“Through here! Here!” Lauren pulled the disoriented Reese through a door marked Emergency Exit in red letters, setting off a howling alarm.
The wind and snow immediately slapped her in the face as they stumbled out into an alley. Behind them they could hear the commotion still going on in the kitchen. Lauren dragged Reese to the lights at the end of the alley.
Reese was pressing his hand to the side of his head to staunch the blood. “Did you get that? Please tell me you got that.”
She looked down at the phone in her hand. The glass was cracked, but it was still lit up. “Yeah. I got that.” She stuffed the phone into her hidden pocket and got a better hold on Reese.
The alley opened up to Niagara Square, framing both City Hall in front and the hotel behind them. Scanning the square, Lauren saw no sign of either her SUV or the police car that was supposed to be stationed out front. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, moving Reese onto the sidewalk, away from the kitchen exit and towards City Hall. Curious partygoers stopped dead at the sight of a bloody Reese being hauled along the street by Lauren. One of the valets came running from the front of the hotel, asking if they needed help. “No, we’re fine,” Lauren called to him, moving Reese farther around the circle.
A door slammed from behind.
Vince Schultz was barreling down the alleyway toward them with a Glock in his hand.
“Get in!”
Charlie was jumping the curb in Lauren’s SUV, sending a sheet of slush splashing over the sidewalk. He was yelling through the open passenger-side window. “That cop bastard wouldn’t let me park and then he took off. Probably had to go take a dump.”
Lauren managed to get the back door open and Reese hauled himself in, with her diving on top of him. Vince ran right up to the car. Charlie managed to hit the window button just in time, closing it in his face. Enraged, Vince slammed the window with the butt of his gun. When it didn’t crack, he wound up again, screaming for them to get out of the car.
“Holy shit!” Charlie swore as he hit the gas and sped off around the circle, leaving Vince in the slush. “What the hell just happened?”
“I stuck a fork in Vince Schultz’s face.” Lauren left Reese bleeding all over her backseat and climbed into the passenger side. A glance into the mirror confirmed what she was afraid of. “I think Vince just commandeered a cab. He’s coming after us.”
“What?” Charlie grabbed the rearview mirror, adjusting it as Lauren twisted in her seat to get a better view, ignoring her screaming injuries. Sure enough, a yellow cab was barreling around the circle and turning after them. “I thought this was supposed to be a stealth operation,” Charlie said, turning the wheel into a hard right. “Vince the psycho brother is chasing us in a cab? Why are there even cabs here? I thought everyone did that Uber thing now?”
Lauren braced against the turn. “We don’t have time to discuss the dynamics of cabs and Uber in the city.” A pair of headlights bore down on them as they careened around Niagara Square. “Head for the Skyway,” she told Charlie. “We’ll double back to the county lab once we lose Vince.”
A maroon Chevy Silverado cut in front of them, causing Charlie to slam on the breaks. They pitched forward as the Ford slid within inches of the truck’s tailgate before jerking to a stop. Charlie hit on the horn and the driver allowed them to pass, but not before Vince managed to get practically on their bumper.
Charlie swung around Perkins Drive to South Elmwood, then onto lower Terrace to the mouth of the Skyway. He floored Lauren’s vehicle against the pounding snow. Just as they turned onto the entrance, the entire SUV was jolted, hit from the behind.
“The bastard is ramming us!” Charlie cried, trying to control the SUV on the now icy road.
Lauren wrestled her portable radio out of the center console. “I’m calling this in,” she said, keying the mic as her car took a second hit.
Two lanes in each direction, with only a chest-high border, the Skyway was a raised mile-long section of Route 5, 110 feet in the air at its highest point. Lauren knew that ramming them could flip them right off the raised highway and send them crashing to the ground below.
“1279 to radio,” Lauren tried to speak over the howling wind as she gave her assignment number.
“1279?” the dispatcher replied right away, her voice questioning why an officer off with an injury would be calling out on the radio.
