Without Remorse

CHAPTER 19

Quantity of Mercy

It was becoming more routine than the morning coffee and Danish at his desk, Lieutenant Ryan told himself. Two pushers down, both with a pair of.22s in the head, but not robbed this time. No loose cartridge cases around, no evident sign of a struggle. One with his hand on his pistol grip, but the gun hadn't cleared his hip pocket. For all that, it was unusual. He'd at least seen danger and reacted to it, however ineffectively. Then had come the call from only a few blocks away, and he and Douglas had rolled to that one, leaving junior detectives to deal with this crime scene. The call had identified the new one as interesting.

'Whoa,' Douglas said, getting out first. One did not often see a knife sticking in the back of a head, up in the air like a fence post. 'They weren't kidding.'

The average murder in this part of the city, or any part of any city for that matter, was some sort of domestic argument. People killed other family members, or close friends, over the most trivial disputes. The previous Thanksgiving a father had killed his son over a turkey leg. Ryan's personal 'favorite' was a homicide over a crab cake - not so much a matter of amusement as hyperbole. In all such cases the contributing factors were usually alcohol and a bleak life that transformed ordinarily petty disputes into matters of great import. I didn't mean it was the phrase most often heard afterwards, followed by some variation of why didn't he just back off a little? The sadness of such events was like a slow-acting acid on Ryan's soul. The sameness of those murders was the worst part of all. Human life ought not to end like variations of a single theme. It was too precious for that, a lesson learned in the bocage country of Normandy and the snowy forests around Bastogne when he'd been a young paratrooper in the 101st Airborne. The typical murderer claimed not to have meant it, and frequently copped to the crime immediately, as remorseful as he or she could be over the loss of a friend or loved one by his or her own hand, and so two lives were often destroyed by the crime. Those were crimes of passion and poor judgment, and that's what murder was, for the most part. But not this one.

'What the hell's the matter with the arm?' he asked the medical examiner. Aside from the needle tracks the arm was twisted around so much that he realized he was looking at the wrong side of it.

'The victim's shoulder appears to be dislocated. Make that wrecked,' the ME added after a second's consideration. 'We have bruising around the wrist from the force of the grip. Somebody held the arm with two hands and damned near tore the arm off, like taking a branch off a tree.'

'Karate move?' Douglas asked.

'Something like that. That sure slowed him down some. You can see the cause of death.'

'Lieutenant, over here,' a uniformed sergeant called. 'This is Virginia Charles, she lives a block over. She reported the crime.'

'Are you okay, Miss Charles?' Ryan asked. A fireman-paramedic was checking the bandage she's placed on her own arm, and her son, a senior at Dunbar High School, stood by her side, looking down at the murder victim without a trace of sympathy. Within four minutes Ryan had a goodly quantity of information.

'A bum, you say?'

'Wino- that's the bottle he dropped.' She pointed. Douglas picked it up with the greatest care.

'Can you describe him?' Lieutenant Ryan asked.

The routine was so exactingly normal that they might have been at any Marine base from Lejeune to Okinawa. The daily-dozen exercises followed by a run, everyone in step, the senior NCO calling cadence. They took particular pleasure in passing formations of new second lieutenants in the Basic Officers Course, or even more wimpy examples of officer-wannabes doing their summer school at Quantico. Five miles, passing the five-hundred-yard KD range and various other teaching facilities, all of them named for dead Marines, approaching the FBI Academy, but turning back off the main road then, into the woods towards their training site. The morning routine merely reminded them that they were Marines, and the length of the run made them Recon Marines, for whom Olympic-class fitness was the norm. They were surprised to see a general officer waiting for them. Not to mention a sandbox and a swing set.

'Welcome to Quantico, Marines,' Marty Young told them after they'd had a chance to cool down and been told to stand at ease. Off to the side, they saw two naval officers in sparkling undress whites, and a pair of civilians, watching and listening. Eyes narrowed collectively, and the mission was suddenly very interesting indeed.

'Just like looking at the photos,' Cas observed quietly, looking around the training site; they knew what the lecture was about. 'Why the playground stuff?'

'My idea,' Greer said. 'Ivan has satellites. The overhead schedules for the next six weeks are posted inside Building A. We don't know how good the cameras are, and so I'm going to assume that they're as good as ours, okay? You show the other guy what he wants to see or you make it easy for him to figure out. Any really harmless place has a parking lot.' The drill was already determined. Every day the new arrivals would move the cars around randomly. Around ten every day they would take the mannequins from the cars and distribute them around the playground equipment. At two or three the cars would be moved again and the mannequins rearranged. They suspected correctly that the ritual would acquire a great deal of institutional humor.

