Excerpt from VICTIM
by Gayle Wilson
Coming from MIRA in February 2008
“He’s gonna walk,” the voice in his headset warned.
“Son of a bitch,” Mac Donovan said.
The utterance wasn’t forceful. Mac had learned long ago
that he could do nothing about the vagaries of the system he
served. He was sworn to uphold it, even if it were wrong. As it
had been today.
“Taking him out the back?” he asked.
“That’s what they say.”
“Everybody in place?”
“He may not cooperate. He’s like that, you know,” Sonny
Cochran said, the last phrase sarcastic.
“Good,” Donovan responded, the single syllable sharp,
abruptly cut off. “Maybe somebody’ll shoot the bastard.”
There was soft laughter in his ear. “We should be so
lucky.”
They had all known how this would play out. The uniform
who’d responded to a fender bender had screwed up. As a result, the
evidence he’d discovered in the back of Samuel Tate’s van, the so-
called murder kit that would link him to the deaths of more than a
dozen adolescent boys, wasn’t going to come in.
This morning’s hearing had been little more than a formality.
There might have been some wiggle room if it had been the cop’s word
against Tate’s, but Phillip Gateau had managed to conduct his search
in front of the woman who’d bumped into the back of the killer’s
van. Once she’d been subpoenaed by Tate’s very expensive lawyer,
everybody within reach of a newspaper headline had known he was
going to walk.
“Okay,” Mac said. “Let’s assume he won’t cooperate. We
have to cover all our bases on this one.”
Given the nature of Tate’s crimes, the department would keep
him under surveillance. In light of the ruling that had just come
down, they couldn’t legally justify that tail, so it wouldn’t be
acknowledged publicly. Nor could it be obtrusive enough to allow
Tate to scream harassment to the judge.
But the bastard wouldn’t be able to take a piss without
somebody analyzing its color and the smell. Every move, every
breath he took, somebody would be watching Samuel Tate.
Damn little satisfaction, Mac Donovan acknowledged, but
right now, it was all he had.
Long shot, Sarah Patterson thought, crossing her arms over
her breasts. She put her gloved fingers in her armpits to keep them
warm.
She had known that waiting out here might be wasted effort, but
then, she had nothing to lose. Her lips tightened at the unintended
melodrama of the phrase. She had tried very hard during the last
three years to avoid that kind of self-pity.
She turned her head, her gaze sweeping the portico at the
front of the courthouse. There were people moving up and down the
steps, as there had been all morning. Heads down, briefcases
dangling as they climbed, they were going about their normal
business.
All the excitement was inside and out back. Sarah knew,
because she had gone there first, that the media was waiting in
force at the rear of the courthouse, along with a few of the other
parents. And the cops.
Which meant that’s where they intended to take him out, just
as the television news this morning had speculated. The media had
better sources within the justice system than she did, of course.
They always seemed to know what was going on.
All she knew was Tate. And that was because she had made it
her mission to know.
Once he’d been arrested, she had poured over every scrap of
information available. Every article. Every psychological
assessment. Every speculation. And there had been a lot of those.
She knew as much as there was to know about Samuel A. Tate.
Which was why she was waiting here instead of at the back with the
others.
Tate wasn’t going to do what the cops wanted him to. He had
beat the system, and he was going to glory in it. He was going to
publicly thumb his nose at the idiots who couldn’t even get
arresting him right.
Even if the evidence they’d uncovered had been allowed in,
he would still have found some way, Sarah thought, her bitterness
building. Some sleaze-bag lawyer. Or some bleeding-heart liberal
judge—
The internal tirade dissipated in an explosion of adrenaline as
her eyes focused on the slight figure emerging through the double
doors. She blinked to clear her vision, needing to be absolutely
sure.
And when she was, her chest tightened, squeezing the air
from her lungs. She didn’t notice, since she had already forgotten
to breath. She watched Tate instead, tracking his movement across
the porch toward the top of the granite steps.
A couple of flashbulbs went off. Apparently she wasn’t the
only one who had suspected Tate might come out here rather than at
the back. A microphone was thrust into his face, but he pushed it
away with one hand. He said something to the reporter who held it,
but she was too far away to hear the words.
Or maybe she hadn’t heard them because after her
identification of her son’s murderer, a cone of silence seemed to
have settled over her, blocking distraction. Her entire
consciousness was on the man at the top of the steps.
