Criminal Intent (MIRA) (36 page)

Except for the occasional chatter of a chipmunk and the buzzing of the mosquitoes that hovered, waiting to dive like heat-seeking missiles, the woods were eerily silent. If he hadn’t known that Route 113 was just a quarter mile away, he might have thought he was lost deep inside some enchanted forest straight out of the Brothers Grimm. He half expected to stumble across a gingerbread cottage owned by a witch who liked to dine on innocent children. Or maybe on a pair of middle-aged cops whose firearms were useless against her evil magic.

Without warning, they staggered into daylight so bright he had to shade his eyes until they adjusted. “See?” Pete said. “I told you.”

Dropping back into the edge of the woods, they took stock of the situation. They were about a hundred yards out back of the Letourneau homestead, which made Gram’s crumbling house look like Donald Trump’s summer place. Two cars were parked near the back steps, a white Camry and a beige Oldsmobile. The back door of the house hung partway open. Twittering birds flitted from branch to branch in the lilacs bordering an old stone wall that probably marked the property line, but there was no sound from the house.

“What do you think?” Pete said. “Do we dare to just walk up, brazen and bold, and hope to God he doesn’t see us? Or do we wait and see what comes down?”

Neither scenario was ideal. Both scenarios were risky. Inside the house with a hired killer were three civilians, including the woman he loved and her fifteen-year-old daughter. If he made the wrong decision, it could lead to a bloodbath. Tossing the ball back into Pete’s court, he asked, “What do you think?”

Studying the house and those three hundred feet of waving grass between their hiding place and the back door, Pete thought
on it for a minute. “I say we go for it. If he has three hostages in there, he’s probably too busy right now to be watching his back.”

“Good call.” His respect for Pete Morin, as an officer and a human being, took a sharp upturn. “I’ll go first. You stay here and cover me. If we walk up to the house together, he could pick us both off with a couple of shots.”

“You’re the chief,” Pete said. “I’m more expendable. You should be the one that waits here.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me to watch your back?”

“I’ve had time to reconsider.”

“At some point in time, I imagine I’ll appreciate that. Right now, I don’t have time. Don’t make a move until I tell you to.” Pete started to protest, but Davy held up a hand to stop him. “My woman,” he said. “My job.”

“Well, don’t go getting your ass shot, then, because I don’t want to have to be the one to break the news to her.”

“The envelope?” Teddy said, holding out his hand.

Breathing hard, her entire body trembling, she told him, “We had a deal. The envelope for my daughter. Where the hell is Sophie?”

“In the living room.”

Still clutching the envelope, Annie shoved past him, heedless of the fact that he could easily put a bullet between her shoulder blades. The crooked wooden floors creaked when she walked over them. They were littered with the detritus of a dozen teenage social gatherings: empty pizza boxes, beer bottles, a used condom or two. Apparently the NO TRESPASSING sign at the end of the driveway had done nothing to discourage the local kids from turning the place into party central. Sophie sat in a darkened corner of the living room, pale as new-fallen snow, her formerly stringy black hair trimmed into a short blond cut that made her look about twelve
years old. Her hands and feet were tied with an old rope, and even from twelve feet away, Annie could see the blood-speckled, angry red marks where the rope had chafed her.

“Mom,” Sophie said, and started to cry. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

“Oh, God, Soph.” Annie flew across the room, knelt and gathered her daughter close. “It’s not your fault, baby. None of this is because of you. This is all my fault.”

“I thought I’d never—” Sophie hiccupped “—see you again.”

Fiercely, Annie said, “Did you really think I wouldn’t come after you?”

Her blue eyes awash with tears, Sophie said, “He’s going to kill us, Mom. Somebody paid him to kill us. Why would they do that? All because of what Daddy put in that envelope?”

Edging her body gradually between Sophie and the man with the gun, Annie said bitterly, “Marcus Brogan paid him. And yes, it’s all because of this damnable envelope.” For the first time since this nightmare began, she was furious with Mac. His obsession had led to this. He was dead, Boyd was dead, Luke Brogan was dead, all because he hadn’t been able to let it go. Pretty soon they’d all be dead, all because of her husband, the Great Crusader.

