R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning

by R. S. Guthrie

“I’M SORRY about all this,” Amanda said from her desk, Melissa sitting in an extra chair in her cubicle.

  “You’re Mac’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And an FBI agent?”

  “Yep, that, too.”

  “I want to be an FBI agent.”

  “I think that would be really cool,” Amanda said.

  “Cool?”

  “It’s an admirable endeavor,” Amanda said. “I’m sure you’d make an excellent one.”

  “Mac saved my life.”

  “He’s good at that.”

  “Has he ever saved your life?”

  “He saved me when he married me,” Amanda said, uncomfortable with the young woman’s fixation on Mac. Hostage and kidnap victims often developed feelings for their rescuers. The level and volatility of said feelings ranged vastly, depending on circumstances. Amanda couldn’t imagine many circumstances worse than what Melissa had endured.

  “He loves you,” Melissa said flatly.

  “He loves you, too, Melissa. He wouldn’t have left you with anyone else but me. That should tell you something.”

  “What, that you’re this amazing policewoman and can protect me as well as him?”

  “No. Because he trusts me with his life, so he trusts me with yours.”

  Silence.

  Meyer poked his head around the doorjamb. “Everything copacetic in here?”

  “We’re good,” Amanda said. “There’s coffee so bad it’s a police cliché in the break room.”

  “Already sampled,” Meyer said. He winked at Amanda. Situation diffused for the moment.

  “So, Cambodia?” Amanda said to Meyer.

  “What? Oh, yes. It was heartbreaking. So many lost.”

  “Did you go with the church or the Red Cross.”

  “Uh, both, actually.”

  “Long flight?”

  “Ghastly. And the Vatican knows not of Business Class.”

  “Is that a straight flight to DIA or do you have to change planes on the coast?”

  “LAX. Los Angeles. Thank the heavens that is a short hop to Denver. Comparatively speaking, of course.”

  “Yeah, that’s not a bad trip,” Amanda said, poking around on her computer.

  “Well, you ladies stay comfortable and safe. I must attend to my bladder. Coffee, as they say, is rented only.” Meyer scooted away and Amanda did something that made her sick inside:

  She ran a background check on Father Meyer West.

  I convinced Jax to give me Rule’s number. He knew my plan, or the idea behind it anyway. If we lost—and by “we” I didn’t just mean myself, Manny, and his group, but Amanda, Melissa, Meyer—everything good we’d ever known—a phone call to Rule wouldn’t matter one way or the other.

  It was time to cross that line that could never be re-crossed. Not with things being the same, anyway.

  “MacAulay,” Rule spat as he answered the phone.

  “I have your puppet,” I said. “But I have the girl, too. Time to end it.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. I continued.

  “I’m sending you an address. It’s an abandoned parking garage in a run-down part of the city. I want to meet you there. You make my brother whole again—you give him back to me—and I’ll turn over Melissa Grant.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “If I see even one of your stooges, I turn around and Melissa goes into protective custody and Jax will never see the outside of state prison. I don’t know why you want her, clearly her father wants her, whatever you two have cooked up I no longer want my family to be a part of it. I don’t care if that betrays some worn-out history. I have a wife and three little girls. Even you can understand that. Give me back my brother and swear to me that you’ll leave the MacAulay name alone for good. No more or less than what you plan for anyone or anyplace else.”

  More silence. This was not an offer he’d considered.

  A betrayal.

  “Send me the address.”

  “Swear it to me.”

  “I swear. I can give you your brother back to you, just as before. You swear you’ll give me the young woman and then stay out of my, business, shall we call it?”

  “I swear.” A lie to a liar is no lie at all. “You meet us there in an hour.”

  “If I see any police, you know I can add more bodies to the agenda,” Rule said.

  “One hour and I will send you the address.”

  “Send it now.”

  “Trust is a fragile thing,” I said. “Let’s not create opportunity for a break so soon.”

