Omega Series Box Set 1 Page 35

  It was while I was lighting a cigarette that the big, black Lincoln rolled up and the driver climbed out and looked at me with amused eyes.

  “You Cap’n Walker?”

  “I was. Now I’m just plain Walker.”

  “Mr. Carmichael sends his compliments, wondered if you’d care to breakfast with him this mornin’.”

  I drained my coffee and left the cup on the windowsill. “Reckon I would, at that,” I said.

  He came ’round, touched his cap, and opened the back door for me.

  “James, at your service, Sir.”

  I smiled. “Were you in the army, James?”

  “Marine corps, Cap’n. An’ if you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, Sir. Once you been a cap’n in special ops, you always a capn’n in special ops. You earned somethin’ nobody can ever take away from you, Cap’n.”

  I nodded my thanks and climbed in the back. When we’d pulled away and were headed east on Congress Street toward Rampart and Dauhpine, I asked him, “What rank did you leave with, James?”

  He smiled in the mirror. “Just corporal. Never saw no active duty. I was invalided out on account of I broke my leg during an exercise. S’why Mr. Carmichael give me the job.”

  “I remember, he said he was in the Marines.”

  He glanced at me in the rear-view again as we turned onto Dauphine and headed for Route 61. “Gunny,” he said simply.

  I nodded. A Gunnery Sergeant. A tough man. “Good employer?”

  “Couldn’t wish for better. Do right by him, he’ll do right by you. Good man.”

  “I came to see him yesterday.”

  “I know that.”

  “He kicked me out.”

  He gave an amused wheeze. “I know that too.”

  “Any idea why the change of heart?”

  “I have some idea, but it’s best he tell you hisself. But I can tell you he’s a good man. He’s tough, but he’s fair an’ just.”

  We went the rest of the way in silence and ten minutes later, we pulled up in front of the gabled portico and the Grecian stone pillars.

  The door was opened by the same pretty maid who’d let me in the day before. She smiled.

  “Good morning, Captain Walker, Mr. Carmichael is expecting you.”

  She led me across the checkerboard floor to a breakfast room at the back of the house. It was bright, with French windows that gave onto a well-kept lawn bordered by mature oaks and river birches. He stood as I entered, smiled ruefully for a moment, and approached me with an outstretched hand.

  “Captain Walker, I hope you will accept my apology for my behavior yesterday. I was out of line. An officer’s desire to protect the reputation of his regiment, and his men, is something to be commended, not condemned.”

  I took his hand. “No need to apologize, Mr. Carmichael. I could have been more sensitive in my approach.”

  “Water under the bridge.” He gestured me toward the table, set with a white linen cloth. “Will you join me for breakfast, Captain?”

  I sat. “I am no longer a captain, Mr. Carmichael. Lacklan, Walker, or if you insist, Mr. Walker will do.”

  “Very well, Lacklan, then please call me Charles.”

  The pretty maid reentered with two plates loaded with bacon, eggs, fried mushrooms, tomatoes, and devilled kidneys. She set them before us and poured coffee. He thanked her and she withdrew.

  “I hope you acquired a taste for the English breakfast while you were over there. I think it is one of their greatest achievements.”

  I sipped my coffee and watched him eat a moment. As I cut into the bacon, I asked him, “Charles, forgive me for being blunt, but why the change of heart?”

  He dabbed his mouth with a crisp, white napkin and regarded me with direct, unwavering eyes.

  “A number of reasons, Lacklan. Once my anger had subsided, I decided to look you up. Many of your files are sealed, naturally. But I have connections and I got access to some of them. Not all, but enough to know that you are a man of exceptional integrity.” He paused, sipped his coffee, and smacked his lips. “You omitted to mention that your regiment was the SAS. To make Captain in the Special Air Service is no mean feat. It takes a very special kind of man.” He nodded, as though agreeing with himself in some internal dialogue. “I myself was in the Marines.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant.”

  He smiled. “James has been talking, I see. He’s a good man.”

