“We are not,” Simpson answered. “Debbie will leave this earth with me. I only took the bounties off them because Cronin is dead. But I want Deborah with me for forever and eternity.”
“And Wyatt?” Paul asked “Where is he?”
“He has passed on, Detective,” Simpson replied. “It seems Linda Tangretti accidently shot him when he located her from a tip from Caulfield.” He laughed as he spoke again. “Yes, he's been quite a help to me. It’s amazing what money can do.”
“Yes,” Paul answered. “You embezzled millions of dollars from William Lance during your employment. That's how you are paying for all of this, right?”
“So what?” Simpson answered. Lynagh caught a glimpse of store lights going out and a figure running and he decided to make a move toward the mall. He began to sprint toward the open mall area as Simpson laughed. “Go get him, Lynagh, save yourself. Oh, where was I? The money was for me and Debbie. No one else. Her father didn't miss it.”
Deborah was now crying as Paul spoke again.
“You love her, Robert. You know you're not going to shoot her. Let them go. We can make a trade, me for them.”
Lynagh sprinted toward the figure he had seen, but somehow he disappeared again. There were at least twenty-five uniformed police officers now spread out through the mall, but all were told to stay away from the walkway leading to the restrooms. Still he could not see where the shooter was. Bud called Lynagh to check on Healey and O'Malley as the officer ran to the back hallway where the shots were originally fired.
Ashley picked up the call from the precinct as to what was happening at the mall as Cronin was driving. “Tell them to have four or five ambulances with a medical team standing by,” Cronin said. “We have to get where we are going. Besides they can't know I'm alive just yet.”
Ashley relayed the message as he hung up and looked at Cronin, saying, “You're a dangerous man, Detective Lieutenant Cronin.”
Simpson barked back at Paul, “There can be no trade. I will take Debbie with me to another life. Somewhere where no one will ever have her again.”
He raised his arm as Bud spoke.
“Then you will never have the satisfaction of seeing me dead, you sick motherfucker.”
Paul put his arm on Bud, but his partner looked at him and said, “It's me and only me that will give us a chance to save the girls. He got Cronin and he put the big prize on me. Our only chance to take him out is for him to try and finish me. He's right. Cronin and I went out of our way to use him as a pawn in the Face of Fear case.”
Bud started to walk toward Simpson, when Paul grabbed his arm again. Bud looked at him and said, “It's OK, partner. I've done a lot of praying.” With that he started walking slowly toward Simpson and the girls. “I have no gun, my hands are up. I'm coming to see you, you ugly son of a bitch.”
Simpson was clearly getting agitated as Bud continued to walk toward them.
Bud continued, “I love Deborah, and the big difference between me and you is that I also respect her. I am willing to sacrifice myself for her. That's how much I love her.”
As Bud continued to speak, Paul called Lynagh who was now in the back hallway.
“Get to the sniper and get through the backdoor! If you don't make it we could lose Bud.” Lynagh saw Healey leaning against the wall with his gun out and yelled to him.
Healey acknowledged and told him O'Malley was down the hallway to eliminate Talison.
“Anyone else here?” Lynagh asked.
“Haven't seen anyone,” Healey relayed.
He tried to get up, but Lynagh held him down, saying, “Make sure no one else comes in behind us. Cops or crooks, we don't want an accidental shooting.” Healey nodded as Lynagh moved further down the hallway in search of O'Malley and the other uniformed officers. He was slowed by the cartons, both full and empty, as well as the clothing on the racks. So much for keeping fire escapes clear, he thought.
“Really,” Simpson replied to Bud, “you will give your life for Debbie?”
“I will, but can you keep a promise not to hurt her if I do, or are you a lying fish that's just jealous I have been with her.”
“A lying what?” Simpson asked.
“Oh,” Bud replied. “I meant a lying fuck.”
Simpson was puzzled by the exchange.
“Jesus,” Paul said to himself as he moved closer as Bud spoke. A uniformed sergeant walked up to Paul asking if there was anything more they could do. Paul told him quickly to be sure the mall was secure and to keep the uniformed officers present and visible to discourage snipers.
“Tell O'Brien to search for the sniper from one of the stores through the back hallways.”
