Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 138, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 821 & 822, September/October 2011

Witness Protection by Brendan DuBois

Since Brendan DuBois debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 1986 with the story “Dark Corridor,” he has gone on to write just over 100 published stories. That’s about four per year, one of them, the EQMM story “The Necessary Brother,” a Shamus Award winner, and another a Barry winner. But the New Hampshire author doesn’t only write short stories. He’s also a well-known novelist whose latest entry in his Lewis Cole series was released in July by Minotaur books. See “Deadly Cove.”

The sniper rested underneath a thick stand of rhododendron on the top of a slight rise, keeping a view on the rows of gravestones below him, stretching out for hundreds of yards in every direction. He had gotten here four hours earlier, to pick a spot that would give him a good target-view of this portion of St. Michael’s Cemetery in Porter, New Hampshire. He was on his belly, resting on a mottled green tarpaulin. It was early September and the ground and air were cool. Fall was coming soon, and all of the leaves and such giving him cover would be thinning.

He shifted his weight. That would be all right. Today was a one-shot deal — hah, he had just made a joke — and he knew he would never come back to this place. To his right was his Remington Model 700P.308 bolt-action rifle, with a mounted Enfield telescopic sight. At his left was a small water bladder, with a hose running out whose end was clipped near his left shoulder. Whenever he got thirsty, he just had to move his head a bit and suck some fluid to keep him alert. There was also a small open green canvas equipment bag for later.

He wore a ghillie suit, a camouflaged suit invented years ago by Scottish gamesmen. It had a base of mesh, and carefully threaded through the mesh were leaves, grass, small branches, and bits of camouflage fabric. The sniper was quite confident that he could only be discovered if somebody decided to trim the rhododendron bush and tripped over him. In training exercises with a variety of police forces in this part of the state, not once had he ever been found while wearing the ghillie suit.

Movement, off to the right. A line of traffic was coming down one of the narrow cemetery lanes, and it slowed and stopped in good view before him. He noted a Porter police cruiser, a state police cruiser, a cruiser from the Wentworth County Sheriff’s Department, followed by two dark-blue Ford LTDs, an unmarked blue van, and, bringing up the rear, a light brown van belonging to the sheriff’s department as well.

He took a deep, calming breath. Relax. Picked up his rifle. Doors flew open and a number of cops and sheriff’s deputies came out from the cruisers, and then, from the large van, fourteen men and women. Some wore suits and fine dresses, others made do with sweatpants and jeans. An older man came out from the rear of one of the Ford LTDs, and two men and two women came out of the other.

He waited.

The van from the sheriff’s department hadn’t moved.

The cops and the civilians moved to one side, walking up to a large tombstone flanked by small pine trees. The group waited.

The doors finally opened at the van. Two sheriff’s deputies came out, and then opened the rear door. They stood in a way that blocked the view of the people by the large tombstone. There was a motion of arms and hands, and then the two deputies started walking, a grinning man striding between them. He had on a dark gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie. The shoes were polished black loafers. His hands and arms and legs were free. He looked happy to be walking out in the fresh air of this fine September day.

The sniper was happy, too. He looked through the telescopic sight and placed the crosshairs upon the man’s forehead.

Standing near her police cruiser, Officer Stephanie Sawyer watched the near van open up, and the jurors file out. Twelve regular jurors and two alternates. They joined the judge, the two defense attorneys, and the two prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office. Standing next to her was Walt Preston, a sergeant in the Porter police department and her training officer when she had come on the job last year. State police troopers and deputy sheriffs were also milling about.

Preston turned to her and said, “You don’t look particularly happy, Steph.”

“I’m not,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

With the jurors, judge, and attorneys gathered in one spot by a large gravestone, the defendant came strolling up, smiling, flanked by two sheriff’s deputies who definitely weren’t smiling.

Stephanie said, “You’ve got Tommy Zammit over there, coming up to his personal crime scene, smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

Her sergeant replied, “In some ways, he doesn’t. Think about it. Doesn’t have to worry about where he’s going to sleep tonight, or where his next meal’s coming from, or where to find a doctor if he gets a bellyache. Advantages of being a guest of the state.”

“Some guest,” she said, watching Tommy approach, still grinning. “You think he’d be worried about a guilty verdict coming his way.”

“Guys like Tommy, they don’t worry about that,” Preston said. “They live hour to hour, day to day, like some creature in the woods, scrabbling for survival. The end of this trial probably has as much meaning to him as the end of the next century. And besides, he has two fine defense attorneys trying to get him off.”