  “He says the same of you.”

  He looked grave. “Loyalty is a big deal for me, Lacklan. To my country, to the Corps, to my family, to my friends…”

  “To the clan.”

  He nodded and met my eye. “Yes, to the clan. So it seemed to me that I owed you at the very least a fair hearing.”

  “I am very grateful to you for that.”

  “So…” He gestured to me with an open hand. “Please, tell me what you have to say, and I guarantee that at the very least, I will listen with an open mind.”

  Five

  I helped myself to more coffee, stared at it in the cup for a bit, and then sipped it.

  “Charles, just because of who he is, Bat Hays is one of the most effective, professional killers you are ever likely to meet. I know because I have seen him do it. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Be my guest. I’ll join you.”

  We lit up. I took a drag and started talking again.

  “There were four of us. We tend to operate in units of four. There was myself, Hays, and two others. We were in the jungle, I can’t tell you where. We’d taken up a position by the river, waiting for two boats. We had intel that they would be loaded with drugs, which were to be exchanged for weapons. Our task was to sink the boats and kill the men onboard. No prisoners. No survivors.

  “We waited twenty-four hours. On the second afternoon, we heard the boats approaching. They were big, slow launches. We saw them coming from two hundred yards away. We were armed with a grenade launcher, an AW 50 cal. And C8 Carbines. They were sitting ducks. They had no idea we were there. They didn’t stand a chance.”

  He was frowning, wondering where I was going with the story. I tapped ash and looked him in the eye.

  “As the boats entered the killing field, the guys were waiting on the instruction to open fire. That was when we saw that as well as men and drugs, the boats were also loaded with women and children. There must have been at least twenty women of all ages, and a dozen kids. For a second, we froze. There had been no hint of this in the intelligence we had received. Not one of us there was going to open fire, but it was Bat Hays who put it into words. He turned to me and he said, ‘You can fuckin’ court martial me if you like, but the day the British Army makes war on women an’ children is the day I become a fuckin’ Frenchman!’”

  He tried to smile at my cockney accent, but it faded at the implication of my words. Before he could answer, I went on.

  “He was serious. He could have faced court martial, or worse. But he would not have opened fire on a woman or a child, unless his life or that of his comrades were in direct peril. That is not something I can take to court, and it’s not something I expect you to take at face value, on my say so. But it does give you the measure of the man.”

  He studied me for a moment. “I assume there is more than that. The way a man behaves on the battlefield can be very different to how behaves in his private life. We both know that.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I just wanted you to know what kind of man we are dealing with. Now, here is how I know, beyond any doubt, that Bat Hays did not commit this murder. I have, personally, seen Hays execute a dozen kills in non-combat situations. Like any man trained by the Regiment, he is as good as it gets. It is inconceivable that he would have carried out the kill in such a sloppy, unprofessional way.”

  I saw his cheeks color and his eyes shine. I knew my phrasing was brutal, but I had to make him see the truth of what I was saying.

  “Even if his personality could have changed so much for him to do this, it is impossible that he w
ould have left prints at the scene. It is impossible that he would have left his prints on the weapon. And, Charles, if Bat had taken a shot at you, he would not have missed. Whoever broke into your house that night and killed your wife, there is no way it was Bat Hays. I may not have proved it to you yet, but I know it for a fact.”

  Carmichael’s moment of anger had passed and he was staring into his coffee cup, listening to what I was saying. Now he crushed out his cigarette and sighed deeply.

  “I know that what you are saying is most probably true, Lacklan. It makes a lot of sense. I know the reputation of the Regiment. Hell, our own Delta Force was modeled on it, after Charlie Beckwith served with you guys in Malay. But for crying out loud, Lacklan! His prints are on the gun. They are in the bedroom and they are in my living room! How do you account for that?”

  I shook my head. “That is not conclusive, Charles. It’s far from an impossible frame.”