'And after it's all over, it becomes a real playground?' Ritter asked, then answered his own question. 'Hell, why not? Nice job, James.'

'Thank you, Bob.'

'It looks small this way,' Admiral Maxwell said.

'The dimensions are accurate to within three inches. We cheated,' Ritter said. 'We have the Soviet manual for building places like ibis. Your General Young did a nice job.'

'No glass in the windows in Building C,' Casimir noted.

'Check the photos, Cas,' Greer suggested. 'There's a shortage of window glass over there. That building just has shutters, here and there. The callback' - he pointed to Building? - 'has the bars. Just wood so that they can be removed later. We've just guessed at the inside arrangements, but we've had a few people released from the other side and we've modeled this place on the debriefs. It's not totally made up from thin air.'

The Marines were already looking around, having learned a little of the mission. Much of the plan they already knew, and they were thinking about how to apply their lessons of real combat operations to this perverted playground, complete with child mannequins who would watch them train with blue doll eyes. M-79 grenades to blast the guard towers. Willie-pete through the barracks windows. Gunships to hose things down after that... the 'wives' and 'kids' would watch the rehearsal and tell no one.

The site had been carefully selected for its similarity with another place - the Maines hadn't needed to be told that; it had to be so - and a few eyes lingered on a hill half a mile from the site. You could see everything from there. After the welcoming speech, the men divided into predetermined units to draw their weapons. Instead of M16A1 rifles, they had the shorter CAR-15 carbines, shorter, handier, preferred for close work. Grenadiers had standard M-79 grenade launchers, whose sights had been painted with radioactive tritium to glow in the dark, and their bandoleers were heavy with practice rounds because weapons training would start immediately. They'd start in daylight for feel and proficiency, but almost immediately their training would switch exclusively to night work, which the General had left out. It was obvious in any case. This sort of job only happened at night. The men marched to the nearest weapons-firing range to familiarize themselves. Already set up were window frames, six of them. The grenadiers exchanged looks and fired off their first volley. One, to his shame, missed. The other five razzed him at once, after making sure that the white puffs from their training rounds had appeared behind the frames.

'All right, all right, I just have to warm up,' the corporal said defensively, then placed five shots through the target in forty seconds. He was slow - it had been a mainly sleepless night.

'How strong do you have to be to do that, I wonder?' Ryan asked.

'Sure as hell isn't Wally Cox,' the ME observed. 'The knife severed the spinal cord just where it enters the medulla. Death was instantaneous.'

'He already had the guy crippled. The shoulder as bad as it looks?' Douglas asked, stepping aside for the photographer to finish up.

'Worse, probably. We'll look at it, but I'll bet you the whole structure is destroyed. You don't repair an injury like this, not all the way. His pitching career was over even before the knife.'

White, forty, or older, long black hair, short, dirty. Ryan looked at his notes. 'Go home, ma'am,' he'd told Virginia Charles.

Ma'am.

'Our victim was still alive when she walked away.' Douglas came over to his lieutenant. 'Then he must have taken his knife away and gave it back. Em, in the past week we've seen four very expert murders and six very dead victims.'

'Four different MOs. Two guys tied up, robbed, and executed,.22 revolver, no sign of a struggle. One guy with a shotgun in the guts, also robbed, no chance to defend himself. Two last night just shot, probably a.22 again, but not robbed, not tied up, and they were alerted before they were shot. Those were all pushers. But this guy's just a street hood. Not good enough, Tom.' But the Lieutenant had started thinking about it. 'Have we ID'd this one yet?'

The uniformed sergeant answered. 'Junkie. He's got a rap sheet, six arrests for robbery, God knows what else.'

'It doesn't fit,' Ryan said. 'It doesn't fit anything, and if you're talking about a really clever guy, why let somebody see him, why let her leave, why talk to her - hell, why take this guy out at all? What pattern does that fit?' There was no pattern. Sure, the two pairs of drug dealers had been taken down with a.22, but the small-bore was the most commonly used weapon on the street, and while one pair had been robbed, the other had not; nor had the second pair been shot with the same deadly precision, though each did have two head wounds. The other murdered and robbed dealer had been done by a shotgun. 'Look, we have the murder weapon, and we have the wine bottle, and from one or both we'll get prints. Whoever this guy was, he sure as hell wasn't real careful.'

'A wino with a sense of justice, Em?' Douglas prodded. 'Whoever took this punk down -'

'Yeah, yeah, I know. He wasn't Wally Cox.' But who and what the hell was he?

