“You offered to treat them?”
She nodded. “We arranged for them to move to Monroe. I thought it was good for Riley, too. He had some issues adjusting to civilian life, and it helped to have them around.”
“So what’s Colin doing now? Why’s he going after the boy?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
LeMay didn’t say.
“Why did he shoot Manish? Is it because he didn’t want us to find out that Manish called you last night? And that you sent your son to kidnap and murder me?”
That got Braddock to turn around. Hughes stole a peek through the rearview mirror. LeMay had an incredulous look, like she was shocked that Rachel would suggest such a thing. Rachel didn’t buy it. She wanted to smack that look off her face, but she also wanted to get whatever cooperation she could out of LeMay.
“Colin came to see you while he’s on the run for attempted murder. Why would he do that? Why are you so important to him?”
“He’s in love with me,” she said. “Colin and I … developed a personal relationship.”
“You’re sleeping with your son’s friend?”
Braddock and Hughes looked at each other. LeMay closed her eyes. Rachel regretted letting the question slip out. She searched for something else to say before LeMay had a chance to become indignant.
“It’s obvious that Colin wants to protect you,” she said. “I think it’s because you did something to help your son. Something you shouldn’t have. Maybe you helped him get his hands on the heroin they used on Bryce Parker. That they were going to use on me. Or maybe you just felt compelled to tell Riley that I was on my way to your office, and that I might find something that implicated Riley in Adam Hubbard’s murder. Maybe you didn’t know he was going to try to kill me. Maybe you didn’t want to know. But whatever it is, he’s doing this for you.”
LeMay looked at her hands again and nodded.
“Right now, he’s on a suicide mission,” Rachel said. “You’ve talked him out of killing himself before. If we can get to him in time, will you help us do it again?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at Rachel with tears in her eyes. “I will.”
* * *
Stoller reached into his bag and dug out Parker’s phone, turned it on, and typed the password. He had forced it out of Parker after the first heroin injection, when he was coming out of the euphoria, still dazed and susceptible. Then he’d given him another dose, thinking that would do the trick, though it hadn’t.
Not that it mattered now.
He touched the contacts app and scrolled down, searching.
Corey Staples.
He touched it and memorized the number. He didn’t want to use Parker’s phone to make the call, just in case the boy had stored the contact in his own phone. After all, he wasn’t planning to impersonate the reporter.
* * *
Corey and his friend, Ryan, were playing Gears of War 4 in co-op mode. Sitting on the floor in Ryan’s living room, they had the volume on the sixty-five-inch TV as high as they could stand it. With no parents around, they wanted as much realism as they could get from the gunfire and the chainsaws.
They finished a chapter in the game, and Corey took a break to check his phone. It was loaded with missed calls, voicemails, and text messages.
“Oh shit.”
“What is it,” Ryan asked.
“My parents have been blowing my phone up.”
He checked the latest voicemail. It was from his mom. “Honey, please, I need you to call me, okay? Please, it’s an emergency. As soon as you get this. I need to know where you are.”
She sounded distraught. He was about to call her back when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Corey, this is Detective Hughes with the Siler City Police. Are you at home right now?”
“No, sir, I’m at a friend’s house.”
“Is it safe there?”
“Uh … yes, sir. I guess.”
“Good. I need you to listen to me very carefully, son. Someone has made a threat against you. Now, there’s no need to worry; we’re going to take care of it. But I need to know exactly where you are so I can send an officer to your location.”
Corey gave him the address.
* * *
Stoller ended the call and turned his phone off, just in case the cops were trying to track him with it. He was coming down Highway 421, heading toward the center of town. He opened Parker’s phone and typed the address into the Maps app. When the route came back, he touched the start button and followed the directions, making a right on 64.
The screen said he was six minutes away.
FORTY-ONE
It had taken Morrison too long to reach one of Corey’s parents. His father was apparently out of town, and his mother worked as a massage therapist who made house calls on the weekends. When she was with a client, she kept her phone on silent. By the time Morrison spoke to her, she was beginning to fear they had been too late.
She stood with a pair of officers in front of the house, hoping Corey would turn up unharmed. If he was inside, he wasn’t coming to the door. Staples suspected he was at one of his friends’ houses. Morrison sent officers to each address Staples could remember and prayed that one of them found him before the gunman did.
When Staples called back, Morrison answered, asking, “Have you found him?”
“Yes, he just called me.” She sounded breathless. “He’s at Ryan Calloway’s house. The house on Amherst.”
“Okay, I’ve already got a unit on the way. I’m leaving now to go there myself.”
She started for her car, waving at the other officers to follow. They fell in stride, looking confused. One of them said, “Where are we going?”
“We got him. Just follow me.”
She jumped in and took off, made a screeching right, and floored it to speed out of the neighborhood. In her rearview, she saw the pair of patrol cars struggling to keep up.
* * *
Stoller turned onto Amherst and saw a Siler City police officer stepping out of his car three houses away. The officer looked like he was headed for the front door. He paused when he saw the Tucson, but Stoller kept his speed steady and cruised by.
