Breaking Point_Kindle Serial Read online

  “Is it bad?” Lex asked, and Van Endel replied, “I don’t know yet. I don’t think Nelson did either. He knows where we live. Is that weird?”

  “He is a detective,” said Lex. “Tell them to get you a beeper. I need my sleep, and you know how hard it is for me to fall asleep right now.”

  Van Endel knew all about it — he’d been holding court on the couch for two weeks straight. “I will. Now that you mention sleep, though, you should get back to it. And don’t worry about me, the bad stuff already happened. This isn’t like putting the uniform on, at least I don’t think it is. Detective work seems more like cleaning up after a fire than trying to put one out.”

  “Well, you know what happens when you fuck with fire,” said Lex. “You get burned. Try not to get burned. And don’t give me that look. You know how you are, and you know I’m right. If there’s even the slightest chance to get your hands dirty, you wind up playing in the mud. Be careful,” she said, rubbing her swollen belly. “That’s all I ask.”

  “I will,” said Van Endel, as he slipped the shoulder holster over his body and then pulled the jacket on. He watched her eyes; she was staring at the gun. He grabbed her shoulder and said, “Just get some sleep. You’re not doing either of us any good when you don’t sleep. I’ll be quiet when I get in, OK?”

  She climbed into bed and said, “Just be careful,” then disappeared into the covers.

  Van Endel flipped the light off and walked from the bedroom. He stuck his feet in his shoes, laced them, and walked outside. Nelson was already there, standing outside the Crown Vic, eating a Snickers bar. Van Endel locked the front door and walked to him.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad,” said Nelson. “Pretty good chance it’s the same guy too. Shot up an Ace Hardware on Forty-Fourth Street, at least five dead, plus there's a woman headed to the ER as we speak.”

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “No clue,” said Nelson, dropping the wrapper of the now-gone bar to the floor, “but we got bigger fish to fry. Let’s go hit the hardware store, see if our boy left us any presents. Get in. I’m driving.”

  Van Endel rounded the car and got in. They were at the hardware store in twenty minutes. Neither of them spoke; the crackle of dispatch and responding officers’ chattering was all the discussion they needed.

  Nelson parked the car in the employee lot behind the store; there was a uni watching traffic, and Nelson flashed him his badge to get past the tape. Lit-up cherries were everywhere, but, mercifully, sirens were off. Nelson and Van Endel left the car. Nelson looked like he wanted a fight, Van Endel just tried to keep up. Two uniformed cops stood by a marked car just inside the yellow tape. Van Endel recognized them immediately: Steve Krebs and Walt Summers. Earlier in the afternoon they would have been his superiors; now he wasn’t sure what they were, aside from fellow cops.

  “How you boys doing?” Nelson asked, shaking hands with the pair of them. “Would I be correct in assuming that you men are familiar with my wet-behind-the-ears understudy?” Krebs and Summers laughed, and Van Endel shook his head. He was unable to resist the smile that crept at the corners of his mouth, inappropriate as it was at a crime scene.

  “Yeah, we know him,” said Summers. “Can’t say that I don’t prefer him in the blue.” Nelson shrugged, a yeah, but what are you gonna do? look. Krebs lifted the tape, and the detectives slid underneath it. Nelson whistled at the crime scene, and Van Endel just stared at it bug-eyed.

  “Shall we go for a walk, Detective?” Nelson asked, and Van Endel followed him past a sheet-covered body lying on the ground next to a car. Nelson walked through the propped-open front door of the hardware store, and the smell of iron met them as they crossed over the threshold. There was a massive bloodstain about twenty feet from the door, but no body, along with a real mess by one of the cash registers. Ignoring the blood, and Nelson, Van Endel walked to the register.

  There were three bodies, two women and a man. It was obvious that they had been killed by gunshots at close range. Basic identification was easy: one employee, two customers, all lying dead in a sea of what looked like Karo corn syrup that had been dyed red. Van Endel processed the deaths quickly, finishing with the dead man. He, like Clint at the McDonald’s, had spent his last moments trying to drag himself to safety. Van Endel walked to him and then followed a few red shoe prints that tapered off toward the back of the store.

