Mourning Dove (33 page)

“You’re bluffin’, old
man. And I ain’t your son.” He picked up the box and dumped the contents out
onto the counter. A half dozen soap encrusted steel wool squares scattered
before him.

“It has to do with age
relevance, little man. Find what you’re looking for there?”

“You moved it! Where is
it?”

“Where is what? You had
all the answers a minute ago. You tell me what’s supposed to be in the box.”
Ron slowly raised his gun hand to the top of the butcher-block and waited for a
reaction.

The punk looked down at
the gun and snickered. He lunged over the wooden block with his knife. It cut a
slice across Ron’s shirt. The gun fired tearing through the flesh of the kid’s
left ear.

“You fuckin’ shot my ear
off, you pukin’ piece of shit!”

Ron watched the kid drip
blood through his fingers onto the kitchen floor and shook his head. “I just
cleaned this floor and you’re making a mess. You know what I had to go through
to mop it with a crutch and a cast?”

“Listen here, man. I
don’t give a flyin’ fuck about your floor. I’ve destroyed more than this. You
don’t know what kind of shit your son was into. I fuckin’ killed the little
Jew!”

Ron jerked his head
sideways, lifted the gun and pulled the trigger again. Blood pooled on the
punk’s right shoulder. He was leaning back against the sink now, but the knife
was still in his right hand.

“Shit man! What are you
tryin’ to do? You ain’t good enough to kill me.”

A roar, like the sea in
heavy surf, filled Ron’s head. “So you’re the sorry piece of humanity that
killed my son.”

“Yeah, and I enjoyed it,
too.”

“Did you kill Stacy, too,
little man?”

“My cousin never could do
anything right. Stupid bitch was no more use to me.”

The gun fired again, this
time knocking the switchblade to the floor.

“Fuck, man! Stop!”

“Oh, I don’t think so.
You see, I’m still learning how to use this thing. I’m aiming for your balls
and I’m trying to adjust the angle. Or don’t you have any, little man?” The gun
fired again and blood pooled from a hole in the punk’s right thigh. “My aim’s
getting a little better, don’t you think?” Ron could see himself from a
distance, speaking like a tough guy, firing a weapon. It didn’t seem real, or
was it finally too real? He could do this for his son; he could make this one
thing right for Sara.

The kid turned toward the
slider to escape and slipped on the red stickiness of his own blood.  His wet
hand slid across the top of the six burner gas range. He looked back at Ron
with a sneer on his face then turned on all the burners and the oven below.

“That only works in the
movies, little man.” Ron laughed, “Electronic ignition – you see, you have to
blow the flame out.”

Ron watched the punk’s
attempt to blow out the blue flames lit like dozens of blue mini-candles on a
birthday cake. “Gives new meaning to the old nursery rhyme, doesn’t it?” Ron
asked, not expecting an answer. “He huffs and he puffs.” His next shot went
wide, hitting the glass on the slider, causing the punk to jump. The smell of
gas was beginning to fill the room now. “Tell me, how does a sorry piece of
crap like you get into this kind of work? Is it a family business, this
burglary, murder and mayhem? Or did you take a left turn at the window where
common sense and intelligence was handed out?”

“You don’t know a damn
thing about it, Jew lover.” He bent over and blew out the ring of flame in the
oven below. “We’ve got people in all the important positions. We’re gonna take
over and cleanse the world.”

“Oh really?  Do you think
selling chemical weapons to Islamic extremists is going to solve your problems?
Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘What goes around comes around’?”

“You don’t know anything
about chemical weapons and terrorists! How I see it, we’ll help you kill each
other off and then we’ll be the last men standing. To the survivors go the spoils.”

“Spoils is an apt word.
Do you realize what kind of a world you’d be living in? Or do you plan to
deceive your partners, too, little man?”

“Stop calling me that!
Where’re ya hidin’ the cylinder and the disk?”

“Deception only works if
you’re good at it, little man. My wife is good at it; my son was very good at
it. I might be a novice, but I’m a quick study, and I’m the son-of-a-bitch
who’s going to destroy you.”

“You are certifiable,
man!” The kid glanced from the gun, to the stove, to the door. Ron could see
that he was frantic to escape now that the room was filled with the smell of
gas.

