The Burning Man (6 page)

A tall, slender girl with a long blond ponytail walked into the room pushing a cart full of magazines, and his heart clenched like a fist in his chest. It wasn’t Olivia— it couldn’t be her—but just for a moment, he’d felt irrationally sure it would be. Then when the girl turned toward him, she revealed a plain forgettable face with a large, narrow nose and thin lips that didn’t quite cover her long, horsey teeth. She left the cart beside the librarian’s desk and sat down, tapping away at a keyboard.

She looked up and caught Tony staring at her. Instead of being angry, she got up and came over to the table where he had been poring over old records.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“An old dear friend of mine passed away from cancer back in September,” he said. “I was serving in the military, in Bosnia at the time, and lost my arm in combat.” He raised his prosthetic. She stared for a moment, then turned back to his face. He put the hook down and continued. “I only just found out about Denise’s death when I got released from the veterans hospital, two days ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” the young librarian said, purposefully not looking at his arm.

“She didn’t have any family,” he said, allowing himself to tear up a little. “Other than her two beautiful little daughters. I can’t find any information about what happened to those girls, and it just breaks my heart to think of them in some crummy orphanage somewhere. I was hoping, well, maybe I could find them and see about adopting them myself. I know that’s what Denise would have wanted.”

“That’s so good of you,” the librarian said, all dewy-eyed. “Especially after everything you’ve been through. Let me see if I can help you.”

Tony had to force himself not to smile.

“Here,” the librarian said. “Come with me.”

She led him down the hall and into a large, brightly lit room with no windows. Inside were several modern steel desks, each one with its own large, beige plastic computer. They were all taken by students, except for the one farthest from the door.

“Here,” she said, pulling an extra chair up beside the desk. “Let’s try a search on the World Wide Web.”

“The world wide what?” Tony took a seat in the extra chair and frowned at the monitor screen.

The librarian smiled. Way too much of her pale pink gums was visible between her upper lip and her teeth.

“Since you’ve been overseas,” she said, all breathless and excited to be talking about what was clearly one of her favorite subjects, “you’ve missed out on a ton of awesome tech development back home.”

Really, this was almost too easy.

“What are the names of the two girls?” she asked.

“Start with the older one,” he said. “Olivia Dunham.”

He spelled out the last name on a piece of yellow scrap paper.

“Got it,” she said, long thin fingers flying on the keyboard. “See this is called AltaVista. You can use this cool new program to execute a search for a person or a topic or anything. But you need to narrow the results by using Boolean operators like ‘AND’ or ‘NOT.’ See, like this.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Tony said, ignoring the screen completely and looking at the librarian. “Say, you’re really smart. I bet a lot of guys see a pretty blonde like you and think you must be dumb. Boy, are they in for a surprise. You’re the total package. Beauty and brains.”

The librarian blushed and tucked her head down, a shy smile on her homely face. She didn’t say anything, just kept on typing.

“Okay,” she said after a few moments. “Check this out. I got a hit on the website for this prep school in Westley, Massachusetts called the Deerborn Academy. There are two Dunhams, Olivia and Rachel registered this semester. Looks like a pretty fancy place, so they must have somebody looking after them financially. Hey, check this out, here’s a picture of the older one, see if that’s her.”

Tony’s breath caught and he leaned into the monitor, desperate for a glimpse of Olivia. But the screen was mostly blank. Nothing but a little stripe of darkness at the top of the frame that was getting gradually wider one line at a time.

“I don’t see any picture,” Tony said.

“Give it a minute,” the librarian said. “It takes time to load.”

This excruciating striptease went on and on for what felt like ages, revealing first the top of a group of heads wearing matching caps, then, line by line, their faces. The kids in the photo were holding rifles and wearing yellow-tinted eye protectors.