Thank God for gloves, Kelly thought, looking at the bruises on his right hand. He'd let his anger get the better of him, and that wasn't smart! Looking back, reliving the incident, he realized that he'd been faced with a difficult situation. If he'd let the woman get killed or seriously injured, and just gotten into his car and driven off, first, he'd never really have been able to forgive himself, and second, if anyone had seen the car, he'd be a murder suspect. That extended thought evoked a snort of disgust. He was a murder suspect now. Well, somebody would be. On coming home, he'd looked in the mirror, wig and all. Whatever that woman had seen, it had not been John Kelly, not with a face shadowed by his heavy beard, smeared with dirt, under a long and filthy wig. His bunched-over posture made him appear several inches shorter than he was. And the light on the street had not been good. And she'd been even more interested in getting away than anything else. Even so. He'd somehow left his wine bottle behind. He remembered dropping it to parry the knife thrust, and then in the heat of the moment he'd not recovered it. Dumb! Kelly raged at himself.

What would the police know? The physical description would not be a good one. He'd worn a pair of surgical gloves, and though they allowed him to bruise his hands, they hadn't torn and he hadn't bled. Most important of all, he had never touched the wine bottle with ungloved hands. Of that he was certain because he'd decided from the beginning to be careful about it. The police would know a street bum had killed that punk, but there were lots of street bums, and he only needed one more night. It meant that he'd have to alter his operational pattern even so, and that tonight's mission was more dangerous than if ought to be, but his information on Billy was too good to pass up on, and the little bastard might be smart enough to change his own patterns. What if he used different houses to count his cash or only used one for a few nights? If that was true, any wait beyond a day or two might invalidate his whole reconnaissance effort, forcing him to start again with a new disguise - if he could select something equally effective, which was not immediately likely. Kelly told himself that he'd killed six people to get this far - the seventh was a mistake and didn't count... except maybe to that lady, whoever she was. He took a deep breath. If he'd watched her get hurt worse, or killed, how would he be able to look in a mirror? He had to tell himself, that he'd made the best of a bad situation. Shit happens. It ran the risks up, but the only concern there was failure in the mission, not in danger to himself. It was time to set his thoughts aside. There were other responsibilities as well. Kelly lifted his phone and dialed.

'Greer.'

'Clark,' Kelly responded. At least that was still amusing.

'You're late,' the Admiral told him. The call was supposed to have been before lunch, and Kelly's stomach churned a little at the rebuke. 'No harm done, I just got back. We're going to need you soon. It's started.'

That'sfast, Kelly thought. Damn. 'Okay, sir.'

'I hope you're in shape. Dutch says you are,' James Greer said more kindly.

'I think I can hold up, sir.'

'Ever been to Quantico?'

'No, Admiral.'

'Bring your boat. There's a marina there and it'll give us a place to chat. Sunday morning. Ten sharp. We'll be waiting, Mr Clark.'

'Aye aye.' Kelly heard the phone click off.

Sunday morning. He hadn't expected that. It was going too fast, and it made his other mission all the more urgent. Since when had the government ever moved that quickly? Whatever the reason, it affected Kelly directly.

'I hate it, but it's the way we work,' Grishanov said.

'You really are that tied to your ground radar?'

'Robin, there is even talk of having the missile firing done by the intercept-control officer from his booth on the ground.' The disgust in his voice was manifest.

'But then you're just a driver!' Zacharias announced. 'You have to trust your pilots.'

Ireally should have this man speak to the general staff, Grishanov told himself with no small degree of disgust. They won't listen to me. Perhaps they would listen to him. His countrymen had vast respect for the ideas and practices of Americans, even as they planned to fight and defeat them.

'It is a combination of factors. The new fighter regiments will be deployed along the Chinese border, you see-'

'What do you mean?'

'You didn't know? We've fought the Chinese three times this year, at the Amur River and farther west.'

'Oh, come on!' This was too incredible for the American to believe. 'You're allies!'

Grishanov snorted. 'Allies? Friends? From the outside, yes, perhaps it looks as though all socialists are the same. My friend, we have battled with the Chinese for centuries. Don't you read history? We supported Chiang over??? for a long time - we trained his army for him.??? hates us. We foolishly gave him nuclear reactors, and now they have nuclear arms, and do you suppose their missiles can reach my country or yours? They have Tu-16 bombers - Badgers you call them, yes? Can they reach America?'

Zacharias knew that answer. 'No, of course not.'

'They can reach Moscow, I promise you, and they carry half-megaton nuclear bombs, and for that reason the MiG-25 regiments are on the Chinese border. Along that axis we have no strategic depth. Robin, we've had real battles with these yellow bastards, division-size engagements! Last winter we crushed their attempt to take an island that belongs to us. They struck first, they killed a battalion of border guards and mutilated the dead - why do that, Robin, because of their red hair or because of their freckles?' Grishanov asked bitterly, quoting verbatim a wrathful article in Red Star. This was a very strange turn of events for the Russian. He was speaking the literal truth, and it was harder to convince Zacharias of this than any one of a number of clever lies he might have used. 'We are not allies. We've even stopped shipping weapons to this country by train -the Chinese steal the consignments right off the rail carriages!'

