The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  God! She needed time to think, and also time for them to go through the house, see the evidence, put it together. She knew cops. In this situation, if one of them spotted her right now, he’d probably start shooting.

  And Cat: The bastard had cut his throat? Shit, shit, shit! Poor Cat. And now their private thing would erupt into public view. Lynn and the kids would be dragged into a media circus when the truth came out. What had that cop Larry just called her—Cat’s punch? These cops were strangers, and they knew?

  She reached the bottom again, backed into a tree, and stopped, aware now that she was back in Injun country. Had that bastard climbed back out of the creek? Was he out there in the woods now, ahead of her, waiting for her again? She shivered, both from the cold and the memory of how he’d come out of the bushes like some blood-crazed bear. She tried to remember his face, but there hadn’t really been one. She began to make her way slowly north, paralleling the creek as she went upstream as quietly as she could, keeping just out of sight of the water, conscious of the rising commotion up on the bluffs: more cars, more lights, radios on external vehicle speakers.

  She needed time to think. Which meant she had to get away, at least for tonight. But she had no car, no purse, no ID, no money, and no coat. And it wasn’t like she could go back to the house just now, not with dogs coming. She was reasonably at home in the woods, but she had always been afraid of dogs. Especially in packs. She squeezed her sticky fingers together. Dogs would find her, too, no sweat.

  The evergreen undergrowth closed around her in the darkness, but she kept going, pushing pungent pine branches out of her face while trying to make no noise, half-expecting to see that lunging form again each time she pushed a branch aside. She held Cat’s gun in her right hand, and the butt was sticking to her palm now. Peering ahead, she saw a flare of headlights through the underbrush as a car came down Tilden Road and rumbled across the stone bridge at the base of the hill before disappearing into the park.

  She needed to get the hell out of here. She had to go to ground somewhere, somehow. No: She had to get a car.

  Think, she told herself again as she arrived at the edge of Tilden Road. There were no streetlights down here at the bottom of the hill, and the water rushing under the old bridge was shiny black in the moonlight. Right or left, she wondered as she caught her breath. She had no goddamn idea of what to do next, but she was out of the underbrush now, so she’d see him if he came at her again. She checked the gun, a stainless-steel Taurus Millenium Special .45. She peeled back the slide to verify that there was one up the spout. Her older brother had taught her about guns a long time ago, and Cat had done the same thing when they had first been dating, taking handguns along when they went together on one of her photography expeditions. If that lunatic came out of the bushes, it wouldn’t be hand-to-gland anymore. Unless, of course, he used his own gun. She shook her head, then went down on one knee by the side of the creek and washed her hands, keeping an eye on the edge of the woods. More headlights at the top of the hill. Maybe she ought to just wait there until the first patrol car came blasting down, give herself up. Had to be warmer than this. She washed the gun butt and dried her hands on her jeans. The lights grew brighter, so she moved closer to the road.

  But it wasn’t a cop car. It was a United Parcel Service truck, and the driver slowed when he saw her kneeling by the side of the road. She had stuffed the gun into the small of her back by the time he pulled abreast, but she stayed down on one knee. The driver got out of his seat, leaving the engine running, and slid open the door on the passenger side.

  “You okay, lady?” he called.

  “No,” she said. “Someone’s chasing me. I need out of here.”

  He was a young black man, wearing the standard UPS brown uniform. “Uh, I’m not supposed to pick up passengers, ever. Lemme call dispatch. They can call the cops. I’ll stay here with you until someone shows up.”

  He had the door open, which was all she needed. She wasn’t about to add kidnapping to her up-and-coming wanted poster, but hijacking? She stood up and produced the gun. “Step down,” she said. “I need your ride.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and she repeated her order, yelling it this time, waving the gun at his face. He popped right out of the truck with his hands up, looking ridiculous as he danced around, trying to keep his balance with his hands still in the air.

  “Put your wallet in the truck,” she ordered. “And then get under the bridge. Do it! Now! Don’t make me hurt you!”

