Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (20 page)

     But when it came to shooting craps or playing poker, he always seemed to roll the right numbers or flip up the right card when it counted.

     While Robbie was walking down Broadway, just a couple of blocks from the zoo, he spotted the black and white patrol car coming toward him.

     It was two blocks away, and moving slowly, the officer behind the wheel watching and looking… but for what?

     Had they discovered the chief’s body already?

     Doubtful. Every available unit would have been pulled off of routine patrol and gone screaming toward the chief’s house.

     And Robbie hadn’t heard a single siren since he rolled the grenade between the chief’s feet.

     Maybe they were looking for him. He had no doubt he was the most wanted man in the city. Possibly the most hated too, at least from the police department’s perspective.

     Maybe whoever was watching out the open window of the squad car was hoping to be the one who shot Robbie or brought him to justice. Maybe he’d be the one to score some major brownie points with Chief Martinez. Maybe he’d win a coveted promotion to Sergeant for his efforts.

     Maybe not.

     Maybe instead, he’d die today.

    The patrolman was looking inside abandoned cars on Broadway as he bobbed and weaved around them. They’d been sitting in these same spots, testament to the great blackout several years before and mankind’s inability to clean up its mess. Now covered with cobwebs and dust, their windows broken by rioters and looters, their tires mostly flat.

     Grass had started to grow between the cracks in the pavement and had started the painfully slow process of covering the street in a blanket of green. It would take many years, and many decades for the cars themselves to become covered.

     For now the cars served as shelter to many of the city’s homeless, as well as the occasional fugitive from justice.

     Corporal Mike Oglesby had celebrated his third anniversary on the force just the day before. He knew Robbie Benton, but only peripherally. They’d done morning standup together many times, but had never partnered. At social functions they typically ran in different circles. Oglesby was a social sort who enjoyed the company of a wide range of people, and worked the room at a party much like a politician worked the crowd at a rally.

     Robbie Benton had only a small handful of friends on the force. They weren’t really friends in the traditional sense. At least as most people would see them. Rather, they were the people who would tolerate Robbie and his moodiness, his long periods of silence, of brooding, of anger at the world.

     Robbie typically didn’t stay long at social events. He avoided them at all costs. When it was something he couldn’t get out of, like the annual Christmas party or promotion parties, he went begrudgingly.

     A few of officers in the department called those types of events “mandatory fun,” and only attended because they wanted to appear to be a team player. Robbie was one of that group. The only group he ever really belonged in, the social misfits and borderline outcasts.

     When he went to one such event, Robbie clung to a small group in the crowd he could relate to or get along with. Then he’d leave as soon as he saw the chief. Or more accurately, the chief saw him. Once his name was ticked off in Chief Martinez’ mind that Robbie had attended, Robbie would typically slip out the back door.

     Had Robbie welcomed Mike Oglesby’s attempts to make friends with him and played nice, the two might have gotten along famously. Oglesby shared Robbie’s love for animals and Mexican food. They both shared a love for reading, although Robbie’s selection of reading material was a bit on the darker side.

     They might have become friends if Robbie had only let them. But he hadn’t. And now here they were, one on each side of justice.

     And the very last time Oglesby would see Robbie Benton was in the split second before he died.

-43-

     Robbie could tell, as the cruiser slowly made its way up the street toward him, that the officer behind the wheel was focusing on the abandoned cars. He hid behind a park bench advertising a local law office.

     “Baines and Carson, the Fighter Attorneys: We’ve got your back!” The advertisement was peeling now, the glue having long before weakened and allowing the corners to curl.

     Nobody ever had Robbie’s back.

     No one.

     Robbie checked his weapon to make sure there was a round in the chamber and the safety was off. Then he merely waited, his back to the back of the bench. Killing had come easy for him. He wasn’t nervous or jittery. He wasn’t having second thoughts about what he was getting ready to do or why he was doing it. He wasn’t arguing with his own conscience about whether it was right or wrong to take another human life.

     His mind was clear. He wasn’t really thinking at all.

     He was just listening.

     The SAPD motor pool staff worked hard to keep their vehicles running. They had damn few of them, and they were getting old. Parts were getting harder and harder to find. Finding qualified mechanics was even harder.

     There wasn’t a single patrol car in the division that didn’t have a few minor defects. They were tolerated, since having a car with a door that didn’t close properly or whose heater didn’t work beat the heck out of walking.

     Oglesby’s car, unit 226, was one of the best ones in the fleet. It ran fairly smoothly, except that one of the bearings was shot and it made a constant high-pitched squeal under the hood. It didn’t affect the car’s performance, at least not yet, because the SAPD hadn’t been on a high-speed chase in years. The cruisers were babied, seldom being driven over thirty miles an hour.

     The squeal was a bit annoying, sure. But it something the officers could tune out after a few minutes.

     Unit 226 wasn’t assigned to any particular officer, and was one of the cars pool officers ran for after morning standup each day. The one who got to it first could be reasonably certain he’d make it back to the station on time at the end of his shift. Others might be waiting inside their broken down units all over town waiting for maintenance to get them going again.

