"You're a stranger
So what do I care?
You vanish today
Not the first time I hear
All the lies."
Maynard J. Keenan, A Stranger
**picture: Lawrence, MA
SWAT breached a house in a working-class neighborhood of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Russell followed them in, gun drawn, as they spread out to search the place. At the same time, three miles south, police cruisers and an ambulance converged at a gas station. Brock joined the sheriff outside the minimarket, while the deputies questioned witnesses.
"The son of a bitch got away!" the sheriff snarled.
"You sure it was him?" asked Brock.
"All the witnesses identified his picture. And he took another car."
"We need an APB on it and checkpoints on all the roads leaving town."
Brock left the sheriff to it and headed to the minimarket as paramedics came out, carrying a zipped body bag.
It didn't make any sense. Phil Palmer had killed three gang members and then attacked the Cronwells. Talk about victimology all over, from ex-cons to a retired couple.
And the man was on an unstoppable spree: just when they had identified him, and Russell went to his place to arrest him, they got the call from the gas station, where Palmer had just gunned down the owner, hijacked a car and fled.
Fine, the gang members had attacked him and his younger brother a week ago. The attack went wrong and ended up with Palmer's brother dead. So the man snapped, bought a shotgun and went after them.
And not twenty-four hours later he killed the Cronwells?
There was an obvious missing thread connecting the victims, but they still couldn't see it and it was getting on Brock's nerves. He called Brandon for the tenth time in as many minutes.
"Still nothing connecting Palmer to the Cronwells?"
"No, sir. But I've just found a sealed Social Services record on him and his brother."
"Unseal it."
"As we speak, sir. Let me call you back."
Brock disconnected and his phone buzzed. Russell, to confirm the subject was not at home.
Inside the minimarket, Brock kept from stepping on the pool of blood behind the counter and took a look under it, finding the empty holster of a gun. Then he checked the security feed.
Okay, that was something: Palmer had made all the clients leave and locked the door, so no one would interrupt him. Then he'd headed to the counter, cocking his shotgun. From where Brock was standing, the owner of the gas station, Dexter Masterson, had pulled out his now-missing handgun and pointed it at Palmer. But the subject hadn't even flinched, shooting him straight in the chest first, then in the face. It was pretty personal, not random at all. Palmer could've shot five more people, but had only killed Masterson.
Brandon called him back: he'd just found that Masterson had been the Palmer brothers' foster father.
Brock checked the cash register. Palmer hadn't touched the money. He'd just killed his foster father and run away.
At Palmer's house, Russell checked the laptop the subject had left behind. The browser history directed him to a map. He frowned at recognizing the city, and turned pale when he saw the place marked with a red pointer.
He was calling Brock when the sheriff came into the minimarket.
"Agent Brockner! Palmer just evaded a checkpoint! He's heading south down the I-93!"
Brock picked up Russell's call, hurrying out after the man.
"Brock, I know where he's going!"