The officer watched for a moment, then turned and continued on toward the door. Stoller slowed and pulled into the nearest driveway. He was four houses away now. He parked and grabbed his gun and a spare magazine from the bag and stepped out. He walked around to the far side of the house to get out of view and sprinted toward the rear corner. He took a quick look, then rounded it and ran through the row of backyards to get to the target house.
Once there, he eased up the side yard toward the front. The officer’s voice met him as he paused at the corner of the house to scan the front yard and the road beyond, both of which were clear. The officer sounded confident and reassuring. There were two other voices answering him—Corey and his friend.
Stoller leaned around carefully until he caught sight of the officer. He was standing in front of the doorway, turned at an angle so that his back was facing Stoller. Lucky break, he thought. But then he noticed that the officer was wearing a ballistic vest, obviously anticipating a potential shootout. Stoller raised his gun and crept around the corner, looking for a clear shot at the back of the officer’s head.
The roar of an engine caught Stoller’s attention. He looked and saw a black unmarked screech to a halt in front of the house. He turned his sights back on the officer, who had spotted him and was now backing into the house, drawing his service weapon with one hand and pushing the boys to safety with the other.
Stoller cursed and advanced on him, but the man had his weapon out. He yelled for Stoller to drop his but didn’t finish the command before he started shooting. Stoller returned fire, making two hits on the officer’s chest and one at the base of his neck, just above the clavicle.
The officer spun and stumbled inside. A female officer in plain clothes wa
s yelling at Stoller from the road. He turned to take aim and felt his leg falter. He looked down and saw that he had been hit. Other police cars arrived. Stoller raised up and fired at the woman, but she was tucked in behind her open door, using the unmarked for cover. The front yard was large, at least twenty yards to the street, which made for a tough pistol shot under stress. The woman fired back, and her second shot caught him in the shoulder.
Stoller winced, saw the open front door of the house, and limped for it. The wounded officer was gone. There was no sign of the boys either. Stoller glanced back and fired a blind volley. Three shots. But more came his way. Another officer was out of his car and taking aim. Stoller caught a round in the back as he rushed through the door and slammed it shut.
* * *
“He’s there already?” Hughes yelled into his phone. He looked at LeMay in the rearview. “Fifteen minutes, my ass.”
Rachel asked, “Is Corey safe?”
Hughes listened for a moment and said, “Oh no. I can’t believe this.” He pulled his phone away from his ear. “They found Corey at a friend’s house. Stoller’s inside with him, the friend, and a wounded officer.”
LeMay leaned forward. “He’ll kill that boy as soon as he gets an opportunity.”
“Damnit, did you hear that, Julie?” He was listening and shaking his head. He lowered the phone again and said, “They can’t tell what’s going on inside the house, but they haven’t heard any more shots since Stoller went in.”
Braddock asked, “How far out are we?”
“At least twenty minutes.” To LeMay, he said, “Have you tried calling this asshole and talking him down?”
“I’ve tried,” she said. “It goes straight to voicemail.”
“Do you guys have megaphones or PAs in your cars?” Rachel asked.
“The newer ones do. There’ll be one there.”
Rachel looked at LeMay. “Would it help to tell him you’re on the way there?”
LeMay thought for a moment. “It might. Tell him I need to see him one last time.”
“What?” Braddock asked. “That makes it sound like you’re condoning this whole murder-suicide thing.”
“No,” Rachel said. “She’s right. He won’t let anything stop him. But if he thinks she’s not going to try, then maybe he’ll hold off long enough to see her. It might buy us the time we need to get her there.”
* * *
Stoller had taken three hits. One had gone through the muscle in his shoulder. Another had hit high on his back, but the angle had made it ricochet off his scapula. Together, they made his left arm useless. But the real disappointment was his leg. Despite his willingness to sacrifice himself, there had been the distant fantasy that he would get out of this alive. That he would finish the job quickly and make his getaway. Go on the run and make a new life in the wilderness of some remote place like Montana or Wyoming.
A bum leg made that impossible.
He pushed it out of his mind and started searching the house. The officer was likely still a threat. Stoller’s first two shots had hit the ballistic vest. They might have been painful, but they wouldn’t have killed him. The one above his collarbone was a different story. It was probably serious, but Stoller didn’t know if it had been enough to put him down for good.
Not that he cared about killing the officer. It meant nothing to him one way or another. The man could live, for all he cared, so long as he stayed out of the way.
Stoller saw a closed door off the living area. There were drops of blood leading to it, a smeared handprint in red on the doorframe. He limped over to it and tested the handle. It was locked, but the privacy hardware of a bedroom door was hardly a challenge for him. Leaning against the frame, he twisted the lever until it popped. Then he pushed the door open, staying clear of the doorway in case the officer tried to take a shot at him.
He waited outside the room and listened. Hearing nothing, he suddenly feared that they had escaped through a window. He chanced a quick look. Back out of the doorway, he took stock of what he had seen. The three of them were huddled together between the foot of a bed and a dresser. The officer was lying on his back on the floor. The boys were next to him on their knees. One of them held a towel to his neck. The other one held the officer’s weapon, aiming it in a pair of shaking hands in the direction of the door.
