A Killer Past (18 page)

‘Goodbye, David,’ she said, knowing an affair would have meant nothing to him, that back then, just as now, he would have ultimately left her.

A
T
THE
POLICE
station, Wally and Phil were waiting for Jack’s arrival. They followed him to his desk, and waited for him to remove his overcoat and sit down. The first thing he noticed was his screensaver was showing. ‘We tried to log in,’ Wally said. ‘But I forgot where I put the list with everyone’s passwords.’

‘Do you think someone stole it?’ Jack asked as he typed in his password.

‘Well, I guess that’s a possibility, but wait ‘til you see what comes up.’

‘If it comes up,’ Phil said, edging behind Jack’s chair so he could get a clear view of the monitor.

Jack didn’t have to wait long to see what had Wally and Phil so
upset. It only took a moment after he pressed the enter key for his monitor to turn completely black and for the sound of maniacal laughter to come out of his speakers. Almost immediately after that, the screen turned a bright red and the words ‘Beware of AntiSec’ appeared in black in the center.

‘Yep, that’s exactly what happened with ours,’ Phil said and gave a deep sigh.

Jack stared at the screen. He knew how to use the computer to type up a report, gather information on the Internet, and access the few data banks his rank allowed, mainly AFIS and IAFIS. Anything beyond those tasks baffled him. It was his son, John, during one of his rare visits, who had urged Jack to use a password and helped him download an antivirus program, firewall, and anti-spyware program.

‘So now what?’ he asked, looking up at Phil and Wally.

‘I hit the spacebar,’ Phil said, ‘and it went away.’

Jack hit the spacebar on his keyboard, and his screen went black again, but only for a second, and then the picture of his granddaughter, taken when she was five, appeared, as it normally did, along with the usual icons on the side.

‘I described what happened to the county’s IT specialist,’ Wally said. ‘He suggested we keep our use of the computers to a minimum until he can look at them.’

‘Oh, that’s just great.’ Jack stared at his granddaughter’s picture. He wanted to go into his files and see if he still had his list of informants, but he didn’t dare.

‘He asked if any of us had received any strange email messages recently,’ Wally added. ‘Something that didn’t look quite right, but that we might have responded to. Someone asking a question, or an email that looked like the message had been sent to the wrong email address.’

Jack started to say he hadn’t received anything like that, but then he remembered the message about the business in Rivershore, the one that didn’t exist. ‘I may have received something like that,’ he said and told them about the request. ‘I responded that I didn’t know of such a business.’

‘McDonald’s Hardware?’ Phil asked.

‘No, King’s Pharmacy,’ Jack said.

Wally grunted an obscenity. ‘I never even thought of that. Mine asked about Arby’s Grocery.’

‘And that gave them access?’ Jack stared at his computer.

‘I guess it’s one way these hackers get in,’ Wally said, ‘least that’s what the IT guy said. He also suggested we look into changing servers.’

‘Meanwhile, are you saying everything we had on our computers will be spread across the Internet?’ Jack didn’t like the idea of his personal correspondence as well as his official documents being out there for anyone to see.

‘I don’t know,’ Phil said. ‘All these messages today have said “Beware of AntiSec.” For all I know, this could be a test from Homeland Security, or maybe the FBI. They’ve been investigating this Anonymous group. And I don’t think we should feel bad that this happened. My gosh, the Department of Defense and the CIA, along with other law enforcement agencies, have been hacked.’

Jack looked at Phil. He wasn’t sure if the younger officer was naïve or simply hopeful, but as far as Jack was concerned, his computer had been raped. His personal information had been violated.

And, as irrational as it might be, Jack felt Agent David Burrows was somehow responsible.

Mary sat at the kitchen table staring at David’s half-empty mug of coffee.
So you’re saying Pandora is dead.
He’d said those words as calmly as if he’d been talking about a third person, but she’d understood the message. If those gang members wanted revenge, sooner or later they would get to her. If Pandora Coye was truly dead, it would be Mary Harrington – an elderly grandmother – facing the gang. Mary Harrington wouldn’t have a chance.

And what about the boy who was now a man? If Peter Dubois
was
looking for her, when would he show up?

She doubted it would matter to him that people here in Rivershore knew her as Mary Harrington. Just as it had been with David, Peter Dubois would look at her and see Pandora Coye.

