The Good Killer Read online

  “One or the other.”

  Her breathing is rougher than he would like, and her eyes look tired and glassy. He leans in and kisses her cheek.

  “Are you leaving?” she asks him.

  “Of course not,” he says.

  “You can, if you have to. He might need you.”

  Garza touches his forehead to hers. “He’s on his own. Whatever happens, I won’t leave you.”

  Jimmy Harper

  Three out of four.

  Molly struggled against him, and it threw off his aim. His fourth shot went wide. But he scored three hits, center mass.

  Molly is still struggling, pushing at him with her shoulder, trying to slam her head into his chin. Jimmy shoves her away, but she comes back at him. He brings a knee up into her stomach, throws an elbow across her jaw. When she comes at him again, he slams the butt of the Ruger pistol into her temple.

  It spins her around and she goes down headfirst to the floor among the broken pieces of the altar. She doesn’t get up.

  When Jimmy looks at Sean again, he’s on his knees, drawing a gun from the left-hand pocket of his windbreaker. Another Ruger. Nick’s gun.

  Jimmy throws three more shots at him. He aims at Sean’s torso like before, even though he can see the Kevlar underneath Sean’s jacket. Jimmy knows what it’s like to be shot while wearing Kevlar.

  Sean’s body jerks three times. He slumps forward onto his hands and knees, gasping.

  Sean Tennant

  The kid’s pistol is right there under his left hand. But his hand isn’t working the way he wants.

  Nothing is. Everything seems blown apart. It hurts to breathe. His ribs are moving in ways they shouldn’t.

  Jimmy comes down from the altar, and there’s a lightness in his steps. He moves like someone happy. Sean gets his fingers to go where they should be on the pistol, but before he can lift it, Jimmy’s there. Kicking it away.

  Jimmy’s wearing black boots. Like Cole’s. One of them stomps down on Sean’s left hand.

  Sean hears a groan that’s got to be his. Jimmy’s not groaning. Jimmy’s happy. He steps around and kicks Sean in the stomach. The kick lifts Sean up, and when he comes down he’s lying on his right side. Another kick turns him over onto his back.

  There’s Jimmy, smiling, with the rafters in the background.

  There’s Jimmy’s gun hand, complete with gun.

  Jimmy shoots him again. In the heart. But the Kevlar stops it.

  “Hurts,” Jimmy says. “Doesn’t it?”

  Sean agrees, but he can’t say it. He can’t catch his breath.

  “Like a son of a bitch,” Jimmy says.

  His gun is still there, aiming at Sean’s heart. Jimmy shifts it up and to the left and shoots him in the shoulder.

  The little brown bird squawks up in the rafters, and the same sort of noise comes out of Sean’s mouth.

  “That’s better,” Jimmy says. “I don’t know if it hurt more, but it drew blood. Makes the damage seem more real. I’m gonna do the other shoulder.”

  The gun moves slow. Sean works on his breathing. It’s panic as much as it is pain. He manages a single word.

  “No.”

  Muzzle flash. The bullet slices into him.

  Jimmy sniffs, standing over him. “You don’t really have a say in this.”

  He alters his aim and shoots Sean’s right leg, midthigh. Then his ankle.

  Sean cries out again, but it’s less like an animal noise, more like something human. A cry of frustration.

  He gets out another word. A syllable anyway: “Nuff.”

  He tries to sit up, but bending at the waist is agony. Jimmy points the gun at his face.

  “You really want to stay down. I’ll let you know when it’s enough.”

  The gun moves. Sean tracks it with his eyes. Jimmy shoots his ankle a second time, and pauses. Maybe so he can watch it bleed.

  Cole’s voice is right next to Sean’s ear. As if he’s lying on the floor with him.

  “I’m not real impressed by your plan of attack,” Cole says.

  Breathe in and talk, Sean thinks. Talk on the exhale.

  “I know,” he says.

  Jimmy shoots his ankle yet again.

  “This keeps up,” Cole says, “I’m afraid you might lose your foot.”