  He thought for a moment, frowning deeply. “Look here, I have a proposition to put to you. I have nothing personal against your man. I don’t even know him. But what I want is for my wife’s killer to be caught. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me employ you. We’ll call you a consultant, with specialist knowledge of the accused’s background. I carry some weight in this town and I’ll tell Jackson to cooperate with you, give you access to their investigation and their file, share what information they have.” He sat forward and stared hard at me. “I’ll get you anything you need. Find my wife’s killer, Lacklan.”

  “You have a deal. What I need is to see the crime scene.”

  His face went pale. “It hasn’t been touched since that night. I’ll show you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. Just tell me where it is. I’ll find it.”

  He hesitated. “It’s up the stairs. There is a galleried landing. The master bedroom is down on the left. It still has the police tape…”

  He looked suddenly old and drawn, grateful to put off for one more day having to confront the room. I sighed.

  “I’ll need you to show me the drawing room and walk me through what happened.”

  “I know. Yes. That’s not a problem. I just can’t bear to think what she must have gone through.”

  I left him there and went back to the checkerboard hall. It was a red-carpeted oak staircase that split into two right angles after ten steps and then rose on both sides to a gallery that looked down over the entrance hall under a domed cupola. Two passages fed off the gallery into each wing of the house. I followed the one on my left into the south wing.

  The master bedroom was the last door on the right. It was dimly lit, and crisscrossed with shadows from the arched window at the end of the corridor. A strip of yellow police tape was strung across it. I pulled it down and opened the door.

  I have seen my share of carnage in my life, more than most people. What I saw, and smelled, then, stopped me in my tracks. It was a large room. Dim, gray light filtered in from a tall, glass-paneled door on the left that led out onto a small terrace. Another door on the right opened to an en suite bathroom. The floor was parquet, and strewn with Persian rugs. There were two hand-carved, free-standing wardrobes against the wall. Directly in front of me, about fifteen or twenty feet away, was a heavy, oak, four-poster bed.

  At first I thought that the duvet and the sheets were burgundy, but as the stench hit me, I realized that they was saturated with blood. In the two weeks since the killing, he had not had the room cleaned, and in the intense humidity preceding the storm, the bedding had not yet fully dried. I closed the door behind me and stood absorbing what there was to see, and smell.

  There was a lot of blood, too much, so much that it had spilled onto the floor. I could see where the handle and the glass on the terrace doors had been dusted. There were prints, presumably hers, Carmichael’s, and Bat’s.

  I approached the bed. The quilt and the sheets were drenched from shoulder-height down to about mid-thigh. Slightly more than two feet down from the pillow, the mattress had been punctured. That in itself was odd. I examined the perforations and decided they looked like closely grouped bullet holes, though they had later been torn in order, I guessed, to extract the slugs. On an impulse, I took my Swiss Army knife and cut a piece of the blood-soaked sheet and put it in my wallet.

  I pulled the duvet back over the sheet and found the same holes, only neater. There were four of them, very closely grouped. Whoever killed her was a good shot, and his hands had not been shaking. He had control of his weapon, and of his emotions. He had not shot her in the head, though he was clearly capable of it. He had deliberately shot her in the belly. One of the slowest, most painful deaths possible.

  If it was an execution, it was a personal one.

  I looked around a bit more, then went back downstairs and found Carmichael where I had left him. He looked embarrassed and kept his eyes on the tabletop.

  “I haven’t…” He sighed noisily through his nose. “I haven’t been able to…”

  “I know, it’s hard to face. You want me to take care of it?”

  He glanced at me and frowned, but there was gratitude in his eyes. “No. No, thank you. Sooner or later, I have to face what has happened. I’ll take care of it today.”

  “James will help you if you let him.”

  He nodded.

  I said, “I need to see where you exchanged fire.”

  He stood. “It’s through here.”

