He got up from his chair, walked like a sleepwalker into the living room, up the stairs, into his bedroom. He opened the closet, reached up onto the shelf, removed a zipped case, opened it, and stared dazedly at the gun. A Russian Makarov PM automatic pistol. He’d bought it new in 1974. When he had defected, the CIA took the pistol away, but eventually returned it to him. A sign of trust. He sat down on the edge of the bed. There was a box of shells in the case and three empty magazines. The doctor opened the box and began feeding shells into a magazine. He did it slowly, methodically, almost totally unaware of what he was doing. His mind was elsewhere. Miles away, in a small town where a mortician would be opening a body bag.
“God,” he murmured again.
He slid the last bullet into the magazine and slid the mag into the frame. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and held it for ten seconds, then exhaled it slowly as he pulled the slide back to feed a round into the chamber.
The gun was heavy and cold.
It would be quick, though. He knew where and how to place it so that death would be certain. All it would take was a moment’s courage. If courage was the right word. Practical cowardice, perhaps.
Two cold tears boiled out of the corners of his eyes and rolled unevenly over the lines that age, anger, and mania had etched into his cheeks.
He weighed the gun in his palm.
“May God forgive me for what I’ve done,” he whispered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The mortuary was tucked a hundred yards down a winding dead-end road that had been officially renamed Transition Road. The road was bordered by lush evergreens and rampant wildflowers. It always cracked Dez up that there was a big yellow “No Exit” sign right at the turn.
The owner was Lee Hartnup, known as Doc — not because of any medical background, which he did not have, but because he had a PhD. It didn’t matter that his doctorate was in literature with a minor in philosophy, the fact that he had a doctorate at all put him in a very small club within the Stebbins community.
Dez liked Doc. He was a bit of a stiff at times but he was “real people.”
There were several small functional buildings tucked behind a faux mansion used for viewings. There were no lights on and no cars in the lot. The mortuary was around back, so Dez and JT looped behind a thick stand of pines to the service lot. Two cars were parked near a functional-looking rear door. The aloof gray nose of a Cadillac hearse peered out of the shadows of an open garage. A second hearse was up on blocks near it. Dez and JT pulled their cruisers side-by-side, blocking the parked cars. They opened their doors and studied the scene for a moment, then got out.
JT raised his chin at the larger of the two passenger cars, a four-year old silver Lexus. “That’s Doc Hartnup’s. Other one must be the cleaning lady’s.”
The second vehicle was a Ford that was so old and battered that it was virtually impossible to tell the model, year, or color.
The rest of the lot was empty, the morning quiet except for a light breeze that stirred the treetops. The red and blue of their dome lights slashed back and forth across every reflective surface — window glass, the polished skin of the mortician’s car, the dead headlights of the vehicle on blocks.
“Looks quiet,” said Dez.
JT keyed his shoulder mike to channel one. “Dispatch, units on scene. Can you provide location of the witness?”
“No, hon,” said Flower. “I mean, negative. I told her to wait in her car, but she hung up.”
“Copy that.” JT turned to Dez. “Flower said she told the cleaning lady to stay in her car. Maybe she went inside.”
They unsnapped their sidearms as they approached the mortuary, each of them fading to one side to be out of a direct line if someone fired through the door. They came in on good lines of approach, working it like they worked every potential crime scene. The town may have been a no-Starbucks wide spot in a farm road, but they took their jobs seriously.
The cleaning lady had been right. There
“How do you want to play it?” he asked quietly. They didn’t speak in whispers. The sibilant ess sounds of whispers carried farther than ordinary voices speaking low.
Dez studied the door. “No sign of force. Lock’s intact. But I don’t like it, Hoss. Boy Scout motto,” she said.
He nodded and they drew their guns. Glock 22s with a round already in the chamber and a fifteen-round high-capacity magazine in the receiver. They both lived by the “Be Prepared” wisdom.
This felt good to Dez. Just the thing to erase the memories of the Love God laying in his puke on her bedroom floor. This kind of entry — or a call to a bar fight or serving a warrant on a child molester — made her blood pump. It made her feel like crawling out of bed in the morning had some purpose. Dez knew, however, that JT hated this part of police work. He was at the opposite end of the evolutionary scale, and Dez knew it. JT actually believed that the “peace” in “peace officer” meant that the job was all about keeping things dialed down to a no- violence, no ass-kicking state.
JT keyed his shoulder mike. “Dispatch, Unit Four. Hold the air and stand by.”
“Copy.”
“I’m on point,” said Dez. “You, me, left, right.”
Dez put the toe of her shoe against the door, mouth-counted from three and pushed. The door swung inward on silent hinges. Dez and JT faded back for a moment, and then went in fast; she cut left with him covering her, and then he was inside, checking behind the door and clearing the corners. Guns were up and out in two-handed grips, eyes tracking together with the light.
They were in a large utility room, a shed that had long ago been built onto the house. There were cabinets and an industrial washing machine on one wall, shelves with cleaning supplies on the other. The far wall had another door and this also stood ajar.
“I’ve got blood,” barked JT.
“I see it.”
It was impossible to miss. A handprint, small, a woman’s, pressed flat on the wall by the door. Blood trails had run all the way to the floor. That hand would have to have been soaked with blood to leave trails that long. Dez felt a familiar shift inside her head, as if a switch had been thrown. It was something she first experienced midway through her first tour, and it happened all the way through her two tours in Afghanistan. When she tried to describe the feeling to a sergeant over a bottle of Beam in a tent in northeast Afghanistan, the scarred vet said that it was part of the warrior mind. “It’s the caveman mind, the survivor mind,” he’d told her. “It’s when you realize on a deep level that you just stepped out of the ordinary world and are walking point through the valley of the shadow.”
Dez had tried to explain this to JT once, and though he understood on an intellectual level, the bottom line was that he’d never been in the military, he hadn’t walked the Big Sand. And in thirty years on the job, he had never fired his service weapon and had never taken fire. That made a difference, even if neither of them ever said so aloud. He was smart and did everything by the book, but on some level he was a civilian and Dez could never claim that exemption ever again.
The mind shift changed her body language; weight easing onto the balls of her feet, knees bending for attack or flight, eyes blinking less often, hand readjusting on the grip of the Glock. She was aware of it on a detached level.
JT peered at the blood and then leaned back. He gave his lips a nervous lick. “I do not like this, Dez.”
“Liking it’s not part of the job, Hoss.”
Dez used two fingers to turn the knob, and this time JT kicked the door—
