Jack flopped down on the bed and closed his eyes. The coffee was doing a job on his stomach. Where was Larry with his economy, family-sized bottle of antacid when he needed him? He lay back and forced himself to relax. It still took ten minutes before he fell asleep, surrounded by a bed full of paperwork.
* * *
Unbeknown to Jack, Sydney was likewise surrounded in her room. She had fallen asleep on the paperwork, as she knew she would, and was now sitting cross-legged on the bed with her copy of the letter in one hand, and the other rubbing out the crick in her neck.
Next to her neatly arranged piles of paper was one of her handwritten lists. She was halfway through the stacks and had checked off four items when she fell asleep. Now, pumped up on room service soft drinks, she was reviewing the mountain of information.
So far they had identified the make and manufacture of the servos, and all the area outlets that handled that brand for a fifty-mile radius were receiving visitors from the Vegas police. The servos were not traceable by number, so this was on the assumption they had been purchased locally. If fifty miles worth brought no success, Jack would likely expand the search. They expected no success.
The time line still had some holes in it. Some of the crew had said that the car had been washed at one point, but the hotel concierge service denied providing the service. They would work to fill the gaps in the line, but most likely the only source of the information they needed died in the car.
The partial print had turned up no hits. Jack had them run it through the Department of Defense data bank, as well as Interpol. No answer yet from either, but again they also didn’t expect success there.
Sydney was frustrated. Gathering all the information that the scene provided and running down every lead until it could be ruled out or lead to another was ordinary police work. Given enough time and trained people, it would eventually bring results. The problem was their shooter, or shooters, were moving fast. Only seven days had passed since the first murder and they were still chasing leads from that one.
They needed a break. Just one small thing that could turn this thing around quickly before it snowballed. A good fingerprint, a serial number they could trace, an eye witness coming forward, anything.
Copycats would be the first problem. Don’t like your boss? Take him on a one-way hunting trip. Just leave a copy of the letter for the feds. Your wife’s divorce lawyer pisses you off? Blow him up on his lunch hour. Just leave a copy of that letter in the paper. Most people were not wise to the fact that the press had left out a phrase, and changed the sentence structure of another at the request of the FBI. Copycats would be obvious. They would see this as their big chance and take it. Jack had suggested to the Deputy Director that they announce the changes to the public, but Deacon had not yet answered. The behavioral science people where probably debating it and that could take a while.
A knock on her door brought her head around and she winced as a pain shot up her neck. She threw her pencil down on top of the current file she was in and rose to answer it. A look through the peephole showed Larry’s face smiling back at her. His nose was hugely distorted by the peephole’s fish-eye lens, and she bit her tongue as she opened the door.
“Hey, Larry, you’re up early.” She stepped aside to let him in. Despite the morning hour, Larry was in a suit. She had never seen him in anything but. A naturally big man, his waistline was getting out of proportion to his frame. He entered the room with a stack of paper in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other.
“Sleeping as well as I am, I see. You getting anywhere?” he asked.
“Just a sore neck so far. You?”
“Not really. Talked to Dave already this morning and he says he could spend another week in LA and still not be close to done. The victim had a lot of enemies, but also was well respected by the criminal element in LA. Also the cops, he says.”
“Say that again?” Sydney cleaned off a chair for him before she returned to the bed. She sat down and crossed her legs.
“He’s the kind of guy the old cops used to call an ordinarily decent criminal. Basically, he keeps his criminal activities confined to the world he lives in, venturing outside his element only to gain political favor, or to wash his money. Dave says he actually saw a graph that showed the crime rate dropping the more power our guy obtained. Like they say in business: consolidation breeds efficiency. How can you drink that stuff this early in the morning?”
Caught off guard by his question, she looked down at the can of Mountain Dew in her hand. “I like my caffeine cold, never developed a taste for coffee. Why?”
Larry shook his head and went back to the subject at hand. “Did we get an answer from the heads on whether to release the fact that we altered the press’s copy of the letter?”
“No, not yet, I would think doing so would be the right thing. Why are they waiting?” Sydney asked.
“Well, there are two theories. One, our guy wants to communicate in some way, and sending us the rewrites is his way of signing his work. This means that he doesn’t wish to have copycats, and it allows him to claim his work in the event of copiers. Two, he doesn’t give a crap, or actually wants to encourage copiers with the letters. This could be why he sent them to the press this time. The agenda he states may be legitimate. This could be his way of building a following, a large group of sympathetic people who agree with him, or worse, a little army of vigilantes running around shooting anyone they think got away with something, which is something that attracts the attention of politicians. If we inform the public, we may change his mind about sending us rewrites, and then we have no way to differentiate him from the copiers. What it comes down to, is right now we are chasing one person, or a group of people, who sign their work. If people do start copying, we know the difference and investigate them separately. The heads have to put both scenarios on the scale and weigh it politically. Do you risk copiers to improve your chance of getting the original shooter, or do you nip the copiers in the bud and risk losing the link you have with the guy you’re after? Personally, I think you stop the copiers up front. But that’s above my pay grade. Thank God.”
