The Grid (17 page)

- CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT -

The Ruger feels different in Sarah’s hand.

The grip is slimmer than the Python’s, the barrel only two inches long. The weapon fits perfectly behind her hip, though, pressed between her flesh and the waistband of her jeans, covered by the black T-shirt she’s wearing.

Sarah has a moment of coherence and realizes she is going to kill her one true soul mate. This thought fills her with sadness and an extraordinary emotion she didn’t know she possessed. Regret.

She remembers the last time they were together.

The curve of his back, the sinews in his arm. The sweat on his brow and the smell of his aftershave. The way he pressed her arms against the headboard as he thrust into her. His nightmares as he slept pressed against her, the cries in his sleep, the shivering.

He is missing the same pieces as she, jagged little holes in his soul. Both of them long for a stylized idea of what life should be like, an image from a magazine, a happy family, smiling over the holiday turkey. A concept that doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind of some booze-addled advertising executive.

But the man has failed to do as she asked, and the anger that coils deep within her will cause her to lash out.

The Ruger will fire of its own accord, and she will be alone again.

As always.

A glimmer of happiness, destroyed by her own hand—her life a bad TV drama where the plotline never changes.

She is in a high-rise apartment in downtown Dallas, the floor-to-ceiling windows offering a stunning view of the city.

The apartment is one that she keeps under a different name. It is a place to be alone, away from the prying eyes of her nanny and the incessant whining of her daughter.

The décor is stark. Stainless steel and pale marble. Low-slung black leather sofas. White walls. Everything sterile. Serene.

Sarah is in the living room by the fireplace, reading an article on her tablet computer about the murder of two homeless men in an alley near Baptist Memorial Hospital.

One of the victims had been a veteran of the Iraq War, a Purple Heart winner ravaged by alcohol and drug abuse related to his time in combat.

The murders are drawing more attention than would be typical for a pair of hobos, Dallas’s do-gooder mayor making the treatment of the underclass a priority of his administration.

She switches to another page and reads again the story of Cleo Fain, the serial killer found with a concussion on the side of the highway.

Cleo is expected to make a full recovery and stand trial for the murder of several young women.

How long, Sarah wonders, before Cleo tries to make a deal, offering up the details of her chance encounter with a woman who meets the description of the suspect in the killing of a law officer outside of Waco?

Sarah’s phone chimes, a text message from the man who has failed her. He is on his way to the apartment.

She swallows her anger. She flips to another website, reads a rehash of the deputy’s murder, tries to find hidden meaning between the lines.

Had they identified the woman in the Dallas Cowboys cap? Are the police congregating outside her house on Strait Lane at this very moment, looking to question her?

Her vision blurs. Fear and anger make the words on the screen watery.

The front door opens. A man’s footsteps on the marble.

Sarah doesn’t look up. She continues to scroll through websites. “Did you find him?”

“Him”
would be her brother, Elias.

The man says, “I know it’s hard for a rich girl like you to understand, but some of us have real jobs to do.”

“I gave you the license plate and the make of his vehicle,” she says. “How much easier could I make it?”

She’d asked the man to perform a simple task.

Locate Elias.

Stop him from shooting up power plants, his disjointed plan to wreak havoc as payback for a lifetime of wrongs. She doesn’t mention that she had been in Elias’s company after calling the man standing in her living room. Mentioning that would entail talking about the two dead bums, and Sarah figures that’s a topic that she should avoid at all costs.

“It’s a big state, Sarah. And your brother’s pretty good at covering his tracks.”

“You’re worthless.” Sarah sighs. “If it wasn’t for your dick, there’d be a bounty on your head.”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunities to stop him.” A long pause. “But you never do.”

The man can almost read her mind. He’s always had that knack. Sarah doesn’t reply. On the inside, she seethes.

“They’re calling what he’s done a terrorist act,” the man says. “That changes things.”

Sarah flexes her fingers, letting the anger wash over her.

