The 6th Target (29 page)

As he walked, he replayed the scene in Dr. Carter’s office, how he’d exploded into action when the cuffs came off like he was some kind of superhero.

Touch your nose.

Touch your toes.

Grab the scalpel.

Put it to the doctor’s jugular and ask the guard for his
gun
. Fred was laughing now, thinking about that stupid guard snarling at him as he taped the guard and the doctor naked together, shoved gauze into their mouths, and locked them inside the closet.

“You’ll be back, freak.”

Fred touched the gun inside the doctor’s jacket pocket, thinking,
I’ll be back, all right
.

I’m planning on it.

But not just yet.

The small stucco houses on Scott Street were set back twenty feet from the road, butted up close to one another like dairy cows at the trough. The house Fred was looking for was tan with dark-brown shutters and a one-car garage under the second-floor living space.

And there it was, with its crisp lawn and lemon tree, looking just like he remembered. The car was in the garage, and the garage door was open.

This was excellent.
Perfect timing, too
.

Fred Brinkley walked the twenty feet of asphalt driveway, then slipped inside the garage. He edged alongside the baby-blue ’95 BMW convertible and took the cordless nail gun off the tool bench. He slammed in a cartridge, fired into the wall to make sure the tool was working.
Tha-wack
.

Then he walked up the short flight of stairs, turned the doorknob, and stepped onto the hardwood floor of the living room. He stood for a moment in front of the
shrine
.

Then he took the leather-bound photo albums off the highboy, grabbed the watercolor from the easel, and carried the load of stuff to the kitchen.

She was at the table, paying the bills. A small under-the-cabinet TV was on —
Trial Heat
.

The dark-haired woman turned her head as he entered the kitchen, her eyes going huge as she tried to comprehend.

“Hola, Mamacita,” he said cheerfully. “It’s me. And it’s time for the
Fred and Elena Brinkley Show
.”

“YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE, ALFRED,” his mother said.

Fred put the nail gun down on the counter, locked the kitchen door behind him. Then he flipped through the photo albums, showed his mother the pictures of Lily in her baby carriage, Lily with Mommy. Lily in her tiny bathing suit.

Fred watched Elena’s eyes widen as he took the watercolor portrait of Lily, broke the glass against the counter.

“No!”

“Yes, Mama. Yes, sirree.
These are dirty pictures
. Filthy dirty.”

He opened the dishwasher and stacked the albums on the lower rack, put the watercolor in the top rack. Slammed the dishwasher door on the complete photographic collection of his sainted sister and dialed the timer to five minutes.

Heard the machine begin to tick.

“Alfred,” said his mother, starting to stand, “this isn’t
funny
.”

Fred pushed her back down in her seat.

“The water isn’t going to come on for five minutes. All I want is your undivided attention for
four
, and then I’ll set your precious picture albums free.”

Fred pulled out a chair and sat down right next to his mother. She gave him her “you’re revolting” look, showing him the disdain that had made him hate her for his entire life.

“I didn’t
finish
what I was telling you that day in court,” he said.

“That day when you lied, you mean?” she said, twisting her head toward the ticking dishwasher, shooting a look to the bolted kitchen door.

Fred removed the guard’s Beretta from his jacket pocket. Took off the safety.

“I want to talk to you, Mama.”

“That’s not loaded.”

Fred smiled, then put a shot through the floor. His mother’s face went gray.

“Put your arms on the table. Do it, Mom. You want those pictures back, right?”

Fred wrenched one of his mother’s arms away from her side, put it on the table, put the head of the nail gun to her sleeve, and pulled the trigger.

Tha-wack.
Nailed the other side of the cuff.
Tha-wack, tha-wack.

“See? What did you think, Mama? That I was going to hurt you? I’m not a
madman
, you know.”

After he secured the first sleeve, he nailed down the second one, his mother flinching with each thwack, looking like she was going to cry.

The knob on the dishwasher timer advanced a notch as a minute went by.

Tick, tick, tick.

“Give me my pictures, Fred. They’re all I have . . .”