Sydney thought about this as she finished her drink and placed it on the night stand. Clearly she was not looking at this with Larry’s years of experience. She rubbed her neck some more. Larry always referred to the Director and his staff as the “Heads.”
“How can you think like that this early in the morning?” she asked with a smile.
“I gotta lot of pent-up knowledge.”
—NINETEEN—
The state of Maine holds 2,013 inmates in its prisons.
Approximately 1,348 are repeat offenders.
Sam adjusted his elbows so his bones were in contact with his makeshift drywall table. The rifle lay across the two bags of mortar mix, providing a stable platform. The box stood nearby if he needed to place the Remington out of view quickly. As the sun rose to light the square below, Sam made note of any flaws in his position that might give him away to anyone below. He had placed himself well into the room, far from the window to reduce his chances of being seen from the outside. The sunlight would not reflect off his scope, nor would his outline be silhouetted against the sky. Sam had always laughed at the shooters in the movies who liked using rooftops. A rooftop sniper was nothing but exposed. To people in other buildings, to the weather, to the media helicopters, and worst of all, to the person you were aiming at. It was really bad if you had to take a leak. Something the movie hero never had to do.
He focused his scope on a young secretary climbing the steps of the courthouse and tracked her head as it bobbed its way up the steps. The scope Sam was utilizing used the Mil-Dot system to aid in range estimation. It superimposed a set of wide posts on the top, bottom, left and right of the sight picture. The post changed to evenly spaced dots as the lines neared the center. The spaces between the dots were known as milliradians. At one hundred yards a milliradian, or mil, equaled 3.6 inches. At one thousand yards
it equaled thirty-six inches or one yard. By applying a simple formula—(height of target in yards) X 1000 / height of target in mils = range in yards—Sam was able to range the woman’s head at 740 yards. He held the cross hairs on her head as steady as he could as he tracked her movements, but he was off target more than he was on. He sat up with a loud exhalation and looked at the trees out in the square. The trees showed small but consistent movement of their leaves. He estimated the wind at five mph at ninety degrees to his shot angle, blowing left to right. No wind would have been perfect, of course, but at least this wind was constant. The wind would deflect his shot by several inches. Since he had to go for a head shot, this was enough to make the difference between a hit or miss at this range. Sam consulted a 3x5 card. It contained ballistic data that he had once memorized, but now needed to help his memory. He dialed in the appropriate number of clicks to account for the drop of the bullet, then making another adjustment to neutralize the wind. He took up his position again and set his sight picture on a bike messenger exiting the building. This time, instead of tracking the man’s movements, he picked a place the man was likely to travel into and steadied his point of aim there. The man entered the picture and left it in a fraction of a second.
Sam sat back again and rested his back against the wall. He was not feeling optimistic. This shot would be one of the toughest he had ever done. The range, wind, elevation, and humidity were all against him. Not to mention that his target would be moving. It would force him to make what snipers referred to as an ambush shot. Since the range was too great for him to track the target as it moved, as a skeet shooter would, he would have to fix on a point in space and hope his target walked into it. He had two options. One, Ping would most likely pause as he exited the car, giving him enough time for the head shot. Or two, he would be led up the steps slowly due to the leg irons, thus allowing Sam to accurately pick the ambush point. Neither shot had a great chance of success. He also had to worry about bystanders getting in the way. He could already see a couple of protesters sitting on the steps with their signs, waiting for Ping’s arrival. Sam didn’t wish to hit one of them, or worse, a sheriff or U.S. Marshall. If they would just leave the damn vest off today this would be a whole lot easier. Sam looked at his watch, another hour or so. He was used to waiting. He had waited for days to get a shot before. This was different in the sense that he was alone. No spotter or fellow sniper to watch his back while he scanned for the target. A few bells and some pennies were hardly a suitable substitution, but he had to make do. He still had the challenge of having less than a second to pull off one of the most difficult, demanding, and contentious acts a person could be called on to do. And he would only have one chance to do so. If he shot too late, the target would pass the round. Too early, and all he could hope for was that he had scared him to death. There was no way to just come back tomorrow and try again. Not to mention his escape would be more difficult this time.
It had to happen today. If Ping survived today he would survive for at least twenty more years. If found guilty, and this was still an uncertainty, as he did have a California jury, he would then have an automatic appeal if sentenced to the death penalty. The appeals process would go on for years while Ping and his lawyers, with help from various anti-death penalty groups, would pervert the system with any and all possible excuses to delay his death. This would cost the taxpayers even more millions of dollars, and delay closure for all the families. This shot could be the most important one so far. Sam was placing a lot of pressure on himself to pull it off. If he was successful today, it would give credibility to the letters sent to the press and, hopefully, draw national attention to the problem. They had to force them to change things. It was clear the system was not going to fix itself. Someone had to embarrass the politicians into action. It was simple in Sam’s mind. The politicians were there to serve the people. Letting criminals dictate the laws that were there to protect them all was not serving the people. If they refused to do their jobs, then the people had no choice but to protect themselves. Most couldn’t. But Sam could. He had nothing to lose now.