     But it wouldn’t be that way for long.

     Unit 226 would soon be a pariah.

     Robbie knew it was unit 226 even when it was half a block away and he couldn’t see the numbers. The screeching cry of the engine was unmistakable.

     And it made Robbie’s job much easier. For he didn’t have to watch from behind the bus stop and risk being spotted.

     He merely hid until the noise was just on the other side of the bus stop, then stepped around it, raised his weapon and fired.

     Oglesby never had a chance.

     He did see Robbie, attracted by the rogue cop’s sudden movement in the corner of his eye.

     But by the time the vision of Robbie, rifle already raised, registered in his mind there was nothing he could do.

     It only took one shot. From a distance of only twenty feet or so, it was damn near impossible to miss.

     And there was no denying the bullet found its mark. It entered through Oglesby’s left eye socket and traveled through his head, destroying brain tissue as it went. Then the bullet took out a sizeable piece of the back of the man’s skull, spraying blood, brain matter and bone shards all over the interior of the vehicle.

     Unit 226 would lose its reputation as one of the best vehicles in the fleet on this day. From this day forward it would be the unit the other officers avoided at all costs. For even after the gruesome and painstaking cleanup was done, it would have a reputation as a death vehicle. An unlucky unit. Some would even spread rumors that it was haunted. That weird things happened in the unit while on patrol.

     Especially at night, and especially when the moon was full.

     Unit 226 would be destined to be the last car to leave the motor pool lot, each and every shift. Officers would only drive it when they had to.

     Her glory days were over. She just didn’t know it yet.

     As for Corporal Mike Oglesby, his days were all over. Glory and otherwise.

     He left behind a wife and young daughter, both of whom worshipped him and who were supremely proud of his service to the city of San Antonio.

     In death, he joined three other children he’d lost to the plague. And a mother and father who’d taken their own lives in the days just after the blackout.

     He’d have plenty of company in heaven.

     And he’d never have to worry about seeing Robbie Benton’s face again.

     For Robbie Benton would eventually go to a far different place.

     Oglesby’s body slumped over the open window frame and blood poured down the outside of the car door. The cruiser continued to roll forward until it bumped against the back of an abandoned Ford Explorer that was blocking its way.

     Robbie moved quickly, but not in a panic. At one time in San Antonio, a gunshot in a quiet neighborhood such as this generated dozens of frantic calls to the 911 center.

     Those days were gone forever. The 911 center no longer existed. It went the way of the telephones, which were all totally destroyed in the blackout.

     Gunshots themselves were not uncommon. They weren’t as numerous as they were in the early days of the rioting. But even now, random street violence was not uncommon, and hunting for rabbits and squirrels was now legal in the city limits.

     The only thing now that might spoil Robbie’s plans was if another officer heard the shot and came to investigate it.

     But SAPD officers were spread very thin. Chances were that any other officers close enough to hear the shot would have been too far away to determine its origin.

     Unless he just happened to be nearby.

     But that would mean that Robbie’s luck had run out.

     And Robbie refused to consider that possibility.

     In Robbie’s mind, his streak of good luck would last forever.

     However long forever was.

-44-

     Robbie opened the door and Oglesby’s body slumped forward onto his feet.

     Robbie cursed. Bastard should have been wearing a damn seatbelt. Now Robbie had brains and blood all over his shoes.

     He reached in and placed the vehicle in park, then pulled the patrolman’s body out onto the street.

     He dragged it away from the cruiser and dropped it with a sickening thud behind a Cadillac that looked good but that would never run again.

     When he straightened up again he saw two boys in their early teens, straddling their bicycles and watching him closely from across the street.

     Robbie thought about pulling his handgun, but he might need the bullets for somebody more important later in the day.

     Instead, he demanded of the boys, “What the hell are you two looking at?”

     The words were just as effective as the bullets. The boys mounted up and rode away quickly, lest they incur the full wrath of the man who’d just killed the policeman.

     They were no threat to Robbie or to his mission. They had no way to contact the police, unless they just happened to stumble across another one. And if they managed to find one and described Robbie, so what? They were already looking for Robbie anyway, and probably had plans to shoot him on sight.

     But they wouldn’t have to search for Robbie much longer.

     Robbie took his stumbling upon Oglesby on patrol as an omen. An omen that things were going his way, and that he should go ahead and proceed with his plans.

     With any luck, by the end of the day more bodies in blue would pile up.

     If Robbie died as well, that was okay by him. His life sucked anyway. It had for a long time.

     He wondered if the fiery pits of hell would be any worse than life on a miserable earth.

     He’d already taken three lives on this particular day, and the day was still young. As he climbed behind the wheel, he wondered what the record was for killing policemen on one single day, in one single act. He remembered walking down the main hallway of police headquarters, and pausing in front of a marble sculpture. The sculpture depicted a policeman, looking toward a heavenly light, his arm outstretched toward another cop. It was commissioned by a local artist to pay tribute to fallen SAPD officers, and depicted the time when a fallen hero departed the earth and left his brothers in blue behind.