Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

This was the shorter one. He had bleached blond hair and a little slit of a mouth, and he was also carrying a pistol. He reminded Bonnie of one of the other realtors called Randy who’d been pink-slipped a couple of months back, and for a moment she thought of those news stories you see where some guy who’s been fired comes back to work and starts shooting at random. But she knew it wasn’t Randy.

“Kneel down on the floor,” the tall one said.

Both men were wearing transparent plastic gloves, Bonnie noticed, the kind her gynecologist used for pelvics.

“I’ve got two hundred dollars in my wallet, and a gold Rolex,” Samuel Baines Sherman announced calmly. “You’re welcome to both.”

“Kneel the fuck down!” the squat guy shouted tensely.

Sherman gave out a long sigh, as though this were just one more of the tedious and unnecessary inconveniences he had to face every day of his life, due to the incompetence of others.

“Kneel?” he repeated with a peeved frown. “What on earth for?”

“Do what they say!” Bonnie Kowalski told him, all the fury and frustration she’d suppressed now gushing out. “I don’t want to get shot just because you’re an asshole!”

Sherman looked more shocked by this than by the gunmen’s appearance. Well, screw him. She didn’t care about losing the sale any more. She didn’t even care about Jack Capoccioni getting mad. Setting her purse down carefully, she knelt beside it, facing the two gunmen. After a moment’s hesitation, Sherman gave a little weary shrug and got to his knees. The tall guy unzipped the pocket of his backpack, watching them all the while.

“Hands behind your back,” he said.

“It’s not even our house,” Bonnie replied. “The owners have moved out. There’s nothing here to steal.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” screamed the squat one agitatedly.

“Hey, lighten up,” his partner murmured.

He crouched down behind Sherman. There was a sharp click. Sherman gave a grunt of surprise, or pain. The man straightened up and moved in front of Sherman, blocking Bonnie’s view.

“This is completely un-” Sherman began.

The gunman bent down, and Sherman’s voice ceased abruptly. The shorter man gave a jagged laugh which broke off as his partner swung around to face him.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” he snapped.

The other gunman started rooting around in the backpack. All his movements were jerky and urgent. He ran around behind Bonnie, who flinched.

“Please!” she pleaded. “I have a family!”

She could feel his breath on her hair and at the nape of her neck. Something hard and sharp gripped her left wrist, then the right, locking them together. The man seized her jaw from behind and pressed something over her mouth in a sticky kiss. Smelling the heady reek of raw plastic, she realized it was a patch of adhesive tape. There was one on Sherman’s mouth too.

The taller man surveyed the scene for a moment.

“OK,” he said.

His companion looked at Bonnie, then at Sherman. His expression was one of panic. The other man had set down his pistol and was taking something else out of the backpack. Bonnie noted dully that it was a video camera, a Sony, the new lightweight model she had been meaning to get Jerry for Christmas, but the store had had a JVC on sale for a hundred bucks less so she’d gone for that instead. The salesman had assured her it was just as good, maybe a tad heavier was all.

The squat man stood looking at the two trussed and gagged figures kneeling on the floor. He took a step toward Bonnie, then paused and stepped quickly over to stand behind Sherman. The other man raised the viewfinder of the video camera to his face, targeting his partner, whose pistol was pointing at the back of Sherman’s neck. Bonnie fought to control her bladder. If she peed now it would form a puddle on the floor, everyone would see. She would just die of shame.

“I can’t!” the short man said in a tone or desperation.

“C’mon, Dale!” said the tall man, switching on the camera. “Hit the mitt! Straight down the pipe, baby! You can do it.”

The gunman took an audible intake of breath and pressed the muzzle of his revolver to Sherman’s neck. At the contact Sherman’s head jerked back instinctively, knocking the barrel aside. There was a dull crack and the gunman jumped back with a horrified expression.

“Christ!” he gasped.

Sherman was thrashing around on the floor. His muffled roars reverberated in the empty room.

“Jesus Christ!” the gunman cried in obvious distress. “Jesus Christ!”

The victim’s overcoat had ridden up, revealing a patch of dense red blood spreading across the seat of his tweed pants.

“Fire it in there!” the tall man shouted.

“I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“Hustle up, Dale! Finish the job!”

