She watched the video loop over and over in the quiet room. For this run-through she found herself watching his hands. Long fingers. Glossy nails. Maintained and delicate. Maybe that made sense, she thought. Building bombs was a task that required finesse. This wasn’t a crime fit for the sausage-fingered slobs of the world. Not at all.
But what did his hands really tell her? Or his lips? Or his eyes? How did any of the details in this video give her something actionable, help her forge a path forward?
Maybe they didn’t. They probably didn’t, in fact.
She hit the space bar again and again. It all felt singsong now. Every element of the video took on a rhythm through all the repetition, somehow made twee after so many loops.
Her eyes drifted over the details again. The rustling newspaper. The wormy lips. The black pits of his pupils. That little fluttery light in the corner. His graceful fingers.
Her eyes snapped back to that top right corner of the screen again — the place where the light fluttered just as he set the newspaper down. She watched for it. Waited for it.
Loshak came back in with two paper cups of coffee in his hands. He leaned a shoulder into the door and swiveled into the room.
“OK,” he said. “So the coffee doesn’t smell great, but—”
Darger yelped involuntarily. Interrupting him.
Loshak’s eyes went wide. He lurched toward the laptop screen, sloshing coffee on the carpet.
“What is it?”
“There,” Darger said. She tapped on the laptop screen. “I know what this is.”
The light fluttered beneath her finger. Glinting through a window off-screen. Lighting up one little slice of the white wall. Sliding over the eggshell surface. Then disappearing.
Even after the light was gone, she just kept tapping. A million words raced through her head, but she struggled to get them to her tongue. Finally something came.
“Huxley went home.”
CHAPTER 58
Again the task force convened on the 23rd floor of the Javits Federal Building. The emergency meeting had been called late in the afternoon, interrupting a multitude of commutes, and stragglers were still filing in even as things got underway, a stream of them flowing off the elevator, speed walking down the hall, spilling into the room.
Detectives and special agents crowded around the glazed table in tall-backed office chairs. The room smelled vaguely of hand sanitizer intertwined with the burned stench of cheap coffee.
Darger tried to get comfortable in the bustling atmosphere. Eyes scanning everywhere. Watching all the keyed-up law enforcement officers twitch and play with their phones and likewise survey their surroundings.
She realized that most of them were functioning on as little sleep as she was, the bulk of them working all the angles of this case behind the scenes. Creases under their eyes spoke to that shared exhaustion.
The restlessness only grew as more people crowded into the space, a bodily stench adhering itself to that rubbing alcohol and burned coffee combo. Soon no one could keep still. Hands and forearms touched down on the tabletop before quickly fleeing. Fingers prodded at noses and brows. The leather chairs squeaked beneath fidgeting men and women in rumpled business suits.
Agent Fredrick had a sheaf of papers in front of her. She was highlighting something in neon pink, the lid clenched between her teeth. Her eyes darted to the clock, and then she cleared her throat and addressed the room.
“At this point, I don’t need to belabor the ongoing shitshow this case has been from the get-go. Multiple deaths, both civilian and LEO. Internet shenanigans that have resulted in unwanted involvement from the public. And just to pop a green olive on top of the hot fudge sundae, our perpetrator is now officially at large. Thankfully, Agent Darger noticed a potentially identifying characteristic in the video Huxley released, and we’re already planning our next move.”
Lots of heads around the table turned Darger’s way. Inquisitive expressions etched on all the faces. Then they snapped back to Agent Fredrick.
“The flashing light in the upper right-hand corner of the footage? We believe, strongly, that it comes from a pinwheel in a potted plant on a balcony near the apartment of Tyler Huxley’s mother. The flashing was witnessed there by Agent Darger, and a few other officers who visited the mother’s apartment verified seeing the same.”
She flipped the pages in front of her. Finger tracing along text and finding something.
