“You ready?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Go ahead.”
He got home at eleven thirty, came through the front door tired and drained. Elsa was on the couch, lightly snoring as a Spanish-language soap opera played low on the television and flooded the open room with a blue glow. Nick covered her with an afghan and then went to check on Carly. In his daughter’s room he stood in the darkness until his eyes adjusted and he could see her pale skin against the pillow, her mom’s profile, her mouth slightly open, and he was somehow soothed by the sound of her breath rhythmically sighing in and out. He sat down carefully and reached out and just with the tips of his fingers he moved a strand of hair off her cheek and lightly stroked her head. He used to play a game after the girls fell asleep in which he tried to match his breathing to the beat of theirs and found that he could never keep up with the air that filled and emptied from their tiny lungs. He tried that now, and then curled up on the end of his daughter’s bed and closed his eyes with the odor of her comforter in his nose and fell deeply asleep.
Chapter 13
Michael Redman tried again to close his eyes and sleep. He lay flat on his back, arms folded across his chest, fingers interlaced. His body was on the exact middle axis of the too-soft mattress, his legs stretched out to their full length and heels left hanging just beyond the foot of the bed. His head was square on the flat pillow, facing the swirled plaster of the old-time ceiling. If he could have seen himself from above, he would have recognized a soldier stiffened at something resembling parade rest, or a corpse readied for lowering into the earth.
Redman was determined to sleep this night, like all the other nights that he had been so determined. He’d been staring at the ceiling until he could see with frustrating clarity the patterns of cracks and fissures that were never meant to be seen. Like so many other nights, his peripheral vision had picked up the motion of the moon by the changes in the intensity of its glow against the hardwood floor and the low corner of one wall. He closed his eyes but again that empty, dark, nourishing nothingness would not come. Sleep. He’d lost that ability in Iraq, the ability to see nothing, to think nothing, to succumb to darkness. His ability to stay alert, trained into him for years as a law enforcement sniper, had become his enemy over the months and months of his deployment. He had so envied the young ones, the eighteen-, nineteen- and twenty- year-olds who could fall into their cots, pull the thin blankets over their heads and snore their way into oblivion for hours. As a cop, he’d trained himself to do that only after danger and the need for his service was past, after the crime-scene breakdown, after the target had been neutralized. But in Falluja and Mosul and Tikrit, the danger never really passed.
Iraq put the bug in his veins. He thought it would pass when he got back home, was back in his own bed, thought the resumption of routine in the real world would convince his mind that he could relax. But it never did. Instead it crept through his blood and into the tiny capillaries behind his eyelids and in the dark he would see the robes and hijabs and draped blankets float across his line of vision like the vestments of ghosts. And he could never see their faces. The scope only allowed a fragment of a hooded profile, the hook of a nose or jut of a chin.
“Take the shot”
Redman’s fingers twitched and he opened his eyes and cut them to the side where the moon glow had painted the far corner of the room. He tightened the muscles in his stomach and swung his legs off the bed and sat up. He had again sweated through the T-shirt he wore. He should have reacclimated to the South Florida humidity by now. He looked over at the window beyond his door-panel desk and saw that it was opened.
In his last few months in Iraq, the night air had been cold like he hadn’t experienced since his years growing up in New England. He remembered thinking then that they were right about Florida thinning your blood. He recalled the tent barracks in Ramadi where he’d bunked in for a few nights with a National Guard unit from Florida. He’d recognized some of the cities they came from when the men were introduced. But by then he was used to being vague about his own background. As soon as the others saw the black, hard-sided case that protected his H&K sniper rifle, the whispering started.
“Hey, yo. The grim reaper, man.”
“How many notches you think are on that stock?”
“I heard like fifty, man. Guy’s the Marines’ special weapon.”
“Fuckin’ like to see him take out that goddamn mortar nest on the north quadrant. Maybe that’s why he’s here.”
“No, that ain’t why. I know why he’s here,” said a red-haired corporal who cut his eyes at Redman and then stuck a cigar in his mouth and walked out.
Redman had pretended not to hear. He remembered envying them and their loose camaraderie, but he stayed to himself. And they noticeably stayed clear of him. He’d watched their Texas hold ’em games from a distance, laughed inside when they told stories from the streets about Iraqi kids who thought the Americans wore air-conditioning inside their uniforms, and kept his head down when they shuffled in after a night patrol, exhausted from the six-hour flow of adrenaline and anxiety. After a few days awaiting his next assignment, he’d purposely worked the mess line and cut the redhead out of a group and sat down next to him. The guy started to get up, but Redman put a hand on his forearm and the grip made the corporal tighten his lips into a line.
“Tell me something,” Redman said in a nonconfrontational voice. “How come that cot across from me is always empty?”
Every other spot in the canvas Quonset was filled but one, an unmade bed where photos of a bright, white-sand beach and a Sports Illustrated glamour cover of the Miami Heat were pinned to the wall. Just above was a homemade banner that read: ONE WEEKEND A MONTH MY ASS!
