Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘Emma, I’m sorry,’ Stan said. ‘I just never figured, in a place like this, that she’d impersonate a cop. I never figured it would be a she . Jesus, I fucked this up. I don’t know what to say.’

‘I never thought it would be a woman either,’ Emma said. ‘She’s probably been watching him for a couple of days, and if we hadn’t had mental blinders on, we would have seen her. Son of a bitch!’

‘And, Jesus, she just shot the shit out of him,’ Stan said. ‘He sure as hell told her whatever she wanted to know.’

When Stan had entered the junkyard office, he saw the owner first, the Indian who owned the place. He had a single bullet hole in his forehead. He’d been lucky. Jubal had also been shot in the head, but before that he’d been shot half a dozen times in both knees with small caliber bullets. The killer had used a silenced weapon, probably a.22, and it looked like she’d just kept shooting Jubal in the knees until he told her everything she wanted to know.

As soon as Stan saw the bodies, he called Emma, then called 911. Calling 911 may have been a mistake because it was three hours before the cops would let Stan go. He didn’t tell the cops that he and DeMarco had been watching over Jubal or that they’d seen the killer. All Stan told the cops was that he’d come to the scrap yard to get a part for a car and that just as he’d driven into the place he’d seen a sheriff’s car leaving.

‘What do you think Jubal told her?’ DeMarco said.

Before Emma could answer DeMarco’s question, Harry walked back to the group. He’d been using a pay phone near the motel office. ‘She didn’t kill the cop. They found the patrol car, and the cop was inside the trunk, gagged, in her underwear, out cold. She’d been hit on the head, hard. Right now she can’t even remember her own name.’

‘Could you identify her?’ Emma asked Stan.

‘The killer?’ Stan said. ‘Yeah, no doubt about it. I got a good look at her.’

‘I saw her too,’ DeMarco said. ‘But in profile and she was wearing sunglasses. So-’

‘No!’ Emma said. ‘You can positively ID her. And don’t you dare say otherwise. When we catch her we’re going to say we have two eyewitnesses who saw her walk into that office in a cop’s uniform, and that nobody went in there again until Stan found the bodies.’

‘Got it,’ DeMarco said. ‘But what do you think Jubal told her?’

‘I know what he told her. He told her the picture was a fake, that Patsy Hall had the picture made by some NSA guy, and he told her the name of that waitress in Winchester. I’ve already called Hall and told her that we blew it …’

‘Oh, man,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll bet Patsy was pissed.’

‘… and I called someone to go pick up that waitress and hide her and her kids until we can figure out what to do next.’

‘Do you think Hall’s in danger?’ DeMarco said.

‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. ‘Maybe.’

‘So now what?’ DeMarco said.

Emma didn’t say anything. The four of them — Stan, Harry, DeMarco, and Emma — just stood there in the motel parking lot like a small group of friends trying to decide where to go for lunch. Or maybe like friends who had just eaten a very bad lunch.

‘What will Lincoln do?’ Emma said. DeMarco could tell that she was talking to herself, thinking out loud, playing a game of chess with Oliver Lincoln two thousand miles away. ‘He could kill Patsy, just to eliminate a threat. Same with that poor waitress. Or he could have Patsy snatched and tortured and make her give up the NSA guy who made the picture.’

‘But Patsy will say you made the picture,’ DeMarco said.

‘But Lincoln doesn’t know that,’ Emma said. ‘Lincoln knows only what Patsy told Pugh. So Lincoln will think — assuming he can even get to Hall — that the best thing that will happen is she’ll give up the name of the NSA guy that made the picture, which he now knows for sure is fake. But then what? Does Lincoln go after the NSA guy? Does he try to kidnap and torture him and get him to hand over all the files he used to make the fake picture? No, it’s just too much. It’s just too hard.

‘Plus Lincoln thinks Patsy’s just a blackmailing cop, not someone trying to put him in jail. He’ll think that once she hears Pugh was tortured and killed, she’ll be too scared to come after him again.’

Emma kicked at the parking lot asphalt with the toe of her boot and chewed her lower lip for a moment. ‘Lincoln’s not going to do a damn thing at this point,’ she said. ‘With Pugh dead, there’s no solid connection between him and the attacks. And Lincoln now knows the picture’s a fake. Certainly an expert could either prove that or make a good enough case to put doubt in the mind of a jury. So, Lincoln’s just going to wait and see what happens next. I would if I was him.’ Emma paused, her brain spinning, looking for a way to recover from their failure, then she just shook her head in disgust and said, ‘Shit!’

‘Maybe we can use Hall for bait,’ Stan said. ‘You know, get her to spook Lincoln somehow and when he takes a shot at her … Well, I swear, Emma, we won’t-’

Before DeMarco could object, Emma said, ‘No. I’m not putting her and her family at risk. Or at any more risk than they already are.’

DeMarco looked over at Stan. ‘Are you sure you got a good look at that woman, the shooter? I mean, she was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and you saw her for only a few seconds.’

Stan stared at DeMarco. As Stan was wearing sunglasses, DeMarco couldn’t see his eyes, but he didn’t have to see Stan’s eyes to know that Stan was pissed.

‘I said I saw her,’ Stan said to DeMarco. ‘When she stepped out of the car, she looked straight at me. You would have noticed if you hadn’t been worried about bugs crawling up your leg. Then, when she turned to go into the office, I saw her in profile.’ Stan paused before he said, ‘If I saw that broad again, I’d recognize her.’

‘Okay,’ DeMarco said. ‘Then I think we have maybe one chance — and it’s a long shot — to tie Lincoln to this woman.’

‘What’s that?’ Emma said.

‘Well, Lincoln had to talk to this woman. Maybe he contacted her by phone or by e-mail or through a middleman, but he’s been under continuous surveillance by the FBI ever since Pugh was arrested.’

‘Ah,’ Emma said.

As he and the boy traveled about the country — it was truly a beautiful land, so rich and so green — they spoke often of martyrdom.

Where he had been before — places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Indonesia — it was easy to find martyrs. Men and women, boys and girls, husband and wives, fathers and mothers — there were many willing to give their lives for their faith. But here in this country, even among the devout, it was difficult to find people who were truly committed. The men in Baltimore, they had said they were willing to die, but he could tell they hadn’t been. They were willing to murder but not to die.

But the boy, he believed .

They had discussed many times what the Koran said about those who died in the service of God, and the boy could quote the words flawlessly, the words that promised that a martyr would be married to fair females with ‘wide, lovely eyes.’ The boy always blushed when he said that, which made him laugh.

It was a shame that the boy would still be a virgin when he died.

But they spoke of more than what the Koran said about martyrdom. This was an intelligent child, and they discussed the strategic value of martyrs, how they were the most powerful weapon they had in their battle against the infidel. It was in these conversations that the boy became the most animated. He grasped completely the terror that the martyrs caused, particularly in this country.