“The envelope, Mrs. Spinney.”

“Take it, you bastard!”

She flung it at him with all her might. It landed on the floor by his feet. Pointing with the gun, he told Louis, “Pick it up.”

Louis briefly met her eyes before he bent and picked up the envelope and handed it to Teddy. “Go sit over there with them,” Teddy told him. Holding the envelope between his elbow and the side of his body, he peeled it open with the fingers of his free hand and removed the contents. His eyes quickly
skimmed the first page. Looking thoughtful, he dropped the envelope, took the raft of papers in his hand, and flipped through a few pages.

He looked back at Annie, a single dark brow raised in question. “This isn’t the original,” he said. “This is a photocopy.”

“That’s right,” she said, her face set in a mask of defiance. “It is.”

He looked pained. “I’m a patient man, Mrs. Spinney,” he said, “but this is getting to be too much for even me. Where’s the original?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

He blinked as if in surprise before that smooth mask slipped back over his face and he smiled. “Fucking amazing,” he said. “Defiant to the end, aren’t you? It’s really a shame that I have to shoot you.”

“I’m the only person who knows where the original is. If you kill me, you’ll never find it. I doubt that Marcus Brogan will be impressed.”

“How about if I shoot your daughter? Maybe that will loosen your lips.”

“You’ll have to go through me to get to her,” Annie said, trying to will herself to be bigger, so she could more easily shield her child. “That would defeat your purpose.”

Beside her, Louis edged closer. “You’ll have to go through both of us,” he said.

God bless you,
she thought.
God bless you, Louis Farley.

“Hmm. We do have a dilemma, then, don’t we?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “The envelope for my daughter. You let her go, I’ll tell you where the original is.”

Teddy dropped the stack of papers. They skimmed and skittered their way to the floor.

“Bravo,” he said. “I’m impressed. But…no. I don’t think so. Really, Mrs. Spinney, I’m not that gullible. And just how far
do you think she’d get before I catch up to her? I’m a hired killer. It’s what I do for a living, and I’m pretty good at it. I don’t let people get away. Maybe you’d like a little demonstration.” Smoothly, without a moment’s hesitation, he turned the gun on Louis Farley.

And pulled the trigger.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this naked, but it had probably been while he was asleep. One of those recurring dreams where you had to go back to high school, and there you were sitting in class with a bunch of sixteen-year-olds, and suddenly you realized you’d forgot your clothes and were sitting there buck-ass naked. Wading through unmowed grass up to his ass, waiting for the lunatic inside the house to take a potshot at him, felt an awful lot like that dream. And crossing those three hundred feet of empty space, like a lone gazelle crossing the savanna, gave him plenty of time to think about his life and what he might have done differently. He hadn’t been any saint, that was for sure. He wondered if this was what they meant when they said your whole life flashed in front of your eyes just before you died.

With his stomach somewhere in the vicinity of his tonsils, he moved steadily toward the house, that old chestnut playing over and over in his head:
There’s a thin line between a brave man and a fool.
Today, he’d crossed the line for sure. How the hell he’d gotten to this place was a mystery. A week ago, he’d simply been living his pathetic little life, struggling each day to get through those empty hours between sunup and sunset. Then he’d seen Annie Kendall standing by the side of the road, and his world had gone upside down. She’d taken him on a hell of a ride, and somehow he’d ended up here, an empty shell of a man crossing an open field, waiting to get his ass shot off, empty because his heart and all the rest of his insides were in there, with her, the woman who’d brought the light back into his life.

He’d
never been so scared. Scared of dying on this beautiful summer day when the lowering sun painted deepening shadows beneath the trees and around the foundation of the old house. Scared of losing her, the one good thing he’d found in thirty-eight years of living. Scared that what they’d found would be cut off before it even got a chance to start. Scared that they’d both live through this nightmare, and they’d get their chance after all, and he’d somehow manage to fuck it up the way he’d fucked up every other chance life had thrown his way. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. It was the way he’d lived his entire life.

He was three-quarters of the way to the house when he heard the gunshot. In an instant, it all dissipated, all the fear, all the insecurity, all the uncertainty. The cop in him took over, and somehow his gun was in his hand, and he didn’t remember drawing it. With a furious hand signal that he hoped to Christ Pete saw, he took off running.

