They both heard the front door crash inward. Dave shouted. Ralph pushed Glenda aside. The swing of his right arm toward his hip exposed a gun in a leather clip holster at his waist. He seemed to coil like a spring as he turned, dropping into a crouch. Dave blundered through the dining room, banging a hip against a chair, before he filled the kitchen doorway.
Dave’s face had a wildness Glenda had never seen in it before—or expected to see. The expression shifted almost imperceptibly—panic laced with relief—when he saw Glenda braced against the counter where Beringer had shoved her. He took in the scene at a glance—Elli across the room on the floor, Glenda crying out a warning, and, facing him, the broad-shouldered, muscular figure of the man who had terrorized his family.
With an animal snarl Dave hurled himself at Beringer.
* * *
HE MOVED SMOOTHLY, economically, easily evading Lindstrom’s rush. He pivoted as he stepped aside and drove his right fist flush against Lindstrom’s jaw. The blow straightened Lindstrom up. A second punch, a left hook that started around Beringer’s waist, knocked the professor off his feet. He spilled backward across the kitchen table. The table skidded sideways, a chair crashed to the floor. On his back, Lindstrom looked dazed.
Smiling happily, enveloped in the familiar red haze, Beringer flexed his fists. He was wearing his trademark black goatskin gloves, his only regret that he didn’t have his personal value pack, the leather pouch of steel balls. Watching Lindstrom struggle to his feet, Beringer told himself that he didn’t need the extra weight in his fists, not this time. Nor did he need his gun. He didn’t want this to end too quickly. He had waited too long to enjoy it.…
OUTSIDE, KAREN YOUNGER saw Lindstrom’s Nissan Sentra parked halfway onto the lawn in front of the two-story house. The driver’s door hung open. Her bowels froze with dread. The front door to the house was open. It gaped like a wound.
Her hands were locked onto the steering wheel. She tore them free. Stumbled out of the car and sucked in air. Fear caught at her throat. She wanted to run. Instead, on quivering legs, she drove herself toward the porch. Once she was moving, her fear acknowledged, training took over. One hand released the flap of her hip holster. She seized the grips of the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver she had never fired away from a shooting range.
She held it before her in both hands as she went up the steps. She moved sideways when she reached the door. Jumped as something crashed inside the house. The empty hallway beckoned, the dark tunnel of her sweat-drenched dreams.
A craven thing in the recesses of her mind screamed, “Don’t do this!”
Karen ignored it, stepped through the doorway. The coward skittered away like a mouse in the dark, and she felt herself go cold and hard and determined.
RICHIE SAW DAVE Lindstrom bounce off the wall and, like a broken doll, slide loose-limbed to the floor. Blood smeared his face, and his nose was mashed like rotten fruit. In a corner of the room Elli sprawled where Beringer had thrown her, one thin arm upraised as if to ward off what she was seeing.
Near his sister’s feet, Richie saw the gun on the floor.
Richie’s mother flew at Beringer, clawing as his eyes. She shrieked in a voice Richie had never heard before. Beringer laughed. Able to fend off Glenda’s blows effortlessly, he seemed content at first merely to avoid being scratched or stabbed in the eye. Then one of her small fists struck through his guard and a fingernail raked his cheek. It trailed a thin red line.
For an instant Beringer’s laughter cut off as if a plug had been pulled. Then it began again, but with a difference. Richie was reminded of the laughter on some television shows, a sound just slightly off kilter that his dad called canned laughter.
Almost casually, Beringer hit Glenda across the side of her face. The blow rocked her back on her heels. Her eyes lost their brightness. Her feet did a rubbery little dance on the tile floor.
“No!” Richie yelled.
He scooped up the small automatic pistol from the floor near Elli’s feet.
Dave had dragged himself to his feet again, using one of the kitchen chairs as a crutch until he was standing. Beringer saw him out of the corner of his eye. The canned laughter stopped. He looked as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. Dave wasn’t supposed to keep getting up again and again. Glenda wasn’t supposed to fight back. The family was not supposed to hold together like this …
Beringer glanced at Richie, saw the gun. “Give it to me, son.”
“No!”
“Don’t play games with me.”
“I … I won’t let you hurt them anymore.”
“Okay, okay, it’s over. Now gimme the gun.”
“Promise me—you’ve got to stop!”
Beringer frowned. He watched Dave Lindstrom while he fended off Glenda and talked to Richie. He was in control. He wasn’t having any trouble with them, it was as easy as he had always known it would be, but the son of a bitch kept getting up off the floor and Beringer was losing patience.
“Okay, I promise. Now gimme the goddamned gun.”
“Richie!” his mother cried. “Don’t believe him—you know you can’t believe him!”
Even without his mother’s plea, Richie knew he couldn’t let his father have the gun. He knew exactly what would happen if he did, as clearly as if Beringer had spelled it out for him. He felt tears like scalding water on his cheeks. Beringer glared at him with an expression of disgust, but Richie could not stop the flow of tears. He couldn’t stop the tears or the way his hand shook holding the gun.
Dave Lindstrom chose that moment to hurl himself at his rival. Richie’s mother screamed. The cry echoed down a corridor of years. At the far end a door in Richie’s memory burst wide open, a barrier that had been sealed against unbearable pain and fear.
