by Jack Quaid
‘I’m the fire marshal.’
And with those authoritative words, Ong’s tone changed. He stumbled over an upturned chair toward Sullivan. ‘Acting Chief O’Conner sent us.’
‘I don’t give a shit who sent you, you can’t be in here.’ Sullivan glanced around, played it coy. ‘What is this place?’
‘We’re with the DPD’s IT department. This is where we store all our digital files.’
Sullivan pretended to be friendlier. ‘Files?’
‘Case files, personnel, budgets, rosters. Everything,’ Ong said. ‘We’re here to see what we can salvage.’
‘Did any of it survive?’
Ong looked at the crushed servers. Somewhere, a spark lit up a dark corner. ‘They’re all fried. But it’s not as bad as it looks. We’ve got a backup in case of something like this.’
Sullivan gave a half smile. ‘Really?’
‘Luckily, huh?’
‘Where’s the backup kept?’
Ong tilted his head and reached for the radio on his belt. ‘Who are you again?’
Sullivan brushed him off and got the hell out of there. He hit William Street, and moved as fast as he could without looking like he was running, pulled the mobile phone from his pocket, and dialed.
O’Conner answered.
‘Mackler was running a skim on the police budget for the past few years. She stole a quarter of a billion dollars, and blowing up Oxford House was a cover for destroying the DPD’s computer servers in the basement.’
O’Conner paused on the other end of the line. It was a lot to take in. ‘Jesus.’
‘There’s a backup server. If Mackler wants to destroy all the evidence, she’d have to destroy that too. You need to send a unit there.’
‘We’re not told where those servers are, for a reason.’
‘Who does know?’
‘Mayor Adams. Do you have any evidence?’
‘No.’
‘I can’t go to him with this.’
‘Can you go around him?’
‘That’s not easy to do.’ O’Conner coughed on the other end. ‘If we get Horse’s testimony on paper, maybe I can—’
‘He’s dead.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Sullivan slowed his steps to a stop. He had been too busy on the phone to notice that he had been picking up uniforms in his wake, like some sort of cop Pied Piper, and now they surrounded him. Each with their hands resting on the butts of their holstered weapons.
‘Where are you?’ O’Conner asked.
‘I’ll think you’ll find out soon enough.’
Chapter Sixty Three
The local morgue wasn’t equipped to store a high volume of bodies, so the dead were taken ten blocks across town and laid in rows on the floor of the Trades Hall building. Air conditioners had been brought in and blasted a cool breeze across the room, while a small group of homicide detectives worked their way down the aisles, trying to determine the identity of each victim.
Jim Jones walked the rows and stared into each and every pained and quiet face of the dead that lined the hall. He saw them all. But he didn’t see Monique. Jones limped his way over to the entrance, but before he reached it, he came to a stop, looked over his shoulder, and gave the room another quick glance. He didn’t see Campbell, Deacon, God, or the rest of their crew, either. He didn’t see Mackler. The flow of bodies had begun to slow as it grew dark, but there would be more tomorrow, he knew that much.
A crowd was gathered outside. Husbands, wives, and other family members searching for loved ones who hadn’t come home from work. They were held back by a couple of uniforms and by wooden crowd-control barriers. As Jones stepped out of the building, photographs and mobile phones with Facebook images on them were pushed in his face, tearful voices pleaded with him to look for their missing loved ones; most of them knew there was nothing he could do, but they still hoped. The uniforms cleared a path for Jones, and by the time he made it to the footpath across the road, the mob let him go.
He went through the motions of turning the engine over and clipping on his seat belt, but before he pulled out into the street, he drew in a lungful of air and let the thought that Monique was still alive seep into his mind.
Fifteen minutes later, Jones walked through the doors of the 9th Precinct. There were upturned tables and chairs on their sides and Angus Sullivan in the corner. He was surrounded by five uniforms. Blood dripped from his knuckles, and none of the uniforms were too enthusiastic about trying to take him down.
