by Blake Banner
“Yes. And w-w…”
“Wicked?”
“Yes.”
“What is it about your dreams that they say is childish and wicked? Can you give me an example?”
“B-B…” He paused. “Batman. Conan…”
“You like Marvel and DC comics, huh? I like them myself. I once met Stan ‘the Man’ Lee in person.”
He was smiling into the corner. “I shook his hand.”
“So are you telling me you go to Comic Con?”
“Yes.”
“And how about in the evenings?” The smile faded. “Did Dr. Stephens tell you not to talk about it?” He nodded. “But you can tell me, David. Just like you told me everything else, because you know I get it. I understand.”
His face flushed again, and he stared down at his fingers. He was ashamed—ashamed of his pleasure. “I visit my f-friends.”
“Girlfriends?”
He nodded.
“Do you enjoy those visits?”
Again the secret smile. “Th-they do nice things to me…”
“Does Dr. Stephens give you special pills to help with that?”
“I h-had e-e…” He stopped and breathed. “Erectile d-dysf-f…”
“Dysfunction? You had erectile dysfunction?”
“But he gave me pills. Now I’m okay…”
I nodded. “That’s good. Let me see your shoes, David, will you?”
He frowned at me. He pulled his chair back and stood up, then walked around so I could look down at his shoes. They were blue-and-white Converse trainers.
“Thanks. They’re nice shoes. Do you have any special leather shoes that you use for special occasions?”
He shook his head. “No. These are the only sh-shoes I like.”
“Okay, David, let’s take a break. I’m going to take you back to work in a while. But for now just take a break. You okay?”
He nodded at the corner.
I stepped outside and opened the door to the observation room. It was empty. I poked my head into the detectives’ room. She wasn’t at our desk. I asked a couple of people. Nobody had seen her. I went downstairs. I looked outside. It was raining. Don was on the desk. “You seen Detective Dehan?”
“Yeah. She went out about five minutes ago.”
I called her on my cell. It rang a couple of times, then cut off. I looked at my watch. Maybe she was at the deli getting lunch. My phone rang. It was Dehan. I felt an unexpected surge of relief. I pressed the green button and said, “Where are you?”
There was a moment’s silence, and then a giggle and a voice that was almost all breath said, “Tick… tock… tick… tock…”
EIGHTEEN
I had a strange sensation like the world rocked. I could hear the blood pounding in my head, and there was a voice telling me it was essential to stay calm and focused because Dehan’s life depended on me not fucking up. My hands were shaking, but I managed to call Bernie at the bureau.
“Bernie, he has Dehan…”
“What are you talking about, Stone?”
“I haven’t got time to explain. He took her in the last five or ten minutes.”
“Who did? You’re not making sense.”
“The serial killer! The guy who cut off the girl’s arms twelve years ago, goddamn it! He took Dehan about five minutes ago. I need you to trace her GPS on her phone!”
“You’ve got techs who can do that…”
“For crying out loud, Bernie! By the time I get through the red tape she could be dead! Just do it!”
I was shouting. Several people turned to look at me.
“Okay, buddy. Take it easy. I’ll do it.”
I went inside and ran up the stairs to the captain. I went in without knocking.
“Stone!”
“Dehan has been abducted.”
“What? When? By whom?”
“The serial killer we’ve been tracking down. She was convinced it was David Hansen. But while I was interrogating him, she was abducted.” I told him about the phone call.
He was reaching for the phone. “We can have them track her GPS.”
“The bureau are on it already.”
He looked startled.
“It was quicker. We need a BOLO.”
He frowned. “But what are we looking out for?”
“I don’t know! Goddamn it!”
“Get a grip, Stone. She needs you cool right now.”
I breathed. “Put out a BOLO on Detective Dehan. Approach with extreme care. She has been abducted. Also, an all points, I need to talk to the last person who saw Detective Dehan when she left the building. There must have been patrolmen or women coming in and out.”
