The Devil's Teardrop

  The agent led the mayor back to his limo. The two men got inside. Jefferies stared defiantly at Lukas for a moment but she turned quickly, and together she and Cage walked back toward the hotel.

  "Shit," Cage said.

  "No, I think it's okay. I don't think the Digger could've seen anything."

  "That's not what I mean. Think about it--if Kennedy found out we were here, that means we've got a leak. Where the hell do you think it is?"

  "Oh, I know that." She opened her cell phone and made a call.

  *

  "Detective," Lukas said, struggling to control her anger, "you know that information about tac operations is secure. You want to give me a reason why I shouldn't refer what you did to the U.S. attorney?"

  She expected Len Hardy to deny or at least offer some slippery excuse about a mistake or getting tricked. But he surprised her by saying briskly, "Refer whatever you want but Kennedy wanted a chance to negotiate with the shooter. I gave it to him."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're willing to let, what, a dozen people die? Two dozen?"

  "If it meant stopping the shooter then, yeah, that's exactly what I'm willing to do."

  "Kennedy said he could talk to him. Talk him into taking the money. He--"

  "You know he showed up with a goddamn TV crew?"

  Hardy's voice was no longer so certain. "He . . . what?"

  "A TV crew. He was playing it for media. If the Digger'd seen the lights, the police bodyguard . . . he'd just leave and find another target."

  "He said he wanted to talk to him," Hardy said. "I didn't think he was going to use it for PR."

  "Well, he did."

  "Did the Digger--?"

  "I don't think he could've seen anything."

  Silence for a moment. "I'm sorry, Margaret." He sighed. "I just wanted to do something. I didn't want any more people to die. I'm sorry."

  Lukas gripped her phone. She knew she should fire him, kick him off the team. Probably file a report with the District police commission too. And yet she had an image of the young man returning to his house, a house as silent as the one she returned to every night after Tom and Joey had died--a silence that hurts like a slap from a lover. He'd spend the holiday alone, forced to suffer a false mourning for Emma--a wife not alive and not dead.

  He seemed to sense her weakening and said, "It won't happen again. Give me another chance."

  Yes? No?

  "Okay, Len. We'll talk about it later."

  "Thanks, Margaret."

  "We've got to get back on stakeout."

  She clicked off the phone abruptly and if Hardy said anything else she never heard it. She returned to the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.

  Lukas slipped her weapon off her hip once more, held it at her side and began to circulate through the crowd. Cage tapped his watch. It was a few minutes to eight.

  *

  They looked over the railing at the dark water and joked about the Titanic, they ate the shrimp and left the chicken livers, they talked about wine and about interest rates and about upcoming elections and about congressional scandals and about sitcoms.

  Most of the men were in tuxedos or dinner jackets, most of the women in dark dresses whose hems hovered an inch above the lacquered deck.

  "Isn't this something? Look at the view."

  "Will we be able to see the fireworks?"

  "Where'd Hank get to? He's got my beer."

  The hundreds of partyers had stationed themselves all over the lengthy yacht. There were three decks and four bars and everyone at the New Year's Eve bash was feeling great.

  Lawyers and doctors, finding a few hours of peace from their clients' and patients' woes. Parents, enjoying a respite from their children. Lovers, thinking about finding an empty stateroom.

  "So what's he going to do I heard he was going to run but the polls suck why should he oh what about Sally Claire Tom did they really get that place in Warrenton well I don't know how he can afford it . . . "

  Minutes clicked past and the time grew closer to eight o'clock.

  Everyone was happy.

  Pleasant people enjoying a party, enjoying the company of friends.

  Thankful for the view they'd have of the fireworks at midnight, thankful for the chance to celebrate and be away from the pressures of the nation's capital for the evening.

  Thankful for the creature comforts conferred upon them by the crew and caterers on board the luxury yacht the Ritzy Lady, which floated regally in her dock on the Potomac, exactly two miles south of the Fourteenth Street Bridge.

  23

  Robby had moved from J. R. R. Tolkien to Nintendo.

  He didn't seem upset anymore and Parker could stand it no longer; he had to find out about the Digger, about the most recent attack. Had Lukas and Cage succeeded? Had they found him?

