Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

My phone rings at 4:30 A.M.

"It's Kirby."

The simple fact that her voice is serious and no wisecracks follow starts the alarm bells ringing.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Sarah's gone."

60

I'M ALMOST SHOUTING AT KIRBY. IT'S ANGER DRIVEN BY FEAR.

"What do you mean she's gone? You were supposed to be guarding her."

Kirby's voice is calm without being defensive. "I know. I was worried about people on the outside trying to get in, not her trying to get out. She wasn't snatched, Smoky. She left. I went to the bathroom. She walked out the door. She left a note, said, There's something I have to do. "

I pull the phone away from my ear. "Son of a bitch!" I yell into the sky. Alan's been inside the house. He comes running out.

"Do you know where she might be going?" Kirby asks. I stop, poleaxed.

Do I?

The voice in my head replies, accusing.

Of course you do. If you'd been listening, you would have been ready for this. But you were too busy with yourself, weren't you?

The truth I'm trying to reveal to myself appears. Sarah, memorizing him. The way he talks. Saying she'd never forget his voice.

Sarah, taking a phone call from Gibbs the other day, supposedly to "verify"

she was fine with us going into the home.

I grip my temples with one hand. My head is spinning and my heart is racing.

He talked to her recently, the day he killed the Kingsleys. Then, he talked to her on the phone, in the hospital, as Gibbs. She knew the moment she heard his voice. He probably wanted her to know.

"I think I do," I tell Kirby. "Stay with Bonnie and Elaina. I'll be in touch."

I hang up before she can reply.

She knew, and once she knew that Theresa was safe, she went off to do the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world. She went to kill him.

The endless cycle.

"What is it?" Alan asks.

I see the fear in his eyes. I can't blame him. The last time we were near the end of a case and I got a phone call that made me react this way, Elaina was in danger.

"Elaina and Bonnie are fine. Sarah's on the run."

I see him thinking, his mind racing, watch as understanding hits home.

"Gibbs. She's going to kill Gibbs."

"Yes," I say.

The fear doesn't leave his eyes. It's not Elaina, it's not Bonnie, it's not me. It's not Callie or even James.

But it is Sarah.

I hear James's voice in my head: Every Victim .

"If we let her kill him, she'll never make it back," he murmurs. I unfreeze at this, snapping into motion.

"Get ahold of surveillance. Alert them, get the address. If they spot her, they're to detain her. Otherwise, they're to watch and wait for us to get there. I'm going to let Callie know we're going."

I head for the house at a run. I find Callie in one of the bedrooms. I tell her what's happening. Again, I see that fear. The same fear in her eyes that I'd seen in Alan's. It's odd to see on Callie, unsettling. No one's gotten away from Sarah's story without a scar to show for it.

"Go," she says, grim. "I'll handle things here."

61

AS IT TURNS OUT, GIBBS--JUAN--DOESN'T LIVE THAT FAR AWAY,in LA terms. In this early time of the morning, without traffic to slow us down, we should arrive at his house in the San Fernando Valley within twenty minutes.

On the way there, my phone rings again.

"Is this Smoky Barrett?" a deep voice asks.

"Who's this?"

"My name is Lenz. I'm one of the agents assigned to watch Gibbs. We got a problem."

My heart beats even faster, if that's possible. "What?"

"My partner and I were doing our thing, keeping an eye on the house. Pretty quiet detail. About five minutes ago someone took a shot at us. Well, at the car. Plugged holes through the trunk and one of the passenger windows. We dive down in our seats, pull our weapons, when we come back, we see a teenage girl beating feet to the front door."

"Dammit!" I say. "Did she enter the home?"

His voice is miserable. "Yeah. Three minutes ago or less."

"I'll be there shortly. Stay alert but stay back."

It's a small home. Humble. A two-story built in older, some would say better, times. It has a small, treeless, unfenced front yard. The driveway leads from the street to a detached single car-garage. The street is quiet. The sun is breaking somewhere on the horizon; we can see its glow climbing over the rooftops.

