Miscue Page 6

  Brach turned and looked out the windows, then returned to his coffee. “Tourists,” he muttered.

  Forte said nothing. The crowd withdrew from the window and filed past his booth on their way back to their tables. His view was blocked for a moment.

  “Hey,” said Brach. “That answer you gave for the cameras earlier. Do you really believe that? Or was it just a media-bite?”

  Forte looked at his friend. “What?”

  “The stuff you said. About our justice system being responsible for the punishment of the murderer.”

  “I said that society has to live with the laws we have or change them. I meant that.”

  “But, really, deep down, don’t you think the doctor deserved what he got? I mean, if you believe that the fetus is a human being, then you believe he was killing children. And if you were in that room, would you have stopped the doctor from killing that child?”

  As Forte thought about the question, he tried to see the table with the blond man. Two woman were standing between his booth and the table talking about their dessert possibilities. He looked back at Brach.

  “Off the record?” Forte asked.

  Brach feigned a look of pain. “Mi compadre, you stab my heart.”

  Forte said nothing.

  Brach smiled. “Okay, off the record, of course.”

  Forte nodded. “In that exact situation, if I had happened to be in the room somehow, I would have stopped him. I don’t know if I would have tried to kill him.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Forte looked at his friend’s face for a long moment. “No. I don’t know.”

  “What about the woman? What about her so-called reproductive rights?”

  “What about them?”

  Brach sighed. “You know what I mean. Doesn’t the woman have the right to decide what happens to her own body?”

  “You know, ever since I was called about the Lamberth thing, people have been questioning me about this one way or another.”

  “I’m just interested. I know you have strong views on this.”

  “I do.” He paused. The women were finally moving out of the way. “I just don’t want to completely dismiss the woman’s rights. I used to be so blunt in my opinion on this that women would scream at me for being a chauvinistic pig. And even now I don’t claim to be able to understand what a woman would go through in her mind. I mean, as she was deciding to have an abortion.

  “But after all the politics and emotions are talked to death, I still believe it is wrong.”

  Brach said nothing.

  Forte searched his friend’s eyes.

  He looked back across the restaurant.

  The blond man and his dinnermate were gone.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday, 10:30 p.m.

  A squirrel tiptoed along the top of the eight-foot brick wall that surrounded the Lamberths' house. It slowed and stopped as it examined a tree limb that stretched from the massive oak in the center of the lawn. The closest branch had been stylishly manicured to end more than a man’s height away from the wall. The squirrel furtively looked all around him, then bunched his hind legs under himself and sprang toward the leaves at the end of the branch. His front paws snagged and caught the tip of the branch. He bobbed and swayed like a drunken trapeze artist then pulled himself onto the branch and scampered up the limb and around the girth of the tree trunk.

  Forte watched the squirrel from the back patio outside the garden room where he had first met with Freida Lambert and Mr. Tolan. He slowly sucked on cigarette number four. The tobacco smoke could not quite hide the aroma from the wisteria next to the patio. The smell was a contrast from the usual stale whiskey-sweat-garbage smell of the Quarter. As he stood and smoked, Forte had not made up his mind which he liked better. From the windows above and behind him, the improvisations of Phish in concert poured out of Hallee’s stereo and into the night air. At least the kid had some good sense of music, Forte thought.

  He had tapped on Hallee’s door when he came on duty a half-hour earlier as he was conducting his first complete walk-through of the house. The second-floor room had only recently been converted from three rooms, the walls knocked down to create a hangar of a bedroom. Three windows overlooked the garden in the backyard, the center one with a window seat.

  A girl with short auburn hair was curled on the window seat clutching a stuffed tiger as she looked out at the spotlighted backyard. A breeze made the curtains dance across the screenless window.

  “Will they stay on all night?” she asked without turning around.

  Forte looked around the room. “Will what stay on?”

  Hallee lifted a hand and pointed a purple fingernail at the window. “Those spotlights in the backyard. I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “No, we are testing them now. They are automatic detection lights.”

  “So, they come on if someone tries to break in.”

  “Yes.”

  She turned and looked at him, her arms still locked around the stuffed animal. “The people who killed my dad? If they try to break in?”

  Forte stood in the center of the room. He had been studying the layout, memorizing where everything was: the canopy bed, the entertainment center crammed with a TV-VCR combo, a stereo system with four speakers, a Sony Playstation and stacks of videos and CD’s and books and electronic games. Next to the bed on the floor lay a pair of Nike sneakers and a pair of ballet slippers. A large globe on a stand sat at the end of the desktop.

  He looked at Hallee. Her face showed no emotion but her brown eyes shimmered.

  “For anyone,” he said. “Anyone without a special invitation from me.”

  She said nothing as she rubbed her cheek against the tiger’s fake fur.

  “You don’t look like the others,” she said.

  “Oh really,” he said.

  “Yeah, they are pretty grim. The cops.”

  “Grim, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But you seem … I dunno. Cool.”

  “That’s me. Mr. Cool.”

