The Watcher in the Wall, page 29
Madison didn’t care. She just didn’t want to go back to high school. There would be teachers, the principal, guidance counselors, all of them watching her, asking questions. All of them concerned.
Really, though, it was the kids who were going to be the problem.
They cleared a path for her as she walked through the front doors and down the hall toward her locker. Madison could hear them whispering.
There she goes.
That’s the girl who fell for that Internet weirdo.
That’s Rudolph.
What a loser.
And at the end of the hall, like a pack of freaking hyenas, Lena Jane Poole and her little posse. They were watching her approach. Nudging one another. Whispering. Texting their friends.
Lena Jane’s smile got wider the closer Madison came. She could already hear the punch line, some bullshit cutting remark that would have the whole school in stitches. She could already feel her face going flush, hot tears in her eyes, nothing to do but keep walking and pretend to ignore it, pretend the whole freaking school wasn’t laughing.
Madison couldn’t do it. She bailed before she reached her locker. Veered off down another hallway, blinking back those tears. Pushed her way through a crowd to the nearest doorway, crying for real now, heard people laughing in her wake.
She had to get out of here.
She pushed open the door and burst out into daylight. Took a couple deep breaths, and kept going. She was at the far side of the school, facing the football field. She could cut underneath the bleachers and out the other side, jump the fence and disappear. Hitch to the bus station, the train tracks or something. Hop a freight and ride it somewhere far away. Anywhere would be better than here.
• • •
She was halfway to the bleachers when someone called out behind her. “Madison.”
Madison stopped. Recognized the voice, and considered ignoring it, knew Paul wouldn’t let her go until she’d at least talked to him.
She wiped the tears from her face, best she could, and turned around. Saw him standing behind her, twenty feet away, that old cocky grin on his face.
Awesome. This is the last thing in the world I need right now.
She scowled at him. “If you’re here to brag about how you saved my life, you can shove it,” she told him. “And I definitely don’t need to hear how you were right all along.”
Paul had his hands in his pockets. Studied her, and she knew he could see where her tears had smeared her makeup. “I’m not here to brag.”
“Bull. You’ve probably been waiting for this moment since you heard I got saved.”
Paul took a couple steps toward her, slow, like she was a wild animal or something. “I heard they caught the guy. In, like, Louisville or something. I heard there was some big crazy shootout.”
Madison hesitated. Then she nodded. “The FBI killed him.” She remembered the two agents, the younger black woman and the older man.
“He sounded like a real freak,” Paul said. “Like he was seriously off his meds or something. Totally insane.”
“Yeah, and I fell for it,” Madison said. “How freaking dumb do you have to be?”
“You helped the FBI stop this guy. Think about how many other kids he could have killed. You’re pretty much a hero.”
Madison scoffed. “Some hero.”
“You are, you know.”
“Yeah, and? What’s the point? I went through all that crazy shit, nearly died, embarrassed the hell out of myself, and, wow, look at me, I’m right back here where I started.”
“Better than being dead.”
“You sure? Everyone hates me here. I have no freaking friends in the entire state.”
“You have one friend,” Paul said.
Madison glared at him. “You’re just saying that because you want in my pants.”
Paul held up his hands. “I’d settle for you not being dead. Rhodes’s history class is a mausoleum without you.”
Madison didn’t say anything. She wished Paul would go away and leave her alone, and at the same time, she didn’t.
“You called the police on me,” she said. “You promised you wouldn’t do it, but you told them where I went.”
“They put out an Amber Alert for you,” Paul said. “Nobody knew where you were. If I didn’t speak up, that freak would have murdered you. And he’d probably still be on the loose.”
“Still,” Madison said.
“I had to make sure you stayed alive. You owe me a hundred and seventy-five bucks.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. I don’t think anyone’s going to let me out of their sight long enough for me to change my clothing, much less let me get a job.”
The bell rang. Resonated through the school yard.
“First period,” Paul said. “I take it from your sudden and dramatic exit that you’re thinking about skipping out.”
“Not thinking about it, doing it. I was right in the middle of it when you interrupted.”
“So where are you going?”
Madison looked across the football field. The city skyline in the distance. She didn’t have enough money for another bus ticket. And who was she kidding? She wasn’t going to be hopping any freight trains.
“I don’t know,” she said. She thought about turning around, walking back inside, into math class, showing her face as everyone stared. Felt fresh tears well up in her eyes, sniffed and turned away. “I just don’t want to be here, is all.”
Paul didn’t say anything. She waited. Wondered if he was rethinking the whole following-her thing. If he’d turned and left her and gone back to class.
She turned around halfway—nope, Paul was still there. He wasn’t smiling, not that cocky smile. “So let’s not be here,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else for a while.”
She frowned. “Like where, exactly?”
“Dunno. There’s a diner on Broad Street that does a pretty good breakfast. You ever had chicken and waffles?”
She shook her head.
“You hungry?”
“I mean,” she said. “I guess so.”
“So let’s go. We can plan your great escape while we’re eating.”
He started across the school yard toward the football field, stopped and looked back at her. The cocky grin was still gone. And he was a heck of a lot cuter, she decided, without it.