As I was talking, I was leaving his office and running down the stairs. I went to the desk sergeant and took him aside.
“Don. Dehan has been abducted.”
“Shit!”
“You saw her step outside. I need to talk to any patrolmen and women who were coming in or leaving and may have seen her.”
He nodded. “Yeah! Andersen was going out just behind her. She’s outside now. She ain’t left yet…”
I was already running, shouting, “Andersen! Andersen!”
She was just climbing in her car. She stopped and turned to face me.
“Hey, Detective…”
“You saw Dehan, ten, fifteen minutes ago.”
“Sure.”
“She was abducted moments after you saw her.”
“Holy…”
“Think. Where was she going? What was she doing? What vehicles were near her…?”
She stared at me.
“Let’s go inside. I need a full statement from you. Every second is crucial.”
As we were going in, my phone rang. It was Bernie.
“Stone!”
“We’ve located her phone.”
“Where?”
“Headed north on I-95. Our techs are talking to your techs, and there’s an agent talking to your captain right now.”
I said to Andersen, “Talk to the captain!” I ran for my car. “Bernie, I am in pursuit. What channel do I need?”
He told me. I fired up the Jag and took off toward the I-95 like a bat out of hell. I tuned the radio as I went and checked in.
“Detective John Stone, headed east on the Bruckner Expressway in pursuit of suspect vehicle headed north on I-95.”
The voice came back over the radio.
“We have an eye in the sky, Detective. What is your vehicle?”
“1964 Jaguar Mark II, burgundy, doing one hundred MPH.”
The radio crackled. “I see you, Detective. Suspect vehicle is about two miles ahead of you doing fifty miles per hour. You should be on him in a little less than two minutes, Detective.”
I was weaving in and out of the traffic trying to keep the needle at 100. I was pissing a lot of people off, but I didn’t give a damn.
“Describe the suspect vehicle? What am I looking for?”
“Dark seven-seater, smoked windows. Could be a Chrysler.”
A big SUV pulled out in front of me. I braked, swerved, almost hit a truck, switched lanes, and hit the gas. I watched the needle climb to one twenty, which was about as fast as she’d go.
The radio crackled again.
“You are approaching your target, Detective. He’s about a quarter of a mile ahead of you, and you are closing fast. He is in the slow lane just going under the Country Club Road bridge now. He’s about eighteen or twenty cars ahead of you.”
I kept going, swerving, weaving, jumping lanes. I switched the channel and barked, “Dispatch! Where is my backup?”
More hiss and crackle and, “We have four cars about to intercept at Pelham Bay Park.”
I switched channels again and started to slow.
Crackle. “He is ten cars ahead of you on your right. Nine cars… eight… seven… You should have visual now, Detective. Dark Chrysler, seven-seater, smoked windows…”
“I see him.”
I pulled into the next lane a
nd eased up behind him. I figured if he looked, he’d catch sight of me in his mirror, and that suited me fine. I wanted this son of a bitch to panic. He could see me, but he couldn’t see the four patrol cars that were about to descend on him and box him in.
They came in behind us as we passed the junction. The guy didn’t accelerate. He maintained his fifty miles per hour and stayed in the slow lane. Two of the patrol cars pulled ahead and slipped in, one in front of him and the other in front of me. Meanwhile, behind us, the other two cars did the same. He didn’t try to squeeze out or ram us. He didn’t panic.
The other drivers on the road could see something was going down and were giving us a wide berth. The squad cars had their lights flashing now, and the car behind blasted his siren and hailed him.
“Pull over to the side of the road! Kill your engine. Put your hands out of the window and remain in your car.”
The Chrysler indicated right and began to slow, then pulled onto the hard shoulder and stopped. The uniforms were climbing out of their cars and drawing their weapons. I didn’t wait. I didn’t give a damn about procedure. I jumped out and ran. He was opening the window to show us his hands. I wrenched open the door and dragged him out.
