Henry reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he pulled it out, a slip of paper fluttered to the ground. Before the breeze could carry it more than a few inches away, Tony stepped on it, then picked it up. It was the standard message form used by the department, and his name was scrawled across the To line. He didn’t have a chance to read more, though, before Henry took it back and returned it to his pocket.
“I was leaving a note at your desk when the call came in about Joe. I didn’t get to finish it.” The smile that accompanied Henry’s explanation was less than steady.
“A note about what?”
“Nothing import—” Henry’s gaze skimmed over the banged-up vehicle and his denial stopped midword. When he looked back at Tony, his expression was grave. “Hell, under the circumstances, it’s even more important. Lucia called this morning.”
Mention of his younger sister made Tony scowl. Unlike the teasing with Joe and Anna, Lucia really was Henry’s favorite of the Ceola kids. Princess, he always called her, and he supported her in virtually everything. At the moment, there was only one thing she wanted, and it deepened Tony’s scowl.
“She’s on that kick about the old folks’ home again, isn’t she?” It was an argument that had started soon after Joe’s diagnosis. Lucia thought Anna should sell the house and move with Joe into an extended-care facility, and Tony thought Lucia should mind her own damn business. Any decisions about moving would be Anna’s, and Anna’s alone.
“It’s not an old folks’ home, Tony,” Henry said, his tone conciliatory. “It’s a retirement community. Some of them are very nice.”
“No.”
“At some point you’re going to have to consider it.”
“No.”
“I know it’s tough. Christ, he’s been my best friend my entire adult life. It kills me to see this happening to him. But it also kills me to see what it’s doing to your mother, and to you. He walked over a mile from the house today, Tony, and took that car. He could have killed himself or someone else. The woman who left her keys in the car could have just as easily left a baby. He’s becoming a danger to himself and to others.” Henry laid his hand on Tony’s shoulder again. “You have to think about it.”
Jaw clenched, Tony watched as the paramedics prepared to roll the gurney to the ambulance. Joe was lying back, looking pale in spite of his olive skin. He opened his eyes as they drew near and offered a fierce grimace. “Sweet Mary, your mama,” he said, putting the emphasis on the second syllable the way his Italian mother had taught him. “She’s gonna kill me. When you break the news to her, Tony, tell her to take it easy on me until this headache is gone. Then she can yell all she wants. I deserve it.”
Tony took his hand, remembering other times when he’d held on to his father—crossing streets or walking to the park, on the first day of school, going to Sunday mass. Not one of those times had he held as tightly as he did at that moment. “I’ll tell her, Dad. You okay?”
Joe raised an unsteady hand to his temple, then lowered it again. “Yeah, I’m okay. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” The paramedics moved on, leaving Tony with no choice but to let go. Once he did, he faced Henry again. “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t have to think about it.”
Not then. Not ever.
The smell of hot pizza filled Dwayne Samuels’s SUV, making his mouth water even though he’d finished dinner not more than an hour before. He usually stayed away from the lab on Monday nights—that was Bucky’s night off, and without a cooker, things got pretty slow—but his idiot cousin Lewis had called, whining that he wanted a pizza and wanted it now.
Usually he kept Lewis away from the lab on Mondays, too, but at the moment they were too well stocked on inventory to leave the place unguarded. It was a good thing most of it would be going out the next day. Then Dwayne would have a few days to disappoint his aunt and find someone to replace her moron son.
As he rounded a corner, headlights flashed some distance behind him. He kept one eye on the rearview mirror. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on these dirt roads, and it made him uneasy . . . but most things did. That was one of the disadvantages of his chosen profession. When he turned onto his own road, he slowed down and watched as the other car drove past. Immediately the tension in his shoulders eased. By the time he turned into his driveway, he was back to feeling nothing more than pissed at his cousin.
After keying the code into the heavy-duty gate, he drove through and watched in the mirror until it was closed. He followed the road through the woods to the house and parked in front of the barn. When he got out, he could hear some late-night talk show on the television. Swearing, he let himself into the barn, tossed the pizza on a table, and thumped Lewis on the back of the head.