“So the news gets better. We’ve got multiple teams in place on rooftops nearby the apartment now. Recon Team 2 just got in touch minutes before this meeting officially began. They had eyes on a male inside the apartment, very briefly. They could not explicitly confirm the identity of the man, but he appeared about the right size, the right age for our suspect.”
Everyone fell quiet for a second. Several officers leaned forward in their squeaky office chairs. Paranoid heads swiveling around.
“Are we sure the man they spotted isn’t Huxley’s brother?” Loshak said. “He’s been at the mother’s apartment, and he could pass for Huxley from a distance.”
Fredrick shook her head.
“The brother, David, should be off at school in Piscataway based on the class schedule he gave us.” She paused to glance at her watch. “We’re trying to track him down to get confirmation on that. So far he hasn’t answered his phone.”
“Have we thought about reaching out to his mother?” one of the detectives asked.
“Too risky,” Darger said. “If he’s there, she’s likely been hiding him this whole time, right? She’d tip him off.”
“That’s our thinking as well,” Fredrick agreed. “We’re waiting on warrants at the moment, which we expect to have any minute. Confirmation that the brother isn’t there would be extremely helpful, and I’m hopeful we’ll get that from him directly. We want to move forward without letting the mom know — in case there’s any chance of Huxley running.”
They were quiet for a beat.
“Either way, we’ll go forward with the raid. If he’s in there, he’s ours. If not…”
From there, the meeting shifted into a tactical mode. Fredrick set up a map on an easel and drew red lines around multiple city blocks near the Huxley apartment. For the first time, it struck Darger how massive this operation would be.
“As you can see on the map, we’re in the process of locking down three city blocks surrounding the building even now. Our hope is to take him by surprise to the degree that we can, but if he runs, he won’t get far. We’ve got the FBI SWAT team and three local SWAT teams at the ready. It’s going to be a massive operation, and we want to be good to go as soon as the warrant comes through.”
She drew Xs at the front and rear of the apartment building where Huxley’s mother lived.
“We’ll have teams securing the exterior of the building — one on Barclay Avenue will cover the south-facing entrance, the other on 41st will lock down the north-facing entrance. That should do it. From there, the plan is to send a SWAT team in to lock down the hallways of the apartment building. FBI SWAT will serve as the strike team, breaching the actual apartment. Hopefully we take this shit heel by surprise.
“There’s one more objective I want to be clear about. I’ve already talked to the teams on the ground about this, but it bears repeating. We want to do everything in our power to take Huxley alive. There could be additional explosive devices either at some point in the shipping process or rigged up somewhere, and we think if we can get him in an interrogation room, we can negotiate with him and potentially save lives. Ironically enough, a lot of these guys who taunt law enforcement end up singin’ like Shania Twain as soon as we have them in custody, including our boy’s hero, David Berkowitz.”
She stopped then. Looked right at Darger and Loshak.
“I’d like to have the two of you on the rooftop across the street with the other half of the FBI SWAT team.” She tapped the building on the map before she went on. “You’ll be in good hands up there. I’
ve got Fitch and a pair of snipers up there now, and they’ll be expecting you. They were the team that spotted Huxley in the window.”
Darger was surprised to hear that Fitch was still on the job. She expected him to go on leave after what happened with Dobbins. But maybe what happened to Dobbins was precisely why he’d stayed. If Darger were in his shoes, she’d want to make damn sure they nailed the man who’d taken her friend’s life.
The door burst open. All heads turned that way where Laboda stood in the doorway. His cheeks were flushed, and he was breathing hard, as if he’d just run a great distance.
“Just got word from the brother,” he said. “He’s at school, like we thought. Had his phone off until just now, being that he was in class.”
Whispers hissed through the rest of the task force members huddled around the table.
“He also said we were right not to tell his mother,” Laboda went on. “He thinks she’d cover for him, guilty or not.”
“OK, people,” Fredrick said. “You’ve got your assignments. Let’s move out. We want everyone in position and ready to roll as soon as we get word on the warrant.”