Jones shifted, got a better angle on Sullivan, and saw him scan the room, searching for an out. Then his eyes found Jones. ‘They’re alive!’ he yelled.
Jones stepped forward. ‘What?’ The crowd was thick; he tried to push through it, but there were too many bodies. ‘What!’
‘Monique’s alive!’ Sullivan called again. Then the uniforms collapsed on him before he could say any more, and in a matter of seconds, he was under a pile of guys, knees in his back, batons swinging.
Jones limped to the front of the crowd, in time to see Sullivan hauled to his feet. The excitement was over. A handful of badges gave a brief round of applause, and those in the room went back to manning the phones, paperwork, and cleaning up the mess of the day.
Sullivan was drowsy, his legs failing to hold him up. Two uniforms, proud of their efforts, held him with a hand under each armpit.
‘Better call an ambulance!’ someone yelled. ‘We don’t want a lawsuit on our hands.’
He was dragged across the office floor, into a hall that led down into the holding cells. By the time he was gone from the room, it was as if none of the ugliness had happened.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ Jones called.
He was ignored by most and received little more than grunts from everyone else.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ he said, louder.
‘I’m in charge.’
Jones looked over his shoulder and saw the station commander at the rear of the room. His face was red from too much booze, and his gut overhung his belt from too many hot dogs.
‘What’s it to you?’ Slowly, the grin dropped from his face as he realized he was talking to hero cop Jim Jones from Internal Affairs.
‘That was all above board,’ he said. ‘I have witnesses.’
Jones stepped forward. ‘I want to see Angus Sullivan.’
Chapter Sixty Four
It wasn’t the first time Sullivan had broken his nose. The experience hadn’t changed; nor had had it grown on him. He sat on a thin mattress, squeezed his thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose, and managed to stop the bleeding.
Voices filtered down the hall, grew louder, and stopped outside his cell door. A key hit the lock, turned, and Jim Jones stood in the doorway.
‘Is she alive?’ he asked.
Sullivan nodded. ‘And so is Mackler.’
Jones turned to the uniform behind him. ‘Leave us.’
The uniform hesitated.
‘Do it.’
The uniform closed the door and locked it. Jones waited for his footsteps to fade before he spoke. ‘How do you know?’
‘Has her body been found?’
‘No.’
‘Have any of their bodies been found?’ Sullivan asked.
Jones shook his head.
Sullivan shifted his weight from one sore half of his body to the other. ‘You were right. Somebody had been running a skim on the police budget. A quarter of a billion dollars is missing. It’s Mackler. She is Hailstrum.’
Jones tilted his head and stared at the corner of the cell, his mind working overtime. ‘I don’t buy it. Not her!’
‘You might want to adjust your level of expectations.’
‘She went into that building to save my little girl.’
‘She went into that building for a clean getaway. Nobody goes after a dead hero. This was never about you; your resignation, your confession, was all a cover to put Mackler i
n Oxford House and to blow it up.’
‘Why destroy the building?’
‘Where would the evidence on the budget skim be?’
Jones rubbed his face. ‘There would be a server farm somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Nobody knows, it’s kept secret . . .’ Jones caught himself. ‘Oxford House?’
Sullivan nodded. ‘It’s destroyed. But those files are backed up at another location. I don’t know where it is, but I’d lay money that Mackler will be destroying those as well. And after that, she’ll be gone.’
Jones slumped into a corner of the room and drew a breath. Two arguments raged inside him: what he wanted to believe and what he knew to be true.
Sullivan stood, the movement hurting his busted rib. He pushed into it with his palm and looked into Jones’s eyes. ‘Mackler won’t kill Monique. She needs her as insurance until she can get out of the country.’
‘And then what?’
‘You can’t let it get that far. Find out the location of the backup.’
‘I need to take this to Adams,’ Jones said, snapping out of the trance he was in.