Bonnie could feel the waffle and bacon she’d eaten for breakfast rising in her throat, and the thought of choking on the vomit, unable to get rid of it because of the gag, made her panic.

The gunman bent over Sherman, who was twisting around and around on the bare floorboards, his feet kicking convulsively. There was another shot. Splinters of the oak planking went flying. Then a sudden spasm of Sherman’s leg knocked the gunman off balance. The revolver went off again as he fell heavily on his side. The window broke, and for a moment Bonnie thought that someone outside had thrown a rock or a ball at the glass, like the time Nathan was pitching to a friend in the backyard and a fly ball went through the kitchen window.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” the gunman howled desperately.

He had scrambled to his knees, his clothes and hands streaked with blood.

“Help me, Andy! I can’t handle it! You’ve got to help me!”

A series of warbling sounds filled the room. Bonnie glanced down at the purse where she kept her cellular phone. It must be Jack, calling her to see how it was going. The phone rang eight times, breaking off with a truncated beep.

The gunman called Andy switched off the video camera and set it down on the floor. He looked at Sherman, then at the kneeling gunman.

“Lemme have it,” he said.

The other guy didn’t react until the command was repeated. Then he raised the plastic-sheathed hand which held the pistol. Andy took the weapon by the barrel, turned it around and shot his partner between the eyes. The man’s mouth popped open as though in a yawn. He toppled forward slowly, crashing to the floor without uttering a sound.

Sherman was moving more slowly now, feebly pedaling his legs and jerking his spine. Carefully avoiding the patch of bloodstained flooring, the gunman crouched down and aimed his pistol at the side of the wounded man’s head, just above the ear. He fired once. Sherman stiffened, then relaxed and was still.

The killer observed him for a moment. Then he straightened up and turned toward Bonnie Kowalski.

COVERAGE WAS BIG in Metropolitan Chicago, fair in Illinois and surrounding states, patchy to nonexistent elsewhere. NU PROF, REALTOR SLAIN IN SHOWHOME SHOOTING was the Chicago Sun-Times headline. The article began:

Urban-style random violence struck at the quiet, leafy college town of Evanston Thursday when three bodies were found in a house in the exclusive Gray Park area of the Lakeside suburb. Two of the victims were named as Samuel Baines Sherman, fifty-one, and Bonnie Kowalski, thirty-seven. The other, a man who police suspect may have been the killer, has not yet been identified.

The crime was discovered by John Capoccioni, president of the Evanston real estate agency where Mrs. Kowalski worked. He had grown concerned when she failed to return to the office or to answer her cellular phone, and drove to the property on Maple Street. He found Kowalski’s car parked outside, and on searching the Victorian mansion discovered the bodies in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Samuel Sherman had recently been appointed as MacDowell Distinguished Professor of Corporate Law at Northwestern University. He had made an appointment to view the Maple Street house with Mrs. Kowalski at 9:30 that morning.

According to Detective Eileen McCann of Evanston City Police, all three victims were shot at close range with a.22-caliber Smith amp; Wesson Model 34 revolver which was recovered at the scene. Marks on the bodies suggest that Sherman and Kowalski were bound and gagged before being shot. Police are working on the theory that the gunman then turned the weapon on himself.

The motive for the crimes remains a mystery. Neither of the victims had been robbed, and there is no evidence that either was known to the presumed killer. The property itself, which had been on the market for several weeks, contained nothing of value. A sexual attack has also been ruled out.

The article continued with an appeal by Evanston Police to any members of the public with information about the shootings. They were particularly concerned to identify the gunman, who was described as a white juvenile aged twenty to twenty-five, of medium height, heavy build, with light brown hair and brown eyes. Efforts were also being made to trace the murder weapon. Home security specialists, hardware stores and gun shops in the Evanston area were reported to be doing record business.

It was a slow news day in the Northwest, and the early edition of the Seattle Times featured a heavily condensed version of the story in its Across the Nation column, squeezed up against an advertisement for a shoe sale at Nordstrom’s department store. In the night final which Kristine Kjarstad read that evening at home, this had been dropped in favor of a piece about the drugs charge which had been brought against one of the pitchers for a leading American League team. Kjarstad skimmed the column briefly before turning to the Arts section to read about a movie she was thinking of seeing.

