Death Angel (11 page)

Porky edged away from Cruz. He moved with exacting slowness, not making any sudden moves while he was in the potential line of fire.

Cruz froze. His eyes bulged, gaze flicking from Lassiter’s face to the gun bore and back again, fastening finally on the gun, unable to take his eyes off it.

“One more body out here won’t make a good damn’s worth of difference.”

“Easy, Lassiter,” Varrin said softly, guardedly.

Cruz tried to bluster it out. “Ain’t you gonna give me a chance—for a fair draw?”

Lassiter said, “Be serious.”

Varrin forced a laugh, weak and unconvincing. “Remember, you don’t get paid for shooting one of our own.”

“It’s not always about money with me. Gun punks like this are a dime for ten dozen. He’ll be easy to replace.”

“I’d purely appreciate it if you wouldn’t, Lassiter. Makes my job harder when our boys start killing each other off. It’s bad for morale.”

Lassiter thought it over. “As a personal favor,” Varrin pressed.

“I should let it slide so Diablito can back-shoot me first chance he gets?” Lassiter asked.

“He won’t. Look at him. He’s tamed.”

Cruz was bathed in cold sweat. Shivering. Varrin prompted, “You was just running your mouth as usual, Cruz. You didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“That’s right—I was just funning. You know how I am. Just pulling the man’s chain, nothing personal,” Cruz forced out the words.

“Pull my chain and you’re the one who’ll get flushed.”

“No, sir, I won’t do that. I learned my lesson.”

“The next time you get in my face I’ll shoot yours off. Savvy?”

Cruz convulsively bobbed his head, nodding.

“Get in the back of the van, Cruz. You too, Porky.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice, Varrin. That fire is getting hot!” Porky said. He circled around behind Cruz’s back, giving him a wide berth. He quick-timed it to the back of the van, threw open the rear door, and climbed inside.

Cruz remained in place, motionless. “Okay if I go?”

“Yeah,” Lassiter said. “You’ve got four guns, Cruz. Reach for one and see what happens.”

“I won’t.”

“If he does I’ll shoot him myself,” Varrin said.

“Go on, get,” Lassiter said. Cruz walked stiff-legged to the back of the van and got in, closing the door behind him.

Varrin let out a long-held breath. “Obliged, Lassiter. I didn’t fancy having to explain to my principal that I couldn’t keep my team from killing each other.

“Of course, what you do on your own time is your business,” he added.

A pall of smoke drifted across the van. It was largely wood smoke; the brush fire now ringed the rear of the oval with a wall of fast-growing flame. Heat wafted over them.

Lassiter threw the van in gear and drove south across the oval, plunging into the highballed narrow gorge that led out of the canyon.

“That’s one meth lab that’s out of business and won’t be filling the Blanco till with payoff money,” Varrin said. He had to shout to be heard over the bucking and jostling of the van as it threaded the dirt-floored track down its twisty course. “The gang will take a big hit to its credibility. After all, that’s what those crank cookers were paying off for—protection—and Blanco and his bitch sister couldn’t deliver.”

“Sister?” Lassiter echoed.

“Marta Blanco. She and Torreon are partners. She does the bookkeeping—and most of the brain work, according to rumor.”

“How much is she worth dead?”

“Forget it. Scratch Torreon and she’s nothing. That five-thousand-dollar bounty on his head still stands, though. Probably go up after today. Interested?”

“Sure,” Lassiter said.

5:12
P.M
. MDT
Highway 5, Los Alamos County

Jack Bauer drove north from South Mesa toward the Hill. Destination: Peter Rhee’s apartment.

A call came in on his cell phone. The cell was plugged into the Expedition’s digital media station. He took the call on the speakerphone, leaving his hands free for driving.

“Bert Leeds here,” the caller said. Leeds was SAC CTU/ELP, head of the El Paso branch. “I’ve got a make on your homicidal room maid. Hold on to your hat—it’s a wild one.”

“Fire away,” Jack said.

