One Was a Soldier

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  Russ shut up. They crossed the lobby, Lyle gawking at the antler chandeliers and the stone fireplace, big enough to roast an entire cow in. He gestured toward the wide, carpeted stairs.

  “It only goes as far as the second floor,” Russ said. “Then it’s your standard interior staircase up to the fifth.”

  Lyle craned his neck to see to where the lobby angled into a hallway past the bar. “What about that side?”

  “The offices. There’s a fire door, but it’s alarmed. No exterior fire escape. The night of the fire, all the guests exited out the lobby or the alarmed door.”

  “Sounds easy. Just the way I like it.”

  Russ positioned himself at the edge of the elevator bank, where, if he leaned forward, he could see all four elevators. Lyle propped up the wall next to the stairs. Russ tried to look relaxed, but there wasn’t any way to disguise two cops hanging around waiting for someone to show. The blond mother-daughter pair stared as they gathered up their tiny purses and headed for the door. Lyle waggled his fingers and winked. Jesus. That guy would hit on anything.

  The elevator dinged. He tensed, but it was only an elderly couple, who looked at him warily and sidled past him before heading downstairs to the spa. He resumed his watch. He envisioned Nichols collecting his wallet and his key card. Maybe putting his shoes back on. Leaving the room. Walking down to the elevator. Pressing the button. Waiting. Waiting.

  The elevator dinged again. The far set of doors opened, but no one stepped out. Russ strode toward the car, slapping his hand against the side of the door to keep it from closing, but there was no need. The thing was empty. He glanced over at Lyle, who ducked around the corner of the stairs. He reappeared a few seconds later. Shrugged.

  Russ crossed the expanse of lobby again, making for the manager’s office. LeBlanc met him at the door. “Did you reach him?” he asked.

  “Yes, right after you and I talked. He said he’d be right down.” She glanced at the thin gold watch on her wrist. “He should have made it by now. Do you want me to try him again?”

  “No. Can you shut down the elevators for a few minutes?” She blanched, then nodded and disappeared into her office. When she came back, she dangled a rectangular metal key from her ring. “Follow me,” he said. “He’s not coming down,” he told Lyle.

  “Stairs or elevator?”

  “I’ll take the stairs. Ms. LeBlanc”—he turned to the manager—“I want you to shut down every elevator except the one Deputy Chief MacAuley is using. Got it?”

  “I’m coming with you.” Before Russ could object, she went on. “I’m the manager. What happens here is my responsibility.”

  He compressed his lips. “All right—but stay behind Lyle, and do what he says.” She nodded. They headed for the elevator bank. Russ hit the stairs.

  If it had been ten years ago, he would have taken the steps two at a time. If it had been two years ago—well, no, two years ago he’d been in a bed in the Washington County Hospital, recovering from two .357 bullets in his chest and one in his thigh, but the rehab and the PT and the exercise program his therapist had put him on had left him in the best shape he’d been in since leaving the army. His heart rate was up, and his knees twinged, but he could make five stories without breaking a sweat. As long as he wasn’t trying to carry Clare at the same time.

  The interior stairwell terminated at the fifth floor, which was just what he wanted to see. No way to go but down. He pushed through the heavy door into the hallway, in time to see Lyle and the manager walking toward him. Lyle’s face was grim. “He’s flown.”

  “How?” He frowned at LeBlanc. “Could he have cut the door alarms downstairs?”

  She shook her head. “They’re wired into the electrical system, not after-market add-ons. We’d have to have a complete power failure to turn them off.”

  “Then he’s got to be hiding in the stairwell on the other side of the building.”

  “Or he’s on one of the other floors.” Lyle’s face creased in frustration. “The two of us aren’t going to be able to smoke him out. We can’t cover all the exits.”

  “The only way out is through the lobby or one of the alarmed fire doors. We can—”

  “Oh, no.” Barbara LeBlanc slapped her hand over her mouth. “There is another way.” She shouldered through the stairwell door, kicked off her heels, and scooped them up one-handed.

  “What?” Russ followed her.

  “The second floor.” She hiked her already short skirt up and bounded down the stairs two at a time. Russ and Lyle clattered after her, their boots thudding and echoing up and down the stairwell. “We have a collection room there,” she shouted, already a flight and a half ahead of them. “So we don’t have to haul loads of dirty linens through the lobby.”

