Crime Machine

40

KEEPING LOW, CARDINAL MADE IT to the edge of the ravine and jumped. He slid down, hidden rocks chomping at femur and tibia. The line of trees above would give him some cover, unless whoever was shooting at him slid down into the ravine too. You got yourself into it this time, he told himself. You got Delorme into it too.

The ravine bottomed out at a small creek that was only half frozen. Swift black water, silver where it splashed over the rocks. Cardinal hunkered behind some thick brush and tried his phone again. Stone dead. Practically crawling, he made his way back toward the cabin, praying that Delorme was still alive.

This time the shot actually creased his arm, tore through his parka sleeve. It didn’t hit bone or even muscle, but ripped a hot line in the skin just above his elbow. He lay flat and peered through the bush toward the top of the ravine. The sniper was a ghost, a wraith out of Native folklore wafting soundlessly through the forest.

If it was the man who had bluffed his way into the cabin, either Delorme was already dead or she had forced him out into the woods. Another shot tore through the branches just above his head. Cardinal plunged back the way he had come, away from the cabin. If he could get to the Kreeger house, he might be in a stronger position to deal with this maniac, then come back for Delorme. It was not an idea that would withstand analysis, and he didn’t submit it to any. He just kept moving through brush and rocks and water.

A little farther on, the wide white platter of a lake opened up and across it Cardinal could see the house, a dim outline behind diagonals of falling snow. A crack of thunder split the air and lightning sparked wide over the trees. If whoever’s behind that rifle comes down this way, I don’t want to be out in the open, Cardinal thought. I really don’t.

Keeping well inside the tree line, he moved clockwise around the lake. That would take him behind the house and provide some cover. By the time he made it to the trees behind the house, the lightning had come west too, as if it had personal business with him. Several bolts lashed at the trees and the thunder sent shock waves through his diaphragm. It set off a car alarm in one of the snow-covered vehicles out front.

The snow had now changed almost completely to rain. Cardinal’s parka was not waterproof. Within minutes, icy water glazed his shoulders.

He moved farther around until he could see the side door of the house. To his left, a bunkhouse. If you were holding a hostage, he asked himself, where would you be most likely to keep him?

He got to the bunkhouse and scanned the trees in either direction. No sign of the rifleman. The car alarm still throbbing. He stepped up to the back window and peered inside. He was looking into a bunk room. Unoccupied and not much of anything in it. Beyond this, a table. It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out a body lying on the floor. He could see enough to know that it wasn’t Lloyd Kreeger and that whoever it once was had been dead some time. There wouldn’t be anybody else in the bunkhouse, not with that.

He stepped back into the trees. Rolls of thunder, moving off now, rain soaking through to his back, his chest. His arm stinging. The car alarm shut off and the rain was louder hitting the bunkhouse, the trees. He scanned the woods once more and ran to the side door of the house.

He tried the handle. Unlocked. He pushed the door open.

Dim interior. Table right in front, living room beyond, a bedroom or two off a mezzanine to the right. It was the kind of test scenario they might set up for you at the academy in Aylmer. Be ready to shoot, and if you do, shoot to kill—but know that it could be a victim or a bystander coming through any one of those doors.

Cardinal moved into the kitchen area, acutely aware of the stairs in the corner behind him, the basement they would lead to. The bathroom was empty. He got to the first bedroom door and opened it and checked inside. No one. He stood listening, the shiver in his knees only partly from cold.

He moved on toward the last door at the end of a short hall.

A voice behind him said, “Put the gun down.”

Cardinal whirled and dropped to his knee in one motion, Beretta at the ready.

“Very impressive,” the man said. He was in his late fifties. Bigger than Cardinal by a lot. Short hair and a military look to him, a shotgun at his shoulder—a shotgun being the exact tool for the situation. Fill a room with buckshot and no one gets away.

“Curtis Winston,” Cardinal said.

“It doesn’t matter who we are. It only matters what we are.”

“I know what you are, and you’re under arrest.”

The man came closer. “Cop,” he said. “Society’s lackey. Lickspittle. A no-account backer of the status quo.”

“Somebody has to take out the garbage.”

“Garbage is just material you don’t personally value. Others might take a different view.”

“Put down the weapon.”

“No.”

“You’re not getting out of here.”

“You might want to recalculate those odds. Shotgun versus pistol. Pathetic little cop versus … what? A force of nature. A united family.”

“A family is not what I’d call you.”

“What would you call us?”

“Just put down the weapon.”

“Negative. What would you call us?”

“I don’t see any us. I just see a gangster minus a gang.”

“Family, not gang. Our loyalties run deep. Now drop the Beretta.”

A hooded figure came in from the side door. “It’s the girl you have to worry about,” she said to Cardinal. “Not Papa.”