He was about five eleven, two hundred and twenty pounds, dark and swarthy. I had never seen him before in my life. I slammed him against the side of the van. Patrolmen were running up, pulling open the other doors, shouting, “Clear!” “Clear!”
I didn’t bother cuffing him. Right then what I most wanted in the world was for him to take a swing at me. My face was an inch from his, and I snarled, “Where is she, you son of a bitch? Where is she?”
He looked terrified.
“Who?”
They had every door on the vehicle open. They were searching the floor, under the seats, and in the glove compartments. There was nothing.
I lowered my voice so only he could hear me, “I swear to you, if you have harmed a hair, if you have hurt her in any way… Tell me where she is, or I will not answer for what I do next…”
There was an icy wind coming in off the river, but he was sweating and I could feel his legs trembling. “Look, I am on my way to pick up my family because we’re going away for the weekend. I have no idea who you’re looking for, or why you think I have her. You’ve made some kind of mistake…”
Even through my rage, I could see something was wrong. I asked him, “Where have you come from?”
“I… um…”
“Where were you before you drove here?”
“The pharmacy…”
“Rite Aid? On Storey and Croes?”
“Yeah…”
“Shit!”
Right at the back of the station, with a large parking lot. She had been there—right there!—in the lot, while I was on the phone to Bernie, talking to the captain. I got on the ground, lay on my back, and crawled under the van. It took me two minutes to find it. It was stuck with duct tape to the bottom of the chassis, by the side door.
I scrambled out, stood up, and looked at it. My heart was pounding. I wasn’t close to panic. I was panicking. The screen displayed a timer. It was set to go off in three hours. I peeled off the tape and put it in an evidence bag. I gave it to one of the patrolmen. “Take this to the lab. It is absolute priority. Detective Dehan has three hours, then she dies. You understand me? See if they can get any prints off it. Do it now.”
They ran and the car took off with sirens wailing. I returned to the driver. I showed him my badge and told him my name. “I need you to think real hard. Did you see anything—anything—that struck you as odd or out of place near your vehicle? Anyone standing nearby?”
He shook his head.
“Who was parked next to you?”
“I don’t know, Detective. They were cars, just normal cars. There was nothing out of the ordinary.” He hesitated. “About…” He closed his eyes, counting in his mind, his right hand held out, positioning to the vehicle in his mind. “Four cars down, opposite, an old, beat-up Cherokee Jeep. Dark green. It stood out because it was old. Maybe early ’90s. But that is all.”
My cell rang. It was the captain.
I said to the guy, “Listen. I’m sorry. Give your details to the sergeant. We may need to talk to you again.” I walked back to my car, answering the phone. “He is playing us like a fucking violin. He had Dehan’s phone taped to the underside of this guy’s chassis…”
“Stone, listen to me.”
“What?”
“It’s Zak.”
“What about him?” Before he could answer, I went on, “Captain, when I recovered the phone, it was set on a timer. It’s set for three hours. We all know what that means. He is going to kill her in three hours, at six p.m. Zak is the bureau’s headache. I haven’t got time for…”
“Shut up, Stone.”
He said it quietly, so I did.
“What?”
“Couple of days ago, a neighbor reported to the Cumberland County sheriff that there seemed to be people at the Hellfire Club again. They sent over a deputy. Zak was there and the deputy tried to arrest him. He shot the deputy and fled. The deputy managed to radio for help, but by the time they got there, Zak was long gone.”
“Why are you telling me this, Captain?”
“Because you need to know. Now just shut up, John, and listen to me.”
“Okay.”
“The deputy said he was not driving a bike. He drove away in an old model Cherokee. Looked like a ’95 model. Green.” He paused. My head was spinning. I had a flash in my mind of arriving at the club. Bikes. A Land Rover. A green Cherokee. The captain was saying, “Now, I am half-inclined to hand this over to somebody else, John…”
“Don’t do that, Captain.”