  Speechless, he extracted his wallet and threw it into the truck. Then he scuttled past her, never taking his eyes off the gun, and slipped down into the bushes beneath the bridge. She leaned over the stone railing. “The whacko chasing me has a machete,” she called down into the darkness. “He cuts people’s heads off. I wouldn’t go making a lot of noise right now.”

  Then she climbed into the truck, scooped up the wallet, and closed the side door. Sitting down in the driver’s seat, she looked at the gearshift diagram for a second, then banged noisily into first and took off. Her first car had been a manual, so jamming gears was nothing new to her. The truck left the bridge behind in a rattling cloud of diesel smoke.

  She went straight until she cut Piney Branch, then left over to Sixteenth Street, and right on down to New Hampshire Avenue and over to Dupont Circle. Going into town, against traffic, it didn’t take fifteen minutes. She went completely around Dupont twice and into the first side street on the north side big enough to admit the truck. She found an alley next to a liquor store, pulled in, and shut it down. She cut off the lights and looked around. Nobody seemed to be taking any special interest in a UPS truck, even at this hour. UPS trucks were everywhere these days, which made them practically invisible.

  With the gun stuck between her thighs and one eye on the alley, she looked through the guy’s wallet and extracted a grand total of seventy-three dollars. But it was cash, and cash could buy a Metro ticket, and the Metro could get her out of the area faster than anything else. They shouldn’t have her description out yet for taking the truck, not until the UPS driver got to the cops and reported a hijacking. The cops might have a BOLO out, though, so she had to hurry, because the Metro system was fully covered by surveillance cameras, especially after all the terrorist threats.

  She threw the guy’s wallet and the truck keys over the top of the heavy mesh door that led to the package compartment, which was still locked. Then she put the gun into her waistband, pushing it down in the small of her back, pulled her sweatshirt down over it, and got out. It was really cold outside. She spied the driver’s brown jacket on a hook in the truck, grabbed that, and slid the door closed. She realized her hands were still sticky with Cat’s blood, so she looked around for a spigot, found one on the liquor store’s side wall, and cleaned her hands again. Two men walked by out on the sidewalk and glanced at her curiously, but neither of them even broke stride. City-dwellers, she thought. They never get involved.

  She walked the three blocks to the Dupont Circle Metro station and went down the escalator, keeping an eye out for security people and metal detectors. Feeling conspicuous in the entirely recognizable UPS jacket, she bought a five-dollar Metro card and went through to the platform for downtown and northern Virginia. She waited back along the sloping walls of the station, leaning against the steel railing as she tried to lift the gun back out of her underwear. Then a train came roaring into the station, opened its welcoming doors, and she was gone.

  It was almost midnight by the time Swamp Morgan made it out to the nurse’s house in Cleveland Park, courtesy of a Secret Service driver. It had been Carl Malone who’d called him via the Homeland Security duty office when word got out about the incident. There were still several police cars parked along Quebec Street, some of them with their blue strobe lights still winking silently into the winter night. He had to show his credentials three times in order to get up to the house, where he was logged in by the crime-scene coordinator, a patrol cop who looked half-fr
ozen despite his bulky coat. Carl Malone came out the front door and waved him through the tape.

  “How’s the lieutenant?” Swamp asked, buttoning up his overcoat against the cold. He wished he’d worn a hat.

  “Touch’n go,” Malone said, waggling his hand. “Lost a boatload of blood, but he’s still alive. It’s a real mess back there.”

  “They piece it together yet?”

  “Split opinions right now,” Malone said, his breath condensing in front of his face. “Homicide guys. You work with ’em for years, they still don’t share so good. Couple of ’em wondering out loud what the hell I’m doing here.”

  “Appreciate the call,” Swamp said. “I was planning to reinterview her tomorrow. I guess that’s today.” They both looked at their watches.

