The Meridians (4 page)

Swampy.

That had to be what had happened. Only a few months before, Scott had secured the critical evidence that led to the indictment of Fredrick "Swampy" Marsh. Swampy was still years away from a conviction, but the fact was that he was
going
to be convicted. Swampy was a gang lord in Los Angeles, the leader of the East End Thugz, one of the less reputable groups that periodically scored the L.A. landscape with gunfire and grief. Cops like Scott had implicated him in dozens of murders - some ordered, some probably performed with his own hands - but only Scott had actually managed to find hard evidence. A dead girl's wallet and blood traces in the trunk of the car of Swampy's right hand man were enough to squeeze that little bastard until he finally agreed to rat out his boss.

So Swampy was in jail.

But even in jail, even in solitary confinement, prisoners had ways of getting through to the outside world. Had ways of making connections.

Of making contracts.

And Scott knew without a doubt that what had just happened to his family was the result of one of those contracts. Swampy had somehow gotten word out from the Federal lockdown; had put word out that an example had to be made. That a cop who stood against him was as good as dead - him and his family both.

Oh, God, no, thought Scott, the realization of what had happened, of what had been done to his family - of what
he himself
had done to them - crushing him with the force of iron bands around his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He couldn't think.

Until the voice.

"Swampy says -" began the voice.

And Scott acted automatically. He turned in the instant between words; in the silence between breaths. He turned and aimed and fired in a single motion that was so fast it was a blur even to himself.

He had an instant to see the surprise on the man's face, and that instant was enough. It was enough to utterly burn the man's face and form into his consciousness as indelibly as a scar on his brain.

The man was of medium height and medium build, wearing a gray suit with a nondescript open-collared shirt and shoes that were nice but not
too
nice. The clothing told Scott instantly that he was not dealing with one of Swampy's thugs, or even one of his more elite hitters. No, this was a professional, a man who dressed to avoid notice, who dressed in such a way that the eye was invited to slide off him rather than reside on him for long enough to form a clear mental picture of face or body.

But Scott was not just
anyone
. He was a Homicide Detective. And more than that, he was husband to a murdered wife, father to a murdered child. He memorized everything about what the man was wearing in that single instant he had, down to the subtle zig-zag pattern of the weave on the man's gray suit coat.

The face was similar to the suit. It was gray. Nondescript. The hair was a light brown, and receding slightly at the temples. He looked like any of a thousand middle-aged businessmen who hustled through the city on a daily basis, trying to do nothing more vicious than claw their way up on some anonymous corporate ladder.

Only the man's eyes were arresting. Like the rest of him, they were gray. But they were not the slate gray of a human's eyes. Rather, they were the soulless gray eyes of a predator; of a man who has exchanged his services of death for cash so many times that he was no longer, in fact, a man, but just one more animal in the jungle. A rogue beast that no longer hunted to survive, but hunted for the simple fact that hunting was the only way he had left to feel.

They were the eyes of a madman. But not a schizoid personality. No, these were the dead eyes of a man who is methodical in his madness; for whom carelessness serves no purpose and so is never indulged in. The worst kind of madman.

"Swampy says -"

That was all the contract killer got out before Scott moved. Before Scott turned. Before Scott aimed and fired.

The surprise registered on the man's face for only an instant as the bullet Scott had fired ricocheted off a nearby wall, sending a hail of concrete chips into the man's face, momentarily blinding him. But the man was a professional, and even though he was blind, he already had his own gun out, and fired it almost the same instant that Scott did.

Scott felt something tug at his stomach. He felt something like a cold breath of air in his center, and knew that he had been shot. He felt himself pitch backward with the force of the shot, and that was what saved his life as the killer before him racked off a second shot, a shot that whizzed millimeters over Scott's head - so close that it cut a furrow through his close-cut hair - and that would have surely taken his head
off
if Scott hadn't just fallen back with the force of the first hit.

He put one hand to his stomach and felt something slippery. Blood, yes, but also something more. It felt like his guts were trying their best to go from inside him to outside.

He didn't care. He racked off a second shot of his own, and saw the killer's dead eyes come to life as pain ripped through the man's shoulder - a shoulder that had suddenly turned into a mass of meat and bone with the force of Scott's bullet.

There was a clatter as the killer's gun hit the pavement, falling from now-nerveless fingers.

Scott brought his gun up to shoot again, to finish the job, to kill the bastard that had killed his family, but his vision suddenly doubled, then tripled, then went black.

It was only a moment, a split-second. But it was long enough that when he could see again, the killer was a good twenty paces away, running as fast as he could down the alley.

Scott tried to stand, but felt the gushing wetness at his center again, and faltered.

No, dammit
.

He shoved his fist into his stomach, the small remaining part of his brain that was acting rationally shocked that his wound was so big that he could actually put his fist into his innards. But it was enough to slow the blood flow, at least, and keep his intestines from spilling out of him.

Then he put a foot below him and painfully shoved himself into a standing position. More wetness came forth, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything except hunting - and killing - the man who had killed his family.

Scott lurched down the alley, bouncing off a wall before he managed to get his feet properly underneath him and start doing something that approximated running. Luckily his quarry didn't seem to be moving much faster or having much more luck running a straight line: blood stains marked the walls on either side of the alley every few feet, and Scott could hear the hitman bouncing off things only a few feet ahead.