Lynagh was moving further down the hall between garment racks and boxes when he spotted a figure taking aim at O'Malley and the three officers. He raised his gun, took aim, and lost sight of the figure again. In another few seconds he saw him move closer to get a better shot, and Lynagh kneeled and fired two shots, injuring the man. It was the bartender from the City nightclub. O'Malley turned around and fired back as Lynagh started yelling. Talison fired from the other side, hitting one of the uniformed officers in the arm.
“Listen!” O'Malley yelled. “You won't leave here alive! Is it worth it? You won't get any bounty money anyway. Don't get in this any deeper than you already are. Cops have been killed. Your only chance of leaving here alive is me.”
He looked back at one of the young uniformed officers who looked like a baby to him. “Get out of here before you bleed to death, and take that asshole over there with you,” he said, pointing at the injured suspect. The officer started to resist until O'Malley spoke again. “It's OK; I have enough backup here,” he said as he pointed to Officer Lynagh about twenty yards away. The young officer started heading the other way as O'Malley turned his attention back to Talison. “You're running out of time, and most likely bullets. No one else needs to die.”
To his surprise Talison answered,
“All I wanted was to have a job in the nightclub business. Work nights, sleep late. Enjoy life, and then this guy enters our lives and offers us a chance to never have to worry about the bills again. I never thought so many people would be killed. Just the cops with the bounty on them. They convinced me you guys had to die. I just wanted to know what it was like to not have to worry about opening up a bill at the end of the month.”
Lynagh had reached O'Malley while Talison kept talking and spoke. “He needs to surrender now or I'm going in. There will be a bloodbath in about two minutes in the hallway, and I need to get through that door.”
O'Malley nodded and yelled to Talison, “We are out of time. We need to get through the door or both of us will be coming to you. You will not make it out of here alive.”
A few seconds went by, and finally a rifle was laid on the floor as Lynagh ran up and pulled Talison away from the door leading to the mall hallway. O'Malley grabbed the rifle and Talison as Lynagh opened the door and saw Simpson standing behind the column as Rachelle was holding Deborah as they stood only a couple feet from him. He could see Bud walking up toward them as Paul was creeping closer and closer.
Lynagh raised his Glock and looked for a way to shoot, but the girls were too close. “Shit,” he said aloud to himself. “Move a little, Rachelle.”
Simpson was anxious to see Bud face-to-face. He let the detective come all the way up to them as Deborah grabbed him. “Oh, how sweet,” Simpson said. “Why don't you tell the girls how many times you had Lynagh pick me up and bring me to the precinct during her kidnapping? Tell her how Cronin threatened me; tell her how you slapped my face, telling me never to come back. Tell her how you told me that you would fuck me up forever if I ever contacted her. You made me feel like a complete asshole. All because of killings I had nothing to do with. Tell her!”
Paul moved closer as Simpson was focused on Bud as another shot r
ang out. Paul grimaced as he focused on what was going on. Lynagh was turning his head sideways trying to get a clear shot. He was still speaking to himself for Rachelle to move.
Bud turned his head to Deborah and winked, saying, “It's true, he is a complete asshole.”
Simpson was getting enraged that once again Bud was not serious with him. Yet Detective Bud Johnson was doing just that. He knew if he could distract Simpson even for a couple seconds someone might be able to take him out.
Bud looked at Rachelle. “Rachelle, go ahead, leave; he only wants me and Deborah, right?”
“No,” Simpson answered. “I think I like this little group. We can all go to heaven together.”
Bud pushed Deborah away from him, hoping to distract Simpson even more for someone to get a clear shot. “You're going to hell, you sick son of a bitch, and Deborah is too nice to tell you but I will tell you. I am better than you in bed. You needed the music to get it up and all I needed was Deborah. As for Kate Summers you forgot to take the strands of your hair from her hand when she was fighting for her life, you dumb shit. Your DNA is all over her death.”