“She’s been positively identified as Helen Veitch.” Leeds pronounced Veitch so that it rhymed with
leech
.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I’m not surprised. She’s from outside your usual
bailiwick—way out. A real rarity: one of the few documented female serial killers.” Leeds sounded upbeat, enthusiastic; the enthusiasm of the hard-bitten, seen-it-all professional who’s surprised by something fresh and new.

“You getting this, Jack?” he said, after a pause.

“Just wrapping my head around it. Tell me more.”

“Helen Veitch is—was—a classic Black Widow type. A sadistic sociopath turned killer for hire. She used to be a psychiatric nurse in a hospital for the criminally insane—fitting, no? She started by killing for kicks, eliminating patients in the nursing homes and hospices where she worked. She had to keep on the move—her patients kept dying on her. Thirteen deaths have been definitely traced to her, with suspicions in eight more, and the toll could be higher. A nurse or doctor can get away with murder for a long time.

“By the time the authorities got on to her, it was too late. She’d gone underground. Where she learned she could get paid, and paid well, for doing what came naturally to her: killing. Her specialty is sharp pointed instruments: hypodermic needles, knives, scalpels, and whatnot.”

“I know,” Jack said tersely.

“I guess you would,” Leeds said. “Helen was known in the trade as the ideal private nurse or companion for that elderly rich relative who’s left you everything in the will but is too inconsiderate to drop dead. Not your usual international terrorist or assassin, that’s for sure.”

“Which is why it almost worked.”

“She’s the type nobody notices while the body count keeps climbing,” Leeds agreed.

“That was fast work, Bert. Thanks. How’d you tag her?” Jack asked.

“The first hit came up on an old Army Criminal Investigation Division file. Helen was fingerprinted years ago when she went to work at a veterans’ home for the aged in Cleve
land, Ohio. The CID file was linked to a big fat dossier on the civilian law enforcement National Crime Identification System. The NCIS net had cases and sightings mostly in the Midwest and more recently in the Southwest. The complete file’s available for downloading when you want it. Quite a story. Nice bedtime reading.”

“Any international connections in her background?”

“None that I can see. It’s not in her modus operandi. Helen was a real home girl. Never been outside the States, not even to Mexico or Canada, as far as we know. Nonpolitical, too. Not an ideological bone in her body. A purist: she was in it for the sport. The money, too, but the psychological profile says that was a secondary motivation. Almost an afterthought. Killing is how she got her kicks. Funny that she should turn up in your investigation, Jack.”

“Hysterical. I almost died laughing.”

“It’s nice to know that with all the American jobs being shipped overseas these days, someone is still relying on good homegrown talent.”

“Someone—who?”

“You tell me.”

“I will, when I find out,” Jack said. Leeds wished him luck, signed off, and broke the connection.

Jack stepped down harder on the accelerator, speeding the SUV north. A hazy gray curtain was rising out of the canyon between South Mesa and the Hill. Smoke, an inverted mountain of it, piling up into the heights. Helicopters and small propeller planes circled around the edges of it.

Must be a fire
, Jack thought.

5:27
P.M
. MDT
Ponderosa Pines Condos, Los Alamos County

Someone was in Peter Rhee’s apartment.

Ponderosa Pines was on the Hill, one of many suburbs of the city of Los Alamos. Ponderosa Pines Condos was a self-contained housing development covering several acres.

The street scene was sunlit, sane, and normal. The buildings were two-story, two-unit dwellings; one tenant occupying the first floor, another the second. The structures were grouped along winding streets that looped back and forth throughout the tract. About eight feet of space separated each building from its neighbors.

Peter Rhee’s apartment was in unit number 42. Numbered parking slots stood at right angles to the curb fronting the row of buildings. At one end of the street was a fenced-in tennis court; a visitor’s parking area bordered it. Two other vehicles were parked there, a late model white SUV and a brown Toyota Camry that was ten years old if it was a day.

