The Devil's Teardrop

  The end is night.

  Shaking her head at her own morbidly philosophical mood, she turned and left the lab.

  She walked to the elevator. Maybe Evans was waiting at the guard station. She looked absently at the indicator lights as the elevator ascended.

  The hallways were deserted and she was aware of the small noises of empty buildings at night. The field office, where she worked, was located near City Hall, some blocks away, and she didn't get here very often. She didn't like headquarters very much. It was too big. And tonight, she reflected, the place was dark and spooky. And it took a lot to make Margaret Lukas spooked. She remembered Kincaid projecting the extortion note onto a screen in the lab and she'd thought: It looks like a ghost.

  Lukas sensed more ghosts now. Here in these corridors. Ghosts of agents killed in the line of duty. Ghosts of victims of the crimes that were investigated here.

  And her own personal ghosts? she thought. Oh, but they were with her all the time. Her husband and son. They never left. Nor did she want them to. The changeling needed something to remind her of Jackie Lukas.

  She glanced down at the floor in front of the elevator. There was a dark stain on the floor. What was it? She smelled sour coffee.

  The elevator light flashed and a chime sounded. The door opened. Someone stepped out.

  "Oh, hi," Lukas said. "Got some news for you."

  "Hey, Margaret," said Susan Nance, juggling a dozen files. "What's up?"

  "They just tagged him. Got him on the Mall."

  "The Metro killer?"

  "Yep."

  The woman gave a thumbs-up. "Excellent. Oh, Happy New Year."

  "Same to you."

  Lukas got on the elevator and descended to the main floor.

  At the employee entrance guard station Artie looked up at her and nodded a pleasant greeting.

  "Did that Dr. Evans sign out?" she asked him.

  "Nope. Haven't seen him."

  She'd wait for him here. Lukas sat in one of the comfortable lobby chairs. Sank down into it. She felt exhausted. She wanted to get home. She knew people said behind her back how sad it must be--a woman living alone. But it wasn't sad at all. Returning to the womb of the house was a hell of a lot better than sitting at a bar with girlfriends or going out on a date with the endless fodder of eligible--and dull--men in Washington.

  Home . . .

  Thinking about the report she'd have to write about METSHOOT.

  Thinking about Parker Kincaid.

  Focus, she told herself.

  Then she remembered that she didn't have to focus anymore.

  What about him? Well, he wanted to ask her out. She knew he did.

  But she'd already decided to say no. He was a handsome, energetic man, filled with the love of children and domestic life. How appealing that seemed. But, no, she couldn't inflict on him the sorrow that she believed she radiated like toxic fumes.

  Maybe Jackie Lukas might have had a chance with a man like Kincaid. But a changeling like Margaret never would.

  Artie looked up from his paper. "Oh, forgot to say--Happy New Year, Agent Lukas."

  "Happy New Year, Artie."

  *

  As the Digger smouldered with a foul reek and the fire department spurted foam onto the scorched cherry trees as the crowds circled the burnt-out bus, Parker and Cage stood together.

  The Digger's gone. So long.

  Verses from Dr. Seuss trooped through his mind like some of the author's bizarre creatures.

  Parker blamed his mania on a cocktail of exhaustion and adrenaline.

  He called the Whos and promised them he'd be home in a half hour. Robby told his father about the air horn someone had blasted at midnight, waking up the Bradleys down the street and causing a neighborhood stir. Stephie described the sparklers in the yard with breathless, sloppy adjectives.

  "Love you, Who," he said. "Be home soon."

  "Love you too, Daddy," the girl said. "How's your friend?"

  "He's going to be fine."

  Cage was talking to an evidence tech from PERT and Parker was jockeying to get downwind of the smoke from the bus. There was an unpleasant scent--worse than the burnt rubber of the tires. Parker knew what it was and the thought of inhaling any of the Digger's ashy corpse nauseated him.

  A dead psycho smouldering before him, and Parker, at the tail end of an evening like none other he'd ever had . . . Yet it's the mundane things in life that poke up like crocuses. He now thought: Hell, I don't have enough cash to pay Mrs. Cavanaugh. He patted his pockets and dug out a small wad of bills. Twenty-two bucks. Not enough. He'd have to stop at an ATM on the way home.