Stephanie looked at the man and woman defense lawyers — a husband and wife team from a prestigious law firm in Manchester — and she said, “That’s another thing that bugs me. You’d think a case like this, a woman wouldn’t want to be part of the defense, or a husband or father, for that matter.”

Her sergeant laughed. “Since android lawyers haven’t been invented yet, there’s no way cases like Tommy’s can be avoided, for lawyers who are mothers, fathers, husbands, or wives. As disgusting as his crimes were.”

Despite the fact that she was well armed, with a 10mm Glock at her side, with a collapsible baton, handcuffs, and pepper spray as well, Stephanie shivered. “Yeah. The Graveyard Stalker. The suspect in a couple of dozen sexual assaults in graveyards up and down the length of the state... and Maine and Massachusetts want him after we’re done with him... because he’s also a suspect in a couple of homicides.”

“Disgusting enough.”

She took a breath. “But look at him. Smiling and joking...”

Now Tommy Zammit was conferring with his defense lawyers, arms folded, as the jurors watched from about twenty yards away. The two male assistant attorneys general stood by glumly, as if they were being overshadowed by the show taking place before them.

Stephanie said, “One thing I can’t stand is seeing him standing like that, no handcuffs, no ankle chains.”

Preston said, “Prejudicial, that’s what his defense lawyers argued, and an argument they won. That’s why the deputies shielded him from view of the jury when they took him out of the van and removed his shackles. Even though he’s been charged, technically, the son of a bitch is still innocent. And having cuffs and chains on him would leave a bad impression on the jury.”

“Still...”

“What’s bothering you, then?”

She said, “Suppose he makes a break for it? Starts running and steals a car? Or pulls out a homemade shiv and takes one of the jurors or the judge hostage? What then?”

Preston didn’t say anything, and Stephanie wondered if she had gone too far. But then Preston leaned over a bit and whispered, “Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.”

The sniper took it all in, getting into the zone. It was hard to explain to civilians what the zone was: It made you sound like a robot or something. But no, it was a way of eliminating outside distractions — birds, the sound of traffic, the root digging into his left thigh — and focusing on the mission at hand, and the target.

He could feel his breathing slow, even his heartbeat relax, as he got into the zone and waited, moving his arms slightly to keep the target in sight, to keep the crosshairs located on the man’s head. The rifle was loaded with a .308 cartridge, and he had fired thousands of such rounds with this same rifle. The safety was off and his finger was near the trigger. All it would take would be to move his finger, press upon it with just a few pounds of force, and there would be a movement of fine mechanical pieces, the sudden explosion of gunpowder, and the almost instantaneous death of the man down there, the man walking unchained, laughing and smiling.

Another thing the civilians didn’t understand. All the talk of pulling the trigger and ending a life sounded like you were playing God. Okay, maybe not the God, but a god nonetheless, one who carried the power of life and death around with him as if it were part of his daily equipment. And the sniper never got into such philosophical arguments, for what he saw himself doing was being an arm of justice. That’s all. An arm of justice. Other people above him — elected officials, others who were paid to make the tough choices — made a decision, and passed on the decision to him. And he had to trust that their judgment was sound; otherwise, it would be time to put the Remington in a closet and take up fishing.

He took another breath. All this thinking was getting him out of the zone.

It was time to get back to work.

Stephanie looked at her sergeant and said, “Covered? How do we have it covered?”

Preston grinned, rocked back on his heels a bit, like he was pleased to be teaching the rookie another lesson. “What you were saying about Tommy Zammit running away, or grabbing a hostage, or stealing a car... that was thought through a long time ago, when his defense attorneys argued that he shouldn’t be shackled while touring the crime scene with the jury. So the chief and the attorney general’s office came up with a plan. Now, if you want to know the plan, it’s classified, Stephanie. No gossiping, no telling tales out of school... you think you can handle that?”

A memory flashed to her, of her time in college, working two jobs to pay the tuition for her criminal justice degree, the sacrifices made, the late nights, and the one desperate night when it looked like it would all go wrong... and which instead made her work twice as hard to be where she was today.

“Yeah,” Stephanie said. “I can handle it.”