Simpson had enough. He leaned forward and started firing as Paul rushed in. Simpson fired three shots all at Bud as the detective went down. Lynagh fired, as did Paul, who unloaded his Glock at Simpson, hitting him in the head twice and the neck. Lynagh struck him dead center in the chest as blood splattered onto Deborah and Rachelle during the exchange. The sniper Simpson hired was none other than Ken Anker, who was behind a table of clothes in the Uptown Girl clothing store. He had Paul in his sights to finish him, but Officer O'Brien pulled the rifle upward as the shot went off and then struck him in the head with his firearm, knocking him out. O'Brien spoke in a whisper. “I should have blown your head off so you could go to hell.”
Paul bent down to Bud and pulled his shirt open to find his vest, but he was unconscious. He checked his pulse and could not feel his heartbeat.
“Defibrillator!” Paul screamed. One of the officers in the hallway pulled one off the wall and rushed over as Paul attempted to use it on Bud.
Deborah was screaming as a crying Rachelle was trying to pull her away from Bud. Deborah was uncontrollable, and in the way, so Lynagh finally grabbed her and picked her up to get her away as they continued to work on Bud. Rachelle was on her hands and knees and her hair was covering half her face looking at Paul as he kept working on Bud.
As Lynagh carried a screaming Deborah Lance over his shoulder toward the exit he yelled for the medical personnel that they needed to get to the hallway. The medics arrived and they pushed Paul away to work on Bud. The two EMS men quickly used the paddles to defibrillate Bud to break the rhythm of his heart. Finally, on the third try his heart was beating normally. Paul fell to the side with tears in his eyes as he looked at Rachelle still on all fours. He was exhausted as he stared into the blood on the face of his lover as she kept turning her head from Bud to him. Finally she fell on her back near Paul as he held her. He held on to her as her cries echoed through the hallway. His heart ached like he never felt before.
O'Malley walked Talison out to the mall parking lot to hand him over to uniformed cops who were anxious to get their hands on someone who was involved in the Music Club Murders as well as responsible for killing cops. O'Malley took his cuffs off Talison and began to walk back into the mall when a single shot rang out and struck Talison in the head. O'Malley ducked down behind a car as he worked his way back to where Talison was shot. O'Malley reached the vehicle and saw blood coming from Talison's head. “Who fired the shot?” he yelled. The uniformed sergeant came up to O'Malley and told him it was no cop, that it was a sniper shot, and one hell of a shot at that.
O'Malley yelled, “We need to find out where it came from. I've got to get back into the mall!”
Lynagh finally put Deborah down outside the back of an ambulance. “Listen to me,” he spoke firmly. “You've got to get yourself together. Bud is going to need you. You're going to the hospital, and you will be there for him, but you have to calm yourself down.” Deborah was still crying, but she was attempting to compose herself. Lynagh spoke again. “One of the officers is going to take you to Stony Brook Hospital. You are going to clean yourself up and be there for him. OK?”
She was still shaking and nodded her head and spoke. “Is he dead?” she asked as more tears came out.
“Listen!” He grabbed her arms. “He had a vest on, but they were close range. There is always a chance with a vest, but he doesn't have any possibility without you there supporting him. He is not dead. Listen to me,” he repeated himself. “You need to hold it together.” He loosened his grip on her.
“OK,” she said. He motioned for the medics to take her. The driver got out and asked if there were any more injured before taking her to the hospital.
Lynagh turned around and yelled, “There are another ten fucking ambulances here. Get her there and have her looked at before I shoot you myself!”
The driver got back in the car and took off. Inside the ambulance, Deborah realized she no longer had her phone and asked the medic to borrow his. She dialed the number and said, “I need you, Dad.” She told him what happened between her cries, and he said he was on his way.
She pushed the buttons on the phone again as the voice on the other end picked up.
“Hi,” Deborah said, “you made me promise to call you if anything happened to Bud. Well, something did. He saved my life by sacrificing himself for me. I'm so scared I'm going to lose him.”
She began to cry again as the voice on the other end said,
“I will see you soon, and remember what I said almost two years ago. God works in mysterious ways.” The call ended.
As Deborah sat in the back of the ambulance, she never felt so alone. Deborah remembered the night Lindsey told her about God working in mysterious ways and mentioned it to Bud the night she gave him the CD after the Face of Fear investigation.