  He glanced at a piece of paper mixed in with the money. It was the transcription of the unsub's notes on the burnt yellow pad. The references to the last two sites of the attacks that he'd found on the pad of paper Tobe Geller had saved from the burning safe house.

  . . . two miles south. The R . . .

  . . . place I showed you. The black . . .

  "What's that?" Cage asked, kneading his wounded rib.

  "A souvenir," Parker said, looking down at the words. "Just a souvenir."

  *

  Edward Fielding paused at the end of the corridor, gasping under the weight of the money on his back.

  He looked toward the reception area thirty feet away and saw the short blond hair of Margaret Lukas. Beyond her was the guard, reading the newspaper. The lights were out in the corridor and even if they'd turned toward him it would have been difficult to see him clearly.

  Adjusting the money more comfortably, he clutched the pistol in his right hand and started down the hallway. His leather soles tapping faintly on the tile. He noted that Lukas was facing away from him. He'd put one bullet in her head. Then as the guard looked up, he'd kill him.

  Then home free.

  Tap tap tap.

  He closed the distance to his targets.

  Perfect.

  32

  Margaret Lukas, gazing at the Christmas tree in the lobby, stretched like a cat.

  She listened absently to footsteps coming up the hall behind her.

  Two weeks ago the entryway here had been filled with presents that the agents and staffers had donated for homeless families. She'd volunteered to give away some of the toys but at the last minute she canceled and, instead, worked twelve hours on Christmas day, investigating the killing of a black man by two whites.

  Tap, tap, tap . . .

  Now she wished she hadn't canceled on Christmas. At the time she'd reasoned that giving out toys was frivolous when she could be doing "serious" work. But now she admitted that the thought of seeing small children on the holiday was more harrowing to her than kicking in the door of a redneck gun nut in Manassas Park.

  Coward, she told herself.

  Tap, tap, tap . . .

  She looked out the glass windows. Crowds, people returning from the Mall. She thought about the Digger. Wondered about the shoot-out, about who'd fired the shots that killed him. She'd been in two firefights in her career and remembered mostly confusion. It was so different from in the movies. Never any sense of slow motion--a gunfight in real life was five blurry seconds of utterly terrifying chaos and then it was over with.

  The vivid images came afterward: caring for the wounded and removing the dead.

  Tap . . . tap . . .

  A buzzing phone startled her.

  In front of her Artie answered and she absently watched his grizzled face.

  "Front desk . . . Oh, hello, Agent Cage."

  Suddenly the guard was frowning. He glanced at Lukas then focused past her. His eyes went wide. "Well," the guard said uneasily. "Detective Hardy? . . . He's who? What do you mean? . . . But he's right here, he's--Oh, Jesus."

  Artie was dropping the phone, fumbling for his weapon.

  Tap tap taptaptaptap . . .

  Instinctively Lukas knew that the footsteps, now running toward them, were an attacker's. She fell forward just as the rounds from the silenced pistol snappe
d into the back of the couch where she'd been sitting, ripping Naugahyde and bits of stuffing from the upholstery.

  She looked behind her, twisting around, scrabbling for cover behind a potted plant.

  It was . . . Wait, it couldn't be! It was Hardy.

  Firing wildly, Artie shouted, "It's him! He's the killer. He . . . Oh, my. Oh, no . . ." The guard looked down at his chest. He'd been hit. He slumped to his knees, fell behind the desk.

  Another bullet snapped through the back of the couch, near Lukas's head. She curled for cover behind the anemic palm tree so many agents had ridiculed. She cringed as a bullet was loudly deflected by the chrome pot.

  Lukas was on automatic. She didn't even try to figure out what had happened or who this man really was. She looked up quickly, searching for a target. But she had to duck fast as another bullet chopped though the thick green blades of leaf inches from her face. She rolled to her left, against the wall, rose and drew a target. In a portion of a second she checked the backdrop behind Hardy and fired three fast shots.