The sniper moved his head over to the left, positioned the water tube in his mouth, took a deep and satisfying sip of water. The end of the tube moved a bit in his mouth, felt loose. He’d have to check that later. A good sniper always kept on training, and always maintained his equipment, from the rifle to the rounds of ammunition that he hand-loaded himself so they were subsonic, not breaking the sound barrier, to the look of the ghillie suit, and even to something as simple as the water bottle.

To do otherwise was to invite disaster, and that was an invitation he was never interested in extending.

Preston kept on smiling. “Okay, don’t act different, don’t start looking around, but there’s another cop out here in the cemetery. Dixon. From the Special Response Team.”

“Carl Dixon? What’s he doing here?”

“Like I said,” Preston went on, “don’t move around to start looking, but Dixon’s hiding in the cemetery somewhere. None of us know where he is. He’s just out there... him and his Remington rifle and telescopic sight, and I can bet you right now he’s got the crosshairs centered right on Tommy Zammit’s forehead... or the back of his skull, depending where he’s standing.”

“You’re not joking?” Stephanie asked.

“Not for a bit. And here’s where it gets fun. The chief and the attorney general’s office came up with Carl’s rules of engagement... and if Tommy Zammit starts to run for it, or make a threatening move, or tries to steal a vehicle or grab a hostage, then Carl’s going to end it, right there. No fooling around. Just a clean head shot and that’s all she wrote.”

Stephanie couldn’t help herself. She smiled. “That sounds great.”

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.”

“Do his lawyers know?”

Preston said, “Are you kidding? No, they were just told that there’d be no patience if their client was to, quote, misbehave, unquote. And I’m sure the message got passed along to Tommy there.”

Stephanie looked again at the defendant, standing cheerfully with the two sheriff’s deputies, as the jurors were brought around to the gravesite, where fingers were pointed and statements were made.

“Too bad,” Stephanie said.

Bored? he was asked once. Don’t you ever get bored?

And the truth was, no, not really. When you were in the zone, everything was magnified, everything came into focus, and you could see things you couldn’t see otherwise. Like right now, seeing through the telescopic sight the finely groomed hair of Tommy Zammit, the little patch on the side of his cheek where he had missed shaving this morning, and the little red marks along the skin of his wrists, where earlier they were constrained by metal handcuffs.

Seeing all of this was like being a scientist of sorts, observing from afar, and that thought made him laugh.

Scientist.

Yeah. A mad scientist, ready to kill if need be.

Preston said, “What do you mean by that, too bad?”

There was an inquisitive tone to her sergeant’s voice, not too sharp, so Stephanie knew she wasn’t in trouble. But still...

Oh hell, she trusted Preston well enough, and he never gave her crap about being one of the ten percent of the officers in the force who went to the bathroom sitting down, so she said, “I meant, too bad Tommy got the warning. It might be better for everyone if he started running for it, to give Carl Dixon the excuse to take him down.”

Preston said, “Tsk, tsk, such cold words to come from such a young lady.”

Stephanie said, “I’m not a young lady. I’m now a cop. And what I’m thinking about are the dozen or so women out there who were sexually assaulted by that smiling creep, and how they’re going to have to line up to testify against him. One right after another. Talking about how they were walking or jogging or minding their own business, and how Tommy Zammit grabbed them and dragged them into a graveyard... not knowing if they were going to live or die... just knowing that their whole life was over. Done. Finished. And that they would have to find their way back to living again. And I’m sure most of them have... and now, months later, they have to relive it. They have to see him again. They have to tell the most private and humiliating details of what went on to a bunch of strangers.”

Preston stayed quiet for a moment or two, and quietly said, “It’s changed, you know. What they can do to a woman in court. I had an aunt once... something... well, she had to testify. And back then, she had to answer questions about her dating life, how old she was when she lost her virginity, what kind of underwear she was wearing the night she was attacked, crap like that. So it has gotten better.”

Stephanie found she had clenched her right fist, for no apparent reason. “If you say so... but still, it stinks that all those women have to come back and see that smug face over there.”

“The price of justice,” her sergeant said.

“Yeah,” Stephanie said. “But who’s paying the price?”

Still in the zone, the sniper watched the scene unfold below him. The jurors huddled together as either the defense attorneys or the state’s attorneys indicated points of interest around the large tombstone with the pine trees flanking it. Part of the trial process, though no testimony was being recorded. Nope, what was going on was a bit of show and tell. Show the jurors the crime scene — oops, he caught himself, the alleged crime scene — so that when testimony did begin, they would have a point of reference.