“I believe you’re right
about that.” Ron thought about the family he’d lost. With a sad smile he shook
his head. “Let’s see, how does that rhyme go again? He huffed, and he puffed,
and he blew the house down.”

The kid lunged for the
door when the pistol fired again.

“What do you think, love?
Can you handle another cup of soup?” Matthew was trying to drown Sara in
liquid.

“I don’t think I should
press my luck.” He was holding the small sauce pot in his hand but he was
staring at the painting again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m just
thinking. If you had to, do you think you could find that spot again?” he
tilted his head toward the painting. Then he poured the last of the soup into
her cup and brought it back to her. “Finish this and I won’t push any more soup
on you.”

“That’s because there
isn’t anymore.” She held the cup in her hands and sipped the last of the broth.
“Are you thinking what I am?” She nodded to the scene on the wall.

“We’ve looked everywhere
else. So have the others. It’s a logical spot, given what we know.” He sat on
the end of the coffee table and placed his hands on her knees. “How are the
stomach cramps?”

“I think I’ll live.” The
phone rang and she answered it.

“Sara, it’s Allen. Your
house just blew up.”

“What are you talking
about, Allen?”

“I just heard it over the
police scanner. There was an explosion at your address in Greenland. I’m on my
way over there now; I can already see the sky lit up with flashing red lights.”

Sara placed the receiver
into the cradle of the phone without saying goodbye, her heart pounded inside
her chest.

“Sara, what is it?”

“Oh my
God
!”

“Sara!”

“My house just blew up.”
She pushed the words past her lips. The shock of the news left her stunned.
Looking around she saw Matthew’s questioning face and the soup mug in his
hands. “I have to go.” She stood up and pushed past him to the bedroom. “I have
to get dressed.” She walked back and looked at this stranger in her house. “I
have to go to him.”

“Sara, tell me what Allen
said.”

“My house just blew up. I
have to go.” She turned toward the coat closet and pulled a jacket off a
hanger.

He grabbed her arms and
turned her toward him. “You have to get dressed first. Go put on some clothes
and I’ll drive you.”

***

In his car, Matthew
pulled a red mobile light from beneath his seat, set it on his dash and flicked
a switch. Racing down I-95, they passed three lanes of cars. He flashed high
beams at slower vehicles ahead of them. She heard him talking on his cell phone
to someone she didn’t know. “Bloody hell!” he said and punched in another
number. They barely slowed through the York tolls. She stared at him and he
turned his head to look at her.

“Did you have anything to
do with this?”

“Sara, I was with you. 
No, I…”

His cell rang again and
he picked it back up. They were flying over the high bridge. “Yeah, I heard.
We’re on our way... I thought you had someone in place... Well, maybe he blew
up with it!” He slammed the phone down and glanced back at her.

“I’m sorry, Sara. The
agency had someone watching your husband’s house. They haven’t heard from him
since this afternoon.” He glanced at her face. “We don’t know anything beyond
what Allen told you. Don’t borrow trouble.”

Beyond the bus depot,
Matthew took the next exit. She inhaled her shock at the red glow coming from
the direction of the house. He slowed the car and turned right stopping at a
police barricade. Matthew flashed his ID. Minutes felt like hours; then the cop
waved them through. Matthew pulled to the right side of the road and got out
telling her to stay put. Sara was already half out of the car. “Not on your
life!”

She slammed the door shut
and ran toward the house, weaving around pickups and cars of the volunteer
firefighters all with flashing red lights bouncing off the black night. Just
beyond a red fire truck, she leaped over a hose bulging with water, ignoring
the shouts behind her. Then she stopped dead in her tracks.

The front of the house
was dark, no obvious damage except for the missing window glass and smoke
billowing from the back. She shook her head. Then she saw it. The house frame
was not on the foundation. It was as if someone had lifted the house up and set
it back down off center. “Ma’am, you can’t be here.” A firefighter with a
mobile phone in his hand confronted her.

“This is my house. My
husband may be in there.”

“Ma’am, you can’t go in
there.”

Matthew pulled her back
to Mrs. Murphy’s lawn where the neighbor stood next to Allen. “You have to stay
here. I’ll find out what you want to know. Allen, keep Sara here.”

