Right to Die

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Horatio, one of the dogs got a hit,” Frank said.

  “Fair Coast.”

  “I can see it from here,” Horatio said. “Thanks.” He put the phone away and summoned the others.

  “Fair Coast! Now!”

  They broke into a run, north up Ocean. They were beyond the sealed perimeter now, and pedestrians, as well as motorists trapped by snarled traffic, watched their progress, some shouting encouragement or curses.

  The canine and his handler waited outside the Fair Coast, which had a fashionably cheesy tiki décor, with longboards set into concrete flanking the walkway and more at the low, flat steps leading into the lobby. Tiki torches burned on poles and suspended from the walls, masks grimaced all around, and palm fronds thatched everything.

  “Caesar smells something here,” the handler said when Horatio approached. “Detective Tripp said we should hang back and wait for you.”

  “That’s right, Officer,” Horatio answered. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got RDX,” Calleigh said, consulting her Raman spectrometer.

  “All right, Calleigh.” His gaze took in his CSI team as well as the canine unit. “I need all of you to get a new perimeter established around this hotel. Remember how much space was affected by the blast at the Sandmoor House, and give me more.”

  “You think he’s got that much—” Eric began.

  Horatio cut him off. “I don’t know what he has on him, but I’m not taking any chances. The street’s packed. You’ve got to move all those people, and right now.”

  “What about you?” Calleigh asked.

  “I know Asher. And I know explosives. I’m going in.”

  “Shouldn’t you wait for a tactical team?”

  “There isn’t time for that. Send them in, but I’m going now.”

  “Horatio—”

  “Do it, Calleigh. Get me that perimeter. That’s the best thing you can do.”

  She knew better than to argue with him. She and the others turned away, accompanying the uniformed officer and his dog, to do what Caine asked.

  And Horatio, alone, went into the building.

  31

  “WHAT’S GOING ON, Officer?”

  Three employees stood behind the check-in counter, a man and two women, all wearing Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts, and name tags. The speaker was one of the women, African-American, tall and slender and lovely, with a shock of black hair trimmed short and standing straight up. A model, or a wannabe, Horatio guessed.

  A dozen or so other people milled around the lobby.

  “I need you to get everyone out of here,” he said. “Outside, now. The police officers out there will show you where to go.”

  “Everyone?”

  “The whole building,” Horatio said flatly. “Use a fire alarm if you have to. But first, I’m looking for someone who probably came in during the last hour or so, carrying a suitcase or a duffel bag or something like that. He may have checked in earlier, but he just brought in another bag. He looks like an FBI agent.”

  “Like…”

  “A big man. Dark suit, dark hair, nondescript face. You’d know if you saw him.”

  “There was someone like that,” the other woman said. This one was blond, shorter, stout, and older than the other two, probably in her late forties.

  “You were on break, Jackie.”

  “Is he a hotel guest, ma’am?”

  “Yes. He checked in day before yesterday, I think.”

  “And you saw him this evening?”

  “Yes. Like you said, he had a big leather duffel bag over his shoulder.”

  “What room is he in, please?”

  “Four-seventeen,” she said.

  “Does that room have a view of Ocean Boulevard?”

  “Yes, it faces the ocean.”

  “Can you make me a key? Quickly?”

  The one named Jackie handed him a key card.

  “Here’s a master.”

  “Thank you,” Horatio said. “Get everyone out, as fast as you can.”

  Horatio just hoped it could be done fast enough. Asher was upstairs. Since he could see the street from his room, he knew he was cornered.

  And a cornered animal is the most dangerous kind.

  He could wait for SWAT—they probably weren’t far behind—but he was afraid that Asher would try to disrupt the evacuation of the hotel. At this point, knowing he was trapped, he might be willing to blow himself up along with everyone else. Motivated by a misguided sense of justice, he would know that a dramatic suicide could make a murderer into a martyr. That might have been his plan all along.

  He’d been killing for too long. Horatio wasn’t going to let him take any more lives.

  A Klaxon started to blare throughout the hotel, and people began streaming out of the stairwell. When the fire alarm went off, the elevators locked up. Asher couldn’t jump four flights, so if he tried to get out with the rest, it would be down the stairs.

  Ignoring the frightened cries and questions of those racing down, Horatio drew his weapon, held up his badge, and started climbing against the tide, apologizing and excusing himself all the way. People rammed him with shoulders and bags, and some saw his gun and shrieked, but he took the hits and kept climbing, watching faces in case Asher tried to slip past.

  By the time he reached the fourth floor, the stream had slowed to a trickle. Most of the people who were leaving had done so quickly, although Horatio had no doubt that some had chosen to ignore the deafening Klaxon and stay in their rooms.

  He held the stairwell door for a couple of young Asian tourists. “Please hurry,” he said as they brushed past him. Behind them, the hallway was clear. Holding his weapon at the ready, he approached the door to room 417.

  Asher could have gone against the flow too, up three more flights to the roof. Horatio didn’t think he’d do that, though—he believed Asher was inside his room, preparing for the inevitable. An explosion on the roof would have little impact with most of its force dispersed into the air, and escaping from there, with police swarming toward the building, seemed unlikely.