  “Anyway,” Malone said, “the primary now thinks the nurse didn’t do it. There were two coffee cups in the dining room, and it looks like somebody outside threw a workshop vise through the window. Knocked shit all over the place in the dining room. They think Ballard went after him, ran through the kitchen, out the back door, and right into a truly wicked trap. You’ll want to see this.”

  Swamp wasn’t sure he did want to see this; he hadn’t been kidding when he told Gary White that murder and its attendant gore unsettled him probably more than most cops. They walked around the driveway side of the house to avoid the crime-scene efforts going on inside. They stopped to one side of the back porch, where there was more tape and four large crime-scene floodlights illuminating practically the entire backyard. Swamp heard police dogs barking from inside a K-9 van parked on the grass.

  “Look up at the top of the stairs,” Malone said. “See that fucking thing?”

  Swamp squinted into the bright white light and saw the serrated ribbon of bloody steel stretched tightly across the top of the steps, about throat-high.

  “That’s the blade from a band saw,” Malone said. “Somebody cut two horizontal notches in the support posts either side of the steps, just deep enough to fit the blade flat into the notches so the teeth faced the back door. Neck-high.”

  “Christ on a crutch,” Swamp said quietly. “He’d never have seen that.”

  “Got that right. Especially if he was coming through the door after some wacko pitched a table vise through the window at them. They got the perp’s footprints over there by the window, and some more over there, front of the garage. That’s where we found the band saw.”

  “How bad is Ballard, really?”

  Malone shook his head. “Really bad, according to one of the medics. I didn’t get out here until an hour or so after it all went down. Heard about it in the hallway as I was headed home, didn’t put it together with the nurse until they mentioned her name. Had no idea that she and Ballard were an item.”

  “They were?” Swamp said, although he didn’t see why anyone would care particularly, and then he saw the expression on Malone’s face.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Malone said. “His own Homicide crew apparently all knew, at least the senior people. His wife and two kids did not know. Now they will.”

  “Oh dear,” Swamp said, mindful of things he hadn’t paid much attention to as recently as a few years back.

  “The nurse managed to call nine-one-one. All she got out was ‘Murder’ and ‘Help me.’ Nothing after that. The nine-one-one ops people called in the address to the street cops, and they also put a code into Homicide. Street cops found Ballard, called that in, and then, of course, the whole Homicide crew rode out on it.”

  “And the nurse? Where is she?”

  “Some kind of struggle went down in the living room. Derringer .45 tracks in the ceiling. Front window broken. She apparently beat feet. Left everything—car, keys, purse, money, apparently just shagged ass into the night. A neighbor heard gunfire from the backyard, and the dogs found a trail down into Rock Creek Park. Perp tracks, too. Signs of another struggle down there. Get this: She makes it out to the road—that’s Tilden, across that ravine over there—and hijacks herself a UPS truck. Driver stopped to be a Good Samaritan. They think she has Ballard’s gun.”

  “This gets better and better.”

  “Oh yeah. Driver was a new kid. Sees this white woman down on one knee by the side of the road. Looked to be in trouble, so he stops the truck to help. She waves this cannon at him, takes the truck, and his wallet, by the way, goes downtown with it to Dupont Circle, and then disappears.”

  “Right into the Dupont Circle Metro station,” Swamp said.

  “Probably. UPS reported the truck missing; patrol cops found it in an alley off of Dupont. Keys and the guy’s wallet still in it. We’re holding the UPS angle back from the media. We’ve got Metro reviewing security tapes as we speak. But, you know, tail end of rush hour…”

  “Yeah, she could be anywhere in the system. Or the suburbs. Damn. So what’s it all about, Sherlock Holmes?”

  Malone took his hat off and rubbed his head. “I keep coming back to that fire. There were five people worked at that after-hours clinic. Four are dead in a not so righteous fire. Now we get this mess at the home of the fifth, and last, member of the night crew. Who calls for help but then boogies.”

  “Was this Ballard guy on the up-and-up?”

