Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

Outside, a huge phalanx of police had herded the last staffers and tourists into this more-or-less pen, marked off with yellow crime-scene tape. It was a rough square among the trees, with officers a few feet apart, setting the perimeter. Everyone had been screened and screened again. Law enforcement had slowly come to the obvious conclusion that Terry Waters was, in fact, long gone.

On the streets framing the Capitol complex-Independence and Constitution running east and west, and First Street SE and NE running north to south-Sully could see dozens of squad cars, lights revolving. Armored trucks parked at intervals. Two choppers beating the air in the near distance.

The paramilitaries who’d pulled him from the building were more pissed off than inquisitive; the detectives and the feds who questioned him were demanding and impatient; and the medic, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, kept telling him, ‘Mister, you’re in shock,’ until Sully ran his fingers across the scars on his face, then raised his sweat-soaked shirt to show the railroad track of shrapnel scars from Bosnia and said, “It’s not my first dance at the prom.”

He had told the feds enough but not everything. Certainly he didn’t mention that he’d heard the man give his name-they would have that from the 911 call, anyway. He didn’t imagine they’d be thrilled to read it in the paper tomorrow, but that wasn’t his problem. Neither was it his problem that they’d missed Waters in the Capitol. It probably hadn’t been hard to do, people running out of offices all over the place, so many warrens and back stairways, the subway running to the House and Senate office buildings-had anybody sealed that off?

Now the manhunt story was galloping ahead, dominating television, radio, and the Web, with newspapers holding their final editions to the last minute. Sully could play no part in the manhunt-he was locked in the safest part of the city for the foreseeable future-but he had the first-person firecracker narrative of the shooter’s path.

“What’s our body count?” he asked R.J.

“Nine confirmed, four critical, five serious, thirteen admitted. One of the fatals is a heart attack. Two of the admitted were people tripping, twisting an ankle, like that, running out.”

“Who we got working it?”

“Everybody but Sports, and I’m including Jesus Christ in that. Keith is anchoring the lede-all with, I’m serious, something like forty, forty-five people sending feeds. It’s the whole damn paper. Your narrative is the 1-A centerpiece. The art is great, a shot of the eastern entrance to the Capitol, all these people sprinting out, looking like they just saw Charlie Manson.”

“Read me back the lede.”

“‘The killer came prepared,’” R.J. said, reading from the story they’d been editing.

“Go on,” Sully said.

“‘The gunman who killed U.S. Rep. Barry Edmonds and at least eight others in the U.S. Capitol yesterday afternoon first stormed into the building by shooting guards at the eastern entrance,’” R.J. continued. “‘He sprinted down a hallway, apparently shooting at random in the Crypt. Ascending the steps, he killed guards and civilians in the circular Rotunda, one of the most famous public spaces in the United States. Then, with a hard right, he zeroed in on one of the most powerful offices in the U.S. Capitol: that of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.’”

“It’s obvious but not awful.”

“We give his ID to the 911 operator, and a bit on his background, but most of that is in the lede-all, not your narrative. And down below, later, the killing of Edmonds reads like this: ‘He had come not only with semiautomatic guns, but with duct tape, flares, a cell phone, and ice picks. He shot Edmonds in the leg, bound him with the tape, hand and foot, then drove a steel ice pick through each of Edmonds’s eyes, killing him.’”

He paused. “Okay, wait. How do we know he shot him before the ice pick business?”

“Because the picks were mortal. The leg had bled a lot, the pants were soaked, all that. You shoot somebody post-mortem, they don’t bleed so much.”

“Hunh. But, I mean, he could have tied him up and then shot him, right? That could be the sequence?”

Sully closed his eyes. He was going to throw up soon, he could tell. The throbbing.

“I guess so, R.J. Edit as you wish. I’m not hung up on that.”

“Okay, okay, just a second…” and R.J. drifted away, the keyboard clattering, the old man breathing softly into the receiver. Sully wondered if he had a concussion. Blown up in Bosnia, beaten up at a motorcycle race track in the spring, now this. The paycheck wasn’t matching the effort. He was pretty sure of that.

“Now then,” the voice, bright and hard, back with him. “Let’s pick it up at: ‘Waters was in no hurry. He lit a common roadside flare-he had apparently brought it with him-to illuminate the pitch-black darkness. By the light of the flare, he appeared as a man of average height, perhaps five foot eleven, with a ponytail of dark hair, dressed in jeans and a dark shirt. When he was leaving, he tossed the flare back toward Edmonds, but did not speak. His path after that is unknown.’”

“True, fair, and accurate,” Sully said. He leaned forward and spit.

“Did he say anything?” R.J. asked. “Did you hear him say anything to or about Edmonds, about why he had to kill him, and in that manner?”

“No. But they’re saying out here that Edmonds was on the House Committee for Indian fuckovery or whatever.”

“He’s the ranking member on the House Committee on the Indian, Insular and Native Alaskan Affairs,” R.J. said.

“Which is, what, the new name for the Bureau of Indian Affairs?”

“Bringing you Wounded Knee and other atrocities since 1824.”

“Well. Any evidence of a more direct connection?”

“You mean like Edmonds was fucking his girlfriend?”

“That would put a bow on it. Tells you something, the way a man kills another. This thing, they had personal history, that’s my guess.”

“None apparent,” R.J. said. “We got Susan and Audra up in research, and the entire congressional desk, going over Edmonds’s voting history, like that, see if there’s some legislation that our shooter might not have liked.”

“Nothing on the manhunt?”

“Sweet fuck all. The city is locked down. Metro is shut down. So is Amtrak, the MARC Train, National, Dulles, and BWI. Traffic checkpoints everywhere. You should see the aerials. The Beltway, 66, 495, 295, the BW Parkway, the George Washington. Every on- and off-ramp. World’s biggest parking lot.”

“Jesus,” Sully said, the last of the adrenaline oozing out of him, a physical sensation, like blood had been drained from his arm. He closed his eyes against the dizziness. The ice picks buried in Edmonds’s face materialized in the blackness. He popped his eyes back open.

“How much time we got?” he said.

“We’re five minutes over.”

“Punch the button. We’re sewed up tight.”

R.J. paused, silence on the line. “Sullivan,” he said quietly.

“Da, sahib.”

“You’re sure about this? All of it?”

Sully looked down at his socks, worn through at the heels now, his shoes lost and long gone, at his right hand, which had dried blood on it. He guessed it was from the kid in the Rotunda or the woman in the Crypt. The night had a bright electric feel to it, something metallic on the tip of the tongue, a penny in a socket.

“One more time, R.J. I swear to Christ and sonny Jesus, you ask me one more time-”

“Okay, alright already. We can not be wrong. We have tons of exposure. Nobody else was up there. This thing is gonna be huge and you’re out there all alone. Eddie, Eddie Winters-you remember the executive editor of this establishment? He’s behind you on this but nervous. The feds are going to want to pick you apart, you were up there before them. It’s not going to be-”