Jack Ryan 1 - Without Remorse (39 page)

'Somebody got Ju-Ju!' It was Mark Charon, who had just arrived. 'I had a case running on that fuck, too.'

'Two exit wounds, back of Mr Donald's head,' Ryan went on, annoyed at the interruption. 'I expect we'll find the bullets somewhere at the bottom of this lake,' he added sourly.

'Forget ballistics,' Douglas grunted. That wasn't unusual with the .22. First of all, the bullet was made of soft lead, and was so easily deformed that the striations imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel were most often impossible to identify. Second, the little ,22 had a lot of penetrating power, more even than a .45, and often ended up splattering itself on some object beyond the victim. In this case the cement of the walkway.

'Well, tell me about him,' Ryan ordered.

'Major street pusher, big clientele. Drives a nice red Caddy,' Charon added. 'Pretty smart one, too.'

'Not anymore. His brain got homogenized about six hours ago.'

'Rip?' Charon asked.

Douglas answered. 'Looks that way. No gun, no drugs or money to speak of. Whoever did it knew their business. Looks real professional, Em. This wasn't some junkie who got lucky.'

'I'd have to say that's the morning line, Tom,' Ryan replied, standing up. 'Probably a revolver, but those groups are awfully tight for a Saturday-night special. Mark, any word on an experienced robber working the street?'

'The Duo,' Charon said. 'But they use a shotgun.'

'This is almost like a mob hit. Look 'em straight in the eye - whack.' Douglas thought about his words. No, that wasn't quite right either, was it? Mob hits were almost never this elegant. Criminals were not proficient marksmen, and they used cheap weapons for the most part. He and Ryan had investigated a handful of gang-related murders, and typically the victim had either been shot in the back of the head at contact range, with all the obvious forensic signs that attended such an event, or the damage was done so haphazardly that the victim was more likely to have a dozen widely scattered holes in his anatomy. These two had been taken out by someone who knew his business, and the collection of highly skilled Mafia soldiers was very slim indeed. But who had ever said that homicide investigation was an exact science? This crime scene was a mix of the routine and the unusual. A simple robbery in that the drugs and money of the victims were missing, but an unusually skillful killing in the fact that the shooter had been either very lucky - twice - or an expert shot. And a mob hit was usually not disguised as a robbery or anything else. A mob murder was most often a public statement.

'Mark, any noise on the street about a turf war?' Douglas asked.

'No, not really, nothing organized. A lot of stuff between pushers over street corners, but that isn't news.'

'You might want to ask around,' Lieutenant Ryan suggested.

'No problem, Em. I'll have my people check that out.'

We're not going to solve this one fast - maybe never, Ryan thought. Well, he thought.

'Can I have 'em now?'

'All yours,' Ryan told the man from the medical examiner's office. His black station wagon was ready, and the day was warming up. Already flies were buzzing around, drawn to the smell of blood. He headed off to his own car, accompanied by Tom Douglas. Junior detectives would have the rest of the routine work.

'Somebody that knows how to shoot - better than me even,' Douglas said as they drove back downtown. He'd tried out for the department's pistol team once.

'Well, lots of people with that skill are around now, Tom. Maybe some have found employment with our organized friends.'

'Professional hit, then?'

'We'll call it skillful for now,' Ryan suggested as an alternative. 'We'll let Mark do some of the scutwork on the intelligence side.'

'That makes me feel warm all over.' Douglas snorted.

* * *

Kelly arose at ten-thirty, feeling clean for the first time in several days. He'd showered immediately on returning to his apartment, wondering if in doing so he'd left rings on the sewers. Now he could shave, even, and that compensated for the lack of sleep. Before breakfast - brunch - Kelly drove half a mile to a local park and ran for thirty minutes, then drove back home for another thoroughly wonderful shower and some food. Then there was work to do. All the clothing from the previous evening was in a brown paper grocery bag - slacks, shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes. It seemed a shame to part with the bush jacket, whose size and pockets had proven to be so useful. He'd have to get another, probably several. He felt certain that he hadn't been splattered with blood this time, but the dark colors made it difficult to be sure, and they probably did carry powder residue, and this was not the time to take any chances at all. Leftover food and coffee grounds went on top of the clothing, and found their way into the apartment complex's Dumpster. Kelly had considered taking them to a distant dumpsite, but that might cause more trouble than it solved. Someone might see him, and take note of what he did, and wonder why. Disposing of the four empty .22 cases was easy. He'd dumped them down a sewer while jogging. The noon news broadcast announced the discovery of two bodies, but no details. Maybe the newspaper would say more. There was one other thing.