  The doors to the drawing room were opposite the library, and made of the same, highly polished walnut. The room was long and broad, running from a large, bow window at the front of the house to tall French doors at the back. These led onto the same, ample lawn I had seen from the breakfast room. There was a large Georgian fireplace set into the far wall, surrounded at a distance by comfortable, modern armchairs and a sofa. There were original impressionists on the walls and an eclectic selection of antique furniture. On a credenza beyond the fireplace there was a silver tray with a collection of decanters and glasses.

  I looked around. It didn’t take me long to find the bullet holes in the walls. One had gouged out a chunk of the chimney breast, about seven feet off the ground. Another had narrowly missed what looked like an original Chagall over the credenza.

  “Those two were mine,” he said.

  “You want to walk me through it?”

  “It was about eleven forty-five. I’d been into town for dinner. Sarah was out. She was a great lover of jazz. I don’t enjoy it myself. My taste runs more to the baroque and the renaissance. So, I had been out. When I got home, I came into the drawing room, intending to have a nightcap. I stepped in and switched on the light. He was there.”

  He pointed down toward the Chagall.

  “How was he dressed?”

  He stared at me a moment in surprise. “Um… He was wearing dark pants, jeans perhaps. A dark sweater, or a sweatshirt, I am not sure. It was very sudden and unexpected. And he had on a ski mask or a balaclava. I remember he was armed with a revolver and he fired at me. There is the shot, in the wall.”

  He pointed behind him. The bullet hole looked about right for a .38. It was above and to the right of the door, about a foot from another painting. I pointed at it and frowned.

  “That’s an original Picasso.”

  “My grandfather was a fanatic of modern art. He bought that before Picasso was world famous. I have no idea what it is worth now.” He looked back at the sideboard, where the shooter had stood. “I was slow to react. To be honest I was stunned. My mind was reeling. He fired again before I could draw my weapon.”

  “You were armed.”

  “I always carry. The second shot is over here…” He walked toward the bow window and pointed to a hole in the wall, about eight feet off the floor. I followed and stood next to him. I ran my hand over the wooden frame of the bow, and examined the small panes of glass.

  “How old is this window, Charles?”

  Again he looked surprised. “
It’s original, from when the house was first built for my great, great…” He made an ‘and so on’ gesture, “Back around the time of the War of Independence. A little earlier than that.”

  “Superb.”

  He nodded. “So, I managed to react. I pulled my piece and let off three shots. One over the fire, another narrowly missed the Chagall and the third knocked out one of the panes in the French doors, missing him in the process. He got out that way and made off across the lawn, into the woods. My first thought, as you can imagine, was Sarah. I ran upstairs and…” He blanched. “There she was, in that ghastly…”

  “I have to ask, Charles, forgive me. Did you check to see if she was dead?”

  “Of course, immediately. It was my first thought. But she was, quite obviously, dead. I called Jackson. I believe it was eleven fifty-five, according to the police report.”

  I went and stood by the door, recreating the scene in my mind. The killer would have been six feet from the fireplace, just beyond the armchair, with his back to the drinks tray, about twenty or twenty-five feet from Carmichael. He let off one shot. Carmichael dodged to the killer’s right, he let off another shot, then turned and ran. Meanwhile, Carmichael had pulled his own piece and fired once, hitting the fireplace, twice, missing the Chagall, three times, missing the killer and shattering a pane of glass in the French doors.

  “If it had been Hays, the moment you stepped through the door he would have double-tapped you in the chest. The higher the pressure—the more intense the situation—the more automatically the training kicks in. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs. Surprise him and he will double tap to your chest, without thinking. It’s an autonomic response.” I gestured at the walls. “Forgive me, but this shooting is shit. This is the wild shooting of a panicking amateur.”

  He looked embarrassed. “I… It’s been a long time…”

  “You’re not a professional killer, Charles. But Bat Hays is.”

  He nodded. “I get it.”

  “Who were your wife’s enemies, Charles?”

  He spread his hands wide and shook his head. “That’s what Jackson asked me. I want to say she didn’t have any, but obviously, she did. Everybody loved her, Lacklan. She was an angel. She was the sweetest, kindest, most humane person I have ever met.”