Greg Iles - Third Degree

Ray had pulled Carl aside dozens of times to talk shop, asking detailed questions about the capabilities of various sniper rifles, scopes, and night-vision systems. But inevitably, after all the hardware questions had been answered, Breen would circle down to the question he’d really wanted to ask: What’s it like to blow some unsuspecting raghead’s shit away from a thousand yards? Carl always answered the same way: I tried not to think about that side of it, sir. It was a job, and I focused on the mechanics of it. Guys like Ray Breen never grasped the true nature of sniping. It was as much about concealment as it was about shooting. Carl had once spent two days constructing a hide in Baghdad, then another waiting motionless with his scout to take a single shot that a twelve-year-old kid could have made in his backyard in Sandy Bottom. But he didn’t blame the TRU commander. The homeboys he’d played ball with at Athens Point High had asked the same question after they got a couple of beers in them. All human beings, Carl had learned, were fascinated with death. Only those who knew death intimately, as he did, understood its essential mystery.

Carl’s eyes tracked a thin form slinking out of the CP trailer. Trace Breen. In the vernacular of Carl’s father, Trace was a skunk. Lying was mother’s milk to him. He had no military experience, and Carl assumed he’d ridden his brother’s coattails onto the TRU, as nominal communications officer. From scuttlebutt around the department, Carl had gathered that Trace had worked a dozen different jobs before becoming a deputy, none of them productive. He’d been a roustabout at construction sites (where materials tended to disappear at night); he’d sold stereos out of the back of a van (most of those stolen, too); he’d worked as a hunting guide (poaching alligators at night); he’d also run dogfights, and pursued various other fly-by-night enterprises that went nowhere. Even now, Trace had some kind of cell phone scam going, selling disposable phones out of his car. Carl figured a truckload of the things must have been hijacked over in Texas or somewhere.

“Hey, Red Cloud!” Trace had caught sight of Carl. “Ray wants you in the CP like yesterday. You better double-time it, soldier.”

Carl let the nickname roll off him. He didn’t like anyone outside the Marine Corps using it. The local guys only got wind of Red Cloud after discovering an article about marine snipers in Baghdad on the CNN Internet archives. Carl raised his left hand to acknowledge the remark, then headed for the command post.

Unlike the other white deputies, Trace Breen made no effort to conceal his dislike of African-Americans. If Carl passed him alone in a corridor, Trace would look pointedly at the ceiling or chuckle softly, as though amused at the idea of a black man in a deputy’s uniform. If they met in public, Trace either pretended Carl didn’t exist or snickered in the ear of whatever trashy blonde happened to be hanging off his arm. Lately, Carl had heard rumors that Trace might be dabbling in the drug business-specifically crystal meth-a trade he’d apparently worked at as a teenager. Carl had already decided that if he picked up concrete information about this activity, he would follow wherever it led. The sheriff might not want to bust his own deputies, but Carl figured if he made the arrest, Billy Ray Ellis would have no choice but to follow through.

Carl stopped before the trailer door and looked up at the Shields house. If what the dispatcher had told him was true, his mother’s soft-spoken physician was barricaded behind the idyllic facade of that house, and he might already have killed someone. If Shields had done that, Carl might well be asked to take the man out, and soon. Before darkness fell, probably. He scanned the northern sky, hoping to see Danny McDavitt’s chopper zooming out of the dark clouds gathering there, but he saw nothing.

The trailer door opened suddenly, and Carl stood face-to-face with Ray Breen. Breen wore a dark brown cowboy hat pulled low over his mustached face, but it was the flak jacket that startled Carl. Body armor was SOP for hostage situations, but still. Carl realized then that deep down he had not quite accepted that Dr. Shields had taken anyone hostage.

“Where’s your weapon, Deputy?” Breen asked.

“In my Jeep.”

Ray frowned. “It ain’t gonna do us any good there, is it? Come on, Carl. We don’t have a lot of daylight left.”

“Eighty minutes,” Carl said. “Less, if those clouds come over, which it looks like they will.”

Breen gave a tight grin and slapped his shoulder. “I knew you were already thinking. Get your gear, son. This is big.”

Carl didn’t move. “Could I ask you something, sir?”

The grin vanished. Breen sensed resistance, and he didn’t like it. “Go ahead.”

“Has anyone talked to Dr. Shields yet?”

“Yeah, me. His wife and daughter are in there, and probably his partner, Dr. Auster. I spoke to the wife and kid, but I think Auster’s dead.”

“Why?”

“Shields wouldn’t let me talk to him. We know there were shots fired, but the kid who got out isn’t positive who fired them. He thought he saw a man lying on his back in the hall, but he was on the second-floor landing and didn’t get a good look.”

Carl wondered if this was the best intel they were going to get.

“We think they’re in the main downstairs room now,” Breen went on. “What they call the great room. I talked to the architect, and he’s bringing a set of plans out here. There’s big windows facing the backyard, but they’re those fancy ones with the blinds built into them, between two panes of glass. They pretty much wipe out all visibility.”

Carl nodded, surprised to find himself grateful for this obstacle.

“That ain’t all,” Breen said. “There was a fire at Dr. Shields’s office about an hour ago. We don’t have many details, but right now it’s possible that Shields set that fire himself. A nurse at the hospital also told me there are some state or federal agents in the ER. There might be some kind of investigation going on that we don’t know about. Something to do with Dr. Shields.”

Carl said nothing. None of this made sense to him, but then he had few facts to work with. For the time being, he’d have to leave the situation in the less-than-masterful hands of Ray Breen and pray that the sheriff got here quick. Even that prospect made him feel only slightly better. The sheriff had been a petroleum land man for much of his life. The only thing that might stop Sheriff Ellis from doing the same thing Ray Breen would do was fear of a negative reaction from the voters in the next election. What gave Carl the most comfort was knowing that Danny McDavitt would be sitting beside the sheriff during any negotiations that might happen in the next few minutes.

“Get your rifle, Carl,” Ray said. “The sheriff’s still thirty minutes out. The wheels could come off this thing any second.”

“Yes, sir,” Carl said, starting back toward his Jeep.

He kept looking northward as he walked. More rain was coming; he would have known that with a blindfold on. Carl was a country boy, too.

He could smell rain ten miles away.

Danny crossed the Mississippi River just east of Lake Concordia and dropped out of the rain clouds at five hundred feet. This leg of the Mississippi was dotted with oxbow lakes, and Lake St. John lay just ahead. He flew around the eastern rim of the C-shaped lake, his eyes tracking the well-trimmed lots that bordered the eastern shore. As he neared the midpoint of the seven-mile horseshoe, he saw a cluster of brightly colored pavilion tents beside a large cypress lake house. A group of men had gathered in a muddy cotton field across the road, and they began waving him down when they caught sight of the helicopter.