13
The Boy looked at his rifle. Admired the straight grain walnut stock, well preserved and polished. This was a gun that had served well and been loved accordingly. Thank God he'd been able to free it from that glass prison, from all the idiot gawkers who never felt the power the gun accorded. With this gun, he was carrying on a legacy over a hundred years old, and every time he clicked the set trigger he felt the power of death over life.
So far the gun had been exactly what he'd hoped. Accurate and powerful. He hated how stupid most people were when it came to these guns, ignorant folk who assumed that the rifles of this kind that they saw in the movies were the real
McCoy. Truth was, in the movies they usually used later models that were deemed more attractive. Only folks who could tell their ass from a cartridge chamber knew the truth.
The Boy was being true to the legend, true to his heritage. And soon one more would fall.
And now he sat on the bed, gazing at the weapon that had won so many battles, claimed so many lives.
He heard a scuffling outside. He made out two voices: male and female. The walls in the hotel were about as thick as linen, and he could hear every nearby squeak like it was right next to him.
The people seemed to be negotiating. The man's voice was eager. A little too eager. The woman was talking slowly.
The Boy could feel his blood begin to rise, his fingers grinding against the wood stock of the rifle. Those two outside, they had no idea how close they were to death, that the person less than ten feet away could snuff them out faster than it would take to exchange currency.
But he couldn't. He had to get the rage out, let it dissipate.
He couldn't end the rampage before it had barely begun. He was strong, powerful, had that blood running through his veins. The only thing that could stop him was stupidity.
He heard her mention a dollar amount. The man said, 'Oh hell, yes' loud enough for the grimy bastard at the front desk to hear it.
'Told you I looked like her,' he heard her say.
'No doubt, you got an ass like Athena Paradis,' he responded. That made the Boy smile. 'Just…just let me call you
Athena. Please, baby.'
She didn't say a word, but the moan of pleasure said it all.
They unlocked a door, slipped inside and closed it. Five minutes later, the Boy felt his bed beginning to shake. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Fixing this nuisance would be relatively easy and painless, but nothing positive could be gained from it. There were more important homes for his lead. He took a deep breath, then turned his gaze from the rifle to the magazine splayed out in front of him.
He eyed the man whose photograph lay within its pages.
He was portly, with graying hair that cascaded in waves past his ears, a gut reserved for men who'd lived their later years in a state of complacency rather than diligence. His half-78
Jason Pinter cocked smile was one of condescension. His air was that of a royal walking among subjects who should consider themselves fortunate to lick the shit off his heels. He was one more battle for the Boy to win, boldly and violently.
He knew the man's schedule, when he arrived, when he left, when he ordered lunch, when his secretary came home with him, when he'd grown tired of her and when his children were forced to visit. He knew the exact moment it would happen, knew where the security cameras were positioned and knew he would be gone right as the fear sank in.
Athena Paradis was a masterstroke. He started the crusade by felling the biggest prize. The cop was a mistake, but looking into the man's background it was a mistake prompted by fate. The cop-Mauser-had shot Henry Parker last year, an innocent man. The same Henry Parker who wrote the quote the Boy had left up on that rooftop. He wondered how
Parker felt, if, like the Boy, he was glad Mauser was dead.
The Boy looked at the gun one last time, could picture the bullet crashing through a helpless skull, and went to sleep.
14
Paulina's telephone rang. She hesitated answering it, focusing instead on the morning edition of the Dispatch spread in front of her. Her hand gripped a red pencil. She was already worked up from having to explain to Bynes that a prank caller had impersonated her. That even though she thought Louis
Carruthers was an idiot she wasn't stupid enough to spew a racist diatribe to a receptionist.
She was making small notes in the margins, passages that could have read better, accusations that could have been a little more salacious without bordering on libel. The article on Joe Mauser's murder had been written by some hack in
Metro. Paulina's piece on Athena was on page three. Mauser got page seven. In the kingdom of selling newspapers, heroic cops were cow shit compared to rich heiresses. Way it went, and Paulina didn't think twice.
She looked at her caller ID, recognized the area code, figured if she didn't pick it up he'd just keep calling back. She picked it up.
'What?'
'Miss Cole, it's James.'
'Hi…James.'
'Hi?' Hi as a question. As if the word would offend her.
James Keach was a junior reporter at the Dispatch. About five foot ten, two hundred and ten cookie-dough pounds, with razor's-edge-parted hair that looked ready to recede the moment anyone said anything nasty about it. Just two years out of J-School, James never left the newsroom, followed reporters around like a beagle awaiting a biscuit, and was generally more of a nuisance than anyone you didn't either sleep with or work for had a right to be. The kid had pulled a solid C+ average, but his father was golfing buddies with Ted Allen and apparently promised to give Allen an unlimited supply of mulligans at Pebble Beach if his son was given a shot to learn the ropes. James didn't seem so much eager to learn the ropes as he did to simply climb halfway up and hang on for dear life.
Paulina had given James his very first assignment, which, she stressed, was every bit as important as any story she was working on that year. Seeing as how he'd spent every previous waking moment peeking around the watercooler in the hopes of overhearing gossip, she knew offering Keach a bone would make him salivate.
So last week, while laying out her eventual hatchet job on David Loverne, she decided to bring James into the fold. She wore her highest heels that day, a low-cut blouse, and a sweet new perfume called Sugar. James would have driven a lawn mower to Antarctica to report on penguin migration that day.
His assignment, she told him, was to shadow Henry Parker twenty-four hours a day. Find out where he goes when he's not at home or at the office. Find out who he speaks with and what they speak about. Find out who his friends and enemies are, what he has for breakfast, whether he wears matching socks, everything. She wanted to tie Parker into the Loverne piece, show how a combination of her father's philandering and Parker's snubbing drove poor Mya Loverne over the edge.
For years, Mya had been the consummate politician's daughter. Bright, attractive, never a hair mussed or sentence misspoken. She got good grades, and never got into trouble.
Her life had taken a terrible detour when she was attacked by a man who broke her jaw during an attempted rape. Mya fought him off, but she had never been the same. Paulina attributed this to her disintegrating family and love life, her dreams vanishing in a puff of lies.
And so far James was everything she wanted in a bloodhound: loyal, dependent and weak. If reporting didn't