The banner’s comment was a shot at the recruiting slogan to join the National Guard. Most of these guys, like Redman himself, had been weekend warriors with regular day jobs when they were called up for active duty. Now they’d been in Iraq for more than three hundred days. Redman remembered waiting for the corporal’s answer.
“Randy Williams,” he’d said, not moving his eyes off Redman’s. “Best damn soldier in the unit. Kind of man who’d do anything for you. Share anything with you. Watch your back and keep everybody loose but, you know, alert.”
Redman had run two or three faces of guys he knew at home who were just like that, guys on his SWAT detail or duty shift that people naturally clung to, admired, depended on.
“Nobody wants to move his stuff,” the corporal had said. “They shipped his personal gear back to Fort Lauderdale with his body, but nobody wants him to be gone.”
“How did he die?” Redman had asked in a soft tone.
“Sniper,” the corporal had said, looking up, challenging-like. “We were on a daily patrol, broad daylight, looking for IEDs. Everybody was suited up with body armor and headgear. Williams was in the rear, covering our asses like always.
“There was one shot and everybody heard it. But the sound was from so far off, some of us didn’t even turn on it. Then Murray started yelling and we looked back and Randy was down. One fucking shot, man. He was still twitching on the ground. Murray got his hand over the hole, but the blood kept running out and nobody saw the exit wound till we turned him. Round went right through his neck, ripped out his carotid. Fucking sniper knew exactly where to hit him. Above the armor, below the helmet. Wasn’t nothing any of us could do.”
Redman could still recall his own reaction to the story. Ground-level shot, he’d thought, immediately working the angles. Probably taken from a wall or a window as the squad moved by. You had to lead the target, gauge his foot speed, fire and let him walk into it. It was beyond lucky and obviously everyone in the redhead’s unit knew it. The corporal’s eyes had shifted to the table and Redman waited out the silence.
“They got ’em too,” the redhead finally said.
“I’m sorry?” Redman said, not understanding.
“They got snipers too,” the corporal had repeated. “W
e ain’t the only ones in the world who can shoot straight.”
Redman sat on the edge of the bed, sweating in the late-night Florida heat, remembering the words, watching the moon glow creep across the room, remembering that night in Iraq when he’d tried to rationalize his talent yet again. You take out the ones that might easily do the same to guys like Williams. That’s why you do it. But Redman’s targets in Tikrit weren’t in uniform. And the sniper who killed Williams wasn’t just taking out anything that moved like Redman had been asked to do. Redman knew he should rationalize it. In war innocent people get killed for the greater good. But he was sick of not knowing. Yeah, he was a trained killer, but the difference was that back at home, working for SWAT, you acted on intelligence. You knew who you were killing: Bad Guys. When he got back home, he would always know. When he got back, there wouldn’t be any questions. Those who deserved to die were the ones who were going to die.
Now he was home and Redman stood up from the bed, stepped over to the table and opened the file once again. On the yellowed newspaper clipping was a mug shot, a photo the Daily News had reprinted from the arresting agency. The man’s hair was leaning to one side, all tufted and tilting. His chin was up, maybe just because the booking officer ordered him to, but Redman could swear he saw a hint of a cocky grin pulling at the corner of the man’s mouth and the light in one of his eyes.
The story detailed how the man had come home, slapped his longtime girlfriend around and then, during an argument, had sloshed rubbing alcohol over her head and body, rubbing alcohol she had used to ease the pain of her sickle-cell anemia. And then the boyfriend whom she thought she loved struck a match and set her aflame.
The story also detailed the man’s history of domestic abuse and a harrowing line from the woman’s eleven-year-old daughter, who described how she’d come to her mother’s aid and had to “slap the fire out of my mama’s hair.” The man’s defense attorney had argued that the two were smoking cocaine and the alcohol had simply spilled and caught fire by accident. A plea bargain was struck. Attempted murder. Redman had already looked up the man’s DOC file on a computer at the public library. He was already out, after seven years.
It was clearly wrong, Redman thought. The story was perfectly clear and convincing. No rationalization possible. A man tried to burn his sick girlfriend to death in front of her own daughter. In the light from the window he scanned the face again, memorizing the shape and profile. This man deserved to die. He shifted his eyes next to the photo. In Times Roman type, fourteen-point, was the byline that proved it:
By Nick Mullins, Staff Writer
Chapter 14
Nick spent the weekend with his daughter, trying as best he could to give her his full attention. He still cheated her out of at least half of his conscious thought.
On Saturday morning he got up and found Carly in her usual spot, camped out in her pajamas, legs curled up under her just like her mother used to do and watching cartoons with a Pop Tart and glass of dipping milk in front of her. He made coffee and settled down next to her without saying a word and aimed his face at the screen.
“SpongeBob SquarePants,” she finally said after three minutes of silence.
“I know,” Nick said.
“Liar,” she said, but the dimples in her smooth cheeks gave her away.
He switched the coffee cup to his other hand and pressed his warmed fingers to the side of her face.
“And Patrick,” he said.
She looked over into his face and smiled that full smile that had the same warm effect on his heart that his fingers were having on her skin.
“OK, maybe you are paying attention,” she said and then, when she saw his expression start to change to that spaced-out, blank look, she quickly added, “What are we going to do today?”
