by Steven James
As they got out of the car, Schwartz pointed to a thickly overgrown field behind the house. “I’ll go around back. That way, if he’s here, he won’t see me. Also, if he has a partner, I don’t want to take the chance of anyone slipping out the back while you go in the front.”
“Sounds good,” she said. She kept her gun low and ready as she approached the porch.
++++
“So, what do you think?” I asked Ralph.
“I’m going back and forth. Pros and cons. Taking him out of here, cutting this sort of deal will cost us our jobs, probably result in jail time. But I’m willing to do it if it means stopping this virus from being spread. You saw what happened to Maria. Now try to imagine that happening to millions of people around the world. Operation Dark Winter was a military war game that was played out back in 2001. It simulated the outbreak and spread of a smallpox bioweapon attack in Oklahoma City.”
“What happened?”
“Things did not end well. Even with a quarantine, within two weeks the virus had spread to half of the U.S., as well as fifteen other countries. Tens of millions of people infected.”
“And that was just a war game.”
“Yeah. And they weren’t even dealing with something this deadly.”
“So,” I said. “We help Ali.”
“Yeah. We help Ali. And we just hope we don’t get infected in the process.”
++++
Sharyn opened the door and stepped into the house.
When people abandon a place, they rarely take the time to tidy up after themselves, and that was the case here.
Dust, dirt, grunge, and debris littered the floor, knee-deep in some places.
However, she wasn’t focused so much on the state of the house but instead on the reason she was there: if Dylan showed up and they caught him, this could all end today.
Although it was a memory that she normally tried to keep in check, being here now, thinking about him, brought to mind that night in the bar on her twenty-first birthday when they met.
________
“So what are you doing tonight?” he said.
“I’m here to drink myself into a bad decision.”
“Hmm. Would you like any help with that, or is this something you’re hoping to do all on your own?”
She assessed him. “Depends.”
“On?”
“Who’s offering. And the type of bad decision I might be lured into making.”
“Lured?”
“It’s just a word.”
“Are some better than others?”
“Do you mean decisions or lures?”
“Decisions,” he said.
“Oh, yes.”
“Well then, I promise to do all I can to make it a really bad one.”
“In that case.” She gestured toward the empty bar stool beside her. “Have a seat.”
________
Sharyn passed through the kitchen, saw no one, then glanced at the stairs that led to the second floor. Now, since she suspected that Dylan was involved, it was hard for her to look at the staircase without feeling a chill.
It’d happened upstairs, at his place.
Upstairs in the bedroom.
She’d been a little tipsy that night when they left the bar—too tipsy.
As he led her into his house, it was one of those moments when she knew she wasn’t making a smart choice, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she also didn’t care.
Her twenty-first birthday was supposed to be the day when she received her trust fund. It was supposed to be the day when things finally turned her way.
But instead, her parents had nearly bankrupted themselves—and her in the process—and she really wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life.
All she’d ever wanted was to be loved. Loved by a parent, loved by a man, loved by someone. But, growing up in Hollywood, that’d always meant she needed to be rich and beautiful. With the workouts, the dieting, the creams, the makeup, she was doing everything she knew to remain young and nubile and attractive, but she was terrified of the thought that she would grow old having never experienced the love that she wanted so desperately to find.
________
“Drink?” he offered, gesturing toward the liquor cabinet.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not.”
One drink led to another, until finally they were upstairs, finally they were in his bedroom, finally he was pulling out the handcuffs and the box cutter and she was begging for her life.
After it was over, she stood in the shower in her condo, trying to wash away all that had happened, trying to make it all go down the drain. All disappear forever.
She needed to clean away the memories, from both her body and her mind, and replace them with something else—something positive and good and pure and right.
Act and act and make believe and don’t let real life get in the way.
But it did get in the way.
There in the shower, she glanced at the red marks on her wrists where the handcuffs had been, and she shook and cried and tried to pretend none of this had happened.
But it had.
It had.
It could never be undone. It could never be washed away.
Now and forever, it was part of who Scarlett Farrow was.
________
After clearing the first floor, Sharyn went upstairs to the master bedroom.
As she stared out the window at the neighborhood, she searched for movement in the bushes and also any cars coming down the street. But everything was still, everything was quiet, except for the sound of two agitated dogs barking at each other in a house two units down.
Then she allowed herself one final foray into the past. One final set of memories from that night grabbed hold of her and wouldn’t let her go.
________
In the shower, as the water splashed across her, she drew her hands up to her face and wept, then lifted her head and screamed and screamed. But even the screaming did nothing to dispel her pain.