“Hello, Donna,” Cardinal said.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

The man called Papa did. “Christine,” he said, keeping the shotgun trained on Cardinal. “Christine, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten the rules?”

“I know the rules,” she said. “‘You leave the family, you leave for good.’” She turned to Cardinal. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Mendelsohn. You killed him because you knew he was going to recognize you. You took the photos from his file. What I don’t understand is why you killed the kid at the ATM.”

“He wouldn’t tell me where Papa was.”

“You kill a kid? To have Papa bear all to yourself? You’re that desperate to run with this guy again?”

“Not run with him. Kill him.” She pressed her gun to Papa’s head. “He won’t shoot. Papa never shoots anyone.” She lifted the shotgun out of Papa’s grasp and stepped around him. He stared at her with hatred. “You’re not the easiest man to find,” she said.

“You led a cop here? Are you that much of a traitor, Christine?”

“It was the other way around,” Cardinal said. “She followed me. Tried to shoot me, too, if that’s any consolation.”

“To warn you away,” Donna said. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“That is true,” Papa said. “Meet Christine Rickert—best shot I ever saw. Best tracker, best fighter, best I ever trained. It broke my heart when you quit the family.”

“Family,” Donna said. “Always family. What a joke.”

“What do you want, Christine?”

“I want my life back, Papa.”

Papa laughed. “I gave you your life back. Years ago. What were you? A juvenile delinquent. A petty thief. Drug dealer, street slut, a human spittoon. We took you in, gave you a home, something to belong to. Something to believe in. You could have become anything—special forces, undercover cop, the failsafe assassin. We trained you until you were the absolute best you could be.”

“Trained me to kill without mercy.”

“You were good at it. You were the best.”

“Trained me to believe that the slightest discomfort could be solved with a bullet.”

Winston shrugged. “So you threw it away. Now what are you?”

“Daddy’s girl.”

“You’re nothing. You’re a zero.”

“You made me in your image. Trained me for slaughter. I never learned any other way to meet the world. What are you supposed to do when your lover upsets you? You kill him. What do you do when you don’t get the job you want? You kill. What do you do when your husband isn’t a saint? You kill him. I just spent eight years in fucking prison, Papa.”

“Not for anything you did with me.”

“It was the culmination of everything you taught me.” She looked at Cardinal. “That’s right, John. My husband didn’t leave me. I sent him on his way.” She gestured with the gun. “With this. It’s one thing when you kill a stranger. That’s relatively simple to get away with. Unfortunately, when you shoot your husband in a fit of rage, you tend to get caught.”

Cardinal spoke quietly. “How did you know where to find the ATM kid?”

“Papa here’s a creature of habit. Always tells them to hit the first ATM again. After the second one. Every time. Kid wouldn’t tell me anything. But like I say, Papa’s a creature of habit. I don’t know how far Mendelsohn got with this, but you check back, you’ll find that aside from his habit of beheading people who annoy him, Papa likes to storm someone’s house and drain every dime out of every account they ever opened. As soon as you said Kreeger was wealthy, in the fur business, I knew he’d be here. The kid didn’t tell me a thing. Just stood there waiting for it. He knew if he got into his car I’d follow him.”

“Lemur was loyal,” Papa said. “Unlike you.”

“And look where it got him,” Donna said. “Are you proud of your children, Papa?”

“Donna—Christine,” Cardinal said. “Whatever you have in mind now, don’t do it.”

Donna laughed. “He took my life. Why shouldn’t I take his?”

“If not for me,” Papa said, “and the family I gave you, you’d have been dead at fifteen.”

“You’re an assembly line for murderers. You’ll just keep turning out more like me. Taking you down will be the one good thing I’ve ever done.”

“Don’t do it,” Cardinal said.

“Why, John? You have a happy ending for me? You marry me and take me away from all this? I don’t think so. In a way, you’re partly responsible. You gave me a glimpse of real love, real loyalty. You would have figured me out quick enough—but it was just so obvious you loved your wife. Real love. Not the fake stuff Papa deals in, the real thing. That’s something I’ve never had, never will. You can’t imagine how that feels.”

“You kill a boy and a law officer and God knows who else,” Cardinal said, “and you blame it on your childhood?”

“You can’t imagine the things I’ve seen. Either of you. You can’t begin to guess the places you travel when you’ve had the benefit of Papa’s training. I’ve seen fathers clasp their hands in prayer and beg, beg not to be killed—not for their own sakes, for the sakes of their children. I’ve seen young mothers sprawled on the ground, blood spilling from their heads, their babies wailing in the next room. I’ve seen teenagers, a teacher, an architect, at least one doctor—all dead for the same reason. The same simple reason. Because Papa wanted it that way. It was never for anything that mattered, anything that might make sense as a motive. They looked at him wrong, they didn’t bow down to him, they didn’t recognize that he was God, obviously they were not fit to live. I lost interest when he started cutting people’s heads off. Not personally, of course. Why kill anyone yourself when you can have a so-called son or daughter do it for you?”

