Gianna had met with Alice privately and explained the formation of the two teams. “By rights, you should be heading one of the teams, Alice, but I need you to do something else. I need you to be a role model for all the young women in the unit. I never had a role model when I was starting out, and I’ll bet you didn’t, either. Not somebody who was close at hand all day, every day. Somebody you could see and hear and talk to, somebody who was an equal. If you don’t want to, Alice, say so, and you’ll be one of the team leaders.” But Alice had readily agreed and Gianna could already see how the younger women from both teams gravitated to her. Gianna would see to it that she had her sergeant’s stripes within the next year, even if it meant losing her, which it probably would.
She sent Mimi a text, then turned her attention back to her work, tuning out the activity and conversation across the room and losing track of time until shouts of Boss! Boss! had her on her feet, sprinting across the room. “What is it?”
“The Idaho 5 showed up together tonight, with a backpack,” Jim said.
“Eyes on them and that backpack at all times,” Gianna said, “but from a distance for now. Put the bomb squad on standby. If they leave the backpack and try to leave the building, get the bomb squad in and arrest them, but separately. Separately, understood? Keep them apart, handcuffed, and take everything away from them: Phone, keys, pens, anything in a pocket. Do a thorough pat-down. Leave nothing on them, is that clear? Get going, everybody! Don’t let their vehicle leave the parking lot; make sure there’s nobody in it! Alert PD in Fairfax that we’re coming to the townhouse. Everybody deployed except a computer person and a social media person. Go! Go! Teams, deploy!”
The room emptied in seconds. Computer guru Kenny Chang and social media maven Justine Turnbull plied their crafts. If any mention of any action at Metro GALCO appeared anywhere they’d know it. Gianna went to her corner, strapped on her shoulder holster, disconnected her phone from the charger, slipped on her jacket, and headed for the door. “Wait, Boss!” Eric exclaimed. “You’re not going to Metro GALCO!”
“I am,” Gianna said, “and you’re taking me.”
Eric activated lights and sirens and sped out of the underground garage. Because they were at police headquarters, people were used to moving out of the way, and even on a Friday night in downtown D.C. they had clear passage. For a while. Then the stupids took over and Eric had to ride some bumpers and blare the horn to get them to move. Gianna knew him to be a good driver so she ignored the traffic and concentrated on getting real-time updates on the phone. All five suspects were in custody—shocked and angry and demanding their constitutional rights! They were, as Gianna had ordered, handcuffed and isolated. They had visuals on the backpack: It was in the middle of the third-floor hallway, leaning against the railing and, yes, the bomb squad was en route. “Then notify the management and begin evacuating the building. We’ll be with you shortly.”
The scene at Metro GALCO looked like the set of a doomsday movie. Eric added to it when he pulled the unmarked onto the first available spot on the sidewalk and left the lights flashing as they bailed and ran toward the building. Eric ran toward Bobby Gilliam and Jim Dudley; Gianna headed for the Metro GALCO co-executive director, shouting as she got close, “Is everyone out of the building?”
“Is there really a bomb?”
“Is everyone out!”
“I thought so but—”
“But what?” Gianna demanded.
The woman looked all around, even turning around in a circle. “I don’t see anyone signing. A group of deaf gays has a class twice a week—”
“Where’s that class and how many in it?”
“Second floor, the room at the top of the stairs. There are about fifteen of them.” Gianna cursed and took off running at full speed toward the building. Running was something she did often and she did it well. She was inside and up the stairs before it registered with observers what she was doing. She flung open the door to the classroom, and the energy of that motion caused most of the heads to turn and look at her. She ran to the front of the room, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote BOMB on the board, then ran back to the door, beckoning them to follow. She held up her badge but they had guessed she was a cop and they were following, but much too slowly. She grabbed a couple of them by the arm and propelled them forward; then the others followed. She waited until the room was empty before running to the stairs herself. She had to do a little pushing and shoving to get them to run, not walk, down the stairs.
