Perfect Grave

Chapter Fourteen

T he next morning Henry Wade held the suspect in the sights of his handgun.

Finger on the trigger.

Life and death in a heartbeat. He couldn’t do this. Not again

He had to do it.

All in a heartbeat.

Steady your grip. Focus. Look at the suspect. Is the threat real? The gun is death in your hand. You are going to kill someone.

Don’t shoot or shoot? Is the threat real?

Decide now.

All in a heartbeat you are going to kill someone.

The air exploded.

Henry fired six rounds from his Glock, pressed the release button with his right thumb, ejected the magazine, inserted another one, securing it smoothly with the heel of his left hand before firing six more rounds.

Twelve rounds in under fifteen seconds. The threat was gone.

But his fear wasn’t.

“Outstanding, Henry.” Earl Webb, the firearms instructor, hit the button that retrieved the target. A B-27 silhouette. A man’s upper torso. He assessed the scoring ring. “Nice clustering.” Webb noted Henry’s high score for the speed-loading segment of his firearm’s qualification course.

“Let’s go to the last one we talked about.” Webb affixed the new target, hit the button for the clothesline chain to set it in position at the required distance, then instructed Henry to proceed.

Henry didn’t move.

“Ready, Henry? Same steps. Go any time.”

Henry stared at the target. It was a B-29 silhouette. A man’s upper torso, reduced in size. Fifty feet away. Confronting him at fifty feet. Pulling him back in time, reminding him that the suspect was approximately fifty feet away.

The victim was…

Henry’s scalp tingled.

“Go ahead.” Webb’s thumb was poised on the timer.

He was being tested.

Again.

God help me.

Henry fired six rounds, ejected the magazine, inserted another one, and fired six more, all in less than ten seconds. Webb retrieved the target. Henry’s clustering was even tighter than with the B-27.

As if he was determined to kill something.

“Impressive.” Webb noted the scoring. “That’s it, you’ve completed everything and because of your background and the fact you’re already a licensed PI, I expect you’ll be getting your firearms ticket real soon. Nice work.”

Webb extended his hand. Henry hesitated. What the hell did he have to be happy about? But Webb didn’t know.

No one really did.

Wheeling his pickup from the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, near SeaTac International, Henry could hear the whine of a jet on its landing approach. As it drew closer, its engines screamed overhead like the truth descending upon him. He would be licensed to carry a gun again.

Authorized to take another person’s life.

Are you able to live with that the rest of your life?

In the seat next to him, the pages of his study guide lifted in the breeze.

His nightmare had been resurrected.

Bile surged up the back of his throat. He pulled to the shoulder, slammed on his brakes, got out, doubled over, and vomited. He stayed there until the jet passed and the sky was quiet again.

Back behind the wheel, heading to where he needed to go, Henry dragged his forearm across his mouth. He ached for a drink. He battled the craving. He had to face this head-on and he had to face it sober.

It was that simple.

He’d gone more than two years now without touching alcohol, ever since he almost lost Jason and took early retirement from the brewery. That’s when Don Krofton, an old ex-cop pal, had hired him for his private investigative agency to work as an unarmed private detective.

Unarmed.

That suited Henry just fine.

Jason and Krofton had pulled him from the hell where he’d been trapped for some twenty-five years. Since he started working as a PI, Henry and Jason had grown closer. Sometimes Henry helped him on his stories, sometimes Jason helped him on his cases.

Partners.

Henry cherished what they had but now he feared he could lose it all.

Recently, a couple of the agency’s files involved some unexpected violence, so Krofton ordered all of his investigators to become licensed by the state to carry and use firearms. “No exceptions, Henry,” Krofton told him. “Unless you want to pack it in, and I don’t think you want to do that.”

It was true.

For as far back as he could remember, Henry had wanted to be a Seattle police officer and work his way up to detective. He’d never imagined that things would turn out the way they did. In the early days, he and Sally were happy. They had Jason and his job as a cop was great.

Then it all went wrong.

It had started as a routine day. Then they got the call. That call.

Twenty-five years ago.

God, he still couldn’t stomach thinking about it. Or talking about it.

Ever.

After it happened, Henry quit the force then tried to become a private detective but failed. Things got bad financially. He and Sally ended up working in the brewery. He shut down, stopped living. For Sally, it was like being condemned to life in a mausoleum. She couldn’t take it, so she left.

It broke Jason’s heart.

The kid used to ride his bike all over the neighborhood looking for her while Henry crawled into a bottle and sat in the dark, mourning it all.

“She’ll be back. I can fix it, Jay. Just wait. She’ll be back. You’ll see.”

Jason soon learned it was a lie. Sally never came back. Henry didn’t blame her. He became a lost cause who had fallen into an abyss and Jason realized that he had to get away, or be dragged down with him.

But Jay refused to give up searching for his mother.

Years later, he’d spend hours at the library, looking for her name and maiden name in old out-of-town phone books. He’d read obituaries and news stories about deaths. He’d keep records of those he checked, thinking the day would come when he would find her.

The boy just wanted to put his family back together.

Maybe that’s how his journalistic dream truly started for him. Born out of his mother’s desertion, Henry thought as he drove.

God, he was so proud of his son.

Only recently did Henry come to see how strong Jason was, how much he needed him, because it was his son who’d saved him. The night Henry turned up drunk in the newsroom was the rock bottom moment. He had humiliated Jason, had nearly cost him his job. That’s when Jason kicked him into AA.

That’s what saved him.

After Henry got sober, Krofton gave him a chance and took him on at the agency.

But now he had to carry a gun again and it pushed Henry to the brink.

For it had released his demons. He could feel them starting to circle round him, feel them closing in.

He needed a drink.

He needed Jason.