Almost two months had gone by since the shootings at Renfrew Avenue. The news that Wayne Sullivan had confessed had created a sense of euphoria and relief that was as intense as it was short-lived. Seattleites liked to think of their city as a civilized haven, as temperate as its mild, cloudy climate, immune by its very nature to the epidemic of crime which had turned so many other urban centers into virtual war zones. At the same time, everyone knew that out-of-staters were moving there, partly because of the area’s reputation as peaceful and livable, and there was growing concern that they would bring their problems with them.

So when something like the Renton killing occurred, a houseful of people shot dead in broad daylight without any evident motive, everyone’s worst fears appeared to have been realized. Any outcome would have been a relief from the swirling, formless terrors of the community’s collective imagination, but Wayne Sullivan’s confession was the very best news anyone could have hoped for. People might be shocked by what Sullivan had done, but at least they could understand it. Hell, we’ve all been there at some moment or other, if we’re honest.

Above all, they were relieved to find that it posed no threat to them. Far from being the random slaughter it had at first appeared, this was a situation-specific killing. What had taken place was a private affair between Wayne Sullivan and his family. As for that poor Chinese kid, he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could’ve happened to anyone.

There was thus intense pressure on the police in general, and on Kristine Kjarstad in particular, to come up with evidence to corroborate Sullivan’s statement so that charges could be brought. This they had failed to do.

Kristine had known the attempt was doomed from the moment she and Steve Warren had interviewed Sullivan at the courthouse following his unexpected admission of guilt. Things had begun promisingly enough, with Wayne giving vent to obviously genuine feelings of hostility regarding his ex-wife.

“She tried to take the little ones away from me,” he explained in a voice filled with hurt. “She shouldn’t ought to’ve done that. I don’t care about her, but those were my children, the only thing I have in this world. She tried to take them away and form them in her image. No one has the right to do that. I told her. ‘My boys’d be better off dead than brung up by a slut like you,’ I said.”

Kristine waited for him to go on, but he seemed to have lost the thread.

“What happened then?” she prompted.

Sullivan’s eyes darted around the room, as if searching for inspiration.

“She started in at me, calling me a no-good, worthless loser who wasn’t fit to father a dog. I just lost it. I took out this pistol I’d brought with me and I blew her away. Then I got to thinking ’bout the kids, all alone in the world with no one to look after them. And them knowing their dad killed their mom and all. So I knew I had to kill them too. It was for the best. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Kristine Kjarstad nodded sympathetically. So far, so good, she thought. Everything Sullivan had said rang true. Now they just had to sort out the details and type up a statement for him to sign.

“Where did you get the gun?” she asked.

Wayne Sullivan hesitated.

“Guy in Seattle sold it to me. You can get anything you want there, you got the cash.”

“And where did you get the cash?”

Another hesitation.

“I’d saved it up. I was going to take the kids to Disneyland, but she wouldn’t let them go, the bitch. Said I was a bad influence.”

Kristine frowned slightly. She had the feeling she was listening to something which almost made sense, but didn’t quite. It was easy to imagine Wayne making extravagant promises to his children, particularly after a few drinks, and equally easy to imagine Dawn putting him down contemptuously. What wasn’t so easy to believe was the idea of him actually getting the money together. She’d seen how Sullivan had been living. He didn’t strike her as someone who was into delayed gratification for himself, never mind others.

“What kind of gun was it?” she asked.

Sullivan glanced at the uniformed man who had brought him over from the jail, and who was now chewing his nails at an adjoining desk. He shrugged.

“I don’t know. I just know it worked. Guy I bought it from took me down the alley, loosed off a few rounds. I knew it would do the job.”

“But it was an automatic?” Steve Warren put in.

Kristine glanced at her partner in surprise. Luckily Sullivan didn’t catch her expression. He nodded.

“Sure.”

“So how come there weren’t any ejected cartridges at the scene?” Warren demanded.

Sullivan looked around nervously.

“The, uh …? Oh, I guess I picked them up.”

“Why did you do that?”

There was no reply.

“And where is the weapon now?” asked Kristine Kjarstad.

This time, Wayne Sullivan had his answer ready.

“Bottom of Puget Sound. I rode the ferry over to Bremerton, dropped it over the side halfway across.”

“Let’s go back to the killing,” said Warren. “You said your old lady started badmouthing you so you shot her.”