French rolled down the window, but it didn’t help.
There was this house, and in it, a killer …
Was this really the question he faced?
One son or the other?
It wasn’t fair, but what was? French had gone to war, and killed, and lost one son already; he’d seen victims and unspeakable crime, spent years in the pursuit of evil men. In a good life, there’d been bad moments, but this was the worst, wind screaming in the car as he did the same in the silence of a breaking heart. One or the other, he had to choose.
French reached for the mic.
He made the call.
* * *
Finding the house was not a problem. The neighborhood was new money, but big money. Lots of gates and walls. Garages the size of a workingman’s house. French got there first, did a slow drive-by, and then parked where he could see the gate, the roofline, the glow of lights beyond the wall. Burklow rolled in five minutes later, and it was a long five minutes.
“You okay?”
They met on the sidewalk, low-voiced as Burklow did a hard-target search of French’s face. Whatever he saw there made him happy enough. He didn’t repeat the question.
“Where’s Jason?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d be here.”
The street was empty. They settled more deeply into the shadows cast by a streetlight two houses down. “Tell me everything he said.”
Burklow glanced at the house. To save time, they’d decided to do the full rundown in person. “Jason knows a lot about the property. The structure is fortified with polycarbonate, armored glass and steel-core doors in hardened frames. The security system is state of the art. Eighteen cameras on the grounds. Another dozen inside. Motion sensors and infrared. Pressure plates at the main and rear gates.”
“How does he know that?”
“How does he know any of it?”
“Do you believe him?”
“Do you?”
French thought, Yeah, I do. “Did he give you a name?”
“Reece, but he thinks it’s fictitious. There’s no Reece listed at this address. We can check property records after.” An unhappy moment passed between them. “I think he might be injured.”
“Jason? Why?”
“Something in his voice, his breathing, the fact he called us at all. I’ve never known him to ask for help.”
That was true. Not even as a kid.
Burklow shifted uneasily, looking down from all his great height. They’d been together a long time, thick and thin. French didn’t have to see his face to know his thoughts or the unanswered question that still hung between them. He nodded once, glad for the shadows, and how they hid his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I made the call.”
“I’m sorry, Bill.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“How soon?”
“Not long.” French did not trust his voice to say more. The first wave was already rolling: everyone on duty, and close enough to get there fast. Behind them, other cops were being called up, body armor issued, the armory broached. They had no warrant; they barely had probable cause. But no cop in the city had ever seen anything like what had been done to Tyra Norris, and every one of those cops wanted the guy who’d done it, proper procedure or not. French had slipped the chain, and it was coming, no stopping it.
Where was Jason?
Why wasn’t he here?
Misunderstanding the expression on his partner’s face, Burklow said, “Brother, you made the right choice.”
French believed that, too.
It didn’t help in the slightest.
45
Inside the bedroom, Sara rode emotion like the crest of an impossible wave. It lifted her, took her, and tossed her. She’d never been the angry person, the forceful personality. She’d gone along to get along. The easy friend. The laid-back neighbor. Only twice in her life had she lost complete control of her emotions, once on the day her parents kicked her out, and then again on the foggy, back-alley night she’d had the abortion. That was it, two times lost and out of control. This was the third, and after so much helplessness and fear, she stepped joyfully into the fire of pure, blind rage, screaming wordlessly as she tried to beat down the prison, the man, the wall she hated. When one chair came apart, she picked up another. Every chunk of drywall was pure adrenaline, the haze of dust like a drug.
Him. He. Whoever.
The rat in the walls.
The second chair shattered, and she could feel it out there, the tail end of her madness. Sheeted in sweat and fine, white dust, she picked up a length of jagged wood, thinking, Fuck this place, and fuck this guy. The screams were gone, but she stabbed at the Sheetrock, hoping the hard, sharp point would find something soft behind the wall.
* * *
Reece had no idea what to do. He’d chosen the girl for many reasons, one of which had been the easy compliance he’d seen in her approach to the world. He knew from bitter experience that women so lovely could be prone to disdain for men who looked and thought as Reece did. Sara had every quality he admired in a woman, the way she looked and moved, the soulful eyes and easy laugh. He’d followed her long enough to make sure, and everything he’d seen confirmed that first assessment.
She was compliant.
She could be taught.
Reece had never been so wrong in his life, and had no idea what to do with this rage machine tearing down his house. There was no saving this. His mind was already in transition. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d cut losses.
The question was how.
She’d broken through the drywall and was attacking the plywood underneath it. Given enough time, she might actually punch through.
He’d have to shoot her, he decided. No fun in that, but he had no desire to be stabbed, either.
With a strange shock, Reece realized that he was feeling something close to actual fear. He lived for control, and had none. She was pounding on the plywood, and if anything, the pounding was getting louder and harder.
Get the gun; kill the girl.
Yet his paralysis was total.
Boom.
She hit the plywood.
Boom.
It gave a little more.
A high-pitched laugh found its way past Reece’s lips, another disbelieving titter. Could it be any worse?
No, he thought. Not possible.
Two seconds later the alarm went off.
* * *
Schematics or not, the security system was too good for Jason to chance on his own. He had a fine memory and knack for tactical thinking, so keeping track of sensors and sight lines was far from impossible. But he didn’t like the odds of running half speed on unfamiliar ground, not against a man like Reece.
So he did need help.
What he’d said to Burklow was not an actual lie.
Jason arrived ten minutes before his father, and parked one street over, slinging his weapons, and working through a strip of forest where Reece’s property touched a neighbor’s. He made a quick recon along the perimeter wall, located the rear gate first, and then a good access point to scale the wall, and watch the front approach. Lying flat, and invisible in the darkness, he was there when his father arrived. He watched Burklow arrive, too; saw them huddle in the gloom between streetlamps.