‘Don’t go to the mayor.’
‘He’s my friend.’
‘He wants to avoid a scandal. A dead hero is a better story for him than one about a corrupt chief. You’re going to need to do this alone.’
Jones took a step, sat on the bed, and put his head in his hands. ‘This is beyond me.’
Sullivan squatted. ‘We don’t have the time, and I don’t have the character, for a pep talk. You’re either going to save your daughter or not save your daughter. What will it be?’
Chapter Sixty Five
Jones banged on the cell door. ‘Open up.’
The young constable who was heading into his seventieth hour of OT meandered his way down the corridor. He stopped at the cell, opened the door, and saw Jones standing in front of him.
‘I’m sorry about this, kid,’ Jones said.
‘About what?’
He didn’t see it coming. Sullivan swung; a hard right cross. Broke the cop’s jaw and knocked him out cold.
Jones caught the kid before he cracked his skull on the concrete and lowered him gently to the ground. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
They dragged the uniform into the cell and laid him on the mattress. Sullivan stripped him of his service revolver and radio. He slid the weapon down the front of his jeans.
‘Don’t blow your dick off,’ Jones said.
‘That would be the most action it’s had in three years.’
Although the corridor was empty, they moved quietly up to the door at the end and peered through the glass window in the middle. Their only exit was through a shitload of cops. Overworked, tired, and busy, they filled the room with sweat-stained clothes and short tempers, the stress of the day wearing them thin.
‘Maybe we should have thought this plan out a little more?’
Sullivan pulled his eyes from the window. ‘You think?’ He looked down the other end of the hall to the emergency stairs. ‘Let’s head up.’
‘And then what?’
Sullivan shrugged. ‘We’ll work it out from there.’
Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air from the badges who ducked into the stairwell to sneak one. Sullivan bounded up the stairs three at a time, while Jones, with his leg, took twice as long to cover the same distance. The precinct was three stories tall, and when they reached the top floor, Sullivan cracked the door a couple of inches and poked his eye through it. Government buildings tended to be like fast-food chains. Once you’d been in one of their outlets, you knew the general layout for all of them.
‘What do you see?’ Jones asked.
‘Long hall, six rooms on each side. A couple look like interview rooms. There’s a lunch room and probably an office or two.’
‘Are they empty?’
Sullivan listened, heard nothing, and stepped through. ‘We’re clear,’ he hissed.
They made for the other end of the hall with a light tread, just in case some badge was behind one of the doors, catching a bit of shut-eye.
‘Sullivan,’ Jones said with a hint of tremolo in his voice.
Sullivan looked back and followed Jones’s eye line to the numbers above the elevator as they ticked over.
G
1
2
Sullivan waited for it.
Then . . .
3
‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered. He grabbed Jones by the arm and opened the closest door with his free hand. ‘In here.’
They stepped into an interview room just as the ding of the elevator sounded. The room itself was nothing special: a table in the middle, two chairs on either side, and a window with a shitty view of the multi-level car park next door.
Sullivan pushed an ear to the door; Jones did the same.
‘I want all these rooms used. We’ve got one hundred and eighty victims reports to do by morning, so start sending people up here. If anyone gives you any . . .’
The voices trailed off, along with the sound of footsteps. Sullivan and Jones had heard enough to know that if they didn’t get out of that room in the next couple of minutes, they would be fucked. Sullivan paced the three steps to the end of the room and back again. His mind raced through a plethora of shitty ideas. He shifted his gaze to the only window in the room. A single pane of glass, five foot by three foot. Sullivan stepped closer and took in the view of the top floor of a parking lot. There was an eight-foot gap between the structures. Below the building they were in, an alley filled with trash and concrete.
Sullivan turned to Jones. ‘What do you think?’
‘You must be nuts,’ Jones replied.
‘Well, I’m not thrilled by the idea.’ He stepped back, picked up one of the chairs, and took aim at the glass.