Did she really want to simply let him shoot her as she’d shot his mother so long ago?

Was she ready to die?

When Harry passed, she’d pondered that question. She’d been seventy-two then, and in her teens she’d considered that old. Really, really old. Back then she’d figured anyone who lived past fifty had had a good life and should be ready to die. She’d quickly changed her opinion about that when she reached fifty.

But for a while after Harry died, life without him hadn’t seemed worth living. For several weeks she’d moped around the house, hating the silence, and wondering if she wanted to go on living without him. She wasn’t quite sure when her attitude changed. Maybe when Shannon came by the house all excited because she’d passed her driving test and wanted to take her grandmother for a ride. Or maybe when she went back to exercising.

But now, would she have a choice?

Mary Harrington couldn’t take out this Jose Rodriguez guy. She wasn’t even sure Pandora Coye could. Oh, years ago it would have been an even match. Years ago she would have had the upper hand, but nowadays there was no way Mary or Pandora could protect herself against Jose’s gang members. She might be in excellent physical condition for a woman her age, but that was the paradox. She was now seventy-four. Her joints grew stiff if she sat too long, and her body wasn’t as supple as when she was in her teens and twenties. She wasn’t as strong, couldn’t move as fast, or hit as hard. She needed glasses to read and had tinnitus, which made hearing difficult. The agency had taught them that their survival in the field depended on relying on their senses, and more than once, when she’d been on an assignment, she’d put that lesson into practice. An almost indistinct sound, the slight movement of a hand, and she’d been ready to counter an attack.

Now…?

She got up from the table and opened the cupboard under her coffee maker. From the top shelf, she pulled out the box that held the weapons she’d brought up from the basement. She placed it on the table in front of her and slowly lifted the lid. The kubotan she’d made years before was on her keychain, and the nunchuck was gone, either already in the possession of Jose’s gang or taken by the son of the woman she’d killed.

Mary checked the remaining weapons. The metal kubotan – the one the agency had given her – along with the throwing stars and fighting fans wouldn’t be much help if she was attacked by more than one person. The night her car had stopped running, she’d been able to use the element of surprise to her advantage. That wouldn’t happen again, and unlike fights in the movies, gangs didn’t hesitate to attack
en masse
. None of this standing around as the hero fought off one attacker, then another, and then another.

If she hoped to survive, she would have to act before they knew what was happening.

Mary chuckled and picked up one of the throwing stars. Even when she’d been younger she’d had trouble throwing the stars. Since then the closest she’d come to any sort of practice was back when she used to play Frisbee with Robby.

As for a gun, Harry hadn’t believed in them, and she’d never asked him to buy one. Living in Rivershore, neither Harry nor she had felt a need for a gun, and even when she’d been working for the agency, she’d rarely carried one. Her assignments had involved eliminating her targets in ways that made their deaths look like accidents or natural causes. Even on her last assignment, the gun wasn’t hers. The whole idea had been to use Dario Mendez’s gun so he would be blamed for his girlfriend’s murder. The French police and media would have seen both of their deaths as casualties of trafficking in drugs. Too bad, so sad … thin the herd.

And if the right woman had been murdered and the boy hadn’t testified otherwise, the plan would have worked.

But of course, it didn’t.

She dropped the throwing star back into the box and replaced the lid. Bringing her weapons upstairs had been a mistake. Forty-four years ago she’d put her days of killing people behind her. She wasn’t going to start again. Not for David and not to save her life.

Box in hand, she hesitated at the top of the stairs to the basement, then straightened her shoulders and went on down. Being afraid of her own basement was ridiculous. There were no bogymen down there.

She had one foot on the bottom step of the steel stepstool, ready to climb up and return the box to its original spot, when she heard
a crash upstairs. For a moment she stood motionless, trying to identify what had fallen and broken. And then she heard voices. Male voices. Loud and strident. Arrogant.

‘Where are you, bitch?’ one yelled.

‘Hey,
Puta
, come get what you deserve,’ another taunted.

‘Bitch!’ a third voice echoed.

