Killed in Action Read online

  Helen picked up the phone. Josh had promised he would call her at 12:20 EST sharp. It would be seven hours ahead in Syria, 7:20 p.m.

  He was a little late.

  Josh’s face brightened on the LED screen. He had his iPad propped up on a desk in some big, drab room. Army personnel were around him. She noted a big white chalkboard with data she couldn’t read and blue crisscrossed arrows. Above it were pinned up grainy surveillance photos of Jihadist terrorists. Josh was holding a small black-and-white photograph in his hands. He looked strained, his uniform disheveled, but he smiled and said, “Hey, Mom.”

  “What happened?” she asked immediately.

  “We were assisting a YPG militia unit at a village called Al Tabqah. We needed to evacuate the villagers, but we got hit by a Jihadist patrol.”

  “How many causalities?”

  “Twenty-six villagers, fourteen fatalities, the rest badly wounded. My forehead got grazed by a bullet, which is no doubt what you’re staring at, but you know how hardheaded I am. Barely left a scratch.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “We’re headquartered in a team house in Ar Raqqah.”

  Colonel Michael G. Ralston crowded into the frame on the LG screen. “Hey, Helen.” He smiled. “You look beautiful.”

  “I thought you had my son’s back, Gunner.”

  “He did,” Josh said. “If he hadn’t hauled me behind an overturned fruit cart in the marketplace, that bullet would have done more than leave a scar.”

  “It was pretty intense for a few minutes,” Gunner admitted. “The enemy patrol was taken by surprise. They had no idea a Syrian Rebel force was at the village.”

  “And what were you doing there? You’re supposed to be observing.”

  Gunner’s wide smile flashed again, but no part of it was in his eyes. “We were observing. Close to.”

  Josh handed Gunner the photograph.

  “Is that our guy?” Gunner asked him.

  “I’d say so.”

  Gunner nodded, looked back at the iPad. “I’ll let you chat to your son, Helen. We’ve got an AAR meeting in five.”

  He moved away. Murmured voices continued in the background. Helen was glad she couldn’t hear what was being discussed. Her entire world revolved around the concept of peace. Seeing the reality of war—especially when it involved her oldest son—jarred her.

  “You found a terrorist you’ve been looking for?” she asked Josh.

  “I can’t be a hundred percent certain. We’d been told he was killed in one of the Turkish air strikes. But he was alive and well two hours ago.”

  “You’re really all right?”

  “Fine. I called to see how you are.”

  “Up to my ass in alligators. There was an exodus of thousands of refugees, mainly women and children, from villages in North Darfur this week. They’re being sheltered at our UNAMID base in Um Baru. I’m dealing with the local authorities, but they don’t give a fuck about human rights violations.”

  Josh said chidingly, “Language, Mom.”

  “Yeah, I know. There’s been a complete failure by the Darfur government to take initiatives against endemic impunity.”

  “That’s why you work for the UN. To try and instill a sense of morality into them.”

  “Yeah, right,” Helen said. “So far all I’ve done this morning is shout and cajole and threaten.”

  “Sounds like a good start. But you’re okay?”

  “I went off my meds two days ago and I’ve been jumpy and skittish and not sleeping well.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was getting terrible headaches. My head is a little better today, until I saw that bullet graze on your forehead.”

  “No big deal. Have you heard from Tom?”

  “Not this week. Your brother has got a test on his Arabic culture and it’s giving him fits.”

  “But he’s still in Istanbul?”

  “Of course. He’s cramming like he was back here at NYU for a math test.”

  “Do you have a phone number you can reach him on? I want to wish him good luck.”

  “Sure, I’ll text it to you when we hang up.”

  Gunner stepped back into the frame of the LG screen. “Gotta take him away, Helen,” he said apologetically.

  “Okay. Call me tomorrow at the same time, Josh. Promise?”

  “If I can. Go back on your meds or you’re in trouble. Bye, Mom.”

