David Golemon - Ripper

Gloria smiled as she walked by Will. Compton half smiled as he watched Mendenhall’s eyes follow the attractive doctor as she walked away.

“What’s wrong Lieutenant? You look sick. Aren’t your new expanded duties meeting with your approval?”

“Huh?” Will stammered, not hearing a word Niles had said. “Sir?”

Niles turned his head and watched the group of doctors as they entered the elevator. Compton smiled and then raised his eyebrows as he turned and looked at Will.

“Carry on, Lieutenant,” the director said.

“Huh?”

Niles smiled as he turned away and strode to the elevator, leaving a confused second lieutenant in his wake.

The large man going by the name of Smith stepped off the chartered flight from Denver. He was met by a team of three men and they were backed up by four more in a car he knew was there but couldn’t see as per their training.

As the large well-dressed man stepped up to the black Chevy Tahoe, he looked at his watch and then turned to the man holding the door. He saw that he was wearing a black windbreaker.

“How much longer does the transmitter have before it dies?” he asked as he eyed the man who led the Black field team inside the Las Vegas city limits.

“We lost the signal five minutes ago, Mr. Smith.”

“You have GPS locations for all of the stops the target made?”

“Yes, sir, we do. Actually, he made only one stop after appearing at 2896 Koval Lane, and that was a private residence out on Flamingo Road.”

The man named Smith shook his head and then buttoned his blue blazer. As he stepped by the smaller man who held the door open, he looked down at him and without his other men hearing said, “What’s with the black windbreaker?”

The man was taken aback as Smith seated himself in the backseat of the Tahoe. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. After all, he had heard the rumors about Smith and his famous temper. He had also heard that the man really had one passion in life, and that was to end other people’s aspirations for a long one.

“We never wear black when the need to intimidate isn’t called for,” he said as he looked over at the man who was now having second thoughts about running the Las Vegas office for him. “And investigating doesn’t call for the intimidation factor. Don’t wear that shit again unless I specifically order you to.” Smith reached out and closed the door in the man’s face. The former U.S. Army Ranger swallowed and then ran around to the opposite rear door and climbed inside.

Smith once more looked at his watch. “Take me to where our target first appeared. That’s quite a jump from Nellis to Koval Lane in downtown Las Vegas with the route the subject took. According to the report, he cut through rough desert and the basements of several casinos to get to this location on Koval Lane. I’m interested in knowing how he achieved that little stunt.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said as he placed the large Tahoe into gear.

“What’s the name of this place again,” he asked the chastised man next to him.

The man pulled out his notebook and then decided at that precise moment to remove the offensive black windbreaker. He opened the notebook and studied his notes, infuriating Smith even more than he had been.

“The Gold City Pawn Shop,” the man finally answered without looking up.

“Then why aren’t we at the Gold City Pawn Shop already?”

The Tahoe screeched out of the charter area of McCarran airport heading to downtown. As they pulled out onto the main drive heading toward the city, another black Tahoe pulled out after them.

As Collins ran the paint roller across the den’s wall, he tuned with a sneer and looked over at a very messy but very satisfied Alice Hamilton.

“No wonder the senator didn’t like you much. You purposefully plied me with drink, and then the next thing I know I’m painting, and I’m doing most of the work.”

“Yes, and soon I’m going to go into that backyard of mine and then grill you a steak, Mr. Collins.” Alice looked up after she poured more light-green paint into the pan she was using just to see if she got a rise out of Jack by calling him mister. But Collins just kept painting. Badly, but he kept painting nonetheless.

“You’re not going to get to me, you know?” he said as he almost fell over when he tried to get more paint on his roller. “This is only the first day of my retirement, so my mind is still strong young lady.”

Alice looked up at Jack and smiled. She lay the paint brush down inside of the pan of paint and then walked over to where Jack was trying his hardest to apply paint to the roller, but every time he tried he would almost fall face first in the opposite direction. Alice took the roller and then placed it in the pan at Jack’s feet. “Come on soldier boy, I think you’re ready for that steak now.”

“See, I knew if I did a bad-enough job you would call an end to this … this farce.”

“That’s right Jack, I’m surrendering,” she said as she guided him through the now empty house and toward the back sliding door. “Let’s get some air, and then I’ll bring you out some coffee.”

“Air? Yes, air would be nice,” he said as she placed him not too gently into one of the chaise lounges.

“Okay, just stay put and entertain yourself for a few minutes.”

“And how do I do that, my dear Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Hum ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ or something.”

An expression of confusion came over Jack’s face. “I … I … don’t know Row, row, row … row, row … your boat.”

Alice wanted to answer, but she had to turn away or she would have lost it right there. She went back into the kitchen, trying her best not to laugh out loud at Jack’s butchering of the children’s song title. When she made it into her kitchen, which she hadn’t really used since the death of Garrison Lee, her cell phone rang. If it was someone public, they would have called on her landline. But since it was her cell phone she knew it was someone at the Event Group calling from the complex.

“Hello,” she said, knowing who it was before the words came through the atmosphere.

“Uh, hello, Alice?” came the voice full of worry and concern.

“Hello my dear. And before you worry yourself too much, he’s here. A little plastered right now, but I can also attribute that to painting, and not just my twenty-year-old whiskey. He’s out in the back trying to sing.”

“Thank God,” Sarah said on the other end. “He’s not answering his phone and I—”

“Stop it now. You listen to what I have to say. My words may be a little bit slurred, but you should understand them well enough. Jack needs time. I don’t know what happened in the field, but I know something inside of him snapped. I’ve seen it before, Sarah. Garrison resigned no less than fifteen different times. He and Jack are a lot alike you know?”

“That’s why I knew where I had to call. Look, Alice, I have to give our field report to a group of recalls from the CDC in a few minutes, but do you think afterward I can stop by? I won’t bug him about his decision. I just need to see him.”

“I would be angry if you didn’t come by, young lady. He needs you now, not an old woman who knows songs he doesn’t know.”

“What?” Sarah asked.

Alice turned away from the open sliding glass window where she heard Jack trying to recall the words to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” but he kept going off track with a mixture of that song and the theme from Gilligan’s Island .

“Nothing, I’ll see you when you get here.” Alice hung up the phone and then as her eyes moved away from her backyard, she caught a glimpse of the only portrait she had on her walls. It was of her and Garrison Lee fifty years before when they took a field trip to Egypt. She saw the angry look on his face for having to be still for so long just for a portrait, but it was the only thing she ever asked of him, so he did it, complaining all the way. She smiled at the picture of herself and the one-eyed ex-senator and former general in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, and then she looked at Jack out on the back porch.