After he raped her and had the box cutter pressed against her throat, she’d begged for her life, she’d promised she would never tell, if only he would let her go. But then, after the shower, all she could think of was what if he did this to someone else? What if he did this again? And she realized that almost certainly, someone that well-prepared, someone that coldhearted, either had killed in the past or would do so in the future. And even if he didn’t kill, he would almost certainly attack other women.
Even though she’d given him her word, she realized that sometimes there are things more important than keeping your promises.
So she went to the police and told them everything. She knew where he lived, and when she showed the officer her wounds, the woman believed her. They found him, they stopped him, they put him away. After that, she decided to enter law enforcement herself, to catch people like this, and maybe make the world just a little bit better place.
She switched from majoring in journalism to criminal justice.
And so.
She’d grown up being taught that an abortion stops a beating heart. In Hollywood, that was not a popular view, and her convictions about abortion only brought her more guilt. She believed that in the case of rape, abortion could be used as a last resort. However, in her case, she hadn’t gotten the abortion because she’d been raped. She’d gotten it for another reason altogether. One that she was ashamed of.
And that shame had never gone away.
No shower, no amount of time could ever make it go away.
++++
Detective Ted Schwartz heard someone moving through the underbrush nearby and shouted, “Detroit Police! Hands up!”
“It’s me,” came the reply.
He lowered his gun slightly as the person came into view. “What are yo
u doing here?”
“I should be asking you the same question.”
++++
Sharyn waited and watched but saw nothing, heard nothing unusual in the neighborhood.
Her phone vibrated, and when she checked the screen, she found a TypeKnot notification from the man she was here to meet: I told you to come alone, Scarlett. You’ll find that detective’s body around back in the weeds.
A chill shot through her.
She rushed downstairs, ran outside, and called for Ted.
Nothing.
She tried again: “Ted!”
Gun out, she began picking her way through the overgrown field.
“Detective Schwartz, are you here?”
Up ahead through a tangle of thorns, she could see a body lying in the grass. She wasn’t sure if it was him, but it did look like it was wearing his clothes.
“Ted?”
As quickly as she could, while also trying to remain cautious in case it was some sort of trap, she approached the body and found that it was the same size as Detective Schwartz and did indeed have on his clothes, but she couldn’t immediately identify if it was him. A spreading pool of fresh, crimson blood was seeping into the earth where his head should have been. No murder weapon visible.
No sign of his head.
Despite the horror in front of her, she found herself thinking with clinical objectivity, all federal agent rather than coworker or friend.
It takes time to cut off someone’s head. Was there really enough time for him to do that? Is this really Ted’s body? If not, then—
A phone had been placed in his hand and as she stood there, it rang.
Tucking her sleeve around her fingers so she wouldn’t leave prints, she answered it.
“It’s me,” a voice said, but it was electronically disguised, so she couldn’t tell who it was—male or female, if it was Dylan or someone else.
“What have you done?”
“It ends now, Scarlett. It ends today. There’s a church I want you to visit. You remember what happened at the end of Sanctuary? Well, the time has come to make the final sacrifice.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“St. Gerard’s Church. What happened to Schwartz will happen to anyone else you bring along. Do not call in his death or contact dispatch. Come alone.”
“Oh, I’ll come alone.” She knew the location, had driven past it, had a photo of it hanging in her living room. She felt her hand tighten around the phone. “And only one of us is going to walk out of there alive.”
“That may be true. Leave your cell there. Bring the one I left for you.”
End call.
She knelt and laid a soft hand on the dead person’s arm.
“I’m sorry. I’ll find him,” she whispered. A hot tear fell. She wiped the second away before it could find its way down her cheek. “I’ll stop him.”
She left her own phone beside the body, rose, and headed for her car, fists tight with rage as she did.
++++
Agents Hawkins and Bowers agreed to Ali’s proposal and came back into the room to lay out the plan.
Ali didn’t know where Fayed would be at this moment, but he could predict where he would be if he could set up a meeting.
At first, Agent Hawkins suggested staging an escape, but then they realized that Fayed would most likely suspect that it was faked since he’d been there when Ali was arrested and knew he was in custody.
In the end, Ali offered to simply tell Fayed the truth: that he had been arrested, that the FBI was looking for a way to use him to locate the other cell members, and that if he didn’t reach out, the agents were going to isolate him because of the virus so that it wouldn’t spread to anyone.
But he didn’t tell Hawkins and Bowers the whole truth of what he had in mind.
He didn’t tell them about his plan regarding the suicide vest. He didn’t tell them that the only way he would be able to convince Fayed to meet would be if Fayed would get him the vest. He didn’t explain that he was going to offer to blow himself up while in custody after being recaptured in order to spread the virus through the explosion to everyone in the federal building through the aerosolized particles in the air vents.