Mary put down the box of weapons and turned toward the egress window. She could try to escape through that. Climb up on the bookcase under the window, crawl out, and run to the nearest neighbor. All she had to do was hope no one came down the stairs until she made her escape, that she could get the window open without making a sound, get herself …

A pair of jean-clad legs appeared on the other side of the egress window, ragged cuffs hanging over scuffed and worn boots. The knees bent, and outside the window she saw a tattoo covered arm and hand, then a face, scraggly black hair half-covering dark eyes. She knew the moment he saw her. A sneer curved his lips, and then the arm and face disappeared, leaving just the pant legs and boots, and she heard a muffled shout in Spanish.

‘Fuck,’ she mumbled. No way to escape now. No place to hide.

Her gaze shifted to the crawl space. Could she get in there before they found her? Would they think to look for her in there?

From above, she heard the shattering of glass and the crack of wood. She wasn’t sure what they were breaking, but the thought of them handling her possessions, of ruining the things that held such precious memories, cleared her mind. Taking in a deep breath, she started up the stairs. The bastards had no right invading her house. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to win this battle, but dammit all, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

‘H
EY
GUYS
,
DISPATCH
is getting 911 calls,’ Allison shouted from the front of the station. ‘Something’s going on over at that house that
was fire-bombed last night.’

‘Shit,’ Jack said, pushing himself away from his computer as Wally and Phil stepped back. ‘I told her they weren’t going to let this drop.’

‘We’re all going,’ Wally called back to Allison, and headed for his office.

‘My cruiser’s right out back,’ Phil said, leading the way to that door. ‘You can ride with me, Jack.’

It seemed the best idea, and Jack slid in on the passenger’s side of the police car as Phil started the engine. Siren blaring, the drive to Maple Street took less than five minutes, and both he and Phil were out of the cruiser, Glocks drawn, before Jack had time to come up with a plan of action. Wally pulled his car up right behind them.

Two boys peeled out of the back door, and Phil took off after them, Wally trailing at a slower pace. Jack headed for the front door, ready to stop anyone who attempted to escape that way. When no one did, he tried the door. A turn of the knob, and he knew it was still locked.

Gun at the ready, he worked his way around the opposite side of the house, looking for the point of entry. A broken window by the back door answered that question. He could also see Phil and Wally had the two escapees down, spreadeagled on the ground. ‘I’m going in,’ he yelled to the two.

Broken glass crunched under his feet as Jack entered the back room. From somewhere near the middle of the house, he heard a high-pitched scream. Male? Female? He couldn’t really tell and cautiously hurried that direction, fearing the worst.

Through an open door next to the stairway that led to the second floor, Jack could see the top of the stairs that led down to the basement. Another yell – deeper and more guttural – came from that area, then a crash and a thump.

‘Mary?’ Jack yelled.

‘Yeah?’ came back at him from the basement, the voice a little shaky.

‘You OK?’

She didn’t answer, and he hurried to the stairway.

He couldn’t make out the sounds he heard, but by the time he’d
gone far enough down the steps to see, Mary was setting a fallen stepstool back up. ‘Hey,’ he said and repeated his question. ‘You OK?’

She looked up at him, smiled, and brushed her hands together. ‘I’ve had better days.’

Behind her, scrunched up against a metal shelf, a cardboard box shoved next to him, was Jose Rodriguez himself. His right arm was at an odd angle and blood trickled down from a gash on his forehead. Although a knife on the floor had no signs of blood, Jack knew the crowbar by the stepstool could be lethal. ‘Is he dead?’

‘No, just unconscious. What about the others?’

‘We’ve got them,’ he said, and then heard Wally, from somewhere above him, shout, ‘Stop where you are!’

Jack rushed back up the stairs. Wally had his gun pointed at a dark-skinned teenager who had started down the upstairs stairway. The boy gave a quick glance Jack’s way, looked back at Wally, and then sunk down on the middle step and raised his arms up in defeat.

‘The woman…?’ Wally asked, never taking his gaze off the boy.

‘Fine.’ Jack laughed and walked up the steps to where the teenager sat. ‘You guys picked on the wrong old lady.’

The kid frowned as Jack pulled him to his feet. ‘But Jose, he say this the one.’

‘Oh, she’s the one, all right,’ Jack said and cuffed the boy. ‘She’s just not a defenseless old lady. Your fearless leader is now going back to jail.’ He jerked on the boy’s arm, causing him to stumble down the stairs. ‘But don’t worry. So are you.’

