by Randy Alcorn
“Get off him!” Doyle yelled.
“He was going for his gun,” I said.
“Let go of my hand,” Noel said. I let go and he opened his fist to show a stick of gum. “I just got gum out of my shirt pocket. That’s a crime too? At least it’s not Black Jack.”
Noel got a sympathetic look from Tommi. I got dirty looks from Suda and Doyle.
“I have to use the restroom,” Noel said.
“Not without an escort,” I said. “Anybody join me?”
“I’ll go,” Cimma said.
“Don’t let him out of your sight,” Sarge said. “I want him back here in five minutes. Everybody else, stay put.”
As we walked out the door, I positioned myself behind and to Noel’s left, Cimma walked beside him on the right. I put my hand on Noel’s shoulder, and he shook it off. I put it back and clenched it.
We headed toward the detective division men’s room, only to see a sign on the door: Out of Order. A pool of water had accumulated under the door crack.
“Waiting area restroom,” Cimma said.
We walked through the security door into the empty waiting room, elevator on our right, restrooms on our left.
“Watch him,” I said to Cimma.
I walked into the restroom, checked the garbage, pulled a paper towel, and looked under the sink. I even looked inside the toilet tank. All clear. Hey, if I can duct tape a gun under the kitchen table, somebody else can do it in a public restroom.
“All clear,” I said. “Let’s frisk him again.”
“He’s clean,” Cimma said, but frisked him anyway.
Noel, trying to maintain some dignity, walked toward the restroom.
“Don’t lock it,” I said, “or we kick the door down, got it?”
When he closed the door, Noel’s shoulders were sagging, like a man who knew he’d been beat. After he’d been in less than a minute, though the toilet hadn’t flushed, he opened the door. His left arm pushed the door forward and his right arm swung up.
I was looking down the barrel of a 9 mm Beretta PXR Storm, with a magazine capacity of seventeen rounds. I knew this because it was on my wish list.
“Drop your gun,” he said to Cimma, “or I blow his head off.” Cimma dropped it.
“Inside,” he said.
When we were both inside, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, a white bottle. I heard the sound of an aerosol spray. My last memory was pain on the right side of my skull and feeling something wet on my nose and mouth, then seeing the restroom disappear.
The next voice I heard was Sarge’s. “What happened?”
The left side of my head felt like it had been teed up for a Tiger Woods driver.
Sarge pulled me to my knees. I saw Cimmatoni strung out beside me, face flat, tasting the restroom floor. Karl Baylor stepped past me and knelt to check Cimma.
“Smells like knockout spray,” Sarge said. “Chloroform or ether. But where’d he get it?”
“Same place he got the gun,” I mumbled.
“He’s got a gun?”
Sarge stepped out and yelled at the gal by the entry window. “Call for a lock-down! Detective Noel Barrows is a fugitive, armed and dangerous. Tell the guards at the Second and Third Street entrances not to let him out!”
He ran toward her, took the phone, and gave his own message.
“Get me the Second Street door guard!” Sarge barked. “No, don’t pull him away! Post two other guards pronto. Then put him on.”
Sarge roared at me. “How long were you out here before he escaped?”
“Just a few minutes. I think.”
“Then he’s got a five-minute head start!” Sarge said. He talked into the phone. “You saw him go out the front door? Three minutes ago? You see which way he turned?” He put down the phone and yelled, “He’s on the streets! Maybe to his car. Somebody call the parking garage, and get some officers there. Now!”
People scrambled to make the call.
Ten seconds later Sarge looked at me and a dazed, flat-faced Cimmatoni, supported by Karl Baylor. He confirmed that Noel hadn’t stolen guns from either of us. His Beretta was enough.
They led us back to the conference room and sat us down. Three phone calls later, Sarge turned to the seven remaining homicide detectives and said, “Noel’s disappeared.”
63
“I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the English police.… They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I had formed of his abilities.… I made every disposition of my property before leaving England and handed it to my brother Mycroft.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE FINAL PROBLEM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 4:10 P.M.