At that moment someone behind Richie yelled, “FBI—freeze!”
Incredulous, Beringer spun toward the unexpected voice. In the same smooth motion his hand drew his own weapon, a Walter PPK 9mm double action, already cocked and loaded.
“Don’t—”
Richie felt the gun buck in his hand. There was a roaring in his ears, chaos all around him. He saw Ralph Beringer stagger, an expression of blank surprise replacing the baleful rage in his face. He stumbled backward, falling against the kitchen table. Redness pooled on his shirtfront.
Richie dropped the gun. He clapped both hands to his ears, as if he might block off the sound of his own screams.
Thirty-Seven
SPECIAL AGENT KAREN Younger stayed on a week in San Carlos while the unwieldy machinery of the criminal justice system dealt with the ramifications of an agent shooting resulting in death. On Wednesday of that week she visited Tim Braden’s small unit near the beach.
They lingered on the balcony after dinner—take-out burritos from a small local Mexican restaurant washed down with a bottle of Carta Blanca.
After a while she murmured, “Have you talked to Dr. Nakashimi?”
“Yes. It wasn’t your bullet that killed Beringer. Not that you FBI Special Agents can’t shoot straight …”
“The boy never has to know.”
“No.” Braden paused. “How’s Richie doing?”
“They have him with a child trauma specialist at UCLA. I guess it’ll be a long time before they know how he’s going to come out of this. Having a family like that, though … I think he has a good chance.”
“How do you think the parents will do?”
“I think they’ll do just fine. That woman … she’s strong, Braden. Real strong.”
They settled into companionable silence. The air turned cooler as a bank of fog crept inland. The weather pattern was changing, Braden had said. Summer was over. Temperatures would be dropping all the way down into the fifties. There was even a chance of rain.
Karen said, “You’re good, Detective—did I tell you that? A good cop, I mean.”
“Glad you clarified that.”
“You should be one of those fast-track guys—a sergeant by now, even a loo
.”
“I was derailed. Maybe you heard the story.”
“Even so. You should’ve been able to ride over that incident.” She considered what she was saying. “I’ve seen something of politics in big-city police departments. I’ve seen it in the FBI.”
“No kidding!” Braden sounded aghast. “In the Bureau?”
She ignored his sarcasm. “I can see why you’d make your superiors nervous. You’re good, so they’d want to use you to make themselves look good, but you’d be a threat to them also. They wouldn’t want to help you onto that fast track.”
“I can see the advantages of having a resident shrink to explain these things to me.”
“I’m not exactly a resident.”
“You could consider it,” Braden said lightly.
This time she was silent for a long time. “I want you to know, Detective, it’s not a suggestion I’d reject out of hand. But I’m not ready. I discovered something about myself these past few weeks … that I can do what I do. Even if I’m scared.”
“I could’ve told you that.” He hitched his aluminum and plastic-webbed chair closer to hers, put his hand over hers. She didn’t withdraw it. Her skin felt hot to the touch. “Maybe you should stay the night, sort of a mini-trial run, you might say.”
“Well …”
As if in response to the suggestion, there was movement from inside the apartment. Karen heard nails clicking across the hardwood floor. A large dog joined them on the deck, a female golden retriever. She had long, silken, golden hair, a broad skull, a very cold nose that she pressed against the side of Karen’s hand, asking for a caress. She also had thick scar tissue on the back of her head and she dragged her left rear leg slightly when she walked.
Karen stroked the dog’s head. “You’re pretty good at keeping secrets, Braden. Until tonight I never knew you even had a dog. All this time you never mentioned her.”
“I put her in the kennel when this business started. I knew I wouldn’t be around here much, and it wasn’t fair to Duchess.” He paused. “She worries when she’s left alone too long.”
Something in Braden’s voice caught her attention.
He smiled. Duchess reacted immediately, coming over to him and trying to push her head in his lap. She settled for resting it on his knee while he fondled her ears.
“I got her from the vet. She’s spent a lot of time there. I think she thinks of it as a second home. They all make a fuss over her.”
“She was injured? In an accident?”
“She’s a rescued dog,” he said after a moment. “She was abused—beaten with a length of chain, among other things. That’s why she has that scar tissue here on her neck and back.”
Karen shivered. “She seems so friendly, so happy …”
“It took her a while to trust again, but she has so much in her it wanted to come out.”
They fell silent again. Traffic rumbled by along the beach road. A seagull drifted overhead, circled and landed on the railing at the far end of the balcony. Braden said, “You finish that burrito?”
“Every last crumb.”
“Not good for ’em anyway.”
The seagull walked along the railing for a moment before giving up and flying away. It flew into the thick cloud bank across the road and was swallowed up, like a figure in a vintage movie set in London.
“I could get used to this,” Karen murmured.
“The offer still goes. And you could find work here.”
“I already have a job … and I’m not finished.”
“There are still monsters out there.”
“Yes …”
She was amazed how comfortable it was, sitting there with him on his tiny balcony, watching the slow march of the huge gray cloud bank, feeling the air change.
“One less, now,” Braden said.
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all available as Jabberwocky ebooks
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