Jack pulled into a slot and got out of the Expedition, taking a sidewalk to the right of the court that ran the length of the block. The lowering sun had lost some of its brute force but was still breathlessly hot. It was filtered through a filmy haze of smoke rising from the southwest.

The surroundings seemed largely deserted. This was the dinner hour; most folks were inside their air-conditioned dwellings. A couple of kids were skateboarding at the opposite end of the street. The ground was level; there was no free downhill ride to be had. They had to put out a lot of energy for the minimal rides they were getting. Jack could relate.

He neared number 42, glancing up at Rhee’s second-floor apartment.

He glimpsed a figure flitting past a side window.

Nothing in Jack’s demeanor indicated he had taken any
notice of the sighting; he continued strolling at a leisurely pace. His course caused him to draw abreast with the building’s facade. Curtains were drawn on the broad front window of Rhee’s second-floor flat.

Jack moved on to unit number 40. He turned left, entering the space between 40 and the building to its right. The grass underfoot was stiff, dry, and yellow-brown. The passageway brought him to the rear of the row of buildings. A grassy strip twenty feet across separated this row from the back of another row of buildings on the other side of the street.

Each unit had two sets of outdoor decks, an upper and a lower, one for each tenant. The decks were mostly being unused at this hour. They came equipped with gas grills; a handful of tenants up and down the row were using them for barbecue but none took any special notice of Jack. The scent of grilled meat hung in the air, reminding Jack that he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, setting his stomach rumbling.

He walked out in the open, moving as if he belonged there and knew where he was going. He went to the rear of 42. Three stone steps led to a back door to the right of the lower deck.

Jack tried the knob; the door was unlocked. It opened onto a narrow entryway. Opposite the entrance was the rear door of the ground-floor apartment. No light from within shone under the bottom of the door. Jack put his ear to the door. He didn’t hear anybody inside. No television, music, voices.

He reached under his vest, freeing the butt strap at the top of his holstered gun. A flight of stairs led to the second floor. Jack gripped the handrail and climbed the stairway, stepping on the far edges of the treads to minimize the noise of his ascent.

At the top of the stairs a landing fronted Rhee’s back
door. The door stood slightly ajar; a starburst of splintered wood marked where the lock had been jimmied open. Jack eased open the door slowly, careful to avoid making any betraying noises.

From inside came sounds of movement. Jack entered, closing the door behind him. It wouldn’t close all the way; the place where the lock had been broken prevented that.

He was in the kitchen. The air was close but bearable. The central air-conditioning must have been set to maintain a minimal level of comfort in the owner’s absence, otherwise the place would have been a stifling hotbox.

At the opposite end of the kitchen a doorway opened into the rest of the apartment. Jack padded deeper into the space. To his left a hallway led to a bathroom and bedroom. Ahead lay the living room. Rhee had turned it into a home office. There was a desk, personal computer, fax machine, printer.

An intruder stood hunched over a filing cabinet in the corner, his back to Jack.

His gun was on top of the cabinet, where he’d placed it to free up both hands to go through the files. He had short dark hair, a broad-shouldered, square-shaped torso. Something familiar about him nagged at Jack’s mind even as he closed in on the other.

At the last instant some sixth sense alerted the prowler he was not alone. He snatched up the gun and spun around. Jack dove, tackling him low. His shoulder connected with the prowler’s legs below the knees, knocking him backward off his feet.

The prowler fired as he was going over. The gun boomed, drilling the ceiling.

The prowler fell heavily, crashing to the floor on his back. Jack was on top of him, grabbing the wrist of the other’s gun hand and bending his arm back, pinning it to the floor. His opponent used his free hand to throw a wild punch at
Jack’s head. Jack got his arm up in time, stifling the punch.

Grunting, gasping, working in close, the two struggled for an advantage. Jack clipped the other’s chin and jaw with a sharp elbow strike, taking some of the fight out of him. Not enough—he pawed at Jack’s face, trying to claw it.