The sniper knew the drill well. The attorneys from the state would indicate the location of the trees, the tombstone, the lane where the victim — damn it, once again, the alleged victim — was walking one night with a portable telescope, to do some observing in this area as part of fieldwork associated with a class she was taking from the nearby University of New Hampshire.

And the defense attorneys would do their part as well. Making sure that the jurors noted the lack of illumination on this cemetery lane, the lack of any streetlights or storefronts, the absence of any homes or buildings in the area that held possible witnesses to what had gone on that night.

Planting, the sniper thought. That’s what those two defense attorneys were doing: planting the seeds of doubt so that that cheerful-looking fellow down there would walk free.

Stephanie said, “How much longer?”

Preston said, “Usually doesn’t last long. The defense and the prosecution get to show the scene to the jurors, the jurors nod and hopefully look interested, and that’s about it. Nobody gets to ask questions. The jurors are just here to observe.”

She watched Tommy Zammit whisper something to his female defense attorney, who was well dressed in a dark black pantsuit, white blouse, and pearls around her neck. Didn’t she notice, Stephanie thought, didn’t she see that she was working for the enemy? Didn’t she?

“Stephanie?”

“Yes?”

“You in a hurry to get out of here?”

Stephanie looked at Tommy, still grinning. The jurors were still together in a group, in some sort of herd mentality, as if they subconsciously knew that they were in the presence of a predator, and wanted to feel safe among themselves.

“No,” she said. “I’m in a hurry to get away from that slug.”

When it seemed everything was done and the attorneys had finished with their presentations, that was when it happened.

Tommy Zammit was being led back to the sheriff’s department van and he turned to look back at the jurors, and even through the telescopic sight, the sniper saw it all unfold. Tommy seemed to pick out one of the jurors — an attractive-looking woman, long brown hair, short tan skirt, in her mid twenties — and Tommy winked at her.

The bastard winked at her. And then blew her a kiss.

The sniper moved quickly.

In his green equipment bag was a highly illegal and homemade silencer device, made of a length of PVC pipe — painted matte black last week — and filled with pink home insulation, a length of spring and metal washers. Previous tests had shown that the silencer would work for at least two, if not three shots, but that was — hah, hah! — overkill. He would just need one.

The sniper threaded the silencer on the end of his Remington rifle, quickly pulled it back under his chin and got the target in sight and the crosshairs were set perfect, right at the base of Tommy Zammit’s skull.

In the movies, this would be where he would say something pithy, something significant, like “Here’s a taste,” or “Sucks to be you,” or “Payback’s a bitch,” or even “Hasta la vista.”

But the sniper was a professional.

He just squeezed the trigger.

Stephanie was walking behind the group of jurors, getting ready to stroll over to their van, when there was the oddest sound, like a pumpkin being hit by a hammer, and Tommy Zammit fell forward, right on his face, and the deputy sheriffs started yelling, drawing their weapons, and then the female defense attorney started screaming and screaming and screaming.

Preston shoved Stephanie’s arm and shouted, “Get those civilians behind the van, now!”

Stephanie drew her Glock, kept it at her side, and with her other arm she started herding and moving the frightened jurors, moving them behind the shelter of the van. They moved quickly, letting her push them along, and it only took a few seconds before they were on the ground, kneeling or sitting, eyes wide with concern and fear. Joining them were the attorneys — the woman attorney crying — and the judge, who looked pretty calm, all things considered.

Stephanie peered around the rear of the van, to the still form of Tommy Zammit, on the ground, sprawled out, and she saw the pink and white and brown of what was left of his smiling head.

The sniper moved speedily and efficiently, clambering out from the rear of the bushes, rolling up his rifle and silencer and water bottle and equipment bag in the tarpaulin, now holding it to his chest. He went down the far slope of the hill, away from the cops and the jurors and attorneys, to a GMC pickup truck, parked underneath an oak tree. He tossed the tarpaulin in the rear of the truck bed, stripped off his ghillie suit and tossed it back there as well, and then got into the cab, started up the truck, and backed out.

In thirty seconds, he was at one of the cemetery exits.

In another thirty seconds, he was in traffic.

And in ninety seconds, he was on an entrance ramp, getting onto a highway that in a matter of minutes more would take him home to Maine.

There was a shout. Stephanie looked over at a slight rise where there was a small brick building, maybe a storage building for the cemetery’s landscaping crew. A man stepped out, wearing the black uniform of the police force’s Special Response Team, baseball cap on backwards, holding a scoped bolt-action rifle in his hand.

