Shoot (25 page)

She thought for a bit. “You’ll get paid in cash. For now.”

Sparky got out his laptop and set it up on Jane’s kitchen table. He said the drone camera copy contained a big file and it would take a few minutes to upload.

Jane took out a small notebook and told us what she had learned at the other autopsies earlier in the day.

“I think I told you about our friend Congressman Hatfield’s strategic ‘HOT STUFF’ tattoo?”

Neither Amy nor Sparky had heard of the groin art and got a big laugh out of it. Jane explained that the post-mortems were weirdly similar, with each victim slain by one powerful blast of a musket ball to the chest. She joked that they were carbon copies, each victim’s flesh and clothing burned and singed by the discharge of old-fashioned black powder. The square patches of cloth, the wadding, had been identified as some kind of silk. Most interesting were various chemical testing results.

“Okay,” Jane said. “Every one of these guys had been drinking, with blood alcohol levels ranging from Chesterfield’s point zero nine up to the tattooed guy’s point one nine reading. They were all legally drunk. Your government at work.”

“Well, it’s not like they were driving or anything,” Amy said.

“Yeah,” Jane replied. “Just carrying around loaded firearms. Robert Blanchette goes to the head of the class because he also had a hefty recreational amount of cocaine hydrochloride in his bloodstream.”

“Alright, Bob!” Sparky cheered.

“But that’s not what I found weird,” Jane said. “Get this. The identical heavy metal musket balls, almost six tenths of an inch in diameter, are not lead or stainless steel. They’re almost pure silver.”

“Silver?” Amy asked. “Seriously?”

Nobody used silver for bullets.

“Yes, according to the tests, the balls are about ninety per cent pure… Wait… ‘eighty-nine point two four per cent pure silver’ and ‘seventy-six point one per cent copper.’ Each ball was heavy and weighed about twenty-six point nine six grams—which is about three-fiftieths of a pound.”

“What the hell?” I asked no one in particular.

“I got it!” Sparky whooped. “The congressmen were all werewolves! That is fucking awesome! A slamming story! They can only be killed with silver bullets!”

“We get it, Sparky,” I groaned.

“Who are you again?” Amy asked Sparky, one of her eyebrows arching suspiciously.

“There’s more weird,” Jane informed us, glancing at Sparky.

“The cost,” Amy volunteered.

“Correct,” Jane said. “I looked it up and did the math. The price of Chesterfield’s murder, almost twenty-seven grams of silver, at today’s market price is a bullet that cost the bad guys one hundred and sixty-three dollars and eighty-seven cents.”

“Times five,” I added. “Money to burn.”

“Exactly,” Jane echoed. “Total cost in bullets, not counting guns, gunpowder or sales tax, is eight hundred and nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“That is just nuts,” I said.

“But, when you consider they have changed the course of history, a bargain,” Amy concluded.

We were silent for a moment.

“So… you guys don’t like my werewolf idea?” Sparky asked.

We crowded behind Sparky’s laptop as he started the video playback of the drone brought down by the pigeons.

The screen flashed and then went dark, a barely visible line of vehicles on a dark street, receding as the drone rose above a black van and into the air. Day, date and time numbers in the lower right corner showed the video was filmed that night.

“Damn. No license plate visible on the van,” Amy observed.

“Bad angle,” Sparky agreed. “So, you think that’s Williamsburg, Shepherd?”

“Think so.”

Three dark figures were visible in the street below for a second before the drone angled away towards dark buildings silhouetted by light.

“Wait, go back to those guys,” I ordered Sparky, who rewound the video and froze on the trio of black hats and coats in the roadway.

“Are they Hassidic?” Jane asked.

“Maybe,” I replied. “Not sure. They’re in an Hassidic neighborhood, dressed like the locals…”

“Why would Hasidic Jews be part of an anti-Semitic plot to kill members of Congress?” Jane asked.

“That makes no sense,” Amy agreed.

We watched as the screen became lighter and the drone flew over several well-lit Brooklyn intersections. Sparky pointed out a nearby structure that looked like an aqueduct made from a lattice of dark steel.