  Sean laughs, but it’s lost in the mess of his breathing.

  He wants to say: “I think that’s what he’s going for.” But it’s too long.

  He settles for: “You and me both.”

  “Time to rally,” Cole says. “Turn this thing around.”

  “You bet,” Sean says.

  The gun hovers in the air. Jimmy is looking at him curiously.

  “Who are you talking to?” Jimmy asks.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone and go fuck yourself,” Sean wants to say, but it comes out garbled. Jimmy can’t understand it. He’s been standing near Sean’s feet, but now he steps around to Sean’s right and squats down to hear better.

  Keep it simple, Sean thinks. Two words.

  “Cole’s here,” he says.

  Bad idea.

  Jimmy’s eyes go dark and his voice turns icy cold. “He’s not. Not anymore.”

  The gun shifts here and there, and when it settles Sean can see straight into the black circle of the muzzle. He looks at Jimmy’s finger on the trigger, the white edge of the nail like a crescent moon. The moon goes blurry.

  Sean’s gaze moves past the gun, up along Jimmy’s arm, to a spot above his shoulder.

  “Wild about you,” Sean says.

  Jimmy’s dark eyes show confusion.

  Molly is behind him, lifting up a chunk of white marble with two hands.

  Molly Winter

  She doesn’t know how long she was out. Maybe only a few seconds.

  When she came back, the world felt woozy. Blood trickling along her cheek.

  Everything soft and hazy, until the gunshots snapped her out of it.

  Moving her cuffed hands from back to front took longer than it should have. Helpless on the floor on her back, she felt sure Jimmy would see her.

  She got the cuffs behind her knees, no problem. Stepping her legs through was harder. Torturous. There’s a pain in her lower back like someone drove a blade into her spine. Her shoulders ache as if they’re in danger of tearing from their sockets.

  No time to think about it. She’s on her feet. She picks up a piece of white marble. Part of the altar.

  There’s a tinny echo in her ears from the gunfire, but that’s good. It must be worse for Jimmy. He doesn’t hear her coming up behind him.

  She swings the marble at the side of his head. It’s glorious, the connection. Solid.

  Maybe the best thing she’s ever felt.

  The impact knocks Jimmy over sideways. His gun goes off, but the bullet misses Sean. It punches a black hole in the floor.

  The slide stays open. The gun is empty.

  Molly lifts the chunk of marble again. Jimmy is half-sitting, half-lying on the floor, trying to push himself up with his left hand. She takes a second swing with the marble, at the same spot on the side of his head. Then a third.

  The third blow tears off a hunk of his scalp and lays him out. She stands over him, waiting for him to move.

  Off to her right, Sean moans. She turns to see him sitting up.

  She drops the marble and goes to him. He’s bleeding in four places, but the ankle is the worst. Molly can see bone.

  She tugs his belt free to make a tourniquet, but Sean grabs her arm.

  “Get his gun,” he tells her.

  “He’s out,” she says.

  He shakes his head. “Spare clip.”

  Which makes sense. Jimmy could have a spare clip. But it’s not what Sean means.

  “My pocket,” he says.

  She steps over to Jimmy and takes the gun from his hand. There’s no resistance. When she returns, Sean has his spare clip out. Molly ejects the one from Jimmy’s gun, replaces it, and works the slide t
o load a round.

  The handcuffs clink and rattle with every movement.

  Sean holds the gun while she makes a loop of his belt and applies it as a tourniquet. She places it up close to his knee and cinches it. She needs a lever to twist it, but there’s nothing around. She tightens it as best she can with her hands.

  “I know,” Sean says suddenly.

  His voice sounds a little airy, but it’s stronger than it ought to be.

  “What do you know?” Molly asks.

  He laughs quietly. It seems to be directed at himself.

  “Talking to Cole,” he tells her. “He says it’s not the worst thing, losing a foot. He says I’m lucky.”

  “You’re not gonna lose it,” Molly says.

  Sean looks to his left. Seems to listen.

  “Cole says you’re an optimist, but he likes that about you.”

