Days of Reckoning (23 page)

Sam studied the picture closely. The more he looked at it, the more the man sketched there resembled Miranda’s brother. “Or he’s from out of state.”

Armstrong grunted.

Sam sighed. “And now Damon shows up dead, in a stream way out in the middle of nowhere. And I’ve got a whole bunch of people murdered back in Ohio with the same M.O. Put down for good with double-taps from a nine to the head. One of them tortured first.” He shook his head. “What a fucking mess.”

“I still want to keep abreast of it. One of my guys got dropped, and there have been threats made against some other people of ours.”

Armstrong nodded. “I know the guy in Charleston. He’ll be pretty cool about keeping you posted, if you want me to contact him first.”

“I don’t know a lot of people on the Federal level, so that sounds good to me. Besides, this all may have started here anyway, with that church bombing and all.”

“I’ll have him give you a ring in the morning. Can he reach you some other way than your cell, seeing as how inclined you are to answer it?”

Sam laughed and handed over his business card. “Yeah, my office number’s there, home phone and cell on the back. And I’ll do better at checking it, I promise. Speaking of which, I should probably see what’s happened now that is such an emergency.”

“All right. I’ll keep in touch. Right now, I’m gonna get some shut-eye. You know those Feds, they won’t be in ‘til at least nine tomorrow.”

Sam shook hands with Armstrong and went back out to his car. It was getting late, and he had an overnight bag packed. He thought about staying at a motel before heading home. Then he checked his messages.

Arnie’s voice sounded fairly frantic on the voice-mail. Sam didn’t even let the message finish before he switched it off and called Arnie back.

Arnie heaved a loud breath. “Just happened, maybe a half-hour ago. Still burning; fire department can’t get in yet. They think it was a gas explosion, maybe from the stove.”

“Yeah, well…” Sam struggled to find something encouraging to say, but came up empty. “We’ve got a lot of problems right now. Not least of which is that our main suspect in all these killings turned up dead a few days ago.”

When she woke up, Miranda’s back was knotted up and her arm hurt like hell. But she was rested, and Tracy still lay bound to the bed. The captive woman appeared to be asleep. She stirred a bit while her captor tested her bonds, but lolled back into slumber when Miranda went into the bathroom to shower.

Tracy was awake when Miranda, wrapped in a towel, returned to the bedroom. Miranda ignored her muffled groanings and rummaged through the closet. She selected a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, which weren’t too bad of a fit on her. Tracy’s shoes were too tight, however, so Miranda donned her own. She then rummaged through the dresser, pocketing keys, a wallet and small pieces of jewelry. She found a lovely diamond necklace and put it around her neck, then stuck several other pieces into a handbag. Tracy groaned with renewed fervor, and then whimpered. She was silent after that.

Miranda wrinkled her nose a few seconds later. “What the hell…?” Then she laughed. “Guess I forgot to schedule you a bathroom break. Sorry, honey.” She shouldered the stolen handbag as well as her own. “Well, I guess since you’ve already gone, you can wait some. I’ll be back in a little bit; I’ve got a few errands to run. Bye!”

Tracy moaned as Miranda walked out of the room, and resumed sobbing when she heard the door to the garage slam shut.

#

Tracy’s car was a nice late-model four-door sedan. It took Miranda several minutes to adjust the seat just right, and then to acquaint herself with the controls. She hit the button on the garage door opener and pulled back out into the driveway. With a wig and sunglasses, she hoped she resembled Tracy somewhat. As long as no one looked too closely or – God forbid – she ran into Sam, she figured she’d be all right.

She drove out of town to a shopping mall about fifteen minutes away. At one of the department stores, she bought several skirts, pants and tops, all using Tracy’s credit card. Her next stop was to a nearby pawnshop, where she exchanged the jewelry, some watches and the necklace for a neat little bundle of cash. After changing clothes at a gas station, she ate lunch at a local deli and then went to a computer store with an unusual request. The kid behind the counter had a hard time saying “no” to her short shirt and revealing blouse, and she walked out with several large boxes, broken down and folded neatly. On her way back to Tracy’s house, she passed the block where she had lived, and was satisfied to see that fire trucks and cruisers still sat outside her smoldering home. It looked like lighting that candle and then leaving the gas stove running had worked nicely. She'd been scared to death of accidentally blowing herself up in the process. That would have been a pisser after all the trouble she'd taken moving the weapons from her place to Tracy's. But she gotten away, unseen and in one piece. She would miss the house, and the things she hadn’t been able to take with her, but she had to start a new life once she was done killing, and that meant leaving everything of the old behind. All things considered, she wasn’t too broken up about it. Except for Sam.

#

The odor of human filth hit her nose as she walked through the door of Tracy’s house.
Poor woman
. Miranda dropped her purchases in the hallway and walked into the bedroom. Tracy was still there, looking pale and sick. It occurred to Miranda that the woman hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for at least fifteen hours. She smiled sympathetically at her captive.

“You must be famished,” she said. “And it smells like you could use a bath. I’ll be right back.” Miranda went out to the kitchen, where she made a peanut butter sandwich and poured a glass of tea. She set the food and drink on a tray and put it on the sink in the bathroom. Then she went back to Tracy.