  One corner of the girl’s mouth twitched. “Don’t make fun of me.” She shifted on the cushion. “Nice tattoo.”

  Forte lifted his forearm. “Thanks.”

  “My mom has one. Not where you can see it though.” The other corner of her mouth twitched.

  “I’m sure she appreciates you sharing that information.”

  She shrugged. “It’s nothing weird. Just a butterfly.”

  Forte scanned the room a moment longer then turned from the door to the hallway. “If you need anything, just call,” he said.

  Hallee just looked at him, then nodded.

  Forte had continued his rounds. Freida Lamberth had been talking to an Episcopal priest in the garden room so he had stepped outside. He walked along the wall that completely surrounded the house. The driveway gate on the side of the house was locked shut and another solid-wall security gate was positioned behind it. Even a small animal couldn’t walk onto the grounds. All he had to do was watch for the attack of the flying squirrels coming over the walls.

  From the corner of his eye he caught a movement in the garden room. The priest had come to his feet. He hugged the widow and glanced out at the lone figure standing on the patio. Freida led the man out of the room.

  After a moment Forte heard the security gate slide open, then snap shut behind the priest. A moment later he heard the click of heels on the stone walkway leading around to the patio where he stood exhaling the dwindling pleasure of number four.

  “Got one for me?” Freida said as she approached. Her voice sounded even more hoarse than it had earlier in the day. Sometime during the day she had changed into a simple black dress with no jewelry. Her hair was pulled back into a bun. As he watched her step close for the cigarette, Forte could see the tiny holes in her earlobes where the earrings had been. In the strong light of the security lamps, her face still looked naked of any makeup.

  “A warning to you,” he said, lighting the C
heckers in her mouth. “These are not premium brand.”

  She inhaled and the tip of the cigarette glowed red. She grimaced. “That’s the understatement of the day.” She took another deep drag and waved him to one of the patio chairs. She sat down and crossed her legs, tilted her head back and released a plume of smoke above her head. The closest security light showed up as streaks of silver in the smoke.

  Forte checked his watch. “The timer on the test for the lights should be going off… just about…”

  The lights shut off, plunging the patio into darkness.

  “Now.”

  Forte could barely make out Freida’s outline behind the glow of the cigarette.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  Freida kept her head pressed against the tall back of the chair. He couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. “I don’t know,” she said. She put her free hand behind her head and rubbed her neck.

  Forte’s cigarette had burned down nearly to the filter. He held it up with his left hand and flicked the embers away with his right index finger. He put the cooled filter tip in his pocket. Some different music now drifted out of Hallee’s window above, something he didn’t recognize. Slower, softer, violins and flutes stirred together in a synthesized new age soup. Maybe Enya.

  “I saw the news earlier. About you being attacked,” she said. “Will that affect your work for me?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Good.” She had stopped rubbing her neck. “What was it about really?”

  “We aren’t sure. Probably had something to do with the shelter. The Refuge.”

  “Yes, I had imagined it did.”

  His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he could make out her features now. “You know, Hallee would be much safer there,” he said.

  “At The Refuge?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head and a strand of hair escaped from the bun. “No. It is better that we are here. Together.”

  He nodded. “As you wish, ma’am. It will be fine.”

  Freida tilted her head toward him. “Ma’am? Please! I’m no older than you are.”

  “Sorry. It was my Grandmama’s good manners speaking.”

  “She raised you, didn’t she, after your parents died?”

  It was Forte’s turn to tilt his head. “You know about that, eh?”

  “I know a lot about you,” she said. She inhaled another drag and held it, then pursed her lips and blew out the cloud of white. “My husband had Mr. Tolan do a background check on you months ago. He was considering hiring your company for security for Hallee even … before all this. Tolan talked him out of it.”

  “But you disagreed with Tolan.”

  “Yes. He means well but he lets his politics get in the way of good judgement.”

  “Sometimes almost any little thing can get in the way of good judgement.”

  Freida sunk lower in the patio chair and looked up at the clouded sky. “Truer words…” Her voice floated up and away, smaller than it had been. She sniffed once and cleared her throat.

  “My husband was not perfect,” she said. “He was unfaithful to me and he was often preoccupied with his work. But, with all that, he loved me, in his way. I know he did. And I loved him. And now he is gone.” Her voice cracked. In the semi-dark, Forte could see her shoulders shaking but he could not hear the crying.

  He waited quietly. It was one of the things he learned from wise Larue. “When there ain’t no words that can help, almost any word can hurt,” the little man had counseled him in what amounted to a long speech one day after Al had smart-mouthed his way into a two-day suspension from junior high school.

  Her shaking stopped after a few moments. “I’m sorry. All day … so many people here …”

  Forte leaned up and patted her hand. “It’s hard answering the questions.”

  The night was quiet. Hallee’s windows were dark now.

  Freida stood up and let her cigarette drop to the imported tiles of the patio. She stepped on it with the toe of her high heel pump and ground it out. “Sometimes,” she said, “there don’t seem to be any answers.” She walked into the house.