“Of course we will,” Mrs.
Murphy said. “Sara, why don’t we all go into my house where it’s warmer? You
can see what you need to from my living room.”

“He was home, wasn’t he?”
She asked looking into Allen’s, then Mrs. Murphy’s eyes.

Mrs. Murphy nodded her
head. “He came home early, around two. He didn’t turn any lights on until just
a little while ago. I thought he might be sleeping. I made him a casserole and
was going to bring it over when I thought a sonic boom went off. You know,
dear, like when the airbase had those planes and the pilots sometimes flew too
fast. It always sounded like an explosion, rattling dishes and breaking
windows. But this time I think it
was
an explosion.  Five minutes later
and I would have been in your house delivering a tuna noodle casserole. Ron
uses a gas stove, doesn’t he? I’ve always been leery of those things. I
remember the first time I saw it. It was bigger than any stove I’ve ever seen.”

“I have to find him.”
Sara walked away from Allen’s shout. Around the back side of the next door
neighbor’s place she saw that the whole back of their house was gone, pieces of
charred wreckage scattered across Ron’s vegetable garden. One of the
firefighters kneeling in the kitchen over a body grabbed his microphone and
spoke into it.  “Captain, fire’s out. We found one dead, and another with a
heartbeat. Send in a back board and kit.”

Leaping over rubble Sara
headed for this man’s location. Just inside what used to be Ron’s prized
kitchen, crumpled in the bottom of the pantry, was her husband. He was almost
unrecognizable; his body broken, his hair…gone. She tried to shove past the
firefighter. “Please be the one with the heartbeat,” she begged God.

“Lady, you can’t be
here,” the firefighter said.

Someone lifted her away
and held her back. “Sh, Sara, it’s me. Let the emergency team take care of
him.” She nodded and shivered over the possible outcomes of this night,
gathering warmth from Matthew’s arms.

What seemed like forever
finally moved forward; they threaded a line into Ron’s arm, slid a back board
under him, and lifted him to the waiting stretcher. She pulled away from
Matthew’s heat and walked beside the men carrying Ron to the ambulance.

Sitting beside him as sirens
announce their race to Portsmouth Regional, Sara stroked his left hand
miraculously unharmed, his wedding ring smudged with soot. She begged him to
stay with her. The technician was listening to his vitals and checking his
pulse. “What’s his name?”

“Ron, Ron Stafford, my
husband.”

“Ron, can you hear me?”
he asked. He checked Ron’s pupils and shook his head. 

“Keep trying, maybe the
sound of your voice will get through.”

“How’s he doing?” a voice
came from the front.

“He’s unconscious, pulse
thready, BP dropping.”

“We’re two minutes out.”

“Hold on, Ron. We’re
almost there,” Sara whispered into his ear. He opened his eyes and looked at
her.

“Sh, Ron. It okay, I’m
here. You’re going to be all right.” She squeezed his hand and leaned down to
his lips.

“I love you, Sara. I’m
sorry.”

“I love you, too. Don’t
leave me now.”

“Carl’s waiting.”

Sara watched his eyes
close through a blur. “Ron! Noooo!”

The technician checked
for a heart beat, and began CPR.

“Ron, damn it; Not you,
too! Not you, too!”

***

Matthew watched her climb
into the ambulance, latched the door, and wrapped twice on the back.  It pulled
away with sirens drowning out the sounds of the clean up. He turned when Allen
walked toward him.

“Sara just left with the
ambulance,” Matthew told him. “They found Ron in the kitchen and it doesn’t
look good. I don’t want her to be alone right now. Follow the ambulance to the
hospital and stay with her.”

“Sure, where will you
be?”

“I’m going to look around
and see if anyone else is down.”

Allen looked at Matthew
with a question in his eyes. “I would have thought... I mean Ron said you and
Sara were... Why don’t you go?”

“I’m a federal agent,
Allen. I have to be here.” Matthew pulled a card from his shirt pocket. “Call
me if the situation changes. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

He watched Allen run back
through the gauntlet of vehicles parked in a herringbone pattern all along the
road. The local law strutted up pulling on his beltline as if he could breach
the belly overlapping his leather.