'To use against you?'

'Against whom, then, the Indians? Tibet? Robin, these people are different from you and me. They don't see the world as we do. They're like the Hitlerites my father fought, they think they are better than other men - how you say?'

'Master race?' the American suggested helpfully.

'That is the word, yes. They believe it. We're animals to them, useful animals, yes, but they hate us, and they want what we have. They want our oil and our timber and our land.'

'How come I've never been briefed on this?' Zacharias demanded.

'Shit,' the Russian answered. 'Is it any different in your country? When France pulled out of NATO, when they told your people to take your bases out, do you think any of us were told about it beforehand? I had a staff job then in Germany, and nobody troubled himself to tell me that anything was happening. Robin, the way you look to us is the same as how we look to you, a great colossus, but the internal politics in your country are as much a mystery to me as mine are to you. It can all be very confusing, but I tell you this, my friend, my new MiG regiment will be based between China and Moscow. I can bring a map and show you.'

Zacharias leaned back against the wall, wincing again with the recurring pain from his back. It was just too much to believe.

'It hurts still, Robin?'

'Yeah.'

'Here, my friend.' Grishanov handed over his flask, and this time it was accepted without resistance. He watched Zacharias take a long pull before handing it back.

'So just how good is this new one?'

'The MiG- 25! It's a rocket,' Grishanov told him enthusiastically. 'It probably turns even worse than your Thud, but for straight-line speed, you have no fighter close to it. Four missiles, no gun. The radar is the most powerful ever made for a fighter, and it cannot be jammed.'

'Short range?' Zacharias asked.

'About forty kilometers.' The Russian nodded. 'We give away range for reliability. We tried to get both but failed.'

'Hard for us, too,' the American acknowledged with a grunt.

'You know, I do not expect a war between my country and yours. Truly I do not. We have little that you might wish to take away. What we have - resources, space, land - all these things you have. But the Chinese,' he said, 'they need these things, and they share a border with us. And we gave them the weapons that they will use against us, and there are so many of them! Little, evil people, like these here, but so many more.'

'So what are you going to do about it?'

Grishanov shrugged. 'I will command my regiment. I will plan to defend the Motherland against a nuclear attack from China. I just haven't decided how yet.'

'It's not easy. It helps if you have space and time to play with, and the right people to play against.'.

'We have bomber people, but nothing like yours. You know, even without resistance, I doubt we could place as many as twenty bombers over your country. They're all based two thousand kilometers from where I will be. You know what that means? Nobody even to train against.'

'You mean a red team?'

'We would call it a blue team, Robin. I hope you understand.' Grishanov chuckled, then turned serious again. 'But, yes. It will all be theoretical, or some fighters will pretend to be bombers, but their endurance is too short for a proper exercise.'

'This is all on the level?'

'Robin, I will not ask you to trust me. That is too much. You know that and so do I. Ask yourself, do you really think your country will ever make war on my country?'

'Probably not,' Zacharias admitted.

'Have I asked you about your war plans? Yes, certainly, they are most interesting theoretical exercises and I would probably find them fascinating war games, but have I asked about them?' His voice was that of a patient teacher.

'No, you haven't, Kolya, that's true.'

'Robin, I am not worried about B-52s. I am worried about Chinese bombers. That is the war my country is preparing for.' He looked down at the concrete floor, puffing on a cigarette and going on softly. 'I remember when I was eleven. The Germans were within a hundred kilometers of Moscow. My father joined his transport regiment - they made it up from university teachers. Half of them never came back. My mother and I evacuated the city, east to some little village whose name I can't remember - it was so confusing then, so dark all the time - worrying about my father, a professor of history, driving a truck. We lost twenty million citizens to the Germans, Robin. Twenty million. People I knew. The fathers of friends - my wife's father died in the war. Two of my uncles died. When I went through the snow with my mother, I promised myself that someday I would defend my country, too, and so I am a fighter pilot. I do not invade. I do not attack. I defend. Do you understand this thing I tell you, Robin? My job is to protect my country so that other little boys will not have to run away from home in the middle of winter. Some of my classmates died, it was so cold. That is why I defend my country. The Germans wanted what we had, and now the Chinese want it, too.' He waved towards the door of the cell. 'People like... like that.'