  The image of her oldest son disappeared from the screen. That he was so far away, within Jihadist territory, scared the hell out of her. But there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  Helen dropped the phone into her Dior jacket, took another bite of her sandwich, and looked over again at the nonviolence symbol of the huge knotted gun.

  If only it really meant something.

  CHAPTER 9

  McCall walked up to a four-story redbrick apartment building on the corner of Tenth and Avenue C. An iron fire escape came down from the fourth floor with balconies of wrought-iron filigree to the second floor, where a final ladder could be lowered down to the street. Ten limestone steps led up to a wooden apartment door. Two big concrete pots of flowering shrubbery rested on either side of the stairs, but the plants had wilted and died about the same time the Pittsburgh Pirates won their last World Series. Sixteen black garbage bags had been lined up outside the building at the curb. They were ripped, and part of the trash had spilled out onto the sidewalk.

  McCall climbed the steps. The front door was unlocked. He stepped into a narrow hallway that smelled of cat piss, disinfectant, and stale pizza. There was no elevator. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door of apartment 2B. He could hear a television faintly playing. Footsteps ran to the door, a shadow darkened over the keyhole, then four dead bolts were thrown back and the door opened. The sound of the TV show magnified—a lot of scary, thundering music.

  In the doorway stood a faded blonde in her midthirties, not unattractive, but a little gaunt, with bright green eyes and full lips. Her hair was piled up on her head. She wore a black New York City skyline sweatshirt over gray sweatpants and blue sandals.

  “You must be the Equalizer.” She caught her breath. “No one else looking like you would come knocking on my door. I’m Linda Hathaway. Please come in.” McCall stepped into the hallway of the apartment. “I can’t call you Mr. Equalizer.”

  “My name is Robert McCall.”

  “I just got my daughter back from day care and the babysitter will be here in less than an hour, so I’m a little rushed.”

  “You work nights?”

  “Yeah, and the weekends. Come with me, please.”

  She indicated a door off the narrow hallway. McCall followed her through it into a large living room, nicely, if inexpensively, furnished. The carpet was strewn with toys and a blue Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends train was derailed around big yellow tracks. A three-year-old blond moppet was sitting on the floor in front a flatscreen TV watching a cartoon. In it a purple dog in a dark cave was cowering away from a huge wolf with prominently featured teeth.

  The little girl looked up at McCall. “His name is Courage the Cowardly Dog, but he’s not really cowardly, he’s very brave.”

  “I allow her an hour on the Cartoon Network before I have to go to work,” Linda said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “A diner in Chelsea. The New York Minute?” Linda shook her head when he didn’t respond. “Not the kind of place you’d go to. There’s so much grease in the kitchen I’m surprised the place hasn’t burned to the ground.” She suddenly smiled. “Wow, I’d be fired in a New York minute if my boss heard me say that.”

  “I won’t tell him.”

  “I suddenly feel very foolish having called you. I don’t think there’s a thing in the world you could do to help me … but I’m at my wit’s end and … I just don’t know what to do.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Gemma, come over here, okay, honey? J
ust for a minute.”

  Gemma reluctantly tore herself away from Courage the Cowardly Dog and got up and walked over to them. She was wearing a pretty sunflower dress, her feet bare.

  McCall could see the problem immediately.

  Red, angry bites were on the little girl’s face and up and down her arms. “They’re rat bites,” Linda said. “I took her to the ER this morning. They put some antiseptic cream on the bites, said the inflammation will die down by the weekend, but it takes forever for them to fade away.”

  “This has happened to her before?”

  “Twice.” Linda tousled her daughter’s hair. “Okay, thanks, honey.”

  Gemma ran back to her place on the floor and watched her program. She noticed with a frown that Thomas the Tank Engine had toppled over and set him back up on the yellow tracks.

  “Let’s talk in the kitchen, if that’s okay,” Linda said.

  McCall followed her into a bright kitchen with old appliances and worn-out cabinets. Linda put together dinners for the babysitter to put into the microwave for her and Gemma.