Jack hammered an open-handed palm-heel strike to the prowler’s solar plexus. A wicked blow to the central nerve nexus, it was debilitating, paralyzing. The prowler spasmed, bucking on the carpeted floor. His mouth gaped trying to draw a breath. His face turned gray. He was finished, no more fight left in him.

Jack pried the gun from the other’s now feeble grip. It was a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Detective Special. Jack crouched over his incapacitated foe, giving him a quick frisk. A heavy bulge in the inside breast pocket of his jacket proved to be not a weapon but a half-pint bottle. The outside right-hand jacket pocket yielded a set of brass knuckles. Otherwise he came up clean.

Jack covered him with the .38. He stepped back, pulling a chair out from under the desk and turning it so it faced the figure on the floor. He sat down, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the tops of his thighs, pointing the gun at the intruder.

The prowler was on the far side of fifty, with stiff iron-gray hair cut in a crew chop, a pear-shaped face, bull neck, and barrel-shaped torso. He wore a dark gray sport jacket, white shirt, skinny black tie, gray slacks, and shiny black shoes.

Jack shook his head, his expression that of wry disbelief. One mystery at least had now been solved: the whereabouts of Harvey Kling. The wayward Ironwood OCI operative had at last surfaced.

Kling flopped around on the floor, hugging himself, arms cradling his belly. Glassy-eyed, he fought for labored, shal
low breaths. Jack managed to restrain his sympathy—Kling had taken a shot at him. He looked up. A bullet hole cratered the ceiling where the slug had struck it.

He listened for the sound of someone raising an alarm; didn’t hear it. He went to the front window, lifted the edge of the curtain, and looked outside. All quiet; no inquisitive bystanders looking around to see where the shot had come from. That was a break.

Jack sat back down in the chair, keeping the gun trained on Kling. Kling was recovering; some of the color had come back into his face and he was able to draw more normal breaths. He raised himself on his elbows, lifting himself to a sitting position, back against the wall.

“That’s far enough. Stay where you are; you won’t have so far to fall if I pull the trigger,” Jack said.

“Bauer, don’t!”

“Why’d you try to kill me, Kling?”

“I didn’t know it was you, I swear!”

“Who’d you think it was?”

“One of the guys who killed Pete Rhee.”

“So you know about that, eh? What else do you know? Talk!”

Kling’s head sagged, chin resting on his chest. A sheen of sweat misted his face. He stared up at Jack through heavy-lidded, pain-dulled eyes. “You—you busted me up pretty good. Think I’m going to puke—”

“A bullet in the belly hurts worse.” Jack wagged the gun barrel suggestively.

“Take it easy, Bauer.”

“I don’t have to—I’ve got the gun.”

Kling raised a hand palm-out, holding his belly with his other arm. “I’ll talk…Rhee and I were working together. On a special project.”

Jack showed a cynical grin. “So special that nobody else ever heard of it.”

“No—I mean, yes, you’re right—it was confidential—confidential investigation.”

“There’s no mention of it in the OCI files, yours or Rhee’s.”

“There wouldn’t be. It was—secret.”

Jack scowled. Kling roused himself to protest. “It’s true! Morrow—Rhodes Morrow—he put us on the case. He was afraid the INL computer system was compromised. Told us not to file anything there. He didn’t, either. That’s why there’s no official record.”

“No records? Convenient for you. Like the old saying: Three can keep a secret if two are dead. Morrow and Rhee are dead. Leaving only you.”

Kling showed some animation, some fight. “Think I don’t know that? That’s why I went for my gun without looking when I heard you sneaking up on me. I figured they were coming for me. I panicked.”

“Who’s coming for you, Kling?”

“Killers!”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. If I did I’d go after them instead of slinking around like a whipped cur. But I don’t!”

“What do you know?”

“I know what they can do. I’ve seen their handiwork. Pete Rhee—what was left of him at Alkali Flats.”

“You were there?”

“I was supposed to meet Pete there at noon. When I got there he was dead. I got scared and took off. Thought about taking it on the run, getting out while I still could. When I got my guts back, I came here.”