“Food’s in the bathroom so you can eat and bathe at the same time,” she said, sawing at the woman’s bonds with a pocketknife. “You give me any trouble… well, I’m sure you can guess what will happen to you.” She left Tracy’s mouth sealed as she helped her stand. Tracy stumbled, and Miranda had to half-carry her to the bathroom. She sat Tracy down on the commode. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay in here while you do your business. That window there probably looks mighty tempting.”

Tracy stared hard at her, rubbing the bruises on her wrists. Though she looked haggard, there was still plenty of fight flashing through her eyes.

“Look, if you want this to be hard, I’ll just tie you back up in there, and you can starve to death in your own filth. I’m doing you a favor here. I suggest you swallow your pride and get down to business. I don’t have all day to wait for you.”

Tracy’s defiance immediately deflated. For punctuation, Miranda produced her silenced Walther and set it on the sink by her right hand. Defeated, Tracy removed her soiled clothes. After she had relieved herself properly, she looked up at her captor. Miranda motioned for her to get in the bathtub. Tracy did so and began running the water. Miranda grabbed the Walther with one hand and set the tray beside the tub with the other. Tracy splashed at her face, loosening the tape with hot water, then pulled it away quickly, wincing and whimpering. Angry red splotches marred her cheeks and chin, and her dry lips bled as the skin peeled away from them. She rinsed her face again and set about eating and drinking.

Miranda watched her impassively. She let the woman finish her sandwich and tea. The tub was by now half-full with water. Tracy reached for some soap, but never got to it. Miranda lashed out, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her down into the water. Tracy tried to scream, but Miranda shifted her grip and pushed down on her throat. Tracy’s head was fully submerged, and all that emitted was a stream of bubbles. She thrashed wildly, but Miranda already had the PPK pointed at her head. She fired twice, the water turned a brilliant crimson, and the thrashing stopped. Miranda set the gun back on the sink, rinsed her hands under the running faucet and then turned off the water.

Now came the hard part: cleaning her prints from the house. She wandered around with a towel and some cleaning fluid, wiping everything she could remember touching. The bed sheets and the blanket covering the futon all went into the laundry, nearly jamming the machine. And Tracy’s body floated pathetically in the bathtub, soaking in the red fluid that still seeped from the holes blown through her head.

Miranda wished she had a pick-up truck. Damon’s would have been ideal, but it was probably sitting in a police impound lot, and in any case would have attracted too much attention. Not that she wasn’t attracting attention now; her skirt was riding high as she struggled to pull the large computer monitor box out of the back seat of the sedan. She heard several whistles; no one, however, offered assistance. She used her hip to slam the door shut and huffed as she lifted the box and walked to the Sparta College administration building. Once inside, a receptionist who was just closing down for the evening hurried over. “You need a hand with that, hon?”

“Well, if you’ve got a cart I can set this on I think I’ll be fine.”

“Sure thing. Just sit tight; I think we’ve got one in our file room.”

Miranda waited patiently for the woman to return. She smiled and thanked the receptionist for the flattop office cart and wheeled her way to the elevator.

Miranda left the cart holding the elevator door open and walked back out. “Let me get a few more things out of the car, then.” She came back in with another armload of boxes and got back on the elevator.

The nice thing about schools was that they were constantly upgrading and replacing old equipment. Had anyone been left in the building, they wouldn’t have thought twice about her wheeling a cart of computer boxes down the halls. Miranda came to a door at the end of the corridor and stopped. Satisfied that no one would sneak up on her, she opened the door and pulled the cart through.

The storage room in which she found herself was musty and filled with shelves of old files. She had no idea what was in them; nor did she care. She had picked the room for its view: right out onto the campus quad, where The Reverend would be preaching his message of hate the next afternoon. She was glad he was not a head of state or similar government official; otherwise the windows would have been boarded shut or – worse – patrolled. This one, however, opened easily, had a grand view and was thankfully empty. Miranda set to work.

She opened the monitor box and pulled out the Minimi machine gun, which sat stripped into its component parts. She laid out the separate pieces and reached into the bottom for the manual she'd printed out so she could put it back together. It only took a minute, and the weapon was ready to go. Out of a second box she pulled a plastic 200-round magazine for the weapon. After attaching it, she pulled a blanket out of the third box, covered the weapon and left the room. She was kind enough to take the cart back down to the front desk, where the receptionist would find it in the morning.

Miranda heaved a relieved sigh as she went back to the car. Only one more stop, and then she could get the night’s work finished. She wondered briefly if she should go for Eldon Marshall first, or Tim Butcher. She decided that the racket at a trailer park would draw a lot of police attention, so she would be able to do Tim afterwards, undisturbed in his own home. Her mind made up, she climbed back in the car and pulled away from the administration building.

Sam was beyond exhausted. As soon as he pulled back into Sparta, he went over to Miranda’s house, or at least what was left of it. By the time he arrived it was a pile of smoldering support beams and roofing material. The house was an old one, and the flames from the fire had engulfed it quickly. The only good news was that, when they were finally able to sift through the ashes, the firemen hadn’t found any human remains. So maybe Miranda had escaped. Or maybe she had disappeared too, just as her brother had before he was found dead. And Damon also. The thought wasn’t very comforting.