“Jesus H., Dwayne, what’s that for?”
Dwayne grabbed the remote and muted the sound, then glared at him. “You have that fuckin’ television turned so loud, a fuckin’ tank could’ve driven in here and you never would’ve known it.”
Lewis scowled at him. “I knew if anyone come, it would be you, bringing my supper.”
“So just because you’re expecting me, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else? Christ, Lewis, you’re a moron.” Dwayne headed across the room to get a beer from the refrigerator, but it was empty. Turning back, he saw Lewis had settled back in his chair, his mouth full of pizza, and the table next to him littered with cans. Shit.
“The pizza’s not hot,” Lewis said even as he bit into a second piece. “What were you doing when I called?”
“I was on a date.”
“With who?”
“No one you know.” Or ever would. Dwayne couldn’t think of much that would scare away a woman quicker than meeting Lewis. He didn’t say much for the Samuels gene pool.
Lewis grinned. “Did you score?”
“I would have, if some retard hadn’t called and made me leave early.”
“Who?” Understanding was slow to cross his cousin’s face. “I ain’t no retard, Dwayne, and your mama said for you to stop calling me one.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Like a man his age was going to worry about what his mama said.
Washing down the last of the pizza with the last of Dwayne’s beer, Lewis wiped his hands on his T-shirt, then stood up. “That was good, but, man, I gotta take a leak.” Instead of heading for the bathroom at the back of the building, though, he walked to the front door, opened it, and unzipped.
“For Christ’s sake, Lewis, what the fuck—!”
A deafening blast echoed through the barn, and Lewis tumbled back a dozen feet, landing on the concrete floor like a rag doll. Holes dotted his chest, seeping blood that quickly turned his shirt red.
Dwayne stared at his cousin in horror before raising his gaze to the man in the doorway, pointing a shotgun right at him. He tried to run, to duck and hide, but his feet wouldn’t move. “Goddamn,” he whispered, whimpered. “Goddamn, goddamn, God, please . . .”
The man reached in his pocket, pulled out a stack of white cards, and flipped them into the air. Most scattered outside, but a handful drifted in. Their message was the last thing Dwayne saw before another shotgun blast exploded into the room.
Repent.
Selena awoke with a start, her eyes popping open, her breathing loud in the quiet room. For an instant, she couldn’t think what might have disturbed her, then she heard the sound of an engine turning over. Sliding from the bed, she reached the front window just as the headlights of Detective Ceola’s car came on, and watched as he backed out of the drive. The white of his dress shirt seemed stark in the predawn light, and the tousled condition of his hair suggested he’d dressed so hastily he’d forgotten to comb it.
She watched until he’d passed from sight. Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath. What had happened to call him out so early? Family emergency? Personal business with Saturday’s blonde? Or work? Had some unfortunate soul lived his last hours?
She had wondered about death sometimes, ab
out what it would be like to suddenly cease to be. A few times she’d thought she might find out for herself—when Rodrigo had hit her one too many times, in an alley in Ocho Rios, on her visit to Tulsa two summers ago. But she could only imagine how it felt to die.
She knew how it felt to kill.
Unable to go back to sleep, she dressed in running clothes, laced her shoes, slipped the switchblade into her waistband, and took the stairs two at a time. She could run anywhere in the city, but she automatically headed west toward River Parks and its miles of trails. Toward William, who was expecting her to kill again.
As he was quick to remind her, she owed him so much. In twenty-eight years, he was the only one who had ever protected her, who had ever thought her worth protecting. He’d given her all the necessities of life and more than a few luxuries. He’d cared.
And all he wanted in return was her soul. Was it such a terrible trade? She had a wonderful life. She wanted for nothing. Was killing a man such a high price to pay for that?
Yes. She wasn’t a murderer. She owed William her life, but not someone else’s.