She didn’t move until he reached the first of them. Then,
unconcerned that someone might be watching, she slipped her right
hand into the opening of her purse, its long strap still over her
left shoulder.
As her fingers closed around the butt of the pistol it
contained, she began to climb the steps, going up them on the
diagonal as Tate began to descend. He came straight down, head
high, pushing arrogantly through the few members of the media who’d
been waiting for him.
They followed, mouths moving, obviously throwing questions
at him. Tate continued to ignore them, heading purposefully down
the steps.
Sensing that purpose, for the first time Sarah’s concentration
shifted, tracing the trajectory of his descent. At the foot of the
stairs a taxi waited. If she didn’t hurry, she realized with a jolt
of panic, he would be inside it before she could get close enough—
She began to run, no longer climbing the steps, but going
straight across them. She was aware subliminally of other people,
all of whom seemed to be converging on the spot where she was
headed. Their presence had no impact on her determination.
There was still no sound. The action played out in front of
her like a silent film. And now the only other actor—the only one
who mattered—was less than a dozen feet away, slightly above and to
her right.
Sarah stopped, holding the pistol in her outstretched right
hand. Her left settled under it, steadying the gun. Just as she
had been taught, she pointed the muzzle like an accusing finger at
the man coming down the steps. Infinitely calm, now that the moment
was finally here, she locked on her target, leading it slightly.
Don’t talk. Just shoot.
The words careened through her brain, as her hands and her
eyes continued to track her prey. Dan must have said them in a
hundred darkened movie theaters through the years. Transfixed by
what was occurring on the screen, he would whisper those words,
offering his warning to countless heroines tremblingly holding a gun
on the bad guy.
Shoot him. Don’t talk to him. Just shoot him, you stupid
bitch.
That was exactly what Sarah had planned to do. She had even uttered
Dan’s words over and over, preparing for this moment.
Now, despite what her intellect was telling her—had told her
from the moment she had thought of this—she knew that she needed him
to know. She needed Tate to understand for which of them he was
dying. In some sense, perhaps, what she was doing would be for all
of them, but the only way it would ever make any difference to
her was if Tate knew her son’s name.
“Daniel,” she shouted.
The dark, well-groomed head turned, everything happening in
slow motion. She had time to watch his eyes meet hers before they
fell to the gun. When they lifted again, they were slightly
widened, but there was no panic in them. Fastened on hers, they
were exactly the same pale, clear blue her son’s had been.
“His name was Daniel Patterson,” she said, no longer
shouting because he was near enough she knew he could hear her. And
because she had his full and undivided attention.
His head moved up and down. In agreement? Did that mean he
had known Danny’s name? Or did it simply mean he understood for
which of them he was about to die?
Tate’s descent had begun to slow, his gaze still locked on
her face. Shoot, don’t talk. Now she could. Now she could
kill him because she had told Tate Danny’s name.
Her finger closed over the trigger, beginning the slow
deliberate squeeze. Concentrating fiercely on the man in front of
her, she was totally unaware of the one rushing at her from the
side.
He reached her before her finger could complete the move it had
begun. He wrapped his arms around her, the momentum of his dive
carrying them both down the steps.
The gun was jarred out of her hand as they landed. She fell on
her left shoulder and hip, hitting the granite with incredible
force. They slid down the last few steps, their bodies locked
together.
Stunned by the impact of her fall, Sarah wasn’t sure at first
what had happened. One second she’d been standing on the courthouse
steps, pointing Dan’s pistol at the man who had murdered their son.
The next she was lying on the sidewalk, unable to breath. Unable to
escape the crushing weight of the man who had brought her down.
She turned her head to the side in time to watch Samuel Tate
duck into his waiting cab. She was near enough that she could smell
the fumes of the exhaust as it pulled away from the curb and
disappeared into traffic.
Only when it had did she become aware that pandemonium had
broken out around her. Someone was screaming. Someone else—and the
sound of this was very close—cursed, the words low and intense.
The noises rushed through her head like water over the stones
of a brook. Meaningless babble.
She looked up at the sky, the thick winter clouds over her head
mottled and gray until they blurred with her tears. And despite the
growing cacophony of noise around her, it was Dan’s voice that
echoed again and again in her head.
Shoot, don’t talk. Just shoot him, you stupid bitch.
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