by Caleb Carr
“Meaning what?” he said, his voice becoming desperate.
“Meaning that you’re dying, Shea. If you don’t get that bleeding stopped, you’ll be dead in a matter of minutes. Less, perhaps.”
“Yeah?” he said bitterly. “Well—you’ll go before that!” And then he fired off another shot that sounded up and down the hollow.
But my ruse had worked: unable to get his gun to a sufficient elevation to aim it at my chest or head, he’d blasted away at what he thought to be my one good leg, tearing a nice-sized hole in my pants and ripping away a piece of the outer plastic of my prosthesis without affecting its structure much, if at all. The force of the shot itself did cause me to stumble, at first; but after that, seeing my chance, I quickly grasped the head of my cane and pulled the blade within it free, ready to move on Shea and drive the steel through his idiot’s chest just below the left ribs. He began to pant and gasp, whimpering pathetically as his rifle chambered a new .308 round and he fought to keep its muzzle from falling completely; but I’d gambled on his inability to do so, and just kept moving.
“Stay back!” he cried desperately, unable to right the gun. “I’m warning you, Jones—”
“You’re warning me of what, Shea?” I said, still limping my way toward him, my speed reduced by the effective loss of my cane. I could have leaned down to pick up my Colt, and finished him with that; but I was far too maddened by hate for such to be satisfying. “That you’re going to kill me? You already said that, but you’ve lost too much blood to lift that Savage, and even if you could, you said yourself that you don’t have the skill to use it effectively with your left arm. No, Shea—you’re the one who’s going to die, here, but it isn’t going to be from bleeding to death…”
His whimpering grew in intensity as he realized the truth of everything I’d just said. “I—I…Don’t!” he pleaded at last, his eyes on the blade in my hand.
But I was done talking to this idiot; the kind of idiot I’d dealt with my whole life—
And then another shot sounded. For a moment, I thought I had mistaken the situation, and that he must have been able to hit me, for blood was suddenly sprayed over the front of my clothes. A quick check of my situation, however, made me realize that I felt no pain other than in my hip, and that the amount of blood on me was inadequate for any wound in my own body from a rifle shot at that distance. Then, looking up, I saw that Dennis Shea’s forehead had simply exploded, and that his body was quivering with a final paroxysm as it fell against and then slid down the side of the Prowler. And as it did, another figure came into view:
Frank Mangold, his Glock smoking in his two hands. There was a look that I’d never seen before on his face: anger, yes, but something more, something complex—an awareness, not only of his actions, but of his own mistakes, his own misplaced trust. He stepped forward, stared down at Dennis Shea’s lifeless body, and, instead of closing the fool’s eyes, raised his foot and kicked the lifeless, violated head hard, causing the corpse to collapse completely to the ground.
“You dumb fuck,” he murmured, holstering the Glock as he stared at Shea’s body. “All you had to do was go by the book, and you could have gone far. But you just had to cut corners, didn’t you? Like the rest of your worthless generation. Can’t fucking take the time to do things right, have to grab every goddamned shortcut you can. Well—this is what it gets you…” He turned to look at me, seeming to come back from a very far-off place. “How you doing, profiler?” he asked, picking up my Colt and handing it to me.
I sheathed my blade in the body of my cane, quickly replacing the whole in my right hand so that I could lean on it and get some relief, and then accepted my gun. “Jesus, Frank,” I said uncertainly. “I never thought I’d say this to you, but I’m…grateful.”
“Shouldn’t sell people so short,” he said with a quick smile. “This piece of shit…” He nodded at Shea’s body, in front of which I could now make out a large chunk of pink brain, blown out through the hole in his skull, the bright white of which could be seen through all the blood; then Mangold produced a ballistic-tipped 9mm round. “Gave him his own medicine. Once I figured out what was happening, I knew he had to be stopped. I’d had my eye on him, I knew he was working for somebody above me—ever since he shot that black kid in North Fraser, before I’d given the order to fire.”