CHAPTER 59
Darger’s ballistic helmet sat on her lap as she rode across town in the back of the cruiser. She fidgeted in her seat, felt the awkward way the vest squeezed around her torso, squishing her abdomen like a corset.
She pulled at the armpits of the thing, fingers prying at one and then the other to no effect. Then she thought about asking Loshak to adjust the straps for her — an enthusiastic NYPD officer had pulled them too taut before they headed out — but looking over at her partner in the seat next to her, she thought better of it. An intense look occupied his features, eyes kind of zoned out, staring intently at nothing.
Instead she turned and stared out the window, watched the city blurring past — fifty shades of concrete. Glass and steel reaching up for the heavens, casting long shadows over everything below. Cars crowding every intersection. Pedestrians mobbing the sidewalk, all those people weaving around each other like ants swarming a dead bird.
Words from the journals echoed in her head as these images flickered by.
You want to see peak humanity? Well, there it is. Just look at the bloodstains on the sidewalk.
Pedestrians lurched along the sides of the car, pulsing with need. Hungry. Agitated. Darger tried to block out the words playing in her head.
This is the idea that must be smashed, crushed, wiped off the face of the planet. And I will accomplish it by wiping away faces indeed, blowing them to little pieces.
Obliterated. Vaporized.
She blinked a few times. Swallowed in a dry throat. But the words kept coming.
The revolution will be etched into celebrity skin.
Ahead, the rest of the law enforcement convoy stretched out as far as Darger could see. A snaking line of unmarked detective sedans and police cruisers pushing through the traffic, winding a tight path through the city. Almost like a funeral procession, she thought. In a way it was.
As they neared the building, a roadblock cut off the traffic around them. Wooden barriers stretched orange and white striped arms over the sidewalk, choking off the foot traffic as well, though some gawkers lined up along the perimeter to try to get a look.
They pulled up to the curb, brakes squealing faintly, car jerking to a stop, and the stillness of the ride ended abruptly.
Darger popped on her helmet and tightened the chin strap. Spilled out onto the sidewalk. Staggered a couple of steps.
Striding out of the car’s air-conditioned comfort, she felt the humidity swell around her chest and legs all at once. Enveloping her. That city heat rising up from the concrete to grip her flesh.
The smell seemed to hit a second later — the clean scent inside the car replaced with a garbage stench out here on the street — the funk of juicy bags of trash cut with just a hint of a sharp sunblock odor.
The jarring change disoriented her for a few seconds, sucked her consciousness deeper inside of herself somehow, pulling her inward until it felt like she was looking out from a tunnel within her skull. Separate. Distant.
And then there were harsh voices and officers waving her on, funneling her toward the glass doors ahead. She fell in alongside Loshak and kept moving. Her mouth felt dry. Her pulse squished in her ears.
Though they were entering the building across the street from the soon-to-be-raided apartment high-rise, they did so through the rear of the structure, a block away from the raid target. The area in front of the mother’s apartment would be kept clear until the SWAT teams were sent in to carry out the primary operation. Better to not tip him off.
If he was even still there.
Darger followed Loshak’s lead through the glass doors. Potted plants reached leafy fronds over the furniture. Beat-up magazines crowded a coffee table. Everything swayed softly in the air conditioner’s hissing wind. The chill clung to the backs of Darger’s arms.
They got onto an elevator, and Loshak jabbed the button for the top floor. The doors closed, sealed them away from the world again, and the wind sound cut out to the faintest whoosh of the elevator car gliding upward.
Goose bumps rippled over Darger’s skin as their car ascended. It was the quiet, she thought. The still moment growing unbearably tense. The tranquility somehow heightening the sense that all hell was about to break loose.
The elevator reached the top floor. Dinged. The doors slid open in slow motion.
From there, they pushed through a heavy steel door and climbed a set of concrete steps. Shade shrouded the dimly lit stairwell. Darger focused on the texture underfoot — cement painted glossy gray with black grip tape forming parallel lines on each tread.