“Radio, this is 1279. I’m in a blue Ford Escape traveling south over the Skyway, being pursued at a high speed by a yellow Buffalo Nickel City taxi cab.”
The irony that she was fleeing in an Escape was not lost on her.
“1279, could you repeat that last transmission? Did you say you were being pursued?”
Thunk, thunk.
Two bullets hit the rear hatch of her car but didn’t pierce the back window. Lauren crouched down in her seat. Keying the mic on her portable she said, “Radio, we have shots fired. I repeat, shots fired.”
“Cap that fucker!” Charlie screamed as he struggled to keep control of the wheel. Snow swirled in the double beams of his headlights, limiting his visibility. Lauren’s SUV careened from side to side, trying to find traction on the unplowed pavement.
Lauren pulled her Glock from its hiding place under her dress and peeked her head around the seat, out the back window. The headlights were practically on top of them, blinding her. “I can’t. I can’t tell if there are cars behind the cab.”
The next bullet went through the back window, straight past her face, and exited out the front windshield, leaving a small spidered hole. She sucked in a breath, trying to get a decent visual for a shot. Snow blew across the back window, obscuring the view even more.
The police radio had blown up with chatter. “Where are you now, 1279?”
“Who’s shooting, Radio?”
“Is there a police pursuit in progress?”
“Be advised, Radio,” Lauren managed as they passed the small boat harbor, still ducked down, “the shooter is a police officer. Vince Schultz is firing on my vehicle. We’re approaching the Tifft Street exit now.”
A strong, calm voice cut into the wild chatter. “Radio, this Adam District Lieutenant Pearson. Be advised A-District cars will be at the foot of the Skyway at the Tifft Street exit. Any available A-District car, proceed to Tifft Street.”
Shirley Pearson’s voice continued to direct the A-District cars while Lauren clutched the portable radio in one hand and the evidence bag in the other. From the backseat Reese let out a low moan. “I can’t believe that asshole hit me with a serving tray.”
“Stay down,” Lauren commanded Reese, knowing if he stuck his head up, Vince would blow it off.
Lauren reached back and felt around the floor of the Ford. Her hand caught on the black fleece she kept for weather emergencies. Staying low, she wrapped the jacket around the evidence bag and tucked it quickly under the seat, hoping it would survive what she was sure would happen next.
Up ahead, at the end of the off-ramp to Tifft Street, blue and white flashing lights were converging from three directions. Lauren looked back just in time to see Vince’s desperate last-ditch effort. He rammed them full force, twisting and locking metal on metal, causing both vehicles to jam together in a sideways slide heading right at the patrol cars.
“Hold on!” Charlie yelled over the sound of scraping steel, trying to turn into the skid.
Grabbing onto her seat belt with both hands, the momentum pushed Lauren back in her seat. The swirl of lights and snow was dizzying as they spun out, then collided with something solid, causing her to bite down hard on her tongue.
Everything went dark for a second, and the taste of blood filling her mouth transported her back to the floor of her office. She was on the Cold Case carpet, staring at a pair of black boots while blood choked off her airway. Sucking for breath, she startled back to reality and tore at her seat belt.<
br />
“Whoa. You’re okay! You’re okay!” Hands and voices seemed to surround her.
“Where’s Reese? Charlie?” She turned toward the driver seat to see several officers carefully helping Charlie Daley out. Someone had opened her door, and hands were gripping under her arm. She turned, and some young cop she’d never seen before was helping to pull her out of the Ford.
“I’m all right,” she tried to shake him off. “Reese?”
From outside the vehicle she heard Reese call to her, “I’m fine, Lauren. Get out of the car.”
She let the cop help her out and into the blowing snow. It stung her cheeks and eyes as she tried to process the scene around her. At least ten police vehicles with lights and sirens blazing ringed the two connected cars that had been crushed against a light pole. The taxi cab had taken the worst of the hit, striking the pole on the passenger side, caving it in and curving the cab itself around the steel base. The pole was teetering precariously to the left above her, the globe busted from the impact. Wires sparked over the twisted mess.