The photo was eventually revealed to be a group shot of the Deerborn Academy Rifle Team. There was only one female, on the far left of the top row. It had to be Olivia. She wore the same eye protectors and team cap as the rest, and the photo was pretty small, so it wasn’t that easy to distinguish her features. But he could see that she was tall now, as tall as—taller even—than most of the boys on the team.

The front of her blue team uniform shirt had filled out quite nicely since their last encounter. He could make out part of a blond ponytail half hidden behind her right shoulder, so she hadn’t changed her hair color, although it did seem just a little bit darker than he remembered. More of a warm golden blond than the pale tresses he remembered twisting like electrified snakes around her flushed face in the seconds before she’d burned his arm off.

“Amazing,” he said softly, feeling genuinely choked up and not bothering to hide it. “That’s absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for your help. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“My pleasure,” the librarian said, flashing that big gummy smile. “I need to get back to my desk now, but you’re welcome to stay logged on and search around a little more on your own.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I think I will.”

It took him some time to get the hang of the program, but he was a quick learner and soon he had called up photos of various Florida Police Academy graduates from a five-year period around the time of his own graduation. It didn’t take him long to find the right man.

Tony’s first order of business was to get his hand on some kind of firearm. He’d sketched out a workable schematic for a custom-made, bolt-on blade attachment that he could use in place of the hook on his prosthetic arm, but that wasn’t what he needed for this next phase of his plan. For the more immediate caper, only a gun would do.

It didn’t have to be fancy, it just had to shoot bullets.

He wasn’t exactly in a position—legally or financially—to purchase a gun, so he was going to have to obtain one through more creative methods. Unfortunately, people who owned guns were generally more difficult to rob than people without them.

He’d test-driven and rejected several plans before settling on one he thought would work. He figured that a beginner’s gun safety class was a great place to meet people who owned them, but had no idea how to use them.

Unfortunately, even after all these years, any savvy gun instructor would smell cop all over him, and wouldn’t buy him as a novice. But if all went according to plan, Tony wouldn’t need to actually
attend
the class in order to get what he needed.

The Thunder Creek Shooting Range was about fifteen miles outside of Gainesville, and the distance required Tony to steal a car in order to get there. That was just as well, since he’d need wheels to tail his chosen target, anyway. He picked a forgettable mid-range Honda sedan with an infant car seat and a yellow diamond sign in the rear window that read
BABY ON BOARD.
He boosted it and made it out to the range with ten minutes to spare.

Tony sauntered into the range and pretended to browse the glass cases full of ballistic candy, while the attendees at a gun safety class gathered around the instructor—a friendly, smiling older guy with a white mustache whose ample beer belly was barely contained by a tight green polo shirt. But Tony wasn’t interested in the instructor, he was interested in the students.

He made small talk with the plump, older woman behind the counter, pretending to be interested in buying a membership.

“Lost my arm in Bosnia,” he told her, holding up the hook. “So, now I need to start over. Teach myself to shoot with my left hand.”

“God bless you, baby,” she said, giving his good hand a little pat. “Let me give you a brochure.”

He took the pamphlet and pretended to be interested in a story about her son who’d died for his country, God bless him, and how noble it was to make such sacrifices to protect our freedom. He smiled and nodded, all the while watching the class out of the corner of his eye, and singling out the easiest mark.

A woman, maybe early-to-mid thirties. Hispanic and pretty, a hundred pounds, tops. Little gold cross around her fragile neck. No wedding ring. She was wearing a conservative floral print dress and low heels, like she’d just gotten off her job as a receptionist—probably in a dentist’s office or something.

What really drew Tony to her was that she gave off that distinct “victim” vibe. Shy, skittish, unsure of herself. The kind of woman who bought a gun because she’d been hurt before, and didn’t want it to happen again.

Too bad it would.

He told the old lady that he wanted to think about it, before committing to a membership program, then went out to the Honda to wait for the class to end.