MY BRAIN WAS STILL FUZZY. All I could think was, Where did he get the gun and the knockout spray?
Someone said they’d seen his car parked in the primo spot at the corner of Second and Madison, twenty seconds from the Justice Center’s east entrance. That meant he didn’t have to walk to the basement parking garage and deal with steps or elevators. He’d been prepared for a quick exit. He could have turned right and crossed the Hawthorne Bridge in a heartbeat, or headed north to the Morrison Bridge and from there could take I-5 to Seattle or Salem or wherever he wanted.
“His car,” Sergeant Seymour said. “What is it? Silver.?” He snapped his fingers.
“Chrysler Sebring,” Baylor said. “Two years old.”
“Four door?”
“Two door,” Cimmatoni said, reentering the land of the living.
“Get out the license number. APB. Top priority.”
I smiled to myself. Noel wasn’t the only one thinking ahead. Yesterday I’d planted a bird dog under his left rear fender. Wherever he was headed, we’d be able to trace him.
Lenny the maintenance man arrived to fix the toilets. Sarge bawled him out because if he’d come earlier, a cop-killer wouldn’t have escaped. Ten minutes later Lenny emerged from the restroom.
“What was the problem?” Sarge asked.
Lenny held up a soaking wet wad of paper. “Some jerk flushed like fifty pages of paper down each of the toilets.”
“Paper?”
He offered two pages to Sarge, who pulled plastic gloves from his pocket before handling the wet paper. He held it up to the light and read the smeared words.
“ ‘I felt the heat rise off the gritty pavement. The smog was so thick you could slice it up and serve it like day-old bread.” He looked further down the page at the next sentence he could read. “I grabbed Alfredo by the throat and said, ‘You’re nothin’ but a two-bit pawnshop palooka.’ ”
“What kind of nonsense is this?” Sarge asked. “Wait, there’s something at the top. It says … The Bacon and Cheese Murders. By … Ollie Chandler?”
An hour later, thanks to the bird dog, four patrol cars were following Noel’s car up I-84 East. Three state police cars and six more officers had gathered down the interstate in Hood River, ready to take him.
Meanwhile, I needed a shower and change of clothes. Just aftr sunset I drove home to the old brownstone. Kids were shooting baskets under the streetlights as I opened the garage door to bring in the trash can. Inside, I pulled down the door and was greeted by the barrel of a pistol, a Beretta, which had grown a silencer since I’d seen it nearly two hours ago.
“Hands behind your back,” said the detective formerly known as Noel Barrows. “Nose against the wall.”
I felt cold metal closing on my wrists. I heard the snap and felt the ache.
“Where’d you get the Beretta?” I asked.
“Hid it in the paper towel dispenser.”
“You thought ahead. Even got yourself out of a secure area by flushing my novel down the toilet.”
“If it ever gets published, it won’t be the last time it sees a toilet. I figured your meeting was to hammer me in front of the detectives. Getting a search warrant and confiscating my stuff was a clue.”
“I left you your bedroom slippers. No hard feelings?”
“I’m taking all your pieces. Move and I blow your head off.”
He reached inside my coat to the shoulder holster and got my Glock. He raided my coat pocket and took my Smith and Wesson 340 revolver.
“How many pockets in this stupid raincoat?”
“Actually, it’s a trench—”
“Shut up. Sit down. Jack told me you always carry a third piece strapped to your ankle. Flail your leg, you’ll never walk again
“He pulled up my right pant leg, exposing my shin.
“You need a tanning booth.”
Gun pointed at my kneecap, he loosened the strap of my ankle holster and took it off, Baby Glock and all.
“Not much of a gun,” he said.
I hoped for a chance to prove him wrong. Between guns and keys, he stuffed my hardware into every pocket he had.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Where’d you expect me to be? My apartment, with the cops? Or driving up the interstate with your bird dog?”
“I’m impressed you found it. Hope you didn’t take personally anything I said at our meeting.”
