The Innocent (7 page)

He looked at his watch. The building was all condo but less than half occupied. After the financial meltdown fifty percent of the folks here had suffered foreclosure. Another ten percent had lost their jobs and been evicted. The woman lived on the fourth floor. She was a renter and could never afford the mortgage on this place, foreclosed or not. There were only two other people living on that floor, an old woman who couldn’t see or hear, and a security guard who worked the night shift and was currently fifteen miles away. The apartments above and below the woman were also empty.

He toggled his neck, felt the pop. He pulled up his hoodie.

The plan was set. There was no stand-down button to push. The rocket was fueled and the launch was commencing.

He looked at his watch. His spotter had seen her go into the building alone hours ago, grocery bag in one hand, briefcase in the other. She had looked tired, the spotter had reported to Robie. That would be a good look, compared to what was coming.

It was moments like this that made Robie wonder what he would do with the rest of his life. He had no problem killing cartel trash or rich, megalomaniac desert sheikhs. But tonight Robie had a problem. He reached a gloved hand inside his pocket and felt the gun there. Usually it was reassuring for him to touch his weapon.

Tonight it was not.

She would be in bed. Her apartment was dark. At this hour she would be sleeping.

At least she would feel nothing. He would make certain his strike caused instant death. Life would go on without her. Rich or poor, important or not, life just did. He would leave by the fire escape. It emptied out to an alley, as many of these buildings did. He would be back at his house by three a.m. Just in time to go to sleep.

To forget tonight ever happened.

As if I can do that.

R
OBIE SWIPED THE CARD
through the reader and the door clicked open. He pulled his hoodie tighter around his head. The hallways were poorly lighted. Fluorescent tubes popped and flickered. The carpet was soiled and pulled up in certain spots. The paint on the walls was peeling.

He opened the door to the stairwell and headed up. The air was filled with the smells of cooked food. Mingled together in the air, they did not make a pleasant aroma. He counted the floors. On the fourth one he exited the stairwell and closed the door behind him.

This hall looked just like the one on the first floor.

Number 404 was the one he wanted.

The blind and deaf lady lived at the end of the hall on the left. The security guard in absentia resided at 411. The lock on 404 was a deadbolt, probably engaged by his target tonight. Robie had noted that most of the other exterior condo doors had simple locks. The deadbolt meant she was security-minded. Yet it took him all of thirty seconds to defeat the lock using two slender pieces of metal in concert.

He closed the door behind him and put on his night-vision goggles. His gaze swept the small living room. There was a night-light inserted into an outlet, providing a bit of illumination. It didn’t matter. Robie had been given the plans of the apartment and had memorized all relevant details.

His fingers closed around the gun in his pocket; the suppressor can was already spun on the muzzle. No wasted time.

In one corner of the room was a round particleboard table. On it
were a laptop and stacks of paper. The lady had brought her work home, it seemed. There were books on a small shelf. There was no carpet, only worn area rugs.

In one corner was a collapsible playpen. On two walls were pieces of construction paper taped up. There were stick-figure kids and a stick-figure woman with messy hair. In childish script were the word “I” and the word “mom” separated by a crude drawing of a heart. There were also toys piled in one corner.

All this gave Robie pause.

I’m here to kill a young mother. The flash drive said nothing about kids.

Then in his headset came the voice.

“You should already be in the bedroom.”

This was also what was different about tonight. He wore a pinhole camera that conveyed live video feedback, and an earwig through which his handler could prompt him to do his job more efficiently.

Robie moved through the room, stopping at the closed door to the bedroom.

He listened at the cheap wood for a few moments and heard what he expected: low breathing, soft snores.

He gripped the knob with his gloved hand, pushed the door open, and stepped through.

The bed was set against the window. Directly outside was the fire escape. In many respects this was far too easy, like a movie set properly lighted and waiting for the actors to execute a pivotal scene.

It was dark in here, but he could still see her lying in the twin bed. Her heavy body made a substantial hump under the covers. Much of her weight was carried in her hips and buttocks. Robie knew it would take some effort to lift her corpse onto the gurney after she’d been pronounced dead. The cops would look for clues, but there would be none. Ordinarily Robie would police his brass. But he was chambering dum-dum rounds tonight, so most likely they would stay inside her. And if so, the medical examiner would find them during the post. But what he would never have was a gun to match them to.

He lifted the Glock out from his pocket and moved forward. When you wanted to make sure that one shot would do the trick, there were any number of places where this could be accomplished.

To avoid the blowback of blood and tissue on his person that inevitably came with a contact shot, Robie had opted tonight to make the kill shot from a few feet away. He would fire once into the heart, and then for insurance he would place a second shot into the aorta, which was the width of a garden hose and ran vertically up to the heart. There were things in front of the aorta, but if one knew where to shoot and the angle was right, the shot would sever the hose ten times out of ten. The bleedout would be lightning fast. And if the bullets somehow passed through her, the mattress would probably collect them.

Quick, clean.