  She was out the second-floor doorway before she could say any more. Russ burst though, Lyle right behind him. LeBlanc was pelting noiselessly down the hall, the thick carpeting absorbing even the vibrations of her passage. They caught up with her as she skidded to a halt in front of an unmarked door next to the elevator. She snapped the key ring off her waist and thrust a plastic card into the flat lock pad. The door clicked.

  A teen in a maid’s uniform looked up from a rolling cart, her hands full of tiny soaps. The collection room was the size of a guest bedroom, lined with towers of toilet paper and gallon jugs of disinfectant. Canvas-and-steel cleaning carts jammed end to end, filling the center of the room. In the back corner, Russ could see white-painted double metal doors. A freight elevator.

  “Kerry,” LeBlanc said, “did a man come through here?”

  “Yeah. Just a few minutes ago. He said he was security.” She stared at Russ and Lyle. “Did I … should I have…?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” LeBlanc weaved through the carts to the elevator.

  “Where does this go?” Russ asked as she jabbed at the button.

  “Broadway. The main behind-the-scenes corridor in the basement. It opens onto the kitchen, shipping and receiving, the employees’ lounge—”

  “Could he get out from there?” Lyle asked.

  “Yes. The employees’ exit and the door next to receiving are exterior-locking only. You can’t lock them from the inside.”

  The elevator doors rattled open. Unlike the wood-and-mirror-paneled guest elevators, the service car was lined with hanging furniture pads. Russ and Lyle followed LeBlanc in.

  “No alarms?” Russ said.

  “No, of course not.”

  Russ pointed to the walkie-talkie hanging off her waist. “Check in with the departments he might have reached from Broadway.”

  The manager twisted the mike off its clip and triggered it. By the time the elevator shuddered to a stop, she had confirmed that no one had seen a stranger going through the kitchen, the receiving dock, or the spa.

  “He must have split out the employees’ exit,” Lyle said. They stepped out into a concrete-floored corridor, inadequately lit by long fluorescent tubes high overhead, crowded on either side by crates and canisters stacked three and four atop one another. It looked like a pessimistic paranoid’s bomb shelter.

  “I don’t understand how he found the collection room in the first place,” LeBlanc said. “There’s nothing to indicate it. It doesn’t appear on any of the hotel maps.”

  “He was looking for it.” Russ didn’t like the level of thought and preparation that went into Nichols’s flight. In his experience, innocent men didn’t make escape plans.

  “The employees’ exit is this way.” LeBlanc led them to where the corridor T-stopped at a set of steel doors. “This is the kitchen.” She pointed. “Employees’ exit to the right, stairs to the spa and the lobby to the left.”

  “This place is blown,” Lyle said. “He’s headed for his vehicle.”

  Russ nodded. “Get to your unit. Have Harlene send a car to Tally McNabb’s house. I’ll take the back way.” Lyle jogged toward the stairs. “Thanks, Ms. LeBlanc. I don’t think he’ll come back here, but if you spot him, let
us know.” Russ turned toward the employees’ exit.

  “It’s always exciting seeing you, Chief,” she called after him.

  The employees’ way out was another nondescript door, marked only by a red exit sign and a litter of papers and posters taped on either side. Russ walked into blinding sunshine—no columned portico on this side—and found himself on a gravel path wide enough to accommodate a golf cart. It curved through manicured grass until it rose and disappeared into the trees that ringed the resort. The employee parking lot was somewhere back there, he guessed, tucked out of sight of the guests whose rooms overlooked the rear of the spa.

  Would Nichols have stashed his vehicle there? He doubted it. Easier and less obtrusive to park in front. A quicker exit if things went south. He jogged up the walkway as far as the corner of the building, then struck out across the grass. He stayed tight to the hotel, avoiding the rock gardens and flower beds scattered across the lush lawn.

  At the front of the hotel, a solid, waist-high yew hedgerow separated him from the looping drive. It was there he finally saw Nichols, in khakis and a polo shirt, a windbreaker in one hand, a leather-and-canvas attaché case in the other. The MP had crossed the drive and the crescent-shaped upper parking lot and was striding down the steps to the lower lot. Fast but not hurried. He looked like a businessman running late for a meeting at a Lake George marina.

