Done In One - Part 9
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Part 9

"You heard me. A killer. Not make believe. Not a story. A cold-blooded killer."

As much as she wanted to resolve this on good terms, Jill felt her blood rising. Don't f.u.c.k with my husband. My hero.

And then inspiration hit. She put her hands on Susan's shoulders, a gesture of friendship, and said, "Close your eyes."

"What?" Suspicious.

"Just do this for me. Close your eyes."

"I'm not going-"

"Please. Author to author. Friend to friend. Close your eyes."

It was the friend to friend that did it. Susan was hungry for friends. Real ones, not the imaginary kind. She closed her eyes.

With her hands still on Susan's shoulders, Jill took a deep breath. With cars rolling past them, and warm tangy exhaust fumes tickling their throats, Jill began to speak.

"Okay, you're in the bank one day. You need to make a withdrawal because you left your ATM card at home, so you stand in line to see a teller. It's almost your turn when the guy in front of you starts rummaging around in his jacket. Only it's summer and why would he be wearing a jacket? He keeps fidgeting. You see a flash of metal. And you're a smart girl. You know what it means. This is a robbery."

"A bank was robbed in Sacramento last month."

"It happens all the time, Susan. All the time. Keep your eyes closed. Imagine, suddenly there's a gun in the guy's hand. Looks like a freaking howitzer. He pops off a few rounds, the first one takes out the security guard. Then the cameras. You're in shock. You can't take your eyes off the security guard twitching in a pool of his own blood on the marble tile floor. You had noticed the guard when you first walked in, because he's about your age. Handsome. Strong, athletic type. He probably won't survive the gunshot, but if he does his days of being strong and athletic are behind him now. It's wheelchair city from here on out. Pressure sores and a catheter bag strapped to his ankle.

"You've never seen a person shot before. In the movies maybe. Described in books. But this is different. This is real. The blood is real. You can smell it. It smells like dirty pennies soaked in saliva. You're going to pa.s.s out. How can this be real?

"But you don't pa.s.s out. This is not a movie. This is not the news. This is you. This is your life."

Jill had her eyes closed too. Living this right along with Susan.

"This is your bank and you're in there with the gunman. He's just killed someone in front of thirty witnesses. He's already been captured on the security system whether he shot the cameras or not. The data is stored off-site. He has nothing left to lose. And now you're all side by side, facedown on the floor. This is real. This is happening. You are f.u.c.ked.

"And then you hear it. Sirens. In the distance. Growing louder. A silent alarm was tripped maybe, or someone heard the shots and called it in. All that matters is that help is on the way. You allow yourself a glimmer of hope. Maybe you'll live through this. The police arrive, but your gunman friend grabs the woman next to you, hoists her to her feet and drags her to the door. A police negotiator tries to initiate conversation, but your friend isn't listening. Instead, he shoots the woman in the head and pitches her out into the street."

Susan's breathing had gotten quicker. Jill could hear it. Felt warm little puffs of it on her face.

"He returns, only this time he pulls you up, holds you in front of him and presses the gun to your temple. The bore is still hot. It burns your skin."

Jill opened her eyes and saw that Susan's were open as well. She seemed to be holding her breath now. Jill kept talking, staring directly into Susan's brown eyes.

"You won't be seeing it played out on the news this time around because this time, you are the news. You are a human shield for an inhuman sociopathic animal. And both of you are completely unaware that somewhere, out in the quiet and the shadows, in a place you'll never see, doing things you'd never dream of, a man waits. All he does is handle situations like this. In all this h.e.l.l you've been through, only he can make it right. Only he can remove this maniac from your life. And he does it. With one shot. One perfectly placed shot and you're free."

Susan let out a deep breath.

"Now you tell me ... do you still think he's a professional killer?"

Susan broke her gaze and stared at the oil-stained surface of the ramp they were standing on.

"Jill. I am so sorry. I didn't mean ... I never meant to imply..."

"Don't worry about it. Most people have no idea what the job is about. To some, maybe he is a killer. But to others, he's a hero. I choose to love the hero."

"What a job."

The tension between them was gone now. Peace had been made.

Jill smiled and said, "In fact, it really is just a job. Just like any other. You get a short in your wiring, you call an electrician. Leaky pipes? You call a plumber. A cranked-up psychopath takes you hostage? You call a police sharpshooter. You call a sniper."

Susan returned the smile and said, "Maybe I should be taking notes. Maybe there's room for another hero in my book."