‘She took him out?’ Wally said, the shake of his head expressing his disbelief.

‘Anyone going to call an ambulance?’ Mary asked, appearing at the top of the stairs. ‘The guy down there is going to be in a lot of pain when he comes to.’

Jack stared at her. In his thirty-four years of police work, both in Chicago and on the Rivershore police force, he’d never seen a potential victim so calm after a break-in and attempted murder.

Mary had to admit, she felt damned proud of herself. Halfway up
the stairs, she’d decided she needed a weapon. Although she would have preferred using her nunchuck, with it gone she’d decided on a more conventional weapon and went back for the crowbar hanging by the furnace.

Next trick was to conceal her intentions. Carl always said, ‘Catch your target off guard, and you’ll have the advantage.’

‘Help,’ she yelled, knowing that would bring the enemy to her.

Within seconds, a man started down the stairs.

By then she’d moved the stepstool closer to the bottom steps and positioned herself beside it. She had a feeling the man was surprised to find her looking up at him, smiling.

‘Looking for me?’ she said as sweetly as she could manage with her heart thudding like a jackhammer.

‘
Puta
,’ he growled, a dark scowl narrowing his almost-black eyes and drawing thick, bushy eyebrows together.

‘
Puta
?’ she repeated, hoping she looked confused. ‘I don’t understand.’

He paused, his frown deepening. His hesitation gave her time to assess her adversary. A gray hoodie covered all but a lock of his dark hair and created an oval frame around his face. His features were Hispanic, his skin swarthy. He wasn’t very tall, but she had a feeling there was a lot of strength in his lean frame. The denims hugging his hips and legs looked fairly new and expensive, as did the leather boots on his feet. He looked older than the boys who had attacked her the night her car stopped running, but she doubted he’d reached his thirtieth birthday.

‘Bitch,’ he growled and held up a knife with a blade long enough to easily slash a tire or puncture a lung and heart.

‘Now, son, what did I ever do to you?’

‘I ain’t your son.’ His nostrils dilated as he slowly proceeded down the steps, his gaze locked on her face, and his movements reminding her of a cat on the prowl.

She edged closer to the stepstool, as if retreating in fear, all the while using the stool and her body to hide what she held in her right hand.

He smiled.

She leaned to the side, using the stool’s top step for balance, and
tilted her head up to watch him.

He reached the basement floor, his gaze focused on her face.

Mary held her breath. Move too soon and she would lose her advantage; too late and he would overpower her.

His eyes, along with the tightening of the muscles around his mouth, relayed his intentions. As he made a slashing lunge with the knife, aiming for her neck, she leaned her head and shoulders back, out of range, and rotated to the left. In one smooth motion, she swung the crowbar up and around in an arc in front of her.

His arm and her crowbar collided, opposing actions doubling the force. A keening sound came from deep within him, the knife flying out of his hand and falling onto the concrete with a clatter.

Mouth open, he staggered back, clutching his right arm with his left hand, until he bumped against the bookshelf under the egress window, jarring books and knick-knacks to the floor. For a moment he stared at her, a mixture of pain and anger giving his eyes a wild, unfocused look, then he gave another yell, this one deeper and more guttural. Again he lunged forward.

As she’d been taught so many years before, she pivoted out of range. He saw the stepstool too late to stop his forward momentum and hit it full-force. The stepstool went over, taking him with it, and throwing him into the metal shelving unit. His head hit an edge with a thud, and he dropped to the floor like a bag of dirt.

Mary heard her name called from somewhere up above and called back, somewhat surprised by how shaky her voice sounded. She started for the stairs, but then, from behind her, she heard a grunt.

She stopped where she was and turned to look back. Blood poured from a gash on her attacker’s forehead, and his eyes had a dazed, crazed look. His lips contorted into a snarl as he struggled to his feet. She waited until he was standing before she moved.

Rather than retreat, she surged toward him. She used the side of an open hand to hit the pressure point at the side of his neck. He had no chance to react, and, although she would have liked it to be a killing blow, she held back, satisfied when his legs collapsed under him, and he slid back down the shelving unit to a seated position on the floor.

He would have toppled over, but she quickly shifted a fallen box of books under his side to prop him up. She then picked up the fallen stepstool and set it back on its legs. That was when Sergeant Rossini came into view.