Read Parker 04 - The Fury Online
Authors: Jason Pinter
had taken a shot that nicked his femoral artery while
looking for a family that we believed had abducted a
child. He'd been assigned to desk duty since then, and
I was lucky to have remained on his good side. Though
he hated being off the streets, I think he secretly liked
the attention from the opposite sex. Nothing sexier than
a guy who took a bullet for a good cause. "Anyway, I'm
sorry for your loss, Henry."
"It's not really
my
loss," I said. "The first and only
time I met Stephen Gaines was a few hours ago."
"Well then," Makhoulian said, "if his death isn't your
loss, whose is it?"
"Someone else's," I replied. "Just not mine."
"Somebody cared for this guy," Binks interjected. We
both stared at him. The M.E. was right. Yet as much I
tried to, I still didn't know what to think about every
thing.
The viewing room resembled a typical examining
room, if all the machines and instruments had been
removed. The only thing remaining was a long metal
table. The table was covered by a sheet. Underneath the
sheet was a body, about six feet long. Most likely be
longing to a man named Stephen Gaines. A man who
was presumably my brother.
"Before we begin," Binks said, "be warned that
there's been extensive damage to the cranium."
"Extensive?" I said, looking at Makhoulian.
"That's right," he said. "From the damage, we can
gather that the muzzle of the murder weapon was held
less than a foot from the back of his head, a 9 mm fired
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at near point-blank range. The apartment we found him
in wasn't a pretty sight."
"From the wounds," I said.
"Not just that," Makhoulian said. "We found...how
can I put this simply...
paraphernalia.
Pipes, needles.
You name the drug, it looked like Gaines was on it."
I took a deep breath, said, "How old is...was he?"
"Turned thirty a month ago," Makhoulian said. Four
years older than me, I thought. Still a young man.
"He's cleaned up the best we could, but..." Binks
said, his voice trailing off. He knew from the look on
my face that this was best done quickly, with minimal
cushioning. "Anyway, here he is."
Binks leaned over the body, took two folds of cloth
between his hands and gently pulled the cover back until
it stopped just below the corpse's neck. From there I
could see the victim's head. Or at least what was left of
it.
Stephen Gaines was lying on the table faceup. A half
dollar-size hole was blown out of his forehead. I could
see the man's skull and brain, both shredded from the
bullet's impact. His eyes were closed, thankfully.
When that cover came down, I felt like everything
in my body dried up. My insides felt like a black hole,
my heart, lungs, my blood, all of it drained away.
"That's him," I said. "The man I saw on the street."
"This is your brother?" Binks said, eyes raised,
curious more than sympathetic.
"According to the detective here," I said.
Binks nodded, his mouth still open, as though ex
pecting me to relate just how this felt. The truth was I
wasn't sure yet. I'd seen enough corpses, visited enough
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Jason Pinter
morgues to have been able to distance myself for the
most part from the realities of death. A reporter could
go crazy letting each individual horror pile up upon
their psyche. Like a doctor, you couldn't think of blood
as blood, but more a by-product of your work.
"Where'd you say he was found?" I asked.
"Apartment near Tompkins Square Park," the detec
tive said. "Odd place for someone with your brother's
seemingly...limited means to be these days. Twenty
years ago, maybe. But now? That's the heart of Stuy
Town. All young families and old folks."
I nodded, trying unsuccessfully to process this while
staring at the body.
"That's the exit wound we're looking at," Binks said.
"The bullet entered just below the back of the right
parietal bone and exited through the forehead with a
slightly upward trajectory."
Makhoulian took over. "The first entrance wound,
combined with what we know about Mr. Gaines,
suggests that his killer was right-handed and slightly
shorter than him."
I listened to this. "Wait," I said, looking at Makhou
lian. "You said 'first' entrance wound."
Makhoulian eyed Binks. Then he turned back to me.
Binks said, "There was a second entrance wound. It
went right through the occipital bone in the back of
Gaines's skull. That bullet was still lodged in his head
when Gaines was brought here."
"I thought you said he was shot point-blank," I said.
"How can you shoot someone in the head twice from
point-blank range?"
"Only the first wound was delivered from close
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range," Binks said, his voice growing softer. His fingers
traced the path of a bullet as he showed where the first
bullet entered Gaines's skull. "The second was delivered
from about four feet away. From a downward trajec
tory."
Binks raised his arm with his forefinger and thumb
cocked like a gun. He pointed it at the floor to demon
strate the likely scenario. He continued, "There were no
muzzle burn or gases expelled from the second shot.
Despite the brain matter, the wound itself is oddly
clean."
"What does that mean?" I said.
"Well," Binks said, scratching his nose with a gloved
hand. "The impact and the trauma suggest the initial
shot was fired from very close range. The brain matter
and impact site..."
"Impact what?" I said.
"It's where the bullet impacts after exiting the body,"
Makhoulian said. "In this case, ballistics found the first
bullet in the wall about six feet off the ground. But they
didn't find the bullet itself."
"So the killer took it," I said.
Makhoulian nodded.
Binks continued. "The entry wound is nearly devoid
of gases or burn marks. Considering the devastation
and the impact site, it has all the marks of a point-blank
shooting. See, normally when a bullet is fired, espe
cially from close range, the wound will leave burn
marks on the flesh, which is literally seared from the
heat. In this case, the burn marks were nearly unde
tectable."