“Throw the gun this way,” Stoller said. “I want to see it come through this door.”
“Screw you, man. If you come in here … I’m gonna shoot you. I swear.”
Stoller laughed quietly. Brave kid, he thought. “Listen, son, I’m not going to hurt you. There are too many cops outside now. If I do anything to you, they’ll come in here and take me out. All I want to do is make sure you don’t make things worse by firing that thing off. Now throw it out here.”
“No!”
Stoller was getting aggravated. “All right, kid. It’s like this. That cop that’s laying on the floor is bleeding to death. He shot at me and couldn’t stop me. And he’s had police training. I’m betting he knows how to shoot that thing a whole lot better than you do. So let’s find out. On the count of three, I’m coming through this door shooting. I’ll be aiming for you and you alone. Let’s see who gets who first. Ready? One … two…”
A loud thud hit the wall next to the door, and the kid said, “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“What was that?” Stoller asked.
“It was the gun,” said the other kid quickly. “He tried to toss it out the door, but he missed.”
Stoller leaned his head in enough to get a look at the gun lying on the floor. He leaned a little further, saw that the boy who had been holding the gun now had his hands up. Stoller stepped around, wincing as his weight shifted onto the wounded leg.
“Smart move,” he said.
The officer’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and his breathing was rapid and shallow. He didn’t have long.
“Which one of you is Corey?”
They didn’t answer. Stoller pointed his gun at the officer’s head.
“Me,” said the one who was trying to stanch the bleeding. “I’m Corey.”
“Trade places.”
They looked at each other.
“Now,” Stoller yelled.
Corey backed away, and the other boy put his hands gingerly on the towel.
Stoller pointed the gun at Corey and said, “Stand up.”
Corey complied. Stoller waved the gun, and together they moved to the door. Over his shoulder, Stoller said, “Put more pressure on that wound or he’s going to die.”
Out in the living area, Stoller moved them away from the doorway so they couldn’t be seen from the bedroom. He pointed the gun at Corey’s head and said, “I’m sorry, kid.”
“Colin.”
It was a voice over a loudspeaker, coming from outside.
“Colin, my name is Julie Morrison. I’m with the Siler City Police Department. We want to talk.”
There’s nothing left to say, he thought.
“I have a message from Pam. She’s on her way here now. She says she needs to see you one last time.”
She’s trying to stop me.
A tenuous calm had settled in. Stoller could feel everyone outside, holding a collective breath. Like a single organism with one thought—get the kids and the officer out safely.
The idea almost made him laugh. It was such a futile sentiment. None of them understood how meaningless a human life really was.
Afghanistan had taught him that. He had seen the worst of what people could do to one another. Men beheaded, women raped and stoned to death … reprisals and honor killings …
His unit had once discovered the body of a twelve-year-old girl with no face. The villagers said the Taliban had skinned her alive, but they didn’t know why. In a village to the east, one of the elders had a different story. According to him, the girl’s own father had cut her up after discovering she had kissed a boy her own age. There was no telling which story was true.
; The barbarism and brutality of life in a country where people didn’t live in the protective bubble of modern civilization. For most of his fellow soldiers, it was a by-product of race or culture or religion. They were savages. Different from the Americans trying to help them.
But Stoller knew better.
Life at home was an illusion. A scam that everyone agreed on so they wouldn’t have to face their fear of the inevitable. It didn’t matter if you were eight or eighty, when death came, it stripped away the facade of everything you had built up around you. Everything you had worked toward and fought for. It showed you how insignificant your existence had been. But life would go on for everyone else as they scurried about, hoping for the fulfillment of false promises.
Only one person seemed to understand it as well as Stoller did. And she had never let it bother her. She had embraced it, deciding to get what she could out of life before her time was done. She didn’t search for meaning. She played her part in the scam because it suited her.
She would try to stop him now, only because she wanted him to stay around for her. She had collected him like all the other experiences in her life. Stoller admired the purity of that. And he had enjoyed giving in to her. Doing whatever he could to please her. In those intimate moments when they shared their inner demons, he had thought he’d found a life partner. Someone who could make his fantasy a reality. They could escape together into the wilderness, away from everyone who believed in the scam.
It was never going to happen, though. So this was the next best thing. He could go out doing his part to ensure her happiness. And the memories of their time together would be fresh in his mind up to the moment he died. Unspoiled by the passage of time.
He took his phone out and turned it on. He had brought it in case there was the opportunity to leave her a final message before the end. It powered up, and he touched her name. A moment later, she was there.
“Colin?”
“Pam.”
“Will you wait for me?”
“I will.”
FORTY-TWO
Patrol cars had formed a crescent on the street in front of the house, cover for uniformed officers as they kept their eyes on the doors and windows, looking for a target—though they weren’t allowed to shoot unless they themselves were fired upon, lest they risk the safety of the hostages. The Chatham County Sheriff’s Tactical and Response Team had gathered in the neighbor’s yard in case the need came for them to storm the house. An SBI Special Response Team was en route to lend a hand.
Down the Broken Road Page 18