Nick and his wife, Julie, had become aware of both their daughters’ abilities to pick up on the unspoken rift between their parents. Nick’s attention would spin off into the most recent story he was working on, the priorities of keeping up with an investigation or finding yet another source that he hadn’t thought about and then taking a chance that he might best get them to talk by calling or knocking on doors at hours they wouldn’t expect. Like on weekends, or the middle of the night, or when he should have been taking one of his daughters to a piano lesson or driving them all to an impromptu weekend getaway. His frequent disappearing acts had strained the relationship, and his vow, after the accident, was to do better by his surviving daughter.
“I am going to take you out to experience the two things that you love to do more than anything,” he said, deliberately punching up his voice with enthusiasm.
Carly’s face reflected a nine-year-old’s version of skepticism.
“Photography and alligators,” he said, watching her look turn to confusion. “We’re gonna go out to Clyde Butcher’s in the Everglades to look at his pictures, which I know you’re going to love, and while we’re out there I promise you will see some gators lolling around in the water next to his place.”
Carly whined, as nine-year-olds will automatically do. Then, maybe after thinking about the picture-taking, which she did love, and the fascination of gators, which were at least different and possibly exciting, she did something that nine-year-olds don’t normally do: acquiesced.
With Elsa’s help, they put together a picnic lunch of salteñas, chips and homemade salsa, and Nick filled a cooler with juice boxes. When they packed the car, Nick tried to coax Carly into the front beside him but was met with a clear statement: “Mom never lets us sit in the front. She says we’re not big enough yet, and the air bag would kill us.”
Nick did not say what immediately came into his head: The air bags didn’t help your mom or your sister, so what goddamn difference does it make? Instead he looked into her face to see if she realized what she’d said and then just nodded and put the cooler and a carton of Goldfish in the back seat with her.
Within thirty minutes they’d escaped urban South Florida and were heading west on what was once called Alligator Alley, a name that caused Carly to stare out the side window for at least twenty minutes before getting bored and voicing her opinion that they shouldn’t name a highway for alligators if you can’t see them lying alongside the road. Nick was going to tell her they’d changed the name to Interstate 75 but decided to keep his mouth shut.
He did try to keep up a conversation about the Everglades, directing her attention to the acres of brown-tipped saw grass that rolled out on the northern side of the freeway and stretched to the horizon. He tried to liken the sight to Kansas wheat fields, spread out and swirling in the winds, but realized his daughter had never been to Kansas. He tried to get her to imagine how the water they could see in the canal alongside was just as deep way out in the grass. “Like an ocean with the stalks poking up from the bottom over every inch.”
“So how come the grass is brown at the top, Dad? I mean, jeez, shouldn’t it be green if it’s growing in water?”
He was never surprised by the logic of a child. Pretty damned simple, Dad, if you quit overanalyzing it. It was one of those things his daughters had taught him.
“Right now the tops are brown because the saw grass is blooming, sweetheart. It’s the blooms that are brown.”
All he got from the back seat was an “Uh-huh,” like she’d accept it even if it was stupid for a plant to have brown blooms. Every few miles, Nick would make some kind of observation, loud enough for Carly to hear, but when he glanced back, her eyes were on a book she’d brought, or the blue GameBoy she and her sister always fought over until they bought a second one. The red one had belonged only to Carly. He noticed that after the accident, she played only with the blue one.
Finally, he gave up the act and let the sound of the car’s spinning machinery and whir of rubber on concrete and rush of wind on glass and metal dominate the space. But silence only took his head where he’d sworn not to go.
What was the federal officer doing sniffing around and suppos
edly looking at similar shootings? Similar to what? The idea of this being a sniper job was getting hard to argue against. The cold precision of that single shot was pretty damned convincing. And both Hargrave and Nick now believed the shooter had climbed up the fire ladder and had prepared the shot, maybe even beforehand. Did the guy have a list of other shootings with the same tag? Professional-type jobs. Preparation. The use of SWAT-style clothing. Did the shooter intentionally wear the clothes to throw off witnesses, make anyone who saw him dismiss him as official? Pretty ballsy. Or stupid.
“Dad?”
Nick was thinking ballsy at this point.
“Daaad?”
His eyes snapped up to the rearview mirror to search for his daughter’s expression. It was annoyed, again, at his wayward concentration.
“Yeah, sweetie. You OK?”
“When are we going to get there?”
The inevitable kid question. He looked alongside the freeway for a mile marker.
“Only a couple more minutes and then we go south, honey. We’re going to go right along the edge of the wildlife preserve, so I want you to look for the panther-crossing signs, OK?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just like when you see pedestrian crossings or those deer-crossing signs up north. Out here they’ve got panther-crossing areas.”
Carly thought about it for a moment. “Cats don’t walk across the street where you tell them to,” she finally said. “They go where they want to so they can hide and do what they want. Remember Dash?”
Dash had been the girls’ tiger-striped tomcat. The thing would disappear for days, somehow getting into the house through a torn screen just to eat and then slink back out. The only way you knew he was still around was by the empty food dish.
Nick got off an exit and then turned south on U.S. 29.
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