I felt as if I could will the bullets to strike their target.
I probably got to four pounds of pressure on a trigger with a pull of five and a half, then gave an inaudible sigh and lowered the gun.
I reflected on what I'd just thought: willing the bullets.
Shooting is physics and chemistry, vision and steady muscles, choosing the right strategy of firing position, having a clear target. There is no will involved. There's no luck involved.
I was a shepherd. I couldn't afford to be emotional.
If I'd shot and merely wounded him or missed, he would have had my position. For all I knew the partner was fifty yards behind me, waiting for me to present. Or, hearing the shot, Bill Carter and Amanda might leave cover to come see what had happened.
Unnerved that I'd nearly given in to emotion, I checked the ground in front of me to make sure I could move silently and I started forward again.
Still using the plants for cover, Loving slipped up to the gate and tried it gently, testing for squeaking. I saw him extract something from his pocket and he appeared to oil the hinges. Then, still halfway out of sight, he slipped through and made his way toward the house, under good cover.
Debating, I finally picked my strategy.
I turned away and headed for the clearing where Bill Carter and Amanda waited.
It was one of the hardest decisions I'd ever made.
But my goal was clear. For me, solo, to try to take Loving in the house was inefficient. A tactical move would have required at least two and ideally four others. My best strategy was to find my principals and get them out. Loving's going inside would buy us ten minutes. I'd let Freddy and his crew run the takedown.
I oriented myself and backed up the way I'd come, then turned left, toward where I knew the girl and Carter were hiding. It was some distance, maybe three hundred yards, across the length of the property. But I had a sense of the forest now and I noted the area ahead of me was largely coniferous--with plenty of pine needles dampening the ground, leaving resinous branches that didn't snap when you stepped on them. One could move quickly and in virtual silence here.
Which was why, as I took my first step forward, Loving's partner got me from behind; I never heard his approach.
A grunt of a whisper: "Drop that weapon. Hands out to your side." I felt the muzzle of a gun kiss my back.
Chapter 28
AS THE PARTNER pressed his gun harder into my spine, I thought: Is this what Abe Fallow had heard not long before Loving had gone to work on him?
Hands out to the side. . . .
I was about to die too.
But not right away.
Because like my mentor, I was valuable. I wondered if Loving had created a flytrap of his own. Maybe he'd used the girl not as an edge on her father but to get me to give up the detective, speculating that it might be logistically difficult to let Ryan know they had his daughter.
I'd been the bait in our flytrap; Amanda was the bait here.
"I told you. Gun. Drop it."
I did. You can't spin around faster than a bullet.
How long could I hold out? I wondered.
Sandpaper and alcohol . . .
Memories of Peggy and the boys, Jeremy and Sam, surfaced.
Then the voice behind me whispered, "Wait."
Curious. It seemed that he was speaking to himself.
Then I heard pleasantly, "Oh, that's you, isn't it, Corte?"
My hands started shaking and I turned around slowly to see Bill Carter, holding a twelve-gauge over-under shotgun pointed directly at my chest. His finger wasn't outside the guard. Amanda was behind him, eyes wide.
Breathing hard now. So hard my chest hurt.
He lowered the scattergun.
"You didn't go to the clearing," I whispered.
"No. Seemed too far. And looks like you weren't in any big hurry to come visit either."
True, I reflected.
Amanda gazed at me with cautious but steady eyes. Definitely her father's eyes. She still had around her shoulder her plush bear purse.
I studied the area around us. It wasn't defensible--we were in a low point. I wanted to get back to the car and leave as fast as we could.
We crouched. "He's in the house. He'll know you're not there any minute now."
I gestured toward the road and to the right. "My car's past the rock fence in front. About two hundred yards. Let's go now. Come on, Amanda. It's going to be fine."
She didn't look like she needed reassurance. I got the feeling she wanted to go after Loving herself.
Grit . . .