The tops of the windmills that lined Lake Erie to the south should have been visible, but their white metal frames made them indiscernible in the swirling, heavy lake-effect snow. Even the old grain mill that should be clearly evident to the west was erased by the flakes.
Another siren pierced the commotion.
A fire truck came rumbling up, the firefighters swinging off the rig, peeling left and right to attend to both of the crashed vehicles. The stone overpass that announced SOUTH BUFFALO was just barely detectable in the near whiteout. If the cars had skidded twenty feet in the opposite direction, they’d have been crushed against it.
“Vince Schultz has a gun,” Lauren announced, trying to shake off the cops trying to guide her to the firetruck. She was still stunned from the impact, not thinking clearly. “He shot at us.”
“Come sit in my car until the ambulance gets here.” Lieutenant Pearson cut through the cluster of officers surrounding her. Lauren looked toward the crumpled cab. “Vince is unconscious,” Pearson told her, wrapping an arm around her waist. “The firefighters have to get him out.” Flakes of snow were caught in the lieutenant’s winter uniform hat. Lauren realized she was still wearing her stupid black dress, but one of her shoes was gone.
“Come sit down,” Pearson pressed. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Wait.” Lauren ducked back inside what was left of her car and snatched up the fleece with its precious cargo inside. Carefully unwrapping the evidence bag, Lauren was relieved to see it in one piece. Behind her she heard the firefighters firing up the jaws of life, presumably to cut Vince Schultz out of the taxi cab. She held up the unbroken bagged champagne flute for Lieutenant Pearson to see amid the chaos going on around them. “We have to call Carl Church.”
42
Lauren shivered against the rough wool of the surplus Army blanket someone had dug up around headquarters for her. The shivering only increased the pain running along her torso, but she couldn’t stop. Her tongue throbbed from where she had bitten down on it. Every time she took a sip of hot coffee it was a bittersweet combination of caffeine and pain.
One of the responding South District cops had found her lost shoe on the floor of her SUV, not that it made her any more comfortable; she was still just as cold in her pair of fancy overpriced flats.
Carl Church sat across from her in one of the Homicide interview rooms. She knew they had taken Reese for stitches and that Charlie was in the Homicide squad somewhere, giving his statement about the night’s events. Carl Church told her Vince Schultz was in the ninth-floor lockup at the Erie County Medical Center, where they treated prisoners for injuries, with possible internal damage from the crash. Now Church and the Kinger were trying to piece together what they needed for Vince’s arraignment on the charges they were laying against him.
Carl rubbed his hand back and forth over his salt-and-pepper hair as he went over an application for a search warrant for Vince’s apartment. Church had been in bed when he got the call and had rushed down to police headquarters in a pair of Buffalo Bills sweatpants and a stained tee shirt from a bar that read: Good Time Chaz’s, Memphis, Tennessee. Rough stubble covered his usually close-shaved chin.
On the table in front of him was Lauren’s cracked cell phone. He’d watched the video five times in stunned disbelief, from the snagging of the glass, to the assault in the kitchen, all the way through the car chase and crash. Lauren’s smart phone, which she had always hated to be tethered to, had documented the entire incident. She swore to herself she’d never complain about having to carry it again.
The union lawyer, Amelia, was in the room with her, more for moral support than anything else. She sat next to Lauren as she gave her statement, fetched her some coffee, and demanded someone find Lauren a blanket.
“What are you charging him with?” Lauren asked, watching Church and King create more paperwork before her very eyes. The Kinger was busy alternately scribbling notes on a legal pad next to his boss and typing things into an official Erie County District Attorney’s office iPad. His red hair seemed especially enflamed, as well as his freckles, with the pressure from Church to get everything right.
Lauren could see by the look on his face he’d rather be going to a hockey tournament for his son at that time of the morning than working on a high-profile case. Kevin King pretended to like the action, but Lauren knew it was all for show. He’d proved that a year ago when a murder suspect had blown his own head off when Lauren and Reese had come to arrest him. King had walked into the crime scene, taken one look around, and walked right back out to his car, leaving Lauren and Reese to piece everything together themselves.