Fred put his mouth near his mother’s ear. Spoke in a loud stage whisper. “I did lie in court, Mom, because I wanted to hurt you. Let you know how I feel
all the time
.”

“I don’t have time to listen to you,” Elena Brinkley said, pulling her arms against the nails, fabric straining.

“But you do have time. Today is all about me. See?” he said, shooting the three-quarter-inch framing nails up the sides of her sleeves to her elbows.

Tha-wack, tha-wack, tha-wack.

“And the truth is that I
wanted
to do the dirty with Lily, and that was
your fault
, Mom. Because you made Lily into a little fuck-doll, with her tiny skirts and painted nails and high heels — on a twelve-year-old! What were you thinking? That she could look like that and no one would want to do her?”

The telephone rang, and Elena Brinkley turned her head longingly toward it. Fred got up from his seat and pulled the cord out of the wall. Then he lifted the knife block from the counter and put it down hard on the table. BLAM.

“Forget the phone. There’s no one you need to talk to. I’m the most important person in your world.”

“What are you
doing
, Alfred?”

“What do you think?” he said, taking out one of the long knives. “You think I’m going to cut your
tongue
out? What kind of psycho do you think I am?”

He laughed at the horror on his mother’s face.

“So the thing is, Mommy, I saw Lily going down on this guy, Peter Ballantine, who worked at the marina.”

“She did no such thing.”

Brinkley began to swipe the eight-inch-long blade against the sharpener — a long Carborundum rod. It made a satisfying
whicking
sound.

“You should leave now. The police are looking —”

“I’m not
finished
yet. You’re going to listen to me for the first time in your spiteful, miserable . . .”

Ticketa, ticketa, tick.

Inside his head,
he
was saying,
Kill her. Kill her
.

Fred put down the blade and wiped the sweat from his palms onto the sides of Dr. Carter’s khakis. Picked up the knife again.

“As I was saying, Lily had been teasing me, Mom. Flouncing around, half naked, and then she puts her mouth on Ballantine’s dick.
Forget the pictures and listen to me
!

“Lily and I took the day-sailer out, and we anchored far out where no one could see us — and Lily took off her top.”

Liar. Coward. Blaming her.

“And so I reached out to her. Touched her little titties, and she looked at me like you’re looking at me. Like I was dog shit.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“You
will
hear it,” Brinkley said, touching the blade gently to the crepey skin of his mother’s neck. “So there she was in her little bitty half of a bathing suit, saying that
I
was the freak, saying, ‘I’m going to tell Mom.’

“
Those were her last words
, Mama. ‘I’m going to tell Mom.’

“When she turned away from me, I pulled back on the boom and gave it a shove. It smacked her across the back of the head, and —”

There was the sound of breaking glass, followed by a deafening concussion and a blaze of light.

Fred Brinkley thought that the world had blown apart.

I WATCHED THROUGH THE SMALL kitchen window, horrified, as Brinkley held a sharpened knife to the side of his mother’s neck.

We were armed and ready, but what we needed was a clear line of fire, and Mrs. Brinkley was blocking our shot. Breaking in through either door would give him time enough to kill her.

Fear for the woman climbed up my spine like a lit fuse. I wanted to scream.

Instead, I turned toward Ray Quevas, head of our SWAT team. He shook his head — no — again telling me he couldn’t take the shot. This situation could go south in an instant no matter what we did, so when he asked for a green light on the flashbang, I said go ahead.

We pulled on our masks and goggles, and Ray jabbed the window with the launcher barrel, breaking the glass — and then he fired.

The grenade bounced off the far wall of the kitchen and exploded in an ear-shattering, blinding concussion.

The SWAT team had the door down in a half second, and we were inside the smoke-filled room, wanting only one thing: to incapacitate Brinkley before he could get his head together and grab his gun.

I found Brinkley on the floor, facedown, legs under the table. I straddled his back and bent his arms behind him.

I had the cuffs nearly closed when he flipped over and shoved me off his body. He was as strong as a freaking bull. As I struggled to right myself, Brinkley grabbed his gun, which had fallen onto the floor.