  He listened outside the door, ear pressed against it.

  If Asher was in there, he couldn’t tell.

  Time to find out.

  He slid the key card in the slot. When the light flashed green, he twisted the handle and shoved the door in. Asher hadn’t set the dead bolt or the bar lock that could have kept Horatio out.

  Inside the room, Asher sat, almost casually, in a chair beside an open sliding glass door that led onto a small balcony. From his vantage point he could see everything happening out on Ocean. Through the open door, Horatio heard sirens and shouted commands—the cops getting ready to storm the place. The smells of salt air and smoke wafted inside.

  Asher held a nine-millimeter Colt 1911 in his hand, and he pointed it into an unzipped duffel bag near his feet. “That’s far enough, Caine.”

  Horatio stopped just inside the room. “It’s all over, Special Agent Asher. This building will be crawling with police in a minute.”

  “The more the merrier,” Asher said. He sniffled.

  “That’s what they say, right? If I’m going to go, I might as well take a lot of souls along with me.”

  Horatio could probably shoot Asher before the agent managed to detonate the contents of his bag. But he wanted the agent in a courtroom, and if there was a way to take Asher alive, he wanted to find it.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  Asher cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re a good cop, Caine.”

  “Don’t you forget it, my friend.”

  “You can still get out of here alive. I can wait until I see you outside.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have some things to clear up first.”

  Close to Asher’s chair, a water glass with ice cubes in it sweated on the hotel room desk. Without shifting his gun hand, Asher reached for the glass and downed the remaining water. The cubes cl
inked against the glass when he put it back.

  “Throat’s a little dry,” he said.

  “I would imagine so.”

  “What is it we’re clearing up?” Asher rubbed his red, chapped nose.

  “You know the drill, Wendell. You’ve left me with a number of open case files. I need to close them.”

  “My trigger finger’s getting tired, Caine. You want to know anything, you better start asking.”

  Horatio had been counting on that. “That’s a bad sniffle, Wendell, but it’s not a cold, is it? You killed Silvio Castaneda, in Bicentennial Park, didn’t you?”

  “Dope pusher? Sure.”

  “Why?” In any interrogation, it didn’t hurt to start with questions to which you were already pretty sure of the answers.

  “I needed a piece.” Asher twitched the gun in his hand. “And cash. Dealers usually carry both.”

  “Someone else shot him at the same time.”

  “I know. They took off running when I shot him, though, so I went ahead and cleaned out his pockets.”

  “You left the drugs.”

  “What do I want with cocaine? Kid was a dealer, Caine, pushing dope in his own neighborhood. I did Miami a favor.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Horatio said. He edged farther into the room, slowly, a step every minute or two. Not enough to draw Asher’s attention to the fact that he was closing the gap between them. “But it’s not my way.”

  “Look, Caine, something you need to understand about me. I’m no whack job. I love my country. I worship the good Lord. These are the reasons I do what I do, nothing else. I know some people don’t approve, but men of faith have always had to take extreme measures in His service, right? When I start working in a new place, I need some spending money.” He kicked the duffel bag gently. “C-4’s not cheap, you know? And I need a weapon not easily traced to me. I pick a drug dealer and it’s win-win. I rid the streets of a useless predator, and I get the tools I need to continue my crusade.”

  “That’s what this is to you?” Horatio asked. “A crusade?”

  “You know a better word for it?”

  “I can think of a few.” Horatio didn’t name them. He wanted to keep Asher calm as long as he could. Through the window, he heard whistles and running boots as the SWAT team closed in.

  If the building was going to blow, this would be a good time, when almost no one remained inside. Soon, as he had threatened, it would be full of officers.

  The Klaxon had finally stopped. Horatio’s ears still rang, but inside the room it was quiet, just Asher’s breathing and that incessant buzzing in his own head.

  “You don’t think much of me, Caine,” Asher said flatly.

  “No, Wendell, I don’t.”

  “You’re not a religious man?”

  Horatio was a devout Catholic, but he didn’t think that was any of the other man’s business.

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Asher countered.

  “No. I’m a law enforcement officer, not a judge and jury. The same goes for you. We have a system, don’t we, Wendell, that we’re sworn to uphold. You took that oath and you broke it. How can you square that with your faith?”

  “Men of faith often have to—”

  Horatio held up a hand, impatiently, using the motion to cover another couple of steps deeper into the room. “I’ve heard it, Wendell. It’s a cop-out. Either you live by your promise or you don’t. There’s no gray area there.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t deserve killing, Caine.”

  “Maybe so, but then we’re all sinners, aren’t we? Even you.”

  “I know I’m a sinner. I try to repent through my actions.”

  “I believe,” Horatio said, “that you’re just making things worse for yourself.”

  “Think what you want.”

  “I do. And what I think now is that you’re about to learn about judges and juries from an entirely different perspective. You’re under arrest, Wendell Asher.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Caine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re forgetting who holds the cards. You can shoot me, but not before I can get off a shot.”

  “That may be true.”

  “You know how much C-4 is in this bag? You want to be remembered as the dead CSI who lost a block of South Beach? I want a chopper to Cuba, Caine. This country is my home, but people like you have made it uninhabitable.”