'Hi, Sam.'

'Hey, John. You in town?' Rosen asked from his office.

'Yeah. Do you mind if I come down for a few minutes? Say around two?'

'What can I do for you?' Rosen asked from behind his desk.

'Gloves,' Kelly said, holding his hand up. 'The kind you use, thin rubber. Do they cost much?'

Rosen almost asked what the gloves were for, but decided he didn't need to know. 'Hell, they come in boxes of a hundred pair.'

'I don't need that many.'

The surgeon pulled open a drawer in his credenza and tossed over ten of the paper-and-plastic bags. 'You look awfully respectable.' And so Kelly did, dressed in a button-down white shirt and his blue CIA suit, as he'd taken to calling it. It was the first time Rosen had seen him in a tie.

'Don't knock it, doc.' Kelly smiled. 'Sometimes I have to be. I even have a new job, sort of.'

'Doing what?'

'Sort of consulting.' Kelly gestured. 'I can't say about what, but it requires me to dress properly.'

'Feeling okay?'

'Yes, sir, just fine. Jogging and everything. How are things with you?'

'The usual. More paperwork than surgery, but I have a whole department to supervise.' Sam touched the pile of folders on his desk. The small talk was making him uneasy. It seemed that his friend was wearing a disguise, and though he knew Kelly was up to something, in not knowing exactly what it was, he managed to keep his conscience under control. 'Can you do me a favor?'

'Sure, doc.'

'Sandy's car broke down. I was going to run her home, but I've got a meeting that'll run till four. She gets off shift at three.'

'You're letting her work regular hours now?' Kelly asked with a smile.

'Sometimes, when she's not teaching.'

'If it's okay with her, it's okay with me.'

It was only a twenty-minute wait that Kelly disposed of by going to the cafeteria for a light snack. Sandy O'Toole found him there, just after the three-o'clock change of shift.

'Like the food better now?' she asked him.

'Even hospitals can't hurt a salad very much.' He hadn't figured out the institutional fascination with Jell-0, however. 'I hear your car's broke.'

She nodded, and Kelly saw why Rosen had her working a more regular schedule. Sandy looked very tired, her fair skin sallow, with puffy dark patches under both eyes. 'Something with the starter - wiring. It's in the shop.'

Kelly stood. 'Well, my lady's carriage awaits.' His remark elicited a smile, but it was one of politeness rather than amusement.

'I've never seen you so dressed up,' she said on the way to the parking garage.

'Well, don't get too worked up about it. I can still roll in the mud with the best of 'em.' And his jesting failed again.

'I didn't mean -'

'Relax, ma'am. You've had a long day at the office, and your driver has a crummy sense of humor.'

Nurse O'Toole stopped and turned. 'It's not your fault. Bad week. We had a child, auto accident. Doctor Rosen tried, but the damage was too great, and she faded out on my shift, day before yesterday. Sometimes I hate this work,' Sandy concluded.

'I understand,' Kelly said, holding the door open for her. 'Look, you want the short version? It's never the right person. It's never the right time. It never makes any sense.'

'That's a nice way of looking at things. Weren't you trying to cheer me up?' And that, perversely, made her smile, but it wasn't the kind of smile that Kelly wanted to see.

'We all try to fix the broken parts as best we can, Sandy. You fight your dragons. I fight mine,' Kelly said without thinking.

'And how many dragons have you slain?'

'One or two,' Kelly said distantly, trying to control his words. It surprised him how difficult that had become. Sandy was too easy to talk with.

'And what did it make better, John?'

'My father was a fireman. He died while I was over there. House fire, he went inside and found two kids, they were down from smoke. Dad got them out okay, but then he had a heart attack on the spot. They say he was dead before he hit the ground. That counted for something,' Kelly said, remembering what Admiral Maxwell had said, in the sick bay of USS Kitty Hawk, that death should mean something, that his father's death had.

