Fire erupted and billowed in the suburban sky as Sampson and Mahoney ran at the pickup, shooting until one of the gunmen turned his automatic weapon on them.
They dove behind a hedge and scrambled deeper into the darkness while bullets chewed the ground. The second the burst stopped, they were back up and over the hedge, chasing the now retreating pickup and emptying their pistols in vain.
Only then did they pause to look at the Hernandez home, which was completely engulfed in flames. The porch was already gone.
There was no movement anywhere around the house.
“Oh my God,” Mahoney said.
“They’re all gone,” Sampson said, dumbstruck. “Every one of them.”
Chapter
54
Sampson was still feeling the shock of the previous evening when he entered the offices of the DC medical examiner the next morning.
“Lauren’s waiting for you,” the receptionist said. “You know the way, Detective.”
Sampson did know the way and soon rapped on the door frame of DC assistant medical examiner Lauren Pickett.
Pickett looked up with a smile, but her smile turned to concern when she saw him. She jumped up and waved him in. “I just heard you were there last night.”
He nodded soberly. “One of two surviving witnesses. Me and Mahoney.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Should you even be out and about? I mean, I’m so sorry I texted you. How are you feeling? We can do this another time, John.”
“No, other than muscle pain in my belly and around the thigh wound, I feel good.”
“Sit,” she said. “Or not.”
Sampson sat. “You said the autopsy is done?”
“It is,” she said. “And Billie’s body has been cremated, as you requested. I want you to know that we treated her with great dignity, John.”
Sampson felt guilty he hadn’t been with her coffin, that he’d been in the hospital when his late wife’s body was exhumed, examined, and cremated. “Cause of death?”
“Cardiac arrest secondary to Borrelia burgdorferi infection,” the medical examiner said. “Otherwise known as Lyme disease. The official cause of Billie’s death will remain unchanged, John.”
Sampson blinked and swallowed that statement, finding it familiar and more than a little bitter. His wife had died because of a hike in the woods and bacteria that had attacked her heart, Billie’s greatest asset.
Pickett said, “You can delete that madman’s text to you, John. He played no role in Billie’s death. I have no idea why someone would say something so despicable.”
Sampson said, “It was sadism, designed to inflict pain. But sadists like to prolong their torture.”
“Meaning?”
“Why did he try to have me killed before Billie’s body could be exhumed? Why not enjoy my pain for as long as possible?”
Pickett said, “Because he knew what the results of the autopsy would be?”
Sampson squinted, trying to see that angle. “Could be, but I just feel like there has to be more at stake than that for him to send an assassin after me.”
The assistant ME thought a moment. “Is it possible you were getting close to him? Close to cracking his identity?”
Sampson racked his brain, trying to think through the events leading up to M’s text claiming responsibility for Billie’s death and Master Sergeant Psycho’s showing up at his house to knife him at M’s behest.
He said, “Alex and I worked the Catherine Hingham case and M’s connection to it before that text. But we felt like we were getting very little traction. After the text, Alex went to LA with Mahoney on the second murder-confession case, which left me pretty much out of the game until after the stabbing.”
“Maybe you weren’t out of the game in M’s mind,” Pickett said. “Maybe you had become a threat.”
“Or maybe he just didn’t want to play with me anymore,” Sampson said. “I’d become something to discard and be done with. Like a chess piece taken off the board in a game of strategy only he understands.”
Chapter
55
I left my house the next morning wondering how long this war between the cartel and the vigilante group would go on before one side cried uncle. There was certainly no sign of a de-escalation, not the way Sampson had described the night before to me.
It was one thing for vigilantes to kidnap, torture, and kill a federal agent. It was another for the cartel to retaliate against his family with missiles and machine guns, killing a mom, two kids, eight U.S. Marshals officers, and four members of the DEA, including Special Agent Hanson.