  “If you don’t trust me, this whole happenstance is a farce.”

  “No, I just want time to get to the location. That’s it.”

  “Fair enough. You’re up to something, but I’ll see to your conditions. Many a hand of poker has been lost by the surest of players.”

  “One hour.”

  I called Manny. “Are you in place?”

  “Si, jefe.”

  “Tell your people I have a small presence of personal police. Off the clock and of no threat whatsoever to them. Just the opposite, in fact. We’ll likely all be happy they’re with us.”

  “No problem. The team here will understand. It won’t be the first time they’ve dealt with the policía on friendly terms.”

  “Notwithstanding, everyone sticks to the plan.”

  “Agreed, boss.”

  Melissa had asked Amanda what she was doing and when she realized the agent was engrossed in her work, she decided to take a walk around the place. Not very impressive for the FBI, she thought. They always made things look more elaborate in the movies and on television, two of her very few outlets to the outside world as she grew up, though her father had taken his home education responsibilities seriously.

  She had no idea why. He only intended on killing her, just like all those other young women. She’d known that for years and had actually come to accept it in a life’s destiny kind of way—just the way things were. Part of it was the constant fear. It became so natural to be afraid that she never really thought about leaving.

  Only with budding maturity had her plan to escape evolved.

  Melissa also did not know how to feel about her father’s alleged death. Part of her wanted to believe what the man named Jax had said. Part of her—the little girl inside—wanted her dad. She wanted him back whole, like the man she had fleeting memories of in her head.

  She still could not move further down that path of memories, however. She knew what had happened to her mother and sister and she knew her father was the guilty party, just as he was guilty of murdering all those innocent women in Denver. It was different then, though; she then understood more of the truth; a truth that sounded more like a movie plot than reality.

  If she clung to that bizarre possibility, however, it meant her father—her real father—had not committed those heinous acts. It meant something else had occupied his body. Melissa wondered if it was what they meant by an insanity defense.

  “Surprise,” Father Meyer said as she walked around the corner into a darkened hallway in the trance of deep thought. She startled and jerked away, as if to flee.

  “I’m sorry,” Meyer said, placing his hand on her shoulder to calm her.

  “It’s okay,” Melissa said, more relaxed. “Amanda is too busy on her computer to talk.”

  “Yes,” said Meyer. “That’s why I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “Well, she’s going to dig, and dig, and then dig some more. That’s what they do, the FBI. And she’s going to find out I was never in Cambodia.”

  “You weren’t ever there?”

  “She already knows I didn’t fly in from LAX. It was stupid of me, really.”

  “What was stupid?”

  “Leaving the tag on my suitcase. I’m afraid I’m not a very good criminal.”

  “You’re not a criminal,” Melissa said, starting to tremble despite her confidence that this man was her friend. Mac’s friend. “You�
��re a priest.”

  “She’s going to find that out, too. That I’m not a priest, I mean.”

  “Are you even Mac’s cousin?”

  “Oh, that I am,” he said, closing the space between them in an instant and clubbing her at the back of her skull.

  Then nothing.

  Amanda was oblivious to everything but what she was finding on the FBI computer. No record of a Meyer West at all. She had placed a call to the local catholic church office and asked for a report on Father Meyer West. Ten minutes later the priest with whom she’d spoken called back and said there was no Father West. Not just Meyer West; there was no West in the papal directory.

  She knew he could not have flown without an ID to match his identity so she contacted the airline for the manifests for all flights the day before between Missoula, Montana, and Denver.

  No Meyer West.

  Shaw Macaulay.

  Amanda ran a check on Shaw and found very little.

  No criminal record but for an arrest warrant and subsequent dismissal of charges stemming from the case of an abducted neighbor.

  In Priest River, Idaho.