“Broadway and the elevated line,” Sparky said. “The drone is following that SUV with a small, blinking targeting square superimposed on the roof. Looks like it’s getting onto the Williamsburg Bridge back to Manhattan.”

The shot became more distant, as the drone climbed vertically and then optically zoomed back through the bridge structure, tracking the SUV.

“That’s the Uber car,” I explained. “I’m in that vehicle.”

“Nice,” Amy said.

We watched as the vehicle emerged from the bridge maze and stopped to pick up a figure, the other passenger who got in at Delancey Street. The drone smoothly glided between buildings, never losing the target. It followed uptown to Radio City, where I also got off. The camera zoomed in as the drone descended for a better angle on my face. The craft fixed on me and Skippy on the street. Then the pigeons exploded in a blast of bright feathers and the drone wobbled, veered and crashed.

“Hey, man. That’s you,” Sparky laughed, as the camera caught me descending on the downed drone like a deranged giant, all hands and face.

The screen went black.

“The end,” Sparky announced. “If there were earlier missions, they erased them before blastoff.”

“So we’ve got exactly nothing,” I concluded.

“Not quite,” Sparky said. “They forgot to erase everything. Check this out.”

He brought up a control screen that featured several icons: GPS, VIDEO, HOME, WAYPOINTS, REGISTRATION and MISSIONS. “I can’t find anything under any of these—except the video we’ve just seen, under MISSIONS, and a few things under WAYPOINTS.” He opened WAYPOINTS and an interactive map of New York appeared. There were red push-pins stuck into the map at specific spots.

“The first one I noticed was this one in Brooklyn—the headquarters of your pals, the Aryan Purity Nation in Williamsburg,” Sparky said. “Then I found this,” he smiled, putting the pointer on a Manhattan red spot.

“Hey,” Jane said. “That’s here. That’s my home address.”

“Yeah. They also got Shepherd’s apartment and the address of our paper, the
Daily Press
, and the convention center on the West Side.”

“Makes sense if they’re watching me,” I said. “They would have places I go to listed.”

“That is incredibly creepy,” Jane said. “How can you be so calm about this?”

I shrugged.

“Not sure about a couple, though,” Sparky continued, clicking on another spot downtown.

“That’s my address in the Village,” Amy enlightened him. “Nice to be included.”

“Oh, okay,” Sparky responded. “What’s this last one?”

We looked at the address. 740 Park Avenue. Nobody answered.

“I don’t think I’ve been there,” I offered. “Oh, wait. I know people who were going there. People I spoke to at the convention center.”

“Who?” Jane asked.

“My parents. They were going to demonstrate there against those Tea Party billionaire brothers who bankroll all the right-wing causes, the Roehm brothers. All the Conservative candidates go there to kiss their asses and get big oil bucks for their campaigns—including Miranda Dodge.”

“So you think our opponents are also tracking your parents?” Amy asked.

“Looks that way. My mom and dad are staying at my place and they said they were going to this place on Park Avenue to demonstrate against the Roehms. Remember, my dad was trashing Dodge and the others on the TV. He was already their enemy. Or, they picked my parents up at my apartment.”

“So, we’re back to square one,” Amy said.

“Maybe not,” I told her. “If they’re not tracking my parents, maybe there’s another reason 740 Park Avenue is listed as an important location.”

“Like what?” Sparky asked.

“Maybe it’s their real headquarters,” I said.

“Meaning they sent the drone out from that spot before?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“How can we prove that?” Jane asked.

“The cops trace the drone and the camera and the explosive and they all point to the Roehm brothers,” Amy suggested, hopefully.

“Or not,” I countered.

“Then what?” Jane asked.

“Then tomorrow we stroll over to Park Avenue for tea,” I said. “And maybe a party.”

My phone buzzed with new
Daily Press
stories, which I shared with Amy and Jane:

Sparky tried to convince me to give the new drone video to the paper but I wanted to wait. He gave me a USB thumb drive with a copy of the file.

“Why not upload it?” Sparky whined. “This will go viral faster than a bastard. We can make some serious money if we slap it on my site. You don’t owe the cops nothing.”

