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We loaded up in the tactical vehicle and much to my surprise, Nadine Daniels and Ralph DeLong were with us. We had a photo of Bruno Clooney, but it was five years old. We needed someone who had in fact met the gentleman to confirm his identity. They were required to stay in the vehicle, though, or be dropped off at the neighbor’s house, who happened to be one of Nadine’s clients. I recognized the address, but couldn’t believe an obvious gold digger like Clooney had scored a house there. He lived immediately across the street from Mrs. Calderone, one of the richest women in the Kansas City Metro area. Nadine called Mrs. Calderone to get the dirt on her neighbor, and learned the woman across the street was 60 or so and had been an actress in the 1960s-70s. My hopes fell a bit with this snippet of information, because Clooney was in his thirties and I couldn’t imagine he worked for the woman who lived in that house. Bruno had a spotty work history at best, and it usually involved things that required him being shirtless and showing off his muscles, such as lifeguard.
Nadine read some movie titles to me and I recognized a handful, but couldn’t place the character the actress had portrayed. I was more familiar with her husband, who had been a baseball star in the 1970s and played seven seasons for the Kansas City Royals. He’d passed away ten years earlier from cancer and last year the actress had gone on vacation and come back with a young man. That sounded like Bruno Clooney, though, and my spirits raised a little. The community was behind gates and had security guards. I’d been to Mrs. Calderone’s the previous spring, but we hadn’t had a tactical vehicle at the time. I wasn’t sure the guards would be thrilled by my return or the giant tank rolling into their pristine and manicured neighborhood of rich folks.
My assumption was correct, and I thought I was going to have to get out and tie them up to keep them from alerting the occupants of the house. Mrs. Calderone, still on the phone with Nadine, showed up on a golf cart at the guard shack and took over, though. She told them she was the new president of the Home Owner’s Association and that it was not the job of the guards to alert the residents that the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit was on its way, and if they did such a thing it would be reflected in their Christmas bonuses. She leaned in Gabriel’s open window and waved to Nadine and me.
“You didn’t bring that handsome brother back with you this time?” she asked, looking sad.
“No, we weren’t able to bring Ivan, but I brought you a different stud if you like big men,” I assured her. She’d taken a fancy to Nadine’s brother and I had guessed she was talking to Nadine in the back of the tactical vehicle and answered for her.
“Oh, I remember him. I also remember he was married.” She smiled. “But he’s still fun to look at.” She smiled wider. “Come on dears, come in. I will escort you in, and if you don’t mind, the dogs and I will wait outside to escort you out. I never did like that guy Maggie brought back with her. She claimed he was a nephew, but he’s a wrong’un through and through and he’s constantly hitting on every woman that dares walk past the house, including me.”
Nadine and Alex referred to Mrs. Calderone as the looney, and I got it. However, I kind of liked her, except for her weird attachment to her dogs. Mrs. Calderone got back on her golf cart, which had an all-terrain lift modification kit on it, and took off. It didn’t take her long to get the thing up to 30 miles an hour, and we followed behind without having to worry about running over her.
“We’re going to park and make immediate entry, Cain and McMichaels on the front door; Stuart and Reece at the back. I’ll watch the two sides, which appear to be dead zones. Grab him and bring him out for a positive identification, if they are in fact able to make one. You two stay in the car and watch from the window. Text us yes or no about the identity confirmation. I don’t want to give him the chance to take a shot at you if you get out of the vehicle.”
“Sure,” Nadine said. Ralph grumbled something that might have been an okay, but I wasn’t going to bet on it, which gave me a touch of uneasiness I didn’t normally have during a capture.
Mrs. Calderone pulled away from us by gunning the engine on her golf cart and slipped into her own drive. It was probably 200 yards from the road to her neighbor’s house and our target. We’d be sitting ducks from any of the upper story windows overlooking the driveway as soon as we exited the vehicle, even if we were in motion, and if he was a decent shot that might be a problem.
“Driveway,” I said to Gabriel, and felt the tactical vehicle start to corner. It cornered roughly and I wasn’t sure what it would be like to drive it. Gabriel and a handful of marshals with prior SWAT training were the only ones trained and approved to drive it. It was on the list for all of us to get trained and approved for, but we hadn’t had it long enough. Our team had Gabriel and team Bravo had Caleb. We took out a lawn ornament as we turned into the driveway. I was out of the vehicle before it had completely stopped, and Lucas was on my tail just as fast.
We covered the distance from the drive to the house in 30 seconds. Lucas hit the door with the battering ram.
