Part 22 (1/2)

His niece, Ashley, was fifteen now. Something of a troubled child. Tattoos, body piercings, pink hair. She would probably use the money to buy designer drugs-bath salts or something. Frankly, right now, Eddie wished he'd never set foot in this bank, because something was very, very wrong with those two women. One of them had twin trails of black dried blood scabbed from her nostrils to her chin. And both her eyes were deeply bruised. One was swollen shut. She still had both her ears, but otherwise the little lady looked like she'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

Ashley had always been a troubled child. Even as a toddler, bad things seemed to happen around her. Over the years, he had given quarters, pocket change, then dollar bills, fins, saw-bucks, on up to twenties, and now, at age fifteen, the fifty-dollar bill was apparently the new norm. Eddie had been saving for hair plugs, and throwing fifties around like he was J. D. Rockefeller wasn't going to get him a headful of flowing locks.

His sister always took Ashley's side if anybody dared say giving a troubled teenager all this cash might not be in the girl's best interest. Or suggested the child might need guidance. Or therapy. Perhaps a father in her life. No, his sister just said kids'll be kids, and why don't you just relax, Eddie? Just relax. Well, he didn't understand why he should have to give the little thug fifty bucks, but his mother had chimed in too. She said, ”Just do it, Eddie. Family is important.”

The dark-haired mousy-looking woman pushed the beat-up woman through the vestibule. The woman went sprawling into the lobby, facedown, probably worsening her injuries. Everybody in the bank looked up to see what was going on. Eddie wondered where the guard was. Surely the bank had on-site security. The dark woman stayed in the vestibule. She was doing something to the outside doors. Eddie decided that she probably wasn't cleaning them. That probably wasn't Windex and paper towels she had pulled out of the gear bag she had brought in. No, it looked to be some kind of locking device.

The bloodied woman had gotten back up to her knees. It was a struggle. The woman had clearly had the h.e.l.l beat out of her. Plus her hands were cuffed in front. The woman managed to get herself upright. She turned and addressed the entire bank.

”She has a gun! Behind me! She has a gun!”

The patrons, the tellers, everyone including Eddie Palmer (but not the guard, where was the guard?) looked at Jill as though she were a lunatic. n.o.body wanted to believe this could be real. Especially Eddie, but he knew it was. Because of Ashley. Because Ashley had brought him in here today, and anything even remotely tied to his niece Ashley invariably turned to s.h.i.+t. His quick little dash into the bank to get a crisp U.S. Grant had certainly turned into a big steaming pile of doo-doo. Maybe if Eddie himself weren't so a.n.a.l-retentive. Wouldn't two battered twenties and a dog-eared ten-spot have done the job just as well? It was only going to end up crumpled in some dealer's greasy front pocket anyway. Why did Eddie have to be like this? And why did Ashley have to poison everything around her?

Finished securing the outer double doors, the mousy woman (whom Eddie no longer thought of as mousy, but bad) turned around. She kicked open the vestibule door, her oversized gray cardigan lapping open behind her, and she stormed into the lobby. The open sweater exposed the sawed-off shotgun broken across her waist and the rest of the a.r.s.enal secured to her body. It reminded Eddie of that high school ma.s.sacre in Colorado. Instead of the Trenchcoat Mafia, this lady was part of the Cardigan Mafia. Dylan Klebold by way of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Everything was unfolding in slow motion now, and Eddie had time to reflect that Ashley probably would have made a good girlfriend for Dylan Klebold. Ashley would screw pretty much anything, and getting laid probably would have adjusted that troubled boy's att.i.tude quite a bit.

The guard finally showed up. He was an older man with a snow-white handlebar mustache. Eddie saw that he was pulling up the zipper on his uniform trousers as he emerged from the back. He turned to the b.l.o.o.d.y woman with a look of perplexity. She screamed at the guard.

”Shoot her! She's got a gun!”

The b.l.o.o.d.y woman motioned over the guard's shoulder, where behind him the bad woman whip-locked the double barrel shotgun into one piece. She did this action one-handed and raised it into firing position.

The b.l.o.o.d.y woman saw that the guard just wasn't going to react in time. She dove for his holstered weapon. Her cuffed hands fumbled with the restraint strap.

But it was too late. Far too late. The bad woman was on them. She fired the shotgun point-blank into the guard's back. The man's body lurched forward and collapsed in a b.l.o.o.d.y heap, taking the beaten woman down with him. The bad woman stepped over both of them and retrieved the guard's gun. She waved it at the beaten woman.

”What? Is this what you wanted?”

The woman turned and fired the guard's gun at a bank employee, killing her. Eddie thought the murdered woman might have been the manager.

”Did anybody else want to see this?” the woman said, bringing the gun around in a deadly arc. n.o.body wanted to see it. In fact, pretty much everybody in the bank was on the floor, huddled into corners, under desks, bodies wrapped around chair legs. Eddie Palmer was one of the very few still standing. Frozen into place.