“You’re just doing this because you want to get laid,” she said, walking to catch up.
“Nah. I just want my money back.”
She punched him. He laughed. They kept walking, skirted the football field and left the school behind, the judgment, the staring, all that Rudolph crap.
Maybe I won’t run away again, Madison thought. Maybe not yet.
< 139 >
“So you killed him.”
Harris tented his fingers and leaned back in his chair, studied Windermere across his desk.
Windermere nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. Beside her, Stevens said nothing.
“Shot him eight times, the report said,” Harris continued. “In the process of disarming him and attempting to save the life of one Earl Sanderson.”
“Yes, sir,” Windermere said.
A week had passed since Randall Gruber had died in that Louisville hospital. Since Stevens and Windermere had saved Louisville agent Bill Wheeler, while failing to save Earl Sanderson, plus a neighbor from Sanderson’s building, plus Curtis Donovan and an Indiana state trooper.
Plus Adrian Miller and the rest of Gruber’s victims.
Stevens and Windermere had spent the week mired in paperwork, checking in on Wheeler in their free time, on Laura Dwyer, the woman in Sanderson’s apartment. Dwyer didn’t have much to say about Earl Sanderson. She didn’t exactly seem overjoyed he was gone.
“Yeah, he was a bastard,” she told Windermere. “He was a mean, rowdy old prick, and sometimes he got rough. But he paid his half of the rent, didn’t he?”
She’d refused treatment for the bruise under her eye, told them all she wanted was to be left alone. Stevens and Windermere gave her space. Watched her walk out of the FBI office after giving her statement, and that was the last they saw of Laura Dwyer.
They ducked in on Rosemary McCarthy, too, Randall Gruber’s old doctor. Figured she might as well hear from them how Gruber’s life had played out. The doctor had listened, her face more sad than surprised, turned to stare out her window when they’d finished the story.
“Randall was just a boy when I treated him,” she said. “He was traumatized, severely, but there was still a child inside. To the last day I saw him, I imagined there was something I could do to help him work through what had been done to him, what he’d done. I’d hoped there was a way he could, well, survive it.”
Stevens and Windermere said nothing. There was nothing to say, no good response. Randall Gruber hadn’t survived what he’d endured in that trailer. He might have done, Windermere knew, but she’d killed him, in cold blood. And she still wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
• • •
“Every officer’s report I’ve read says that the killing was justified, Agent Windermere,” Harris said. “Says Randall Gruber would have shot you and escaped if you hadn’t put him down. Is that true?”
He regarded her over the desk. Windermere hesitated. Knew the Louisville PD officers had sided with her in their reports. Knew Stevens had probably done the same. Knew it wouldn’t matter a lick to anybody in the whole damn world that she’d gone overboard on Randall Gruber, let her feelings get the better of her. Knew Harris would be glad to sweep the whole thing aside, move on to another case.
But Windermere knew she didn’t feel the same way.
She looked Harris in the eye. Let out her breath. “No, sir, those reports aren’t true. I appreciate that my colleagues were trying to cover for me, but I didn’t have to kill Randall Gruber. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“You’re saying that you didn’t need to use deadly force,” Harris said. “That you could have subdued Gruber without him risking the lives of any other innocent bystanders.”
“I let my personal feelings cloud my judgment, sir,” Windermere told the SAC. “He was disarmed and immobilized, and I could have let up on him without endangering anyone, but I didn’t.”
She glanced at Stevens. Then back at Harris. “I lost control. I let my own feelings take over when I should have been impartial.”
Harris didn’t say anything. Pursed his lips and studied her across the desk. Flipped through the case file.
Finally, he sighed.
“This case would have been a whole lot more complicated if Gruber had lived,” he said. “Teenagers or no, what Gruber was doing on those forums was still arguably protected by his First Amendment rights. We initiated our investigation on legally questionable ground, Agent Windermere. You could have brought him in from underneath that bridge, locked him up and put him on trial, and seen your whole case shot to pieces by some defense attorney with a bug up his ass.”
“But I didn’t,” Windermere said. “I killed him without giving him the benefit of a trial. I overstepped my bounds as an FBI agent, sir. I—”
Harris held up his hand. “We both know what Gruber was doing was wrong, Carla,” he said. “It was sick and it was twisted, and it goes against the spirit of every law on the books. Nobody in the world is going to fault you for what you did.”
Windermere started to argue. Started to tell Harris how it didn’t matter what Gruber did, that it mattered what she’d done, that she’d blacked out and emptied her clip into a bad guy instead of acting how she’d been trained.
But Harris cut her off.
“I’m not going to discipline you for what you did down there, Agent Windermere,” he said. “You want some time off to talk to a shrink about what happened, that’s fine by me. But you know and I know that that maniac had it coming. I’m not about to lose sleep over the fact that my best agent got a little overzealous on a man who’d just finished a killing spree.”
Windermere said nothing. Knew there was nothing she could say that would sway her boss. What was she going to do, beg him to suspend her? She kept her mouth shut.
“Far as I’m concerned,” Harris said, closing the case file and standing, “this case is closed. Good work to you both. Take a couple days off and then bring me another one.”