“What aren’t we charging him with?” Church asked, looking up from the warrant. “Three counts of attempted murder, criminal use of a weapon, reckless endangerment, assault second on Reese, carjacking …”
“And Gabriel Mohamed?” Lauren pulled the blanket tighter to suppress her shivering. The maintenance staff hadn’t gotten around to turning the ancient boiler on in the basement yet and the building was ice cold. “What about his murder case?”
Church gave her an apologetic smile. “Not yet. We’ll hold off on that until we serve the warrants. But we have more than enough to hold Vince until we do. The charges for your assault are pending, but I am going to charge him. His admission on the recording is clear as a bell. That was a stroke of brilliance to let that phone just keep taping.”
She wanted to tell him she forgot to turn it off. After it was knocked out of her hand in the kitchen, she had forgotten it was still recording and just stuffed it into her pocket, but did that really matter? It was all there. Every last sound, every punch, impact, and crash, including the gunshots.
“What about Sam Schultz?”
“Charlie gave us Rita’s address and called to let her know officers were coming. We’ve already moved her to a safe place. We’ll be taking formal statements from her as soon as possible, but right now, I have to focus on Vince.” Lauren didn’t like the sound of that. She and Reese would have to make sure they kept Rita safe. Witnesses had a habit of going back to their old haunts. Rita was no exception. She was older now and that apartment was all she had.
“What about charging Sam Schultz?” Lauren’s voice went up a notch. “What about Rick?”
Church deflected the questions again, likely because he knew she wouldn’t like the answers. “We need you to put the glass into the lab.” He motioned to the perfect champagne flute encased in its clear evidence bag sitting on the desk next to her. “I’ll go with you to do that. I’m going to need all the paperwork, and copies of the file, of course. The state attorney general’s office will probably take that aspect of the case over from me. Conflict of interest. But brace yourself for a major media shitshow.”
“Sam is going to lawyer up right away.” Lauren was thinking out loud now, the odds and
ends of the case popping out of her mouth as they came into her head. If Church wasn’t going to say it, she would.
“He is a lawyer,” the Kinger pointed out, “and it’s safe to say all three brothers won’t be cooperating with this investigation.”
It was almost dawn and they weren’t even close to finishing the paperwork, there was so much to do and search and document. Lauren leaned her head against her hand. “What about Joe Wheeler? Do you think we’ll be able to charge Vince with his murder?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Amelia told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. The little union lawyer was so tiny it felt like one of her daughters giving her a Christmas hug when they were tweens. “Thanks to you, Mr. Church here has weeks’ worth of evidence to go through. You know it’ll be a while before everything is sorted out.”
Lauren did know that. But they’d just stuck it to all three Schultz brothers. There’d finally be justice for Gabriel Mohamed and his family. It was worth a knife in the ribs to bring these scumbags down. It’s taken years, she told herself, what does a few more days matter?
43
The headline scrolling across the front of her iPad read: Shootout On Skyway Ends In Crash: Off-Duty Police Officer Charged. Lauren didn’t bother to read the article. She hadn’t bothered to go outside and get the newspaper stuffed in her mailbox; it would just be more of the same.
She and Reese had gotten home from headquarters at ten o’clock in the morning and were due back as soon as possible. They’d both gotten three hours of choppy sleep and had to jump right back into the investigation, which would be rolling along without them in their absence. Lauren’s OCD ways had to put a stop to that. Whatever happened now, she needed to be sure she was a part of it.
Lauren scrambled to get dressed after she finally gave up on getting a decent nap, kicking the black gown under her bed, hopefully never to be seen again. She came downstairs to find Reese already up and showered, his staples glistening with some antibiotic goop the doctor had spread over them, eating a bowl of cereal in her living room with Watson at his side. Ears pricking up, Watson wagged his tail at her appearance, not even flinching when she tossed the tablet on the couch near him.
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