Even before Zacharias spoke, Kolya knew he had him. Months of work for this moment, Grishanov thought, like seducing a virgin, but much sadder. This man would never see his home again. The Vietnamese had every intention of lulling these men when their utility ended. It was such a colossal waste of talent, and his antipathy to his supposed allies was every bit as real as he feigned it to be - it was no longer pretense. From the first moment he'd arrived in Hanoi, seeing first-hand their arrogant superiority, and their incredible cruelty - and their stupidity. He had just achieved more with kind words and not even a liter of vodka than what they and their torturers had failed to do with years of mindless venom. Instead of inflicting pain, he had shared it. Instead of abusing the man beside him, he had given kindness, respecting his virtues, assuaging his injuries as best he could, protecting him from more, and utterly regretting that he'd necessarily been the agent of the most recent of them.

There was a downside, however. To achieve this breakthrough, he'd opened his soul, told true stories, dredged up his own childhood nightmares, reexamined his true reason for coining the profession he loved. Only possible, only thinkable, because he'd known that the man sitting next to him was doomed to a lonely, unknown death - already dead to his family and his country - and an unattended grave. This man was no fascist Hitlerite. He was an enemy, but a straightforward one who had probably done his utmost to spare harm to noncombatants because he, too, had a family. There was in him no illusion of racial superiority - not even hatred for the North Vietnamese, and that was the most remarkable thing of all, for he, Grishanov, was learning to hate them. Zacharias didn't deserve to die, Grishanov told himself, recognizing the greatest irony of all.

Kolya Grishanov and Robin Zacharias were now friends.

'How does this grab you?' Douglas asked, setting it on Ryan's desk. The wine bottle was in a clear plastic bag, and the smooth, clear surface was uniformly coated with a fine yellow dust.

'No prints?' Emmet looked it over in considerable surprise.

'Net even a smudge, Em. Zilch.' The knife came down next. It was a simple switchblade, also dusted and bagged.

'Smudges here.'

'One partial thumbprint, matched with the victim. Nothing else we can use, but smudges, uniform smudges, the prints department says. Either he stabbed himself in the back of the neck or our suspect was wearing gloves.'

It was awfully warm this time of the year to wear gloves. Emmet Ryan leaned back, staring at the evidence items on his desk, then at Tom Douglas, sitting beside them. 'Okay, Tom, go on.'

'We've had four murder scenes, a total of six victims. No evidence left behind. Five of the victims - three incidents - are pushers, two different MOs. But in every case, no witnesses, roughly the same time of day, all within a five-block radius.'

'Craftsmanship.' Lieutenant Ryan nodded. He closed his eyes, first mentally viewing the different crime scenes, then correlating the data. Rob, not rob, change??. But the last one did have a witness. Go home, ma'am. Why was he polite? Ryan shook his head. 'Real life isn't Agatha Christie, Tom.'

'Our young lad, today, Em. Tell me about the method our friend used to dispatch him.'

'Knife there... I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. Strong son of a bitch. I did see one... back in '58 or '59.' Ryan paused, collecting his thoughts. 'A plumber, I think, big, tough guy, found his wife in bed with somebody. He let the man leave, then he took a chisel, held her head up -'

'You have to be really pissed off to do it the hard way. Anger, right? Why do it that way?' Douglas asked. 'You can cut a throat a lot easier, and the victim is just as dead.'

'A lot messier, too. Noisy...' Ryan's voice trailed off as he thought it through. It was not appreciated that people with their throats cut made a great deal of noise. If you opened the windpipe there could be the most awful gurgling sound, and if not, people screamed their way to death. Then there was the blood, so much of it, flying like water from a cut hose, getting on your hands and clothes.

On the other hand, if you wanted to kill someone in a hurry, like turning off a light switch, and if you were strong and had him crippled already, the base of the skull, where the spinal cord joined the brain, was just the perfect spot: quick, quiet, and relatively clean.

'The two pushers were a couple blocks away, time of death almost identical. Our friend does them, walks over this way, turns a corner, and sees Mrs Charles being hassled.'

Lieutenant Ryan shook his head. 'Why not just keep going? Cross the street, that's the smart move. Why get involved? A killer with morals?' Ryan asked. That was where the theory broke down. 'And if the same guy is wasting pushers, what's the motive? Except for the two last night, it looks like robbery. Maybe with those two something spooked him off before he could collect the money and the drugs. A car going down the street, some noise? If we're dealing with a robber, then it doesn't connect with Mrs Charles and her friend. Tom, it's just speculation.'

'Four separate incidents, no physical evidence, a guy wearing gloves - a street wino wearing gloves!'

'Not enough, Tom.'

'I'm going to have Western District start shaking them down anyway.'

Ryan nodded. That was fair enough.

