“It’s open, Robert,” Hackett called out. “Come on in.”
Robert Monk entered the room cautiously.
“I’ve been expecting you.”
“I would have been here earlier but one of your friends required me to spend a couple of days in bed,” Monk said.
“How did you figure it out?”
“It wasn’t hard, James,” Monk replied. “Had to think about it but you’re the only one who made sense.”
“There were cops in and out in New Orleans, Robert, and you know how many dirty cops are about,” Hackett said, chuckling. “And then we arranged for the delivery guy to bring groceries in every day. I could posit it could have been the delivery guy.”
“Yeah, the delivery guy was a good feint, James, but it didn’t work when you guys went out to the farm. Greco still knew what was going on.”
Hackett nodded.
“I knew you’d figure it out then,” he said. “You know, I really liked that farm. Raquel and I wanted a place like that. We wanted to move to New Mexico when I retired.”
“Life has a way of not working out the way we dream it,” Monk said.
“Don’t lecture me about life,” Hackett said, suddenly belligerent.
“What happened, James? Why?”
“What happened?” Hackett was almost shouting. “You want to know why? Death happened, Robert. That’s what happened. Raquel’s death. I died with her. Everything died with her.”
“Do you think she would have wanted this?”
“I don’t know what she would have wanted, Robert,” Hackett said, sounding now more miserable than angry. “She suffered. Oh, how she suffered. Did you know she begged me to kill her?
“What happened? All I know is one day she was gone and I was left with nothing. I had no money. Our home was repossessed. I was bankrupt and deep in debt. Had to sell my truck and buy that used piece of junk you see outside now.”
“But you were an Alaska state employee. When you signed up we had the best insurance available anywhere. That should have covered her medical bills. Why did you go broke?”
“When the doctors here and in Seattle said there was nothing more they could do, I took six months off without pay. I traveled with Raquel to every doctor in every country I could find who promised they could cure her,” Hackett said, bitterness framing every word. “Quacks. Every one of them. Nothing but quacks. Insurance didn’t pay for them. They took nothing but cash. Every dollar I could lay my hands on.”
“When did you go to work for Greco, James? How did you meet him?”
“Not long after he got here. Don’t really remember how I met him. Couldn’t afford to go to his restaurant. He came looking for me, I guess. He was good at figuring how who might be bought and how to buy them.
“At first it was small jobs. Mainly supplying him with information.”
“Then the jobs got bigger?” Monk pursued.
“Yeah, Robert, then the jobs got real big. As big as they get.”
Robert waited.
“He sent me to San Francisco for the first big job. One of his employees stole forty thousand from him. Greco wanted his money back and he wanted to set an example for his other employees. Wanted them to see what happened if they stole from him.”
“The first one, James?” Robert asked, surprised.
“Yeah, there were others. One in Wyoming. Another in Kentucky.”
Robert felt sick to his stomach listening to his old friend confess to multiple murders.
“And the two in New Orleans?”
“They were expendable,” Hackett, emotionless. “I wouldn’t let them get close to the house. They were intended only to flush us out from behind the brick wall. The world is better off without them.”
“James, the old man who arranged the attack on the Pines told the sheriff it was supposed to be only a diversion,” Robert said, not wanting to hear Hackett’s reply.
“I wasn’t going to kill them, Robert,” Hackett protested. “I was supposed to sneak them out during the attack and get them to a cabin the old man had back out in the woods. Greco wanted me to hold them there to use for leverage if you or anybody else got too close to busting his operation.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because the whole thing was out of control,” Hackett explained. “The old man’s sons started shooting at the cops and the cops shot back. People were being hit. Being killed. There was no way I could get the women and that child safely out of the house.”
“He would have ordered you to kill them sooner or later, James. You know that.”
Hackett poured another glass of vodka. He drank half of it.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have done it, Robert. Really I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have killed that little girl and those two women. I couldn’t do that.”
“I want to believe that, James.”
“You can believe it. I couldn’t do that.”
Hackett downed the remainder of the vodka.
“You know, Robert, you’ve heard it said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die,” Hackett said. “It’s true, you know, but they don’t have it quite right.”
Monk said nothing. He let Hackett talk.
“It doesn’t happen quickly. It plays out in jerks and jumps and stops and starts. I’ve been seeing scenes from my life for years. I’ve relived every day since my first memory. I’ve seen replays of every mistake I ever made. They run through my mind like bad movies. I don’t sleep much anymore. I just lie in bed watching the reruns of my life.”
The two friends were quiet. There was nothing left to be said.
Hackett raised the snub-nosed Korth Sky Marshall revolver and fired. The bullet flew harmlessly over Monk’s left shoulder. Hackett was an expert marksman with a handgun.
Robert Monk raised the Glock he was holding by his side. He was also an expert marksman. His bullet was true.
Now it was over.
A Shooting at Auke Bay Page 21