by Zoe Sharp
The residents of the adjoining homes had been cleared out and were being kept behind a police line at the end of the block.
Wade drove up in his department-issued Crown Vic, which might as well have been a badge on four wheels. The uniformed officers waved him through without a glance or a check of his ID. They looked confused. He couldn’t blame them. They had no idea what was going on. Nobody in the department did.
He parked behind an FBI armoured assault unit. As he got out of his car, he noted the sharpshooters on the rooftops and the Kevlar-vested agents crouched behind their vehicles, aiming their guns at Malden’s house as if it might leap from its foundation and attack them.
Carl Pinkus was easy to spot among the agents. He wore a Kevlar vest over his suit, a tactical helmet on his head, and was wielding his Blackberry instead of a gun, firing off text messages with his thumbs. He pocketed the device when he saw Wade approach.
“What’s the situation?” Wade asked.
“You’re standing out in the open, asking to be shot,” Pinkus said from behind a car. “Take cover.”
“If I wanted cover, I would have stayed in bed.”
“You didn’t tell us that Roger is an insomniac.”
“I didn’t know.”
“He saw the agents coming,” Pinkus said. “He fired off some warning shots before we even got close. We think he’s herded the family into the kitchen.”
Wade nodded and started towards the house. Pinkus grabbed him. “Put on a vest before you walk in there.”
“You think that would make my head off-limits for him to shoot?”
“We need you alive to testify.”
“Thanks for giving me something to live for.”
Wade sauntered across the street and up the front walk as if he was going to another one of Roger’s weekend barbeques. He knocked on the door.
“It’s me,” he yelled.
“Are you alone, Tom?” Roger replied in a loud voice from deep inside the house. Wade didn’t hear panic or desperation underscoring his words. He heard bitterness.
“Yeah, but I’m carrying a gun in each hand and a stick of dynamite in my teeth.”
“So am I. Come on in and we’ll party.”
Wade opened the door and stepped into the darkened house. Same floor plan but different furniture, electronics and art. Roger’s stuff was more upscale and contemporary than what Wade had. But Wade didn’t have Roger’s money.
He walked to the kitchen. After every Walden barbeque, Ally always raved about their travertine floors, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.
Roger sat on the edge of the centre island, near the stove top. He was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe over a T-shirt and draw-string pyjama pants. He didn’t have a stick of dynamite but he was holding a Glock in each hand.
“I figured the traitor had to be you,” Roger said. “You are always so fucking self-righteous, whether you’re making an arrest or a sandwich.”
Wade glanced to his right and saw Sally Malden and her daughters, ages nine and eleven, all in their nightgowns and huddling together on the floor, their legs curled up against their bodies. She held her daughters close to her, one under each arm. They were all crying silently, trails of tears and snot running down their faces.
He focused his gaze back on Roger. “You don’t want to hurt your family. You want to hurt me. I’m here now. Let them go.”
“They need to see this,” he said.
“Please,” Sally cried. “Think of the children.”
“I am,” he snapped, waving a gun in her direction. She tensed up, pulling the kids tighter to her bosom. “Why do you think I did it? So you could have the house you wanted, the clothes you wanted, everything you wanted.”
“I didn’t want this,” she said.
“Only because you haven’t seen it on HGTV. The damn channel was on twenty-four/seven in this house, just so you could constantly point out to me all the things we needed. You even had it on while we fucked.”
“Only so the kids wouldn’t hear us,” she said.
“I couldn’t take a shit without finding the latest issue of Architectural Digest waiting for me with the corners marked down on the pages you wanted me to see.”
“This isn’t my fault,” she said.
“You didn’t shake down the drug dealers or take any bribes, but you were part of it, honey. Don’t kid yourself.” He looked at Wade. “You took the money, too, but I never saw you spend it on anything. You never enjoyed it. I asked myself about that and never came up with an answer.”
“I gave it to the Justice Department.”
“You didn’t keep even a little of it for expenses?”
Wade shook his head.
“C’mon. Don’t you have a mortgage? Don’t you have things you need and want but can’t afford?”
“Sure I do.”
“You could have had them,” Roger said. “You could have had prosperity.”
“I could also be sitting in my kitchen waving a gun at my family and ranting about what I read in the bathroom.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“So shoot me, Roger. It would be less painful than listening to any more of your whining.”
“You suck as a hostage negotiator.”
Wade shrugged. “I don’t negotiate.”
“Why did you sell us out? What did they offer you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. Nobody does anything for nothing.”
“It’s my job to catch bad guys. You’re a bad guy. It’s as simple as that.”
Roger nodded. “So you did it just so you could feel even more self-righteous than you already do.”
“I did because that’s what I am paid to do. It’s what you’re paid to do, too. I guess you forgot about that. But it’s not your fault, Roger. It’s those bastards at Architectural Digest.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done, what it’s going to mean for me, what it’s going to mean to them,” Roger tipped his head towards his family. “Did you ever think about the consequences, Tom? Even once?”
“Did you?”
Roger glared at Wade for a long moment, then aimed the gun in his right hand at his family. They whimpered in terror. He tossed the gun in his left hand to Wade, who caught it.
Wade checked to see if his gun was loaded. It was. “What’s the game?”
“I’m going to blow my wife’s head off in five seconds unless you shoot me.”
“Suicide by cop,” Wade said.
“I’m not going to let you hide behind a bunch of Federal agents. If you want to take me down, you’re going to have to do it yourself, right in front of my family, so they can see the—”
Wade shot him in the right shoulder, knocking him off the counter onto the floor. The children screamed. He kicked away Roger’s dropped gun, rolled him face-down on the blood-spattered travertine, and pinned his left arm behind his back.
“You’re under arrest,” Wade said.
Roger started to heave before Wade could read him his rights. Wade tipped him to one side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.
That’s when FBI agents burst into the kitchen from every doorway. Two of the agents immediately hustled Sally Malden and her wailing kids away. But they still saw what a puking, mewling, bloody mess their father was and that Wade was holding him down.
It was their father who’d threatened to kill them but it was Wade who they hated. He saw it in their teary eyes already. The hate would only intensify with time.
Wade got up off of Roger, handed his gun to one of the agents and walked outside, the harsh glare of the arc lights casting his long shadow over the house.
Copyright © Zoë Sharp 2005
First published in Great Britain 2005
Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd
This edition published 2011
Murderati Ink
excerpt from SECOND SHOT copyright © Zoë Sharp 2007
excerpt from KING CITY copyright ©
Lee Goldberg 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author, nor otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published.
All characters and events in this collection of stories, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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