It was midnight when he left his apartment. The area was so agreeably quiet on a weekday night. The old apartment complex was peopled with residents who minded their own business. Kelly had not so much as shaken a hand since the manager's. A few friendly nods, that was all. There were no children in the complex, just middle-aged people, almost all married couples sprinkled with a few widowed singles. Mainly white-collar workers, a surprising number of whom rode the bus to work downtown, watched TV at night, heading to bed around ten or eleven. Kelly moved out quietly, driving the VW down Loch Raven Boulevard, past churches and other apartment complexes, past the city's sports stadium as the neighborhoods evolved downward from middle- to working-class, and from working-class to subsistence, passing darkened office buildings downtown in his continuing routine. But tonight there was a difference.

Tonight would be his first major payoff. That meant risk, but it always did, Kelly told himself, flexing his hands on the plastic steering wheel. He didn't like the surgical gloves. The rubber held heat in, and though the sweat didn't affect his grip, the discomfort was annoying. The alternative was not acceptable, however, and he remembered not liking a lot of the things he'd done in Vietnam, like the leeches, a thought that generated a few chills. They were even worse than rats. At least rats didn't suck your blood.

Kelly took his time, driving around his objective almost randomly while he sized things up. It paid off. He saw a pair of police officers talking to a street bum, one of them close, the other two steps back, seemingly casual, but the distance between the two cops told him what he needed to know. One was covering the other. They saw the wino as someone potentially threatening.

Looking for you, Johnnie-boy, he told himself, turning the wheel and changing streets.

But the cops wouldn't change their whole operating routine, would they? Looking at and talking to winos would be an additional duty for the next few nights. There were other things that had higher priority: answering calls for holdup alarms in liquor stores, responding to family disputes, even traffic violations. No, hassling drunks would just be one more burden on men already overworked. It would be something with which to spice up their normal patrol patterns, and Kelly had troubled himself to learn what those patterns were. The additional danger was therefore somewhat predictable, and Kelly reasoned that he'd had his supply of bad luck for this mission. Just one more time and he'd switch patterns. To what he didn't know, but if things went right, what he should soon learn would provide the necessary information.

Thank you, he said to destiny, a block away from the corner brownstone. The Roadrunner was right there, and it was early still, a collection night; the girl wouldn't be there. He drove past it, continuing up the next block before turning right, then another block, and right again. He saw a police cruiser and checked the clock on the car. It was within five minutes of its normal schedule, and this one was a solo car. There wouldn't be another pass for about two hours, Kelly told himself, making a final right turn and heading towards the brownstone. He parked as close to it as he dared, then got out and walked away from the target house, heading back to the next block before dropping into his disguise.

There were two pushers on this block, both lone operators. They looked a little tense. Perhaps the word was getting out, Kelly thought with a suppressed smile. Some of their brethren were disappearing, and that had to be cause for concern. He kept well clear of both as he covered the block, inwardly amused that neither knew how close Death had passed them. How tenuous their lives were, and yet they didn't know. But that was a distraction, he told himself, turning yet again and heading to the objective. He paused at the corner, looking around. It was after one in the morning now, and things were settling down into the accustomed boredom that comes at the end of any working day, even the illegal kind. Activity on the street was diminishing, just as expected from all the reconnaissance he had done. There was nothing untoward on this street, and Kelly headed south past the rows of brownstones on one side of the street and brick row-houses on the other. It required all of his concentration to maintain his uneven, harmless gait. One of those who had hurt Pam was now within a hundred yards. Probably two of them. Kelly allowed his mind to see her face again, to hear her voice, to feel the curves of her body. He allowed his face to become a frozen mask of stone and his hands to ball into, tight fists as his legs shambled down the wide sidewalk, but only for a few seconds. Then he cleared his mind and took five deep, slow breaths.

'Tactical,' he murmured to himself, slowing his pace and watching the corner house, now only thirty yards away. Kelly took in a mouthful of wine and let it dribble down on his shirt again. Snake to Chicago, objective in sight. Moving in now.

The sentry, if that's what he was, betrayed himself. The streetlights revealed puffs of cigarette smoke coming out the door, telling Kelly exactly where the first target was. He switched the wine bottle to his left hand and flexed his right one, turning his wrist around to make sure his muscles were loose and ready. Approaching the side steps, he slumped against them, coughing. Then he walked up towards the door, which he knew to be ajar, and fell against it. Kelly tumbled to the floor, finding himself at the feet of the man whom he'd seen accompany Billy. Along the way, the wine bottle broke, and Kelly ignored the man, whimpering over the broken glass and spreading stain of cheap California red.

'That's tough luck, partner,' a voice said. It was surprisingly gentle. You best move along now.'

Kelly just continued his whimpering, down on all fours, weaving on them. He coughed a little more, turning his head to see the sentry's legs and shoes, confirming his identification.

