The Strategist

by John Hardy Bell

  “My money,” Solomon said again.

  “We’ll talk about it another time. I have to go.”

  Solomon smiled to keep himself from exploding. “How about I just see you after the press conference, Oliver? We’ll settle it then. If the meeting doesn’t go well, I won’t even charge for the extra labor of killing you.”

  The other end of the phone was silent and Solomon assumed that Brandt had hung up. But he was certain the message had been delivered.

  He took out a handkerchief and wiped down the phone, lest he leave behind a stray whisker from his ever-thickening five o’clock shadow. He tossed the phone next to Graham’s dead body, took off his latex gloves and jogged across the parking lot to his cruiser.

  His next stop would be DPD headquarters. As frightening as Solomon’s threat may have sounded, Brandt probably didn’t expect him to make good on it. But Solomon had every intention of making good on it. No matter how much he may have wanted to finish the Leeds job, the situation was too far gone, and Solomon getting his hands on the disk wasn’t going to change that. If anything, going through with the plan would only make matters worse. He had never killed a cop before, and even though the uniform he wore was little more than an elaborate costume, it still felt like something of a betrayal. Now, if he wanted to get that disk, he would most likely have to kill three. That wasn’t a chance he was willing to take for any amount of money. It would be far easier to make Brandt disappear, keep the fee that he had already collected, and call it even.

  Of course, Solomon hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Money or no money, all he wanted was for the entire ordeal to be over with. It had already been way more than he had bargained for, and if he wasn’t careful it had the potential to get worse.

  As he got into his cruiser, he looked in the rearview mirror and spotted a familiar black Crown Victoria driving down the street adjacent to the school.

  When the car suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, Solomon took out his binoculars to get a closer look.

  It was then that he realized things were about to get much worse.

  CHAPTER 51

  Camille had barely settled into the passenger’s seat of Detective Sullivan’s car when a sudden pull on the brakes almost sent her flying into the dashboard.

  “Oh my God, what is it?” Camille frantically asked as she looked around for the animal or worse yet, the child that Sullivan had slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting. When she saw nothing, she settled back in her seat. “Why did we stop?”

  Sullivan was quiet as they idled in the middle of the street.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “That car over there,” Sullivan finally said. “It looks like Graham’s.”

  Camille looked toward the school parking lot a few hundred feet away where she saw a car that looked exactly like the one they were in. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Fantastic.”

  “What is he doing?” Sullivan muttered.

  “Maybe he’s having engine trouble. Maybe he’s found a date. Maybe he’s hiding from the world. After the run-in you two just had, why do you even care?”

  “Because something is wrong.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time. At least that was what you told me when you showed up at my house. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but I personally couldn’t give two shits what Detective Graham is–”

  “Wait a second,” Sullivan cut in, pointing to the DPD patrol car parked in the adjacent loading dock. “Is that Officer Davies?”

  “I don’t really see why it matters.”

  “It matters,” Sullivan said as she put the car in reverse.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Camille got her answer when Sullivan pulled into the school entrance.

  “I’m sure Walter isn’t going to be the least bit happy to see me again, but I have to be sure.”

  “Sure of what?”

  Sullivan said nothing.

  When they pulled up next to the Crown Victoria and saw Detective Graham slumped down in the driver’s seat, the answer became horrifyingly clear.

  “Oh my God,” Sullivan shouted as she rushed out of the car.

  Camille quickly followed suit. She could see the blood before she even made her way to the driver’s side where Graham sat. Once she reached it, and could see the full scope of what had actually happened to him, she felt sick to her stomach.

  Sullivan reached inside the car and put two fingers up to Graham’s neck. Camille couldn’t tell whether she was checking for a pulse or attempting to stem the flow of blood from the gaping wound just below his jaw line. Both gestures seemed useless.

  “Damn it, Walter. How did you let this happen?” Sullivan said, trying to choke back emotion. She cradled his neck for a moment longer, as if she still hoped he could offer a response. When he didn’t, she lifted her head out of the car and pointed at Camille. Her hand was covered in blood. “My two-way is in the car! Can you bring it back here?”

  Camille was frozen, just as she had been months earlier in Daniel Sykes’ basement. She had been too late to save Agent Sheridan, but she had cradled him in her arms like there was still a chance. She had heard the girl’s desperate cries for help. But she couldn’t move. Even after she heard the first gunshot and one of the girl’s cries had gone silent, Camille still could not bear to remove her hand from the wound in Agent Sheridan’s forehead. The pressure from her grip had managed to stop the bleeding and she tried to convince herself that if he didn’t lose anymore blood, he could be saved. But she was lying to herself and she knew it. The truth was that she was in the midst of a panic attack so severe that the only thing keeping her from disconnecting completely was the feeling of Sheridan’s blood on her fingers. Sitting in the middle of that cold, dank dungeon that reeked of death and decay, hearing screams of pain and terror echo off the gray cobblestone walls, applying pressure to her dead partner’s wound was the only tangible thing left in a situation that had become darkly surreal. And now that same panic was setting in again. Only this time, she didn’t have anything tangible to hold onto.