  “I put out rat poison, but you’ve got to be so careful with a three-year-old around. I’ve actually killed four big rats in the last six months—and I mean huge, like they were out of some horror movie—and threw them into the garbage, but they keep coming back.”

  “Did you report it to your super?”

  “He’s a fat, lazy slob who watches more television during the day than Gemma does, probably the same channel, and smells like a brewery. He says he’s put out traps, but I’ve never seen them.”

  “Who owns the building?”

  “I don’t know, some CEO of some big corporation. I think he owns a bunch of apartment buildings in Manhattan and Queens. I went to city hall and signed a formal complaint, and they did nothing. No one’s going to do a damn thing just because my brat got some rat bites.” Linda stopped making her dinners and turned to McCall. Now tears were brimming in her eyes. “But my daughter’s suffering. Those bites sting. I have to check under her bed every night and show her there are no rats under there the size of fat raccoons. I’ve talked to other people in the building, and they’re sympathetic, but they all have their own problems in this place.” She went back to her macaroni-and-cheese plates and ham sandwiches.

  “You’re a single mom?”

  “How could you tell? Do we have an aura about us?”

  “No family picture in the living room. No husband you turned to.”

  “He left me right after Gemma was born. Good riddance, but it’s been tough.”

  “Would you allow me to take pictures of those bites on Gemma’s face and arms?”

  “Okay.”

  Linda hustled back into the living room. McCall took out his iPhone and followed her.

  “Gemma, honey, stand up for a minute and stand very still,” Linda said. “Mr. McCall is going to take some photos of those awful bites.”

  Gemma jumped up and stood awkwardly, like she was in a fashion photographer’s studio and didn’t like it. McCall took several pictures of her face and both of her arms with his iPhone. Linda raised Gemma’s sundress up a little so he could take pictures of the bites on her legs. He checked the photos and put the iPhone away.

  “I need to leave and you need to finish getting dinner ready.”

  Linda Hathaway escorted McCall down the hallway and opened the apartment door. She searched his face with her bright green eyes. “I don’t know a damn thing about you.”

  “All you need to know is that I’m going to help you.”

  “Why should you care? And don’t say, ‘Someone has to.’”

  McCall smiled. “Someone does have to. Put out more rat traps. Keep reassuring your daughter by looking under her bed at night. I’ve got this.” He stepped out into the dim corridor.

  Linda caught his arm, turning him back. “Do you really?”

  “Yes. I’ll be in touch with you, Linda.”

  As she closed the door, there was a cry from her daughter, but McCall didn’t think she’d been attacked by another huge rat. He thought Courage the Cowardly Dog was probably fighting for his life.

  * * *

  McCall didn’t know what he expected to find in the alleyway. Detective Lansing had allowed him to read Megan Forrester’s police report, but the lights from Essex Street barely permeated the concrete tunnel. If this had been a black-and-white 1940s detective movie starring Bogie or Robert Mitchum, McCall might have found a dropped matchbook from a ritzy bar with a name or a phone number written on the inside.

  There was no matchbook.

  A shadow moved to his right.

  McCall whirled to see a young man stumbling out of a back doorway to one of the buildings. He was wearing dark jeans, a gray hoodie over a green Polo shirt, and black Adidas Cosmic Boost running shoes so old they looked to be unraveling. McCall grabbed the man’s arm before he could bolt. The hoodie fell back to show straggly dark hair shot through with a little gray, a narrow face, and a pathetic scrawl of beard. He had small hoop earrings in both ears and a ring pierced over his top lip. He stank of sweat, sweetened with a little Old Kentucky bourbon. But it was his eyes and eyebrows that chilled your blood. The eyes were so pale blue as to almost disappear into their sockets. The eyebrows were like a fine white powder you could just blow away. McCall figured the melanin pigments for brown, black, and yellow colorations were missing. But not all of the albino characteristics were there. His eyes were red rimmed, as if he’d been crying, but that may have been a permanent condition. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

  “I didn’t see anything! I was asleep! I woke up when she ran away. They deserved what you did to them!”