I guided us up the incline of the ravine and toward the road. We moved slowly and I was getting dizzy from looking from side to side and behind us so often. There were a thousand configurations of shadow and shapes of green that took on the dimensions and postures of a hostile.
Still, none broke away from the backdrop and became an armed human.
Twenty yards, then thirty, then fifty.
Suddenly Amanda gasped. Our weapons up, Carter and I dropped to our knees and I pulled the girl down, looking in the direction she was.
The deer emerged from the bushes he was grazing on and stared at us with a face both blank and cautious. Two others joined him. Carter picked up a rock and was going to toss it to scare them off, presumably to make Loving think that any noise he might've heard was from this fauna. But I shook my head, opting for quiet.
Sometimes you can outsmart yourself.
Looking down and verifying that there were no signs the partner had come along the path I'd chosen to follow, we continued on silently. The deer went back to destroying a bush for lunch.
More noises near us.
Animals? Or Loving? The partner?
We came to a bald strip of the property, about fifty feet across. To keep to cover, going around, would have taken too long. I motioned us across the open space.
Just as we reached the other side, I looked back. About a football field's distance, I caught a glimpse of the house.
And I saw Henry Loving stepping into the front yard. He looked our way and froze.
Then dug into his pocket for a radio or mobile.
"He spotted us. Move fast!"
I indicated the asphalt and we started to run.
"Bill, watch the rear. If you see him, aim low. He'll be crouching."
Better a minor wound on the feet and ankles than a miss over the head, Abe used to say.
"Got it."
I whispered, "Come on, Amanda. We're doing fine."
Keeping low, gasping, we ran through the thinning undergrowth, not caring about noise. I expected to hear at any moment the near simultaneous snap of the bullet and the boom of the weapon from behind us. But neither Loving nor his partner fired. Amanda was no good to them dead. You need your edge relatively healthy.
Finally, all of us breathing hard, we approached the road. About fifty yards away was my car, on the other side of the stone fence. We sprinted through the low brush.
Carter glanced back. "I think I see him. Go on, get in the car. I'll cover you."
"No." We ran a bit farther then I pulled the others down beside me, under the cover of a fallen tree, old enough that as a youngster it might have given similar protection and comfort to Union or Confederate soldiers making their way south after the carnage of the most deadly battle of the Civil War, Antietam.
I was sure I saw Loving behind us, not far away, maybe sixty, seventy yards or so. He too had ducked behind a tree next to the wall.
I said to Carter, "We're going to move up close to the car. I'll be in the rear. I'll start it remotely. When it starts, fire both barrels into the woods across the road. This time I want you to aim high. Reload and fire two more. Fast. Then, you both go over the wall. Amanda, get in the backseat and get down. Bill, drive maybe twenty feet or so forward, then stop, cover the forest across the road with your sidearm. I'll join you in a minute."
"The partner's over there?"
"That's right.
"
He didn't ask how I knew and I wasn't inclined to explain that it was simply rational.
A glance at both faces, sweaty and flecked with leaf debris. "Ready?"
Nods.
I pressed the ignition button and the engine came to life. Our cars have special mufflers to deaden the exhaust sound but there's nothing you can do about a starter.
Carter didn't hesitate. The instant the car started, he did as I'd asked: rising over the fence and firing two hugely loud rounds. He reloaded, fired two more and reloaded again, as I fired a burst of six in the direction where Loving was hiding. Carter grabbed Amanda by the hand. They ran to the car.
It squealed away, while I rolled over the stone fence and lay in tall grass on the shoulder of the road, prone, aiming back toward Loving.
I felt a tickle on my spine. Loving would think I was in the car but the partner might have seen the ruse and gone for a shot at me in the shallow weeds.
Come on . . . come on . . .
Then Loving presented.
He jumped over the wall and started to aim at the car.
