“What?” Mitch said, already horrified. Also rising, he explained: “But Weaver told us he had a weapon—he said the boy had held him forcibly with it!”
“And you believed that fat fuck?” I bellowed, rushing over to Latrell’s body. I already knew he was dead, or at least I knew it cognitively; emotionally, I was praying that he’d only been wounded—and, if the shameful truth be known, I was also praying that none of the bullets fired had managed to strike his cell phone. But I was to be bitterly disappointed on both counts. Latrell lay on the ground, his perforated corpse still looking for all the world as if it intended to make a call. As soon as I’d fully accepted the simple fact, if not the full emotional implications, of his death, I immediately grabbed at his right hand; but it had been mostly shot away, and its mangled remainder held only a smashed few bits of tiny, useless cellular technology.
Everything that either Latrell or his phone could have told us was gone: when I at least came to terms with this one aspect of the innocent young man’s death, I turned angrily back toward the squad cars, drew my own pistol, and brushed off Mitch’s attempts to restrain me. I started toward the cops, holding the .45 high.
“You idiots!” I called, letting off a couple of rounds into the air. “Go ahead, shoot me, too—I’m more dangerous to you than that boy ever was! Go on, shoot! Because if I ever get to your lying ass, Weaver, or to you, Mangold, you’re going to find out—”
But then Mitch seized me again, getting one of his powerful arms up under both of mine and grabbing the Colt away from me with his other hand. “Try to understand, Trajan!” he said. “You were in there a long time, we thought he was holding you like he’d held Weaver.”
“And how was that, Mitch?” I shouted. “At the point of a phone? Go look in his hand—all the poor kid had was a cell phone!”
Once he was sure I’d regained some semblance of self-control, Mitch released me, and went to Latrell’s body. Kneeling down to confirm what I’d said, he sighed heavily, stood back up, and then signaled to the assault force. “All right!” he called. “It’s all over—shut those damned lights back off!” The street went relatively dark once more; and when it had, I saw a figure dash out from behind the cars—Mike. He ran over to me just as Mitch came back down to join us, shaking his head and returning my Colt to me.
“Trajan!” Mike called. “You all right, kid? What the hell just happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” I said, still seething, if more quietly. “And you, Mitch—we just lost what will probably be our only chance to get a firsthand account of who’s behind these deaths, and how they’re working.”
Shaking his head, Mitch said, “I’m sorry, Trajan; we truly thought you were in trouble.”
“This case is in trouble now, Mitch!” I struck the pavement hard with the tip of my cane. “And you can tell Donovan and that crew that I’m in no mood to explain myself—in fact, they’ll be lucky if they’re not the ones doing the explaining, when it’s all over. Come on, Mike—there’s no reason for us to be here, anymore. God damn it all…”
McCarron made no move to stop Mike and me as we moved back through the cars, stared at by almost every one of the various officers present. Some of them looked almost contrite, and Gracie Chang actually did apologize quickly to Mike; the others, however, were defiant; for they had done no more than embody the new definition of “police work” that they had been taught by a terribly changed society. Asked to pound a street beat, where the true value of the policeman has lain for centuries—asked, that is, to get to know the places and people in their jurisdiction on a daily basis, and thereby to recognize the small vibrations of ominous change that can grow into crimes both minor and major, and where they might even have learned what both Donnie and Latrell had been going through—nearly every one of them would have been helpless. But on this night, the new version of “cop” had been on display, and the rapid response of paramilitary force to even the suggestion of threat had been completed.
Somewhat miraculously, I was able to control my sorrowful anger over all this as we left: that is, until Frank Mangold came forward to intercept me. “Hope you appreciated that, Dr. Jones,” he said. “Looks like my shooter did a fine damned job.”
Later, when I’d regained my full analytical skills, I would realize that there had been a strange lack of true gloating in the BCI Senior Investigator’s tone; but at the moment, I became enraged again, and spun on him, grabbing my .45 and fully intending to pistol-whip him with it. “You stupid fool,” I said angrily; but then yet another pair of arms grabbed me: Mike’s.
