The Devils Teardrop

hawks . . .
    Smoke wafted past him. It was from fires in the oil drums where the homeless men and women and the gangstas burned wood and trash for warmth. He saw more hulks of stripped cars. Across the street was a building that seemed deserted; the only clue to habitation was a bulb burning behind a red towel covering a broken window.
    Just past the Metro stop, over a tall, decaying brick wall, the chimney of the crematorium rose into the night sky. There was no smoke rising from it but the sky above themuzzle rippled in the heat. Perhaps its fires always burned. Parker shivered. The sight reminded him of old-time pictures of—
    “Hell,” Lukas muttered. “It looks like hell.”
    Parker glanced at her.
    Cage shrugged in agreement.
    A car arrived. It was Jerry Baker, wearing a bulky windbreaker and body armor. Parker saw that, as befit a tactical agent, he was also wearing cowboy boots. Cage handed him the stack of computerized pictures of the unsub—the death mask portrait from the morgue. “We’ll use these for the canvas. At the bottom? That’s the only description we have of the Digger.”
    “Not much.”
    Another shrug.
    More unmarked cars and vans began to pull up, their dashboard flashers reflecting in the bands of storefront windows. FBI government-issue wheels. White-and-teal District police cars too, their light bars revolving. There were about twenty-five men and women in total, half of them federal agents, half uniformed cops. Baker motioned to them and they congregated around Lukas’s truck. He distributed the printouts.
    Lukas said to Parker, “Want to brief them?”
    “Sure.”
    She called, “If you could listen to Agent Jefferson here.”
    It took a second before Parker recognized the reference to his stage name. He decided he would’ve been a failure at undercover work. He said, “The man in the picture you’ve got there was the perp responsible for the Metro and Mason Theater shootings. We think he was working out of a safe house somewhere here in Gravesend. Now, he’s dead but his accomplice—the shooter—is still atlarge. So we need to find the safe house and find it fast.”
    “You have a name?” one of the District cops called.
    “The unsub—the dead one—is a John Doe,” Parker said, holding up the picture. “The shooter’s got a nickname. The Digger. That’s all. His description’s on the bottom of the handout.”
    Parker continued. “You can narrow down the canvassing area some. The safe house is probably near a demolition or construction site and won’t be far from the cemetery. He also recently bought some paper like this—” Parker held up the clear sleeves holding the extortion note and the envelope. “Now, the paper was sun-bleached so it’s possible that he bought it in a store that displays their office supplies in or near a south-facing window. So hit every convenience store, drugstore, grocery store and newsstand that sells paper. Oh, and look for the type of pen he used too. It was an AWI black ballpoint. Probably cost thirty-nine or forty-nine cents.”
    That was all he could think of. With a nod he handed off to Lukas. She stepped in front of the agents. Looked over them, silent, until she had everyone’s attention. “Now, listen up. Like Agent Jefferson said, the unsub’s dead but the shooter sure as hell isn’t. We don’t know if he’s in Gravesend and we don’t know if he’s living in the safe house. But I want everybody here to assume he’s ten feet behind you and has a clear path to target. He’s got no problem lighting up law enforcement personnel. So as you go through the neighborhood I want everyone to be looking for ambush positions. I want weapon hands free, I want jackets and coats unbuttoned, I want holster thongs unsnapped.”
    She paused for a moment. She had their complete attention, this thin woman with silver-blond hair.
    “At eight o’clock—yep, that’s right, just over two hours—our perp is going to find someplace that’s filled with people and he’s going to empty his weapon at them again. Now I do not want to work that crime scene and have to look into the eyes of someone who’s just lost a parent or a child. I do not want to have to tell them I’m sorry but we couldn’t find this beast before he killed again. That is not going to happen. I’m not going to let it. And you’re not.”
    Parker found himself drawn into her words, delivered in a firm, even voice. He thought about the Band of Brothers