Harris shook Stevens’s hand. Nodded to Windermere. She hesitated another moment, her legs unsteady, feeling like she was walking through quicksand. She’d wondered how this meeting would go. Agonized. Knew she had to pay some kind of penance for what she’d done.
She hadn’t expected Harris to brush off her concerns so readily. But he had. And that was pretty much that.
“Yes, sir,” she said, turning and following Stevens to the door. “Thank you, sir.”
< 140 >
Windermere walked back through CID to her own office. Felt Stevens beside her, but said nothing. Her partner said nothing, either.
Mathers was waiting at the door. Windermere ignored him, too. Unlocked the door and walked in, sat behind her desk, looked around, opened her filing cabinet and started to organize the case’s paperwork, just for something to do. Knew both men were watching her, didn’t want to meet their eyes. Figured she’d kill some time for a bit, duck out early. Grab a six-pack of beer and hide out somewhere and think for a while. Maybe pick up a carton of smokes, too.
Stevens sat down at his desk. Mathers hung around in the doorway, leaning against the wall. Watching her. She ignored both of them until she couldn’t anymore.
“What?” she said. “What are you staring at?”
Mathers cleared his throat. “We’re just worried, Carla,” he said. “We want to know you’re okay.”
Like a goddamn intervention. Windermere gathered a stack of paper from her desktop and swiveled in her chair to file it away, her arm aching through the bandages where Gruber had slashed her. “I’m fine, Derek,” she said. “Fine as I’m going to be, I guess.”
“You know Harris was right,” Stevens said. “There’s no need to feel ashamed of what you did back there, Carla. That bastard had it coming a hundred times over.”
“Yeah, but what if he didn’t?” Windermere said. “What happens the next time, when it’s not so cut-and-dried? What if I lose it on a guy who’s just probably guilty?” She shook her head. “Heck, in the eyes of the law, Gruber wasn’t even a criminal before we came along.”
“He killed four people with his own two hands,” Stevens replied. “He was a criminal, all right.”
Windermere kept her head in her filing cabinet. Avoided his eyes, Mathers’s, too. “Anyway, it’s not about him,” she said. “It’s about me. I’m an FBI agent. I’m not supposed to be losing my cool like that. I’m sure not supposed to be emptying my clip into defenseless people, even if they are criminals.”
Stevens didn’t say anything. Neither did Mathers. They waited until she’d shuffled around enough paper to fill a Russian novel, waited until she’d run out of things to do and had to look up again.
“So, okay,” Mathers said. “What are you going to do?”
Windermere exhaled. Tried to set her jaw, fake being hard, determined, confident. Knew she couldn’t do it, knew she shouldn’t even try. Knew she should talk about her situation, about Wanda and Rene, about the way she heard their voices and hated herself every time she looked in the mirror.
She felt tired. She felt really damn tired.
“I just need to be alone,” she said.
< 141 >
They left her alone.
Took some convincing, some raised voices, some threats. Took Windermere getting angry, pushing both men away. Finally, they left her. Mathers retreated to his cubicle, tossed a meaningful look and a raised eyebrow over his shoulder at Stevens as he left. Stevens backed away, too, to his desk on the other side of the room. Spent his time staring at his computer screen, clicking buttons, though she could feel his eyes on her whenever she looked away.
Just leave me alone, she thought. Just let me handle this myself; is that really so hard?
She knew this was wrong. She knew she was crazy for pushing them away, knew she’d never climb out of this funk on her own.
But she didn’t know how to talk to them. Couldn’t find the words without sounding like a victim, so she bolted. Shut down her computer and locked up her files, grabbed her coat and walked out of the office without a word to Stevens, cut behind Mathers’s desk so he wouldn’t see her. Hit the stairs and took them fast, figuring Stevens and Mathers would probably chase her, hurried through the security checkpoints in the lobby and out to her daddy’s Chevelle.
She climbed inside. Turned the key in the ignition and fired up the big 396 and listened to the engine rumble and considered the possibilities. Take a couple of days, Harris had said. Well, she could do that. She could drive off somewhere, some small town with a motel and a bar and a liquor store, disappear and be self-destructive by herself for a while.
She put the car in gear. Backed out of her stall and revved and roared out of the lot. Caught Stevens and Mathers coming out through the front doors, scratching their heads, watching her go. Felt a perverse sense of satisfaction at how helpless they looked, how lost.
So long, boys. Supercop’s gotta go.
• • •
She drove. Aimless, at first. Took the interstate southbound, I-94 down through Minneapolis, then I-35, a straight shot, until the city faded away to flat fields and farmland, the occasional lake. She’d lived here nearly four years, a transplant from Miami, still hadn’t spent much time outside the Twin Cities. She was doing it now, though, driving, her foot heavy on the gas pedal, the sun arcing down toward the western horizon.
Her phone wouldn’t stop blowing up, the first hour or so. Stevens and Mathers both, then Drew Harris, too. Voicemails and texts, everybody concerned. Windermere ignored them. Relished the silence every time the phone stopped buzzing. Figured, sooner or later, it would stop buzzing for good.
