by Tom Barber
You might find something useful that could help the case, she tried to tell herself, but really it was because she was extremely curious about how all this had played out. There was a reason she was considered a top-tier detective; when something caught her attention, it really took hold, and she didn’t drop it until she got answers. Right now, she wanted to know one thing.
How the hell Nicky Reyes had managed to get himself onto the truck and out of the prison without being seen by either the Loughlins or the prison COs?
‘If Lupinetti thought he had it bad before, he better just wait until we catch him,’ Shepherd told Archer, who’d called him in New York City straight after speaking to Marquez. ‘He couldn’t be held responsible for when these brothers attacked the bus on the bridge, but he was right there with them when they blasted their way out of the State and killed more troopers last night. They left a roadblock on one of the routes leading out of West Virginia in shreds. Everything shot up. It was a massacre.’
‘I still don’t know Frank and those two got so friendly.’
‘He must’ve promised them something to keep himself alive in Gatlin. And be significant enough for them to take the trouble to get him off that bus. The two brothers don’t seem the philanthropic type so he’d need to earn his way. Whatever the reason, the Marshals called earlier. Wanted any possible contacts Lupinetti might try to reach here if he comes this way.’
‘Could be a few he hasn’t pissed off or double-crossed. He lived in New York his whole life before he got busted.’ Archer had suffered enough of the energy drink and threw it into a trash can nearby. ‘The deputies tell you what they’re doing right now?’
‘Laying traps. The Loughlins are from a town called Red Creek not far from Syracuse so police upstate have been warned to keep a close lookout. The Marshals’ office in Cleveland has had people on Nicky Reyes’ sister’s place all night. They snare the guy, he could give up where the Loughlins and our man Frank might be heading. Seems like they’re all involved in this escape somehow.’
‘The sister had any visitors?’
‘No-one all night, they said. Not even her roommate showed up.’
‘If the girl has a job somewhere, Reyes could try her there if she’s working today.’
‘Let the Marshals handle her, Arch. Reyes isn’t our problem, Lupinetti is. Your assignment’s still to get him back alive, but these brothers seem the type to go down shooting. Federal deputies and local cops won’t care too much if Frank catches a bullet and gets killed too. If you and Lisa can get to him first, more of a chance we can stop him getting himself toe-tagged.’
‘I just arrived in Cleveland. I’ll set up in the city and wait for another sighting. They might be bypassing here to peel west to Michigan or east to Pennsylvania. But I’m on a prepaid, boss. Take down the number.’ He read it out from the packaging still sitting on the passenger seat.
‘Dried out yet after your dip in the river?’
‘Just about.’ Archer looked down at his slightly too-big sweater with the Virginia Tech University logo on the front. ‘But I’ve ended up looking like a college grad.’
A brief chuckle came down the phone. ‘What you talking about?’
Archer smiled. ‘Not important. I’ll be in touch,’ he added before ending the call. With law-enforcement across numerous States searching for the fugitives and time of his own to kill until another sighting of Lupinetti came in, the prospect of a hotel room with a hot shower was very tempting. But as he got back into the car, Archer looked down at his borrowed clothing then at his own still-sodden jeans, sweater and jacket screwed up in a plastic bag in the passenger footwell.
One more stop needed to be made before he found a hotel. ‘You owe me a new set of clothes, Frank,’ he muttered, before starting the engine and pulling out of the gas station to head onwards into Cleveland proper.
EIGHTEEN
On the westside of the city in Clark-Fulton, two men in Spectrum uniform were standing outside Kat O’Mara’s residence.
‘Hello?’ one of them called, knocking loudly on the door for the third time. He stepped to the side and cupped his hand as he put it on the glass, shielding his eyes from the reflection as he peered inside. Having repairmen show up unannounced to check the phoneline a day after someone you considered family went missing from federal prison was a pretty damn obvious tell, but the Marshals had managed to get the apartment’s electricity shut off by the provider. O’Mara and her roommate had been late on payments before, so there was a chance it could pass unquestioned.
‘She might be asleep,’ their lead deputy ordered over their earpieces. ‘Try agai-’
‘Yo man, shut that shit up!’ a neighbor called, leaning out of a window next door to yell at the two men. ‘It’s the weekend!’
‘Austin, you didn’t see this girl leave?’ the Marshal who’d been knocking asked, turning his back so he could speak into his sleeve mic while his partner apologized to the irate man next door to try to calm him down and avoid attracting unwanted attention.
‘Yeah, I just forgot to mention it,’ their team member who’d been on stakeout all night replied sarcastically, having assumed the role of a homeless drunk slumped against a wall down the street for the past ten hours. ‘The girl hasn’t left and I haven’t seen her roommate.’
‘Well if she isn’t inside, she must’ve slipped out somehow without you noticing.’
‘Or she’s in bed with a hangover.’
‘Or she’s seen the news about Reyes and will guess she’s under surveillance. Won’t answer.’
‘Just try again,’ their lead ordered. The undercover deputies knocked again, still with no response from Kat’s apartment, so one of them used a lock key to get the door open and the pair moved inside, closing it behind them quickly.