Eric, Bobby, and Jim had seen her dash into the building at the same time. Bobby pursued her while Eric and Jim aimed for the Metro GALCO exec. “What’s that all about?” Eric asked.
“The deaf class. It doesn’t look like they made it out.”
“There are people still in there? Deaf people?!” Eric yelled, but nobody heard him over the sound of the blast. It literally was deafening. The blast force knocked Bobby back out of the building even as he was holding the door open for the first of the deaf students to make it down the stairs, and it knocked everyone else to the ground where they lay in stunned silence for a moment. Then all hell broke loose. Half of those assembled ran away from the crumbled structure, while the other half ran toward it. They had seen one of their own enter just moments ago, one who was liked and respected by all who knew her or knew of her. Paramedics began to tend to the obviously injured, and firefighters began to move everybody back—everybody except the bomb squad members who were already picking through the smoking rubble, looking for clues.
Eric, Jim, and Alice surrounded Bobby and kept him down until paramedics could examine him. He wasn’t happy about it but he was outnumbered. The blast had reopened the knife cut on his face and it was bleeding. He allowed treatment for about two minutes before pushing the medics aside. “We gotta get the Boss outta there!” he wailed.
Then the Chief was standing over them. “Tell me she’s not in there,” he demanded, and when all he got back was pain-filled looks, he paced and cursed for several seconds. Then, “I understand you have the fuckers who did this?”
“Yes, sir,” Eric said, and led the Chief to them, while Bobby, Jim, and Alice started to climb the rubble mountain.
“Did you have eyes on her, Bobby?” Alice asked.
He shook his head. “But the deaf kids were coming down the staircase, which was right there,” and he pointed to the pile of rubble where the door once was, the pile where Alice began her climb.
“Boss! Gianna! Can you hear us? Can you make any noise?” she called out, and the others joined her in calling Gianna’s name. They kept it up until one of the bomb squad techs joined them, a device of some kind in his hand.
“A heat sensor,” he said, and he began moving it inch by inch over the area where they’d been calling Gianna’s name. Then Jim’s phone rang. He answered, listened, disconnected.
“The Chief wants us—all of us—right now. We’re to leave search and rescue to these guys.”
“We know it’s your boss, and we know who she is and none of us will leave here tonight until we get her out. That’s a promise,” the S&R guy said. He looked into the three pairs of eyes staring back at him and he knew it was a promise he’d better keep . . . or die trying.
The five suspects were lined up facing the bomb-squad truck, hands cuffed behind them, feet spread wide, separated from each other by two team members between them. Every time one of them tried to speak the Chief slapped him or her upside the head until they finally got the message and shut up. “I don’t need you to speak. I don’t care what you have to say. We have the vehicle you like to park at the Metro lot, and we’re inside the Falls Church townhouse. We’ll be in your computers and your phones in the next couple of hours. We’ve had warrants ready for a few days. We were waiting for you to pull your stupid little stunt. That’s why the building was empty when your bomb detonated. Now stand there and keep quiet.”
Eric had been watching their faces while the Chief talked. “We got the reaction we w
anted,” he said. “Total shock.”
They walked several paces away to stand with Tim McCreedy, who told the Chief what he’d already told his team leader: The suspects bragged that the cops could do nothing to prevent the bomb from detonating. “They said, ‘the bomb is smarter than you cops, it knows what to do and when to do it,’” Tim said.
“So even if one of them didn’t detonate it, it was on a timer and would self-detonate,” the Chief said, disgust heavy in his voice.
Tim looked from Jim to the Chief, not sure who he should address. Alice knew what he wanted to ask. “The bomb squad guys are all over it, Tim. They’ll get her out. They will.”
He nodded and walked away. He wanted to believe her. He had to believe her. They couldn’t lose the Boss, too. They just couldn’t.
“I want to meet these A’s I keep hearing about,” the Chief said, and Jim waved them over, introduced them and explained how they had concluded that the five suspects were up to no good. The Chief beamed at them, shook their hands, told them he was honored to serve with them, then went back to the bomb site.