“He has detailed maps of the grid,” the man says. “He knows where the choke points are.”

Sarah rubs her eyes.

“The next choke point,” the man says. “The closest one to Dallas. That’s the key. That’s where he’ll be.”

Sarah knows she could have stopped Elias yesterday or the night before that. But that would require crossing her brother, something that she’s never been able to do. Therefore, the need for someone like the man standing before her.

“San Saba,” the man says. “I’ll stop him there.”

Sarah puts her tablet computer down, flexes her fingers.

“You look like you’re about to try and rip somebody’s eyes out,” he says. “I hope, for your sake, they’re not mine.”

Everything is out of control. Cleo Fain. The dead deputy. Dylan’s injury. And she hasn’t tried to line up a meeting with a horndog in days. Of course she’s angry.

“You want a drink?” the man asks.

Sarah pulls the Ruger from her waistband.

The man laughs.

“I should shoot you,” Sarah says.

“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” he says. “Guns or fucking.”

She aims the Ruger at his face.

“Why do you care so much what happens to Sudamento anyway?” the man asks. “You like a good train wreck. This is shaping up to be a big one.”

Sarah tightens her finger on the trigger. The metal presses against her flesh; the hammer creaks back.

The sense of control is delicious, savory. A life hangs in the balance. You do not fuck with SarahSmiles.

The man’s eyes narrow, his only reaction. He says, “You can’t control everything, Sarah. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta let go.”

Her arm shakes.

The man walks across the room, takes the weapon from her hand, puts it next to her tablet computer on the coffee table.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says. “I promise.”

“You’ll stop him?” Sarah feels the tears well in her eyes.

The man nods. “I’ll be the hero for once.”

“Oh, Price.” She stands, slides into his arms. “Thank you.”

The head of security for Sudamento kisses her tenderly. He strokes her face. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

Sarah kisses him back, mashing their lips together, grinding her pelvis against his. The anger is just a prelude to the sex. He knows her so well.

Price Anderson grabs her hand, pulls her toward the back of the apartment.

- CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE -

I returned to my office at the county courthouse, having had my fill of talk about the integrity of the grid, blown transformers, and the need to keep Sudamento stock prices high so the terrorists don’t win.

Whitney Holbrook stayed behind to continue riding herd on the investigation and to coordinate the various federal agencies that were descending upon Central Texas like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians had risen from the ashes.

A stack of paperwork rested on my desk, reports to sign, interdepartmental memos, messages from the HR department. I took care of everything in short order and then went to my deputy’s office.

The room looked like it had that morning except for one item that was missing, the desktop computer.

A receipt and an accompanying memo were taped to the door.

The machine had been taken to the Department of Public Safety IT lab in Austin. The techs there would try to find out the identity of SarahSmiles, or at the very least pinpoint the location from where she’d accessed that site.

I returned to my office, plopped in the chair, and looked at my cell phone, at the text message from earlier:
Eliz is fine.

I stared at those eleven characters until my eyes became blurry.

After a period of time—I’m not sure how long—an e-mail dinged, a message from the Texas Rangers.

The ballistics report had come in.

Since an officer had been killed, they’d rushed the testing. The weapon used had been a Colt Python .357 Magnum. The fatal bullet had been a low-powered .38 Special, what’s known as a semi-wadcutter. A target round.

Based on the lead content and design of the projectile, the lab had determined the bullet was old, manufactured around a quarter century ago by the Remington Company.

These facts were interesting but not very revealing as to any potential suspects.

The next part of the message was, however.

The lab had run the bullet striations, each as unique as a fingerprint, through a national database and learned that the same weapon had been used in an unsolved murder in 1991.

That crime had occurred in Bowie County in the far northeast section of Texas. The victim, a black male aged forty-three, had owned a bar and was believed to be involved in gambling and prostitution.

The last section of the message was even more intriguing.

The bullet used in the 1991 murder was a Remington semi-wadcutter.