“US Marshals SCTU!” I shouted into the cavernous house. “The house is surrounded. Bruno Clooney come out with your hands raised!”
A very frail woman was sitting in a chair in the living room, which was roughly the same size as my entire ground floor. A woman sat with her. She looked terrified. She wore scrubs and looked Hispanic and nothing like the woman in the chair. Perhaps we should have asked if she had any physical or mental ailments, because I was certain the terrified woman was a nurse.
“Dios mio,” the dark-haired nurse said. She was now standing near the frail woman.
“Where is the nephew?” I asked.
“Upstairs in his room,” the nurse said.
“Idoya, get our guests some refreshments; they look hot in all that clothing,” the frail woman said.
“Mrs. Christman, these people are police,” the nurse replied.
“Which room upstairs?” I asked. Then I made sure my comms unit was functional. “Xavier, inside please, Mrs. Christman has a nurse in the house.”
“There is also a housekeeper and a gardener. Upstairs third door on the left,” the nurse said.
“Idoya, you must be mistaken, the police wouldn’t be here. These people must be friends of Harden. Oh, I bet they came to play that laser game where they shoot each other with fake laser guns,” Mrs. Christman said.
“Mrs. Christman, is Harden your nephew?” I asked.
“Yes, I found him in New Orleans a year ago.” She smiled at me. “Such a good boy and such a hard life.” Idoya rolled her eyes at this and I headed upstairs. Lucas came with me. At the top of the staircase, I didn’t need directions. The sound of a video game was so loud it echoed in the hallway. A man was shouting and swearing. It was my turn to roll my eyes. Lucas was still carrying the battering ram. We took positions on either side of the door and Lucas hit it and dropped the ram. I had already entered the room with my gun drawn. The man currently swearing into the headset he was wearing was no doubt Bruno Clooney. I didn’t care what Mrs. Christman called him.
“On the floor, hands flat on the floor stretched toward the door above your head,” I shouted to him. He turned to look at me and shock showed on his face. “US Marshals SCTU,” I told him and he reached for something in his chair. I fired three shots. They all entered his chest. He fell face first onto the floor. I ran toward the spot where he was sitting. There was a gun in a bag hanging from the chair. I grabbed a glove and put it on. Then I reached into the bag and pulled it out. It was extremely light-weight for a gun. Lucas was standing next to me. I put the gun on the chair and we both stared at it. It was shiny and black. I pulled back but it didn’t move.
“Is it a gun?” Lucas asked.
“I think so,” I said with a bit of a shrug. Had I just killed a man reaching for a toy gun? And why would he have reached for it?
“McMichaels, Cain!” Gabriel was shouting our names and running. We could hear his feet hitting the stairs.
“Get an ambulance!” I shouted back. “Holy fuck!” I said and my legs buckled under me.
“Cain are you hit?” Gabriel asked.
“Ambulance now!” I shouted back.
“She’s fine,” Lucas said slowly and quietly.
“It’s a fucking toy,” I said and felt the tears begin to fall. Lucas had rolled Bruno Clooney over and was attempting CPR. But I had put one bullet through his heart.
“Come on,” he said to me, but I didn’t move.
“Cain, come with me, that’s an order,” Gabriel said.
“He reached for it like it was a real gun. I identified us and he reached for it like he was going for a gun. I fired three shots in response. He was reaching for a fucking toy gun.”
“Come on,” Gabriel said as he came in and picked me up. I let him. He kept a firm hold on me as we walked out of the room.
“I killed him over a fucking toy gun...” I said.
“Don’t,” Gabriel said. Gabriel held on to me for the entire walk down the stairs, out of the house, and to the tactical vehicle. I had killed people before, but never someone that might have been innocent and never someone reaching for a toy gun.
“Ace?” Nadine said as Gabriel shoved me in the tactical vehicle. “Ace?” she repeated.
“He reached for a toy fucking gun and I shot him for it,” I said. An ambulance was finally pulling up. “After I identified myself he turned and acted like he was reaching for a gun and I fired three shots into his chest.”
“Ace, don’t say anything,” Nadine said.
“It was a fucking toy.” I repeated. “I shot him over a fucking toy.”
“Marshal Cain, you did the right thing,” Ralph DeLong said.
“Did I?” I looked at him. “It feels like I just committed murder.” Nadine stood up in the tactical vehicle and slid the covers over the windows, blocking out the rest of the world. “I’ve never killed anyone that wasn’t guilty of multiple murders or multiple rapes. Like without a doubt guilty of them. I’m not sure that’s true anymore.”
“Ace, shut up. We are witnesses!” Nadine said, and I gave her the finger. She returned the gesture.