Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

When the flames had died down, two agents in full body armor made their way to the door of the bus and looked inside.

Suddenly a series of loud bangs shook the Mall.

Every agent and cop nearby dropped into defensive positions, lifting their weapons.

But the sounds were only the fireworks-orange spiders, blue star bursts, white concussion shells. The glorious finale of the show.

The two agents stepped out of the doorway of the bus, pulled their helmets off.

A moment later Parker heard one of the agent's staticky transmission in Cage's radio. "Vehicle is secure," he said. "Subject confirmed dead" was the unemotional epitaph for the killer.

As they walked back to the Vietnam Memorial Parker told Cage about Czisman, how the shooting had started.

"He fired warning shots. He hadn't done that, the Digger would've killed a hundred people right here. Maybe me too."

"What the hell was he up to?"

In front of them a cop was covering Henry Czisman's body.

Cage bent down, grimacing in pain. A medic had poked his abdomen and proclaimed that the fall had resulted in the predicted broken rib. The agent was taped then given some Tylenol 3. The most frustrating part of the injury seemed to be that shrugging was momentarily too painful for him.

The agent pulled the yellow rubberized sheet away from the corpse. He went through the journalists pockets. Took out his wallet. Then he found something else.

"What's this?" He lifted a book out of the man's jacket pocket. Parker saw that it was a little gem of a book: Leather-bound, hand-stitched pages, not "perfect"-glued-binding as in mass-market books. The paper was vellum, which in Thomas Jefferson's day was smoothed animal skin but nowadays was very high-quality cloth paper. The edges of the paper were marbleized in red and gold.

And inside, the calligraphic handwriting-presumably Czisman's-was as beautiful as an artist's. Parker couldn't help but admire it.

Cage flipped through it, paused at several pages, read them, shaking his head. He handed it to Parker. "Check this out."

Parker frowned, looking at the title, written in gold ink on the cover. A Chronicle of Sorrow.

He opened it. Read out loud. "To the memory of my wife, Anne, the Butcher's first victim.'"

The book was divided into sections. "Boston."

"White Plains." And photographs of crime scenes had been pasted inside. The first one was headed "Hartford." Parker turned the page and read, "'From the Hartford News-Times.'" Czisman had copied the text of the article. It was dated in November of last year.

Parker read, "Three Killed in Holdup… Hartford Police are still searching for the man who walked into the offices of the News-Times on Saturday and opened fire with a shotgun, killing three employees in the classified advertising department.

"'The only description of the killer was that he was a male of medium build, wearing a dark overcoat. A police spokesman said that his motive may have been to divert law enforcement authorities while his accomplice robbed an armored truck making a delivery to a bank on the other side of town. The second gunman shot and killed the driver of the truck and his assistant. He escaped with $4,000 in cash.'"

Cage muttered, "Killed three people for four G's. That's him all right."

Parker looked up. "One of the clerks killed at the paper was Anne Czisman. She was his wife."

"So he wanted the prick as much as we did," Cage said.

"Czisman was using us to get to the unsub and the Digger. That's why he wanted to see the body in the morgue so much. And that's why he was following me."

Revenge…

"This book… it was his way of dealing with his grief." Parker crouched and reverently pulled the sheet back up over the man's face once more.

"Let's call Lukas," he said to Cage. "Give her the news."

At FBI headquarters Margaret Lukas was in the employees' lobby on Pennsylvania Avenue, briefing the deputy director, a handsome man with a politician's trim graying hair. She'd heard the reports that the Digger was on the Mall and that there had been shooting. Lukas was desperately eager to get to the Mall herself but since she was primary on the case, protocol dictated that she keep the senior administrators in the Bureau informed.

Her phone buzzed. And she answered fast, superstitiously not letting herself hope that they'd captured him.

"Lukas here."

"Margaret," Cage said.

And she knew immediately from his tone that they'd nailed the killer. It was a sound in a cop's voice you learn early in your career.

"Collared or tagged?"

Arrested or dead, she meant.

"Tagged," Cage responded.

Lukas came as close to saying a prayer of Thanksgiving as she'd come in five years.

"And, get this, the mayor winged him."

"What?"

"Yep, Kennedy Got off a few shots. That saved some lives."

She relayed this news to the deputy director.

"You okay?" she asked Cage.

"Fine," Cage responded. "Cracked a rib while I was covering my ass is all."

But her gut tightened. She heard something else in his voice, a tone, a hollowness.

Jackie, it's Tom's mother… Jackie, I have to tell you something. The airline just called… Oh, Jackie…

"But?" she asked quickly. "What happened? Is it Kincaid?"

"No, he's okay," the agent said softly.

"Tell me."

"He got C. P., Margaret. I'm sorry. He's dead."

She closed her eyes. Sighed. The fury steamed through her again, fury that she herself hadn't had a chance to park a bullet in the Digger's heart.

Cage continued. "Not even a firefight. The Digger shot toward where the mayor was sitting. C. P. just happened to be in the wrong place."

And it was the place that I'd sent him to, she thought bitterly. Christ.

She'd known the agent for three years… Oh, no…

Cage was adding, "The Digger capped four other friendlies and we've got three injured. Looks like six civies wounded. Still a half-dozen reported missing but no bodies. They probably just scattered and their families haven't found them yet. Oh, and that Czisman?"

"Who, the writer?"

"Yeah, Digger got him."

"What?"

"He wasn't a writer at all. I mean, he was but that's not what he was doing here. The Digger'd killed his wife and he was using us to get him. The Digger took him out first though."

So, it's been amateur night, she thought. Kincaid, the mayor. Czisman.

"What about Hardy?"

Cage told her that the young detective had made a one-man assault on the bus the Digger'd holed up in. "He got pretty close and had good firing position. Might've been his shots that hit the Digger. Nobody could tell what was going on."

"So he didn't shoot himself in the foot?" Lukas asked.

Cage said, "I'll tell you, it looked like he was hell-bent on killing himself but when it came right down to it he backed off and went for cover. Guess he decided to stick around for a few years."

Just like me, Lukas the changeling thought.

"Is Evans there?" Cage asked.

Lukas looked around. Surprised that the doctor wasn't here. Funny… She'd thought he was coming down to the lobby to meet her. "I'm not sure where he is," she answered. "Must be upstairs still. In the document lab. Or maybe the Crisis Center."

"Find him and give him the good news. Tell him thanks. And tell him to submit a big bill."

"Will do. And I'll call Tobe too."

"Parker and I're gonna do crime scene with PERT then head back over there in forty-five minutes or so."

When she hung up the dep director said, "I'm going down to the Mall. Who's in charge?"

She nearly said, Parker Kincaid. But caught herself. "Special Agent Cage. He's near the Vietnam Memorial with PERT."

"There'll have to be a press conference. Ill give the director a heads-up. He may want to make a statement too… Say, you miss a party tonight, Lukas?"