Conklin ripped off his mask and yelled, “
Keep your hands where I can see them
.”

It was a standoff.

LASERS WERE POINTED AT BRINKLEY’S HEAD — but he had two hands on his gun grip, prone position, his military training kicking in. His Beretta was aimed at Conklin. And Rich’s gun was on Brinkley.

I was right there.

I screwed my Glock into Brinkley’s first vertebra hard enough so that he could really feel it, and I yelled through my mask, “
Don’t move. Don’t you move an inch, or you’re dead
.”

Richie kicked out at Brinkley’s gun, sending it skittering across the floor.

Six weapons were trained on Brinkley as I cuffed him, exhilaration flowing through me — even as Brinkley laughed at us.

I pulled off my mask, gagging a little from the phosphorus still in the air. I didn’t know what Brinkley found so funny.

We had him. We had him alive.

“He was going to
kill
me!” Elena Brinkley shouted at Jacobi. “Can’t you keep him locked up?”

“What happened?” Brinkley said, looking over his shoulder into my face.

“Remember me?” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “My friend, Lindsay Boxer.”

“Good. You’re under arrest for your prison break,” I said. “And I think we’ve got a reckless endangerment charge to go with it. Maybe attempted murder, too.”

Behind me, Jacobi was telling Elena Brinkley to hold still and he’d get her out of that chair.

“You have the right to remain silent,” I said to Brinkley.

Elena freed herself — ripped the fabric loose on one sleeve and, tearing open her blouse, released the other arm. She walked over to her son.

“I hate you,” she said. “I wish they’d
killed
you.” Then she struck him hard across the face.

“Wow. What a
shock
,” he said slyly to me.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” I continued.

“Who are you kidding?” Brinkley shouted at me, seeming oblivious to the roomful of pumped-up law enforcement officers who’d love nothing more than to kick the crap out of him.

“All you can do is take me back to Atascadero,” Brinkley said. “Nothing you charge me with is going to stick.”

“Shut up, asshole,” I said. “Be glad we aren’t zipping you into a body bag.”

“No,
you
shut up!” Brinkley said, shouting me down, spit flying, a hellish brightness lighting his face. “I’m not guilty of anything. You know that. I’m legally
insane
.”

And suddenly I heard Elena Brinkley scream, “
No
!” — as the dishwasher started its run.

I DIDN’T KNOW THE POOR MAN laid out in his birthday suit on Claire’s table, only that his death might have been related to the
Del Norte
tragedy. Claire had peeled and folded the patient’s scalp down over his face like the cuff of a sock, sawed off the top of his skull, and removed his brain.

She now held a shard of a bullet in the grip of her thumb and forefinger.

“It passed through something first, sugar,” Claire told me. “Piece of wood, maybe. Whatever it was, it reduced the velocity and the impact but finally killed this guy anyway.”

I called Jacobi, who said, “You know what to do, Boxer. Tell him your story, but keep it simple.”

Then he patched me through to the chief.

I told Tracchio the cut-to-the-chase version — that Wei Fong, a thirty-two-year-old construction worker, had just died that morning. That he’d been in a persistent vegetative state for months at Laguna Honda Hospital long term care because of an inoperable gunshot wound to the head. That he’d taken that bullet the day Alfred Brinkley shot up the passengers on the
Del Norte
.

“Brinkley’s sixth round went wild,” I said. “And it finally killed Wei Fong.”

“You’ve got my cell phone number?” Tracchio asked.

Claire’s normally steady hands shook as she put the fragment into a glassine envelope. Then we both signed the paperwork, and I called the crime lab.

I heard Claire say to the dead man on her table, “Mr. Fong, honey, I know you can’t hear me, but I want to say thank you.”

Claire’s Pathfinder was just outside the ambulance bay. I moved her dry cleaning from the passenger seat and strapped myself in.

“Kind of like in the Manson killings,” I said as we pulled out onto Harriet Street. “
Two sets
of murders — Tate and LaBianca.
Two sets
of cops working side by side for weeks before they realized that the same perps did the killings. And now this. Macklin’s crew working Wei Fong’s case, coming up with nothing.”