'Come on, pop.' Strong hands reached down. Both hands, lifting him. Kelly allowed his own arms to dangle, one going behind as the man started to turn him towards the door. He staggered, turning yet more, and now the sentry was supporting him almost fully. Weeks of training and preparation and careful reconnaissance came together in a single instant.

Kelly's left hand slapped against his face. The right drove the Ka-Bar through the ribs, and so alert were his senses that his fingertips could feel the heart, trying to beat, but only destroying itself on the razor-sharp, double-edged blade of the fighting knife. Kelly twisted the blade, leaving it in as the body shuddered. The dark eyes were wide and shocked, and the knees already buckling. Kelly let him down slowly, quietly, still holding the knife, but he had to allow himself a bit of satisfaction this time. He'd worked too hard for this moment to turn his emotions off completely.

'Remember Pam?' he whispered to the dying body in his hands, and for the question he received his satisfaction. There was recognition through the pain before the eyes rolled back.

Snake.

Kelly waited, counting to sixty before he withdrew the knife, which he wiped off on the victim's shirt. It was a good knife, and it didn't deserve to be stained with that kind of blood.

Kelly rested himself for a moment, breathing deeply. He'd gotten the right target, the subordinate. The principal objective was upstairs. Everything was going according to plan. He allowed himself exactly one minute to calm down and collect himself.

The stairs were creaky. Kelly attenuated that by keeping close to the wall, minimizing the displacement of the wooden treads, moving very slowly, eyes locked upwards because there was nothing below to concern him now. He had already replaced the knife in its scabbard. His.45/.22 was in his right hand now, suppressor screwed on, held low in his right hand as the left traced the cracked plaster wall.

Halfway up he started hearing sounds other than that of the blood coursing through his arteries. A slap, a whimper, a whine. Distant, animal sounds, followed by a cruel chuckle, barely audible even as he reached the landing and turned left towards their source. Breathing next, heavy, rapid and low.

Oh... shit! But he couldn't stop now.

'Please...' A despairing whisper that caused Kelly's knuckles to turn white around the pistol grip. He moved along the upstairs corridor slowly, again rubbing up against the wall. There was light coining from the master bedroom, only the illumination from streetlights through dirty windows, but with his eyes adjusted to darkness, he could see shadows on one wall.

'What's the matter, Dor?' a male voice asked as Kelly reached the doorframe. Very slowly he moved his head around the vertical barrier of painted wood.

There was a mattress in the room, and on the mattress a woman, kneeling, head down while a hand roughly squeezed her breast, then shook it. Kelly watched her mouth open in silent pain, remembering the photo that the detective had shown him. You did that to Pam, too, didn't you... you little fuck! Liquid dripped from the girl's face, and the face staring down at her was smiling when Kelly took a step into the room.

His voice was light, relaxed, almost comical. 'This looks like fun. Can I play, too?'

Billy turned, looking at the shadow that had just spoken, and saw an extended arm with a big automatic. The face turned back to a pile of clothing and a carry bag of some sort. The rest of him was naked, and his left hand held a tool of some sort, but not a knife or a gun. Those tools were elsewhere, ten feet away, and his eyes could not bring them closer.

'Don't even think it, Billy,' Kelly said in a conversational tone.

'Who the fuck-'

'On your face, spread-eagle, or I'll shoot that little dick of yours right off.' Kelly altered his aim. It was amazing how much importance men placed on that organ, how easily a threat to it intimidated. Not even a serious threat, what with its size. The brain was much larger and easier to hit. 'Down! Now!'

Billy did what he was told.??ll? pushed the girl back on the mattress and reached in his belt for the electrical wire. In a few seconds the hands were securely wrapped and knotted. The left hand still held a pair of pliers, which Kelly took and used to tighten the wire yet more, drawing a gasp from Billy.

Pliers?

Jesus.

The girl was staring at his face, eyes wide, breath heavy, but her movements were slow and her head was tilted. She was drugged to some extent. And she had seen his face, was looking at it now, memorizing it.

Whydo you have to be here? This is out of the pattern. You're a complication. I ought to... ought to...

If you do that, John, then what thefuck are you?

Oh, shit!

Kelly's hands started shaking then. This was real danger, if he let her live, then someone would know who he was-a description, enough to start a proper manhunt, and that would - might - prevent him from accomplishing his goal. But the greater danger was to his soul. If he killed her, that was lost forever. Of that he was certain. Kelly closed his eyes and shook his head. Everything was supposed to have gone so smoothly.

Shithappens, Johnnie-boy.

'Get dressed,' he told her, tossing some stuff in her direction. 'Do it now, be quiet, and stay there.'

'Who are you?' Billy asked, giving Kelly an outlet for his rage. The distributor felt something cold and round at the back of his head.

