The Constantine Conspiracy by Gary Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

empty, almost as if recently cleaned out. But the bottom right drawer held a small metal box, also locked.
    She checked on Russell and Baker again and heard them drawing closer, their voices more audible.
    “Go,” she whispered to Luisa. “Out!”
    “Here,” Luisa answered, handing her a slip of paper. “My cell phone number. You call Mr. Rick if you want.”
    Shannon took the paper, stuffed it in her pocket and waved Luisa away. Then she yanked the metal box from the drawer, unlocked it with the same key, and found a miniDVD inside. For a moment her conscience kicked in and she hesitated, but then she moved past her guilt, grabbed the DVD, and slid it and the key into her back pocket. Then she dropped the box back into the drawer and shoved it shut just as Russell and Baker stepped into the room.

7
    Atlanta
    N ot everybody hired by the stocky man accepted his job because of the money. So far as Buster Will cared, the emotionless robot who hired him could take the million bucks and buy a lifetime supply of personality with it. Buster wanted face time instead of money—Fox News, CNN, internet blogs, New York freaking Times . His face plastered over anything and everything for days on end. He foresaw books written about him, people studying his life, the whys and wherefores of his motivation. Just like them Columbine boys, he figured. Historic dudes, those kiddos.
    “Do the deed,” the stocky guy told him. “The press will follow.”
    Buster smiled as he imagined the results of the havoc he’d wreak. The FBI would drive his three-room trailer to one of their labs, take it apart piece by piece, and study every inch. Police psychologists would pore over his spotty school records hoping to find clues to his troubles. The military would hand over his files—reveal his exploits in Iraq, the suspicion of assault on an Iraqi woman in addition to the numerous ribbons he’d collected for bravery and duty. They’d declare him a man of contradictions or something complicated like that. Doing a good thing one day, something wicked the next. Somebody would visit his momma in prison and ask her about his childhood, his bad grades, spotty school attendance, his six years in a foster home after his momma went to jail for meth use. Somebody would point out that he never knew his daddy. The softheaded do-gooders would excuse his deeds; blame his environment, his momma. They’d find somebody to point out that he’d been abused as a boy—tied to a radiator, beaten with a broom handle, left out in the cold in February—all that nonsense.
    Buster almost laughed. People were idiots. If he lived through this, which he hardly expected, he’d tell them precisely why he did what he’d done. Infamy. Since he’d lived as a nobody, he wanted somebody to remember him, and since he had no way to make that happen by doing normal things, he’d make it happen by doing something highly abnormal. Off the charts abnormal. Point-the-camera, breaking-news, put-it-in-the-history-books abnormal.
    Now, comfortably in place on top of a thirty-story building just outside the I-285 perimeter of Atlanta, Buster Will pulled his cell phone from his pocket, flipped it to video cam, and set it up on the six-inch-thick wall that edged the roof. Then he lifted his M-16 rifle and peered over the edge to the parking lot below. Time to rock and roll.
    A car pulled up and parked as Buster pulled a cigarette from his shirt and lit up. Two people climbed out of the car—a doctor whom the stocky man had told him to target—and a nurse companion. Lovers, the thick man with the Southern accent had informed Buster. The doctor was married to someone else, another reason for Buster to take care of business this morning. The doc was an adulterer and a murderer.
    “The doctor does over a hundred abortions a year,” the stocky man had said.
    “Innocent babies,” Buster fumed. “No threat to nobody.” He remembered that he’d always wanted a baby sister, somebody