The sound gave him an extra burst of strength, and he continued after the predator who had suddenly become prey. He saw a flash of gray up ahead, then heard another gunshot and a crashing noise. Apparently the hitman had a spare firearm, and it sounded like he had used it to shoot through the lock of one of the doors that lined the alleyway.

Scott coughed, and felt wetness spray from his lips and wondered how much longer he could keep on. He knew he was dying, knew he should go back and lay down next to his wife and son, but instead he kept going, kept on his quest to destroy the thing that had destroyed his greatest treasures, shattered them like Ming vases under a sledgehammer.

He saw the doorway the killer had gone through up ahead. The entrance to whatever establishment lay on the other side of the portal was wide open, but Scott could see nothing on the other side of it. His vision kept blurring in and out of focus, and the cold he had felt in his gut was slowly making its way up his body, through his chest.

It was getting harder to breathe.

But he kept going. He moved to the doorway, then peeked into the dark space beyond. Doorways were one of a cop's least favorite things. There were too many bad angles, too many places that a shooter could lay in wait to fire at anyone who went through them. But again, Scott found himself not caring about the danger. He was already dying, he had already lost everything he had to lose, so what more could be done to him?

He went through the doorway full speed, heedless of the danger that presented itself with such a careless rush. But no bullet tore into him, no new slug pierced his body.

He made it through. And again, heard a noise.

It was the sound of someone rushing up stairs. Scott ran toward the sound, feeling his legs grow slower and slippery with blood, but willing them to speed in spite of it. He was in time to see the killer's feet as the man disappeared into the second floor of this place.

Scott looked around. As bad as doors were, stairs were much worse. There was only one way up them, and that was to barrel straight ahead and hope that anyone waiting for a cop would not choose to lean out and shoot point blank into the limited shooting gallery of the stairwell.

Besides, Scott didn't even know if he was capable of making it up a stairway at all, let alone move at speeds great enough to avoid incoming fire and return fire of his own.

Shut the hell up!

He realized that the voice he had just heard in his mind was his own; was his own consciousness overriding his fears and doubts and urging him onward, after his killer and the killer of his loved ones.

Scott took a step up the stairway. No shots rang down.

Another step. Still no shots.

He looked down and saw that he was leaving bloody tracks with every step, was leaving an easy-to-follow trail for any second hitman that might be out there as backup.

Stop. Don't think that. There's only one of them. There
has
to be only one of them
.

Scott took the rest of the steps as fast as he could, stopping twice on the way up to breathe and cough up bloody sputum as he rested. His eyesight had a permanent black tunnel around it now, almost completely cutting off his peripheral vision. Just one more handicap to go on top of the loss of blood and the massive internal damage he had undergone.

He didn't care.

He made it up the final stair and peered around the doorjamb that marked the outer limits of the stairwell. It was a fast look, just a glance in case the hitman was waiting for him to look out in order to have an easy target and blow his head off. But it told Scott that things had just gone from critically dangerous to...he didn't know. Whatever was worse than critically dangerous.

He was in the Garment District - an area of Los Angeles that specialized in providing high quality, low cost clothing to those willing to travel a bit farther than their local chain stores. He had known that in the back of his mind, but had not known what that meant going into this place. Now he realized that he was in a dressmaker's shop. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem; might even have been an interesting place to tour through and look at. But now, at dusk, the place was dark and closed. Dust motes hung in the few weak rays of light that speared in through several skylights above, twirling their frantic dance before settling to the surfaces below them like angels fallen from Heaven and dying once they touched the terrestrial spheres.

But the darkness wasn't the worst of it. Not by a long shot. Because everywhere he looked, he saw one thing, and one thing only: mannequins. They were everywhere, being fitted for dresses and suits and coats and pants that either were being designed from scratch or altered from previously existing designs at customers' requests.

It was dark, and he was surrounded by man-shaped figures on all sides. He couldn't be sure with his rapidly fading vision which were lifeless silicon models and which might be the hitman, waiting patiently for him to come near and be killed with the extra gun that Scott had earlier heard being used.

He thought he sensed movement to his right, and spun, his weapon straight out before him, though it was wobbling back and forth as his strength ebbed.

Nothing.

Then there was a sound straight in front of him. He turned, but too slowly. The shot came out of the darkness, and time dilated as it had before in the alley. Fear gripped him in its death-shrouded hand, and time slowed down. He saw the muzzle flash. Saw the killer's gray face lit up with the bright light of gunfire in the dark space. Saw the man's smile and his lifeless eyes as he saw victory within his grasp.

He saw - or thought he saw - the bullet.

But even though he saw these things, Scott was powerless to stop them. He felt the bullet tear into his chest, knocking him back down the stairwell. He rolled head over heels down the rough wood of the stairs, his vision going blurrier than ever as he repeatedly hit his forehead and the back of his neck against the stairs' edges.

Then he came to rest on the bottom of the stairs, his body splayed out at strange angles, blood everywhere. His feet were still on the stairs, pointed up at the gray man who now walked down the stairs toward Scott, gun pointed at him, a grin on the gray man's face.

Scott hacked up another mouthful of blood, and this time when he spat it out he found he couldn't inhale after doing so. The second bullet must have gone through a lung. Even if the first shot hadn't been a death sentence, the second shot was sure to signal the end of his life.