  “Camille!”

  Sullivan’s voice was little more than a distant echo, drowned out by those screams in the basement and the subsequent gunshots that silenced them forever.

  “Camille!” She was shaking Camille’s shoulders. “I need to stay with him! Please get my radio from the car!”

  Camille nodded then ran to Sullivan’s car as fast as her numb legs would carry her. She found the radio in the compartment between the driver and passenger’s seat. On her way back, she glanced over her shoulder. That was when she got her first good look at the patrol car that Sullivan had noticed earlier. The driver’s side door was open, and Camille thought she could see someone looking in her direction through the open window. As she got closer to Sullivan and Graham, she looked over her shoulder again. This time she was positive she saw someone staring at her. He wore sunglasses that matched the dark tint of his uniform. And now he appeared to be holding something out of the window. It looked silver but it could have been black. It looked like a pair of binoculars, but it could have been a gun.

  A gun?

  Sullivan took the two-way radio and had begun her emergency relay before Camille could say anything.

  “Code ten, code ten, I have an officer down! West side parking lot of Braswell Elementary School! I repeat, officer down!” Panic rose with each word Sullivan spoke.

  As Camille glanced over her shoulder at the patrol car, her panic rose as well. The driver’s side door was still open, but she could no longer see the officer sitting inside. By the time she turned back to Sullivan, she felt the first sting just below her left shoulder blade. Before Camille could open her mouth to say the word ‘help’, she felt the second sting slide across her left cheek. She hadn’t realized that she was shot until she heard two more rapid-fire pops. Then she saw Detective Sullivan crumble onto the asphalt.

  CHAPTER 52

  So much for not killing anyone
else, Solomon thought with a hint of regret as he threw his PSG-1 into the backseat of the squad car. He knew that Detective Sullivan had most likely been killed right away. The first shot caused her to fall forward; the second sent her crashing into the ground. Camille Grisham was another story. She barely moved after the first shot and staggered backward only a few feet after the second. She cupped the side of her face before finally falling to her knees. He couldn’t be sure if either shot was clean enough to be anything more than superficial, so he approached the parking lot under the assumption that he still had work to do.

  Before Solomon got the first shot off, he saw Sullivan talking into her two-way radio, which meant she was able to put in a call for help. He cursed himself for not moving in on them sooner, just like he’d been cursing himself for a lot of things lately. But it was too late to worry about that. Right now he had to focus on the task at hand, which was making sure no one in that parking lot was left alive.

  He climbed into his cruiser and drove the short distance to a parking lot that was completely empty except for two Crown Victoria’s and three law enforcement agents – two of whom Solomon felt confident were dead. The third one would soon be dead too.

  Given the events of the day, it was very likely that Camille would be carrying the disk, or at least a copy of it, with her. But at this point, Solomon wouldn’t even bother to retrieve it. The cat had most certainly already been let out of the bag. The fact that Camille had a disk in the first place meant that Julia Leeds planned for such a scenario long before Solomon had gotten to her.

  Throughout the entire ordeal, Elliott Richmond had operated under the false assumption that he was the smartest person in the room. He was the one with all the answers; the one pulling all the strings. But Julia Leeds had been a step ahead of him from day one. She knew exactly what Richmond was capable of, and she took steps to ensure that the world would know about it should he ever decide to act.

  And now the world would know, which meant this entire episode of Solomon’s life had been a complete waste of effort.

  The more he thought about that fact, the more it angered him. He had done everything he was supposed to do. In the end, Richmond was the one who failed. Because of him, an easy job had deteriorated into an unmitigated disaster. Because of him, four people would end up dead. If Solomon felt that Elliott Richmond would do anything other than to toe the line of absolute innocence once he was exposed, he wouldn’t hesitate to make him the fifth. But Richmond was not a threat to him. Neither was Camille Grisham.

  But he had to kill her just the same.

  Solomon stopped a few feet from the car that Camille and Detective Sullivan had arrived in, got out of his own car, and listened. The only sound he heard was indecipherable chatter from Sullivan’s open radio.

  With his Heckler and Koch drawn, Solomon inched his way toward the back of Sullivan’s Crown Victoria. From his current vantage point, he could see Graham slumped in the driver’s seat of his own car a few feet away. Detective Sullivan, and presumably Camille Grisham, were somewhere on the other side.

  Solomon heard a scrape against the asphalt. Then a second, this one louder. He crouched down behind the car and listened. When he heard nothing else, he quickly stood up, realizing that he had taken a defensive position that was based on fear and nothing more. When he first encountered Camille outside of Julia’s house, then a second time in Mayor Richmond’s campaign headquarters, Solomon had seen something in her that was very formidable; a dark presence that she obviously went to great lengths to contain. Elliott Richmond had probably not seen it until it was too late. But Solomon saw it right away, and it put him on notice. Camille may have no longer had the seal of the FBI behind her, but she was still dangerous. He knew from personal experience that true darkness could never be contained for long, and he’d shuddered at the thought of being in Camille’s path when her efforts to contain the darkness within herself finally failed.

