More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

Sniper?

He lifted his eyes from the alley. A hundred yards away was a high-rise from whose roof a sniper would have a perfect shot into the intake loading dock where Silverman, the minister, Pease and the two guards now stood. It could very well be a Cahill building.

“Inside!” he shouted. “Now.”

They all hurried into the corridor that led to the lockup and Pease’s babysitter slammed the door behind them. Heart pounding from the possible near miss, Silverman picked up a phone at the desk and called the captain. He told the man the reverend’s theory. The captain said, “Sure, I get it. They shoot up the safe house to flush Pease, figuring they’d bring him here and then put a shooter on the high-rise. I’ll send a tactical team to scour it. Hey, bring that minister by when you’ve got Pease locked down. Whether he’s right or not, I want to thank him.”

“Will do.” The detective was miffed that the brass seemed to like this idea better than the anagrams, but Silverman’d accept any theory as long as it meant keeping Pease alive.

As they waited in the dim corridor for the lockup to empty out, skinny, stringy-haired Pease began complaining again, droning on and on. “You mean there was a shooter out there and you didn’t fucking know about it, for Christ’s sake, oh, sorry about the language, Father. Listen, you assholes, I’m not a suspect, I’m the star of this show, without me—”

“Shut the hell up,” Silverman snarled.

“You can’t talk to me—”

Silverman’s cell phone rang and he stepped away from the others to take the call. “’Lo?”

“Thank God you picked up.” Steve Noveski’s voice was breathless. “Where’s Pease?”

“He’s right in front of me,” Silverman told his partner. “He’s okay. There’s a tac team looking for shooters in the building up the street. What’s up?”

“Where’s that reverend?” Noveski said. “The desk log doesn’t show him signing out.”

“Here, with me.”

“Listen, Mike, I was thinking — what if the CI didn’t leave that message from the Bible.”

“Then who did?”

“What if it was the hit man himself? The one Doyle hired.”

“The killer? Why would he leave a clue?”

“It’s not a clue. Think about it. He wrote the biblical stuff himself and left it near the body, as if the CI had left it. The killer’d figure we’d try to find a minister to help us figure it out — but not just any minister, the one at the church that’s closest to the police station.”

Silverman’s thoughts raced to a logical conclusion. Doyle’s hit man kills the minister and his wife at their summer place on the lake and masquerades as the reverend. The detective recalled that the church office had nothing in it that might identify the minister. In fact, he seemed to remember that the man had trouble even finding a Bible and didn’t seem to know his desk lamp bulb was burned out. In fact, the whole church was deserted and dusty.

He continued the logical progression of events: Doyle’s boys shoot up the safe house and we bring Pease here for safekeeping at the same time the reverend shows up with some story about greed and a real estate developer and a sniper — just to get close to Silverman… and to Pease!

He understood suddenly: There was no secret message. He’s on his way. Look out — Luke 12:15. It was meaningless. The killer could’ve written any biblical passage on the note. The whole point was to have the police contact the phony reverend and give the man access to the lockup at the same time that Pease was there.

And I led him right to his victim!

Dropping the phone and pulling his gun from its holster, Silverman raced up the hall and tackled the reverend. The man cried out in pain and gasped as the fall knocked the wind from his lungs. The detective pushed his gun into the hit man’s neck. “Don’t move a muscle.”

“What’re you doing?”

“What’s wrong?” Pease’s guard asked.

“He’s the killer! He’s one of Doyle’s men!”

“No, I’m not. This is crazy!”

Silverman cuffed the fake minister roughly and holstered his gun. He frisked him and didn’t find any weapons but figured he’d probably intended to grab one of the cops’ own guns to kill Pease — and the rest of them.

The detective yanked the minister to his feet and handed him off to the intake guard. He ordered, “Take him to an interrogation room. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Make sure he’s shackled.”

“Yessir.”

“You can’t do this!” the reverend shouted as he was led away roughly. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Get him out of here,” Silverman snapped.

Pease eyed the detective contemptuously. “He coulda killed me, you asshole.”

Another guard ran up the corridor from intake. “Problem, Detective?”

“We’ve got everything under control. But see if the lockup’s empty yet. I want that man inside ASAP!” Nodding toward Pease.

“Yessir,” the guard said and hurried to the intercom beside the security door leading to the cells.

Silverman looked back down the corridor, watching the minister and his escort disappear through a doorway. The detective’s hands were shaking. Man, that was a close one. But at least the witness is safe.

And so is my job.

Still have to answer a hell of a lot of questions, sure, but—

“No!” a voice cried behind him.

A sharp sound, like an axe in a tree trunk, resounded in the corridor, then a second, accompanied by the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder.

The detective spun around, gasping. He found himself staring in shock at the intake guard who’d just joined them. The young man held an automatic pistol mounted with a silencer and he was standing over the bodies of the men he’d just killed: Ray Pease and the cop who’d been beside him.

Silverman reached for his own gun.

But Doyle’s hit man, wearing a perfect replica of a Detention Center guard’s uniform, turned his pistol on the detective and shook his head. In despair Silverman realized that he’d been partly right. Doyle’s people had shot up the safe house to flush out Pease — but not to send him to the hospital; they knew the cops would bring him to the jail for safekeeping.

The hit man looked up the corridor. None of the other guards had heard or otherwise noticed the killings. The man pulled a radio from his pocket with his left hand, pushed a button and said, “It’s done. Ready for the pickup.”

“Good,” came the tinny reply. “Right on schedule. We’ll meet you in front of the station.”

“Got it.” He put the radio away.

Silverman opened his mouth to plead with the killer to spare his life.

But he fell silent, then gave a faint, despairing laugh as he glanced at the killer’s name badge and he realized the truth — that the dead snitch’s message hadn’t been so mysterious after all. The CI was simply telling them to look out for a hit man masquerading as a guard whose first name was what Silverman now gaped at on the man’s plastic name plate: “Luke.”

And, as for the chapter and verse, well, that was pretty simple too. The CI’s note meant that the killer was planning the hit shortly after the start of the second shift, to give himself fifteen minutes to find where the prisoner was being held.

Right on schedule…

The time on the wall clock was exactly 12:15.

THE COMMUTER