“You didn’t give the order?” I said, even more stunned.
Frank shook his head bitterly. “Nope. At the time, I thought he was just a go-getter, but later, when my guys saw a sniper go up your mountain, I figured out he must’ve done it to shut the kid up. Damn it all. He really could’ve written his own ticket; but nobody wants to wait anymore. Everybody wants the easy way. The easiest way…”
“And you know who he was working for?”
Mangold nodded in disgust. “Cathy-fucking-Donovan, just like you got him to say. I would’ve beaten it the fuck out of him, but…well, you came along. You played long odds, Jones—he would’ve killed you, don’t doubt that.” He shook his head, and hissed in disgust: “The fast track…”
“Which ‘fast track’?”
Frank smiled and even laughed a little. “You know, profiler, I doubt we’ll ever understand each other—I mean, did you really think I’d plant a dead kid’s body just to frame those Patrick pigs?”
I owed it to him to be straight: “Yes, I thought so. Cops have done it before.”
“Hunh,” he noised, shaking his head. “Well, not this cop, fuck you very much. But whatever you think of my ass, one thing you can trust me on: you do not understand how modern law enforcement is working. Police—locals, state cops, Feds, everybody—the fastest way to the top, now, is to kill somebody. In the line of duty is always best, but if you have to do it in secret, so long as it makes the people on top happy, well, that’s just fine, too. Advancement by blood—that’s the ticket, these days.”
I studied my old antagonist, this former enemy who had ensured that my life would go on and was now my bizarre ally; and I found myself actually taking a moment to consider his thoughts. “It sounds like the old imperial guards in Rome,” I finally judged. “The Praetorians…”
“You know,” he said, his expression brightening, involuntarily and just briefly, “I’ve thought the same thing. The Praetorians. Easiest way to the top was to kill somebody on orders. But they all ended up like this asshole, eventually. Makes you and me the barbarians, doesn’t it?”
Mangold was dead right; but I couldn’t smile at it, for I still had to face what awaited me at the top of the hill, no matter how crushing it might be. “Well—my thanks, again, Frank,” I said, starting to move off. “I have to see how the—others are.”
“You mean your cat?” Frank said, smiling in disbelief. “Come on, profiler, we’ve got people to bust. If you’ll work it with me, I think we can make it quick and clean.”
“And we will, Frank,” I said, never breaking stride. “But I have to do this, first…”
He said nothing more, just went back to the Prowler and stood by the dead disappointment on the ground, cursing him once more and spitting hard.
When I finally reached the gate to Marcianna’s enclosure, I called out: “It’s okay, you guys! You can come on out, it’s all over!” Reaching into my pocket, I found my own phone, and quickly located the number for Marcianna’s vet. I told him that the shooting had stopped, that the shooter was down and the police were on the scene; and I was grateful to hear that, anticipating my call, he’d driven to the foot of Death’s Head Hollow, and was just waiting for the all-clear to drive up to the enclosure. That left but one grim task: finally finding out what had happened to my “favorite sister.”
Clarissa, Annabel, and Mike emerged. I hugged both my great-aunt and Annabel, and would’ve hugged Mike, save that he was keeping his .38 at the ready, not quite trusting the situation. But when he saw the blood on the front of me, and quickly realized that it wasn’t mine, he at last felt safe returning the revolver to his ankle holster. “Wh
at the hell?” he asked, correctly concluding that I couldn’t have shot the assailant; and on being told who had, he whistled low. “No shit…Mangold? World’s just full of surprises, isn’t it?”
“Brother,” I said, “you don’t know the half of it…” I braced myself. “How is she?”
“She’s in there, with Lucas,” Clarissa said, looking very grave. “She’s alive, Trajan, but terribly weak. Did you convince the vet to come?”
“Yes. He should be here any second, in fact.”
“Good,” Clarissa answered. “You can’t let anything happen to her, nephew—she tried so hard to protect us. I think it was Lucas she was worried about, most of all.”