Carl Dixon. And he shouted again.

“It wasn’t me!” he yelled. “It wasn’t me!”

At home, the sniper put the pickup truck in the garage, closed the door, and went inside and had a nice cold glass of water. He let his breathing go back to normal. All in all, a damn fine job. In and out, do what had to be done. And leads for those poor cops? Oh, there would be plenty of suspects: friends or relatives of the women who were either assaulted or murdered... or distant acquaintances... or maybe a rogue citizen, wanting to see a little rough justice done.

The sniper didn’t envy the job of those investigators. But he knew cops. They would do a good job for a week or two — having a criminal defendant get blown away in front of a judge, jury, and attorneys didn’t particularly build confidence in the judicial system — but so long as there wasn’t a blatant clue out there, leading them to him, the cops would thankfully go on to something else once the hubbub died down.

He went back to the garage, retrieved his ghillie suit, unrolled the tarpaulin, looked at the rifle and his gear, and—

Froze.

Damn it to hell. Blatant clues left behind.

He had just done that.

After a while of more shouts, yells, and sirens from responding units, some sort of order was restored to St. Michael’s Cemetery. The jurors, judge, and attorneys had been driven out in their respective vehicles and taken to the police station, where they would be interviewed to see if anybody heard or saw anything unusual before Tommy Zammit got his head blown off.

Now Stephanie and other Porter police officers were carefully searching the grounds of the cemetery, in a deliberate manner, walking away in a wedge shape from where Tommy had been shot. And one of the cops — named Woods — looked around and said, “Good luck with that. High-powered rifle with a silencer? The guy was a pro.”

Stephanie didn’t disagree. But there was a job to be done. She walked up the slight slope of a hill, and then glanced back at the still form of Tommy Zammit, now a brand-new crime scene. Photos were being taken, Porter detectives were taking measurements, and she was thankful that when the burst of violence had taken place before her, she hadn’t panicked, hadn’t collapsed, hadn’t looked around wildly. Nope, she had done her job.

Just like now.

On the top of the hill, she noted a stand of rhododendron bushes. Stephanie walked over, glanced down, saw nothing, and started walking away.

Hold on.

She looked back.

The ground beneath the bushes. Looked... disturbed. Like something had been here, and then was dragged away.

Stephanie got on her knees, peered through the base of the bushes. A good view of Tommy Zammit’s body. Still... didn’t prove anything.

She moved on her knees again, and winced and whispered, “Damn it,” as she knelt on something.

She moved back, looked down. A black tube-shaped piece of plastic. Taking a pen from her uniform shirt pocket, she picked it up and carefully looked at it.

Again and again, the sniper touched the hose from his water bladder. The mouthpiece was gone. He remembered it had been loose, the last time he had taken a drink, back underneath the bushes. Loose. Sure. And when he had dragged everything out and had left the cemetery, the mouthpiece had fallen off.

Would it be found?

Of course. If it was on the ground, it would be found. And any half-smart cop would know what it was. It would be evaluated, tested, his DNA would be carefully extracted, and then the manufacturer would be contacted. The long grinding process of justice would start, and this time, it would be aimed at him.

He closed his eyes. Thought of a special woman from a while ago, and then shook his head.

Justice. He had to have faith that in the end, it would prevail.

Had to.

Stephanie examined the piece of plastic, recognized it right away. The mouthpiece to a water tube, leading to a bladder or little knapsack that a sniper could use, while waiting to take the right shot.

She looked back underneath the bushes. Sure. Made a lot of sense. She looked at the scuff marks, and then put the whole scene into place. And in his hurry to get out, he had left this big fat clue behind.

Stephanie stood up, slipped the piece of plastic into her pants pocket, and then eventually rejoined the other searchers, and met up with her sergeant.

“Well?” Preston asked. “Find anything?”

And instead of answering right away, that memory flashed back to her again, of being in college, of going to her first — and only — frat party, getting hammered, and having a nice young man escort her back to her dorm room, where he had promptly and efficiently tossed her down on her bed, and stripped off her clothes, and then—

And later. Deciding whether to take it public, to go to the cops... what would it gain her? What could she have proven? So she had gone on at school, had gotten her degree, had gotten to Porter and past her rookie period and was now a cop and—

“Stephanie,” Preston repeated. “Did you find anything?”

Justice, she thought silently, justice. That’s what I found.

Aloud, she said, “No. Not a damn thing.”