Jeff Abbott - Collision

“Wait a minute, wait…” A note of recognition in his voice. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

Of course it was a stick shift, since his arm wasn’t working right. But he was alive. No complaints. He gunned the Mercedes into a lurching motion, found a rhythm. Every time he changed gear the dull agony pulsed.

Ben powered out of the lot. You had a gun, he only had a knife. You could have hit the button, opened the doors, you could have shot the murdering bastarddead. You cannot run, you have to take the fight back to these people. They will never stop chasing you.

Through the pain he thought of Delia, lying broken on the floor, gone in a second, like his Emily. He’d shot twice at Jackie and missed both times. Pilgrim was right; he was no good at this war. He prayed as he pulled back onto the main road through Frisco that the man in the parking lot didn’t get the license number, wasn’t calling the police, that sirens wouldn’t rise in pursuit of him in the next minute.

A rage filled him, eclipsed the pain in his arm and along his body from Jackie’s toying cuts. It was a hot and fierce anger he’d tamped down hard into his heart, kept at a simmer. Seeing Delia die gave it energy, fueled it like long-dry tinder exploding into flame.

You ran and you should have killed him. You should have killed him for what he did.

Jackie Lynch trembled. More from fury than pain. Ben’s final shot had missed him, because he’d gotten out of the line of fire, stumbling against the wall.

And not had the guts to leap and jab the elevator button, reopen the doors, confront Ben. The thought of being shot with his own gun had slowed him, made him hesitate. Not caution, but cowardice. Stupid, he could have gutted the amateur with one sweep of the blade.

“You worthless shit,” he said to himself, mumbling through his broken nose and cut lips. The heat of shame warmed his bones like a fever. He had hesitated as Ben cut into the mall crowd, when he should have taken the shot, then run. A terrible mistake, a sorry excuse for a Lynch.

He suddenly fought back tears. He was the son of one of the most feared men in the IRA. He remembered the dark basement in Belfast where men who were suspected of whispering into British ears were brought; he could still see the terror in their eyes as they were placed in the chair across from his father. He was brother to a man revered for his ability to kill and not be seen. But he was a sorry legacy of their blood, taken down by an amateur he’d badly underestimated. He didn’t even have his car keys now. His face was a bloody fright; anyone who saw him would remember him. And if the police found him, started questioning him, found his ties to his brother and hence to his brother’s clients in the Mideast-then all was ended. He would never see the outside of a prison again.

He reached the store’s loading docks, hung back in the shadows for a moment. He kept the knife up his shirtsleeve, ready to drop into his hand. A young man wheeled an armoire into a delivery truck, came back out onto the dock and then steered his dolly through another door. Now the back of the truck was empty, the driver conferring off to the side with a co-worker holding a tablet PC, tapping at the screen and shaking his head at his companion, then laughing good-naturedly.

Jackie stepped into the back of the truck, squeezed through the narrow maze toward the cab, hid between a refrigerator and an armoire. He took off his shirt and pressed it against his cut and battered face. Would he have awful scars? Would his face be ugly now?

Thirty seconds later, the truck door slid shut, plunging him into darkness.

He heard footsteps on the loading dock, security men asking questions about two men running through the store, the truck driver saying he’d been standing here the whole time, he’d seen nothing.

Jackie waited, to see if the doors would open or if the truck would take him.

After another minute, the truck’s engine roared to life, moved forward out of the bay.

Escape was escape. But this was humiliation, running, losing to a nobody like Ben Forsberg. As he bounced in the darkness, he imagined Ben’s face gaping in terror, dying slow on his knife’s point, screaming like the cowards in the Belfast basement. The bloodied smile seemed tattooed on Jackie’s face.

Bob Taggart’s den appeared to be a bizarre hybrid of a gun show and a used bookstore. Tall bookshelves covered one wall, jammed full with tattered paperbacks and battered hardcovers. Another wall featured a collection of antique firearms mixed in with newer guns. Bright yellow squares of Post-it notes lay beneath several of the mounted guns. Vochek could see notes penciled on the squares of color. The handwriting was as precise as the characters of a typewriter. Stacks of books towered from the floor, volumes on history and weaponry and guns.

“I’m working on a book on firearms,” Bob Taggart said. “I’m on the ninth draft of my outline. I’m being very methodical in how I approach my work.”

“I admire that,” she said. She leaned closer, looked at the guns. A French pistol from 1878. A German revolver from 1915. A police special from Prohibition-era Chicago.

“If they could talk,” he said. “Other than spitting bullets.”

“We’d be out of our jobs.”

He laughed, a rich, warm sound. Taggart was a short man, heavyset, with a silver burr of hair cut into a retro flattop. He had a warm and ingratiating smile. He had his hands behind his back and he rocked on the balls of his feet, beaming at his guns. Vochek gave his fingers a quick inspection as he pointed out the beauty of an antique firearm from Prussia: no wedding ring. She wondered if maybe Mom would like Taggart, wondered if he ever made his way to Houston.

“You truly have quite a collection,” Vochek said.

“I’m mindful about my purchases. I research them. I’m careful and methodical.”

She wondered if he was preemptively defending his work on the Emily Forsberg case before she asked a single question. He offered her iced tea, she accepted, and he got them their drinks. He settled into a recliner; she sat on the couch across from him.

“I’m not sure how I can help you,” he said. “The lead investigators were in Maui. I only did questioning here of people in Dallas in support of the Hawaiian investigation. Everything on the murder was in the file. The case remains open.”

“But cold.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re the closest, so I’m talking to you first, but I’m sure we’ll be talking with the investigators in Maui as well. I read the file. You were, indeed, very methodical and careful.”

Taggart shrugged. “Not that I made much of a difference for Emily Forsberg.”

She heard bitterness under his words. “I’d just like your impressions on the case. You can get so much more from talking to an investigating officer than simply reading the file.”

“You get all my prejudices and theories.” He smiled.

“I’ll take those,” she said.

“And this is because you want to find Ben Forsberg.”

“Yes. We found a link between Forsberg and a known hired killer. I want to find out how strong the link is and how long ago it was forged.”

“You mean, did he use a hired killer to get rid of his wife?”

“Yes.”

Taggart frowned. “I suppose anything is possible.”

“What did you think of Ben?”

“As a suspect or a person?”

“Both.”

“I did not talk with him until he returned to Dallas. So, you understand, I did not see him in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death, which is when you can learn the most about a suspect’s emotional reaction to the crime. He’d had a few days to compose himself, to deal with the shock of her death. He was… There’s a phrase I used in my career. Devastated but dignified.”