  “You think they’ll take you in Cuba?”

  “I’ll take my chances. Just get me a helicopter.”

  “I don’t think so, Wendell.”

  Asher nudged the bag with his foot again. “You don’t believe I have the C-4? You want to take a look?”

  “I believe you,” Horatio said.

  Asher’s face went cold. “Then make the call. I’m through talking to you. Make the call now, or I shoot.”

  “You’re not leaving Miami, Wendell,” Horatio said. “So I guess you’ll have to shoot.”

  32

  HORATIO HAD NEVER told Wendell Asher about his time on the Miami-Dade bomb squad. And like most FBI agents Horatio had met, Asher underestimated local law enforcement personnel. His threat to shoot the contents of the bag convinced Horatio that he didn’t have a shock tube or any other immediate detonator, probably just more timers.

  He could empty his whole magazine into a bag of C-4 without setting it off. He could throw matches at it. C-4 needed a small explosive charge to be detonated.

  He caught Horatio’s gaze and held it for long seconds, then his bleary, bloodshot eyes shifted toward the open window—trying to gauge how much time he had left before the room filled up with police officers, Horatio guessed. “I guess you got me,” he said, beginning to raise his hands.

  “Put down the weapon,” Horatio ordered him.

  Asher started to comply, then changed course and hurled the gun at Horatio.

  Horatio batted it away, the steel of the rear sight slicing the side of his hand. In that instant Asher bolted from his chair, rushing him. Asher was as solid as a tank, and he slammed his shoulder into Horatio’s midsection, driving him back into the wall. He caught Horatio’s right wrist, holding it so that his gun pointed uselessly toward the door, and pressed his right forearm against Horatio’s throat, legs spread too far for Horatio to reach with his own feet.

  Asher was a couple of inches taller than Horatio, broad-shouldered, with muscles like corded iron. Horatio’s left hand tugged at his right arm, but he couldn’t budge it. With his larynx compressed, he couldn’t draw air into his lungs. His vision darkened at the edges.

  Horatio gave up trying to move the arm off his throat and instead closed his left hand into a fist with his thumb extended. Reaching around the agent’s crushing arm and shoulder, he jabbed it at Asher’s right eye. Asher jerked his head away. The thumb hit his cheek instead, and Asher responded by putting even more pressure on Horatio’s neck.

  The world was turning black faster now, as Horatio—already weakened and dizzy from the near miss at the Ibanez house—threatened to pass out. If he did, he knew, he’d never wake up again. Asher was a murderer through and through, and his “crusade” was just a justification for his crimes. He would, Horatio believed, be a killer even if he hadn’t come up with that rationale. He wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over murdering Horatio.

  Horatio figured he had one more chance to take out the bigger man before he blacked out for good. Asher kept his feet spread wide so Horatio couldn’t stomp down on his tarsalia and break the bones of his foot, at the same time leaning in so close that Horatio couldn’t get enough momentum to do damage to his testicles.

  But maybe having those legs splayed out would be good for something.

  Horatio drove his right knee into the agent’s patella, hard, just above his right knee. Asher flinched from the blow, and Horatio followed by bringing his right foot back and slamming it into his opp
onent’s left tibia. He heard the snap of bone beneath his shoe, and Asher let out a shriek of pain and dropped his arm. Horatio swung his left fist into the agent’s cheek, knocking him to the floor.

  Horatio leaned against the wall, sucking in a few deep breaths in succession. His throat burned, as raw as if he had swallowed acid, and he coughed a few times. But he kept his weapon pointed at Asher—who writhed in pain on the floor, tears filling his eyes, nose running—the whole time. Before the agent could recover, armored, helmeted SWAT officers filled the doorway, pointing their automatic rifles inside.

  “You! Drop that weapon!” one shouted.

  “One down, another one armed!” someone else reported into a radio. “We need a medic up here!”

  Horatio tried to speak, couldn’t, and instead drew back his jacket to show the badge and ID card on his belt.

  “You’re Lieutenant Caine?” the first one asked.

  Horatio nodded, holstering his gun and touching his damaged throat. Perfect, he thought. My ears are still ringing like church bells on Christmas, and now I can’t talk either.

  “Is he…?”

  Horatio nodded again. “He’s—under arrest,” he managed to croak, barely at whisper level. “Get him medical—attention—and book—him.”

  A commotion at the doorway captured his attention, and he looked up to see Calleigh forcing her way through the SWAT team, followed by Eric and Ryan. “Horatio,” she said, “are you all right?”

  He nodded, touched his neck again.

  “Did he hurt your throat?”

  Horatio nodded. He was getting used to it.

  “Do you need a paramedic?”

  “This guy does,” Eric said.

  “Good,” Ryan offered. “He deserves it.”

  Horatio nodded one more time. He would never enjoy violence, but there were times that it was warranted, and he didn’t shy away from dealing it out when he had to.

  This had been one occasion when he didn’t feel the least bit sorry that it had been necessary.

  “Come on, Horatio,” Calleigh said, her blue eyes expressing her concern. “Let’s get out of here.” She started back through the officers, clearing a path for him.