Tears And Blood

Nothing Left.

A normal day. Kids playing ball. Trashmen picking up trash. Cat enters the house of Emilo's house. Cat walks through the house like it could be a trap, a silencer in her hand. Her senses are keening, she is that alert. And then she finds the first body.

Mama. Dead. A bullet in her head. Cat has all she can do to keep it together.

Then she finds Pepe, a bullet in his head. It is almost too much for her to bear.

And then she finds Emilio, tied to a chair, tortured. To death. This IS too much for her to bear.

Cat cuts Emilio's beaten and bloodied body loose, and gently takes him in her arms. And begins to cry.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry"

 □□■■□□

An operator answers.

"Federal Bureau of Investigation. How may I direct your call?" Cat is on a pay phone.

"I'd like to speak to the agent in charge of the TAG killings." Ross is pinning up the pictures of Cat on his board. His phone rings.

"Agent Ross.... Hello? Hello?" Cat hangs up the phone.

The building is emptying out. In the lobby, Ross passes a floor cleaner and a lone security guard. He picks up a prepackaged meal and enters his building. Turning on the lights, revealing an apartment as austere as Cat's. Heads for the small kitchen, where he is about to put his precooked meal in the microwave. When he feels a gun in the back of his neck.

"This won't take long. Hands up." Ross raises his hands. Cat reaches around and removes his gun, "Turn around." Ross faces her. "Sit."

She motions him into the chair behind him.

"Just so you know, all this? Being so smart? Covering all your bases? It's not going to matter. It's already over. The whole place is wired with web cams." His moment of triumph is short lived. Cat reaches on the side of the counter. Holds up six web cams, wires ripped out.

"You mean these?" Tosses the ripped out cams onto the table, "Talking about covering all your bases. Your chair is pressure wired. You move your ass one inch you don't have one anymore." Ross looks under the chair. Sure enough, there are several wires leading out of the bottom of the chair. He looks further to the where the wires attach to a small charge.

She puts her gun down on the table.

:I know what you're thinking. Maybe yes a bluff, maybe no. But you have to figure yes, given what you know about me." Ross does not move. "This wasn't what I had in mind for myself when I was a kid. I wanted to be on the other side of things. Like you."

"So what happened?"

"He did." She takes out an old picture of Don Luis, lifted from the internet. She takes out the picture of her parents and her as an eight year old. "This is the last time I was happy. The next day they were dead. He killed them."

"All these clues...they weren't for us. They were for him." Ross said, putting together the puzzle pieces.

"I didn't know how else to find him."

"And you figured sooner or later we would make this public."

"It took you long enough."

"You're very patient."

"What else do I have to be? I have no one. I did. Until this morning. I had them." She takes out pictures of dead Mama, dead Emilio, dead Pepe.

"You sent him a message. He sent you one back."

"And now I want to finish it."

"I can't help you."

"Yes you can."

"He's protected by your government. By a part of the government I have no way of reaching. It's CIA. I don't know why. But there's no getting through it, under it, around it, believe me, I've tried.:

"You're going to have to try harder." She takes a photo album out, opens it. "I found this on your table inside. Your family, right?" She begins to flip pages. "Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. Mother, father. Nice." Ross knows what is coming. "I know this sounds harsh. But until I get what I want, you'll go to a funeral a week. And you will begin to feel what I have felt all these years."

She places the photo album in his lap. Puts his food in the microwave, starts it and goes to exit.

"Wait..." She stops. "What about...?" He points to the chair.

"When your dinner's ready, the timer on it will have expired. Then you can get to work." And with that  she is gone. Ross watches the timer on the microwave. When it beeps, he sits a moment longer. Hesitates to get up. Little by little, he moves himself off the chair, tentative. Afraid that any moment, BOOM! Until he makes the final move, stands just enough to clear the seat, waiting for the worst to happen. And when it doesn't, he breathes a sigh of relief.

□□■■□□

A non descript building. Facing a large picture window...

"You understand, I only agreed to this meeting out of professional courtesy. The President wanting us to reach out to you folks on the domestic side, and all that pie in the sky crap. The truth is, I really can't help you at all. Can't or won't. Same thing really." Richard says cockily.

"Look, let's put all our cards on the table here. I've met this woman. The killer."

"Really? Where?" He quesetions, thinking Ross is lying.

"My apartment. She trapped me. She told me if I did not get her this man." He puts Luis's picture on the desk. "She will kill a member of my family every day until I have none." Richard pauses. Then he begins to laugh.

"You're kidding me?"

"Do I look like I could make something like that up?" Richard says nothing." So? What should I do now?"

"I'd go to the police. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting..." He goes to rise, when Ross's phone rings. He answers.

"It's her." Richard sits back down. "She says you either give her what she wants or she is going to redecorate your office." Ross points to Richard's chest where a red laser beam holds on his heart. Bright red.

"What does she think this is? Amateur hour? Tell her that glass is tempered to resist a direct hit by a fifty seven millimeter ordinance." Richard says, laughing as if everything was a joke. All of the sudden, a bullet shatters the window; destroying a picture of Richard standing with the President hanging on the wall just behind his head. The red dot is back on Richard in a heartbeat.

"She says she's using seven point six two steel jacketed armor piercing shells. And you have ten seconds to give her the address." Richard starts to come unglued.

"How can I be sure once she has the address she won't kill me anyway?"

"You can't. But I can assure you that if you don't give her the address you will be number twenty four on her hit parade. Trust me on this one." After an interminable moment...

"Eight seven six Magnolia Terrace... New Orleans." There is a long pause on the other end of the phone.

"She asked you to keep this conversation strictly confidential."

"With pleasure." A moment later, the red dot disappears from Richard's chest. Richard breathes out. Ross reaches out and shakes richard's limp hand.

"Thank you. Because honestly I didn't know how I was going to explain you splattered all over your walls." Ross exits. Richard looks at the shattered picture. The President's head is intact but the bullet ripped Richard's face clean off.