15
One Shot
The man wore a dark blue nylon raincoat, which bulged slightly in the back, his face obscured by the oversized hood. In the rain, at such a distanceâfifty, maybe even seventy-five feetâit was almost impossible for Grove to positively identify the man by his picture. The only things visible within the black hole of that hood were the very tip of the man's long patrician nose and a dull gleam of teethâeither a smile or a grimace . . . or both.
The man made no sudden movements. He looked like a statue standing there in the rain at the end of that long row of onlookers, gazing out of the shadows of that hood directly at Grove. And even as Grove hesitated, looking away, attempting to give the impression that he had not noticed the hooded figure, he could tell in his peripheral vision that the man had not budged, his gaze still fixed on Grove.
Adrenaline percolated through Grove as he crouched there, trying to appear only interested in the weather-beaten gravel. He was still clutching that ridiculous umbrella and that water-blurred bulletin, and for several agonizing moments he couldn't make his brain work, couldn't gather his thoughts, couldn't move. He knew he couldn't get to his gun without alarming Ackerman (and everybody else, for that matter). And he knew he couldn't signal Zorn without spooking the perp.
All at once, he willed himself into a kind of hyper-attenuated hyperalertness that he first learned on the training course when he was at the FBI academy. Back in those days they would send young guys like Grove into this vast fake city hewn from immense particleboard building facades, plywood cutouts, and spring-loaded cardboard criminals, and they would run the poor newbies through the gauntlet, making them jump at shadows with their little .38 starter pistolsâ
bang! bang! you're dead!
Much to the section trainers' delight, Grove turned out to be almost preternaturally adept at fake-killing fake targets. But now, a million light-years away from the academy, engulfed by the stench of the real world, Grove found he had to struggle to achieve that same cobra calm.
Crouching in that horrible blood-scented mud, getting drenched by the filthy rain, a calliope of noise swirling around him, he bit down hard, so hard he nearly cracked his teeth. He felt the unwavering reptilian gaze of the tall man in the hood on the side of his face like a heat lamp. And he felt his joints tighten with fight-or-flight panic.
The son of a bitch hasn't figured out what's going on
, Grove's inner monologist marveled,
he doesn't know you ID'd him, he hasn't figured out he's been made!
Another volley of lightning erupted, turning the scene into a silver photographic negative.
Grove knew at once that he had an opportunity here. If he could continue the ruseâthe Academy Awardâworthy performance of An Investigator Examining Pavementâhe might be able to get his hand inside his coat, and get it around the grip of the .357 Tracker, without giving himself away. If he could utilize the element of surprise, he might be able to pull down on Ackerman quickly and decisively enough to prevent any further violence or mishaps. Of course, this theory was all predicated on the belief that Ackerman had a few brain cells of sanity left in his beleaguered skull. Unfortunately, Grove had no way to gauge the extent of Ackerman's sickness. Right now, all that Grove had was a huge, gangly perp with a touch of catatonia, and a face shrouded in the shadows of an oversized hood, standing stone-still on the edge of Grove's peripheral vision.
An idea occurred to Grove, a way to get to his gun without alarming the killer, and over the space of a mere second or two, the profiler plotted out his actions: He would do it in three steps. One, he would reach down to his outer pocket with his free hand and dig out his small spiral notebook. Nothing out of the ordinary there; nothing that any investigator wouldn't do a million times in a day. Then, two, he would pretend to search for a pen that he didn't have, patting all his pockets and frowning and generally playing the part to the hilt. And finally, three, he would reach into his coat, unsnap the Tracker's holster, and draw the gun out as he was rising and dropping the umbrella and aiming a bead on Ackerman in one fluid motion.
The object of all this physical business was not to give Ackerman any chance whatsoever to react. In other words, to make it nearly impossible to respond. The keys to success were speed and resolve. Which was why Grove started taking deep, steady breaths. Like a golf swing, gun work is all about relaxation and breathing.
Ackerman had yet to move.
Grove began the three-step journey to his gun, becoming hyperaware of the crowd around him. Very few of the bystanders were talking, or if they were, it was impossible to hear their voices above the noise of the rain. Somewhere on the other side of the parking lot, a detective called out for assistance, and a pair of morgue attendants hurried across the lot with a collapsible gurney under their arms.
Ackerman kept staring at Grove.
Grove pulled the little beige spiral notebook from his pocket.
So far, so good. Ackerman had not moved. Grove laid the notebook on the ground, then pretended to search for his pen. He made a big deal out of itâlike a stage actor playing to the back rowâpatting his right breast pocket, then his left, frowning, patting his trouser pocket, then finally reaching into the inside of his coat. His heart was beating so rapidly, he could feel the pulse on the inside of his arm as he frantically worried open the holster. His mouth was dry. His neck palpitated with excess adrenaline. He heard the muffled snap of the safety strap.
He had his handâmoist and hot with nervesâaround the grip of the gun when he heard an unexpected cry ring out across the street.
And that was when everything started going to hell.
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“Everybody down! Everybody down! FBI! Don't you dare move, Ackerman, you son of a bitch! FBI!”
Terry Zorn hurled across the street with his big black steel Desert Eagle raised and ready, colliding with an elderly duck hunter, sending the old man sprawling to the pavement. The crowd lurched and jerked like a herd of sheep spooked at the commotion, many of them complying instinctively, splashing down into the puddles. Moving in an awkward, tumbling, sideways gait, Zorn held his gun up with both hands in the “weaver” positionâthe best posture from which to shootâas he roared toward the hooded suspect.
The tall man in the hood hardly had time to turn, which he did instinctively now, as people careened to the gravel around him.