  The footprints led Van Endel to the store’s gun counter, where it appeared that an attempted last stand had almost been staged. The clerk, dead and bent over the counter, looked as if he had been just a few nervous seconds away from loading a carbine. Too bad. Van Endel took in the scene, tried to analyze what had happened without Nelson in his ear cracking jokes, and felt like he was getting somewhere. Van Endel stepped away from the body as two men wearing lab coats came on the scene.

  The first was the head medical examiner, an old man named Lorne Patterson who had forgotten more deaths than most people would see in a lifetime. With him was a smiling black man whose ME card identified him as Tracy Vincent. At the moment, Lorne was directing Tracy on what to photograph, though it seemed to Van Endel that Tracy already knew what to shoot and was just playing along for his boss. Van Endel nodded at Tracy and got a nod back, along with a thumbs-up. Is there anyone in this town who doesn’t read the paper?

  After leaving the back counter, Van Endel considered where he would have gone if he were the perp. There were few options, and only one good one: back toward the front door. He might have heard people trying to escape, or it was possible that the clerk with the gun had spooked him. Van Endel walked through an aisle of yard tools, and when he came to the end of it, he stopped. The pool of blood that had been missing a body was almost undoubtedly the spot the EMTs had whisked an injured customer away from. Assuming she had been facing the door before being moved, Van Endel figured he knew the end game: the person who had been killed next to his or her car had lost a game of inches, by his estimation.

  Nelson interrupted his thoughts, appearing at his side from out of nowhere.

  “Thought I lost you,” said Nelson. “Sort of figured maybe this was a little too much for your first day.” He picked at a tooth. “Not that I would have blamed you for turning tail — it’s pretty heavy in here.” It was obvious from his body language that Nelson meant none of the last part, but Van Endel let it go. At least in some small measure, he’d proven himself to his older partner.

  “I think I got it figured,” said Nelson. “Our boy was at the gun counter, and the dead guy back there got a funny feeling about him. Maybe he was asking too many questions — who knows? Anyways, the old man thinks, The hell with this, and starts loading a gun when our perp’s back is turned, only when the perp comes back, old man isn’t ready for him. Everything after that just progressed naturally. I mean, as loud as that shot must have been, it’s a single gunshot in a hardware store. You get a couple, maybe people start booking it. One? No way. I’m a cop and I wouldn’t think gunshot, not after one. Nail gun, maybe. After that, I figure he hit the register, people started running, and he just started blasting. Could be there were even some that got away.”

  “I don’t see that,” said Van Endel, who missed the annoyed look Nelson threw his way. “I’ve got a whole different picture on this thing. I think the robbery aspect is secondary. I think he likes to kill, and that murder, not money, is the motivating factor here.”

  “Look, said Nelson, “don’t get me wrong, even jaded old me appreciates the enthusiasm. The thing is, though, that’s not how killers work. Guys like that don’t just run in somewhere and start blasting, they like to take their time. Like that sick clown Gacy — that bastard wasn’t going around shooting up places and raping everything in sight. He liked to get some privacy and spend some time alone with his victims, not just shoot them and walk away.”

  “I see him walking in, shooting the cashier and then the two customers,” said Van Endel, ignoring Nelson. “After that, he took the
cash as something to do, not a purpose for his mission. By the time he got to the guy at the gun counter, he was supercharged and that man didn’t have a chance.” Van Endel swallowed thickly, but he rattled on, like a roller coaster sans brakes. “Here’s the thing: this wasn’t a McDonald’s, this was a store that sold guns. I get that he was in a rush, but you saw that M1 back there — it’s lying on the ground. He wouldn’t have had to hop the counter to get it; he could have just taken it. That’s not a robbery. A guy looking to take and then leave? There’s no way that gun’s still on the floor.

  “I’m not saying this guy gets made like Gacy either,” continued Van Endel. “I see him more like Charles Starkweather.” Getting no sense of recognition from Nelson, Van Endel explained further. “Nebraska teenager who went on a killing spree that lasted months; he even brought his fourteen-year-old girlfriend along for kicks. My point is that these guys are all wired differently, and if he is expecting to get caught, he might even be blaming us for allowing this to keep happening.”