But that was the price he’d set for her, and he would see that she paid one way or another. With his enemy’s life or her own. From that perspective it wasn’t cold-blooded murder but survival, and she’d learned at a very young age that she would do whatever it took to survive.
After jogging the circuit from Twenty-first to the Pedestrian Bridge and back again twice, she returned home, slowing to a walk when she reached Princeton Court. As she passed the Franklin house, a light came on inside and a woman’s silhouette appeared in an upstairs window, joined a moment later by, presumably, her husband, merging into one indistinct shadow as they embraced. What was it like for Dina Franklin—sharing her life with someone special, waking up with him, making love with him, having a reasonable expectation that he would be there for her not just now but in the weeks and months and years ahead?
Selena wasn’t envious. There was no one special to share her life with, but she neither wanted nor needed that. She would be there for herself, would be strong and capable. She was the only one she could count on. Luisa had taught her that lesson with her neglect, Rodrigo with his fists, William with his manipulation.
It was a lesson she would never forget.
When Tony turned off Highway 51 onto Coyote Trail, a sheriff ’s car was waiting. The deputy didn’t look a day over eighteen, though he was trying, his manner self-important, his expression overly stern. They exchanged introductions, then the kid climbed back into his Crown Vic and took off. Without his lead, the only thing Tony would get out there was lost. He knew every square inch of Tulsa, but take him ten miles outside the city limits, and he could get into trouble real fast.
By the time the deputy slowed to turn off the road, Tony felt as if he’d been dropped in the middle of a maze. They’d bypassed the driveway, blocked with an elaborate iron gate, to drive through a wide hole in the barbed-wire fence. The Chevy bumped over the rough ground, scraping over rocks and bushes before he could turn onto the driveway.
Where the road ended there were three sheriff ’s cars, a pumper from the nearest fire department, a van from the medical examiner’s office, a vehicle belonging to an investigator from the state fire marshal’s office, and the sheriff ’s crime-scene unit. As he stepped out of his car, he caught the first acrid whiff coming from behind the house.
The crime scene was obvious. Where a structure had once stood, only rubble remained, and streaks of blackened earth stretched out in every direction from spreading flames, hungry for more fuel. In another six weeks, after the summer drought had started, such a fire would have taken out half the countryside, but everything was green enough now to slow the process.
The odors coming from the smoldering rubble were powerful—smoke mixed with the acidic residue of chemicals and burned flesh. We got a meth lab blown to kingdom-fucking-come, the sheriff ’s detective who’d caught the case had said when he’d called. And there are fucking little white cards scattered everywhere. Wanna take a look?
As he crossed the uneven ground, Tony spotted one such card, half buried in the damp soil and bearing the distinct impression of a tire tread. From one of the fire trucks? Or maybe the vigilante’s vehicle?
He took a moment to mark it for the crime-scene guys, then joined the men gathered some distance from the scene, where deputies in Tychem protective suits were starting to gather evidence. Pete Wolenska was there to pronounce and claim the bodies, and Mike Collins, a detective with the sheriff ’s department, would be sharing the investigative duties with Ernest Pratt, an arson investigator for the state.
And, apparently, with Tony.
“Hey, Chee.” Wolenska greeted him with a grin too cheery for sunrise. “A little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
“Not by choice.” He shook hands with the other two men, then scowled when Wo stuck out his own hand. “I know what you do with those hands. I’m not touchin’ ’em.”
“Get fucked,” Wo retorted good-naturedly.
“In my dreams,” Tony said with a snort. He shifted his attention to the other two men. “What happened?”
“Barn go boom,” Pratt replied. He was in his late fifties and had been an arson investigator for the Tulsa Fire Department as well as the ATF for about as long as Tony had been alive. These days he worked part-time for the state and, apparently, spent too much time with his grandkids.
“Neighbors to the east reported hearing an explosion around midnight,” Collins said. “The place was fully involved by the time the fire department got here.”