Annie Andersen grabbed Alice’s arm. Tears were streaming down the girl’s face. Alice pushed her own tears back up where they belonged and wrapped the girl in a tight hug. “They’re going to get her out, and she’s going to be fine.”
“How do you know that? A whole building just fell on her!”
“In the first place, it wasn’t the whole building. And in the second place, that’s not who she is, Annie. She might bend—just a little, and only on special occasions—but she doesn’t break. Not ever. She never has and she never will.” Three other women from both teams joined them and it became a group hug. Then several of the guys joined in, then Bobby and Jim added their long, strong arms, and Alice just knew that it was a hug that Gianna felt.
“We know where she is, Chief!” the search and rescue guy yelled as soon as he saw the Chief, who broke into a run. “She’s right about here,” he said pointing to a pile of rubble. “She made it to the bottom of the stairs, and she’s in a pocket.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means there’s nothing directly on top of her, that the heavy stuff all around her is what’s protecting her.”
“And do you plan to dig her out anytime soon?” the Chief snapped, and the digging commenced. It was, of necessity, a slow process, a brick by brick process, but many pairs of hands were involved. The Chief gave them all shoulder pats and announced to all that he was on his way to lock up the hate-filled little bastards responsible. He got a cheer. Then he walked back to the pile of rubble. “Maglione!” he yelled. “I know you can hear me! I’m putting your ass on report as soon as they get all these damn bricks off of you!” And he stalked off, the grin on his face his secret.
He was about to organize the transportation of the five suspects to booking when a loud, “Get your hands off me, goddammit!” permeated the air.
“That would be Patterson,” the Chief said. “Somebody go get her before she assaults a cop and we have to lock her up, too.”
Alice took off at a run. “She’s with me!” she yelled at the uniforms holding Mimi. They happily released her, and she ran in the direction Alice had come from. She saw everybody—the Chief, Bobby, Jim, Tim—everybody but Gianna. She looked from one to the other, then the bottom dropped out of her stomach and she ran toward Metro GALCO, Zemekis close on her heels trying to slow her down. They knew about the bomb, but the sight of the totally collapsed building that had once been an elementary school stopped them cold. Alice grabbed Mimi. “She’s all right; they’re working to get her out.”
Mimi pointed to the building; then she looked at Alice and began shaking her head. “She’s . . . no, she can’t be . . . not in there . . .” and her knees buckled. Alice had an arm around her waist and Jim, Bobby and Tim were there, too, holding her up. Alice beckoned to the search and rescue guy and he trotted over. “Tell her what you told us, about where Lieutenant Maglione is.”
He looked at Mimi, who was seconds and inches away from a faint. “She’s in a pocket. There is no debris on top of her so she’s all right; she’s not injured. But we do have to be very careful about removing the rubble off her. It has to be brick by brick and it’s going to take a while.”
“And you all were going to leave her here?” Mimi was coming back to herself.
“We were going to process the perps—”
“You know who did this? You have them in custody?”
“We do,” said Eric, who had joined them.
“But it doesn’t take all of you to process them. Surely some of you could stay here, surely some of you would want to stay here until she’s safe!”
“We all want to, Mimi,” Alice said, “but the Chief wants us downtown.”
“The Chief is an asshole and you can tell him I said so!”
“I heard you,” the Chief said. “One team with me, one team here. Can’t have the Fourth Estate thinking I’m an asshole,” he said dryly, and turned away, leaving Bobby and Jim to decide who got to stay and help dig Gianna out of the rubble.
“Half and half?” Jim asked, and Bobby nodded. “In fact,” Jim said, “everybody who was Hate Crimes stay here with Bobby, everybody else come with me.”
“That’s not fair!” Annie Andersen wailed. She loved her new boss!
“No, it’s not,” Jim said, “and I’m sorry. But it is the easiest way to do it. So let’s go.”