  That fucking son of a bitch, she thought. He played his role to perfection. Foil. Intelligentsia. Always there to feed Mac a pellet when he pushed the lever. It would break her husband’s heart to learn that the friend he thought replaced his brother was—

  Amanda looked up from her oblivion to see Melissa had left the cubicle.

  “Melissa?” she called out.

  No answer.

  Amanda drew her sidearm and with it, double-gripped and angled toward the floor, moved around the right side of the cubicle exit, clearing the six-foot high cube hallway in both directions. It was then she noticed the absolute silence. Not even an office murmur.

  She moved from cubicle to cubical.

  Each occupied cubicle contained a fallen comrade. Amanda stopped checking cause of death after the first two; each kill was the same M.O.: a knife insertion just below the center skull, severing the brainstem. Silent. Painless.

  Amanda fought to contain her emotions and be a cop.

  It had become late enough that her team was the only remaining on that floor—that area being comprised of operational units of lesser time-sensitive investigations that rarely worked twenty-four hour shifts.

  There was no life remaining where she was and both Melissa and Meyer, or, Shaw Macaulay, were gone.

  She’d failed.

  Her team.

  Young, terrified Melissa.

  Bobby.

  She pulled her cell from her pants and punched the speed dial to “Mac”. It went straight to voicemail.

  Shit.

  She left a message detailing what she’d found. Concisely. Professionally. Then she grabbed her keys and ran for the elevator.

  We arrived at the garage just after I sent the address to Rule—the building was in decent shape, nondescript enough, no presence of anything or anyone as we entered the ground level. We slowly circled, floor by floor. I spotted two of Brighton’s finest in the shadows on the fourth floor, halfway to the top, but only because I knew that was where he’d instructed them to stake out. The other dozen or so, plus Brighton himself, would be outside, undetectable, on the perimeter of the garage, with instructions to let no bad guy make it in or out of the garage alive.

  There were a hundred Puerto Ricans backing them up, dug into the shadows and niches along the surrounding streets only they knew. Probably armed better than S.W.A.T. That was simply the reality in which law enforcement lived. The hard streets were little different than third world capitals where angst and inequities and arsenals ruled the land.

  This was one of the few times that fact made me feel a little better.

  When we reached the top floor, Jax still in the rear and silent, the night sky opened to us, myriad points of light, perhaps showing us the heavens, maybe just balls of long-distinguished heated gases.

  From the shadows of the flat, open space—all along the perimeter—we would be able to see in all directions. I stopped in the middle of the plateau, twenty feet from where Father Rule stood, alone, as promised (though I knew from experience he was never truly alone).

  “You indicated just the two of us,” he said without conviction, almost as if bored already of the entire affair. “Promised or swore, if I remember correctly.”

  “We both knew neither of us would come alone. That doesn’t change the stakes at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure this drama is playing out exactly as it’s meant to.”

  “But I see no Melissa. That changes things very much. I’m sure, however, you brought along that pathetic toy.”

  “That ‘toy’ has been your undoing more than once,” I said, something I could never have believed without seeing it firsthand—without using it myself. The Crucifix of Ardincaple lay on the seat, unwrapped from its cloth; a sword and talisman, just a reach away.

  I opened the back door, untied and un-cuffed Jax, and pushed him toward Rule. He stumbled a bit, walked a few steps, then stopped halfway between us. “I don’t want him back,” I said. “I don’t take betrayal lightly and neither should you.”

  “Yes, the mercy he showed young Melissa. Very disturbing. I suppose no one can trust a traitor, even the other side. It’s a wonder your wife trusts you.”

  “You’re not going to get to me this time, Rule. Whether you want to accept it or not, this is where it all ends.”

  “Or where it all begins,” he said, sneering.

  Manny rose from the shadows and joined me.

  From below I could then hear the subtle squealing of rubber tires rounding the parking garage pavement inside, climbing toward us, already, it seemed, past all lines of defense, including the fourth floor S.W.A.T. members.

  Why had no one challenged the driver?

