The Last Family

9

Paul Masterson had come by his dislike of hospitals honestly.

In his mind those institutions represented pain beyond description. As he walked the carpeted hallways of Nashville’s Vanderbilt Hospital, his heart hammered and a swallow lodged in his throat as fragments of memory slammed into him like flying shrapnel. Ancient memories, recent memories, were sliding around together in his mind.

As a child he had been brought by his mother again and again to a small hospital, where he had been required to sit and watch some poorly constructed, yellow-skinned effigy of his father wither away by degrees. Finally all that was left was an empty hull connected to life by plastic tubes, each hard-fought breath measured by whirring and throbbing machines. He remembered the face he had been held up to to kiss good-bye. He remembered how the skin was drumhead-taut over the skull, how the hollowed bones felt under his hands. He remembered the dry half eyes, the black holes of his nostrils, packed around the breath that smelled of decaying tissue. Paul’s young dreams had been haunted by his father’s corpse floating through at inappropriate moments. No matter how deeply he tried to bury him in his mind, he surfaced. He could not locate one moment of his loving father as a living man. Death is evil, blind, and cruel.

Paul was away from his Montana nest for the first time in five years, and the world he had found beyond the mountains was alien, the smells focused and sharp, the colors garish and liquid, and the faces filled with fear, angst, suspicion, and disapproval.

Six years earlier he had almost died in a hospital not dissimilar to this one and had had to be taught again a few basic human skills, like walking. It had taken all the king’s horses and all the king’s men a year to put him together again.

Paul had no memory of being gunned down, but he remembered the before and after well enough. He knew from the accounts of others that he had been shot while trying to open a room-sized container reportedly filled with tons of cocaine. Two agents, Joe Barnett and Jeff Hill, both street virgins dressed in black assault suits with clammy palms and infinite trust in Paul, had perished. Sometimes he still saw them in his dreams. In the dreams the two agents were opening the doors to hell.

The KTW rounds, solid brass coated with Teflon to dissuade friction, passed through the agents’ Kevlar vests, vitals, and bone like hornets through cigarette smoke. There was instant retribution as the other agents and locals fired clip after clip into the container from the sides, turning the enclosed assassins into wet confetti. By some miracle no round had hit the detonator, nor had any been able to touch off the plastic explosives. Otherwise, the story would have ended there for all the troops.

Barnett and Hill stopped breathing before they hit the boards, and Paul’s heart had stopped beating in the operating room because the pump ran dry. A good measure of his right frontal lobe had become gull food.

He’d lain there day after day staring at a gallery of friends and family, most of whose faces didn’t register through the veil of morphine and damaged tissue. There had been nothing between his brain and the wind but bandages.

An army of physicians had used their skills and constructed a modern Frankenstein from used blood, shifted tissue, suture, formulas from NASA and Du Pont, and finished it with a glass eye that didn’t fit. They had wanted to finish the job, but other things had interfered-the ghosts of Barnett and Hill, the pity of old friends, and the feeling of being a stranger who frightened his children shitless. The shaking hands and blind unreasonable fear. The uncertainty. He had bolted to his mountain and stayed there. He had been paralyzed and unable to make even the smallest of decisions ever since.

Paul realized he was lost in the maze of look-alike hallways and stopped at a nurses’ station, an empty balloon of human skin with a piece of paper wadded up in his hand. They seemed to know there was nothing inside the suit but bone. The horseshoe scar that started at the top of the right ear and curved back around to the bottom of the same ear by way of his right temple, the patch, and the slightly misshapen skull marked him as the undisputed property of medical science, and worse, work interrupted while in progress. A coward, probably. The doctor who wandered by had eyes that measured him for a bed.

“Wrong floor,” one of the nurses said after looking at the paper.

“Elevator. Two floors up,” said another whose face he didn’t see because she was on his dead side.

The elevator ride was remarkable for the black orderly in his early fifties who smelled of disinfectant and soap and who stared openly at him. “In country?” he asked, possibly hoping he’d spotted a kindred soul who had seen the rockets’ red glare in Vietnamese skies. Wounds like Paul’s came from few known places.

“Miami,” Paul had answered.

“Hell of a war, that one,” the black man said, shaking his head and snapping his gum at Paul’s back as the door closed, leaving Paul oh another floor that might have been the same as the others but for different-colored carpeting. He seemed to float down the hall through clouds of antiseptic odors.

When Paul saw the object of his visit, he almost wished he had not come. Rainey Lee sat in a rocking chair staring out the window at golden treetops and slices of redbrick building with dark windows. He was much changed. Old flowers, kept beyond their endurance, had scattered petals across the surface of the lap table. The window ledge was cluttered with cards offering condolences, coupons, and other junk mail surely hand delivered by some well-meaning friend. Household bills were stacked and bound with a red rubber band. The bed with its hard sheets was aimed at a dead television affixed to the wall beside a poster of a schooner in a steel frame.

