“Fucking glass.”
The building (a shed) grew closer. There was a thirty-foot gap between it and the tree line. It faced the woods width-wise, making visible the closed barn-style doors that would open away from the woods. The adjacent wall had one small window. The roof was slanted toward them and covered with corrugated steel as was the entire structure.
“You know, we don’t even know that he’s clocking us.”
“I don’t care.”
Lynch slid the car next to the shed in a cloud of dirt. Both detectives drew their sidearms and shouldered their doors open. They slid out and crouched behind the doors.
“See him?”
“All I see is grass, trees, and a dirty car window that can be shot through.”
“Stay there a sec.”
Lynch flattened his front softly against the shed and shuffled toward the woods in an effort to get a look around the corner. He grabbed a peek through window on the way. The inside was too dark to see more than silhouettes and a few slivers of sunlight, but he could tell there were no entrances other than the two that were pad-locked from the outside.
“Whatcha got, acho?”
“He isn’t in there.”
Lynch kept moving. The soft ground allowed him to creep along in silence other than the pounding of his heart. As he neared the corner, a gas can came into view followed by the distinct edge of a portable generator. Otherwise, the area between the shed and the tree line appeared empty, but it was difficult to tell.
“Hey, Jaime, can you see that?”
Lynch looked across the hood of his car to see his partner pointing at the woods. Unable to tell what Ernie was talking about, he shrugged and shook his head “no.”
“In the woods, straight ahead of you. Call it fifty feet. It looks like plywood.”
Plywood?
It took some doing to lay eyes on it, but Ernie was right. The distant and knotty corner of a piece of weathered plywood stuck out from the foliage about eight inches. It looked like they were going to have to do what they really, really didn’t want to do. Lynch scurried back around the car door and spoke to his partner across the front seat.
“If we’re going in there, it’s going to have to be cowboy style.”
“Who goes first?”
“I will. You’re the better shot.”
“You’re going to have to check yourself for ticks tonight, you know.”
“I’m starting to hope he is hiding in there. This isn’t exactly going to be a story to tell our grandkids if he isn’t.”
“I’ll count you down.”
“Cowboy style” meant “run like hell across an area without cover, and pray you don’t get shot.” Of the three possible outcomes, obviously the most favorable was that Philip wouldn’t have enough reaction time to fire. Failing that, hopefully he would miss and give away his position to the runner’s partner. Failing that, the afternoon would become academic.
“3…2…1…Go!”
Lynch leapt off his mark. Gomez frantically scanned the trees, readying himself for whatever happened next. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his partner’s blue windbreaker dart across the grass. Five excruciating seconds later, Lynch was on his belly and out of harm’s way.
Nothing.
Lynch readied himself. Gomez repeated the countdown to himself and sprinted a corner route putting him twenty-five feet away from his partner.
Again, the trees stayed quiet.
They worked their way slowly and separately to the plywood. As long as they stayed low, the trees and undergrowth provided the protection they needed…fingers crossed.
Lynch saw the whole of it first.
“Good Lord.”
It was Philip’s clearing, his think tank, his war room. He’d spent countless hours of target practice there. He’d invented and constructed his collapsible tree stand there. Three days earlier, he’d climbed above it, and after a chorus of “You Are My Sunshine,”, tossed a set of costume false teeth into the surrounding trees.
Lynch was sitting on the ground with his back propped up against a 100-year-old red maple taking it all in. The only things to see were plywood, saw horses, and an assortment of tin cans. The sparseness of the décor made the scene no less eerie.
He noticed something about the cans.
The labels had been torn off, but they weren’t blank. One lay less than an arm’s length away, so he snagged it for a closer look. Two painted lines formed an ‘X’ across its center. One was silver; one was gold. He looked for his partner and found him sitting similarly, but facing the opposite direction, across the clearing.
“Hey, Ernie, what do you make of this?”
The can arced across the clearing, landing softly in Ernie’s hands. It took a few seconds for him to recognize the symbol formed by the silver and gold brush strokes. Before he could say anything, his partner was shouting to him.
“What are those lines supposed to be? Swords?”
“No…keys. It’s a papal symbol.”
“A paper symbol??”
“No acho, papal! It’s a symbol of The Pope.”
Lynch’s heart rate slowed.
Good enough for me.
He was glad he hadn’t left his cell phone in the car.
10. Up a Tree
Philip had been watching the entire process from his favorite tree; the one he was sitting in the day before he did the Archbishop.
He had to respect them for tracking him to his uncle’s woods, despite their ineffective method of approach. They did some jazz with their car that he couldn’t really see, followed by some running that reminded him of the last scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Spoiler alert fellas: They die at the end.
Eventually, their ill-conceived plan had them sitting still.
He braced his shooing arm on a convenient branch. He recognized them from the press conference, and the rehearsal interruption at the church. There was no clear shot at Detective Lynch. He could nick a shoulder at best.
Or perhaps his elbow. What’s he doing?
Detective Gomez, however, was facing Philip straight-on. The distance between Philip and the clearing was less than twice the length of the clearing itself. He remembered the bull’s-eye he made after throwing the teeth…lucky shot? Maybe, but he did it with little effort and an obstructed view.
He could do