'You even breathe loud, and your brains go on this floor, got it?' The head nodded by way of an answer.

Nowwhat the hell do I do? Kelly demanded of himself. He looked over at the girl, struggling to put panties on. The light caught her breasts and Kelly's stomach revolted at the marks he saw there. 'Hurry up,' he told her.

Damn damn damn. Kelly checked the wire on Billy's wrists and decided to do another loop at the elbows, hurting him badly, straining the shoulders, but ensuring that he wouldn't be doing any resisting. To make things worse, he lifted Billy by the arms to a standing position, which evoked a scream.

'Hurt a little, does it?' Kelly asked. Then he applied a gag and turned him to the door. 'Walk.' To the girl: 'You, too.'

Kelly conducted them down the steps. There was some broken glass, and Billy's feet danced around it, sustaining cuts. What surprised Kelly was the girl's reaction to the body at the bottom.

'Rick!' she gasped, then stooped down to touch the body.

Ithad a name, Kelly thought, lifting the girl. 'Out the back.'

He stopped them at the kitchen, leaving them alone for an instant and looking out the back door. He could see his car, and there was no activity in his view. There was danger in what came next, but danger had again become his companion. Kelly led them out. The girl was looking at Billy, and he at her, motioning with his eyes. Kelly was dumbfounded to see that she was reacting to his silent entreaties. He took her arm and moved her aside.

'Don't worry about him, miss.' He pointed her to the car, maneuvering Billy by the upper arm.

A distant voice told him that if she tried to help Billy, then he would have an excuse to -

No, goddamn it!

Kelly unlocked the car, forcing Billy in, then the girl into the front seat, before moving fast to the left-side door. Before starting the car he leaned over the seat and wired up Billy's ankles and knees.

'Who are you?' the girl asked as the car started moving.

'A friend,' Kelly said calmly. 'I am not going to hurt you. If I wanted to do that, I could have left you with Rick, okay?'

Her reply was slow and uneven, but for all that, still amazing to Kelly. 'Why did you have to kill him? He was nice to me.'

What the hell? Kelly thought, looking over at her. Her face was scraped, her hair a mess. He turned his eyes back to the street. A police cruiser went past on a reciprocal heading, and despite a brief moment of panic on Kelly's part, it just kept going, disappearing as he turned north.

Think fast. boy.

Kelly could have done many things, but only one alternative was realistic. Realistic? he asked himself. Oh, sure.

One does not expect to hear doorbells at a quarter to three in the morning. Sandy first thought she had dreamed it, but her eyes had opened, and in the way of the mind, the sound played back to her as though she had actually awakened a second earlier. Even so, she must have dreamed it, the nurse told herself, shaking her head. She'd just started to close her eyes again when it repeated. Sandy rose, slipped on a robe, and went downstairs, too disoriented to be frightened. There was a shape on the porch. She turned on the lights as she opened the door.

'Turn that fucking light off!' A rasping voice that was nonetheless familiar. The command it carried caused her to flip the switch without so much as a thought.

'What are you doing here?' There was a girl at his side, looking thoroughly horrible.

'Call in sick. You're not going to work today. You're going to take care of her. Her name is Doris,' Kelly said, speaking in the low commanding tone of a surgeon in the middle of a complex procedure.

'Wait a minute!' Sandy stood erect and her mind started racing. Kelly was wearing a woman's wig - well, too dirty for that. He was unshaven, had on awful clothes, but his eyes were burning with something. Rage was part of it, a fury at something, and the man's strong hands were shaking at his side.

'Remember about Pam?' he asked urgently.

'Well, yes, but-'

'This girl's in the same spot. I can't help her. Not now. I have to do something else.'

'What are you doing, John?' Sandy asked, a different sort of urgency in her voice. And then, somehow, it was very clear. The TV news reports she'd been watching over dinner on the black-and-white set in the kitchen, the look she'd seen in his eyes in the hospital; the look she saw now, so close to the other, but different, the desperate compassion and the trust it demanded of her.

'Somebody's been beating the shit out of her, Sandy. She needs help.'

'John,' she whispered. 'John... you're putting your life in my hands...'

Kelly actually laughed, after a fashion, a bleak snort that went beyond irony. 'Yeah, well, you did okay the first time, didn't you?' He pushed Doris in the door and walked away, off to a car, without looking back.

'I'm going to be sick,' the girl, Doris, said. Sandy hustled her to the first-floor bathroom and got her to the toilet in time. The young woman knelt there for a minute or two, emptying her belly into the white porcelain bowl. After another minute or so, she looked up. In the glare of incandescent lights off the white-tile walls, Sandra O'Toole saw the face of hell.