The Meridians(7)

"Without what?" she asked, putting as much venom into it as possible. It weakened her terribly, but she had just seen her husband taken away in handcuffs, for goodness sake. "What are you looking for?"

"We're," said Cody, and gulped before continuing. "We have to examine you, Mrs. Randall."

"What are you looking for? Tell me!" she entreated, falling back once again to her bed, hot tears coming to her eyes.

Doctor Cody shared a glance with the nurse, who shrugged. Then he finally looked back at Lynette and said, "Bullet wounds, Mrs. Randall. We're looking to see if you've been shot."





***





4.

***

It was only a moment.

Only a moment, but it seemed like forever: that instant between the death of his family and his own first brush with death. In spite of working in the LAPD for the better part of a decade, and working with Homicide for a good portion of that, Scott Cowley had never before drawn his gun. And now here he was with gun in hand, holding it even as he held onto his family's bodies.

That was what saved his life.

After that first instant, that first instant where he felt the loss of Amy and Chad as keenly as though he had been suffering their loss for years instead of only nanoseconds, he heard a noise.

It was a scuff. The sibilant scrape of a shoe on pavement, the sound of someone trying desperately to remain silent in an alley that was littered with trash and detritus and blood and bodies.

And Scott knew. He knew in that instant who was behind him. He knew what had happened, and what was going to happen if he didn't make the next move.

They were executed.

The thought tore through him like a lightning bolt, like a flash fire through dry brush. But he knew that it was more than a random firing of grief-stricken neurons. Either through cop sense or instinct or some other, deeper understanding of the universe that he had no name for, Scott knew that his family had not just been killed, they had been murdered to send a message.

Swampy.

That had to be what had happened. Only a few months before, Scott had secured the critical evidence that led to the indictment of Fredrick "Swampy" Marsh. Swampy was still years away from a conviction, but the fact was that he was going to be convicted. Swampy was a gang lord in Los Angeles, the leader of the East End Thugz, one of the less reputable groups that periodically scored the L.A. landscape with gunfire and grief. Cops like Scott had implicated him in dozens of murders - some ordered, some probably performed with his own hands - but only Scott had actually managed to find hard evidence. A dead girl's wallet and blood traces in the trunk of the car of Swampy's right hand man were enough to squeeze that little bastard until he finally agreed to rat out his boss.

So Swampy was in jail.

But even in jail, even in solitary confinement, prisoners had ways of getting through to the outside world. Had ways of making connections.

Of making contracts.

And Scott knew without a doubt that what had just happened to his family was the result of one of those contracts. Swampy had somehow gotten word out from the Federal lockdown; had put word out that an example had to be made. That a cop who stood against him was as good as dead - him and his family both.

Oh, God, no, thought Scott, the realization of what had happened, of what had been done to his family - of what he himself had done to them - crushing him with the force of iron bands around his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He couldn't think.

Until the voice.

"Swampy says -" began the voice.

And Scott acted automatically. He turned in the instant between words; in the silence between breaths. He turned and aimed and fired in a single motion that was so fast it was a blur even to himself.

He had an instant to see the surprise on the man's face, and that instant was enough. It was enough to utterly burn the man's face and form into his consciousness as indelibly as a scar on his brain.

The man was of medium height and medium build, wearing a gray suit with a nondescript open-collared shirt and shoes that were nice but not too nice. The clothing told Scott instantly that he was not dealing with one of Swampy's thugs, or even one of his more elite hitters. No, this was a professional, a man who dressed to avoid notice, who dressed in such a way that the eye was invited to slide off him rather than reside on him for long enough to form a clear mental picture of face or body.

But Scott was not just anyone. He was a Homicide Detective. And more than that, he was husband to a murdered wife, father to a murdered child. He memorized everything about what the man was wearing in that single instant he had, down to the subtle zig-zag pattern of the weave on the man's gray suit coat.

The face was similar to the suit. It was gray. Nondescript. The hair was a light brown, and receding slightly at the temples. He looked like any of a thousand middle-aged businessmen who hustled through the city on a daily basis, trying to do nothing more vicious than claw their way up on some anonymous corporate ladder.

Only the man's eyes were arresting. Like the rest of him, they were gray. But they were not the slate gray of a human's eyes. Rather, they were the soulless gray eyes of a predator; of a man who has exchanged his services of death for cash so many times that he was no longer, in fact, a man, but just one more animal in the jungle. A rogue beast that no longer hunted to survive, but hunted for the simple fact that hunting was the only way he had left to feel.