  The heavy 10-millimeter slugs just missed him and dug huge chunks out of the wall. Hardy fired twice more at her then vanished back down the corridor.

  She ran to the wall beside the hallway, pressed her back against it.

  The tapping footsteps receded.

  Another voice from the far end of the corridor called, "What's going on? What's going on!"

  Somewhere along the hallway a door slammed.

  Lukas looked around the corner quickly then went back to cover. She'd seen a man down at the end of the hall, in silhouette. She dropped to her belly, drew a target, shouted, "I'm a federal agent! Identify yourself or I'll fire!"

  "Ted Yan," the man called. "In Software Analysis."

  Lukas knew him. He was a friend of Geller's, an agent. But she thought: Great, I've got a computer nerd for backup.

  "You alone?" she shouted.

  "I'm--"

  Silence.

  "Ted?"

  "No. There're two of us . . . Susan Nance is here with me."

  Nance's voice cracked as she called, "Oh, Margaret, he got Louise in Security! She's dead. And Tony Phelps too."

  Jesus. What was going on?

  Ted said, "We're by the--"

  "Okay, quiet," Lukas barked. "Don't give away your position. Did anybody go past you?"

  "No," Ted called. "He couldn't've gotten by me. I heard a door slam in the hallway here. He's somewhere between us."

  "Cover me," Lukas called.

  Watching her back, Lukas ran to the guard station. Artie was unconscious but wasn't bleeding badly. She picked up the phone but Cage was no longer on the line. She hit 911, identified herself as a Justice Department agent and called in a Code 42 at FBI headquarters.

  To her knowledge nobody'd ever done this, not in the entire history of the Bureau. It meant an assault on headquarters. It had become a joke over the years--when somebody 42'd, it meant they'd totally screwed up.

  "You armed?" Lukas called.

  "Service," Ted called. "Both of us."

  Meaning their Glocks or Sig-Sauer service pistols. Lukas thought about her MP-5 machine gun, sitting in her truck at the moment. She would have given anything for the weapon but didn't have time to get it now.

  She studied the corridor, which was still empty.

  Eight doors in the hallway. Five on the right, three on the left.

  He's behind one of them.

  Here's a puzzle for you, Parker. Which door leads to our Judas?

  Three hawks have been killing a farmer's chickens. . . .

  Holding the gun out in front of her, she eased forward, saw the silhouettes of the other agents at the far end of the corridor. Using hand signals, she motioned them aside, back around the corner. If Hardy burst from a doorway she'd have trouble acquiring a target with Ted and Nance in the background. They'd have the same trouble too and might hesitate to light up Hardy for fear of hitting her. Alone, she'd lose the cross-fire advantage but could shoot freely if he tried to make a run for it.

  Lukas moved down the corridor.

  Which door? she wondered.

  Think . . . Come on! Think!

  If Hardy had any sense of orientation he'd know that the five offices on her right were exterior ones; he wouldn't've picked any on the left because he'd risk getting trapped inside the building.

  Okay, we'll narrow it down to those on the right.

  Of these five, two were labeled reception--the euphemism for the interrogation rooms like the one in which they'd met with Czisman. Hardy might logically doubt that the FBI would have reception rooms and he might figure that they had something to do with security and would have no access to outside--which in fact they didn't; they were windowless.

  The door in the middle was labeled maintenance. Lukas didn't know exactly where that one led but she supposed it was a janitor's closet with no other exit and concluded that Hardy would have made the same deduction.

  That left two doors. Both unmarked and both, she happened to know, leading to small offices for temporary word-processor operators. Both rooms had windows facing the street. One was the office closest to the reception area. The other was closest to Ted and Nance.

  But what's the hurry? she asked herself. Just wait for backup.

  Yet Hardy could be trying to break out one of the windows right now, close to escaping. Lukas wouldn't risk that this man might get away.

  Which door, which one?

  She made her choice: The door nearest the lobby. It made sense. Hardy wouldn't have run thirty or forty feet down the corridor with an armed agent behind him before taking cover.

