The Killing Kind (25 page)

Pawing through Patty Gunderson’s dopp kit, Hendricks found a pair of tweezers. He ran his left hand under the bathroom tap, rinsing away the drying blood, and found that although he’d been cut multiple times by the shattered rocks glass, none of the cuts were deep. Carefully, he tweezed free what few shards of glass remained, dropping each of them into the trash.

That done, he grabbed a hand towel and filled it with ice, pressing it to his swollen face until the worst of the puffiness had receded. A faint dusky smudge streaked below his right eye, riding the tangent of his orbital socket’s curve across the meat of his cheek, and would likely darken in the hours and days to come. If that proved the worst of his problems, Hendricks would consider it a win.

The shower stung like needles against his skin, and ran pink from clotting undone. Hendricks scrubbed himself clean and then stood beneath the water until it ran clear. When he was finished, he toweled off gently and disinfected his hand with a goodly helping of ol’ Norman’s Aqua Velva. It smelled like Hendricks’s first foster father— a hard, mean man—and it burned like perdition, but it made a fine disinfectant.

Hendricks filled the sink basin and, with Norm’s disposable Gillette, removed the ratty bristle of horseshoe mustache he’d sculpted from his stubble for the job. He used Patty’s tweezers again, this time to thin his eyebrows some and change their shape, softening his standard frown from one of determination to one of worry. He eyed his handiwork for a moment and then picked up the razor once more, using it to take his sideburns up to an unfashionable forty-five-degree angle. The end result was a man who looked little like the cocky cowboy who’d sauntered into the casino this morning. A dab of Patty’s concealer on the bruise beneath his eye, and his transformation was complete.

All that was left to his plan was to wait. So he sat down on the edge of the tub, a bathrobe tied around his frame, to do just that.

He wasn’t waiting long.

The rapping was loud and sharp. Seven in a row, meant not to be ignored.

“That you, Patricia?” Hendricks called, dropping the drawl he’d been affecting in favor of a tone more broadcast-neutral. “Don’t tell me you forgot your key again! Well, hold your horses—I’m in the bathroom!”

He splashed some water on his face—avoiding his makeup job as best he could—and grabbed the razor from the vanity. Then he headed for the door. Hendricks had scarcely disengaged the interior lock before the electronic lock buzzed—unlocked from the outside—and the door swung in toward him. Outside was a blazered, khakied mound of flesh with a buzz cut and spiral-wired earpiece— Pendleton’s security—and a more compact but no less intimidating man in full-on body armor aiming an automatic rifle at him—FBI SWAT. For a millisecond, Hendricks calculated the odds of taking them—grab the SWAT guy’s barrel, force the gunstock into his throat, turn the weapon on his cohort once he crumples and releases it—but he dismissed the thought as soon as it flitted through his consciousness. Fighting wasn’t going to get him out of here.

So instead, he threw his hands in the air, the razor clattering to the floor, and he let out a not entirely manful scream, cowering at the sight of the gun.

“It’s all right, sir—but I’m going to have to ask you to calm down while I search your room. Are you aware, sir, that you’re bleeding?”

“What? I—” The security guard gestured to his own neck, and Hendricks echoed his movement as if uncomprehendingly. He touched the knife wound on his neck and acted surprised when his fingers came back bloody. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, my! I was shaving when you two—and then the knocking startled me, and...wait—what do you mea
n
you have to search my room? What the heck is going on here?”

The two men shared a glance, and the security guard said, frowning, “There’s been an incident. A shooting just off the gaming floor. Can you tell me, sir, who’s registered in this room?”

Hendricks backed away from the doorway, feigning terror. “Me and—I mean, N-n-norm and Patty Gunderson,” he said. “You think the shooter is up here?”

Another glance at each other, a confirmatory nod, and their features softened. “No,” said the SWAT agent. “The shooter’s down. But we think he may have had an accomplice. We’re just covering our bases,” he added, in what he seemed to think was an encouraging tone.

“Was anyone hurt?” Hendricks asked.

No reply. Instead, the two men fanned out inside the room. They checked inside the shower. Under the bed. Behind the heavy curtains.

“Oh, God,” Hendricks said, allowing a note of hysteria to creep into his voice, “was anyone killed?”

“Clear,” said Security.

“Here, too,” SWAT replied. Both acted as though Hendricks wasn’t even there.

“Please, you have to tell me—my Patricia is down there! Patricia Gunderson? She—we...” Hendricks made a show of marshaling his wits, and started over. “I had a little too much to drink with dinner last night—my stomach can’t handle whiskey like it used to—so Patty thought she’d let me sleep it off awhile while she tried her hand at craps. I prefer cards to dice, myself, and she’s got this thing about this being our vacation, like she can’t leave my side for more than a trip to the can, you know? I kept telling her, you want to play, go play, but she never listens to me...”

“Uh, sir?” SWAT said, trying to nudge Hendricks back on track.

“Yes. Right. Anyway, I was feeling lousy, so she let me sleep in and headed downstairs herself. Six hours ago, this must’ve been. You don’t think she’s hurt, do you? You don’t think she’s...”

At that, Hendricks began to cry.

“Sir,” said Security, “I’m sure your wife is fine. We’re going to need you to lock your door and sit tight awhile, okay?”

“Sit tight?
Sit tight?
How do you expect me to sit tight while Patty could be bleeding to death God knows where?” Then, with no small measure of steel: “You have to take me to her. You have to take me downstairs.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.” This from SWAT. “We’ve got a job to do. You wanna help, you’re gonna have to stay put until we complete our search.”

“No.”