  Had they killed him?

  He maneuvered through the toys on the floor and walked downstairs, where Stephie was in the kitchen with Mrs. Cavanaugh. The girl was squinting in concentration as she scrubbed one of Parker's stainless-steel pots. She'd made a caramel corn Christmas tree, sprinkled with green sugar. It sat, charmingly lopsided, on a plate on the counter.

  "Beautiful, Who," he told her.

  "I tried to put silver balls on it but they fell off."

  "Robby'll love it."

  He started for the den but saw a hollowness in her face.

  He put his arm around the girl. "Your brother's okay, you know."

  "I know."

  "I'm sorry tonight's gone all ka-flooey."

  "That's okay."

  Which meant of course that it wasn't quite okay.

  "We'll have fun tomorrow . . . But, honey, you know my friend? I may have to go back and see him."

  "Oh, I know," Stephie said.

  "You do?"

  "I could tell. Sometimes you're all-the-way here and sometimes you're partway here. And tonight, when you came back, you were only partway here."

  "Tomorrow I'll be all-the-way here. It's supposed to snow. You want to go sledding?"

  "Yeah! Can I make the hot chocolate?"

  "I was hoping you would." He hugged his daughter then rose and walked into the den to call Lukas. He didn't want her to overhear his conversation.

  But through the curtained window he saw motion on the sidewalk, a man, he thought.

  He walked quickly to the window and looked out. He couldn't see anyone--only a car he didn't recognize.

  He slipped his hand into his pocket. And kneaded the cold metal of Lukas's gun.

  Oh, not again . . . Thinking of the Boatman, remembering that terrible night.

  The gun is too loud! . . .

  The doorbell rang.

  "I'll get it," he called abruptly, glancing into the kitchen. He saw Stephie blink. Once again his brusque manner had startled one of his children. Still, there was no time to comfort her.

  Hand in his pocket, he looked through the window in the door and saw an FBI agent he recognized from earlier in the evening. He relaxed, leaned his head against the doorjamb. Breathed deeply to calm himself then opened the door with a trembling hand. A second agent walked up the steps. He remembered Lukas's comment about sending some men to watch the house.

  "Agent Kincaid?"

  He nodded. Looking over his shoulder to make sure Stephie was out of earshot.

  "Margaret Lukas sent us to keep an eye on your family."

  "Thanks. Just park out of sight if you would. I don't want to upset the children."

  "Sure thing, sir."

  He glanced at his watch. He was relieved. If the Digger had struck again, Cage or Lukas would have called. Maybe they'd actually caught the son of a bitch.

  "The shooter in the Metro killing?" he asked. "The Digger. They got him?"

  The look that passed between the two men chilled Parker.

  Oh, no . . .

  "Well, sir--"

  Inside the house the phone started to ring. He saw Mrs. Cavanaugh answer it.

  "The shooter,
he got on board a party yacht on the Potomac. Killed eleven, wounded more than twenty. I thought you knew."

  Oh, God. No . . .

  Nausea churned inside him.

  Here I was reading children's books while people were dying. You've been living life on Sesame Street . . .

  He asked, "Agent Lukas . . . she's all right? And Agent Cage?"

  "Yessir. They weren't anywhere near the boat. They found some clue that said 'Ritz,' so they thought the Digger was going to hit one of the Ritz hotels. But that wasn't it. The name of the boat was the Ritzy Lady. Bad luck, huh?"

  The other agent said, "Security guard got off a couple shots and that scared the shooter off. So it wasn't as bad as it might've been. But they didn't hit him, they don't think."

  Bad luck, huh?

  No, not luck at all. When you don't solve the puzzle it's not because of luck.

  Three hawks . . .

  He heard Mrs. Cavanaugh's voice, "Mr. Kincaid?"

  He glanced into the house.

  Eleven dead . . .

  "Phone for you."

  Parker walked into the kitchen. He picked up the phone, expecting to hear Lukas or Cage.

  But it was a smooth-sounding, pleasant baritone he didn't recognize. "Mr. Kincaid?"