  “I thought you said you didn’t see it.” When he didn’t respond, McCall shook him like a rag doll. “What did you see?”

  “Two gang guys. They were lying on the ground.”

  McCall dragged him to the doorway. He noted it went back six feet to an old door that didn’t look as if it had been opened in this century. A can of Sprite and a big cardboard box and some newspapers were crammed into the space. Also an L.L. Bean backpack with a Gideon Bible poking out of the top.

  “This is where you sleep?” McCall asked in a gentler tone.

  The young man nodded emphatically. “My spot! Isaac’s spot! Everyone knows. They leave me alone. I don’t hurt anyone. I don’t bother anyone. ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’”

  “You think I’m the man who beat up those two gang guys?”

  Tears formed in Isaac’s eyes, but they seemed like alien beings there, unable to fall down his pale face. “Sure, I know it was you!”

  “What makes you think so? You saw my face?” Isaac shook his head emphatically. “Then why do you think it was me?”

  “You look the same. Same height, same build. Same hair. Same coat.”

  “Same coat?”

  Isaac nodded again. McCall let him go. He didn’t bolt. Just shuffled from one foot to the other, his breathing ragged, sniffing like he had a bad cold or had snorted something.

  “You mean this coat is the same style and color?”

  “Same coat, man. You’re trying to trick me. Then you’ll break my arm and punch me in the face. ‘Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’”

  “Genesis nine:six.”

  A big smile creased Isaac’s face. “You know your Bible, sir!”

  “I didn’t beat up those gang members. The attacker won’t come after you if you didn’t see his face. Were you in that doorway in the shadows the whole time?”

  “Yes! Isaac’s spot!” He suddenly looked a little guilty. He reached into the pocket of his hoodie and came out with some turquoise buttons. “These came flying off her shirt when one of the guys ripped it open. Exposed her breasts. They were very big. She was embarrassed. I thought the buttons might be worth something. Took them over to Gems on Houston Street. You know, the pawn place? Weren�
�t worth shit.” Isaac spilled the mother-of-pearl buttons into McCall’s palm. “Maybe you can take them back to her?”

  “Sure.” McCall dropped the turquoise buttons into his coat pocket. “What more you can tell me about him, Isaac? Was he white, black, Latino? The way he walked, the way he moved? Anything?”

  Isaac shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t leave my spot. Isaac’s spot.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Maybe twenty-six. Can I go now?”

  “Go where?”

  He shrugged. “Somewhere for a handout. A kind word.” He suddenly grinned. “A shot of bourbon.”

  “You don’t need to sleep in a doorway, Isaac. I live at a hotel where there are a lot of empty rooms. I’ll see you get some food and a bed and maybe that shot of whiskey.”

  Isaac shook his head, stumbling away from McCall. “I’m not worth you trying to save me.” He picked up his backpack and stuffed the Bible down into it. “‘And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul, in hell.’” He turned. “You know it?”

  “Matthew ten:twenty-eight.”

  Isaac gave McCall a thumbs-up. He shrugged on the backpack and moved quickly down the alleyway until he was swallowed up in its darkness.

  McCall said softly, “‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, no crying, nor pain anymore.’ Revelation twenty-one:four.”

  He thought about Serena Johanssen and Elena Petrov. Two women he’d loved. Both lost to him. He looked at the place where Isaac had disappeared. The homeless man had been too frightened to move from his spot—Isaac’s spot—during the attack on Megan Forrester. But something in his watery eyes told McCall there was more Isaac could have said.

  McCall walked over to the brick wall Megan had been thrown up against by Julio and Alejandro. He’d noticed something sparkling on the ground beneath it. He kicked away a Mars-bar wrapper, knelt down, and picked up a diamond earring. It glittered in the light. It wasn’t something you picked up at Gems pawnshop. It might have flown from Megan’s ear when one of the gangbangers had hit her. McCall dropped the earring into his coat pocket to join the turquoise buttons. Maybe a clue, maybe not.