  “Nichols!” Russ spotted a break in the hedgerow a few yards away, where a crushed stone walk led into the gardens. “Police! Drop your bag and put your hands in the air!” He ran toward the opening. Nichols turned his head but kept walking. Russ skidded though the gap in the yew, stones flying, and spotted Lyle getting out of his squad car, headed for the upper lot. Russ ran in a straight line, ignoring the steps to his right and the concrete ramp to his left, picking the most direct line toward Nichols’s rapidly receding back. He bounded over low rock outcroppings and pounded across the ground cover, leaving crushed flowers and scattered wood chips in his wake.

  At the upper lot, he lost sight of Nichols. He ran across the asphalt and paused, teetering, at the top of the next set of stone stairs.

  “There!” Lyle, above him, pointed. “He’s behind the blue SUV.”

  Russ leaped down the stairs, knees screaming, and broke for the SUV. He was maybe ten yards away, closing fast, when a late-model Crown Vic, anonymous in government green, reversed out of the space behind a blue Explorer. It lurched forward, straight toward Russ. Then Nichols slammed on the brakes. Russ could see the man’s face though the tinted windshield, see his lips moving, and had a heart-stopping second to think: Pull my gun? Or jump?

  Nichols twisted in his seat. The Crown Vic exploded into reverse, screeching backward through the lot, bumping over one of the low rock curbs. It spun in a tire-squealing half circle and surged up the entry ramp the wrong way.

  “Get in the car!” Russ yelled to Lyle. “Get in the car!” He turned, back up the stairs, across the upper lot and staggered up the second set of stairs in time to see Nichols’s car disappearing down the drive. He hadn’t gone through the portico, thank God, which by now had filled up with bellhops and parking attendants and wide-eyed guests. Lyle’s cruiser pulled forward into a tight U-turn. He rolled past Russ, pointing to where Nichols had gone. Russ nodded. Lyle punched his lights and siren and accelerated after Nichols. Russ yanked the door of his own unit open, hurled himself into the seat, and was rolling in the opposite direction before he had finished buckling in.

  As soon as he was safely away from the crowd, he stomped on the gas. He tugged the mic off its clip. “Fifteen-thirty, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

  “Got you.”

  “See him?”

  “Just dust. We coming out at the same place?”

  “Yeah. The loop joins up about a mile above Sacandaga Road.”

  “Will he head for town? Or south on Route 9?”

  “Depends on what he’s carrying in that case.” It was damn small for an overnight bag, but there was plenty of room for a couple automatics and any number of magazines. “You get that car sent to Tally McNabb’s?”

  “Kevin’s on his way.”

  “Good.” At least she wouldn’t be surprised, alone, by Nichols wanting to “talk.” He heard a faint siren. “I’m coming up on the Y.” He took his foot off the gas. The last thing he wanted to do was broadside Lyle. The road was clear. He accelerated forward. “I’m through.”

  “I see you.”

  Russ glanced up at the rearview mirror. There was Lyle’s unit, lights whirling, sun sparking off the hood and grille. He shifted his focus ahead: narrow private road twisting through dense pine and hemlock forest. “No sign of him ahead.”

  “Jesum. That guy drives like he’s at Watkins Glen.”

  And he was headed toward an intersection that had already seen one fatal accident this summer. Russ hoped to hell Nichols was a better driver than Ellen Bain had been. The two squad cars flew down the remaining stretch of mountain road, Lyle a prudent six or seven lengths behind Russ. Approaching the roads’ T-stop, Russ took his foot off the gas again. He keyed the mic. “I’ll take east toward town. You head south toward 9.”

  “Roger that.”

  Russ slowed, slowed some more, and made damn sure no other vehicles were coming along the Sacandaga Road. He swung left, past the enormous carved and painted Algonquin Waters sign. Behind him, he could see Lyle’s cruiser pull into the road and head in the opposite direction. Before him, the road rose over a treeless peak. Russ sped up, crested, saw the fields and pastures spreading out below, green and gold and brown, like a ragged quilt stitched with stony brooks and sagging barbwire fences … and there, halfway to the horizon, a Crown Vic.

  Russ tromped on the gas as he reached for the mic again. “Fifteen-thirty, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

  “Go.”