  As if in answer to my thoughts, an unmarked police car with tinted windows drove slowly out to park ten feet behind me. Meyer got out of the vehicle and scampered over to where I stood.

  “Coward or no, I stand with you, cousin,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

  Manny nodded.

  I thought I heard a muffled cry from behind but before I could react there began a crescendo of automatic weapons fire from below, further out than Len Brighton’s S.W.A.T. perimeter. I removed my sidearm and sidestepped over to the wall, which was really two walls, the most interior meant to safeguard against a rogue vehicle breaking through the outer.

  Below, at first just in the distance, but soon from everywhere, out of the darkness and shadow, came the demons. They were black as coal, misshapen, and under the cover of night, in a poorly-lit area of the city, nearly invisible.

  Out on the surrounding streets, the outer perimeter, the gunfire from Manny’s neighborhood men and women raged. Manny joined me against the innermost wall and in my partner’s terrified stare I could see that he now believed fully—no one could, honestly—they could not give their minds over to the awful truth until facing it themselves.

  The battle had certainly begun. I turned and looked at the demon Rule and he remained a fixture of confidence, smiling, knowing what I, too, knew: that it was a matter of time. A few minutes after the gunfire on the external a block away started, S.W.A.T had opened up on both those demons that broke through the initial lines and more that were then coming from the blackness all around them.

  I heard Rule laugh behind me.

  Not yet, I told myself.

  I looked back at Meyer. He had removed the Crucifix of Ardincaple from the car seat and was holding it in both hands. The blade, the hilt—nothing. Just a piece of metal. Maybe he was right; perhaps only some from our lineage could—

  My attention was drawn back to the battle.

  The sheer magnitude of heavy caliber munitions (and a cache of explosives rigged strategically throughout the area) had at first begun to overcome the hundreds of monsters, their living, breathing shells being shredded and left useless, littering the ground below
.

  But Rule cried out, summoning more, and the sky above thundered down its answer to him. More and more demons of all sizes and shapes kept pouring forth and as they pushed forward, getting within reach of the brave humans, the weapons lost their power and none were a match for the physical prowess of the evil creatures.

  The diminuendo of gunfire juxtaposed against the rising cries of human terror and agony, were telltale. We were losing and losing fast. I looked at Manny and nodded.

  “PARA PATRIOTISOM DE PUERTO RICO,” Manny shouted above the chaos.

  And from the space between the walls three hundred heavily-armed ‘Rican comrades stood as one unit, lining all four sides of the rooftop, and began firing short, controlled, damaging bursts from their automatic rifles.

  They knew they had the elevated ground. They knew the importance of Manny’s words—that we’d come here for a final stand—and they fought like warriors from a distant time.

  Focused.

  Undeterred.

  Brave and fierce, they cut down the enemy beneath them.

  It made a difference. As I’d hoped, the tide turned. Brighton and his S.W.A.T. team retreated to the garage, and, along with the two on the fourth floor, joined the army above.

  It was something to see. Gang members and S.W.A.T., side-by-side, fighting for not just a country or a color or a flag but for us all.

  Then, like a blue and red lightning storm, Bum Garvey and fifty vehicles from I don’t know how many LEO agencies arrived on scene, approaching from all directions, and immediately began a flank assault on the demon army. Vehicle doors flew open and veteran Colorado LEOs opened fire from behind.

  Knowing their own comrades were above, they waved the remaining neighborhood platoon back to join them and then launched grenades and tear gas canisters into the horde. Slowly they pushed the demons toward the gunfire that rained down from on high, tightening the noose.

  Some of the monstrous beings reached the stronghold, however, and were scaling the cement walls of the garage as if made of pliable earth, their claws sinking into the concrete as easily as with grappling hooks or ice axes.

  Manny’s people picked them off, one by one, with impressive accuracy, repelling any that gained the walls. It could have been a castle of old; all we needed were archers and huge pots of boiling tar.