“It always has been,” I answered with a nod. “Well—all right, then…”
“Stay strong, kid,” Mike said, putting a hand to my shoulder as I headed in.
Within the kopje, Lucas was cradling Marcianna’s head in his crossed legs, stroking her neck gently as she purred: not the usual, electric-motor purr of happiness, but the deep, breathy vibration that cats manifest when they are in pain. She was panting intermittently, making me wish I’d thought to bring her water—and so I called to Mike, asking him to get some. Scanning the overall scene further, I saw that there wasn’t a lot of blood evident, which might or might not have been a good sign: if the damage was entirely internal, she was almost certainly in severe peril.
“Hey,” I said to Lucas, getting to my knees and joining him in stroking Marcianna’s neck.
“Hey, L.T.,” the kid answered, in a voice that showed he’d been crying, but had stopped before I’d entered. “She’s hurt awful bad…”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, more bravely than I felt; then I leaned down so that Marcianna could see me in her dull, half-lidded stare. “Hello, my love,” I whispered, running my knuckles along her jaw just under her mouth. “I’m home; and I’m never going away again—understand?” She made a halfhearted attempt to whimper in return, but it only came out as a kind of pathetic grunt. “You just keep quiet, for once,” I said. “You’ve done enough…” I scanned her body for more-detailed evidence of what had happened, and eventually, I found the wound: the bullet had pierced her left thigh, and looked to have exited somewhere on the right side of her belly. I couldn’t determine just where, however, because each probe brought a growl and a weak swipe at me with her left forepaw. “Okay, okay; I get the message.” I moved my knuckles to her forehead and pressed them hard.
“What’re you doing now?” Lucas asked with desperate interest.
“Nobody really knows,” I answered. “But all cats, when they’re in pain, seem to seek pressure to the forehead. Kind of works for people, too; I’ve tried it, but—for cats, definitely.”
Lucas nodded. “The vet gonna get here?”
“Any second.”
He paused, slowly working his way up to the next question: “Ambyr come back with you?”
I shook my head. “But we can talk about that later.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t really expect her to.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But you were hoping, all the same. She had reasons, though, Lucas.” I glanced up at his now-doubly-pained face, and then back down at Marcianna. After a few seconds of silence, I murmured a dimly remembered quote: “ ‘Incurable, in each, the wounds they make…’ ”
“Hunh?” Lucas noised quietly. “Who said that?”
“An ancient playwright,” I answered, having already worked out my own tears.
“Yeah?” the kid asked. “What’s it mean?”
“Ah,” I sighed. “We can talk about that later, too…”
Finally, the vet appeared at the entrance, along with an assistant. He took a quick look and agreed with my diagnosis: didn’t look like any bone damage, just a question of whether her internal organs had been damaged, and if so, how badly. Turning to me as the assistant prepared restraints, he said: “You sure you want this young man to be present?”
“You just try to fucking move me,” Lucas declared; and while I admired his spirit, I had to warn him of realities:
“Lucas—they have to secure her, and make sure she can’t scratch or bite. That’s going to look cruel to you, but until they get her sedated, they’ve got to do it. Don’t you think—”
“I’m staying, L.T.,” Lucas replied, his tone still unbending.
And stay he did, as the vet and his assistant carefully bound Marcianna’s front and rear legs, then expertly slipped a light muzzle over her mouth. Not wanting to shoot her with a tranquilizing gun from inside the den, they had been forced to use this method of immobilization, because the pain of the coming injection just might have made her crazed enough to do real damage. As it turned out, though, she accepted that pain with only a mild protest, and within minutes, she was finally resting for real, in a deep, deep sleep. The veterinary assistant fetched a stretcher from where they’d left it outside, and we all got her on it, removing the restraints and muzzle, in order to take her down to the hangar, where the vet could do what he needed to atop the Formica table. Lucas never left the stretcher’s side, bravely enduring Marcianna’s drugged appearance; I, on the other hand, had to slow up, both to try to talk to Mike and Clarissa, and because my hip was finally starting to buckle. The kid was advised to keep his hands clear of Marcianna’s now-freed claws and mouth, just in case, and so he quickly ran around to the opposite side, where her long, dipping spine lay still. And all the way down the hill, he kept stroking her neck, even though he’d been told that she couldn’t feel it.