  “I got him.”

  “I’m coming around.”

  Russ signed off and immediately keyed the mic again. “Dispatch, this is fifteen-fifty-seven.”

  “Go, fifteen-fifty-seven.”

  “Be advised both units are in pursuit of late-model Ford Crown Vic, U.S. government plates 346-638, headed east on the Sacandaga Road.”

  “Roger that, fifteen-fifty-seven. Do you require assistance?”

  “Alert the state police. He may be headed for the Northway via Schuylerville Road.” Or he could take Route 57 into town. That was Russ’s fear. Seventy miles an hour along country roads was dangerous enough—speeding through Main Street on a Saturday afternoon during tourist season was a guaranteed disaster. “Harlene, make sure they know our guy is an MP. Resisting, evading, speeding. Possibly armed. Fifteen-fifty-seven out.” He punched the accelerator. The big-block Interceptor engine roared and the cruiser surged forward, pressing Russ into his seat, blurring the fences and fields outside, turning the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of his tires into a high-pitched yowl. He drove over another rise, the road curving farther to the east, and he saw Nichols smoking past the Stuyvesant Inn and out of sight again. His gaze flicked to the speedometer. Eighty-five. Jesus. His hands were steady, but his heart pounded, the adrenaline rush pricking under his arms and sparking up his spine.

  He had time to think, This was a lot more fun with Clare in the car, and then he reacquired Nichols, popping over a hillock and disappearing again. Illinois driver’s license. He remembered that from Nichols’s billfold. He figured that meant crowded urban streets or country roads so straight and flat they made billiard tables look bumpy by comparison. Here in Washington County, you couldn’t find a level stretch of road running more than a quarter mile.

  He hit the same hill he had seen Nichols going over, up and then down, down, into another rolling valley, and there was Nichols, Christ on a crutch, overtaking a tractor and combine so fast it looked like the farmer behind the wheel was going backward.

  Nichols shifted into the other lane and blew past the tractor. Ahead of him, an ancient Plymouth wagon crested the opposite hill and descended straig
ht into his path.

  “Shit,” Russ said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Nichols jerked to the right, skidding half off the narrow blacktop, spraying dirt and grass before catching the road and straightening the Crown Vic out again.

  Despite Russ’s lights and siren, the Plymouth still hadn’t pulled off the road. It continued to barrel toward the tractor, even as Nichols kicked his car into gear and began the climb up out of the valley. Russ was getting closer to the rear of the combine every second. “Get off of the road, you idiot,” he said to the Plymouth. He took his foot off the gas and feathered the brakes, slowing, slowing, watching helplessly as Nichols hurtled over the far rise and was gone again.

  The Plymouth finally got the message and wobbled to the edge of the road, leaving just enough space for Russ to squeeze between it and the tractor without transferring the JOHN DEERE lettering onto his cruiser. The driver, who looked about ninety years old, eyed him disapprovingly as he inched by. As soon as he cleared the tractor’s grille, he hit the gas. His speedometer crept up. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. He remembered the stop sign at the T-intersection just as he crowned the hill.

  He swore again. Hit the brakes, skidded down the road toward the stop. No sign of oncoming cars, thank God. Of course, no sign of Nichols, either. Russ had a half second to make his decision. West to the mountains? Or north toward town? He thought about Nichols at the resort. Scoping out his escape route as he was going up to his room. An old army maxim every grunt knew: Know how you’re getting out before you get in.

  Russ heeled his cruiser north. Too bad none of the brass ever thought like that. He was damn sure Nichols wouldn’t get stuck in Iraq with no clear exit strategy.

  His radio cracked on. “Fifteen-fifty-seven, this is fifteen-thirty.”

  He grabbed the mic. “Go, Lyle.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Heading northeast on River Road.” One car, then another, then another, pulled to the side of the road as he roared past. “Traffic’s picking up.” The Crown Vic would have to get past vehicles that moved out of the way for a cop car, slowing Nichols down. Unless Nichols didn’t give a shit about who got hurt. If that were the case—Russ’s shoulders twitched. He had no reading on Nichols. None. He didn’t know if he had come back to town on a stupid romantic impulse and was panicking, or if he was hell-bent on murder-suicide.