“Look at you,” Papa said. “You’re magnificent. An implacable force. Come with me up north. We’ll work together. We’ll raise a family the like of which has never been seen, and we’ll take over whatever’s left of the world.”

“Big talk from a guy who’s never killed anyone.”

“He did,” Cardinal said. “Martin Scriver—later known as Curtis Carl Winston—murdered his parents forty years ago. Took them for a ride on the lake and chopped their heads off and sank the boat. Why’d you do it, Martin?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t kill my parents,” Papa said. “I never killed anyone.”

“Nobody did it for you,” Cardinal said. “Not that first time. You did it all by yourself.”

“My parents died. I didn’t kill them.”

“What did you do with the heads, Martin? Not that I suppose we’ll find them at this point.”

“I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything.” For a moment at least, all arrogance and authority seemed to drain from the man, leaving nothing but faint denial.

“Then how come you changed your name to Curtis Winston? We have the DNA, by the way.”

Papa shook his head.

“In some weird psychotic way, you’ve been trying to prove that ever since. It’s always somebody else doing the killing, right? You have them kill the couple. You have them kill the kid. You would have had Bastov’s son killed too, if he hadn’t got sick and missed his flight. But that first time, nobody did the killing for you. That was all you.”

“No,” Papa said, still shaking his head. “No.”

“That’s how you knew the house was for sale, right? Took a drive out Island Road to get a look at the old cottage? Last place you saw your parents alive? The Schumacher property was the best place to get a look at it.”

A girl of about thirteen stepped into the kitchen from the basement stairwell. She had a gun gripped in her two hands and aimed at Donna. Even from where he stood, Cardinal could see it shaking, but her arrival seemed to breathe life back into Papa. “Nikki,” he said. “Kill this woman.”

Donna kept her gun pressed to the side of his head. She looked the trembling girl up and down. “You’re losing your touch, Papa. This one’s not ready to kill anybody.”

“You’re wrong,” Papa said. “She already has.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do it, Nikki.”

Nikki swallowed. She kept the gun trained on Donna.

“Do it,” Papa said again. Nikki adjusted her stance.

“Dear me,” Donna said. “At her age I’d already killed at least two people for you.”

“Christine, this family is on the cusp of greatness. A pure existence in the clarity of the north. We can sit there in comfort and watch the entire planet go to hell.”

Donna laughed. She looked at the girl. “He’s been going on about the Pure White North for decades. Did he give you the story about so-called guided chaos too? Stir things up, then retreat to the north to wait out world war?”

“It’s such a shame,” Papa said. “We made you into something real, Christine. Lethal, yes, but real. We made you into travelling darkness, the agent of destiny, death incarnate. You had the power, not me, and that’s as close to God as it gets.”

“Not human, in other words.”

“A force to be reckoned with.”

“And now I’m reckoning with you.”

Donna shot him through the temple and he crumpled to the floor. Random nerve and muscle spasms jerked the arms and legs. Before Cardinal could move, she had the gun, still smoking, trained on a spot between his eyes.

The girl was trying to keep Donna in her sights, but her arms shook and wavered with her sobs.

Donna ignored her. “You’ve investigated a lot of murders, John. Now you’ve actually witnessed one up close. How do you like it? Would you like to make a career out of it?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Didn’t think so. It’s an acquired taste. That bastard made sure anyone near him acquired it pretty fast.”

“You think I’m going to let you go because we slept together?”

She shook her head. “Never. Sorry, John.”

“Kill me and you won’t get away with it.”

“Who’s going to know? I’m willing to bet you haven’t told anyone else what you figured out. It makes you look too dumb. What was the clincher for you?”

“Zabriskie Farm. The pictures you stole from Mendelsohn’s room.”

“How long have you known?”

“A couple of hours. Other people will know soon enough.”

“It’s too bad,” Donna said. “I liked you. Admired you. I still admire you.”

The girl made a move—it was only a sob, but it made her gun hand jerk—and Donna whipped around. In that splinter of time Cardinal had no opportunity to judge whether she would actually shoot the girl. Instinct took over. His gun hand came up and his finger squeezed the trigger.

Donna stumbled and fell back against a table. She started to raise the Browning toward Cardinal and he shot her again, catching her in the arm. She lifted the gun again. Her knees gave out and Cardinal’s final bullet went into her skull just above the left eyebrow.