The HCU team was ready to start digging, but the S&R guy held up a hand to stop them. “You all take the handoffs,” he said, referring to the debris removed from the pile and handed off down a long line, out of the way, a line that Mimi became a part of, too. She watched the HCU team, their thoughts written all over their faces. They’d lost Cassie; no way were they losing their Boss. The pile steadily grew as the pile on top of Gianna was just as steadily diminishing. Every few minutes the S&R guy called out, “Give me three taps if you still can, Lieutenant,” and three taps would sound from within the debris mound. They were faint but they were there. It took four long, dirty hours, but finally the S&R guy held up his hand, then motioned for the paramedics and their stretcher. “Lift her straight up, and be careful!”
A great cheer went up when Gianna was lifted from the debris pocket. She was dirty—she was filthy, truth be told—and she looked exhausted, but aside from a few cuts and scratches, she looked fine. She smiled and extended her hand when she saw Mimi. Then she saluted when she saw her HCU team, all of whom were crying, and they returned the salute, which brought tears to Gianna’s eyes. “You guys need to move away now, so we can keep digging,” and that’s when the realization hit all of them that Gianna wasn’t the only one buried in that rubble; she was just the only one who could hear the rescuers calling out and respond to them.
Bobby called the Chief and Tim called Jim Dudley, his team leader. Then they called Tommi and Eric. Mimi hugged them all, reserving an especially tight one for Alice, then climbed into the back of the ambulance for the siren-shrieking, rapid ride to University Medical Center. Mimi hoped the emergency trauma surgeon that she’d become way too familiar with was not on duty, and she was relieved to see that her wish was granted, but the procedure was too painfully familiar. Gianna was whisked through the swinging doors into the trauma surgery suite. Even though she didn’t need surgery, she was the victim of a bomb blast, and she’d been buried beneath what probably was tons of rubble for several hours, so they were taking no chances. She’d be examined, x-rayed, MRI-ed, and whatever else was deemed necessary while Mimi sat on the bench in the hallway and waited. She somehow still had her wallet and phone in her pockets, so she stepped outside to check in with Zemekis who still was watching the excavation at Metro GALCO. Two more bodies had been removed, one alive, one not. “Hate crime murder,” he said. “They’re going away for life.”
“Good,” Mimi said, and she meant it.
“Any chance the lieutenant will talk to me?”
“Not tonigh
t,” Mimi said, “but she likes you, so see how she feels tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Patterson,” he said. Then, “Are you sure you want to stay quit?”
“So sure I don’t have all the words I need to tell you. Good-bye, Zemekis,” she said, and ended the call. Then she headed for the cafeteria. She was hungry and thirsty, and she kept wondering why she was getting odd looks from people until she looked down at herself and saw that she was also filthy. She should go home and shower and change, she thought, and she would—as soon as she found out that Gianna was all right.
“She’s fine, Ms. Patterson,” the doctor told her two and a half hours later, “and she’ll sleep for the next several hours. We gave her a sedative when we were certain she didn’t have a concussion or any kind of head injury.”
“No broken bones or—”
“Nothing but a few scrapes and scratches,” the doctor said. “She’s dehydrated; she inhaled quite a bit of dust and probably some mold spores. That’s an old building. Was an old building. We’re monitoring her breathing and her lungs and her heart—”
“Her heart?!”
“Breathing dirty air makes the heart work extra hard, but that’s usually over a prolonged time. We don’t think you have anything to worry about in that regard. Honest. Go home, get some rest.”
Mimi stood up and looked down on Gianna. She seemed to be resting peacefully. She’d been cleaned up, her hair washed, something the color of Betadine applied to her cuts and scrapes. Mimi touched her face. Cool. She leaned down, kissed her, whispered words of love in her ear, thanked the doctor and left, surprised to see that the sun was fully up. Surprised also to remember that she didn’t have her car, but given the sudden fatigue that overcame her, she probably had no business driving. She hailed the taxi that was dropping off a fare at the ER door, climbed in, gave her address, and didn’t wake up until the driver told her she was home.
Death's Echoes Page 21