Bob nodded. ‘Revenge for your family. Finish that masterpiece you talk about all the time, the one you had me believing was the dog. But then all these staged murders, and this mysterious figure that kept disappearing. Tomás Gomez. Actually you told me everything I needed to know to flush you out, but I couldn’t put it together. Did you want me to stop you?’
‘No,’ said Mike. ‘But maybe I wanted you to understand me. Afterward, at least. That’s what every artist hopes for, right?’ He gave a cautious smile.
‘The thirst for revenge isn’t so hard to understand, Mike.’
‘But there’s more than that. There’s a message.’
Bob saw something moving on the chest of Mike Lunde’s white shirt. A red dot. SWAT had arrived.
‘But if there’s a message, surely you don’t have to kill innocent people.’
‘Gomez, Dante and Karlstad were not innocent people, Mike. Nor was the Milkman, or Die Man either. And Hector I shot only in the shoulder, I hope.’
‘I don’t know anything about any Milkman and Die Man, I’m thinking about these people in here.’
‘In here?’ For a moment Mike seemed not to understand. Then he started to laugh. Looked over at Mrs Patterson and the children as though he expected them to laugh along with him. ‘You surely didn’t think I would kill women and children that have nothing to do with this. I’ve explained to them. That the only reason they are here is to show that they could have been killed. By a depressed, free citizen with access to weapons, the Second Amendment and the District of Columbia versus Heller.’
Bob leaned over sideways, across SWAT’s line of fire. The red dot on Lunde’s chest vanished.
‘But now that you’ve made your point, shouldn’t you let them go?’
Mike shrugged. ‘It was all such a long time ago. Thirty years. Give or take a few minutes.’
‘The children are so afraid, Mike. Experiences like this leave their mark. And I’ll work just as well as your hostage.’
Mike looked at Bob in silence. Then he bent forward and picked something up from under his chair. It was the scalpel Bob had seen him using in his work.
‘Cut them loose.’
Bob took the scalpel from him, stood up and carefully continued to cover the line of fire between the display window and Mike Lunde as he cut the tape binding Mrs Patterson and the children. He indicated to the mother that she could pull the duct tape off their mouths, but either she didn’t understand or for some reason didn’t want to understand. Bob nodded toward the street, and she took her children by the hand and hurried them to the door.
‘Don’t forget Quentin,’ said Mike.
Both children at once broke away from their mother and ran back to the dog, lifting it, one at each end, and carrying it over to where their mother stood, holding the door open. She gave Bob a look that he interpreted as gratitude before she followed the children out. The store bell jangled merrily as the door slid shut behind them.
‘How long have we got?’ asked Mike. The rifle was now between his knees with the butt on the floor and his hands around the barrel, which was pointing up toward the ceiling.
‘Before they storm in? Fifteen minutes maybe.’
‘That’s plenty of time. Shall I make some coffee?’
‘I think it’s best that you sit right where you are. They’ve got snipers out there just waiting to get a sighting on you.’
‘Aha.’ Mike’s smile was sad and resigned. But not just that. There was something else. Hope, thought Bob. Like at a parting you know is final, at the same time as you sense something new and unknown lies ahead of you. Bob felt a little bit the same way.
‘So you want to tell me what happened?’ asked Bob. ‘Had you been planning this long?’
Mike Lunde shook his head slowly. ‘Tomás Gomez just happened to come in here one day. Just like you did. Said his cat was dead and Mrs White had recommended me. It was thirty years since the last time I saw him, he looked very different. But you know, it’s in the eyes. I never forgot those eyes. The eyes of the guy who killed my little girl in that parking lot. Who stood over me and was about to kill me too. We got a real good look at each other before he heard the police car coming and ran off. And even so, Gomez didn’t recognise me when he came into the store.’
‘They called him Lobo, he was a killing machine, you were just another number to him. Did you kill him straight away?’
‘No. I had several conversations with him. I went to his home and ate with him.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I took him to a studio up in Cedar Creek where I kept his stuffed cat. He was pleased with the job I’d done. I gave him coffee. With Rohypnol in it. When he woke up he was tied to a chair.’
‘I know, we found him. Why didn’t you kill him immediately?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘I think you had to act out those fantasies of revenge you’ve been living with these past thirty years. You tortured him.’
‘Yes.’
‘And did it meet your expectations?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I got sick, I had to throw up.’
‘Even though you’ve spent your whole life cutting up animals?’
‘It was the first time I had ever inflicted pain on a living creature. The worst thing was that Tomás regretted it. Talking together here in the store he never said in so many words exactly what he’d done, only that he’d caused untold harm to others, that he didn’t deserve to live. His gang life was behind him, he said, he worked casual jobs, but he still had nightmares every night. In that respect it might have been a harder punishment to let him go on living. Lonely, but haunted. But the torture at least gave me the name and address of the person he had bought the Uzi from, Marco Dante. I learned where his boss Die Man hung out. And that the detective I had trusted took bribes to keep any suspicion from leading to Tomás and Die Man and their gang. And I got his face. And the skin of his hands. When he was dead I took his clothes and the keys to his apartment.’
‘The rest of his body you freeze-dried.’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’
‘So Tomás Gomez bought the Uzi he killed your daughter with from Dante?’
‘That is correct.’
‘And after you shot Dante, you left enough clues and witnesses who saw you disguised as Gomez to make sure he would be the suspect.’
‘Yes.’
Bob glanced at his watch. ‘Tell me about Cody Karlstad.’
52
Kentucky Fried, October 2016
‘Isn’t that that guy who was in here?’ the customer said, gesturing with his beer glass toward the small, muted TV screen on the wall behind Liza. That was one of the things she’d change if she ever took over the place. Two big TV screens instead of one small one. But only for turning on when something was happening, something that brought people together. Super Bowl, presidential elections. Stuff like that.
She turned around to look.
It was KSTP-TV with a flashing BREAKING NEWS line above the picture.
A female reporter was talking to the camera. Behind her police cars were visible, and a big military-looking vehicle with SWAT in white lettering along the side. Then Liza saw the picture of a face in the upper-right corner of the screen. With the name under it: Bob Oz. MPD. With a trembling hand Liza grabbed the remote and turned up the sound.
‘...went inside and persuaded the hostage-taker to take him in exchange for the release of Jill Patterson and the two children. Bob Oz is now in there with the hostage-taker, who is believed to be the owner of the store. He is Mike Lunde, a fifty-eight-year-old widower.’
‘So, Shirley, you’re able to confirm that the officer involved is the same Bob Oz you met briefly two days ago at Track Plaza.’