A pause. “No?” said SWAT, incredulous. “Are you aware you’re defying an officer of the law?”

“So arrest me,” Hendricks said. “Shoot me if you want. But please, for the love of God, take me downstairs to find Patty.” Though SWAT was resolute, Hendricks saw doubt in Security’s eyes and redoubled his efforts. “If you don’t, I swear I’ll follow you the whole way. You’ll be putting me in danger, and Lord knows, I’ll slow you down.”

That did the trick. Security piped up. “Ah, hell, Cy, what’s the harm? Let me take this guy downstairs to find his wife.”

SWAT was unconvinced. “You can’t abandon me up here—I need you to open the doors. My team’s spread thin enough as it is.”

“It’s a fucking card key, for God’s sake. I think you can manage.”

The SWAT agent stepped into the hall and radioed down to his commander. They conversed a second—muttering punctuated by bursts of static. When he returned to Hendricks’s borrowed room, he looked irritated. “Fine,” he said to the security guard. “Straight down. Straight back.” And then, to Hendricks: “Report directly to the holding area—they’ve set up triage for the victims there, and they’re taking a head count of all evacuees. If your wife’s been injured or”—he swallowed, searching for the proper euphemism—“otherwise accounted for, they’ll know it.”

Hendricks’s features showed relief. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t hard to muster. “Thank you—thank you both so much! I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” He made for the door, all puppy-dog enthusiasm. The security guard stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“Uh, sir?”

“Yes?”

The guard and agent shared a look, both grinning at the kind if ineffectual man standing before them in nothing but a bathrobe. “Don’t you think you ought to put on some clothes first?”

In that moment, Hendricks knew his cover was cemented. These men would pose no problem for him now.

“Clothes! Right!” he said, flashing them a wan smile. He grabbed a pair of underwear, a blue polo with red and white stripes, and a pair of jeans from the Gundersons’ suitcase. He hooked the boat shoes with a finger in each shoe back and tossed them and his clothes onto the bed. Then turned his attention to the two armed men. “Uh, fellas? You mind giving me a little privacy?”

The two men turned around, their gazes trailing toward the ceiling. Hendricks dropped his robe and dressed quickly, mindful of the many bruises that blossomed across his taut, scarred warrior’s frame. If they’d glanced back, or caught his reflection in the mirror on the wall beside them, all his subterfuge would be for naught.

But they didn’t look back. And clothes on—pinching shoes and all—he was Norm Gunderson once more. Loving husband. Hapless guest.

He snatched up his bankroll off the nightstand and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. Then, leaving the SWAT agent to canvass the seventh floor alone, Hendricks and his escort headed toward the elevators.

Toward freedom.

29

“
Agent Garfield? You might wanna get over here. This guy’s got some information you’re gonna wanna hear.” The triage tent was bustling with activity, makeshift cots overflowing with the dying, injured, and just plain terrified—first responders flitting back and forth like flies among them. Garfield wended his way through it toward the woman who called to him—a cute twenty-something paramedic. A half an hour had passed since the SWAT team had declared the ballroom clear. Nearly an hour since Leon Leonwood was executed by Thompson’s so-called ghost— for she and Garfield were certain that’s who it was.

Thompson was rattled by her experience in the banquet hall, of course, as well she should’ve been, having faced down what she thought was certain death. Garfield didn’t need the phantom throb of his long-healed bullet wound— a parting present from the Mara chapter he’d worked so hard to infiltrate—to remind him what that was like. He saw it in the worry lines around his eyes every morning in the mirror. He felt it gnawing at his insides every time he went into the field.

The MS-13 Task Force he’d worked for had placed him with the LAPD, posing as a dirty cop with a taste for blow and Salvadoran women, since being useful and corruptible was the only way into Mara for those who weren’t full-blooded Salvadoran. Turns out he didn’t pose well enough. Even now, six months after the shooting— his wounds healed and the coke habit he’d developed in the line of duty kicked quietly on the Bureau’s dime—he felt empty, a hollowed-out version of the man he’d been before.

He had to hand it to his partner, Thompson—she might come across a ballbuster, but even facing down the barrel of a gun today, she kept her wits enough about her to render a full account of what was said, as well as a half-decent description of her ghost. Seemed he fancied himself a cowboy. Anyway, he wouldn’t be free to roam the prairie long—word was, SWAT had chased him into the ventilation system and had every access point covered. If he made a move, they’d nab him—and if he didn’t, they’d gas him unconscious and go in after him.

Problem was, he only half-believed it. It seemed too pat. Too easy. Not that he could put the feeling into words. But the way his guts were twisted up, it didn’t feel like anticipation of the collar. It felt like worry. Like watching the sky for a big-ass second shoe.

Garfield looked the paramedic up and down. Slight, small-boned, dark-skinned: Hispanic or Latina or whatever. Damn pretty, too—nice body, high cheekbones, doe eyes.

She coulda used a touch of makeup, maybe, but then again, she was on the job.

“Special,” he said, with as much charm as he could muster.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“The title’s
Special
Agent Garfield,” he said.

“Special. Right.” The look on her face suggested she found him anything but.

Garfield heaved a weary sigh and shifted into business mode. There was a time, before the shooting, when he had game—a cocksure swagger women tended to respond to. But ever since, it was like whatever it was they were responding to had atrophied. “All right, then, whaddaya got?”

“White male, forty-five. Illinois license under the name of Alan L’Engle. Claims he tangled with your perp.”

“Leonwood, you mean?”

She flashed him a stern look, as if to say,
No, asshole—I know how to read a fucking memo.
“Not him, the other one. The guy who got away.”