They met in the dark alongside the droning hum of the electrical substation not far from Zeller’s former home; its mechanics were silhouetted against the sky like a giant schematic. It had snowed an inch, the first of the year, and the temperature had dropped into the twenties. Dart arrived first and was shivering by the time Zeller approached telegraphing the pain he was in without meaning to. Alverez had clearly wounded him back in the sewers.
Dart was for moving out from under the loud hum of the overhead wires. He strained toward the wooded darkness. “This shit makes too much noise,” Dart complained, glancing overhead. Stepping closer to Zeller, he pointed into the dark.
“You’re jumpy. Take it easy.” Zeller’s voice was tight. Dart worried for him.
“Are you all right?”
“Fucking peachy. Thanks.”
“What now?”
Zeller said, “It’s my job to sell you on leaving these as suicides. Let Martinson take the fall she deserves.” He paused. “I’d like to tell you that I’ll turn myself in, but I won’t. I’m not going to be locked up.”
“It’s too late,” Dart explained. “I’ve already convinced Teddy Bragg and Haite that they were
“Well, there you go,” Zeller said. “Go along with him. Let them stand.”
“It won’t bring down Roxin. Martinson has dropped the names of the suicides from their list of participants- covered her bases.”
It was difficult to see in the dark, but Dart thought that he saw Zeller nod, as if he had expected something like this. His voice colored by pain and discouragement, Zeller said, “She pulls that off, and it’s all been for nothing.” He added, “Bitch.”
“I think you’re wrong about the files-the records of the clinical trials,” Dart said, taking control of where they should head. He couldn’t remember contradicting Zeller so directly. “Being deleted,” he continued. “Shredded. Does that sound like Martinson? You say they’ve been in clinical trial for years. A person like her-a devoted scientist-is
“Bullshit. It’s gone.”
“Hidden, maybe, but not gone.” He explained, “She needs that data. She created that data. It’s important to her. She won’t destroy it.”
“I disagree.”
“If I’m her, I destroy all physical evidence of those files, but only
“And what? You’re going to subpoena it?”
“We’ve got Ginny,” Dart reminded him.
“The computer? You think Martinson has it in a computer?” Zeller asked, amused by the absurdity.
“Where else? Password protected. Safe. Easy to get at-but impossible for anyone else to access.”
“Doubtful, Ivy. It’s gone. She shredded it.” He reminded, “I was
“Shredded, maybe, but not destroyed.”
“You’re not making sense,” Zeller said angrily. “She’s not going to give you those files, Ivy, believe me. You make noise about them and she’ll destroy them, sure as shit.”
“Maybe that’s what we want,” Dart said obliquely. “For her to erase them.”
“Make some fucking sense, would you?” Zeller reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a mashed cigar. He tore open the crinkled cellophane and broke the cigar in half where it was torn, stuffed it into his mouth, and bit a piece off the end, spitting it out. Zeller located a match, cupped it, lit the cigar. “I fucked this up, Ivy. What I’m trying to tell you”-he puffed on the cigar and blew out the flame-” is that it’s over.”
Dart saw a small red dot blink against the fence’s galvanized pipe. It seemed like nothing more than the lingering aftermath of Zeller’s lighting the match, but Dart’s sight remained fixed and the dot moved.
It moved quickly toward Zeller’s head, and Dart identified it for what it was: an electronic sighting device used by marksmen. The red dot touched the fence behind Zeller’s shoulder and then quickly found his neck.
Dart slapped out with his open hand, catching a stunned Zeller on the side of the face and knocking him to the side. Zeller stumbled, dropped the cigar, and fell.
To Dart, the bullet sounded like a thin, fast wind at ear height. Zeller didn’t hear it. He misunderstood, shoving the detective away and prepared to fight. When the red dot found Dart’s cheek, Zeller lurched forward and returned a life-saving shove. Dart went down into the wet snow as the second bullet splintered off a piece of a tree trunk behind them. The two immediately crawled toward the cover of the trees, their attention fixed on the other man, alert for the glowing red dot of the assassin. As the dot found Zeller’s back, Dart hissed, “Right!” and the sergeant rolled to his right. The ground, where he’d been crawling a fraction of a second before, exploded into mud and dirt. “Right,” Dart instructed again, and again the earth erupted under the power of the bullet. Zeller came to his knees and crawled fast, aware that the marksman was locked onto him, that all it required of the killer was to sweep the sight back and forth and await the signal. Dart moved left, intentionally widening the space between them, to give the marksman a larger dead space where the technology would fail to send a signal.
But it was Zeller the red dot hunted, and Dart experienced an increasing sense of dread. “Left … right …” He called out commands, attempting to steer him clear, knowing well that the laser at the end of a weapon was faster, far more agile than its human target.
A piece of Zeller’s leg exploded as a bullet hit from behind. Zeller splashed facedown in the muck.
“Roll!” Dart coughed out, emotion choking him. The dot wandered onto Zeller’s ribs and then froze there.
The sergeant rolled, but not before Dart heard the distinctive sound of another bullet taking a piece of him. Zeller groaned, came to his knees, and scrambled to his right in a zigzag pattern. The ground around him came alive with a series of small explosions. Dart raced ahead toward the trees, feeling helpless, looking on as Zeller’s efforts slowed.
Dart spun around, withdrew his weapon, and stretched into a prone position. He fired blindly into the dark. The shot echoed loudly. The red dot weaved across the open space toward him. Dart searched for the source of that light but saw nothing. He fired again. A wounded Zeller hurried on hands and knees into the woods, like a crippled dog.
Dart’s attention divided between the red dot as it raced across the snow toward him, and the seething darkness that hid the shooter. If he rolled to his left, he would meet the laser. To roll to his right would only disorient him. He held his ground, his heart pounding, his finger begging to squeeze off another round.
Zeller fired two consecutive shots, intentionally drawing the red dot away from Dart and back toward himself.
The shooter was good. He knew that his targets had turned to face him, that his next shot, although silenced, would produce a muzzle flash identifying his location. The flash would give either Dart or Zeller-or both-a target to aim at. By challenging him, Dart and Zeller forced him to reconsider spraying bullets at them. The laser wandered across the snow, the full attention of both cops fixed to it. It moved toward Zeller, stopped, and headed back toward Dart. Zeller scrambled backward, still facing in the direction of the shooter, but moving toward, and finally reaching, the woods. He pulled himself to a position partially blocked by a tree.
Dart lay prone, his weapon aimed in front of him, but his eyes on the lethal red dot sweeping the snow. It edged steadily closer:
Zeller, also tracking its progress, fired yet another round and then quickly rolled away, attempting to escape having made himself a target with his own muzzle flash.
The dull red dot jerked wildly in Zeller’s direction. The sergeant fired again, buying time for Dart as he scrambled farther back into the woods. He lost sight of the small red dot, causing panic-his world had been reduced to this one small orb of red light; to misplace it could mean death.
Red light flashed in his left eye. Dart jerked his head away as if from a burning match. The tree trunk that he was pressed against exploded, and wooden shrapnel splintered his face, clouding his vision and temporarily blinding him. He knew then that he was a dead man-couldn’t see, couldn’t flee the all-seeing laser. He would be targeted and killed. He pressed himself flat to the ground, reducing his profile while frantically trying to clear his eyes of the