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Molly says. “Elevate the leg. Does that make sense?”

  “I would,” Sean says. “But I don’t know if I’d get back up.”

  Right then, as she’s worried that he’s fading, she hears the tone of distant sirens. When they’re closer, he picks up on them too.

  “See?” he says. “Lucky.”

  The brown bird sings in the rafters, making a pretty counterpoint to the sirens. It flies down and alights on the back of a pew. From there it descends to the floor and hops toward Jimmy.

  He raises his head to look at it.

  Sean has the gun in his lap. He brings it up. Aims it.

  Jimmy starts to crawl away.

  Sean’s grip on the gun seems secure, but his arm is far from steady.

  “I’ll do it,” Molly says.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She takes the gun and moves Sean’s hands to the tourniquet.

  “Tight,” she says.

  “I’ve got it,” he tells her.

  When she rises to her feet, the bird flies back to the rafters.

  Jimmy is moving slow, dragging himself along on knees and elbows.

  Molly walks behind him. She wonders where he’s going—until she sees it. There’s another gun, on the eastern side of the chapel, near the wall.

  It’s a twin of the one she’s holding.

  Jimmy crawls through dust and fragments of glass and splinters of marble to reach it.

  Molly lets him get close enough to touch it, then puts a bullet in his brain.

  Epilogue

  TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER

  Rose Dillon

  The road that leads to the site of Camp Antioch might have had a name once, but there’s no name on the map and no sign at the place where it joins up with the main road.

  There are only two wooden posts with a chain hanging between them. The chain isn’t serious about keeping anyone out. It’s not even secured with a padlock. There’s just a hook that fits into an eyebolt on one of the posts.

  Rose Dillon gets out of her car to unhook the chain so she can drive through. The sun is out and it’s springtime. She can hear birdsong from the trees nearby. There’s a caterpillar crawling on the ground.

  It makes her think of Henry Keen.

  To be fair, Henry Keen is seldom far from her thoughts.

  When the police searched Keen’s apartment after the shootings at the Galleria mall, they found pages of notes that he’d written, sort of a rambling manifesto. The Houston Chronicle printed parts of it. There were several references to caterpillars squirming in his head. It made him sound suitably insane.

  Rose needed no proof of Keen’s insanity. She had seen it up close.

  In retrospect it’s hard to believe, but there was a time when he seemed harmless. She went on two dates with him, and they were okay but nothing special. She decided against going on a third. She stopped returning his calls; it seemed like the easiest way to break things off.

  What happened after will never leave her. It’s a memory she can’t get rid of: the moment when she saw him again that day in Brooks Brothers where she was working. He didn’t seem angry, even when he raised his gun and shot the customer she was helping, a man who only wanted to buy a suit.

  Rose remembers the look on Keen’s face, the excitement. Like he wanted to show her something. And he did. He took hold of her and dragged her along with him on his shooting spree. She looked into the faces of his victims.

  She believed she would be one of them, that he would kill her. But it didn’t happen. She lived, and Keen died. Sean Tennant killed him.

  It’s over. It’s in the past. But Rose is still dealing with it.

  She dealt with it poorly at first. In those early days, she was pursued by reporters who wanted to talk to her about Keen. She left Houston and hid out at her parents’ house in Fort Worth, but they found her there and parked their vans on the street. She remained inside for days, for weeks, and the reporters got bored and left. But even when it was safe to come out, Rose stayed in.

  There was no place she wanted to go, no one she wanted to see.

  She stayed with her parents for more than a year.

  They took care of her for all that time. Rose slept late and watched television, and as long as she showered every day and ate regular meals, they left her alone. But in the end they began to show signs of impatience. They wanted her to talk to someone. Someone professional. They said she needed to move on.

  She agreed. She told them she was going on a trip.

  She had some money in the bank, and her car was in her parents’ garage. Her father had been starting it and running the engine every week, religiously.

  Rose left on a Saturday morning. Told her parents she was going to visit friends. She drove for an hour before she admitted to herself that it was a lie. She’d lost touch with her friends. She’d lost everything she used to be. All she had left was the thing that had happened to her.