“No, Trajan!” he said quietly. “Not like that—and not here…”
I turned back to Mangold, shaking off Mike’s grip. “One question, Frank,” I said. “Just which one of your fools was it that did that ‘fine damned job’?”
“Which one?” Mangold said, in that same tone that I would later find so odd. “I think it was—yeah, Dennis Shea. Got a hell of an eye—why, you want to thank him? Hey, Shea, get your ass out here—now, the profiler wants to thank you!”
At that a thin, slightly red-faced young man with bright blue eyes moved out in front of the pack of cops, his rifle butt held triumphantly at his hip. He was smiling a bit, although the smile vanished when he heard my next words: “Thank him?” I said. “You congenital idiot, Mangold, I don’t even want to speak to him. But when you do…” I began to get better control over myself, and replaced my Colt in its holster. “I want you to tell him that he may just have blown any chance of solving this case. They won’t make a mistake like that again.”
“Come on, Trajan,” Mike said quietly, urging me toward our car.
“ ‘They’?” Mangold called after us. “Did the boy know who the murderers are?”
“Yes,” I said, turning around one last time. “The ‘boy,’ who had a name, knew who is responsible—for these deaths.” I was perilously close to giving away too much, and Mike indicated as much by touching my shoulder. “But it doesn’t matter. Your ‘ace’ just eliminated our one hope. That young man wanted to help, and he trusted me when I said that we would keep him safe while he helped. Now—he’s gone, and the opportunity is gone with him. You don’t get two, in a case like this. So you tell Officer Dennis Shea—”
“Sergeant, actually,” Mangold announced, attempting some kind of pride.
“Even better,” I shot back. “You tell Sergeant Shea that we’re the ones who’ve been crippled by his ‘fine damned job.’ That poor, desperate bastard is dead, but at least his troubles are over.” I turned to keep walking with Mike. “Ours are just beginning,” I added, as much to the night as to Mangold.
But the BCI man couldn’t let it go. “ ‘Ours’?” he called after me, almost laughing. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Cinderella? Your official involvement in this case ends tonight! As of tomorrow, you’re just another interested bystander.”
The cold truth of this fact was just salt in the wound of what had taken place; still, I could not let it be the final word or gesture. As Mike and I pushed on toward the Empress, I took Pete’s badge from my holster and flung it over my shoulder at Mangold—a ridiculous action, but one that I knew would enrage him, even if it only made me feel more idiotic and wretched.
Tunnel vision is insidious. It can affect an officer, or, indeed, anyone involved in the administration of justice with sometimes tragic results. It results in the officer becoming so focused upon an individual or incident that no other person or incident registers in the officer’s thoughts. Thus, tunnel vision can result in the elimination of other suspects who should be investigated….Anyone, police, counsel, or judge, can become infected by this virus.
—JUSTICE PETER CORY (CANADA) COMMISSION OF INQUIRY REGARDING THOMAS SOPHONOW, 2001
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
—SIR JOHN LUBBOCK THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE AND THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, 1892
{i.}
That weekend was an uneasy one
…
Late Friday night, a sudden and violent storm cell, of the kind that had been appearing all too frequently in both winter and summer, cracked open above Death’s Head Hollow, bringing rain and howling winds and particularly sharp pains in the remnants of my left thigh. I could usually find a way to endure such periods (caused by drastic shifts in barometric pressure) while maintaining a fairly normal schedule; but the rage and guilt I felt over the killing of Latrell made social niceties impossible, this time. And so, on Friday evening, I used the convenient truth that Marcianna was frightened by such thunderous, lightning-streaked weather to absent myself from my great-aunt’s house for the weekend. I gathered what notes on the case I considered necessary from the hangar, along with a blanket and a half-bottle of Talisker twelve-year-old scotch, and passed the next two days inside the stone den that I had had designed for Marcianna. Cheetah do not ordinarily favor such homes, preferring to hide in the open, where their greatest defense—speed—can be used to full effect; only in times of great danger and need do they resort to such enclosed places. And it was an indication of the trauma that Marcianna had endured that, almost always, she chose the den as her safest retreat. Thus our reasons for being there together, on this occasion even more than most, were strikingly similar.