"Why?" I asked.
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Jason Pinter
"My guess?" Binks said. "The killer was using a
silenced weapon. Now, very few guns have those kind
of professional silencers you see in movies, that screw
on like a lightbulb. Usually they're homemade, a length
of aluminum tubing filled with steel wool or fiberglass."
"Forensics is checking for both," Makhoulian added.
"It's not just professionals who use them. Some
hunters use silencers out of season. Even guys in their
backyards shooting beer bottles who don't want their
neighbors to hear. Of course, there's a chance the killer
simply did it the old-fashioned way," Binks said, "and
covered the muzzle with a pillow. The killer didn't need
to be an expert in weaponry. In fact, there's a reason you
see that in the movies. It's not going to dampen the noise
completely, but as a quick fix--"
"Please," I interrupted, pleading to either man.
"Explain to me what the hell all this means."
Makhoulian said, "It means whoever killed your
brother shot him once in the back of the head with a
silenced weapon. Then while he was lying on the
ground, dying, the killer shot him one more time to
finish the job. Your brother wasn't just killed, Henry. He
was executed."
4
I followed Detective Sevi Makhoulian out of the
examiner's office. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat
outside, and Makhoulian approached it. He leaned up
against the door. He took a white handkerchief from his
jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. I stood there
watching him, unsure of what to do. What the next step
was.
"You still haven't told me why you're so convinced
Stephen Gaines is my brother. And even if he is, why
did you call
me?
" I asked. "I barely spoke two words
to Gaines in the entire thirty seconds I knew him. So
again, why me?"
"You weren't our first choice, Henry," Makhoulian
said, pocketing the cloth. "The first person we called
was James Parker, your father. And Stephen's father."
"Wait," I said. "We had the same father?"
The detective nodded with no emotion. "You thought
you were related through osmosis?"
I hadn't had much time to really think about every
thing, to consider what all this meant, but if Makhou
lian was right and Gaines was my brother, we had to
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Jason Pinter
share a parent. And I could never picture my mother
holding on to that kind of secret. There was no way she
could keep that from me.
My father was another story.
From the first time I could think clearly, I recognized
my father was the kind of man, who, if not your blood,
you would go out of your way not to know.
Even as a younger man, he was mean, belittling,
nasty, vicious. Violent.
That man was fifty-five now. In the last twenty years
he'd never held a steady job. Never made enough money
to move out of the house I grew up in, never desired to
give my mother anything more than he had when they
married. If anything, he took much of it away.
He preferred swinging from branch to branch on the
employment tree, always looking for a vocation where
the bosses didn't mind if you showed up late, left early
to drink, and showed no ambition to rise above foot
soldier. Comfort was given highest priority. When I
began to write first for my school paper, then took
various internships before taking a paid job with the
Bend Bulletin,
James Parker approached it like I was up
setting the gods of apathy. And hence upsetting his life.
The harder I worked, the more work came home with
me. My editors and sources would call at all hours of
the night, and because this was before cell phones were
more common than pennies, they would call my
family's landline.
I remember sitting at my desk, the phone resting
inches from my hand while I wrote, my eye always
flickering to the headset, waiting to pick it up the mil
lisecond it rang. The system wasn't foolproof, but it's
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37
the best I could come up with. The trick was to simply
be the first to answer the phone when it rang. The
moment that shrill bell rang, the phone was in my
hands. "Henry Parker," I would say, hoping if the call
was for me, my father would simply leave it alone.
Every now and then I was slow, distracted or in the
shower, and he'd pick up. It meant I had to deal with
hang-ups from sources who were scared off by unrec
ognized voices on the other end. And if, heaven forbid,
someone called during dinner, I could count on James
Parker locking me in the garage. If I was lucky. And if
I wasn't--I had a scar or two to motivate me to quicken
my reaction times.
My mother, Eve Parker, was withdrawn. I hate to say
aloof because that wasn't it, but it seemed as though
she'd been shell-shocked by her husband into a per
petual state of submission. She rarely flinched, just went
through the motions like an automaton who forgot that
at one point she was human. I wondered what she had
been like before she'd met James. If she'd been strong
or vivacious. If she'd hoped to marry the man of her
dreams. Or if somewhere, deep down, she was resigned
to a life married to this thing that called himself a man.
If anything, though, I had to credit James Parker
with making me stronger. He made me work harder,
longer, better, if only to give myself every chance of
getting the hell away from that house. When I was
growing up, I wasn't strong enough, mentally or physi
cally, to stand up to him. Now, I was twice the man he
ever was. And I considered him lucky that his son left
before he could stand up to him the way that he
deserved.
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Jason Pinter
"Wait," I said to Makhoulian. "If Stephen Gaines
and I had the same father...who's Stephen's mother?"
Makhoulian nodded, as though expecting this
question to be asked sooner or later.
"According to the birth certificate, her name is
Helen Gaines."
"I've never heard that name before," I said. "Where
is she?"
"Actually, I was hoping you could tell me," the de
tective said. "All we know about Helen Gaines is that
she was born in Bend, Oregon, in 1960. Her financial
records show that she closed out her bank accounts in
Oregon in 1980, and moved. Where, we don't know."
"So if she was born in 1960, and Stephen Gaines was