  "Yes? Who's this?"

  "My name's Slade Phillips, WPLT News. Mr. Kincaid, we're doing a special report on the New Year's Eve shootings. We have an unnamed source reporting that you've been instrumental in the investigation and may be responsible for the mix-up in sending the FBI to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel when in fact the killer had targeted another location. We're going on the air with that story at nine. We want to give you the chance to tell your side. Do you have anything to say?"

  Parker inhaled sharply. He believed his heart stopped beating momentarily.

  This was it . . . Joan would find out. Everyone would find out.

  "Mr. Kincaid?"

  "I have no comment." He hung up, missing the cradle. He watched the phone spiral downward and hit the floor with a resounding crack.

  *

  The Digger returns to his comfy motel room.

  Thinking of the boat--where he spun around like . . . click . . . like a whirligig among red and yellow leaves and fired his Uzi and fired and fired and fired . . .

  And watched the people fall and scream and run. Things like that.

  It wasn't like the theater. No, no, he got a lot of them this time. Which will make the man who tells him things happy.

  The Digger locks the motel door and the first thing he does is walk to the couch and look at Tye. The boy is still asleep. The blanket has slipped off him and the Digger replaces it.

  The Digger turns the TV on and sees pictures of the Ritzy Lady boat. Once again he sees that man he recognizes--the . . . click . . . the mayor. Mayor Kennedy. He's standing in front of the boat. He's wearing a nice suit and a nice tie and it looks odd to see him wearing such a fancy suit with all the yellow bags of bodies behind him. He's speaking into a microphone but the Digger can't hear what he's saying because he doesn't have the TV volume on because he doesn't want to wake up Tye.

  He continues to watch for a while but no commercials come on and he's disappointed so he shuts off the TV, thinking, "Good night, Mayor."

  He begins to pack his belongings, taking his time.

  Motels are nice, motels are fun.

  They come and clean up the room every day. Even Pamela didn't do that. She was good with flowers and good with that stuff you did in bed. That . . . click, click . . . that stuff.

  Mind jumping, bullets rattling around the cra . . . crane . . . cranium.

  Thinking, for some reason, about Ruth.

  "Oh, God, no," Ruth said. "Don't do it!"

  But he'd been told to do it--to put the long piece of glass in her throat--and so he did. She shivered as she died. He remembers that. Ruth, shivering.

  Shivering like on Christmas day, twelve twenty-five, one two two five, when he made soup for Pamela and then gave her her present.

  He looks at Tye. He'll take the boy out . . . click . . . West with him. The man who tells him things told him he'd call after they finished in Washington, D.C., and tell him where they'd go next.

  "Where will that be?" the Digger asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe out West."

  "Where's the West?" he asked.

  "California. Maybe Oregon."

  "Oh," responded the Digger, who had no idea where those places were.

  But sometimes, late at night, full of soup and smiling at the funny commercials, he thinks about going out West and imagines what he'll do out there.

  Now, as he packs, he decides he'll definitely take the boy with him. Out West out . . . click.

  Out West.

  Yes, that would be good. That would be nice. That would be fun.

  They could eat soup and chili and they could watch TV. He could tell the boy about TV commercials.

  Pamela, the Digger's wife, with a flower in her hand and a gold cross in between her breasts, used to watch commercials with him.

  But they never had a child like Tye to watch commercials with.

  "Me?" Pamela asked. "Have a baby with you? Are you mad crazy nuts fucked . . ." Click. ". . . fucked up? Why don't you go away? Why are you still here? Take your fucking present and get out. Go away. Do you . . ."

  Click . . .

  But I love you all the . . .

  "Do you need me to spell it out for you? I've been fucking William for a year. Is this news to you? Everybody in town knows except you. If I were going to have a baby I'd have his baby."

  But I love you all the more.

  "What are you doing? Oh Je--

  Click.

  --sus. Put it down!"

  The memories are running like lemmings through the Digger's cranium.

  "No, don't!" she screamed, staring at the knife in his hand. "Don't!"

  But he did.