  But he no longer had to worry about that. Camille was not standing at the other end of a dark alley waiting to draw her gun on him. She was most likely sitting a few feet away in a pool of blood waiting for him to finish her off. He was anxious to oblige.

  When he walked around the left side of the car, he saw Detective Sullivan lying motionlessly on her side. Her ivory blouse was stained red on the left side of her upper torso, as was her left leg just above the knee. The two-way radio was still tucked in her left hand. Solomon kicked the radio out of her hand, sending it hurling across the parking lot until it came to a rest in multiple pieces. Sullivan didn’t move.

  Seeing no need to engage the detective further, Solomon moved to the front of her car, then to the right side. From there, he made his way to Graham’s. The smell of copper was thick as he passed the open window where his body had already begun to decompose. Pellets of shattered glass crunched under his boots as he rounded the front of the car, then up the other side. Solomon stopped there. His arm trembled before it involuntarily fell to his side, taking the gun down with it. It was as if the asphalt under his feet suddenly became quicksand and he was unable to prevent himself from being pulled under.

  Camille Grisham was nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER 53

  Before she made her way into the backseat of Detective Graham’s car, Camille had managed to pry the Glock out of his shoulder holster. She crouched down in between the seats as far as she could, covering most of her body with Graham’s oversized trench coat. Then she listened. Aside from the chatter on Detective Sullivan’s radio, she heard nothing, and for a time she thought the DPD officer, the man who had most likely shot them all, had left. Then she heard footsteps. She’d had a fleeting hope that it was a concerned passerby who could offer help. But passersby in this neighborhood were rarely concerned and they almost never helped. Her notion was confirmed when the footsteps stopped and she heard a thump that caused Sullivan’s radio to go silent. Seconds later she heard it skidding across the asphalt. The officer had apparently come to finish what he had started.

  When Camille allowed herself a moment to think about whom the officer could be or what his motives were, the name Richmond was the only one that came to mind. He was the only one with the motivation to do this, and he certainly had the resources to bring in a hired gun from within the police ranks to pull it off. Even before now, she had begun to suspect that there were many such hired guns within the department – Detective Graham being chief among them. But that was as far as her panicked mind would allow her to go. Right now it didn’t matter who the officer was or what his motives were. She had to find a way out of this.

  It had been a couple of minutes since Detective Sullivan put in the emergency call, which meant that every available police unit within a five-mile radius would be descending upon them at any moment. Her gunshot wounds were painful, but they were superficial. All she had to do now was bide her time in here until she heard the sirens.

  Bide your time, Camille thought. Just a few more minutes and they’ll save you. You certainly can’t save yourself. You can’t save yourself because you’re a coward. You don’t have the courage to fight. You never did. Cower in this backseat next to this corpse. Maybe if you stay long enough, you’ll end up just like him. Just like Agent Sheridan. Just like Jessica Bailey and Candice McPherson. They died because you cowered, the same as you’re doing now. There’s still a possibility that you can help Detective Sullivan. But you won’t, will you? You’re going to let her die too. If you let this pass, then you deserve nothing less than to join her. If you let this pass, then you’ll finally confirm to the world what you’ve always known about yourself – that you never deserved anything you had. Not the badge, not the gun, not the forgiveness, and certainly not Julia’s trust. She put her life in your hands so you could hide under this trench coat while the men who killed her are allowed to walk free? Of course she didn’t. Don’t wait for the sirens, Camille. Don’t you dare.

  Camille was overwhelmed by the thoughts pushing through her mind. But
she was also stirred by them. Pull this coat off and get out of this car.

  And that was exactly what she did, despite the tears clouding her vision, despite frayed nerves that caused her entire body to shake. She pulled off Detective Graham’s coat and lifted her head.

  The first thing she saw was part of Graham’s skull lying on the seat next to her. She wanted to scream, but something inside the hard-as-nails, Quantico-trained, Special Agent-In-Charge-of-Ridding-the-World-of-Everything-Evil-and-Impure Grisham would not allow it. It was a part of herself that Camille thought she would never see again. Its appearance was sudden and surprising. And it was most-welcomed.

  She sat Graham’s gun down on the seat while she used her good arm to slowly open the back door. The hinges squeaked as she did and she stopped halfway. “Shit,” she whispered as she held the door. She waited a few seconds and pushed again. The door opened the rest of the way without making a sound. With her left arm trailing uselessly behind her, Camille pulled herself across the back seat until she was out of the car.

  Once her feet were under her, she reached back into the car to retrieve the gun, then gently closed the door, stopping short of the latch.

  The only thing she saw in her immediate field of vision was the school playground some distance in front of her. Detective Sullivan’s car was on the other side of Graham’s, as was presumably Detective Sullivan. Camille’s only thought was to get to her.

  Until she heard footsteps.

  They came from somewhere behind her. They were slow, they were cautious, and they were searching. She crouched down against the car, the gun held high in front of her. As the footsteps drew closer, Camille’s index finger wrapped loosely around the trigger. When the footsteps stopped, her grip tightened. He was on the other side of Graham’s car, no more than a few feet away. And he was here for her.