The breathing stopped.
The flat crack of a supersonic bullet told Walt that a rifle had been fired. A silencer had muted the muzzle blast, but the exploding head on-screen relegated that thought to something he would only recall later.
“Reacquiring,” said the shooter.
“Fire at will,” said the second voice.
The two young men carrying the box had whipped their heads around at the sound of the crack, but they had no idea what had happened. By the time they looked down and saw their companion lying facedown in the water, the shooter had fired again. A second man shuddered, then staggered back and fell into the black water.
The third man dropped his end of the box and ran for the driver’s door of the SUV. Walt expected a flurry of shots, but none came. The SUV backed up with frantic speed. As the driver stopped to shift from Reverse into Drive, a third bullet shattered his window and blasted half his head across the passenger seat.
“Targets neutralized,” said the emotionless voice.
“Thirty points,” said the third voice. “Outstanding.”
The picture froze, and the sound stopped.
Walt sat staring at the screen, his heart pumping like a fist squeezing his trachea. What had he just seen? His gut told him military or police snipers operating during Hurricane Katrina, but he had no way to be sure. As his mind whirled in confusion, he heard a noise from the interior of the house.
Reaching down through the neck of his shirt, he pulled out the leather thong that held his derringer around his neck. Then he moved quickly into the hall. He heard the noise again, a loud clunk that he now recognized as the sound of an icemaker.
“Fuck,” he breathed, going back into Knox’s office.
Taking his seat again, he rifled through Knox’s drawers in search of a flash drive. In the third drawer, he hit pay dirt. A half-dozen thumb drives lay in a pile of old pens, yellow highlighters, and other office junk. Walt suppressed the urge to pocket them all, and instead inserted an orange one into the USB slot on the Dell. A minute later, he had a copy of the sniping video. He copied the hog-hunting video for good measure, then pocketed the flash drive and carefully replaced everything on the desk as he’d found it.
He was walking to the hall door when he heard a car engine on the street outside. The car seemed to slow near the Knox driveway, leaving Walt frozen like a statue in a cemetery, not daring to breathe. I’m too old for this shit, he thought. By the time the car drove on, Walt had abandoned his plan to search the house. He needed to get that video to a safe place before fate intervened and made it something the police found in a pocket on his corpse.
As he made his way back to the French doors that led to the patio, his derringer in his hand, a breathtaking inspiration struck him. A smile stretched his mouth. I’m holding the gun I used to kill Trooper Darrell Dunn. The murder weapon. Ballistics can prove it. How perfect would it be for that weapon to be found hidden in the home of Lieutenant Colonel Forrest Knox?
Walt stopped walking and looked around for a place to hide the gun.
CHAPTER 22
CAITLIN HAD HOPED to find Kaiser gone when she returned from Sheriff Byrd’s office, but as she pulled into the employees’ lot, she saw his black Crown Victoria parked against the wall. Pulling around the building, she parked in the visitors’ lot and headed for the front door.
As she passed through it, she came upon some sort of altercation between a haggard-looking woman of about seventy-five and Jackie Cullen, the paper’s receptionist. Jackie gave Caitlin a quick shake of her head, as though she should hurry past, but before Caitlin could manage it, she heard the overwrought woman say that no one but Caitlin Masters could possibly help her, and she wasn’t leaving what she’d brought with anyone else.
Something plaintive in the woman’s tone made Caitlin pause. Without taking time to think, she said, “Maybe I can help you, ma’am. What is it you need to see Ms. Masters about?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the old woman said, whirling on her.
As soon as the frustrated eyes lit on Caitlin’s face, they changed. “You’re her,” she said, her face softening. “Aren’t you?”
The old woman hadn’t a dab of makeup on her wrinkled face, and she was clutching a manila envelope to her chest like it held the deed to her ancestral home. She looked like nothing so much as a woman from one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs from the 1930s. A Dust Bowl wife. Caitlin forced a smile and said, “I am. And you are . . . ?”
The woman closed her eyes and wavered on her feet as though about to collapse. Then Caitlin saw tears trickle from the corners of her eyes.
“Virginia Sexton,” said the woman. “I’m Henry’s mother.”
Caitlin froze for a second, then rushed forward and put her arms around Mrs. Sexton to support her. The receptionist’s mouth dropped open, but Caitlin didn’t bother to explain. She was scanning the newsroom behind Jackie, searching for FBI agents. Seeing none, she took Mrs. Sexton by the wrist and led her into the nearby advertising office, which was about the only room John Kaiser was unlikely to enter.
“I need the room,” Caitlin said to the two salespeople sitting in the office. “Don’t tell anybody I’m in the building, and tell Jackie to say she hasn’t seen me. Got it?”
The younger of the two women nodded as she left the office.
“I’m so sorry you had to wait,” Caitlin apologized, leading Mrs. Sexton to a rather uncomfortable chair. “We get a lot of cranks demanding to see me or the editor, so the receptionist is overly cautious.”