  He put the knife into her chest, just below the gold cross he'd given her that morning, Christmas morning. What a beautiful red rose blossoms on her blouse! He put the knife in her chest once more and the rose got bigger.

  And bleeding bleeding bleeding, Pamela ran for . . . where? Where? The closet, yes, the closet upstairs. Bleeding and screaming, "Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus. . . "

  Pamela screaming, lifting the gun, pointing it at his head, her hand blossoming into a beautiful yellow flower as he felt a thud on his temple. I love you all the . . .

  The Digger woke up sometime later.

  The first thing he saw was the kind face of the man who would tell him things.

  Click, click . . .

  He now calls his voice mail. No messages.

  Where is he, the man who tells him things?

  But there's no time to think about it, about being happy or sad, whatever they are. There's only time to get ready for the last attack.

  The Digger unlocks the closet. He takes out a second machine pistol, also an Uzi. He puts on the smelly latex gloves and starts to load the clips.

  Two guns this time. And no shopping bags. Two guns and lots and lots of bullets. The man who tells him things told him that this time he has to shoot more people than he's ever shot before.

  Because this will be the last minute of the last hour of the last night of the year.

  24

  A sweating Parker Kincaid ran into the FBI Document Division lab.

  Lukas walked up to him. Her face was paler than he'd remembered it. "I got your message," she said. "That reporter--Phillips--he got to one of the mailroom people. Somehow he found out your real name."

  "You promised," he raged.

  "I'm sorry, Parker," she responded. "I'm sorry. It didn't come from here. I don't know what happened."

  Dr. Evans and Tobe Geller were quiet. They knew what was going on but, perhaps seeing the look in Parker's eyes, they wanted no part of it. Cage was not in the room.

  Parker had called them on his cell phone as he sped--with a red dashboard flasher borrowed
from the agents stationed in front of his house--from Fairfax to downtown. His mind had been racing. How could he control the disaster? All he'd wanted to do was help save some lives. That was his only motive, save some children. And look what had happened . . .

  Now his own children would be taken away from him.

  The end of the world . . .

  He pictured the nightmare if Joan had even partial custody. She'd soon lose interest in mothering. If she couldn't get a baby-sitter she'd drop them off, alone, at the mall. She'd lose her temper at them. They'd have to fix their own meals, wash their own clothes. He was in despair.

  Why the hell had he even considered Cage's request for help tonight?

  A small TV sat on a table nearby. Parker turned it on to the news. It was just nine. A commercial ended and smiling pictures of the WPLT "news team" flipped onto the screen.

  "Where's Cage?" he asked angrily.

  "I don't know," Lukas answered. "Upstairs somewhere."

  Could they move out of the state? he wondered manically. But, no, Joan would fight that and the Virginia courts would still have jurisdiction.

  On the screen, that son of a bitch Phillips looked up from a stack of papers and gazed at the camera with a grotesquely sincere expression.

  "Good evening. I'm Slade Phillips. . . . Eleven people were killed and twenty-nine were wounded an hour ago in the third of the mass shootings that have terrorized Washington tonight. In this special report we'll have exclusive interviews with victims and with police on the scene. In addition, WPLT has obtained exclusive videotape of the scene of the most recent killings--on a yacht anchored in the Potomac River."

  Parker, hands clenched, watched silently.

  "WPLT has also learned that police and FBI agents were sent to a hotel where it was mistakenly believed that the killer would strike next, leaving too few officers and agents to respond to the shooting on the boat. It's not known for certain who is reponsible for this mix-up but informed sources have . . . have reported . . ."

  Phillips's voice faded. The anchor cocked his head, probably listening to someone through the flesh-colored earphone stuck in his ear. He glanced camera right and a shadow of a frown crossed his face. There was a brief pause and his mouth registered defeat as he recited, "Informed sources have reported that District of Columbia Mayor Gerald D. Kennedy is being detained by federal authorities, possibly in connection with this unsuccessful operation. . . . Now, standing by at the site of the most recent shooting, is Cheryl Vandover. Cheryl, could you tell us--"

  Cage walked into the lab, wearing an overcoat. He clicked the TV set off. Parker closed his eyes and exhaled. "Jesus."