“We won’t be staying here,” Noel said, looking out the garage door window. He nodded toward the neighborhood kids still shooting baskets under the eerie glow of the streetlights. “But we’ll wait till the crowd thins. Be dark in thirty minutes.”
“So until then … we’ll just chat in my garage?”
“We’re going in your back door.”
Gun pressed into my lower spine, I stepped out of the garage onto the back deck.
“Familiar territory for you, isn’t it?” I said. “You and your noose and shotgun.”
“Think I couldn’t have gotten you with the shotgun? I was just playing with you.”
“If Mulch hadn’t made me duck, it would’ve been playing rough.”
“I’m taking off your cuffs so you can grab his collar. I won’t hesitate to shoot you both. This is a quality silencer. Your neighbors won’t hear it.”
There’s only one smartest dog in the world, and every little boy has him. I love Mulch, and he’s got great street smarts, but instead of something clever like waiting under the kitchen table to attack Noel, he just stood with his paws stretched up on the kitchen window and barked like crazy.
Noel handed me my keys. Beretta in his right hand, he carried a gym bag in his left. “Open the door slowly, grab his collar, and stay six feet in front of me. Lure him into a room, and close the door. Don’t go in yourself, or I’ll shoot you both. Dog comes at me, I kill him. Got it?”
I opened the door. Mulch was snarling now, showing his teeth, his eyes riveted on Noel behind me. I took his collar. Mulch is a great judge of character. I’d have let him go in a heartbeat if Noel didn’t have the gun trained on him. I got him to my bedroom door, opened it, and pushed him in, then tried to close the door.
Mulch put it in reverse, wormed his way back out, made a quick turn, and chased Noel into the kitchen. He got his teeth on Noel’s leg, and I was sure I’d hear the gun.
What happened next showed that Noel didn’t trust his silencer like he claimed. I heard a thud then a yelp from Mulch as he fell to the floor. I ran to him. Noel held his gun gingerly in his hand. I cradled Mulch in my arms, wiping blood flowing out of his right ear. His teeth were showing, including a broken one, but he was as still as a piece of wood.
“He’s a goner,” Noel said.
I felt metal clamp on my right wrist again. He pulled it behind my back to my other wrist and snapped it in place. Both hands behind me, I put my head against Mulch’s chest. I heard a heart beating. Mine.
Donald Meyer had pistol-whipped my dog. I no longer wanted to take him in. I wanted to take him down. I wanted to kill him. But I’d need to bide my time. I’d get justice for Brandon Phillips and Melissa Glissan and Paul Frederick and too many to count on one hand. Including Mulch.
Meyer pushed me down in the recliner and strapped me with duct tape he’d found in my garage.
“Don’t they know how dark it is?” he asked, looking out the front window blinds at the ball players.
Though all I wanted was to get my hands on his throat, I had to calm myself. I should get any information I could, in case I survived this. I breathed deeply, and spoke calmly.
“Was it you or Jack at Palatine’s front door, showing the ID?”
I was hoping he’d be proud of his work and would talk.
He opened his bag and pulled out a metal detector, then ran it over my coat. It activated. He ransacked my coat pockets until he found a metallic dot. He held it up and smiled.
“A GPS, so they can find you. Well, the problem is, you’re home, recovering from your wounds, so you’re not missing. We’ll just leave it right here in your living room.” He set it on the TV.
Next he pulled from his gym bag a TD-53 bug detector, like Ray Eagle’s, then ran it over my chest. The Geiger counter effect kicked in faster and faster as he moved it toward my chest. He waved his wand over my shirt and it started beeping. Pulling back some of the duct tape holding me in the chair, he opened my shirt.
“You wired yourself.” He laughed.
“In case you came after me.”
He put his fingers under the white surgical tape that made an X on my chest, holding the bug in place. He ripped one of the tapes off and I winced, eyes watering. Then he ripped off the other. Next time Jack Bauer wants terrorists to give him information, I recommend pulling their chest hairs.