An agent I don't recognize is waiting. He comes to us as we get out.

"Lenz," he says. He's fortyish, a little homely. He has the skinny look and sallow skin of a smoker. "Really sorry about this."

"You stay here," I tell him. "Keep your partner watching the back. We're going up to the front door."

"You got it."

They get moving. Alan and I do the same. We haven't drawn our weapons, but our hands rest on them. When we get to the front porch, I hear Sarah. She's screaming.

"You deserve to die! I'm going to kill you! Do you hear me!"

A voice responds. It's too low for me to make out the words.

"Ready?" I ask Alan.

"Ready," he says, my friend that I secretly look up to. No questions asked.

We're at the tipping point. I can hear it in Sarah's voice. There is no time for finesse, only time for action.

We move to the front door. I check the knob. It opens under my hand, and I throw the door wide. I enter first, gun drawn. Alan follows.

"Sarah?" I call. "Are you here?"

"Go away! Go away go away go away!"

It's coming from the kitchen, toward the rear of the house. It's not far; I reach the doorway in a few quick strides. I look into the kitchen and stop.

It's small. Old-fashioned and efficient. The dining table sits away from the stove, clean but battered, with four old chairs around it. Stark. Functional.

Juan is sitting in one of the chairs, smiling. Sarah is standing, facing him, about four feet from him. She has a gun pointed at his head. It looks like a thirty-eight revolver. It's an obscenity in her small hands. Something that doesn't belong.

I almost don't recognize Gibbs. He's missing his beard and moustache.

They were fake, dummy.

He turns, sees me, smiles.

Eyes aren't blue, either. They're brown. He was wearing contacts.

"Hello, Agent Barrett." His voice is humble, but his eyes are bright. He's dropped the pretense, let the madness inside him shine. "Are you the good side of what I've become?"

"Shut up!" Sarah screams. The gun trembles in her hands. I glance back at Alan, shake my head. Telling him to wait. I lower my gun without putting it away.

Sarah had begun to unravel earlier. Now she's come undone. Looking at her face, I understand, finally, what it was that Juan as The Stranger had been striving for.

Her face was the face of an angel, its wings shorn, as it fell away from the sight of God. The absence of hope as a totality. A Ruined Life.

I look at Juan and see that he's sucking down the horror of it, and that this, for him, has become a kind of ecstasy. He told himself once that it was all about justice, and maybe, at one time, it was. But he had changed, in the worst and most fundamental way, until it was only about one thing: The Joy of Suffering.

He'd set out to punish evil men, and in doing so, had become an evil man.

"This is not the ending I had planned," he says, ignoring me now, "but God's will is all, and I see, I see, what he is doing here, in his infinite wisdom, praise be to Him. He set me on the path, to make you over in my own image, and that can only be completed, I see, I see, by my death at your hands, praise be to Him. You will kill me in the name of vengeance, you will kill me because you think that it is right, but, I see, I see, that you will only be killing me because you want to, praise be to Him." He pauses, angling his head down. "You will not kill me to save Theresa. She has been released, she is unharmed. You will be killing me because you yearn to spill my blood, a need so sharp and huge and terrible that it burns your skin like a bright blue flame. And where does that need come from, where does that flame come from?" He nods and smiles with his mouth open. "It is the flame of God, Little Pain. Don't you see? I was an angel of vengeance, sent by the Creator to destroy the men who hide behind symbols, the demons that caper through the world in pressed suits, proclaiming their goodness while eating the souls of the innocent. I was sent by God to cut a wide swath, a bloody swath, a swath that drowns both victim and oppressor, the innocent and the guilty. What are the deaths of some who shouldn't die in the name of the greater good? I was sacrificed so that I could be made into the Lord's weapon. And I have sacrificed you, I see, I see, so that you can become me and take my place, praise be to Him." He leans forward, closes his eyes, his face blissful. "I am ready to meet God. Hail Mary, full of Grace."