  “Outside of his love life? Yeah. Reputation as a stand-up guy. Eighteen years on the force. Made lieutenant the long way, but with style. Came around asking about you, by the way.”

  “Oh yeah? When?”

  “Would you believe earlier this afternoon?”

  Swamp nodded. “That figures. I interviewed Ms. Wall this morning, along with Gary White. She spooks, calls her boyfriend, the Homicide detective. I guess I need to talk to Ballard.”

  Malone made a face and shook his head. “No time soon, Special Agent. If ever.”

  Swamp kicked some grass around with the point of his shoe. There were several cops over by the garage now, smoking cigarettes and stamping their feet in the cold. Some of them were eyeing him suspiciously. “Well, I was slated to get a warrant to search the dead doctors’ homes and bank accounts this morning,” he said. “But I guess now we’d better do a full court press on finding Ms. Wall.”

  “‘We’?” Malone asked quietly. He turned so the Homicide cops couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Secret Service gonna take this mess federal?”

  Swamp eyed the older man, hearing the concern in his voice. “You’ve got some advice on that for me?”

  Malone puffed out his cheeks. “Man, now that’s a goddamn first.”

  Swamp smiled, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. He’d forgotten gloves, too. It must have been in the twenties out here in the suburbs. “Remember, Carl, I’m just a retired pogue these days,” he said. “Left all my rice bowls and turf shoes at the front desk the day they sent me home. I’m not listed in any government phone books. Don’t have a code next to my name on anybody’s spaghetti chart. No axes to grind, no hobby horses to ride.”

  Malone nodded. “You telling me you can work an investigation back-channel? All the way?”

  “Exactly. DHS is still coming together, bureaucratically speaking. Lots of slippery cracks in the org chart. Plus, I’m intel. So what’s the advice?”

  Malone tilted his head imperceptibly toward the group of Homicide cops. “They’re ready to rumble on this—find the fucker who laid out that blade and bring his ass in for some pointed questions, while fervently hoping he does something stupid, like resisting arrest, okay? Feds come barging in, take all that fun stuff away, be hell to pay downtown.”

  “Got it,” Swamp said quietly. “Lemme suggest this: I want the nurse more than I want the guy who cut up Lieutenant Ballard. I’m working a potentially much bigger deal, remember? A fuse you lit with your call to the White House detail. And then again, maybe it isn’t. The point is, right now, nobody knows. I do think the nurse was shining us on a little this morning.”

  “They’ll want the nurse, too,” Malone said. “She’s the one can tell ’em what the fu
ck happened here. Brother Ballard sure as hell can’t.”

  “So we both look,” Swamp said. “I’ll turn on what federal assets I can to find the runaway nurse. We find her, I’ll make sure the District cops get first shot at her, too, so to speak.”

  “Then she needs to stop her rabbit act. Some of these guys still like her for the cutting.”

  “I understand. And no federal extradition bullshit, no unnecessary paperwork. They find her, I’d appreciate the same courtesy. And our side of it stays off the case-books.”

  “She’s at least a material witness to this deal,” Malone said. “They’re gonna want physical custody.”

  “I’ve got no problem with that.”

  Malone nodded thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said. “I can sell that deal. You want me to talk to them?” Two more detectives came out of the back of the house, arguing, their breath visible in the floodlights. Swamp could see them stepping carefully around the mess on the back porch.

  “You’re Arson,” Swamp said. “No dog in this fight. How about being the honest broker? Like I said, we can keep our action all back-channel.”

  Malone gave him a skeptical look. “Your bosses cool with that?”

  “Oh, yes. Especially since I’m the intel liaison wienie in OSI.”

  Malone grunted. “Okay. I’ll go talk to those boys.” He looked over at the group of cops, who were moving around the way hornets do when their nest has been disturbed—standing up, sitting down, looking around for something to fly at. “But probably not tonight. Later in the morning. Right now, I do believe they got their blood up, you know what I’m saying?”