The medics got a steady heartbeat from Bud as they feverishly worked on him by putting an endotracheal tube, or ET as doctors referred to it, in him to pump air into his lungs. One of them came over to Rachelle and examined her as she lay on the floor of the mall. Paul sat up to look at her as she just stared at him without saying a word. A third medic attempted to look at Paul, but he pushed him off, telling him to help with Bud. Paul lay back down on the floor, unable to get up.
The medic yelled back, “He's got enough help. Stay still, you've been shot.”
Rachelle turned her head to Paul as he looked at her through his glassy eyes.
“No,” she said as she touched his face. “No, not now,” she said again as she cried. Paul's eyes stayed on Rachelle as he drifted off and lost consciousness. Paul had been shot by two of the sniper's bullets in the mall. One hit him in the back, which the vest saved him from serious injury. The second one hit him just above the waist on the left side, just missing the vest. He kept control in the mall by trying to deal with the pain. He needed to know Rachelle was going to be all right. The medics got Bud and Paul on stretchers as Lynagh was back in the mall to see what else was happening. Rachelle was alongside Paul's stretcher as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance. She took Paul's smartphone from his pocket and called his father. Lynagh met up with O'Malley and informed him he was now the ranking officer for Priority 1.
O'Malley looked at him and said, “Maybe they should call it Priority 2 since you and I are the only ones left that can do anything. Let's get back to Caulfield.”
When they reached the vehicle they saw Caulfield cut up and butchered. Lynagh spotted the mask and picked it up.
“What is this about?” O'Malley asked.
Lynagh looked around the parking lot as he spoke. “We have a vigilante killer again, and unless Madison Robinson is Houdini, it's not her.”
“Come on,” O'Malley said. “Let's make sure the mall is clear and you can fill me in
on the blanks before we go to the hospital.”
When they got back to the mall, O'Brien was still in the Uptown Girl store with an unconscious Ken Anker. O'Malley ordered the medics to take him out through an exit other than where the vigilante shots had been fired.
As they loaded him up in the ambulance, Lynagh grabbed one of the drivers and spoke, “Make sure he is not on the same floor as our fellow cops.”
“Sir,” the driver said, “I have nothing to do with where he is put.”
Lynagh repeated himself with a much stronger tone.
“Make sure, he is on a different floor.”
The driver put two and two together as he shook his head and got behind the wheel as O'Brien jumped in the back.
Uniformed Officer Sergeant Church and his officers continued to search the parking lot and the small amount of cars that were still there. It was another ten minutes before they found a Ghost Face mask on the ground. The Sergeant called O'Malley who informed Lynagh.
“Looks like you were right. The spot where it looks like the shot that may have been fired from left another mask as a calling card. That's one hell of a shot.”
Lynagh shook his head in agreement as they walked the mall. O'Malley called over three uniformed officers and told them the mall was to be sealed off until further notice. He then notified the Fourth Precinct commander to get three detectives to the mall to investigate any possible information and evidence, including video in what O'Malley feared would be nationwide news. Both Lynagh and O'Malley waited another 35 minutes till detectives arrived as well as the crime unit to search for evidence that would help in the investigation. It was another thirty minutes of filling the detectives in before they could get to the hospital. They reached Stony Brook Hospital which now had Officers Chapman, Healey, Detective Ellyn Baker, as well as Powers and Johnson. O'Malley got into the elevator with Lynagh as he spoke.
“The place is just filling up with cops.” They reached the eighteenth floor where they were met by other uniformed officers that asked for ID. They no longer cared that Lynagh had a uniform on or that O'Malley was a thirty year veteran of the force. They were told that Paul was in surgery and it was determined that he was hit in the Iliac Pelvic bone which stopped the bullet. He was bleeding in the pelvic cavity but the doctors felt he would be stabilized in a short time. Although he was in excellent physical condition, Paul would not be walking for at least two to four weeks. Bud had slipped into a coma while Healey was satisfactory after the bullet was extracted from his leg. O'Malley and Lynagh went to Bud's room as doctors would not allow anyone else in the room. There were two uniformed officers by the door on the orders of the DA's office. Deborah was in the hallway being consoled by her father, and Lynagh could hear her telling him what happened in the mall.
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