Rainey Lee had lost weight and substance. He seemed fragile, far older than possible; his hair, which had been an uncertain shade of auburn, was streaked with white. The skin was pallid. There was an open Bible in his lap.

Rainey looked up when Paul entered but seemed not to recognize him. Paul walked over and looked down into his face. Then Rainey’s eyes focused, sparked recognition, sadness, and embarrassment, and he stood slowly, like a man underwater. He laid the Bible on a table beside him and embraced Paul. Rainey hugged him a little too long, and Paul felt awkward and single-sided and flimsy, but he returned the hug and patted at Rainey’s back with both hands. He was pleased that the left hand was working pretty much as it should, since he had been squeezing the tennis ball he carried in his pocket.

“Paul, long time,” Rainey said.

“Didn’t expect to see me?” Paul asked.

“I didn’t expect to see you… and to see you so changed. Truthfully, Paul, I didn’t recognize you. I thought you had come into the wrong room.”

Paul changed the cane from his right to the left hand and touched Rainey’s shoulder to let him know that he was glad to see him and shared his grief.

“I can’t tell you how deeply sorry I am,” Paul said. “There are no words to express what I’m feeling. How are you doing?”

“This is a nice room. See my flowers?” Rainey’s voice was like gravel. “Looked better yesterday… day before.” He stared at Paul as he stood the cane against the wall. “I’m real glad you came. I was pissed at you. That note.”

The note. Paul remembered the note Martin had left on the bed beside Doris’s body. It had been put into an evidence locker, so he had yet to read it.

“I heard.”

“Martin wanted to set me against you-all of us.”

Paul said, “You thought any about going home? The future?”

“Why?” Rainey sat down and looked out the window. His eyes filled with tears. His body shook with sobs. “There’s nothing at home, Paul. I got no mountains to hide behind.”

Paul was unsettled by the reference to his exile.

“What are you doing here?” Rainey asked. “I’m flattered, but what brings you all the way here?”

“I’m going after Martin Fletcher,” Paul said. “I’ve been in D.C. ironing out the details. The agency is pledged-within reason.”

“Robertson? T.C. authorized you to find Martin? How?” Rainey looked up at him and his eyes cleared.

“T.C. has three solid reasons. First, because his agents have to feel like he’ll go to the wall for them and move heaven and hell to protect their families. Second, because he knows that for any number of reasons the normal authorities who would be in control would never get Martin Fletcher in custody. And, finally, because a senator who oversees the DEA’s budget requests told him it was a capital idea.”

Rainey’s eyes refocused far outside the room. “That makes perfect sense.”

“We’re going to get him, Rainey.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Thorne, Joe, and some newbies.”

“I am ready to get out of here,” Rainey said. “I’ll get dressed.”

“Wait a minute, Rainey. You need some R and R.”

“I have to come.”

“We’ll have to get you released. It’ll take time.” Paul didn’t plan to have Rainey anywhere but here. He wasn’t fit for mowing a lawn, much less what had to be done.

Rainey looked out the window. “Let me come, Paul. You owe me that much.”

Paul was shocked into silence.

“It’s out of the question, Rainey. This… you just aren’t up for it yet. Stay and rest.”

“What do you know about me?”

“I’m sorry, Rainey.” There was a flicker in Paul’s eyes that Rainey seized on. And before Paul knew what was happening, Rainey was carrying his suitcase toward the elevators.

They didn’t speak again until Paul was winding through Nashville’s heavy traffic on Broad toward the office building across from the post office where the local DEA offices were located. The logical place to gather the team was Nashville, because that was where Martin’s trail had ended. There was investigating to be done, and Paul would stay in Nashville long enough to see what they could discover that the police might have missed.

“The Tennessee bureau thinks there were two of them, the ranger and the old doctor,” Paul said. “Don’t think he could have done what was accomplished by himself.”

“They don’t know Martin,” Rainey said. “I don’t think there were two. Martin was always a loner. He would want to have the pleasure of killing, himself. Sharing was never his tiling. It’s not like he’d trust or need anyone to watch his back.”

“The Rover at the airport had what remained of the polio crutches inside. I understand the old doctor wasn’t on any of the airport tapes.” Paul shook his head. He stared at the yellow stains between his fingers as he spoke. “Fletcher left the country after he escaped from prison, and he had his face changed in Spain.”

“How’s agency intelligence on Martin?”