“Actually, I think I do. The new video doesn’t really add much. I just want to wait and see what happens.”

“Like what?” Amy asked.

“Like what Phase Two is and where.”

“Makes sense,” Amy agreed.

“You’re not going to go running around the country chasing bad guys,” Jane said. “Let these lunatics move on and find someone else to follow. We can continue to investigate here.”

Sparky laughed sarcastically. Amy rolled her eyes. Neither one had ever backed off a big case. Ever.

“I agree,” I told Jane.

Sparky and Amy looked at me with shocked pity, as if my testicles had fallen off. To save face, I announced I would be on the case at 740 Park Avenue in the morning. They left, unsmiling.

When we were alone, with a yawning Skippy, Jane zeroed in.

“Were you serious about not following those psychos all over the country?”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“This case makes you very nervous and I don’t want to stress you out. You’re more important to me than any case.”

“Good,” she said, kissing me, pulling me close.

“Good,” I said, kissing back. “So, I’m rehired?”

“What?”

“You fired me.”

“You mean the night you were at the convention center and stayed at Amy’s place?”

I hoped that wasn’t a trick question.

“Right.”

“I forgot about that. I’m sorry. I was upset and I got scared… I apologize.”

I told her she had nothing to be sorry for but I didn’t mention I did.

Later, in bed, she went channel surfing and stopped at an old movie,
Greystoke
, about a Victorian-era English lord who was raised by apes in Africa and rescues a beautiful lost English girl named Jane from the savage jungle—who teaches him her name.

“I love this movie,” Jane said.

I should have thought of this. A good chick flick or romantic comedy was the equivalent of at least two drinks.

She smiled at me, pointed at herself, said her name, and waited.

“Jane,” she said again, pointing to herself and then to me.

“Shepherd?” I asked, jerking my thumb at my chest.

Jane shook her head no until I admitted her name was Jane and my name was Tarzan. And then proved it.

* * *

In the morning, my phone went berserk. There were emails, news alerts, bulletins, and calls from everyone. The paper had refreshed the website yet again, this time with a headline screaming:

Another Republican congressman had been perforated by a musket ball—this time in a men’s bathroom stall at the Minneapolis Airport in Minnesota. Representative Brad “Blue” Bunyan had been returning from the less-than-triumphant GOP convention in New York, the story said. Allegedly, a call of nature caused him to stop in the john to take care of some business before proceeding home to his wife and three children. A person or persons unknown had blasted Bunyan into eternity at an embarrassingly infamous homosexual haunt, sources said.

Our disloyal opposition, the
New York Mail
, trumpeted Congressman Bunyan’s demise with its usual tasteful diplomacy:

Tea Party Animals? Guess the killers had a name now.

In addition to Bunyan’s murder, other members of Congress had received death threats in at least ten other states. The feds were stepping in. It looked like the New Minutemen’s Phase Two had begun.

Mel called and wanted me to get on a plane as fast as possible with Sparky. I said no, as Jane was listening. Mel told me I was crazy but he didn’t immediately fire me. Sparky and Amy also called again to pressure me to chase the big story all over the map. They thought I was whipped. Jane gave me a kiss and a smile. I was supposed to get on the 740 Park Avenue lead right away but I wasn’t in any hurry to talk to my parents. Jane made an egg-white omelet with cheese, mushrooms and tomatoes—with a dash of salsa. I slapped mine on wholewheat toast and ate it as a sandwich, Jane looking on with amusement.

“What?” I asked, with a full mouth.

“Nothing,” she giggled. “I forgot how much I like watching a man eat.”

“I forgot how much I like watching a woman cook. Let’s get a farm,” I laughed.

I resigned myself to hanging back and letting someone else take the point, for a change. I had a feeling that the key to the case was what had happened in New York, no matter where these clowns actually came from or wherever they did more carbon copy killings. I might be wrong about that but I was still glowing and relaxed after last night in the treehouse with Jane and looking forward to bedtime.

Jane didn’t wait until bedtime. After lunch, Skippy went to sleep on Jane’s bed and she jumped my bones in the kitchen.

I ignored my calls, emails and texts. I wasn’t worried about what Mel or the others thought.