The Pardon

He led with his gun as he raced up the stairs and burst into the room. Gina stood in her green satin robe, frozen beside Cindy’s brass bed. She was alone. He caught his breath and stared. The pink bedspread had been neatly turned down, revealing clean white sheets that were smeared with something bright red and wet that looked like blood. He reached down and touched it.

“Ketchup,” Gina said, nodding toward the empty bottle on the floor, which had been taken from her refrigerator.

He cautiously approached Cindy’s bed, his gut wrenching as he imagined what might have happened here tonight. He knew better than to touch anything, but he could tell there was something beneath Cindy’s pillow- something, he figured, that whoever had been here tonight had wanted him to find. He gently took the corner of the pillowcase between his fingertips. Slowly, with arms fully extended so that he could stand as far away as possible, he raised the pillow.

“Jack,” her voice trembled, “what the hell are you doing?”

He ignored her. He kept lifting, slowly, until he saw it. A flower-a chrysanthemum.

“Goss,” he said as he lowered the pillow back into place.

Suddenly, the phone rang. Jack’s eyes locked with Gina’s. Her panicked expression said there was no way she was going to pick up. “Hello,” he answered, trying to sound calm.

Four blocks away at a pay phone on the street, a man in torn blue jeans and a yellowed undershirt stood in the murky shadows of a flickering streetlight, pressing the receiver to his ear and covering the mouthpiece with a rag. “You came early to my party,” he said accusingly.

Jack took a deep breath. It was the same voice, but the tone was different. The man was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running, and his voice trembled as he spoke.

“You came early, Swyteck. And now I’m very angry.”

Jack stayed on the line but was unable to speak, paralyzed by the crazed panting of a madman so furious he was gasping for breath. “Please,” Jack said, “let’s talk.”

“I said four-thirty A.M.,” he seethed. “And I meant four-thirty A.M. This is your last chance. Be there-at four-thirty.”

Jack started to say something, but the phone went dead. His hand shook as he hung up.

“What was that?” Gina asked with fear.

He looked at her. “My final invitation,” he said.

Chapter 16

Two hours later, Miami was in its deepest phase of sleep, that eerie, silent period just after the last drunk makes it home for the evening and just before the first early bird leaves for work. There was a knocking, then a pounding at the door. Eddy Goss rose from his bed and listened, wondering if he’d really heard something. Another round of pounding told him he wasn’t dreaming. He rolled out of bed and paused, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He couldn’t switch on a light; they’d shut the power off when he failed to pay his last bill. He took small, precarious steps out of his bedroom and toward the door, somewhat leery of answering the knock. He reached under the couch cushion and retrieved his revolver, then pressed his face to the door and looked through the peephole. The bulb hanging outside his apartment was out, and all he could distinguish was a distorted silhouette. He recognized the dark blue police uniform, however, so he tucked the gun away. Convicted felons weren’t allowed to have guns. He opened the door and presented himself in the same cocky way he always addressed cops.

His face showed confusion as he stared into the eyes of the man in uniform. “What the hell-” he started to say, but before he could get the next word out, the intruder burst inside the apartment, slammed the door behind him, and shoved Goss against the wall. He had no time to think, no time to fully understand what was happening. In half a second, the look of horror that he’d seen in so many of his own young victims overtook his face as he stared down the marksman’s tunnel of death and swallowed two silenced bullets that pierced his cheeks and blew his brains out the back of his skull. He slid to the floor, smearing a bright red streak against the wall and landing with a thud, a twisted heap in a pool of blood. His lifeless body lay in the dark shadow of his executioner. Then the door opened quietly, and in an instant the shadow was gone-down the dimly lit hall, down the stairs, and back onto the street, carried away from the scene and into the night by the lonely echo of worn leather heels pounding on the pavement. . like just any other beat cop making his rounds.

PART THREE

Tuesday, August 2

Chapter 17

At 5:25 A.M. a frantic 911 call came in to the department. A crimson pool of blood had seeped beneath the closed door to Goss’s apartment, staining the hallway’s dirty green carpet. A neighbor had spotted it coming home from her night shift at the county hospital. The address she gave to the dispatcher would have been familiar to any homicide detective in the city, with all the publicity the Goss trial had received. Any one of them would have been tickled to see Goss get his due. But the chief of the homicide division knew exactly who should answer the call.

“Jump in your car, Lon,” he said as he rushed into the office of Detective Lonzo Stafford. The venetian blinds rattled against the glass door as it swung open. “Sun ain’t even up, and I’m about to make your day.”

Stafford looked up from the Miami Herald sports section spread out on his desk. As usual, he was in his cubicle of an office a full ninety minutes before his 7:00 A.M. shift officially began, sipping coffee and dunking doughnuts. Stafford had been in law enforcement for almost forty-five years, a detective for nearly twenty. He was an ex-marine and a workaholic who filled nearly all his free time with overtime. Some said he worked longer hours because he’d lost a step with age-that he had to push a little harder to get less satisfactory results, like a magic lamp that had to be rubbed three times to yield one wish. In his prime, however, Lonzo Stafford had been the best homicide detective on the force. He didn’t make mistakes. Except one time in forty-five years, and it had been so big that it cost a prosecutor a sure conviction. He’d played on a murder suspect’s conscience during a videotaped interview and induced a confession by giving a “Christian burial speech.” He’d botched the case against Eddy Goss. And Lonzo Stafford despised Jack Swyteck for nailing him to the wall with that one.

“Whatchya got for me?” Stafford asked.

“Cold one,” the homicide chief replied with a smirk. “Four-oh-nine East Adams Street. Apartment two- seventeen.”

A satisfied grin came to Stafford’s face as he instantly recognized the address. “Praise Jesus,” he said, rising from his old Naugahyde chair. “I’m on my way.”

“Lon,” said the chief as he stepped inside and closed the office door. Stafford was stopped in his tracks by the chief’s pointed look. “I know how you felt when that bastard Goss walked. I felt the same way. And I want you to understand that I won’t be upset if, just this once, your investigation turns up goose eggs.”

Stafford looked back plaintively, without disagreement. The chief turned to leave, then stopped before opening the door. “Actually’ he said, sighing, “there’s more to it than that. Right after Goss’s neighbor called nine- one-one, we got another call. Some guy who didn’t want to get involved. Wouldn’t leave his name, and he called from a pay phone outside the building so we couldn’t trace it back. Claims he saw someone in a police uniform leave apartment two-seventeen-right about the time Goss got blown away.”

Stafford raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“We don’t know anything for sure,” the chief continued, “but I suppose it’s possible that when the jury didn’t give Goss what he deserved, one of our men decided to take matters into his own hands. Can’t say I’d be terribly