After a quick check around, one of them got back on his radio. ‘She’s not here, Chief. Neither’s the other girl. Name’s Erica Till. We ran her ID and she’s got a criminal history too, same as Katherine O’Mara. Served two stints inside ORW for burglary.’
‘We gotta find O’Mara. Reyes is gonna try and raise her. She’s all he’s got outside the prison walls, so plant the bugs and get out.’ As one of the deputies unpacked their gear and started installing listening devices and cameras in case she came back or Reyes turned up, the other took a closer look around the place.
He found the back door was unlocked and swore; it opened onto a very narrow alley which a slender woman could easily slip down, with a tall fence at the end that could be scaled too with some effort. The Marshals had only had coverage on the front, not thinking anyone could squeeze out the back way, but it appeared they’d been wrong. Looking around, the deputy noticed something else too: the kitchen cupboards and fridge were almost completely empty. It meant either Katherine O’Mara and her roommate ate out a lot, which living in this area on what must have been a small income wasn’t likely, or something else. He checked the closets in the two small bedrooms and saw both were also pretty much cleared out too, confirming his suspicions.
Apparently the two women weren’t planning on coming back here again any time soon.
Over on the eastside of town, in the inner-ring city suburb of Cleveland Heights, a black and white CHPD squad car was parked on the side of the road, the two officers inside each eating a breakfast burrito one of their wives had made for the pair, when there came a tap on the window.
The cop in the driver’s seat turned to find himself looking at a man wearing a jacket, jeans and sunglasses. ‘Officers, can you help me out with somethin’?’ he asked, his voice muffled by the closed window. The officer lowered it.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I gotta get into my business this morning but there’s some bum drunk off his ass who won’t let me get to the door. Think if I keep tryin’ to get past, he’s gonna start throwing hands.’
The pair immediately put their food down, got out of the car, and followed the individual down an alleyway. Being a possible minor dist
urbance not yet confirmed, they didn’t radio anything in to Dispatch. ‘Where is he?’ one asked.
Instead of answering, Frank Lupinetti stood to one side as Billy Loughlin stepped out from a doorway and shot one of the officers in the face with the concealed carry revolver he’d collected from the West Virginia couple they’d killed last night, using his prison jumpsuit top as a rolled-up suppressor to muffle the sound. Brooks emerged from behind a dumpster at the same time and broke the neck of the other as fast as he’d killed the woman passenger the previous night.
Once the two cops were splayed out on the ground, Lupinetti turned to keep watch on the mouth of the alley as the Loughlins started stripping the pair. Billy sucked in his stomach less than a minute later to try and zip up the first cop’s pants, already wearing the shirt with the buttons open. ‘How we fatter than them and we been in the joint for the last four years?’
Brooks didn’t waste time replying as he pulled on the other cop’s overshirt; it didn’t quite fit either, but no-one would see that with them riding in the squad car. With their uniforms removed, the two cops were left dumped face down in the alley. Billy finished adjusting and fixing his belt, as his big brother checked the magazine on the Glock taken from one of the dead officers before slotting the pistol into his holster.
‘Move the rest of the guns into the cruiser then follow us,’ he ordered Lupinetti. The ex-NYPD lieutenant turned and ran back to their car as the two Loughlins dragged the dead cops’ bodies out of sight behind the dumpsters, then returned to the police vehicle. As they got inside, Lupinetti pulled up behind them in the car they’d stolen from the couple in West Virginia late last night; he glanced around to make sure there was no-one observing them, then quickly transferred their stockpile of weapons and ammo from the truck to the squad cruiser.
While Billy took one of the rifles, double checking it was loaded before doing the same with a shotgun, Brooks used the squad car’s screen to draw up a map of downtown, looking for a certain cross-street. He found it, checked the time then moved off, Lupinetti following behind in the other ride.
It was just coming up to 11am.
As the Marshals were in the process of bugging Kat O’Mara’s home in Clark-Fulton, and the Loughlin brothers were driving through the city streets in the stolen squad car with Lupinetti following close behind, Archer was just taking some clothes up to the register of a downtown store.
And at the same time all this was happening, an armored truck on its way to the downtown Morningstar bank in the city’s Public Square stopped at a red light on East Superior Avenue. Waves of morning traffic often ebbed and flowed, and there weren’t as many vehicles around on this holiday weekend, so only a few cars were currently positioned at the intersection. The driver in the armored truck was drumming his fingers on the wheel as he listened to a Doobie Brothers song on the radio, his partner keeping an eye on the street while he drank coffee.
A small team of construction workers were working on a site beside them, only ten feet or so from the intersection. A pear-shaped wrecking ball hanging from a small crane and attached to a lifting hook was positioned facing a building, its steel rope already having pulled and locked the ball in place towards the cab. One of the workers was sitting behind the controls.
‘Wake up,’ the truck driver said, stopping tapping the wheel to What a Fool Believes to lean on the horn instead. The car in front hadn’t moved off at the green light, but because they were focused on the vehicle in front, the two men didn’t notice the crane beside them start to turn.
The driver and passenger were both just starting to get suspicious when the wrecking ball was released.