Donald took out the miniature recording device and looked it over. “Just a recorder, no live transmission. Good.” He dropped it on my kitchen floor and ground it flat.
“You know what you could’ve gotten for that on eBay? I meant to say this earlier, but I’ll say it now: ‘I’m recording you.’ Oops. Should I have mentioned it sooner?”
“You thought I wouldn’t check whether you’re wired. What an idiot.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d been called an idiot, but when the guy calling you that has a big gun with a silencer and a recent track record of at least four murders, you don’t sass him. And you certainly don’t make cracks about his mother.
“Like mother, like son,” I said.
He slapped me with the back of his hand. Harder than the Pillsbury Doyleboy can hit, I’ll tell you that.
“I hate her.”
“What’d your mother do to you, Donald?”
“None of your business.”
“I met her. She’s something. She said your father beat you up.”
“My father wasn’t the problem. He left my mother because he was afraid of her.”
“What’d she do?”
“Things I’d never do to anyone.”
Considering what he’d done, that said it all.
“Should be dark in fifteen minutes,” he said, peeking out the blinds at the ball players.
“So now you can answer my question—was it Jack or you who showed the ID at Palatine’s front door?”
“Me. I’d called him in advance, told him we were conducting an investigation into a student complaint concerning him. Said we just wanted to hear his side of it and I’d be over in ten minutes. He saw my ID and let me in. I closed the blinds, then let Jack in the back door.”
“You saw Frederick over at the apartments?”
“I saw somebody standing there on his deck. Since I couldn’t describe him, I figured he couldn’t describe me. But when I read your interview notes and found out about the binoculars, I knew he could be trouble.”
“So you killed him?”
“If he identified me, I’d be dead. It was self-defense.”
“Interesting definition of self-defense.”
I was taped, hands behind me, in my recliner, knowing that my SIG-Sauer P226 was ten inches out of reach, taped under the chair bottom.
Donald moved Sharon’s old rocking chair by the window. My wrists were on fire.
“The noose symbolized Meli
ssa’s hanging?”
“Jack’s idea. He explained it to the professor as he tightened it around his neck. Said his daughter hung herself, but that as far as Jack was concerned, Palatine tied the rope. I didn’t mention to Jack where I got the rope.” He smiled.
“Were you really trying to frame me? Or distract me?”
“Having fun with you. When he found out later where I’d gotten the rope, and about the Black Jack wrapper, he bawled me out. I wanted people to question you, give you some serious headaches. I’ve never liked you.”
“I’m crushed, Donald. I’ll have to call my therapist.”
The corners of his lips barely raised, like his mother’s. The rotten apple hadn’t fallen far from that tree.
“Your plan,” I said, “was that you’d be investigating the murder you’d committed. The second murder that night spoiled things for you, didn’t it? What were the chances that you’d be assigned to another murder before Palatine’s was called in?”
“We shouldn’t have counted on neighbors to call. We should’ve called sooner. One of those twists of fate.”
“November 20 was the anniversary of Melissa’s death. But you only had a one in five chance of being the up team that night, right?”
Have you ever asked a question you didn’t know the answer to, and just before the last syllable comes out of your mouth you suddenly know? I said it: “You bumped yourself up the list, didn’t you? By murdering people.”
“Just a homeless guy and a drug dealer. No big deal.”
“You killed Jimmy Ross, didn’t you? And framed Lincoln Caldwell?”
“You’re not as stupid as you look, Chandler. Come to think of it, nobody’s as stupid as you look. Yeah, I tested my fake fingerprint skills with Lincoln Caldwell’s prints. Blood sample from Lincoln’s apartment to leave on Jimmy’s doorknob? Easy. Needles everywhere. Getting someone with outstandings to come over in the red sweatpants? Piece of cake. Heard that guy died of an overdose a week later. Shame.”
“How many people have you killed, Noel?” I deliberately addressed Noel the cop rather than Donald the serial killer in the unlikely hope they were separate personalities and the cop still had a conscience.