CHAPTER 12.

The Cameron County Range, the proving ground, was where Jacob and his partner were required to qualify on a monthly basis. The shooting range was a large rectangle, about the size and shape of a football field with markers at 7, 15, 20, 25, 50, and 100 yards. Targets were up at the far end of the range. Jacob was examining his used targets, making notations about environmental conditions directly on them and making notes in his dope book as well. He turned when he heard his partner approaching behind him.

Sesak had changed out of her training gear and into a ghillie suit. A large camouflage outfit with strange little tendrils sprouting from it, a ghillie suit blended with the environment and broke up a sniper's outline so it wasn't quite as man-shaped. These were not off-the-rack uniforms, or even special order gear. Snipers made their own. Typically, the sniper would start with an olive drab poncho and canvas field hat, add jute and burlap and even hunks of grandma's Christmas wreath if appropriate. The suit was usually finished off with sc.r.a.ps and cuttings of foliage from the immediate vegetation so that the blending effect was perfected not only in shape and color, but so that the suit would respond to the wind or the rain or the snow exactly as the surrounding environment. It was the ultimate expression of trompe l'oeil-deceive the eye.

Kathryn even had similar colors painted on her face. She could have been a tree if she had more arms. She peered out at Jacob.

"What are we doing again?"

Jacob indicated the gra.s.sy meadow that sprawled out from the maintained shooting range. It was several hundred yards long and about a hundred yards wide. The meadow was an undisturbed expanse of trees and tall golden gra.s.s-a plot of the past that seemed to have arrived on this spot as though delivered by a time machine. Jacob was pretty sure one of the trees, a beautifully gnarled live oak, was an Indian trail tree that predated the first white settlers to this end of the country. The Indians purposely bent and deformed certain trees to permanently point the way to water or food or safety. The ma.s.sive trunk of the live oak in this meadow came straight out of the earth, then bent at a near ninety degree angle about five feet up so that the trunk was actually parallel to the ground, then bent again and continued straight up. The horizontal plane it created pointed to the freshwater stream at the bottom of the meadow. (Jacob was ashamed to realize that he didn't even know what tribes were aboriginal to Northern California, but he recognized the oak for what it was the instant he first saw it. His father had taught him about Indian trail trees.) Now the oak seemed to point in accusation. That so many other trees had been bulldozed so that the land could be developed. Maybe he and Jill were both haunted by trees.

For Jacob, it was a stark reminder of the substance of the past that always surrounded him, pulling at him. The settlers, pioneers, forty-niners, and the cowboys migrated across the country in search of good land, homes, gold, wide open s.p.a.ce-a place where they would be free to live by their own codes. They found all those things when they got here. Only problem was that there was nothing past California. The dream came to fruition and then ended here. Jacob and his kind were the last vestiges of that western spirit. The Sheriff's posse now rode in patrol units and SWAT vans. But they were still trying to bring order and justice to the Wild West. They still believed the American dream was worth protecting. For a while anyway. Until the bad guys and the system that seemed to support those bad guys wore them down. Wore their resistance to nothing. Everything simultaneously culminated and ended in California. And now even the good guys were fleeing this apogee of America.

The Land of Milk and Honey, where the homesteaders came to be free of oppressive government and live by their own personal code, now had more legislation per capita than anyone, anywhere. Yes, they had codes to live by. Thousands of them. Cops and firefighters put in their twenty, then fled the state at the earliest opportunity. Maybe that was what the Indian trail tree was pointing to. The way out.

"We'll be stalking each other through this meadow. I'll start at the other end. We'll have radio contact." Jacob began putting on his ghillie suit too, smearing his hands and brow with a handful of dirt, snapping off strands of gra.s.s and vine and attaching them to his suit. "The objective is to spot me before I get close enough for a hand-to-hand kill. You, of course, will be trying to stalk me as well. When you think you've seen me, indicate the location on the radio, and I'll let you know if you're right. I'll do the same."

Sesak smiled and said, "And you won't be p.i.s.sed if I win?"

Jacob shrugged. "I hope you do. Remember, patience is the key. You have to move in tiny, minute increments to avoid detection. Be conscious of everything you're wearing and everything around you. What could cause a glare or reflection. A sound not consistent with the environment. Things like that. Okay?"

"Fine. Let's get started. I'm burning up in here."