  Forte watched her go then looked up at the sky. Oh, there are answers to the pain, he thought. Just not always the right ones. But when the chance comes along to make the hurt go away for even a few minutes, you forget about right or wrong. You just think about the here and now and the chance to escape. He remembered that feeling every morning when his eyes opened and every night when they closed and all the moments in between. The memory of that sweet escape, despite its insanity, was not always strong. Sometimes it lived way back on the edge of his consciousness. But it seemed like it was always there, looking at him from across the distance like a wolf beyond rifle range, a wolf with its teeth exposed in a cruel smile. Waiting.

  Right now, he wanted Checkers number five. But he would force himself to delay that pleasure for a while.

  He got up and went inside. He locked the doors and reset the security system. Anything more than a few feet tall that moved anywhere in the yard would instantly trigger the outside spotlights and the shrieking of alarms.

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, 10:30 p.m.

  On the monitor in the van, Forte looked small and tired. But that was just an illusion, the killer knew. A man with Forte’s reputation would have the combination of training and instincts that could make for danger.

  The killer, dressed completely in black, sipped juice from a bottle. But then again, he thought, anyone can be fooled.

  He had watched Forte and Freida Lamberth chatting on the patio. It had been hard to see them when the security lights shut off. But he had seen the cigarettes glowing and knew they were still there. The microphones he had planted months before were working perfectly. He could hear everything. The woman’s remark about her husband’s unfaithfulness made him smile to himself. Why wouldn’t the doctor fool around? He was accountable to no one and believed he could “fix” any inconvenience caused by his dalliances.

  The grief in Freida’s voice actually made him feel uneasy a bit, but he considered it a casualty of war, that kind of grief. Besides, it was all part of the plan and the plan must be carried out.

  The van was parked behind a bar on St. Charles, six blocks from the Lamberth home. Anyone driving by would see a beat-up beige van with “Nance Plumbing” emblazoned on the side in royal blue block letters a foot tall. Inside the van, everything was state-of-the-art. The killer sat on a rolling stool facing a console of electronic equipment. The images on three tiny monitors flashed views of all four sides of the Lamberth home, all three entrances into the house, the kitchen, the den, the stairway, the hallway leading past Hallee Lamberth’s bedroom on the second floor, and the third floor landing outside Freida Lamberth’s bedroom. The miniscule remote video cameras he had planted at the Lamberth house were working perfectly, beaming the images to his receiver in the truck and giving him knowledge of every movement in and around the house. The cameras had been in place for more than three months, lying dormant except for a few tests until being automatically triggered for tonight’s mission.

  A police scanner tuned to the New Orleans band was bolted to the wall of the van next to his head. It squawked and he listened for any indication that the dispatcher was talking to a police unit nearby. Satisfied that he wasn’t, he pushed away from the console and glided backward on the small rolling chair across the rubber floor mat until his back rested against the opposite wall of the van. He rested there, watching the monitors. He looked down and flexed his hands. The light of the monitors cast a greenish hue on his skin.

  This was the part of the mission that had bothered him when it had first been planned. It was one thing to kill a murderer in the act of defending an unborn child. But the Lamberth girl, she was innocent. He rubbed his eyes. He reminded himself that the big picture would be served by this act. It was just the actual execution of it that bothered him. But it had to be done.<
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  He would make it quick so the girl would not be afraid.

  He reached down and picked up the old black canvas duffel bag with the letters “CPD-SWAT” on it. He moved the bag closer to the counter next to the electronic equipment and opened it. Reaching into the bag, he started unpacking it, neatly stacking its contents on the countertop: the .45 automatic, the .22 automatic, the screw-on silencer for the .22, two shoulder holsters for the guns, a black Kevlar bulletproof vest, a coil of black half-inch nylon rope, a small remote device with two rows of buttons about the size of a TV remote, a small empty black backpack, a pair of thin black gloves and a black cotton ski-mask with holes for the eyes and the mouth.

  He clicked on a small light above the counter top. The van’s side and back windows were painted black and a curtain was drawn across the compartment behind the driver’s seat to prevent any light inside the van from escaping. It was the inattention to details that got you caught.

  He pushed aside the other items from the canvas bag and closely examined the remote control. Tacked to a small bulletin board above the counter top was a diagram on a sheet of paper. It showed the exact function of each of the remote’s buttons. He took out a piece of paper from a drawer under the counter. He quickly drew up the layout of the buttons on the remote and, without looking at the diagram on the wall, jotted down the function for each button. When he finished, he checked his answers against the diagram on the board. Perfect. He knew it would be; he’d tested himself dozens of times already.

  The police scanner squawked again and he listened, then relaxed. Everything was in place. When it was time he would move the van closer to the Lamberth house.

  He reached up above the monitors and pressed the “Play” button on a small CD player he had strapped to a metal shelf there. He rolled his chair against the wall and leaned back again. The music started. Dvorak’s "New World Symphony."

  He watched the monitors flick from one image to another.