  It took her another hour of driving to remember that it had happened to other people too. Oscar Lindauer, for one. He was the first of Henry Keen’s victims. He’d been shot through the eye. Rose pulled her car over and found his obituary online. He was buried in Lone Grove, Oklahoma, the town where he grew up.

  She made it her first destination.

  From there, it was only a matter of deciding to go on. She gathered the names of all of Keen’s victims, and over the course of a year she visited each of them, the wounded and the dead. She stood over five graves and spoke with eight survivors. All the survivors had taken their leave of Houston. Seven of the eight had left Texas altogether.

  In between her visits, Rose has done a fair amount of wandering. She lives cheap, stays in hostels and no-name motels. Sometimes she sleeps in her car.

  Three months ago, when she came to the end of her list of names, she realized she needed a new purpose, and she found one.

  Sean and Molly.

  Their story is bound together with hers, and she intends to find them. But she’s in no hurry. She’s working up to it. She’s been to Long Meadow Ranch in Montana. She stayed there for six weeks, helping tend the horses in exchange for room and board.

  She’s been to Rusty’s All-American in Knoxville. She picked up some work there, waiting tables.

  Now she’s made her way to Michigan, to Camp Antioch on Grass Lake. There used to be a chapel here where Sean almost died. There’s nothing now, no buildings left. Everything torn down and hauled away. As Rose drives closer to the lake, all she sees is a beat-up truck parked at the roadside, with a travel trailer hitched to the back.

  She leaves her car in the road and walks down to the water. There’s a dock on the shore, long and narrow. Out at the end, there’s a guy with a fishing pole.

  Rose is as leery of strangers as anyone, but she knows that the worst trouble in her life has come from people she was acquainted with. She’s not going to let herself be afraid of a guy on a dock.

  She walks out halfway and says, “What are you fishing for?”

  The guy turns to her briefly, give
s her a friendly nod.

  “Lunch,” he says.

  She moves closer. “Beautiful day.”

  He looks up at the sky as if he hadn’t noticed it before.

  “Yup,” he says.

  She ventures closer still and takes him in. His clothes are worn, but they seem clean. He’s around five ten and slender, midtwenties. He’s got a ball cap on and shaggy brown hair spilling out from under it. He’s got a beard that covers a lot of his face, but not the crooked scar on his left cheek.

  “Do you come here a lot?” Rose asks him.

  He shakes his head without looking at her.

  “Do you know what happened here?”

  He’s quiet for a beat, staring into the distance.

  “Did something happen here?” he says.

  She lets it go. Stays out there with him for ten or fifteen minutes, feeling the breeze that blows over the water.

  He doesn’t ask her name, and she doesn’t ask his.

  *

  Two days later, Rose is in Detroit. She drives through Corktown and looks for Harper Auto Repair, but in the place where it’s supposed to be there’s a Midas muffler shop.

  She tracks down a phone number for Rafael Garza. She’s done some research on him, and she knows he left Houston two years ago. These days he works homicide for the Detroit police.

  She arranges to meet him in the evening downtown, by the fountain in Hart Plaza. She gets there early and waits, and when she sees him he’s with a woman. It’s a cool day and they’re both wearing black wool coats.

  An image flashes through Rose’s mind: Henry Keen walking toward her in his black coat. It’s there, and it’s gone.

  The woman with Garza has sleek black hair and wears a silk scarf around her neck. She kisses Garza and parts from him, heading for the path that runs along the Detroit River.

  When Garza reaches the fountain, he’s smiling.

  “You look well,” he says to Rose. “Better than the last time we spoke.”

  He interviewed her once at her parents’ house—one of many detectives who questioned her about Keen.

  “I feel better,” she says.

  They walk in circles around the plaza, and Rose tells him what she’s been doing for the last fifteen months and what she wants. She followed Sean and Molly’s story in the news, and she knows Sean was never charged for the burglary that led to his friend’s death. But she doesn’t know what became of him. The information she’s been able to find is sketchy.