I leaned back in the desk chair and tried to imagine a scenario where the same gun and the same ammunition could be involved in two different murders twenty-four years apart.

Was there a serial killer out there, one who’d been able to remain undetected for all this time?

The MOs indicated not. The victim in 1991 had been shot three times, once in each kneecap followed by a final round in the head, right between the eyes. My deputy had been killed during an altercation of some sort, a single bullet to the chest.

The e-mail from the Texas Rangers ended by saying they would pursue the lead in Bowie County, but their resources were stretched at the moment because of the purported terrorist attack on the power grid.

I forwarded the e-mail to several law-enforcement friends, old-timers who’d been around during the early 1990s, asking if they knew anything about the murder in Bowie County. A long shot, but it made me feel like I was doing something.

Footsteps sounded outside my office.

I looked up.

Jerry stood in the doorway. He looked ten years younger. A smile creased his face as he bounced on his toes.

“Did you hear, Jon?”

I arched an eyebrow.

“We got a grant, a big one.” His eyes glowed. “Uncle Sam has come to town and hit us with the money stick.”

“That’s swell, Jerry.”

“We can get rid of that bad sewer line here at the courthouse.” He sat down in the chair in front of my desk. “And rebuild those Section Eight apartments that burned.”

We were silent for a moment, Jerry staring off into the distance, a rapturous look on his face.

I said, “Have you and the other commissioners fixed Kelsey’s benefits?”

“Huh?” He came back to earth.

“What we talked about.” I stood, ready to depart. “She needs the money.”

A confused look on his face. Then: “I meant to ask you. How’s the investigation going?”

Jerry had evidently forgotten that the grant money was a trade for my being on leave.

“We’re making progress,” I said. “I bet we have an arrest in a few days.”

“That’s great, Jon. I always had faith in you.”

“The grant money,” I said. “Has the cash come through yet?”

He didn’t reply. The answer was obvious. Nothing involving the government happened fast.

“You be sure to take care of Kelsey.” I stood and walked to the exit. At the door, I flipped off the lights and left Jerry sitting in the dark.

I picked up a burrito from the taqueria on the far side of the town square and then went home.

It was early evening, the heat of the day still thick despite the thunderclouds building. A breeze rustled the leaves on the sycamore tree in my front yard, blowing dirt and lawn clippings from the place next door.

Everything on the block appeared normal. My neighbors’ vehicles were where they should be. The old Chevy Impala across the street. The pickups on either side of me. The Toyota and the Honda down the block.

In front of the house on the far corner was an old Jeep Cherokee I’d never seen before. But the couple who lived there had a lot of family in the area, so there were always a lot of different vehicles coming and going.

I got out of the Suburban and went inside. Once across the threshold, I dropped the burrito sack and pulled my Glock.

Someone had been there.

The place felt different, disturbed somehow.

A chair in the dining room had been moved slightly. A stack of magazines on the coffee table had been knocked askew.

I stood perfectly still.

No sounds whatsoever except for the hum of the AC and the slight rattle from the refrigerator’s compressor.

Clearing a house by yourself is no easy task. But we were short-staffed because of the deputy’s murder and the power outage, so I didn’t call for backup. Also, there was a certain amount of pride involved.

Instead I went from room to room and closet to closet, gun held high against my chest and muzzle out, my free hand opening doors, moving curtains.

Everything was as it should be until I got to the back bedroom, what would have been the nursery. The room was empty except for a baby bed, a changing table, and a handful of toys.

In the middle of the changing table sat a stack of photographs, eight-by-tens printed on copier paper.

They were all pictures of my daughter, Elizabeth.

Cooing for the camera. Nestled against a stuffed animal. Sitting on a couch. She was smiling in all.

Breath caught in my throat. My heart ached.

Piper had been here. She’d moved the magazines and the chair, just enough to let me know. She was trying to tell me our daughter was okay.

I dropped the photos and ran outside.

The Jeep at the end of the block was gone.