Roaring toward the suspect, closing the distance to thirty-five yards, then thirty, then twenty-five, Zorn forgot the field procedure that had been drummed into him back in the academy a couple of decades ago. Something had snapped in Zorn's brain a few seconds earlier when he had just
happened
to glance up from the damp bulletin and look back at the motel, and he had just
happened
to see the hooded figure at the precise moment a bolt of lightning had just
happened
to illuminate the landscape enough to light up the inside of that hood, and
there he was
, the motherfucker from the bulletin, standing right there, his gaunt face creased with a cadaverous smile, and it was that
grin
, or grimace, or whatever the hell it was, that lit the fuse inside Zorn and made him drop his umbrella and draw his weapon and sent him charging through the rain full of hellfire and fury, and now he was maybe twenty yards away from the subject with a bead dropped directly on the black hole inside that hood.
Then all sorts of things happened all at once and very quickly.
There was an audible collective gasp, loud enough to be heard across the street, as the front row of onlookers seemed to duck down in unison like a sloppy chorus line, umbrellas tumbling away on gusts of rain. Some of the investigators across the lot instantly crouched down, hands involuntarily reaching for weapons, while others appeared in doorways, already armed and rigid and instinctively standing in tripod positions. Zorn couldn't see Grove but heard a shrill silent warning alarm ringing in his ears as he approached the suspect, the sudden danger registering in Zorn's innards before his brain had a chance to send the news to his legs.
Ackerman had grabbed the closest bystanderâthe portly woman with the field glassesâand was quietly holding something long and sharp to her neck.
Sudden hesitation threw off Zorn's stride, and the Texan slipped on an oily patch ten yards away from the suspect. His legs flew out from under him and he fell directly onto his ass, banging into a cowering duck hunter, the impact hard enough to knock the air out of Zorn's lungs. Amazingly, the barrel of that big black automatic never wavered from its trajectory toward Ackerman's hooded faceâeven as Zorn sat shuddering in pain near the flapping yellow tape.
By that point another weapon had been drawn and trained on the killer.
Ulysses Grove stood in firing position about fifteen yards away, his face taut and dripping, his gaze seared and fixed on Ackerman and the hostage. In that brief instant, Zorn's brain seethed with panic and regret and shameâthe realization almost instantaneous as he sat there like an idiot, like a rookie, like a goddamned trainee on the wet shoulder, his spine screaming with pain. He had forced them into a standoff. He had violated about a dozen principles of good tactical work, and now they were faced with a hostage situation because of
him
, and all these thoughts crossed Zorn's mind in a millisecond and then blew apart like leaves in a hurricaneâ
âbecause Ackerman had started moving.
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Had the killer hesitated another few seconds, the other law enforcement people might have had a chance to get into position for a decent head shot, but there were many aspects working against the cops and feds that day.
The rainâwhich had obscured everything with a film of Vaselineâproved to be the least of their troubles. First and foremost was the crowd. The gawkers had scattered in all directions at the first sign of gunplay, making it impossible for an average shooter to pinpoint the bad guy. Too many frantic bodies were lumbering this way and that in the deluge, their umbrellas tossing and tumbling on the winds, skittering willy-nilly across the gravel and the road and even the roof of the motel.
Lightning only worsened the effect with its intermittent, raging punctuation of silver tungsten supernovas, retarding movement down to time-lapse, Nickelodeon slow motionâwhich is exactly what it was doing at the precise moment Grove aimed his revolver at Ackerman (who was roughly ten feet away) and hollered in an even, booming, stentorian voice over the rain, the call of a lion tamer scolding an errant animal:
“Let her go, Ackerman, there's no way out, so don't make it worse! Let her go!”
Ackerman frantically yet steadily kept backing toward the yellow tape that fluttered on the west edge of the property, dragging the field-glasses lady like a hunting trophy, ignoring her wriggling and mewling, shooting regular glances over his shoulder as though he were an automaton triangulating the distance between Grove and the other armed authorities and the empty forest beyond the property line. It looked as though the killer held a short spear or hunting arrow to the woman's jugular, the slender tail wagging in the rain.
Another violent flicker of lightning lit up the world, and Grove had to squint in order to maintain the killing bead on Ackerman's hood. He could see Zorn back on his feet and in the weaver position just off his right shoulder, and he could sense time slipping away as the other shooters behind him coalesced as quickly as possible on the periphery, the sounds of bolts clanging, rounds injecting into chambers with dull thunks, shuffling footsteps, and a swelling din of frenzied voices. But it was all gelling too slowly because Ackerman was already halfway to the fringe of scrub along the western edge of the gravel lot.
“Don't do it, Ackerman! Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it!”
Grove's finger, moist with flop-sweat, curled around the trigger, and in the space of a single second he saw the worst-case scenario open up before him like a sinister pop-up book revealing its garish inevitibility in his midbrain: the edge of the gravel lot simply ending, without border or garden trim or edging, merely melting into a leprous hill of ironweed and litter now shrouded in gloom and shadow, providing a perfect escape route into the dense wall of birch that loomed just beyond the motel's property line.
Before Grove had a chance to do anything about the situation, several things happened almost simultaneously in the flashbulb strobe of lightning.
The killer made the tactical error of glancing over his shoulder at the woods long enough for one of the peripheral shooters to squeeze off a shot at his hood. Grove was in the process of firing a warning shot when he heard the blast, and it must have been a large-caliber bore because the report was immense, a teeth-jarring boom that rivaled the thunder. It slapped and echoed off the distant hills. The trees above the killer were perforated in a cloud of mist, and Grove's gun suddenly discharged as though touched off by sympathetic vibrations, sending a round into the air in a plume of silver light, and everybody dove to the wet ground, and the killer lurched toward the dark forest, doing something jerky and decisive to the lady.