“But she can,” he insisted to the vet. “I know she can…”
There wasn’t really much for me to say to the others, it turned out, as we followed along. They could all see that Ambyr had not returned with me, and that I was both in pain and enraged: in fact, so at war were my feelings—for now I held Ambyr fully responsible for what had happened to Marcianna, along with everything else she’d done—that all I could ultimately do was keep murmuring the fuller quote from Euripides:
“ ‘Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make…’ ”
Mike and Annabel understood the general meaning of my words; but Clarissa recognized the line from Medea immediately, as well as its specific importance at that moment. So she drew close, letting me lean on her hard as we kept descending to the hangar…
{vii.}
As it turned out, and more thankful for it was I than for anything I could remember in a long time, some wounds that Ambyr had made were curable: the bullet that had struck Marcianna had not, in fact, pierced any vital organs, and her vet assured me that once she’d been sewn up, bandaged, and shot full of antibiotics, she would begin to recover with a speed remarkable only to those who do not know cats. I had deep misgivings about leaving her again, about having her wake to find me not there; but we had things to do, yet, and I had to trust that, if she did come around before I returned (assuming I did), Lucas would continue to be enough of a comfort to pull her through the shock. The vet also agreed to stay until my return, particularly when I told him that I did not anticipate being gone for more than a couple of hours.
When Mike and I finally descended to plan our next moves with Frank Mangold, I took Clarissa along, or perhaps I should say that she took herself: she wanted to know all that had transpired, who was responsible for what, and exactly how far I now intended to stick my neck out to press the case home. Her own desire for justice was behind this urgency, I knew, along with concern for our safety—but I was also aware that she had still another reason: Clarissa was a force to be reckoned with in county politics, but she still wanted to know whom we were planning to go after, and what if any effect our plan would have on Shiloh. Told that we had our immediate sights set on ADA Cathy Donovan, she couldn’t help but smile.
“Really?” she more stated than asked, seeming very pleased. “Oh, I think I’m going to enjoy this—I have never trusted that woman. But listen to me, Trajan: you’ve g
ot to be sure. We can’t have this boomerang on us, and more importantly, on the farm.”
“Oh, we’re sure, Aunt,” I said. “The only question is whether or not we can get her to confess, and implicate anyone else.”
I had not objected to Clarissa’s coming down to the car, in part because it would have done no good, but also because I wanted to see the effect that she and Mangold would have on each other; and I have to say that, while the entertainment did not disappoint, it was surprising, nonetheless. Mangold was still by Dennis Shea’s gruesome corpse, leaning on the ATV’s fender and going over some messages, perhaps instructions, that he’d received from his superiors on his phone. This didn’t bother me: Frank may have been a thug, but he was also far more principled, in his way, than I’d previously believed, and I didn’t think that there was any purely political pressure that could induce him to let up, once he’d perceived what he believed to be the correct course of action. He didn’t turn as we approached, just assumed that it was only Mike and me who were doing so. Therefore, still staring at his phone, he growled:
“Well, Jesus H. Christ, profiler, if you and your sidekick are done playing Doctor-fucking-Dolittle, maybe we can take care of some damned business.” He drew a pen out of his jacket pocket and held it toward me. “Here. Take this—”
And then he caught sight of Clarissa. I’m not sure what I was expecting, if I was actually expecting any one thing at all; but certainly, I wasn’t prepared for what I got. Mangold immediately quieted down, becoming, not obsequious, but very respectful and perhaps even a little intimidated, keeping my great-aunt’s record of unnerving cops consistent. “Oh.” Frank checked himself like a berated schoolboy and stood straight up. “I, uh—beg your pardon, ma’am. I thought it was just the two docs, here.”