Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

A wife without a husband, a mother without a child…

Give up, Parker?

I'm the answer to the riddle. Because I'm the wife of a man lying in the cold ground in Alexandria Cemetery. Because I'm the mother of a child lying beside him.

The riddle of the wife and mother…

Here's another: How can ice burn?

When an airplane drops from the sky into a field on a dark November morning, two days before Thanksgiving, six days before your birthday, a hot autumn day, and explodes into a million fragile bits of metal and plastic and rubber.

And flesh.

That's how ice can burn.

And that's how I became a changeling.

Oh, puzzles are easy when you know the answer, Parker.

So simple, so simple…

Hold on, she thought, letting go of the lamppost. Taking a deep breath. Locking away the urge to cry. Enough of that.

One thing Special Agent Lukas didn't tolerate was distraction. She had two rules she repeated endlessly to new recruits in the field office. The first was "You can never have too many deets." The second was "Focus."

And "focus" was what she now ordered herself to do.

Another breath. She looked around. Saw some motion in a vacant lot nearby-a young kid, wearing gang colors. He stood over an oil drum, waiting for some of his homeys. He had a teenagers attitude-which was a hell of a lot more dangerous than a thirty-year-old's, she knew. He gave her the eyeball.

Then up the street, a block away, she thought she saw a man in the alcove of a check-cashing store. She squinted. Was anybody there? Somebody hiding in the shadows?

No, there was no more motion. It must've been her imagination. Well, this's the place to get spooked.

Gravesend…

She tossed out the remains of the coffee and walked toward the teenager in the vacant lot to see if he knew anything about their mysterious unsub. Pulling the computer printout from her pocket, she wove easily around rusting auto parts and piles of trash-the same way Jackie Lukas used to maneuver through the perfume counters at Macy's on her way to a drop-dead sale in women's sportswear.

Parker stepped away from the thrift store, disappointed.

The stationery he'd seen inside wasn't the same as the extortion note or the envelope. He looked around the streets. He was shivering hard. He thought: Stephie's outgrown her down jacket. I'll have to get her a new one. And what about Robby? He had the fiberfill, the red one, but maybe Parker would get the boy a leather bomber jacket. He liked his fathers.

He shivered again and rocked on his feet.

Where the hell was that van? They needed the on-line service subscriber list. And the demolition and construction permit information. And the shrink. He wondered too what the tape of the shooting would show.

Parker looked around once more at the devastated streets. No Lukas, no Cage. He watched a young couple-they looked Hispanic-wheeling a baby carriage toward him. They were about thirty feet away. He thought about the times just after Robby was born when he and Joan would take after-dinner strolls like that.

Again his eye caught the man huddling in the check-cashing alcove. Absently wondered why he was still there. He decided to be useful and fished in his pocket for a picture of the unsub. He'd do some canvassing himself.

But something odd was happening…

The man looked up and, though Parker couldn't see clearly through the dim light and smoke from the oil drums, reached into his coat and pulled something out, something black, shiny.

Parker froze. It was the man who'd followed them near the Archives!

It was the Digger!

Parker reached into his pocket, for the gun.

But the gun wasn't there.

He remembered the pistol pressing into his hip as he sat in Cage's car and he'd adjusted it in his pocket. It must have fallen out into the front seat.

The man glanced at the couple, who were between him and Parker, and lifted what must have been the silenced Uzi.

"Get down!" Parker cried to the couple, who stopped walking and stared at him uncertainly "Down!"

The Digger turned toward him and lifted the gun. Parker tried to leap into the shadows of an alley. But he tripped over a pile of trash and fell heavily to the ground. His breath was knocked out of him and he lay on his side, gasping, unable to move, as the man walked steadily closer. Parker called to the couple once more but his voice came out as a breathy gasp.

Where was Cage? Parker couldn't see him. Or Lukas or any of the other agents.

"Cage!" he called but his voice was still merely a whisper.

The Digger approached the couple, only ten feet from him. They still didn't see him.

Parker tried to climb to his feet, waving desperately to the young man and woman to get down. The Digger moved forward, his round face an emotionless mask. One squeeze of the trigger and the couple and their baby would die instantly.

The killer aimed his gun.

"Get… down!" Parker rasped.

Then a woman's brash voice was shouting, "Freeze, federal agents! Drop the weapon or we'll shoot!"

The attacker turned, gave a choked cry as the couple spun around. The husband pushed his wife to the ground and shielded the baby carriage with his body.

"Drop it, drop it, drop it!" Lukas continued, screaming now, moving forward steadily, hand extended in front of her, drawing a perfect target on the man's large chest.

The Digger dropped the gun and his hands shot into the air.

Cage was running across the street, his own weapon in his hand.

"On your face!" Lukas shouted. "On your face!"

Her voice was so primitive, so raw, that Parker hardly recognized it.

The man dropped like a log.

Cage was speaking into his phone, summoning backup. Parker could see several other agents sprinting toward them. He climbed unsteadily to his feet.

Lukas was crouched on the ground, her gun pressed into the killer's ear.

"No, no, no," the man wailed. "No, please…"

She cuffed him, using only her left hand, the gun never wavering from its target.

"What the hell're-" he choked.

"Shut up!" Lukas snapped. She pushed her weapon harder into the man's head. Steam rose from the man's groin; he'd emptied his bladder in fear.

Parker held his side, struggling to fill his lungs.

Lukas, breathing deeply herself, backed away and holstered her weapon. She stepped into the street, eyes contracted and icy, glancing at Parker then at the suspect. She walked to the shaken couple and spoke to them for a few moments. Wrote their names in her notebook and sent them on their way. The father glanced uncertainly at Parker then ushered his wife down a side street, away from the staging area.

As Cage frisked the attacker one of the other agents walked over to the man's weapon and picked it up.

"Not a gun. It's a video camera."

"What?" Cage asked.

Parker frowned. It was a camera. It had broken in the fall to the concrete.

Cage stood. "He's clean." He flipped through the man's snakeskin wallet. "Andrew Sloan. Lives in Rockville."

One of the other agents pulled out his radio and called in a warrants request-federal, Maryland and Virginia.

"You can't-" Sloan began to protest.

Lukas took a step forward. "You keep your mouth shut until we tell you to answer!" she raged. "Understand?" Her anger was almost embarrassing. When he didn't answer she crouched and whispered in Sloan's ear, "You got me?"

"I got you," he responded in a numb voice.

Cage pulled one of Sloan's business cards from his wallet. Showed it to Lukas and Parker. It read NORTHEAST SECURITY CONSULTANTS. Cage added, "He's a private eye."

"No warrants," said the agent who'd called in the request.

Lukas nodded at Cage.

"Who's your client?" Cage asked.

"I don't have to answer."