I spoke my thoughts on all that was happening—the case, the thunder and lightning—aloud to my companion, who was always comforted by my ramblings: too frightened by the storm to be playful, she simply curled up on my blanket next to a small fire that I kept going and tried to sleep. When I grew so tired that I had to hammer my own mind into unconsciousness, I turned to the Talisker; but most of the time I paced the den, puzzling over the case and mumbling about what had happened, trying to come up with new connections, new answers, anything that might both help our investigation and somehow lend meaning to Latrell’s death, as well as determine exactly what he had been so persistently talking about when he spoke of “them.”
By Saturday evening, the violence of the storm had let up some, which helped both Marcianna’s nerves and my leg; and my general outlook was also assisted by small acts of human decency. That night, and then again on Sunday at lunchtime, my great-aunt’s housekeeper and cook, the delicately built yet indefatigable and eternally kind Annabel, appeared at the gate of the enclosure, bearing trays covered in plastic wrap that conveyed some sort of typically delectable nourishment. She left the trays atop the cooler in which I kept Marcianna’s thawed beef and medicinal supplements at the ready; and only when it was time to fetch those supplies did I check Annabel’s compassionate offerings, which Mike augmented with, on Saturday, a couple of packs of cigarettes, and then, on Sunday, a note generated from his printer that said simply:
We are having what may be an important guest this evening; care to be present?
As I studied this intriguing message, I picked out and discarded those portions of Annabel’s midday effort that had been nibbled on by mice, then retreated to the den, eating as much as I could of the remaining fare and enjoying the decreased pain levels that came with the rapidly improving weather. By late afternoon, both Marcianna’s and my moods had improved enormously, as the storm cell finally dissipated altogether.
With the renewed sunshine came the sound of Mike’s voice, just outside the den: “Yo!” he called. “Knock, knock. Please don’t kill me, Marcianna.”
In truth, Marcianna was very fond of Mike; and she rushed outside (for Mike, like most people, dreaded coming inside the den), jumped up, and placed her front paws on his shoulders in an effort to win his trust and affection. This was an ongoing task, being as Mike, apart from his typically urban aversion to wild creatures, believed he had good cause to yet be wary of her.
“Whoa! Okay, there,” he said, stroking Marcianna’s head uneasily and steadying himself. “Jesus…It’s no wonder you’ve got the people in town so convinced that there’s some rare dog up here, L.T.—she acts more and more like one all the time.”
“As all cheetah will do.” I emerged from the den with the bottle of Talisker, and saw the depth of Mike’s uneasiness clearly. “Oh, get over it,” I said, although part of me was, as ever, perversely amused that he never had. “She’s fine, now. Mostly.”
“Yeah—mostly,” Mike replied, as Marcianna jumped back off of him. “But I’m the one who had to take you to the hospital, remember, and cook up some story to feed them. A bear attack—I still can’t believe they bought it. Not to mention the fact that you bled all the fuck over my passenger seat…”
“A lifetime ago,” I pronounced. “When I still didn’t know just how to handle her. Not to mention that I paid for the God damned seat to be replaced.” I handed him the whiskey. “Here. Calm your nerves. I took it with me, by the way. Forgot to tell you.”
“Yeah, so I noticed,” Mike answered, taking a pull off the bottle. “Leaving me with the Johnnie Black. Nice.” He paused, studying my face. “Have you been drinking today?”
“Nope, not today,” I answered. “Why?”
He indicated the hangar. “The kid is here again. Lucas. Says he needs to talk to you.”
I offered Mike one of his own cigarettes. “That what your note was about?”
“Oh, good,” Mike mused, taking a smoke. “My favorite brand. No, that was about something else, actually.”
“Well, you want to tell me, or do I have to guess—” And then something occurred to me: “Say, how’d you get through the gate, anyway? It’s a combination lock.”