Another big metal door squawked as Loshak elbowed the push bar and gave it a shove. It opened up to blinding sunlight, and they stepped out onto the roof.
Darger squinted. She could only see blurry contours at first, the dark of the bitumen roof shearing off against the impossible glow of the daylight. Various shapes huddled on the roof, jutting up from the black surface — air-conditioning units and the like, Darger assumed.
One of the shapes was moving funny, though. Looked like a tree branch wagging in the wind.
Then she blinked and everything sharpened into focus. It wasn’t a tree branch. It was an arm.
Fitch was waving Darger and Loshak over to his position. He and two snipers were set up on the opposite side of the roof, kneeling to mostly conceal themselves behind the parapet. The CIRG agent had a laptop set up there, presumably to be able to watch the helmet cams as the strike team breached the apartment.
The blades of a helicopter whoomped overhead, a pounding sound that seemed to reverberate in Darger’s head, out of time with her pulse. It must be part of the operation, she thought.
The agents made their way over to the others. Hot wind pushed on them with every step, an aggressive battering summer wind. Gusts that seemed angry. Wind this hot felt strange, Darger thought, like dragon’s breath.
As they squatted into position near the others, the squad leader murmured something into a walkie-talkie, but Darger couldn’t hear him over the sibilant blasts of wind. She realized after a second Fitch was talking about the helicopter.
“Someone tipped off the local news. Probably the mayor. He’d love to have footage of the SWAT boys kicking in the door plastered on every channel. Wants to look tough on crime with his reelection coming up. Law and order and all that.”
He smiled at her, his sled dog eyes looking bright behind the clear visor of his helmet. He moved the walkie away from his mouth and spoke to her then, lifting his voice to be heard loud and clear.
“We got the warrant,” he said. “They’re about to go in.”
CHAPTER 60
Images twitched on the laptop screen. Darger watched over Fitch’s shoulder as he clicked around to different body cams. Restlessly shifting from camera to camera even though the footage all looked roughly the same for now.
> Black-clad men huddled in the back of an armored truck, something taut and nervous in their faces, in the way they carried themselves. Grim lines in their mouths, between their brows. Tension in the set of their shoulders.
Some flutter and jiggle to everything in the frame made it clear that the truck was in motion — rushing to the scene even now, rocketing over potholes and bumps in the road. That fluctuating quality in the video reminded Darger of ancient footage from the very first cameras — the black and white images all jerky and strange like a cartoon with frames missing.
Noise on the street below drew Darger’s eyes away from the laptop screen. She peered over the parapet.
“Go time,” Fitch muttered, half under his breath.
Three black trucks wheeled around the corner. Zipped over the asphalt. Skidded to a stop before the building.
Everything held still for a few heartbeats.
And then the cargo doors swung open on the back of each truck, and the men filed out. Anticipation seemed to waft off their upright backs and shoulders. Aggression, something like bloodlust entering the air, spreading, affecting Darger way up on the roof, a prickle over the back of her neck like rising hackles.
The chuff-chuff-chuff of the helicopter shifted overhead like a drum fill panned across stereo speakers. The percussive sound seemed to change pitch as it moved around, echoing funny in the hollow between the buildings, like the street was some steep valley made mostly of concrete and brick.
Darger glanced up. Squinted at the bright light above. Saw the news chopper banking overhead. Probably trying to get the money shot now, the trucks arriving, the best angle of the raid to come.
She turned her head back to the street in time to see the breach of the front door.
The first team had the Holmatro Door Blaster in place, waiting to fire. From this distance, it looked like a thick black bar extending across the door, simple, not unlike an anti-theft device stretching over a steering wheel. But Darger knew that just beyond that bar, the round pushing plate was flat against the door right beneath the deadbolt, even if she couldn’t see it from here. The pneumatic pump would drive four tons of pushing force into the plate without a sound. It’d be like having a horse kick the deadbolt open, except with the power of an explosion.
Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight Page 23