"You'd be in one of these things for days if you were waiting to take out a strategic military target. Not only that, an enemy sniper would be hunting you. That's the point of the exercise."

"We're not military snipers."

"No s.h.i.t. But we can still learn from them." Jacob paused, then said, "Make your weapon safe."

Kathryn opened the bolt to reveal an empty chamber and showed it to Jacob.

Jacob nodded, satisfied. "I'll signal you when I'm in position at the other side."

"Got it."

In his ghillie suit, Jacob moved into the tall gra.s.s, knelt down, and then virtually disappeared. Trompe l'oeil. Kathryn scanned back and forth trying to spot movement. All she could see was the gentle breeze ruffling the seeded tips of the switchgra.s.s in the meadow.

"I'm working with a ghost."

CHAPTER 13.

Oswald sat on one side of a small table in an interrogation room at the Cameron County Sheriff's Department. The two detectives sat in chairs opposite him. The laminate-topped table between them was spotted with brown blooms of cigarette burns from the olden days when everybody smoked. To Oswald, the burns looked like melanomas. One concession to modern times was that the two-way mirror had been drywalled over, and a reflective dome that concealed a closed circuit camera was mounted to the ceiling. Lieutenant Cowell and Sergeant Heidler watched the feed from the monitor room.

Cortez asked, "Any particular reason you would be cleaning a sniper rifle when you are no longer employed in that capacity?"

"I always keep it clean. Just the way I was taught. No matter what."

Detective Hasan asked, "Not because you shot it earlier today?"

"You know, I didn't give you guys permission to search my place."

"n.o.body searched anything," Cortez said. "I was just taking a p.i.s.s. I could smell the Hoppe's."

"Which prompted you to look and see if I let soap sc.u.m build up on my shower tile?"

"Some people do. It's hard not to think less of them once you find out."

"Did you have time to rifle through the medicine cabinet, too?"

Hasan jumped in. "That's a good pun."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"Rifle. You used the word 'rifle' as a verb meaning 'to ransack' when the real focus of our conversation is the Winchester rifle you tried to conceal from us by hiding it in your bathtub."

"You have a great mastery of the English language. Preparing for the citizenship test?"

"I was born here, just like you."

"And actually, Hay-Seed-"

"It's Sayeed. Sayeed Hasan. Detective."

"Fine. But I didn't use rifle as a verb. I used the infinitive. As an adjective. Time to rifle. That's what I said."

Cortez said, "Are you two f.u.c.king kidding me?"

"I'm just trying to help your partner become a full-fledged American citizen."

"Kiss my full-fledged a.s.s, Lee Harvey."

Cortez said, "Oz, maybe you could just tell us why you felt compelled to grease up and wipe down your scope-mounted sniper rifle on the same morning Captain Bryant was shot up like Sam Peckinpah was directing his life."

"You're full of film references. But you know there's more to our culture than movies. There are books. Novels. Music. Painting. Poetry."

"And TV. TV is a cultural force. So why did you clean your gun this morning?"

"Rifle."

"How's that?"

"Rifle. Not gun."

Cortez frowned. "So we're back to rifle. It's an infinitive, right?"

"No, my weapon is a rifle, not a gun. 'This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun.'"

"Full Metal Jacket."

"Right."

"Oz, for the last time, why did you clean your rifle this morning?"

"Because I wanted to."

"Oz. C'mon."

"Look, all I'm saying is that I'm allowed to own and maintain firearms. That's one right I still have."

Hasan said, "Which begs the question: Why conceal it from us? Why go to the trouble to hide something that's perfectly legal? Why are you acting guilty?"

"Whoa, slow down there, chief. You're rifling these questions at me pretty fast. See what I did there? Transitive verb."

"Okay, okay, okay. Enough. Oz, you up for a powder residue test? That would put this to rest."

"Residue test? What would that prove? I could've worn gloves. I mean, you know, if I was the shooter."

"Seems to me, if I recall correctly, and I think I do, that you were kind of well known for your, oh let's say, disdain, of gloves. That they were impure. An unnecessary barrier between the sniper and his tool. That sound about right?"

"Yeah, I was like Brooke Shields in that regard. Nothing came between me and my Winchester."

Cortez said, "How about you let us run a ballistics match on your rifle against the .308s recovered from the murder scene?"

"Yeah, I could do that. But like I said, nothing comes between me and my Model 70. So I reckon I'll decline that offer. I don't trust you boys with my baby. Sorry."