  “I got a robbery,” said Nelson. “Two robberies, with a whole stack of murders attached to them. Let me do my job solving them, and we’ll get you back to shoehorning winos into the drunk tank soon enough, all right?”

  Van Endel said nothing.

  “Fine,” said Nelson, “be pissed. That’s on you. I’m going to go back to the gun counter and run it through again. My way.”

  Ken showered before work. He tried to make himself hard again in his hand but had no success. His proximity to the killings had already faded enough that the emotions were washing off him like the soapsuds from his body. He shut the water off and stood there dripping. He could recall the murders — every fine detail of the chaos had been recorded in his mind for future enjoyment — so it wasn’t a question of memories. As he dried off, Ken thought he knew exactly what it was. He had been driven to killing by the intersecting fantasies of revenge and of a way out. So far, he had neither.

  Sure, there was a plan in place to kill Paula and the brats, but he felt like that was years away. For all he knew, he’d be killed or arrested after the next shooting, and then what was the point? That he’d survived killing a couple of people just so Paula could go on one of those fucking daytime talk shows that he despised and talk about her ordeal? That wasn’t good enough.

  Ken dried himself with a towel and walked to the bedroom. He dressed quickly in his work uniform and gave a quick look to the clock: he still had two hours before he needed to be there.

  He walked from the bedroom to the kitchen. Everything he’d left there the night before still sat on the table, except for the magic bullet in his pocket and the revolver, which was still on the nightstand. He’d considered picking up in case the cops decided to stop by, but figured if they were already looking at him, the table wouldn’t matter at all. He considered the pile of money, then sat down in the chair closest to it. He counted it quickly: his two robberies had netted him a grand total of $205.05; he wasn’t sure how the nickel had gotten in there. It wasn’t enough to do anything with, not anything real, in any case. Maybe that’s the problem.

  Ken had never considered the money angle in his little conquests, he’d taken it both times just because it was there. What if I killed people somewhere there would be money? A bank was the most obvious, but also seemed to be among the most dangerous of places to rob. Banks had surveillance cameras, sometimes even armed guards. He’d already decided after the near mistake of getting shot the night before that there would be no more attacking places with guns, so banks were definitely out, as were armored cars. A memory — one he wasn’t even sure when he had cataloged it — let him see a scene at a grocery store. One of the clerks had carried a drawer full of money to the office to end his shift, and he had watched.

  A bank drop is probably done that night to one of the machines, or more likely the next morning. Ken figured times. It was eight a.m., and he had to work at nine thirty. He’d be out of work between six and seven thirty that night, most likely, and could go immediately after. There was a grocer a few miles north that he could hit, further distancing himself from the other crimes. Figuring the times in his head, Ken put it all together. Rob the grocer tonight, then call Paula and make plans tomorrow. He’d have a little bit of money in his pocket, take care of the rest of the shit in the next day or two, and then go to ground. Just push a mop for six months or so, and then disappear. It was perfect.

  Ken rubbed the bullet through his jeans and then walked back to the bedroom to get the revolver. He wasn’t going to bring it to work, but there was no reason not to have it ready to go when he got home. Most grocery stores closed at nine o’clock. If he could get there ten minutes before closing, the store would be his, and anyone left in it would be forced to deal with the consequences. A plan in place, Ken felt peace slowly come back to him, even with the rotten workday ahead.

  Van Endel was exhausted when he woke up, exhausted as he quietly dressed, and exhausted as he got ready to walk out the front door. Lex had been asleep when he got home, and was still asleep when he got up for work. He was happy that she was getting the rest that she needed, but felt like shit about not being there for her, and not being there for their relationship. He didn’t feel like the couch was doing them any favors, and it wasn’t doing much for his neck either. He walked out the front door and locked it behind him, then went to the driveway and stopped in his tracks. Nelson was leaning on an unmarked car and smoking a cigarette. Unsure of what to say, Van Endel settled on “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “Yeah, old habits die hard,” said Nelson. He opened the driver’s-side door, then said, “Get in,” before closing it. Van Endel walked to the passenger door, opened it, and climbed inside. The car was already filling with smoke, and Van Endel cracked the passenger window. Phil in the driveway was not how he’d expected the morning to start. They’d spoken little after Nelson had shut down his ideas the night before, and hadn’t spoken at all on the way home. Van Endel had figured they were just going to meander along, solving nothing, until either they got lucky or the chief busted him back down. Nelson in the driveway was not on the map Van Endel thought he was following.