‘You’d think they would have put a cage over that.’ Jones motioned to the window.
‘What?’
‘To stop suspects from doing what we’re about to do.’
‘They will after this,’ he said and threw the chair out the window. It smashed the glass on the first whack, sailed through the air and crashed on the ramp, followed by a trickle of glass.
Sullivan smiled at a job well done.
Then . . . an alarm sounded throughout the building.
He lost his smile. ‘Explains why there wasn’t a cage.’ Sullivan headed over to the door. He kicked the handle off, put his finger in the guts of the door, and pulled out the internal rod that stopped it from being opened on either side.
He was just in time. On the other side, somebody tried, and failed, to open it.
‘GET A BATTERING RAM!’
Sullivan pointed at the window frame. ‘You go first.’
‘Why?’ Jones said.
‘Because if you don’t make it, I’ll think twice about trying.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’ Sullivan said. ‘Because if that door swings open, I’ll fight them off. You go rescue your daughter.’
There was a thump against the door. The battering ram had arrived and was being put to use.
‘GO!’ Sullivan yelled.
Jones climbed onto the window frame. He peered down, and it didn’t look good. Yellow headlights from a vehicle spotlit him against the wall. He closed his eyes briefly to get his night vision back.
‘COME ON!’ Sullivan shouted.
A hard crack came from the door. The bastard swung open. Two cops held a battering ram, with many more lined up behind.
‘GO!’ Sullivan yelled.
Jones lunged out of the window. His bad knee gave out, but his good leg had enough strength to push him across the gap and onto the concrete ramp of the parking lot. He hit hard and stumbled over himself.
As soon as Jones jumped, Sullivan stepped off. He didn’t have the time to do it carefully. He took three big steps, landed his foot on the bottom of the window frame, and catapulted himself out of the window, over the dark gap, and onto the top
floor of the car park. He hit the ground hard but didn’t have time to get over it. He pushed himself to his feet anyway.
Bullets chased them across the concrete. Sullivan threw a look over his shoulder as he ran. Neither of the badges hanging out of the window were game enough to make the leap. They just popped off shots and, at thirty feet, were too far away to hit anything.
Sullivan and Jones rounded the second floor and skidded to a halt in the headlights of a F-100 driven by some poor bastard just searching for a place to park. He threw the car into reverse, but Sullivan was quicker. He yanked the revolver, took aim, and made the semicircular walk to the driver’s side window.
‘We’re taking your car.’
The driver, too stunned to talk, did what he was told and opened the door. Sullivan sped up the process by grabbing the poor bloke by the back of his shirt and throwing him to the ground. By the time Sullivan was behind the wheel, Jones was already in the passenger seat. His eyes darted every which way, looking for the cops he knew would be scrambling to surround the building. Sullivan looked over his shoulder and through the windshield, and sped back in reverse. A corner came up before him. He hit the brake, yanked the wheel, and spun the F-100 in a one-eighty, geared it, and shot forward. He spun around the next three corners to the ground floor. Badges flooded through the entrance. Guns out, arms waving.
‘I hope they move,’ Jones said.
Sullivan gunned it. ‘If they don’t, they’re going to wish they had.’
The exit came up fast. Sullivan buried the pedal. Uniforms dove out of the way. The F-100 snapped the boom arm off, sent it flying out into the narrow street. The car followed it. Sullivan pulled a hard right, too hard. They sideswiped a parked BMW and bounced off that into a parked Audi. He struggled with the wheel, and when he gained control of it, sped off down the street and into the night.
Chapter Sixty Six
Lopez told O’Conner that she had been called into Internal Affairs to give a statement about Angus Sullivan’s escape. O’Conner didn’t believe the story but let her go anyway.
Twenty minutes later, she pulled up to a red light and caught a glimpse of the left side of her face in the rearview mirror. Red, bruised, a black eye for sure, but no permanent damage. Sullivan had done a good job slapping her around.