“You used your bank PIN for the combination,” Mike answered. “Fucking troglodyte.”
“How the hell do you know my bank PIN?”
“Trajan…How many databases have we hacked into, over the years? And your bank PIN is supposed to be a problem? Besides, I can’t draw from the petty cash fund without it.”
“We don’t have a petty cash fund,” I said, as Marcianna bumped into my good leg.
“Oh, yeah, we do,” Mike said with a nod. “It’s called your bank account.”
“Okay, okay,” I conceded. “So what was the note about? And what’s Lucas want?”
“I’d say he heard about Friday night. As for the note—we may just have a defector heading our way.” Before I could start fuming about letting anyone from the state near our headquarters, Mike waved me off. “Take it easy—it’s only Gracie.”
“Gracie Chang?” I said, a little taken aback. “What the hell does she want?”
“I’m not sure. But she says it’s important, that it’s information we need to hear. I figured, I know Gracie, she wouldn’t stab us in the back. So I told her to come on over.”
“Mike,” I sighed. “None of those people can be trusted. You know that. Or you ought to.”
“The rest, maybe,” Mike answered. “But Gracie? Not for nothing, L.T.—and I didn’t mention this on our way back here Friday, because I didn’t want you to hit me upside my head with that antique firearm of yours—but I heard Gracie arguing with the others while you were inside that building. Saying that maybe they were going about it the wrong way, that maybe Weaver was just covering his ass when he said Latrell had a gun. So just see what she has to say when she gets here. Could be useful. Meanwhile—should I tell Lucas to come up?”
I considered the matter for a smoky moment. “Yeah. I guess you’d better.”
Mike nodded, then started back down toward the gate. He paused, however, just a few steps from the den. “How’d it go during the storm? With the leg, I mean?”
I shook my head. “Not good. Better now, but—not near where it’s supposed to be.”
Mike looked momentarily concerned. “Well, it’s only been, what? Six months since the last radiation? The doc said it might take a while.”
“Doesn’t six months qualify as ‘a while’?”
Mike nodded judiciously, sticking his cigarette in his mouth. “So what you’re saying is, you don’t want to hit that topless bar in Albany?”
I shook my head, laughing grimly at Mike’s fatuous attempt to cheer me
up, while he continued on his way. When he’d gotten about halfway to the gate, I called, “Hey! Dr. Li!” He turned again, blowing out smoke that faded into the moisture that was evaporating from the ground and the grass under the resurgent sun. “You’ve still been working the case, then?”
“Why the fuck not?” Mike answered, continuing on his way. “You don’t think those shitheads we dealt with the other night are going to solve it, do you?”
“No,” I answered, reassured. “And I’ve been going over some ideas of my own, too.”
Mike held up a hand to signal acknowledgment, while I turned back to the waiting Marcianna, who, with Mike’s departure, had begun to run back and forth in the grass, glad to be outside and trying to engage me in roughhousing. “No, no, you,” I said, stepping her way with the intention of getting her under control for Lucas’ visit; but in an instant, she had knocked me to my knees (or knee), and was keeping me from getting back up. It wasn’t her weight that gave her the edge—even the largest cheetah are not heavy, and Marcianna came in at only 75 pounds or so—but rather her speed and agility, and my lack of the same. Soon she had her forelegs on my shoulders, while I locked one arm around her neck and struggled to get back up with my cane—
Then I heard Lucas: “Uh—do you two need a minute? Should I maybe come back later?”
“No, no, Lucas,” I said, as Marcianna turned her attention to him and I finally got to my feet. “Easy, young lady,” I told her. “You remember Lucas.” With perfect comprehension, she looked up at him with nothing more than curiosity, recalling his face and even more his voice:
“Hey, there, Marcianna—you do remember me, right? One of the good guys…”
As Marcianna went to inspect the kid, I pulled myself together and said, “That’s a wise idea, Lucas. Stay friendly but careful, for now. She’s never actually killed anybody, but you want to remember, at least until she really knows you, that she could.”