Eddie-quite calmly-turned the withdrawal slip over and wrote on the back of it. He wrote: Dear Ashley, f.u.c.k you, Uncle Eddie. And then he folded it into a neat square and tucked it into his front pants pocket. He was sure the CSI people or maybe the Coroner's office would find it and make sure it got to the proper recipient. Then he dropped to the floor and curled up into a tight ball.

CHAPTER 23.

Outside, on the streets of Morgan City, a Sheriff's office cruiser squealed onto the main street of the business district. Another cruiser, lights and siren blaring, turned in from a side street. Another cruiser, riding full-out code three, joined the first two.

These units caught up to more responders up ahead. More joined these. Fire trucks. Ambulances. A police helicopter loomed over this incredible fleet of emergency vehicles. The news vans and choppers were en route.

And out in the glaring hot California day, an anonymous black van carrying the Cameron County Sheriff Department's Special Weapons and Tactics team rolled through the city streets. Fast. Insistent.

Inside, the eleven team members (ten men and one woman) were dressed in varying shades of white, gray, and black-their daytime urban BDUs that would look more natural on a business rooftop than greens or tans. They held on to overhead straps as the vehicle swayed and sped forward.

Fast. Insistent.

The team faced forward in the van, where a dry-erase board was mounted. Lieutenant Joe Cowell faced his team, gesturing to the whiteboard.

The board showed a diagram of the Cameron Citizens Bank, surrounding structures, and landscape. Several areas were marked in red, including an exterior spot marked SNIPERS DENTON/SESAK.

Jacob Denton studied the diagram. The area inside the drawing of the bank was filled with black dots, and the words hostages, number unknown. In Jake's mind, these black dots were obstacles to his target. It was a mind game. It had always been a mind game. Like Oswald had taught him. They weren't people, they were obstacles. And the objective wasn't a human being, it was a target.

Except that wasn't true today. The target would be a woman who had been a guest in his home. The obstacle would be his wife, Jill. His wife who was apparently pregnant, but had not told him so herself. But everything had been staged for him. He had been summoned here. Drawn here. He was being manipulated. So he did not know for sure.

His eyes moved from the bank and the obstacles. He stared at the red dot on the whiteboard that marked the sniper's position on a rooftop across the street from the bank. And for a second the red on white blurred. It became fresh red blood spilt on crisp white snow. Jacob remembered how that snow had once been clean, unspoiled. And he could hear the jagged heavy breathing of a boy struggling to break through the ice-crusted snow to keep up with his father. And he could hear the man say to the boy, ”You have to do it, son. She's suffering.”

The boy and the man had come to the end of the blood trail. The vast plane of snow behind them was broken and spoiled from their long trek.

The trail ended just outside a small enclosure in the foothill rocks obscured by the limbs of a spruce tree.

The boy pulled back the spruce limb to see the she-wolf resting in blood-soaked snow. Around her, three wolf pups suckled from their dying mother. The boy backed up, horrified. He backed into his father.

”You have to do it, son. Killing's hard sometimes.”

The boy nodded, his chin quivered a bit, then steadied. Richard Denton held back the spruce branch for Jacob.

”It's time.”

A tear fell down the boy's cheek. He brushed it away, raised the rifle and took aim.

The shot echoed through the foothills and across the broken field. And then another. And another. And another.

The boy would grow into a man. And the man would realize that he had been branded that day. There was no going back from a killing. And there was no living with it.

CHAPTER 24.

The bank was eerily quiet. All of the customers and staff were gathered inside the tellers' cage. All of these hostages lay side by side, facedown on the floor. Susan paced back and forth through them, shotgun at her side. It was a Stevens model 311 .410 break-action double barrel shotgun with the stock cut off and formed into a hand grip. It was easily concealable under the armpit. Not necessarily the weapon of choice when robbing a bank, but Susan had her reasons.

One reason was the psychology of it. The shotgun, especially with the sawed-off side-by-side barrels and the modified quasi-pistol grip, was intimidating. It encouraged compliance. People know it spreads. They know the risk of death or traumatic, disfiguring injury is significant. It was a bad-a.s.s-looking weapon, relatively light to carry with the shortened stock and barrels; but ultimately, with those modifications, it was really useful for only one thing, and that was blowing people's heads off.

The other reason was psychological as well. Her father had carried a weapon just like this. She had seen it. Held it once. The Stevens was no longer in production, but easily obtainable on the secondary market. She modded this one herself. She had been studying rifles and marksmans.h.i.+p for quite some time now, but she had also become a scholar of pain, a student of brutality. That's where the Stevens came in. A rifle was an elegant, precise instrument, but a shotgun was a blunt, brutal weapon. Perfect for this moment of retribution. Her daddy was carrying this weapon the day they shot him.

Susan executed the break-action of the shotgun to expose the loading breech. She ejected the spent sh.e.l.l she had discharged into the guard's back and replaced it with a fresh .410 gauge round so that both barrels remained lethal.

And so she paced, fully loaded shotgun at her side. She was waiting for the forces outside to take their places.

She stopped and stood over Jill. Planted her foot squarely in Jill's back. Jill turned her head to look up at Susan. What?

”Close your eyes.”