Ali asked if either of the men knew Arabic, and when they told him they did not, he said, “Alright, then after I call Fayed, I’ll tell you exactly what he said.”
But that was a lie.
Right now, Ali needed to play both sides. He needed the agents to trust him and he needed Fayed to trust him. If he could do this, if he could pull this off, he would be able to both save his sister and stop the spread of the virus.
Just enough of the truth, but not too much.
“There are too many ears in here,” Agent Hawkins said softly. “We need to get you out before you make the call.”
From his research on the city earlier concerning the tunnels beneath Detroit, Ali knew that only a few of the bomb shelters were still airtight. He would need one of them for what he had in mind.
82
2:04 P.M.
Dispersal in 30 minutes
It wasn’t going to be easy for us to get Ali out of the building without anyone trying to stop us. I confirmed the hallway was clear, then uncuffed Ali’s ankles and wrists and quickly led him into the bathroom just down the hall.
We waited inside until Ralph called to the agents near the elevator. “Get down here now! We need you in the interview room!”
I waited until I heard their footsteps. Waited until I heard Ralph shouting for them to come into the room. Waited until I heard him slam the door, locking them inside.
Then I quickly hustled Ali out of the bathroom, down the hall, and to the elevator. “How long do you think we have until those agents get out of there?” I asked Ralph.
As the elevator doors were closing, I saw the interrogation room door crash open.
“Not long,” Ralph said.
The guys inside must’ve been as good as Ralph was at kicking through doors.
They Hawkinsed it.
The doors to the elevator shut before the agents could get any shots off, and we ascended to ground level. As we exited the elevator, Ralph unholstered his weapon, stuck it beneath his belt, and jammed the holster into the elevator transom. The stiff leather was thick enough to keep the doors from closing, and if they couldn’t close, the agents couldn’t get to this level.
A temporary stall.
They would no doubt get here soon enough.
After changing the settings on our phones so they couldn’t be traced, we took a back hallway to the parking garage, leading Ali, whose hands I’d drawn back behind him, and telling the two people we met to step back. “Prisoner transfer,” Ralph announced authoritatively and quite convincingly.
We made it outside just as the alarms were going off. If the building was in lockdown, there was no way we would be able to drive a car out of the garage, but now that we were this far, there was no turning back.
We rushed to the street and located a BMW sedan parked along the curb, but Ralph shook his head. “Too hard to hot-wire.”
Two cars down, he found one that he did know how to get started. He wasn’t subtle about it at all, but punched through the backseat window on the driver’s side, shattering the glass.
Once in the car, he took the driver’s seat and began working on the wires beneath the dashboard. I brushed the glass aside and sat in the back and recuffed Ali to stop him from making a run for it, in case everything he’d told us was a lie.
++++
A million things were racing through Sharyn’s mind as she drove to St. Gerard’s Church, the old, abandoned cathedral-esque church where the Bluebeard would be meeting her.
As she thought of the body lying there in the thick grass behind the house she’d just left, a tight coil of anger and rev
ulsion wrapped around her, twisted through her. Was that really Ted back there in the undergrowth? If not, who was it?
Anger and revulsion, yes.
And grief.
Had that really been Dylan on the phone? If so, why did he disguise his voice? If it wasn’t Dylan, who could it have been?
Sharyn thought of Pat’s conclusions regarding the killer’s familiarity with the city and the layout of the police precincts.
She couldn’t shake the thought that Dylan—or the killer, if it was someone else—knew an awful lot about leaving a clean crime scene, about the precinct map, about what the team would be looking for at each site. While it made sense that the resident, Geoff Dryer, would be familiar with those things by working in the medical examiner’s office, it was also possible someone in law enforcement was involved.
Also, as far as she knew, Dylan had never decapitated any of his previous victims. She reminded herself that he might have a partner other than the man who’d been killed in the morgue—if that was even Igazi after all.
She glanced at the time.
Twenty minutes to the church.
++++
While Ralph drove, I sat in the back, keeping an eye on Ali.
I put a call through to the Nude-Velvet-London-Reckless office maven, and she helped me locate a building with a bomb shelter about fifteen minutes from here. There weren’t many that fit the description of what Ali required, and although not ideal, this one seemed adequate.
“Can you confirm if your people have found my sister yet?” Ali asked us.
“I’ll put the call through,” Ralph said, “as soon as you contact Fayed.”
He gave me his encrypted phone and I passed it to Ali.
++++
Ali knew that if Fayed suspected that he was truly working with the FBI to stop the smallpox release, he would almost certainly contact Faatina to have her kill or sell Azaliya. So he needed to be convincing. Not only did his life depend on it, but so did his sister’s.
He called the number he’d memorized, the one on the twenty-dollar bill Fayed had given him at the restaurant.