* * *
Leo turned to look at Ping in the backseat of the cruiser. The thickness of Ping’s glasses made his eyes look comically large, giving him the look of a frog in a bottle. Ping avoided the officer’s eyes and looked out the window. He had made this trip many times in the past and was treated to whichever route the driver chose today. Leo saw the sweat on his jumpsuit. He knew this was the day Ping would meet his fate. Death came for us all sooner or later, but few deserved to have it inflicted early as did Ping. Leo couldn’t imagine what it must be like knowing the exact day and time you were going to check out or even worse, the exact means. An innocent man might come to terms with it and live before he died. Not Ping. Leo knew the real Leonard Ping. This man in the backseat would count every minute. It would be his first waking thought in the morning and his last late at night, every day until that final midnight appointment. Life in prison was more than just a reprieve for Leonard. Prison for Ping was perfect, it gave him the structure his life needed. He had the guards to tell him what to do and when. He was safe from the outside world, a world that he had never fit into. He wanted for nothing that the state could not provide.
* * *
Leo turned away from Ping as they pulled into the square. The crowd had grown slightly larger in the past few weeks as the trial was once again in the press. The signs rose as one as they came within sight of the courthouse.
“Check out the circus today,” he remarked to his partner.
“Yeah, hope they sent more uniforms to keep the crowd back this time.”
Leo gave his young driver a look that the kid caught.
“Was that one of those rookie things I shouldn’t have said?”
“You’re learning, kid, you’re learning. Pull up between those cones and don’t forget to bring the keys this time.” Leo pointed.
* * *
Sam watched as the cruiser pulled up to the courthouse steps. He quickly took up the rifle and adopted the shooting position. A glance out his non-dominant eye at the trees showed no change in the wind. He took several deep breaths as he tracked the car to a stop. He could make out an older officer in the front passenger seat, and a younger driver. The escort vehicle stopped right behind the first car. The crowd moved in to voice their displeasure, and the uniformed police formed a tight corridor from the car to the entrance. The outline of Ping’s head was barely visible through the side window of the cruiser. The glare from the sun prevented Sam from having a clear view. He watched closely as the senior man exited and slowly scanned the area before reaching down to unlock the rear door. He was standing right where Ping would be when he exited the car, so Sam fixed his sight picture on the man’s head. As Ping placed his legs out of the car and stood, Sam was taking up some of the two and a half pounds of trigger pull required to send the round on its way.
His picture of the back of Ping’s head was suddenly replaced with the face of the driver. Sam quickly let off the trigger and scanned around the man. He had missed his first chance. Ping was shuffling up the steps between two uniformed policemen with the senior escort from the car leading. Sam picked a new point based on the location of the leading officer’s head. Ping moved slowly, head down, ignoring the crowd. The officer quickly moved three steps ahead of his prisoner, his legs at about the height of Ping’s head. A waving sign blocked his sight for an instant. Two steps. Sam again put tension on the trigger. One half breath and hold. Ping’s head popped into the center of the sight reticle.
The rifle fired.
* * *
What Leo would remember most was the sounds. Somewhere amid the shouting of the protestors and the orders of the uniforms holding them back, Leo heard a sound he had not heard in years, a wet slapping sound that at first his brain classified as familiar, but was unable to identify. This was replaced by the overwhelming pain from a blow to his left leg. As he spun around in a cl
ockwise rotation, the leg gave way and the steps rushed up at him. As he impacted the hard concrete, his brain registered another sound. One it immediately identified.
“Gun!” Someone screamed. The officers on the steps immediately dropped to the ground and several guns were drawn. This had the usual effect on the crowd as everyone attempted to leave the area. As Leo looked back down the steps he noticed several officers squinting into the morning sun looking for the shooter. The screaming of the crowd as they departed next registered in Leo’s mind as he watched the mayhem disperse around him.
His hearing returned as a shot of pain from his leg cleared his mind. He looked down to see his uniform pants covered in blood just above the knee. He instinctively reached out his hand and applied pressure to the wound. He forced himself to wiggle his foot and was relieved when it responded as it should. Only after he had both his hands on the wound did he notice the carnage two steps below.
Ping lay face down on the steps of the courthouse with a small pool of blood forming a halo around his head. The back of his head showed a large entrance wound. The papers he had been carrying were blowing around him in the slight breeze. Leo stretched out a hand to feel for a pulse, but the sight of gray matter on the step next to the man’s head made him stop short.
“Leo, you’re shot!”
“You think so, kid? Gimme your belt,” Leo ordered.
“Yeah sure, is it bad?”
“Bad enough. I haven’t been shot since Beirut, and I don’t remember ever seeing a good one. Got an ambulance coming?”
“Ambulance is on its way, Leo,” one of the uniforms broke in. “Our boy dead?”
“Dead as can be. You see where the shot came from? No, do it this way.” He instructed the rookie on the pressure bandage. He had to speak up over the approaching sirens.