'You've killed people, haven't you?' Sandy asked.

'That's what happens in a war,' Kelly agreed.

'What did that mean? What did it do?'

'If you want the big answer, I don't have it. But the ones I took out didn't ever hurt anybody else.' plastic flower sure as hell didn't, he told himself. No more village chiefs and their families. Maybe someone else had taken the work over, but maybe not, too.

Sandy watched the traffic as he headed north on Broadway. 'And the ones who killed Tim, did they think the same thing?'

'Maybe they did, but there's a difference.' Kelly almost said that he'd never seen one of his people murder anyone, but he couldn't say that anymore, could he?

'But if everybody believes that, then where are we? It's not like diseases. You fight against things that hurt everybody. No politics and lying. We're not killing people. That's why I do this work, John.'

'Sandy, thirty years ago there was a guy named Hitler who got his rocks off lulling people like Sam and Sarah just because of what their goddamned names were. He had to be killed, and he was, too damned late, but he was.' Wasn't that a simple enough lesson?

'We have problems enough right here,' she pointed out. That was obvious from the sidewalks they passed, for Johns Hopkins was not in a comfortable neighborhood.

'I know that, remember?'

That statement deflated her. 'I'm sorry, John.'

'So am I.' Kelly paused, searching for words. 'There is a difference, Sandy. There are good people. I suppose most people are decent. But there are bad people, too. You can't wish them away, and you can't wish them to be good, because most won't change, and somebody has to protect the one bunch from the other. That's what I did.'

'But how do you keep from turning into one of them?'

Kelly took his time considering that, regretting the fact that she was here at all. He didn't need to hear this, didn't want to have to examine his own conscience. Everything had been so clear the past couple of days. Once you decided that there was an enemy, then acting on that information was simply a matter of applying your training and experience. It wasn't something you had to think about. Looking at your conscience was hard, wasn't it?

'I've never had that problem,' he said, finally, evading the issue. That was when he saw the difference. Sandy and her community fought against a thing, and fought bravely, risking their sanity in resisting the actions of forces whose root causes they could not directly address. Kelly and his fought against people, leaving the actions of their enemies to others, but able to seek them out and fight directly against their foe, even eliminating them if they were lucky. One side had absolute purity of purpose but lacked satisfaction. The other could attain the satisfaction of destroying the enemy, but only at the cost of becoming too much like what they struggled against. Warrior and healer, parallel wars, similarity of purpose, but so different in their actions. Diseases of the body, and diseases of humanity itself. Wasn't that an interesting way to look at it?

'Maybe it's like this: it's not what you fight against. It's what you fight for.'

'What are we fighting for in Vietnam?' Sandy asked Kelly again, having asked herself that question no less than ten times per day since she'd received the unwelcome telegram. 'My husband died there and I don't still understand why.'

Kelly started to say something but stopped himself. Really there was no answer. Bad luck, bad decisions, bad timing at more than one level of activity created the random events that caused soldiers to die on a distant battlefield, and even if you were there, it didn't always make sense. Besides, she'd probably heard every justification more than once from the man whose life she mourned. Maybe looking for that kind of meaning was nothing more than an exercise in futility. Maybe it wasn't supposed to make sense. Even if that were true, how could you live without the pretense that it did, somehow?

He was still pondering that one when he turned onto her street.

'Your house needs some paint,' Kelly told her, glad that it did.

'I know. I can't afford painters and I don't have the time to do it myself.'

'Sandy - a suggestion?'

'What's that?'

'Let yourself live. I'm sorry Tim's gone, but he is gone. I lost friends over there, too. You have to go on.'

The fatigue in her face was painful to see. Her eyes examined him in a professional sort of way, revealing nothing of what she thought or what she felt inside, but the fact that she troubled herself to conceal herself from him told Kelly something.

Something's changed in you. I wonder what it is. I wonder why, Sandy thought. Something had resolved itself. He'd always been polite, almost funny in his overpowering gentility, but the sadness she'd seen, that had almost matched her own undying grief, was gone now, replaced with something she couldn't quite fathom. It was strange, because he had never troubled to hide himself from her, and she thought herself able to penetrate whatever disguises he might erect. On that she was wrong, or perhaps she didn't know the rules. She watched him get out, walk around the car, and open her door.