It swung down fast towards the armored truck, the intersection in a final moment of quiet.
Then the three-ton ball smashed into the side of the vehicle, and any sense that this was going to be a normal Saturday morning was obliterated.
NINETEEN
‘Mind if I use the changing room?’ Archer asked the cashier in front of him, who’d just rung his purchases up and passed him a receipt for a new pair of jeans, t-shirt, boxers, socks and black sweater.
‘Sure.’ She took the bag back and clipped off the price-tags on the clothes. ‘Just keep the receipt in case you get stopped at the door. Don’t want anyone to accuse you of stealing,’ she added with a smile.
‘Me neither. Thanks.’ He walked back across the store and went into a private stall before closing the door. He was grateful to the Charleston cop’s husband for providing him with his current set of clothes, but the new items were fresh off the rack and fit much better. He swapped what he was wearing, re-tied his brown Timberlands which had just about dried out, bagged the old items, then making sure he had the receipt he exited the store, raising a hand to the woman at the checkout as he left.
He dropped the old clothes in a trash can and returned to his rental parked beside a meter. But just as he was reaching for the door handle, he stopped and lifted his head.
The sound of harsh bangs could suddenly be heard echoing from somewhere in the distance.
He might have been dressed much like other men on the street, but the wealth of experience Archer had gained over the years since he’d been a cop meant that unlike them, not only did he recognize the noise that had others looking around uncertainly.
But he immediately reacted to it.
Ninety seconds earlier, around the time Archer had been paying at the checkout, the force of the released wrecking ball had knocked the armored truck on E Superior Avenue off its wheels and straight onto its side, the two men sitting up front hurled sideways in the cab with only their seatbelts saving them from serious injury.
The ball jangled and came to a shuddering stop on its steel chain, most of its force from the downswing delivered into the heavy truck. The three individuals who’d appeared to be working on the construction site beside the road abandoned what they were doing, each pulling a fully-loaded M11 9mm auto from where they’d had the firearms concealed and ran forward, keeping their sunglasses and hardhats on to mask their identity from cameras and passers-by. One of them went to the cab of the truck just as the two dazed individuals inside were starting to try and release themselves from their seatbelts; he pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and dropped it in through the broken window before the pair inside could reach for their sidearms or the radio to call it in.
As smoke started to fill the cab, a large silver Hyundai swung onto the street and reversed up to the truck, a slender figure in a ski-mask behind the wheel. At the same time, another female leapt out from the car that had been stalling at the green light in front of the armored vehicle, but rather than a firearm, she was carrying two rolled-up holdalls and a chain. As smoke poured from the toppled truck’s cab, coughing and sputtering coming from the two disoriented men inside, she looped and locked one end of the chain to the already-damaged rear doors of the truck, before fixing the other to the rear of the Hyundai that had just pulled up.
Once it was secured, she hit the back of the car twice and the driver floored it.
The chain snapped taut and with the tires spinning to gain traction on the asphalt, it ripped the rear door of the truck further open. The men who’d been posing as construction workers had separated on the street with their submachine guns raised, covering the other vehicles that had either stopped or were frantically backing up, a few people on the sidewalks braving it out to film on their phones, the more sensible ones running for safety.
The woman who’d attached the chains went to the back of the truck, carrying the two empty holdalls, but then encountered a hitch; she was no bigger than about a hundred and forty pounds, but even so, the hole wasn’t quite big enough for her to squeeze inside.
The driver of the car saw the problem and put her foot down harder but the door wouldn’t snap free or open any wider. ‘What’s taking so long?’ one of the construction workers yelled.
‘I can’t fit!’
The driver of the car got out and ran towards the t
ruck; she was slighter than the other woman and after taking the bags and a flashlight from her, managed to slide through the small gap. By now some of the people who were witnessing the attack were using their cell phones to make calls to police rather than film the scene. The thieves had chosen this specific spot to hit the truck to give them various options at the intersection for their escape, but the seconds until the cops responded to the emergency calls were ticking by fast.
Inside the truck, Kat O’Mara was using the flashlight to rapidly check the numbers on the deposit boxes that had been stored inside. She found one that she wanted and quickly dragged it into one of the holdalls, then frantically started to search for the other.
‘WE NEED TO GO!’ she heard a voice shout from outside, her hands shaking from adrenaline as she tried to find the second and to her, most important box. They’d been stacked in numerical order but when the truck had been knocked over, the boxes on one side had been dislodged and were now strewn haphazardly all over the floor.
Then with a gasp, she found what she was looking for. Shoving it into the remaining bag, she made her way to the back of the truck, but a sudden outburst of gunfire and screams stopped her before she re-emerged into the daylight.
That first harsh burst of gunfire was what Archer had heard, and it was only when he’d jumped behind the wheel of his rental and instinctively started driving in the direction the noise was coming from that he remembered he wasn’t in New York City and was an outsider in Cleveland, badge and sidearm regardless. However, that didn’t deter him, particularly considering who he’d come to the city to find, and he kept going, following the sound as more gunfire echoed around these unfamiliar streets.