Joan Johnston - Outcast

He heard sirens in the distance and realized help was on the way. He huffed out a breath and hauled the killer to his feet. “Your ass is busted.”

“Epifanio ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ to nobody now,” the kid shot back.

Ben didn’t say another word as he frog-marched the boy back down the alley. He was met halfway to the corner by MPD cops with their guns out, backup he presumed Waverly had called in. He held up his ICE badge and handed over his prisoner.

“How’s the kid who was stabbed?” he asked.

“Paramedics are with him now,” one of the cops replied.

Ben started running again. Maybe he could get to Epifanio before the boy died. Maybe he could find out what the kid knew that was so important it had gotten him killed.

A moment later he was on one knee in the blood that had pooled around the dying youth. He looked into the eyes of the paramedic kneeling on the other side of the boy, but the woman shook her head.

“Epifanio,” Ben said, his voice harsh, his throat aching.

The thirteen-year-old’s eyes fluttered open. He reached weakly toward Ben, who grasped his hand.

“Why did he want you dead?” Ben asked. “What is it you know?”

The boy looked at him with anguished eyes. He opened his mouth, but his larynx had been severed, along with his jugular.

“Don’t worry,” Ben said in a husky voice. “I’ll take care of your abuela. I’ll make sure she’s okay. You just rest now.”

The boy’s eyes had fallen closed, but his bloody hand tightened weakly on Ben’s. A dying breath soughed out of his mouth, along with a bubble of blood.

Ben eased his hand free and stumbled to his feet, wiping Epifanio’s blood on his jeans. He recognized the familiar meaty smell. The stickiness of it.

Senseless. Stupid. His gaze searched the area. What a waste! He wasn’t sure what he sought until he saw Waverly standing near the cop car that now held the killer.

His friend saw him coming and met him halfway.

“I’ve had enough,” Ben said. “I quit.”

Waverly looked from the kid in the cop car to the dead kid on the ground and said, “You can’t quit.”

“I sure as hell can,” Ben said. “I don’t need the hassle. I don’t need the—”

“Pain?” Waverly interjected. “I know you don’t need the money. But you can’t quit, Ben.”

“Why the hell not?” he said, stalking toward his SUV.

Waverly kept pace with him. “You’re doing good work here. You understand these kids. You understand the violence that threatens them. You want peace in these neighborhoods as much as I do. As we all do.”

“There’s no such thing as peace. Just intervals without war.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Ben I know.”

“You don’t know shit about me,” Ben retorted. “I’ve changed in the years since we were kids playing cops and robbers.”

“You’re forgetting that I watched you stop squabbles between your parents both before and after their divorce. You learned to negotiate peace between warring factions when you were still in short pants.

“Besides,” Waverly said, eyeing Ben. “Only cowards quit.”

Ben’s face turned chalk white. “I’m not a—”

“No, you’re not a coward. You’re a man who needs purpose in his life,” Waverly continued relentlessly. “Which you’ve found among these kids. Kids who need someone like you to help them find their way back to the straight and narrow.”

Ben said nothing. His throat had swollen closed.

“Damn it, Benedict! Did you have to shoot at the kid?” Tony Pellicano, the special agent in charge of the D.C. ICE office, gripped the top of the swivel chair behind his cluttered desk with white-knuckled hands and glared at Ben. “That was the mayor on the phone. He’s not happy. I had to explain to him why one of my agents was firing bullets at a fourteen-year-old. What were you thinking?”

Ben stared at his boss with disbelief. “I watched that kid cut another kid’s throat. And I shot once—over his head. Sir.”

Ben’s boss smacked his black leather chair as though it was the back of Ben’s head, then stalked back and forth behind his desk, waving his hands and ranting. Ben followed his tall, rail-thin boss’s constant, agitated movement with his eyes, while his hands gripped the arms of the maroon leather studded chair in which he sat.

“This isn’t a war zone,” Tony ranted. “We don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”

Ben felt his heart thudding in his chest, licked at the sweat beaded above his lip, and said, “You don’t have to tell me this isn’t—”

“You returning vets have the wrong—”

Ben came out of his chair as though he’d been catapulted from it. “The last thing on earth I want to do is kill some kid. I shot over his head to slow him down. I wanted to catch a killer. What’s wrong with that?”

Tony stared at him stony-faced and said, “I want you to see a doctor, a psychiatrist who specializes in cases like this.”

Ben stood stunned. “What?” If Tony only knew how hard it had been for him to fire his weapon at all, he would realize Ben wasn’t going to be a threat to the peace and harmony of D.C. streets. “There’s nothing wrong with me, sir,” Ben managed to say.

“You shoot, you talk. Those are my rules,” Tony said implacably.

“I’m not talking to any shrink.”

“Then pass me your credentials and your weapon,” Tony said, holding out his hand. “Your choice.”

Ben’s stomach rolled. He swallowed down bile. If there was one thing he didn’t want to do, it was talk to some doctor about killing kids. Especially after what had happened in Afghanistan. But his boss wasn’t giving him any choice. He lowered his gaze and said, “Who do I have to see?”

“We’ve got a psych trauma team on the payroll,” Tony said.

“I’ll make an appointment.”

“I had them called when I heard you’d fired your weapon. They sent over a therapist—Dr. Schuster. She’s waiting for you in the conference room.”

“Waverly’s wedding rehearsal is tonight, and I have paperwork to finish. I don’t have time—”

“You don’t leave this office until you talk with a doctor. That’s an order.”

“Fine,” Ben said between tight jaws. “Are we done here?”

Tony sighed. “Until today, I’ve been happy with the way you’ve been doing your job, Ben. The gang kids like you. You write great reports. You can type. Even better, you can spell. You’re responsible. You’re respectful. You’re reliable. I just can’t have a gunslinger working for me.”

“I’m not a—”

“Go see Dr. Schuster,” Tony interrupted brusquely. “Do it now.”

Dr. Annagreit Schuster recognized the ICE agent standing in the doorway. He’d yelled at her yesterday morning at the vet’s office. He’d ignored her at the urgent care clinic. He’d fallen apart in her arms last night, then walked out of her apartment leaving her unsatisfied.

She noted the wary look in his cold blue eyes as he leaned against the doorway to the conference room. She saw the tension in his bunched shoulders and the anger in his tight jaws and balled fists. She looked for a bandage on his left forearm, but he was wearing a long-sleeved Georgetown University T-shirt that covered it.

He spoke without saying a word: I don’t want to be here. There’s nothing you can say or do to help me. I’m fine.

“Have a seat, Agent Benedict,” Anna said, gesturing to one of the comfortable swivel chairs across from her at the center of the oval-shaped, highly polished conference table.

Anna had read in Ben’s personnel file that his job was to make friends of the kids in local gangs, in conjunction with similar MPD efforts, in order to direct them away from unlawful activities. He was also tasked with locating and arresting gang members with a possible terrorist agenda—and, of course, deporting illegal aliens who infiltrated the gangs.