A fireman leaning against a nearby pumper, standing by in case of flare-ups, responded to that. “It wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t had to cut through the goddamn fence. Goddamn electronic gate.”
Collins turned to look at him. “You got pusher bars on the front of that thing. Why didn’t you just drive through it?”
“And risk tearing up my rig? I don’t fuckin’ think so. ’Sides, even if we had, it wouldn’t have made much difference. Them two would’ve just been well-done instead of extra crispy.”
Wo and Pratt snickered, and Collins rolled his eyes. “Christ, three jokers this early in the morning. Who did I piss off to deserve this?”
“What can you tell us about them?” Tony asked Wo.
“They’re dead.”
This time the fireman snickered. “Like we needed an M.E.’s investigator to tell us that.”
“Any sign of foul play?”
“Being roasted and toasted isn’t enough?” Wo asked. “I think I can safely say they didn’t set fire to themselves.”
“Meth labs blow up all the time.” The chemicals were volatile as hell, making the labs about as dangerous as the product itself.
Squinting his bug eyes against the rising sun, Wo peeled back the wrapper on a candy bar he’d pulled from one pocket. “Victim number one, who was found closest to the door, had a hole about the size of that sun right in his middle. A shotgun, up close and personal. Victim number two, who was across the room, was riddled with smaller holes. Also a shotgun, but from a greater distance.”
“Somebody comes to the door,” Collins said, starting toward the barn. “Number one opens it, the guy blows him away, then takes out number two before he can react.”
Tony fell into step with him. “These guys aren’t the trusting type. They’re not going to open the door to anyone who comes knocking in the middle of the night unless they know him. If the gate was locked when the fire department got here, either he knew the code or he didn’t go out that way.” He glanced around, judging the distance to the house, the tree line, and the closest hiding spots. “Probably he didn’t go to the door at all, but set down out here and waited for one of them to come out.”
“Must have been a patient son of a bitch.”
“Or a man with a mission.” The calling cards— Repent— suggested that. Tony just wasn’t ready to believe it. It was so obviously calculated
to make the killer appear sympathetic. A vigilante dedicated to punishing drug dealers for their sins was so much easier to accept than another drug dealer eliminating his competition. For one, it was a crime of passion; for the other, it was greed. For one, retribution. For the other, murder.
“You have any ID?”
Collins opened his mouth, hesitated, then said with a straight face, “About what?”
Wishing for a cup of coffee—or, better yet, his bed and a sweet wet dream—Tony scowled at him. “You guys are sick fuckers.”
“Sorry. I was reading my E-mail this morning and my brother-in-law down in Georgia sent me one of those ‘You might be a redneck’ things. The neighbors who reported the explosion didn’t know the guys. Said they moved in a few months ago, installed that gate, and kept to themselves.”
“They didn’t find a five-thousand-dollar gate on a fifteen-thousand-dollar house unusual?”
“Son, they’s times when it’s best to mind your own bidness,” Collins said, exaggerating his already-strong Oklahoma accent, then reverting to a normal voice. “We’re checking property records to find out who owns the place. I ran a twenty-eight on that SUV over there. It comes back to a Tulsa address—guy by the name of . . .” He flipped back a page in his notebook, then frowned. “Damn. It was dark, I was walking, and I hadn’t had my coffee. Looks like Dwight—no, Dwayne Sim—Sem—something.”
Tony glanced toward the M.E.’s van, where the bodies had already been loaded. “Wouldn’t be Samuels, would it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You know him?”
“I arrested him a time or two when I worked Street Crimes, until he became one of my C.I.s. After a while, we both moved on.” Tony had transferred to Homicide, and apparently Samuels had graduated from confidential informant and small-time crack dealer to the big time. There was a hell of a lot of money to be made in meth, with the price in this part of the state running between fifteen hundred dollars and two thousand dollars an ounce.
Joining them, Pratt asked, “You guys ready to go in? Just watch where you step and don’t touch anything.”
The Assassin Page 11