The FBI man hadn’t been lying about the money, either. Probably not confiscated counterfeit bills, not the way he had them hidden—he had to give Mack the instructions twice, they were so damn complicated.

  While Mack was retrieving the agent’s stash—and making sure Conrad stayed wherever he’d put him—I used my ceramic knife to cut through the Rescue Tape down to the Coban, then pulled it back to inspect the wound. The sponge had done its work—it showed only faint traces of blood. I squeezed a tube of Dermabond tissue glue over the wound, sealing it closed almost as good as stitches would.

  “I guess you figured out I was a medic,” I told him. “You want a shot to put you out while we go back and dump the bodies?”

  “I don’t need that much. But something for the pain would be …”

  “This’ll make it all go away,” I promised, tapping a vein at his elbow.

  Conrad might have been shaking inside, but Mack whispered that his hands had been sure and steady on his equipment as he reloaded the Taurus.

  I couldn’t guess at what the FBI man might do if we’d let him come around. Probably not much—take a few days off, down with the flu. But whenever he went out to his garage and found the pickup hadn’t been used, he’d do something. And looking for me probably wouldn’t be one of those things.

  But I’d been warned off gambling a long time ago—the shot I’d given him made any guesswork unnecessary.

  I’d left the spike in his arm, and the length of rubber hose they’d think he’d used to bring up a vein. The tox screen would still be good, even if they didn’t find him until days later—and the three extra baby Ziplocs loaded with 90-plus-percent pure would answer any questions they had left.

  What else would a junkie do when he realized he had three bodies to dispose of, and was too wounded to drive? A nice little shot to relax himself, then he’d come up with an answer.

  The answer he’d always come up with before.

  But junkies aren’t good at forward-thinking, and he’d probably been pretty anxious when he took his last hit. He hadn’t had to use a needle. A well-used pipe was in his living room, behind some books he probably never read.

  “You’re one of us now,” I said to Conrad from my position in the backseat.

  He turned and looked at me. Not eye to eye, but closer than he’d ever done before. “How could I be—?”

  “You’re the one who broke this case, Conrad. It was your photo that started it off. And now you know exactly how that man ended up where you saw him … on the beach that night.

  “So you’ve just closed the case you opened, didn’t you? I mean, we’ve got one of the killers on video, not only confessing to the murder, but showing the weapon he did it with. Once you send that to the papers, what’s left?”

  “But he’s … I mean, that guy in the white jacket, he shot—”

  “Oh, you can show him doing that,” I said, as if it would dismiss any doubt a reasonable man might have. “Doesn’t change a thing. Remember, you can’t blow our cover, so be sure you edit—”

  “I … I know. I was your eyes, wasn’t I? But I don’t know how to get the … evidence to the papers. I mean, an e-mail with a photo-attach, that’s one thing, but—”

  “Oh, we’ll handle that part,” I assured him. “In fact, we’ll take all the tape and disks with us, how’s that? The cops won’t come into this. They won’t be able to trace it to you, but the papers, they’ll make sure everyone knows it came from the same freelance investigator who sent in that original picture. The one that started this whole investigation.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Guaranteed,” I promised.

  Once the cops saw those portions of the video we needed them to see—they had no choice about that, not with the leak to Undercurrents—the DA called another press conference, and proudly announced that no innocent man was going to be tried for a crime he couldn’t have committed.

  Not in his town.

  Homer was released into Mack’s custody. After dark, when it was safe. Mack’s first job was to take him over to that band of runaway kids, so Homer could see for himself that they were his friends, like he’d always believed they were, until the cops had taken him away.

  Mack told me and Dolly that the whole experience was actually a good one for Homer. “It’s important that he knows he has friends. It’s even more important that he learns to distrust things that don’t add up, instead of just listening to the voices.”

  That still left one more job.

  “He’s got to go,” I said to Mack.

  “Why? I mean, what could he actually—?”

  “I don’t know. What difference? He’s not right in the head. Sure, we took all the tapes and the camera cards, but …”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  “I wasn’t asking you to. I was telling you what’s going to happen. Tonight.”

  He looked at me. Hard, like he was expecting to see something new.

  “I’m going with you,” he finally said.

  “This is a lot of money,” Conrad said, looking at the stack of bills I’d handed him.

  “It’s the going rate,” I assured him. “You were the agency’s eyes and ears on this one, don’t forget.”

  “You said ‘freelance’ …?”

  “Exactly. Who knows when we might need you again? Could be a week, could be five years. But we know where to find you.”

  “And if I find something, how do I—?”

  “Do just what you did this time. Go through the papers. Hit them all, Undercurrents, too. We’ll be watching.”

  The word must have tripped a switch. Conrad’s hands started to shake. Maybe he picked up on what he had to know was coming next—maybe he’d been waiting on something like that his whole life.

  Mack made an “I’ve got this” gesture, and sat down next to the video man. “You don’t have to do what you’ve been doing,” Mack told him. “Not now. You don’t have to keep doing it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Yeah, you do. You understand just fine, Conrad. If you want, we can work together, turn that around.”

  “I don’t understand. What could—?”

  “I only work freelance for the agency, just like you,” Mack said, turning so he blocked Conrad’s view of me. “My work, my real work … I’m a therapist. So I understand why you … watch. And I’m saying you don’t have to. It’ll take some work, and—”

  “But he said I should keep—”

  “Sure. Keep watching. You’re an expert at it. But you don’t have to be watching for the same reasons.”

  “How do you know anything about …?”

  “Am I wrong?” Mack said, almost too soft for me to catch.

  When we drove away that night, Conrad was still breathing.

  Maybe not the safest possible move, but I wasn’t living that life anymore.

  Mack dropped me off. I was pretty sure I knew his next stop.

  When I slipped in the back door, my wife was waiting.

  “I’ll never get you involved in anything like that, Dell. Not ever again.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “You know I did,” my wife said. Very, very softly.

  And then it was just the two of us.

  Andrew Vachss is a lawyer who represents children and youths exclusively. His many works include the Burke, Cross, and Aftershock series, numerous standalone novels, and three collections of short stories. His works have been translated into twenty languages and have appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, and The New York Times, among other publications.

  The dedicated website for Andrew Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com.

 

 

  Andrew Vachss, Shockwave

 

 

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