Dan Simmons - Hardcase

Don Farino shook his head sadly.

Leonard Miles took the moment to jump to his feet and run for the door, leaping over the body of William as he ran.

Without raising the Beretta, the Dane shot Miles in the back of the head.

Don Farino had not even looked up. Without raising his head, he said, "You know the price for such betrayal, Sophia."

"I went to Wellesley, Papa," she said. Her legs were still pulled up under her like a little girl's. "I read Machiavelli. If you try to kill the prince, do not miss."

Don Farino sighed heavily. The Dane looked to the old man for instructions. Don Farino nodded.

The Dane lifted the Beretta, swung it slightly, and blew the back of Don Farino's head off.

The old man pitched forward out of the wheelchair. What remained of his face banged into the glass coffee table. Then his body slid sideways onto the carpet.

Sophia looked away with an expression of mild distaste.

Kurtz did not move. The Dane was aiming the Beretta at him now. Kurtz knew that it was a Model 8000 with ten rounds in the magazine. Three were left. The Dane kept a good, professional distance between them. Kurtz, could try to rush him, of course, but the Dane could put all three slugs into him before Kurtz could get off the couch.

"Joe, Joe, Joe," said Sophia. "Why did you have to go and fuck everything up?"

Kurtz had no answer to that.

The basement office was overflowing with police and paramedics. Half a dozen of the police were plainclothes detectives and one of them was a woman with auburn hair. She pulled Arlene aside as the others stood around Cutter's body and talked.

"Mrs. Demarco? I'm Officer O'Toole. I'm Joseph Kurtz's parole officer."

"I thought you were… homicide," said Arlene. She was still shaking, even though one of the paramedics had draped a thermal blanket over her after they had checked her out.

Peg O'Toole shook her head. "They just called me because someone knew I'm Mr. Kurtz's P.O. If he was involved with this in any way—"

"He wasn't," Arlene said quickly. "Joe wasn't here. He doesn't even know about this."

Officer O'Toole nodded. "Still, if he was involved, it would go better for him if you and he told us up front."

Arlene had to steady her hand to drink from the Styrofoam cup of water one of the homicide detectives had given her. "No," she said firmly. "Joe wasn't here. Joe had nothing to do with this. I looked on the monitor and saw this… this person… come in and stab Tommy. Then the man went for the two customers. Then he came down here."

"How did he know there was a basement, Mrs. Demarco?"

"How should I know?" Arlene said. She met the parole officer's gaze.

"Does the name James Walter Heron mean anything to you?"

Arlene shook her head. "Is that… his name?"

"Yes," said Officer O'Toole. "Although everyone in town knew him as 'Cutter. Does that ring a bell?"

Arlene shook her head again.

"And you've never seen him before?"

Arlene put the cup of water down. "I've told about six of the police officers that. I don't know the man. If I've seen him on the street or somewhere… well, I don't know him, but how could anyone recognize him with all those terrible burns?"

O'Toole folded her arms. "Do you have any idea where he received those burns?"

Arlene shook her head and looked away.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Demarco. You do understand that one of those tests the officers performed will tell us if you actually fired the gun."

Arlene looked at her hand and then at the parole officer. "Good," she said. "Then you'll know that Joe wasn't involved."

"Do you have any idea where we can find Mr. Kurtz?" said Officer O'Toole. "Since this is also his office, we'll have some questions for him."

"No. He said that he had a meeting this afternoon, but I don't know where or with whom."

"But you'll tell him to call us as soon as he checks in with you?"

Arlene nodded.

One of the plainclothes detectives walked over with the night-vision goggles in a plastic bag. "Mrs. Demarco? Could you answer another question, please?"

Arlene waited.

"You say that the assailant was wearing these when he came into the basement?"

"No." Arlene took a breath. "I didn't say that. I told the other officers that the… the man… took those out of his raincoat pocket and held them up to his eyes."

"Before or after he knocked the lightbulbs out with that umbrella?" asked the officer.

Arlene managed a smile. "There was no other light, Officer. I couldn't very well have seen him take those goggle things out of his pocket if he'd done so after he smashed the lights, could I?"

"No, I guess not," said the detective. "But if it was so pitch-dark, how is it that you could see the assailant to fire at him?"

"I couldn't see him," Arlene said truthfully. "But I could smell him and hear him… and feel him as he towered over me." She began shaking again, and Officer O'Toole touched her arm.

The homicide detective handed the night-vision goggles back to an assistant and stood there rubbing his chin.

"I'm sure he wasn't wearing them when I saw him upstairs on the security monitor," Arlene said.

"Yeah," said the male cop. "We've looked at the tape." He looked at Officer O'Toole. "It's part of the Dunkirk arsenal inventory. They just raided a place out by SUNY where Kibunte had a hundred other weapons stored. The Bloods were dipping into them in this war they're having with the white-supremacist assholes. If we hadn't been tipped about this warehouse before the Bloods got there in force, Buffalo would have looked like Beirut on a bad day."

O'Toole nodded, obviously ill at ease speaking in front of Arlene.

"Are you ready to go down to the station with us, Mrs. Demarco?" said the male cop.

Arlene bit her lip. "Am I under arrest?"

The male cop chuckled. "For stopping a piece of shit like this Cutter after he killed at least three people this afternoon? I'll be surprised if the mayor doesn't give you a medal—" He stopped when O'Toole caught his eye. "No, Mrs. Demarco," he said formally, "you're not under arrest at this time. There'll be an investigation, of course; and you'll have to answer a lot of questions tonight and make yourself available to the investigating officers in the coming days, but I'd bet you'd be home by" — he looked at his watch—"oh, eleven at the latest."

"Good," said Arlene. "I want to watch the local news. Maybe they'll explain what happened here."

The Dane held the Beretta steady, its muzzle zeroed on Kurtz's chest and never wavering for an instant. Sophia sucked at her thumbnail and seemed to pout. "Joe," she said, "do you have any idea where you are right now?"

Kurtz looked around him. "It looks like the last scene of fucking Hamlet ," he said.

The Dane's mouth twitched ever so slightly in what might have been a smile.

Sophia dropped her hand from her mouth. "Don't tell me that you've seen Hamlet , Joe."

"I see all of Mel Gibson's movies," said Kurtz.

Sophia sighed. "Where you are, Joe, is about half a minute away from being dead."

Kurtz had no comment on that.

"And there's no reason that this had to be the way things went," she continued. "Why didn't you just let me keep fucking you and leave the rest of this mess alone?"

Kurtz considered not commenting on that either, but finally he said, "Your dad hired me. I had a job to do."

Sophia glanced at her father's corpse and shook her head again. "Some job. Some outcome." She looked at the Dane. "Well, Nils, as I told you on our way to the airport, I hoped it wouldn't come to this—but it has."

Kurtz moved his gaze to the Dane. The man had never relaxed his attention—or the Beretta's aim—for a microsecond. "Nils?" said Kurtz.