Eleventh Hour

There was no answer from inside.

Dane called out more loudly, “Captain DeLoach? It’s Agent Dane Carver here to speak to you again.”

Dane opened the door, careful to keep Nick behind him, which was really stupid, she thought, what with his left arm in a sling.

The room was empty.

Dane breathed out real slow. “Right. Let’s go see if he’s one of the cheerleaders back in the rec room.”

They found Captain DeLoach literally holding the eight ball, the old guy in the Harry Potter T-shirt trying to get it away from him.

Captain DeLoach was yelling, “Come on, Mortie, you lost to Daisy. She beat you fair and square. You can’t throw the eight ball at her or I’ll have to arrest you!”

“She deserves to eat it,” an old woman yelled, and thumped her cane on the floor.

Dane realized then that at least a third of the old people were women. They were retired police officers? He didn’t think things were so enlightened in law enforcement forty years ago.

Mortie wasn’t happy, but he fell back, obviously still fuming. At that moment, Captain DeLoach tossed him the black eight ball, laughed, and said, “Make her eat it if you want to.”

“Just let him try it,” Daisy yelled, shaking her fist at Mortie.

“Excellent,” Dane said. “Carla was wrong. Captain DeLoach isn’t out to lunch. Looks like he’s with us today, thank God.”

In another minute, they had Captain DeLoach off to the side.

“Do you remember me, sir?”

Captain DeLoach looked Dane up and down, stared at his left arm in its blue sling, then very slowly raised his arm and saluted him.

Dane saluted back. He smiled at the old man.

“I’ve got a gun,” Captain DeLoach said.

“Do you?”

“Yes, Special Agent, I do.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t want anyone to know, might scare ’em. I bribed Velvet to buy it for me. I told her no one could prove that I wasn’t attacked, and as a senior law enforcement officer I should be armed. It’s even registered in her name. It’s a twenty-five-caliber Beretta. Eight rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. All I have to do is pull back the hammer and I can kill anyone in the blink of an eye.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and in his arthritic old palm was the elegant small black automatic pistol.

“How long have you had the gun, sir?”

“Velvet got it for me yesterday. I didn’t want my son coming back to try to kill me again.”

“We heard that he called yesterday, said he was coming to see you in just a little while. We want to meet Weldon. Why don’t you let me deal with him, Captain? I doubt you’ll have to shoot him.”

“Will you shoot the little cocksucker for me then?”

“Maybe,” Dane said. “Just maybe I will. Why is it that he wants to kill you, sir?”

The old man just shook his head, stared down at his arthritic fingers.

“Captain DeLoach,” Nick said, “how old is your son?”

Captain DeLoach looked over at the pool match, then down at his hands and said finally, looking up at Dane, “He’s so young he’s barely on this earth, but the thing is, Special Agent, he just won’t stop trying to keep me quiet. It pisses me off, you know?”

Captain DeLoach looked toward Daisy, who was cheering because she’d just made the three ball in the corner pocket. “They’ve started another game. Old Mortie doesn’t have a chance. Do you know that he was once a police commissioner in Stockton? Daisy was married forty years to a desk sergeant from Seattle who died the day after their anniversary, fell over with a massive heart attack. She’s got spunk.” He thought a moment, then said, “You know, if Daisy weren’t so old, I just might be interested.”

“Yeah, you’re right, sir,” Dane said. “I’d guess she’s all of seventy-five.”

“More like seventy-seven,” Captain DeLoach said. He slipped the small Beretta into the pocket of his jacket. He was wearing the sports jacket over his blue pajama tops. “I’ll bet she was hot when she was younger.”

“Maybe so,” Dane said, and thought of his own grandmother, who’d died some years before.

Suddenly, Captain DeLoach said in a soft, singsong voice, “I can feel him. He’s near now. Yes, very close and coming closer. I always could tell when he was near. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Your son Weldon, Captain DeLoach, when exactly was he born? What year?”