Bang!
Jamison’s body jerked once.
Sol collapsed onto the steps.
Blood showing on his T-shirt, Jamison took aim at Pierce. “I’m not going down.”
Pierce pulled the trigger.
Jamison fell backward.
Against the slider door.
Took aim again and fired.
The shot went wild, the bullet burying itself in the thick neck of an already dead buck.
Pierce’s gun was leveled, directly at his friend, his finger on the trigger. “Give it up!” he ordered, and for a second, Jamison’s eyes flashed with defiance. He seemed about to shoot again, but the pistol fell from his hand. Still leaning against the slider, Jamison sank to the floor, a smear of blood streaking the glass behind him.
“You … you …” Jamison rasped, blood on his lips. “You … goddamned fuckin’ detective …”
Shaken, Pierce held on to his gun, keeping it trained on his friend as he walked closer and kicked Jamison’s gun out of his reach. The man, his once-upon-a-time best friend, was gasping for breath, splotches of red blooming on his T-shirt.
Sol, too, lay on the floor, her body stretched over the two steps into the room, head near the kitchen, feet in the trophy room.
Pierce called to her, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes open. Unblinking. “Sol!” he shouted. “Augustin! Come on. Stay with me,” he begged, on his knees, seeing the blood oozing from a wound on her shoulder He couldn’t lose another partner. Couldn’t! “Sol! Sol!”
She moaned, then.
Blinked, her eyes seeming to focus as he reached for his phone.
“They’re coming,” she said, with obvious difficulty, realizing that he was about to call for help. “Backup. I called. They’re coming. Listen.”
He heard nothing but her labored breathing and the frantic beating of his own heart. He dialed, one eye on Jamison, who still wasn’t moving, the other on his partner.
“911,” a crisp female voice answered just as he heard the first siren, faint but bleating and heading this way. Nonetheless, he told the operator what he needed, insisting she send two ambulances to the home of ADA Jamison Kittle, one-time golden boy and now just another cold-blooded murderer.
Only when he ended the connection, against the operator’s instructions, did he see the text from his wife.
We got him.
We got the Savannah Slasher.
Now you come home, Detective.
We need you.
Epilogue
Life had finally quieted down, Nikki thought, as she climbed into the passenger seat of Pierce’s Jeep. It had taken a while, but she felt like she could breathe again.
Duke Wheelan, the Savannah Slasher, was in prison, awaiting trial, and still protesting that he was just doing God’s will when he’d taken the lives of Billy Huber, Mavis Greenlee, and Jeanne LaRoux. He had taunted the police with his Hebrew and Arabic numbers. Hebrew for the Old Testament from which the commandments were originally written. Arabic as a clue for the modern man not versed in the Bible. Now, along with murder, Wheelan faced assault and many other charges. On top of that, he was now a prime suspect in his own mother’s death, as the police had proven through DNA analysis that the blood that he’d mixed in his sacrificial concoction was hers. It was not only his sister Frannie’s blood that confirmed it, but his own as well.
They’d discovered his lair, a spot his sister had just considered Duke’s “man cave,” and though Frannie had had suspicions about her brother being involved in their mother’s death, she hadn’t linked him to the recent homicides or the terror that had reigned over Savannah when he’d been on his killing spree.
Nikki had stupidly assumed Frannie was Duke’s wife as theydidn’t resemble each other, but it made sense. A wife would have seen the man’s scars from self-flagellation; a sister was less likely to notice.
“Ready?” Pierce said as he slid behind the wheel.