* * *

About two hours later, the woman he’d tagged came out of the range, chatting with two of the other students—a chubby redheaded man and another Hispanic female about ten years younger than his target. They stood around a battered yellow Pinto with a bumper sticker that read
JESUS ES EL SEÑOR.
After a few minutes the other two students broke off and headed toward the back of the lot, while the target got into the car. She backed out of the parking space, then drove in the direction of the exit.

Tony cranked the ignition and followed her.

* * *

He tailed her back to a pretty decent little house in a so-so neighborhood. It had a two-car driveway, but no garage. There were frilly lace curtains in the front window, and when she unlocked the door and went inside, Tony saw her walk over and greet a tiny old lady who looked related. Probably her mother or grandmother. Certainly nobody who would give him any trouble.

As he sat there, watching the two women go about their day, he felt a distracting twinge of heat resonating through his arm, singing Olivia’s name. It was as if she was as impatient as he was.

Like she couldn’t wait for them to be together.

Inside the little house, the target went into a back room and came out wearing a different outfit. Tight jeans and a silky blouse that actually showed a little skin at the neck. There was a short exchange between the two women, and it seemed to be about the number of buttons that should or shouldn’t be open on the blouse.

Without warning, an SUV pulled into the driveway. A big, blond guy with a goatee got out and went to knock on the door.

The target answered, greeting the guy with an anxious smile, waved over her shoulder at the older lady, and then walked with the blond guy over to the passenger side of the SUV.

He opened the door for her like a gentleman, but there seemed to be some sort of hushed argument going on between them. The blond guy closed her door, and then walked around the back of the vehicle to the driver’s side, shaking his head and looking aggravated.

Tony let them pull a discreet distance away, then followed the SUV to a mid-range seafood restaurant and watched them go in. By this time there was a stiff silence between them.

Finding a spot in the parking lot, he waited.

They came out sooner than he’d expected. Clearly they hadn’t lingered over a romantic dinner. And from the look on her face, things had not gone well. Once again they didn’t speak as they got back into the SUV.

Driving back to the house, they pulled into the driveway again. They stayed inside the parked vehicle for nearly an hour, but they weren’t necking. They were fighting, arms waving and angry voices audible despite the distance and the SUV’s closed doors.

Eventually, she got out and ran, crying, up to the door. The older woman was waiting and let her in, putting a comforting arm around her. The blond guy gunned the engine, backed out of the driveway, and accelerated away, burning angry rubber on the tarmac.

Tony was debating whether he should move in now, kill both of the women and get the gun, or whether he should wait and take a little more time to get to know his target and her habits. He knew he should err on the side of caution, but Olivia’s hot harmonic presence inside his brain made him impatient.

He was about to get out of the car when the target came out of the house.

Behind her, the older woman was clinging to her arm, begging her not to go, but she pulled away and ran to her Pinto. As she started it up and peeled out, the older woman in the doorway crossed herself.

Curious, Tony followed the target.

* * *

She drove out of town to a large, rustic-looking house in a wooded area and parked crookedly in front, blocking the driveway. The blond guy’s vehicle was in the driveway, as was a low-end silver sedan. She walked to the front door, opened it with a key, and went inside.

Tony waited with his window rolled down, idly swatting at bugs and fiddling with a fast-food napkin. He’d folded it up as small as it would get, and had just tossed it into the cup holder when a gunshot tore through the muggy silence.

He looked up at the house and saw several bright muzzle flashes through the picture window, each one accompanied by a sharp
crack
.

Seconds later, the target came running out of the front door, tossed something into the bushes on her left, and then got into her car and drove away.

Tony got out of his car and ran to the front door, squatting down and feeling through the thick, glossy bushes until his fingers found what he was looking for.

The gun.

It was a compact semi-automatic pistol, a tiny little thing that fit into the palm of his hand.

That would do nicely.

He couldn’t resist peeking in through the open front door to see what had gone down. The blond guy with the goatee was on the couch with his pants down and a face full of lead. Facedown on the floor about ten feet away was a dead brunette in heels... and nothing else.