of idealism came from tragedy and betrayal, in Gaspar’s experience. Which was what he figured had happened to her. But what?
The other woman was Jennifer Lane, Samantha Weston’s lawyer. She sat in the corner across from the entry door where she had a clear view of the entire room and its occupants. Gaspar knew a lot of lawyers, but none that were Velcroed to their clients like this one. What was going on there?
He shrugged. Both women were too young to have known Reacher during the Weston murder investigation, which made them vaguely interesting, but irrelevant to his mission.
He absorbed the rest of the scene in a quick glance. One wall of the waiting room featured large plate glass windows overlooking the water. The opposite wall sported a small opening filled with a sliding frosted glass panel behind which, presumably, someone was working. Otto was probably chatting that someone up now. Which was great, because it meant he didn’t have to do it.
Gaspar settled into one of the molded plastic chairs, extended his legs, folded his hands over his flat stomach and closed his eyes. The others might think he was sleeping. If nothing interesting happened within five minutes, he would be.
Three minutes later, Otto came in and sat next to him. “I spoke with the Westons’ assigned nurse. His name is Steve Kent. He served at MacDill, so he has the necessary clearances, he said. He was also a Navy medic for a while, and respected Weston’s service in Iraq. That’s why he requested the duty.”
“Since when do you need a security clearance to be a civilian nurse to a retired officer?” Gaspar asked without opening his eyes.
“Probably depends on the officer,” Otto said. “Anyway, I told him we had a plane to catch and he said he’d take us in as soon as Weston can answer questions.”
“Okay,” he replied, closing his eyes again. “Did he say anything else I need to know right now?”