Suicide. The boy had seemed around the same age as Michael, her thirteen-year-old. Jamie drove the rest of the way home numb all over.
Forty minutes later she pulled into her driveway. She didn’t open the garage, not wanting to wake the kids. She ran to the back of the house and unlocked the cellar door. She heard the beep for the burglar alarm, entered the code, and then placed Ben’s Glock and the things from her pocket on Dan’s old desk – a slab of plywood the size of a door set across two metal filing cabinets. When he was alive, Dan would come down here to catch up on paperwork or to read through one of his woodworking magazines.
She picked up Ben’s wallet. No credit cards, just a licence with the name Benjamin Masters. Local address too: Boston. Has he been living here all this time?
She picked up the Glock, turning it over in her hands.
Three safeties, three modes of fire: safe, automatic and semi-automatic. Laser-targeting sight mounted against the frame. She examined the barrel and found the model number. A Glock eighteen. She’d never heard of it. She ejected the extended magazine and read the words stamped into the metal tubing: RESTRICTED IN THE USA.
The rounds had a pitted nose. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
She knew about hollow-point rounds, how they expanded when they hit the victim’s skin, the pressure from the rush of blood expanding the snub-nose tip and turning it into a spinning mushroom of razor-sharp lead claws that shred tissue and organs as it spiralled its way through the body. Hollow-point rounds were one-stop shots. Even with immediate medical attention, victims usually died from massive blood loss.
If Ben had shot me, she thought, placing the Glock back on the desk, I wouldn’t be alive right now.
Standing inside the kitchen, she stuffed all of her clothing and the spent brass inside a rubbish bag. She tossed the bag inside the garage. She’d find a place to dump it later. She walked back down the hall to use the shower. Scrubbed clean, she grabbed a pair of cotton shorts and a T-shirt from the dryer and went upstairs to see the kids.
Michael’s room first. She kissed him on the forehead. Michael, with his sandy-brown hair and lean swimmer’s build, looked so much like his father it was painful.
Carter wasn’t in his bedroom.
She found him sleeping in her bed.
Jamie crawled underneath the sheets and cuddled up next to her six-year-old. He smelled clean. Good. Michael had remembered to give him a bath.
She wrapped her arm around Carter’s small waist and pulled him close. The blond stubble of his buzz cut tickled her chin.
She was too wired to sleep. She stared out of the window at the dark sky and rubbed her fingers across the thick lines of scars covering his stomach – permanent reminders of the scalpels that had cut him open to save his life. The ER doctors had managed to stem the bleeding and repair the damage to his stomach and lungs.
‘Dead,’ she whispered against Carter’s ear. ‘Killed him.’
Her son breathed softly beside her. He didn’t suffer from nightmares any more, not like he had the first year, when he’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Sometimes he’d crawled into bed with her. Sometimes she’d woken to find him standing at her bedroom window, chewing the corner of his ratty blue blanket. She’d asked him what was wrong but the answer was always the same: I’m watching for the bad men, Mom. Do you think they’ll come back?
Jamie hugged her son.
‘I will… find… find… partners,’ she whispered. ‘Kill… them.’ She said the words to Carter. To the cool air inside the locked house. To God. ‘I will… kill them to… to… keep you and Michael safe.’
Day 2
15
The following morning, at half past eight, Darby sat in her office chair with her feet propped up on the corner of the desk. She stared out of the windows overlooking another grey sky while listening to Dr Aaron Goldstein, a Boston-based neurologist brought in to treat the boy, John/Sean Hallcox. The man spoke in a dry monotone, as though he were reciting from a medical textbook.
‘The bullet entered underneath the boy’s chin,’ Dr Goldstein was saying. ‘Instead of traversing the cranial cavity and leaving through an exit wound, the bullet ricocheted inside the skull, with massive tearing caused by the shock waves. This resulted in –’
‘Doctor, I don’t mean to be rude, but I was in the hospital room when John Hallcox shot himself. I know the bullet didn’t pass through the skull. I want to know his condition.’ She popped a couple of Advils in her mouth and washed them down with cold water fizzing with Alka-Seltzer.
‘We performed a debridement,’ Goldstein said. ‘The procedure involves removing bone and bullet fragments from the brain. We removed a good majority of them, but I’m sorry to say there were some fragments that were so deeply imbedded near sensitive areas that I had to leave them behind. I’m more concerned about what we refer to as secondary effects.’
‘Swelling and bleeding from ruptured blood vessels.’
‘Yes.’ A bright tone in the man’s voice, surprised that she knew such things. ‘With gunshot wounds to the head there’s always a high risk of oedema and, in Mr Hallcox’s case, infection. We’re treating him with strong antibiotics, but these kinds of infections – the ones involving the brain – are extremely difficult to overcome. Fortunately, he hasn’t experienced a seizure, but he’s still in a coma.’
‘Where does he fall on the Glasgow Coma Scale?’
‘I can’t give you an accurate GCS score at the moment. Because of the intubation and severe facial swelling, he can’t talk and I can’t test his eyes’ responses.’
‘Do you think there’s a chance he’ll be able to talk?’
‘To you?’
‘To anyone, Doctor.’
‘There’s always a possibility, but I’m inclined to say no. I doubt he’ll survive – not from the gunshot wound but from the infection. Does he have any family in the area? My understanding is the mother died rather tragically.’
‘She was murdered.’
‘Well, if you find any family members, please let us know. Certain arrangements will need to be made. That’s all I can tell you right now, Miss McCormick.’
‘Would you call me if there’s any change? I’d like… I want to know how he’s doing.’
‘Of course. What’s the best way to reach you?’
They exchanged numbers. Darby thanked the doctor, swung her legs off the desk and dialled directory inquiries to ask for the number of the FBI’s field office in Albany, New York.
She introduced herself to the woman who answered the phone and asked to speak to SAC Dylan Phillips.
‘Let me connect you to his office,’ the woman said.
Phillips wasn’t in his office yet. Darby left a message with the man’s secretary.
Pine had told her he was working on locating the owner of the house, Dr Martin Wexler and his wife, Elaine. Darby didn’t want to wait. She turned to her computer. When she had the information she needed, she started working the phone.
An hour later she had tracked down one of Wexler’s children – his eldest son, David, who lived in Wisconsin. He had the number for his parents’ home in the South of France. The names Amy and John Hallcox didn’t mean anything to him.
Darby called the number. A machine picked up, the voice in French. She left a detailed message along with her office and mobile numbers, and asked them to call regardless of the time.