  Once she made her decision she forgot all other options.

  Puzzles are always easy when you know the answer. Just like life, right?

  She tried the knob. But the door was locked.

  Were they always locked? she wondered. Or had he locked it from the inside?

  No, he'd locked it. He had to be in there. Where else could he have gone? She ran to the guard station, got the keys from Artie's belt, returned. She slipped the key in the hole as quietly as she could.

  Turned the latch.

  It clicked with an alarming sound.

  Hell. May as well just shout out, Here I come!

  One, two . . .

  Breathe deep.

  She thought about her husband, about her son.

  I love you mommy!

  And pushed through the door fast.

  Crouching, weapon up, pressure on the sharp trigger of the Glock . . .

  Nothing . . .

  He wasn't here.

  Wait . . . the desk . . . It was the only piece of furniture he could be hiding behind.

  She stepped around it, swinging her weapon in front of her.

  Nothing.

  Hell, she'd gotten it wrong. He'd gone through the other door, the far one.

  Then, from the corner of her eye, faint motion.

  The door directly across the hallway from this one--another door marked maintenance--had opened slightly. The muzzle of a silenced gun was lowering toward her.

  "Margaret!" Susan Nance's voice came from the end of the corridor. Then the woman shouted, "Freeze, you!"

  Lukas flung herself to the floor as Hardy's gun fired twice.

  But he wasn't aiming at her. The bullets were meant for the plate-glass window. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Nance fired a group of three as Hardy, who ran awkwardly because of a large knapsack on his back, stumbled through the corridor and into the office where Lukas crouched. The agent's shots missed. He fired blindly in Lukas's direction, forcing her under cover. She rolled to the floor. The slugs clanged into the desk and Hardy leapt through the empty window frame onto the deck overlooking Ninth Street. He jumped over the fence to street level. Lukas returned fire but she missed too.

  She climbed to her feet and ran to the window.

  Lukas understood what had happened: Hardy had tried the door on the window side of the build
ing and found it locked. He'd waited in a janitor's closet across the hall, outguessing her--figuring she'd probably pick the door she did and get the key to open it. He'd used her.

  She'd been dead wrong.

  He aims at the hawk on the left and shoots and kills it. . . .

  Standing on the crisp broken glass on the deck, she looked up and down the street but could see no sign of Hardy.

  The bullet doesn't ricochet. . . .

  All she saw was a huge crowd of people returning from the fireworks, staring in surprise at the shattered window that framed the attractive blonde with a gun in her hand.

  How many hawks are left on the roof?. . .

  33

  Parker and Cage were in the document lab once more. Joined this time by the dep director.

  "Six dead," the director muttered. "Lord almighty. Inside headquarters."

  Dr. John Evans, shot twice in the face, had been found in a seventh-floor closet. Artie the guard was badly wounded but would live.

  "Who the hell is he?" the director demanded.

  The man pretending to be Hardy had left some good fingerprints and they were being run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System files right now. If his prints were on file anywhere in the country they'd know his identity soon.

  Lukas pushed through the door. Parker was alarmed to see a peppering of blood on her cheek.

  "You all right?" he asked.

  "Artie's," she said in a low murmur, noticing his eyes on the blood. "Not mine." She looked at Parker then Cage for a moment. The stones in her eyes were gone but he couldn't tell what had replaced them. "How did you know?"

  Cage glanced toward Parker. "It was him figured it out."

  "Tremble," Parker answered. He held out the sheet of paper that he'd found in his pocket when he'd been looking for baby-sitter money. "I noticed there was tremble in his handwriting. That's what happens when somebody tries to disguise their writing. I remembered it was Hardy who'd written down what I dictated but why would he try to fake his writing? There was only one reason--because he'd written the extortion note. I checked the lowercase i in 'two miles' and the dot was a devil's teardrop. That confirmed it."

  "What happened?" the deputy director asked. "The director wants to know. Immediately."

  "It was all a setup," Parker said, pacing. Somewhere in his mind the entire plot was quickly falling into place in minute detail. He asked Lukas, "How did Hardy get involved in the case?"