He moved to the front of the bed and raised the pistol. She was lying flat on her back. He lined up her heart in his gunsight. Instead of his target he momentarily saw in his mind the toys, the playpen, the drawing that said, “I heart mom.” He shook his head clear. Refocused. The drawing stormed back into his mind. He shook his head again. And—

Robie jerked slightly when he saw the small hump next to her. The head with the wiry hair sticking out. It had been hidden under the covers. He did not pull the trigger.

In his ear the voice said, “Shoot.”

R
OBIE DID NOT SHOOT.
But he must have made some sound.

The wiry head moved. Then the little hump sat up. The boy rubbed his eyes, yawned, opened his eyes, and stared directly at Robie standing there, his pistol pointed at the boy’s mother.

“Shoot,” the voice said. “Shoot her!”

Robie did not fire.

“Mommy,” said the boy in a fearful tone, never once taking his gaze off Robie.

“Shoot,” said the voice. “Now.”

The man sounded hysterical. Robie couldn’t put a face with the voice because he had never met his handler in person. Standard agency procedure. No one could ID anyone.

“Mommy?” The little boy started to cry.

“Shoot the kid too,” said the handler. “Now.”

Robie could fire and be gone. Taps to the chests. One big, one small. One dum-dum fired into the child would destroy his insides. He would have no chance.

“Shoot now,” said the voice.

Robie did not shoot.

The woman began to stir.

“Mommy?” Her son poked her with his fingers but kept staring at Robie. Tears slid down his thin cheeks. He started to shake.

She slowly woke. “Yes, baby?” she said in a sleepy voice. “You’re safe, baby, just a nightmare. You’re safe with Mommy. Nothing to be scared of.”

“Mommy?”

He tugged on her gown.

“Okay, baby, okay. Mommy’s awake.”

She saw Robie. And froze, but only for an instant. Then she pulled her child behind her.

She screamed.

Robie put a finger to his lips.

She screamed again.

“Shoot them,” the handler said frantically.

Robie said to her, “Be quiet or I shoot.”

She didn’t stop screaming.

He fired a round into the pillow next to her. The stuffing flew out, and the round deflected off the mattress springs and drilled into the floor underneath the bed.

She stopped screaming.

“Kill her,” the handler roared in Robie’s ear.

“Stay quiet,” said Robie to the woman.

She sobbed, hugged her son. “Please, mister, please, don’t hurt us.”

“Just stay quiet,” said Robie. The handler was still screaming in his ear. If the man had been in the room Robie would have shot the asshole just to shut him up.

“Take what you want,” mumbled the woman. “But please don’t hurt us. Don’t hurt my baby.”

She turned, hugged her son. Lifted him up so they were face-to-face. He stopped crying, touched his mother’s face.

Robie realized something and his gut tightened.

The handler was no longer screaming. His earwig held nothing except silence.

He should have picked up on that before.

Robie lunged forward.

The woman, thinking he was about to attack them, screamed again.

The window glass shattered.

Robie watched as the rifle round passed through the boy’s head and then drove through his mother’s, killing them both. It was an enviable shot made by a marksman of enviable skill. But Robie was not thinking of that.

The woman’s eyes were on Robie when her life ended. She looked surprised. Mother and son fell sideways, together. She was still holding him. If anything her arms, in death, appeared to have tightened around her lifeless child.

Robie stood there, gun down. He looked out the window.

The fail-safe was out there somewhere with a fine sight line, obviously.

Then his instincts took over and Robie ducked down and rolled away from the window. On the floor he saw something else he had never expected to see tonight.

On the floor next to the bed was a baby carrier. In the carrier sound asleep was a second kid.

“Shit,” Robie muttered.

He crawled forward on his belly.

His earwig came alive. “Get out of the apartment,” his handler ordered him. “By the fire escape.”

“Go to hell,” Robie said. He ripped the pinhole and earwig off, powered them down, and stuffed them in his pocket.

He snagged the carrier, slid it toward him. He was waiting for a second shot. But he did not intend to give the shooter a viable target. And the man on the other end of the kill shot wouldn’t fire without that, Robie knew. He had sometimes been the one holding the rifle out there in the darkness.

He moved clear of the window and stood, holding the baby carrier behind him. It was like lugging a large dumbbell. He had to get out of the building, but Robie obviously couldn’t go out the way he’d planned. He glanced toward the door. He had to get something before he left.

He carried the child out of the bedroom and scanned the living room with a penlight. He spied the woman’s purse. He set the carrier down, rifled through the purse, and took out the woman’s driver’s license. He snapped a picture of it with his phone. Next he photographed her ID card. Her government ID card.

What the—? That fact wasn’t on the flash drive.

Finally, he spied the blue item partially hidden under a stack of papers. He grabbed it.

A U.S. passport.

He snapped photos of all the pages, showing the places to which she’d traveled. He put the license, ID card, and passport back and grabbed the carrier.

He opened the front door of the apartment and looked right and then left.

He stepped out and hit the stairwell four strides later. He raced down one flight. The layout of the building was whirring through his mind. He had memorized every apartment, every resident, every possibility. But never for such a purpose as he had now: escape from his own people.