“You the agent from the
feds?”

Matthew offered his hand
diffusing the challenge. He pulled out his ID and waited for the chief to scan
it with his flashlight.

“Didn’t you show up at
the break-in at the Stafford offices?” Matthew nodded. “What exactly does any
of this have to do with the feds?” the chief asked.

“I’m not at liberty to
disclose.”

“Bull shit! There are two
people down here, one dead and one that probably won’t make it through the
night. Ron Stafford is a friend of mine and I blame all this on the federal
government. This man is a decent citizen. He’s had enough loss in his life. He
doesn’t deserve this!” By the time the chief finished what was probably the
longest speech of his life, his face was florid and he was out of breath.

“Tell me about the other
body. Do you have an ID yet?”

“You tell me.” The chief
led Matthew off toward a mound covered with a black tarp. Matthew pulled a pair
of rubber gloves out of his jacket pocket and put them on. He lifted the tarp
and stared at the body.

“Looks like a lot more
going on than an explosion,” Matthew said.

“He had to be standing
right beside the stove when it blew,” the chief commented. “Lots of blood here,
several holes where something penetrated the body. See the side of his head. It
looks like something sharp ripped off an ear. Do you recognize him?”

“Not yet. You check
pockets?” Matthew reached into the dead man’s jeans pocket just above an
obvious bullet hole and pulled out an oval shaped key chain, with three keys on
it. He flipped it over in his hand and saw a familiar marking. He reached under
the corpse and pulled out a wallet.

“What’s the name on that
driver’s license?” the chief aimed a flashlight onto the laminated ID.

“Jimmy Pike.” Matthew
opened the wallet and found forty-three dollars and a Starr Shine business
card. On the back was a handwritten phone number. He reached into his jacket
pocket and pulled out a pen, writing the number on the inside of his wrist.

“What was that?”

“A business card,”
Matthew said.  He stood up, pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and slid the
wallet into it.

“Wait just a minute,
Farrell. I’m collecting the evidence here.”

Matthew dropped the
sealed bag into the cop’s hands. “Don’t lose it, Chief.”  Then Matthew walked
around the back of the house sliding the key chain into his pocket, and began
to look for a gun, a 9mm from the size of the holes in Jimmy Pike’s body. Were
you defending your home, Ron? Or were you destroying the man who killed your
son? In a corner of the shattered kitchen he found a switchblade with a dent in
the handle. He closed the blade as far as the dent allowed and slid it into
another plastic bag. Then he walked over to the spot where they’d found Ron.
Down on his haunches he scanned three-sixty with his flashlight. Pots and lids
and shards of clay tile blanketed the floor. Under the fourth lid he found the
handgun, bagged it and slid it into his other pocket.

Out back he scanned the
yard and the tree line beyond it. Not far from where he sat watching weeks
before, he found the depression where the agent had set up surveillance on the
house. Crushed leaves marked the spot; drag marks led farther into the wooded
area. With his flashlight following the skid line he found a mound of leaves
twenty feet away. Under the leaves was the garroted agent, Thomaston. “You didn’t
watch your back, old friend. I told you death would come from behind,” Matthew
whispered to the dead man.

Minutes later, he walked
up to the chief of police, “There’s another body in the woods behind the house.
He’s the federal agent we had watching the back. My guess is the guy with the
missing ear is the assassin. He took out our surveillance, and tried to kill
Mr. Stafford. During the struggle in the kitchen, the gas stove exploded.”

“Wait just a minute here!
Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the hospital; you’ve
got my card. I’ve called the agency. This is now a federal crime scene.”

“This is my town, damn
it!”

“And these are federal
agents.” Matthew nodded in the direction of two men in dark suits walking
toward them. “Evening gentlemen; this is the local chief of police. He can fill
you in. The body of our surveillance man is under a pile of leaves a hundred
and fifty feet behind the house.”

Climbing into his
vehicle, he checked his phone. One missed message. Reconnecting he waited for a
pick up. “Allen, what’s the word?”

“He’s gone. He died on
the way. How did this happen, Mr. Farrell? How did this happen?”

“We’ll sort it out. Stay
with her until I get there. I’m five minutes away.”

***