He took the back steps in a single leap and slithered through the narrow opening into an old country kitchen with an ancient slate sink and checkered oilcloth tacked up on the walls. From somewhere at the front of the house, he could hear sobbing. He thought it was Sophie, but he couldn’t be sure. That meant that at least one of them was still alive. Davy kicked off his shoes and tiptoed across the kitchen. Hugging the wall, he inched forward, trying not to breathe, trying not to make a sound that would give him away.

Then he heard Annie’s voice, strong and frightened and furious, and for an instant, his knees went weak. “You bastard,” she said as Davy leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and sucked in a ragged breath. “You monster! He never did anything to you!”

An unfamiliar male voice said, “He was expendable.”

“Human beings are never expendable!”

“I told you, Mrs. Spinney. This is what I do. I’m not the least
bit squeamish. You and your daughter are nothing more to me than names inside a file folder.”

“How the hell do you sleep at night, Teddy?”

“It’s just a job,” the man said as Davy began inching forward again. “I don’t take my work home with me at night. I sleep like a baby.”

He reached the living room doorway. The man named Teddy stood in the middle of the room, facing away from him, but he could see Annie clearly, huddled with Sophie on the floor beneath the window, could see the blood all over her clothes. Davy’s heart lurched until he realized that it wasn’t her blood. It had come from the man lying silently on the floor beside her.
Louis,
he thought. Whoever the hell Louis was.

“If you don’t tell me where it is,” Teddy said, “your kid will be next.”

His heartbeat thundering in his ears, Davy inched forward. She hadn’t seen him yet, didn’t know he’d come for her. Sitting there bold as noon, trying to shield her daughter with her slender body, Annie Kendall raised her chin. “You’re going to kill us anyway, aren’t you?” The tremor in her voice gave away her fear, but that didn’t stop her.
Annie,
he thought.
Oh, Christ, Annie.
“If you do,” she said, “I’ll take the secret with me to my grave.”

In his stocking feet, he slid a half inch closer. Another half inch, and then Sophie saw him. Recognition widened her eyes. He lifted a finger to his lips as Annie said, “Just know that I have a friend in Detroit who has a key to my safe-deposit box and instructions to look there if anything should happen to me. Inside the box, there’s a letter telling everything, including where to find Mac’s original envelope.”

Davy inched closer, so close he had to hold his breath so his breathing would give him away.

“Let her go,” Annie said. “She’s just a little girl. This is between me and Brogan. It’s not her battle.”

“Sorry,” Teddy
said. “No can do. But it looks like you’ve covered all the bases and I’m wasting my time here.” He raised his shooting arm. “
Adieu,
Mrs. Spinney. Sorry we couldn’t come to an agreem—”

Davy pressed the muzzle of his gun to the back of Teddy’s head. “You pull that trigger,” he said in a deadly quiet voice, “and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Annie gasped. She breathed his name, half greeting, half prayer.

“Well, well,” Teddy said. “If it isn’t a member of the local constabulary.”

“Drop the gun, Teddy.”

“You shoot me, I shoot her.” His words were brash, but nowhere near as confident as they’d been just fifteen seconds ago. “Looks like we’re at an impasse.”

There was a horrific splintering sound as Pete Morin kicked in the rotted front door. He came through it like a charging bull—and about the same size—his gun drawn and aimed directly at Teddy’s heart. “Wrong,” he said. “Now be a good boy and drop the fucking gun.”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t,” Pete said, “I’ll kill you with one shot.”

“Is it really worth it?” Davy said. “I heard you tell her that it’s just a job. You really want to go down over somebody else’s beef?”

“I have a reputation to protect.”

“I’ll make sure they etch that on your gravestone.” With deceptive casualness, he said, “If I were you, I’d cooperate. I used to be a federal agent, Teddy, and I can tell you right now, there’s nothing the feds like better than making deals. Of course, that’s up to you. If it was up to me, I’d shoot you right here.”

Teddy considered his words, considered the relative merits of ten years in prison versus certain death, and shrugged. Slowly
lowering his arm, he loosened his fingers, and the gun dropped to the floor.