“We’re getting files on him from the Navy, FBI, and the CIA but the CIA may not be as cooperative as the others. They certainly won’t open any of the Black Operations files. They may, in fact, still be protecting him. The agency’ll ship what they compile to us as soon as it’s assembled,” Paul said. “We need to check for other possible suspects. We know the ranger had red hair, mirrored glasses, and a fancy pistol on his hip. He used a three-eighty on the scout leader-silenced, maybe. Nobody heard a shot.”

“Why did you come? He told you he would stop if you didn’t come after him.”

“I don’t believe it for a minute.”

Rainey looked at Paul and seemed to be measuring him. “Gonna poke the snake with a stick?”

“He has to be stopped, Rainey. Doesn’t matter what he said, even if I believed him. Can’t walk after what he’s already done.”

“Once on stakeout he dressed up like a derelict and called himself Willie the wino,” Rainey said. “He disguised his voice and had this pair of pants that he’d pissed on days before. Smelled like a truck-stop bathroom. Trained to do makeup by one of those Hollywood experts. And got the government to pay for it. So tell me what Robertson said. Pissed, right?”

“I think he saw the wisdom of my idea.”

“T.C. wouldn’t give you green dog shit he scraped off his shoe.”

“I talked to Senator Stanton’s aide the day before I saw T.C. An informal dinner in Arlington. He passed my request for help on to the senator.”

“And the senator was receptive?”

“Absolutely.”

“He agreed?” Rainey slowly shook his head.

“Thorne and I have been reinstated as special agents to apprehend Fletcher, who is also a fleeing felon. He is to be returned forthwith to Marion, Illinois, where a cell awaits him. If he resists capture, we are to use whatever force appears necessary.”

“Great!” Rainey’s eyes glazed over and lost their focus for a few seconds.

“T.C. was very cooperative. Postal inspectors, U.S. marshals, Secret Service, FBI, and the CIA are to cooperate in whatever manner we see fit, if we need ’em. Thorne and McLean have been reassigned to me.”

“And I’m on your team. Not going back to what I was.”

Paul didn’t answer. Rainey was on extended leave, and Paul didn’t want him activated yet, if at all. Paul said, “Look, I know we’ll get Martin. But the reality is that we may or may not get him before he moves against Laura and the kids. Logically, they have to be his next target. I have to know that someone I can depend on will make sure he doesn’t get them. Otherwise, I’ll have to go myself.”

Rainey couldn’t conceal how ridiculous the idea of Paul pitted one on one against Martin Fletcher was to him. “And see if maybe he’d just kill you and go away?”

“We’re roughly the same size,” Paul said in self-defense. They both knew it was a ludicrous statement.

“Me. I’ll go because I’m the best choice,” Rainey said.

Naturally, Paul knew that Rainey wanted to sit and wait for Martin to show up. His own hatred would give him infinite patience and the courage to face him.

“Rainey, who out of the agency or any other agency I’ve mentioned would be best suited to watch over my family? Aside from you. You’ve been around while I’ve been out of circulation. I need for you to be my right hand on this. Who besides you?”

Rainey looked down into his lap and contemplated the request. “Thorne Greer,” he said finally. “Thorne Greer is the best guy for that. He has the patience of a rock, he’s a crack shot, and he always had great reflexes.”

Paul didn’t speak the rest of the way to the office. He had said more in the space of the past few days than he had in six years, and it had tired him. Rainey spent the rest of the time in traffic drumming his fingers against the Bible on his lap and humming to himself. Paul hoped the operation would give Rainey a chance to regain some balance. It was obvious to him that the deaths had altered him in some fundamental way-how could they not have? Of all three agents who had lost their families, Rainey was the one most likely to spin out of control when he got the scent of Martin Fletcher.

Paul had to keep the operation as quiet as possible. Powerful people trusted Paul to see that all the i’s were dotted and the bodies, if any, were buried quietly. Rainey Lee’s addition to the team wasn’t a good idea, but Paul wanted to help his old friend.

The operation was a hunting party staffed with people who were conflicted by circumstance and driven by revenge. And there were the others in the mix, the new guys. Then there was Tod Peoples’s wild card, Woodrow Poole. Paul hadn’t been able to get any background information on him through his sources at DEA or Justice. The CIA had no one listed with that name, nor did FBI, Secret Service, marshals or anyone else tied into the government-employee database he had access to. So Woody Poole was either an alias for a known agent, deep cover, Black Operational, or freelance.

Paul eyed the people passing in their cars and trucks and wondered what they were thinking as he and Rainey were planning the destruction of a mad killer. A man Paul now knew he should have killed years earlier. Paul tried not to dwell on the fact that he was responsible for letting Fletcher live. He knew that it was his moral stance, his refusal to allow the man to be taken out, that had paved the way for innocent deaths, the destruction of lives, and his own downfall. There was no moral element to the equation now. Martin Fletcher would die.