“Can you hold it together?”
“Yes.”
“One of your neighbors called in earlier today. The message did not get to you because it was left on your desk, and you have barely been at the station house.”
“What did the message say?”
“There had been a suspicious-looking man, looked like a Hell’s Angel, banging on your door. He left driving a green, early-model Cherokee.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“We put out an APB. The car has been spotted.”
“He was parked behind the precinct. In the Rite Aid parking lot.”
“Today?”
“When Dehan was abducted. Near the car where her phone was taped. Where is the Jeep now?”
He heaved a huge sigh. “At an old, abandoned church, at Jones Point, on the river. It’s opposite Peekskill…”
“I know where it is. I’m on my way there.”
“John, do not go. The bureau has this.”
“Fuck the bureau!”
“What?”
“I said I trust the bureau. You’re breaking up, Captain. Gotta go.”
I hung up and switched off my phone.
NINETEEN
I took East 222nd across to the River Bronx Expressway. Then I broke the speed limit all the way to Elmsford. There I took I-287 across the Tappan Zee Bridge and scorched through Nyack onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. I came off at Stony Point. After that I had to slow down, because the road wound and twisted, meandering among secluded clapboard houses and woodlands.
The light was beginning to fade, and the roads were wet and shiny with drizzle, but I couldn’t afford to drop below fifty. The Jag gripped the road like it was nailed to it, and I prayed to whatever gods look after reckless cops that I wouldn’t encounter anyone on the road around the next bend. Because I would not be able to stop.
Then, at Tomkin Cove, I was suddenly out in open countryside. I floored the pedal and did a hundred and twenty along the riverbank. I came to a fork in the road and slammed on the brakes. I knew where I was. There was a parking lot on the left, and I pulled in and stopped. I climbed out of the car and cocked my automatic. The way I was feeling right then, Zak would be a very lucky man indeed if he went away for life.
&
nbsp; He’d be a lucky man to make it to the trial.
I moved down the road at a steady run. There were dense areas of trees and bushes on either side, and though they were bare of leaves, they were thick enough to provide cover in the failing light. I came in sight of the church and hunkered down behind a tree. The road forked again just ahead, and the left branch curved in a crescent through an open esplanade of grass, where the old church stood with gabled roof and spire. Parked out front, on a patch of muddy lawn across the road, were a green Cherokee and a Ford pickup. That meant I was dealing with six of them, tops.
Even if the main entrance to the church was open, which I doubted, going in that way was not an option. I began to circle back, through the trees, to see if there was a rear entrance to the vestry. I covered about a hundred and twenty yards at a ducking run, to what looked like a toolshed set about thirty yards back from the front of the church. It was dusk turning to dark, but I could see a red door. There were no windows.
I paused to think. I needed some kind of plan. The Feds would arrive at some point, and when they did, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Storming a stone church with no windows and only two doors was not easy, and the whole damn situation would degenerate into some kind of Waco-style standoff. I could not afford to do that.
I checked Dehan’s phone. I had less than two and a half hours. That meant one thing: my plan was to go in and get her. There was no time for anything else.
I readied myself for the sprint to the door and heard a soft click in my ear.
“Freeze. Put down the gun and tell me who you are.”
My mind flashed through the options. If he was one of Zak’s Angels, he wouldn’t be asking me who I was. He’d just blow me away. That meant this was a Fed. I said, “I’m Detective John Stone. I’m here to get my partner out of that church alive before you Feds set up a Waco circus here, and I am not going to put down my gun. Are we clear?”
The guy sighed. “At least show me your badge.”
I showed him.
“I can’t let you go in there, pal. They’re on their way. Your captain is with them, and the instructions were very clear. ‘When Stone arrives, clap him in irons if you need to, do not let him go in.’”
I turned and looked at him. If he was standing up, he would be six six at least. He’d probably been a quarterback at college and looked as tough as concrete. He smiled and held out his hand. “Agent King.”