Dan O'Shea - Penance

Then the wheels came off the Big Red Machine. Nobody needed a fake Russian anymore. But the shooter? He gets some weird religious attachment to his Dragunov. He is doing God’s work, and the Dragunov is God’s instrument — some such shit, like it’s Excalibur or something.

Dead guys start turning up with clean rounds in em. No rifling, no nothing. Word among the Fort Campbell types was that the Dragon was saboting his rounds so he could keep using his toy.

And now you got people pierced by magic bullets turning up outside churches in Chicago. You got a 54mm casing that somebody who loves bullets more than he loves his mother has honed like a fucking scalpel. And Cunningham had to decide what he was going to say and to whom.

On the one hand, it was a no-brainer. Cunningham was a cop and anyway you sliced it, this was murder. On the other hand, Cunningham had, by the legal definition, murdered people before — and done so on the orders of the sort of people who might be ordering these kills, if it really was the Dragon at work.

But why would they be ordering these? Hard to see Riordan as Al-Qaeda or anything. Harder still to see the old lady who caught the first one. But Cunningham had been around a lot of funny-shaped blocks.

What he had to do, he figured, was call in. Had to be somebody he knew still far enough inside that they could talk to somebody and get the word back. And if the word was national security, then Cunningham would have some thinking to do.

Bernstein waved Lynch over as soon as he got into the office the next morning.

“The prints from your pop can? Got a hit.”

“About time we caught something. Who?”

“You’re going to love this one. Ferguson, James R., USMC.”

“A Marine?”

“Yep. All sorts of shit you’re gonna like. Enlisted in 1968. Couple of tours with a long-range recon unit — and they are, from my research, gentlemen of some account. Nominated for the Silver Star twice and the DSC once. Got the second Star. Four Purple Hearts, and not those John Kerry band-aid jobs, either. Took a round through his right lung. Another one through his left leg. USMC long-distance shooting champ in ’70, again in ’72. Graduated from the scout/sniper program in ’72, then his records get a little fuzzy — gotta figure he got lent out to one of those special operations groups you hear about.”

“Son of a bitch. Home fucking run. We got a photo?”

Bernstein handed Lynch a formal USMC portrait from 1973. Better than thirty years old, but it was the guy.

“That’s our boy. Anything more recent?”

“Not likely. Nothing after ’73. Records have him as KIA. They planted him at Arlington.”

Lynch just stood for a second, looking at Bernstein, then rubbed his face. “So how do prints from some guy who’s been dead since the Nixon administration end up on a pop can in yesterday’s trash? I watched this guy drop the can in the garbage. I watched our guy take the prints.”

“An interesting question.”

“So somebody screwed up. Run em again.”

“Already did. Got the same record, and the prints are way past a legal match — every loop, every whorl.”

“Some kind of computer screw up?”

“These didn’t start out digital. What I’ve got is a digital copy of his paper record. The prints are on the same piece of paper as his photo, and you’re telling me the photo looks like the guy. Computer could pull up the wrong record, but it couldn’t mismatch the photo and prints — they’re all part of the same image. If the records were more modern — prints and photos residing as separate pieces of data — then, sure, it’d be possible to screw up the search, get the data mismatched. But this? I don’t see how.”

“Maybe a vampire?”

“Maybe he’s Hindu.”

“What?”

“Reincarnation.”

“Thought they came back as cows or something.”

“Varying levels of incarnation reflecting their growing enlightenment until they achieve Nirvana.”

“That Cobain guy achieved Nirvana. Look where it got him.”

“Nirvana the state of being, not Nirvana the band.”

“So God’s not a grunge rocker. This is seriously fucked. We got a possible perp matches up every way we need him to, and we got some computer in Washington telling us he’s been dead for better than thirty years. Is it just this system says he’s dead? You check anything else?”

“In 1974, armed forces insurance paid off the only living relative, a spinster aunt, Ellen Grinde, who kicked off in 1980. Arlington checks out. They’ve got a James R. Ferguson buried in the fall of 1973. Ran a credit check using all his info — nothing. The James R Ferguson with these prints hasn’t filed a tax return, used a credit card, applied for a loan, engaged in any reportable financial transaction of any kind since July, 1973. This guy hasn’t popped up anywhere he shouldn’t have until yesterday.”

“Cunningham put me on to the guy. Said he turned up at Fort Campbell just when Bush the First was taking his swing at Saddam. Said he thought he was CIA.”

“So we got some operative out of a Tom Clancy novel, and the CIA fakes his death so it can send him around shooting old ladies and Democratic party hacks from outrageous distances?”

“You got a better explanation?”

Bernstein smiled. “You ever hear of Occam’s Razor?”

“That a Gillette product?”

“Philosophical principal. States that, all else being equal, the simplest explanation for any given set of facts likely is the right explanation.”

“And?”

“The Tom Clancy scenario? So far as I can see, that’s it.” Bernstein pulled a couple of pages out of the pile on his desk and handed them to Lynch. “Something else we ought to think about, too. We got two people in a row shot coming out of church now. The press thinks it’s a serial killer ritual thing — this Confessional Killing shit — not some kind of payback for Marslovak. Maybe they’re right.”

“Thinking the same thing,” said Lynch. “You run a search?”

“Had a shooting little over a week ago in Wisconsin. Guy coming out of confession. Also, you see the news last night, big shootout downstate?”

“Thought that was some drug deal.”

“Maybe, but we don’t get that many people shot with rifles from long distances, and a couple of those guys were, so I Googled around on that a bit.” Bernstein handed Lynch a map. “Got your Wisconsin shooting here, north shore of Door County, just about two hundred thirty miles north of the Marslovak shooting. Thing is, it is due north, I mean exactly. Now, you got this mess downstate, town called Moriah, a bit southeast of Effingham. Damn near exactly two hundred thirty miles south.”

“Due south?”

“Off by a mile or so. But there’s a Catholic church near the downstate thing, and it is due south. Exactly.”

“Guess I better make some calls,” said Lynch.

Lynch called the sheriffs in Wisconsin and downstate. Door County sheriff was sticking to his story — he had a case on a jilted husband, and he didn’t want to screw with it. Said he’d take a look at the church for the bugs, though.

Guy from downstate, Buttita, he wanted to talk.

“We get out there,” Buttita said, “and we got the station guy dead — three 9mm center chest through the window. We got the cop and a housewife in the parking lot. Housewife’s on the ground next to her minivan, two year-old kid in the back seat bawling her eyes out. Housewife’s got a.25 through the forehead. Cop’s got a 9mm in the head and is burned to a crisp. Somebody’d put a couple of.50s into the squad car. Got some.25 holes and 9mm holes in the squad. That’s got to be at least two, maybe three people — two different hand guns and a big-ass rifle. So we’re working that scene for a while when I notice we’re getting a lot of crows up on top the ridge east of the station. We get up there, this is maybe 200 yards out, we got two more stiffs, dressed in cammies, both got nines in shoulder holsters, both got M16s next to them, none of their weapons are fired. One’s got a hole through his chest and a hole through the head, the other’s got a hole through the throat — all 7.62mm rounds, rifle rounds. So now I’ve got two different hand guns and two rifles. Another little ways up that hill, we got a third guy missing the back of his head.”