  “Bad news from the hospital,” said Nelson. “Our girl didn’t make it through the night. From the sound of things, she was a vegetable when they put her on the bus.”

  “That’s awful,” said Van Endel. “I figured you were picking me up so we could go talk to her.” Nelson nodded; he had a look on his face like he’d just eaten something that didn’t agree with his taste buds.

  “Listen, Dick,” said Nelson. “There’s something else. I was thinking about what you said last night, and I think maybe you might be onto something. Look, I know I’m a stubborn prick. I don’t mean to be, and I’d love to tell you I was going to change, but that’s not going to happen.” Nelson released a blast of smoke, then rolled down his window and flicked the butt out. “I was talking with the wife last night about your dumb-ass idea, and she thought it sounded pretty good. Then, when she laid it out for me, it sounded really good. Honestly, it made me feel like a fucking idiot. We can play it your way for a bit, as long as we don’t let my thoughts on the matter go away entirely. Remember, I like it as an idea. I’m not ready to hang my badge on it just yet.” Nelson grinned, and Van Endel was shocked that the man was serious.

  “All right, Phil,” said Van Endel, “I appreciate you coming around. On that note, I haven’t been back to the McDonald’s since the day of the shooting. Shall we head over that way?”

  “Can’t see why not.”

  They were there fifteen minutes later. Police tape blew in the wind, and there was a pile of flowers, cards, and stuffed animals laid as a memorial in front of the store. Nelson parked the car, and they got out and walked to the door. There was a sticker over the seam of the door advising people not to enter, and Nelson split the sticker with a car key, then pulled the door open. They walked in, and Nelson found a light switch. The bodies were gone, but the place was no
less miserable. It smelled of burgers and death, and the twin odors wouldn’t have a candle named after them anytime soon. Nelson walked to the counter where Van Endel had seen Calvin’s corpse and leaned against it.

  “You were here first,” said Nelson. “Tell me what you thought happened. You know what I mean — not when you were clearing, but when you thought about it later. You go first, then I’ll tell you where I’m at, and maybe one of us can convince the other one of the wisdom of his thoughts.”

  “All right,” said Van Endel, still not sure that he trusted this new version of Nelson. “I think he came in, possibly said something to Calvin the cashier, and then shot him. I think he took out the manager next and then went in the kitchen and shot the guy working back there. After that, he walked out here and saw Ms. Russow dumping garbage; he said something to her and shot her. That’s five bullets so far. Right here is where I think he decided to kill himself. Either he changed his mind or something went wrong with the gun.”

  “We’ll know which soon enough,” said Nelson. “If those lab results come back saying that the same gun was used in the hardware store, then we’ll know the gun was just fine.”

  “Maybe,” said Van Endel. “It could have been a misfire. It doesn’t happen often, especially in a revolver, but it can. That part doesn’t matter, though. What matters is motivation. I see the same empty cash registers that you do; I just don’t associate the theft with the motivation. I think he either took the money to throw us off or, far more likely, took it because there was no reason not to. I mean, there would be no reason not to take it — the cash is sitting right there and it’s the least of his concerns, as far as committing a crime goes.”

  “He came in, hit the till, and caught shit for it, from either the manager or the cashier,” said Nelson. “Bang, bang. He grabs the money, then he sees the guy flipping burgers in the back. So he goes and kills him, bang. Comes back out of the kitchen, sees Mrs. Russow, bang. He missed the kids, thank God, and that’s it. He came because he had a gun and he was desperate, there’s no reason beyond that. It’s like your thought process last night. I think he was looking to buy a gun, freaked out, and felt that he had to go out shooting after the old guy spooked.”