I didn't have much of a shot, with the brush and the wall partially blocking my view, yet it was something. But just as I started to fire, Carter slammed on the brakes--as I'd asked him--and Loving realized my strategy. He didn't see me but he knew what had happened. He spun around and started back over the wall. I emptied my magazine at him. Chunks of rock flew from the wall and dirt from the ground. Loving vanished over the rock. I couldn't tell if I'd hit him.
Reloading, I saw motion in the leaves across the road--it would be the partner--and I sprinted to the car. I leapt into the driver's seat as Carter scrabbled over to the passenger's.
I floored the accelerator and we sped away.
Carter was looking behind us. "Yeah, there's the partner, climbing out of the woods. And Loving's joining him, they're in the road. Loving's hurt, I think. Doesn't look too steady."
A few minutes later I skidded around a bend in the road and slowed from eighty-five.
Carter laughed, pointing up. "Your boys're here."
A chopper swooped in fast, descending as it sped directly for Carter's house. A moment later a stream of black SUVs, in the oncoming lane, braked to a stop, blocking me. They approached with weapons drawn, cautious, and I held my ID out the window.
A young agent, covered by two others, looked into the car and then motioned the vehicles containing his fellow agents around him, to continue on to the house.
"You all right, sir? Everybody's fine?" The agent looked us over.
"Yes, we are. Is Agent Fredericks here?"
"He's about five minutes behind us."
"All right, tell your agents there're two of them. Loving and his partner, both armed. Loving may be wounded. I don't know where they stashed their vehicle."
"We'll check it out, sir."
"I was looking over a map earlier and saw across the lake there're a dozen houses and some easy routes to the interstate. I'm thinking they may try to row over, hijack a car."
"I'll get some of the team over there," the agent said.
I told him, "Can you patch me through to the chopper pilot? I'll give him a description of the property."
"Chopper?"
"Your tactical air unit." I gestured toward the sky.
He looked confused. "Well, sir, we don't have a helicopter involved in the operation."
Chapter 29
BILL CARTER SAT silently beside me and a glance in the rearview mirror revealed Amanda in the backseat, staring out the window at the overcast fall afternoon. We were ten miles from Carter's lake house.
I was not thinking of what had just happened at Carter's property but was wrestling with a difficult memory. Peggy, the boys and I were driving in the country and I spotted a bad roadside accident ahead. I'd stopped to see if I could help the stoic but young and shaken county troopers. They say that mothers are better than fathers at remaining detached around accidents and blood and trauma. Not Peggy. She'd climbed into the back with the boys and clutched them to her. The ostensible purpose was to make sure they looked away from the overturned cars and the mangled bodies, as yet uncovered, but in fact she was hiding her face, as well as the boys'. (Thinking again about another similarity between Maree and my wife: the whipsawing between carefree optimism and edgy distress.) Back then, at the site of the accident, Sammy and Jeremy had managed to peek, despite their mother's huddle. Jer, the oldest, was horrified at what he saw and began sobbing uncontrollably. Sam, though, said, "Daddy, that man lying there. He doesn't have a hand. How can he eat ice cream?" Not a tragedy to him; a mystery.
You just didn't know how young people would respond to trauma.
I saw Sam's face, unperturbed and curious, reflected in Amanda's.
"You all right, honey?" I asked, surprised I'd used the endearment.
She looked toward me, nodded and then studied Carter's Beretta shotgun, open and sitting on the seat beside her.
Hitting a speed dial button, I called Freddy.
"Hey," he said.
"You there?"
"Nice place. I may retire here."
I hadn't really appreciated the comforts of Carter's summer home.
"Anything?"
"They're gone."
"The chopper?"
"Had to be."
"No," I said. "I know that's how they were extracted. I mean do you have any details on it?"
"Negative. So far. We're still canvassing. Some wits reported hearing a helicopter low and nearby. They thought it was going down, you know, crashing. A couple nine-one-one calls. Nobody--"
"Saw anything?"
"Interesting question, son. They looked but they heard only a ruckus and saw leaves and dust. Landed between two stands of trees thirty feet apart. That takes some skill."
"More, it takes some equipment. Expensive . . . Find the car?"
"Stolen months ago. Somebody else's tags. We were hoping to get the partner's prints but didn't find a single, solitary swirl."
"The neighbors?"
"They're fine."
I told Carter and Amanda about their friends, then turned my attention back to Freddy. I told him, "I'll get Claire tracking down the chopper." Our organization is always flying our principals around the country, sometimes internationally, so we had good contacts with the FAA and private charter companies. The fact that the craft seemed small, which meant it had a short range and would have to be based somewhere near here, would give duBois some guidance in finding the lessee.
Freddy continued, "Somebody's hurt. We found blood."
"Where?"
"Roadside. The wall and some bushes. A path too."
"It's Loving. I got him. He was on his feet afterward. How much blood?"
"Not a lot. Found his footprints and the partner's."
"I'll have Claire look into medical treatment."
"Who is this gal of yours, Corte? She Claire-voyant?"
Jokes again.
"Listen, Corte . . ."
"Westerfield," I said.
"My voice give that away, son?" Freddy asked.
"What about him?"
"For one he keeps calling. He's calling me. He's calling everybody. What'd you do?"
I said, "He wants my principals in a slammer. He's wrong but I couldn't reason with him. So I basically . . ." I tried to think of a good euphemism.
"Put your job on the line by scamming the attorney general of the United States of America. And pissing off half the federal government."
I said, "Loving's got too many contacts in D.C. I couldn't risk it."
"I don't care. That's your business, Corte. It's no skin off my nose."
"Call me if you find any forensics. Loving went through Carter's house too."
"Will do."
We disconnected. As soon as I did, my boss's number came up on caller ID. So did Westerfield's. I rejected both calls and dialed duBois. I explained to her what happened and then told her about the helicopter. "Find it, if th
ere's any way."
"Okay." She took down the details.
Then I said, "And Loving's wounded."
The demure young woman said, "You got a piece of him. That's good."
"I want you to try to find where he'll go for treatment."
There's a legal requirement that medical personnel must report gunshot wounds to law enforcement. Gangs and organized crime have doctors or nurses or even vets on call who treat wounds and conveniently forget to dial 911. We knew some of these medicos and routinely monitored them (we didn't arrest them since they were invaluable as sources to find and track wounded lifters and hitters).
Loving, though, would avoid any of these, of course. I told duBois this and said, "He's going to find somebody private, somebody we don't know about. Look through all the files we have on him, checking addresses he's been seen at, phone calls, everything. Public records too."
She'd use ORC and other data-mining programs.
"I'll see what I can find," she said. "And, Corte?"
My name again. "Yes?"
"Those images you got at Graham's house? I'm still running the analysis."
"Good."
She was pausing. "I thought about it and there wasn't any other way to get the information from him. What you asked me to do. I didn't like it then, I didn't like it later. But it was pretty smart. I'll remember that."
"There wasn't any other way," I repeated.
We disconnected and we drove in silence for a half hour. Carter asked to put the radio on and I said, "You don't mind, I'd rather keep it off. Better to concentrate."
"Oh. Sure."
I saw that Amanda was looking at me in the mirror.
"Was that all because of me, back there?" she asked. "Because of my blog?"
"Yes. He'd linked your screen name to your real name through a social networking site. He tracked the post to Bill's neighbors and then to his house."
She closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. I . . . I thought you meant I couldn't use my computer. I didn't know he could track us. I used my nic."
But she was a smart girl. She'd have had an inkling of the risk but in the oblivion and zeal of adolescence she hadn't thought it through or hadn't cared. Most likely, a little of both.
Amanda then added, "It's just I felt really bad about Susan--this sophomore at school."
"The one who killed herself?" I asked.
"That's the thing. It was a car crash but she was driving real fast and stupid, like she didn't care if she lived or not. That's a kind of suicide, our counselors tell everybody. I wanted to blog about that, make sure people know that being reckless can be just like taking pills or hanging yourself."