M.D. Grayson - Danny Logan 05 - Blue Molly

by M. D. Grayson

  “Oh-h-h shit,” she said in pain. “I’m not hit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not hit. I tripped over that fucking pipe when he fired! I think I must have broken my goddamned ankle. Son of a bitch, Danny—it hurts like hell!”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” I whispered in relief, falling forward on her. I could literally feel my heartbeat begin to slow down. “I thought you’d been shot.”

  She reached up and patted me on the head. Then she pushed. “I’m good. Get off me.”

  I moved, but I stayed with her—there was no moving her out until Laskin was neutralized. I checked her ankle—thank God she was wearing her Doc Martens; at least they’d keep the swelling down. I wasn’t sure if the ankle was broken or simply sprained, but either way, Pri was going to have a new patient soon.

  Not long afterward, Miguel and Greg called me back up front. “You got her?” I said to Doc.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Go do your thing.” I leaned over and kissed Toni, then left her with Doc.

  “Any minute now,” Greg said when I crouched beside him. “They’re going to signal us, and I have to answer. He turned to Miguel. “Much as I hate to suggest it, why don’t you try calling out to Laskin again?”

  “Okay. Tell everyone to take cover.”

  The whispered message went back down the line, and the men made themselves small against the walls.

  “Laskin!” Miguel yelled. “C’mon—give it up! There’s nowhere to go! There’s no reason anyone needs to get hurt here!”

  This time there was no answer, just silence. Miguel tried again, but still, there was no response.

  “Maybe he’s trying to save ammo,” Greg said.

  A minute later, I heard one long followed by two quick bangs against one of the doors somewhere down the areaway, possibly from Sylvia Lyon’s shop.

  “That’s them,” Greg said. He gave his prearranged response—three quick bangs on the door next to him.

  Immediately, a distant door swung open and light flooded the far end of the areaway.

  A few seconds later, a voice called out, “We’re clear down here, boss!”

  Laskin was definitely not down at that end.

  “Let’s move,” I said. We moved out, more quickly now, our vision a little better because of the light. The team at Sylvia’s end poured into the areaway and, after checking the space behind them, started moving toward us. A moment later, their lights met ours and suddenly it was clear—the reason Laskin hadn’t answered the last call was simple. He was gone.

  * * * *

  “Where the hell did he go?” Miguel shouted.

  “Check all the doors!” I yelled.

  A moment later, someone yelled out, “Here! Over here! This one’s unlocked.”

  I ran over. One of the empty spaces in the Lyon Building—the one two doors up from Carta Rarus—was indeed unlocked. I knew it was vacant, which meant that Mike would have locked it from the outside.

  “Damn,” Miguel said. “I thought he was down farther than that. He must have snuck back up here.”

  “Let’s open it,” Greg commanded. “Carefully.”

  The SWAT team members took their places on either side of the door and, on Greg’s command, swung it open and burst inside. Almost immediately, they started yelling “Clear!”

  I stepped in and flashed my light around. The space was completely empty. “Son of a bitch!” I said.

  Miguel joined me. “He’s not in there, and he’s not out here. Who the hell was shooting at us?”

  “Check the door up there!” I yelled, pointing to the door at the top of the stairs.

  A SWAT team member raced up the stairs and tried it. “It’s locked!”

  I looked up at the door and weighed the evidence. Laskin had been here. Now he wasn’t. All the areaway doors along the way were locked, except this one. The upstairs door was locked, but from the other side. There was only one possible explanation. “Damn!” I said. “That bastard snuck in here, ran up the stairs and locked the door behind him. Now he’s getting away topside!”

  “There are cops all over the place up there,” Miguel said.

  “Yeah, but they’re all looking the wrong way. They’re up on Second.” I looked around to get my bearings, then said, “We’ve got to follow him! Let’s just use the Lyons’s stairs.” I stepped back outside of the empty space and took a few steps toward Sylvia’s space when I noticed that the SWAT team hadn’t come through Sylvia’s door after all—they’d come through the Carta Rarus door next door.

  “I thought your guys were going through the Lyon Gallery?” I said to Greg.

  “We did.”

  “No you didn’t. You came through the space next door.”

  Greg looked from one to the other, then he yelled, “Carter! Why didn’t you go through the Lyon Gallery door?”

  “Sorry, boss, we couldn’t. The gallery was closed. The door was locked. So we backed up a space and the guy there let us through. Rare books, something like that.”

  I stood straight up and paused. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “They’re always open this time of day.” I turned to Miguel. “Something’s not right. We gotta go.”

  * * * *

  Miguel, Steve, Greg Jordan, and six other members of the SWAT team followed as I raced through the Carta Rarus basement and up the stairs. We burst onto the main floor, where we startled Omar Reynolds, who had his back turned to us. He’d been looking out his window as SPD patrol cars sped east up Main.

  He recognized me. “Mr. Logan, what’s happening?”

  I pulled up suddenly, the rest of the men piling up behind me. “Omar, did you see anyone run by toward Sylvia’s gallery?”

  He shook his head. “Toward the gallery? No! But I was downstairs until a minute ago. I’ve seen everyone running the other way, toward the fire station. What’s going on?”

  I ignored his question. “Is Sylvia open now? Is she normally open?”

  He nodded. “Yes, she’s open. Certainly. She was there earlier. She’s open until eight.”

  “Thanks.” I started to leave, but then turned back. “Omar, stay inside! When we leave, lock your door until we come back!”

  We ran out Omar’s front door, and I was about to sprint right up to Sylvia’s door when the thought occurred to me that if Laskin was inside Sylvia’s gallery, waiting, he’d have a clear view of us approaching. “Stop!” I ordered, raising my fisted hand. Everyone froze in place behind me. I turned to Greg. “We’re out of cover once we cross in front of that window. We should move back behind this truck.”

  He nodded, and the team moved back and took up positions behind a truck parked halfway in front of the gallery and halfway in front of Carta Rarus. I peeked around the back of the truck and scoped the setup. “Greg!” I signaled for him to come look as well. “See that door right over there?” I pointed to the Main Street entrance. “That’s the main door. We’re going to need to take up positions to cover it. There’s another door just like it right around the corner that faces out onto the mall. We need to cover that one, too. See there?” I pointed to the windows. “There’s glass storefront windows all the way around. If Laskin’s inside, we may well have a hostage situation, but the windows mean he’d have to move either into the basement or else into a private room they use for showing pictures to clients. Otherwise, the glass makes him visible.”

  Greg nodded. “Got it.” He split his force in half, issuing orders for both teams to use the cover of parked cars to shoo away civilians and take up covered positions outside both of Sylvia’s doors. He turned to me. “I need to call in a hostage team.”

  “Why? We don’t know that’s what we’ve got here. For all we know, Sylvia Lyon had to go to the bathroom, so she locked her door first. Why don’t we find out where we stand before you make the call?”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  I smiled. “I’m going to pretend like I’m a patron of the arts—walk right up to the front door.”

/>   “You can’t do that,” Miguel said. “If Laskin sees you, he’ll recognize you. Besides, you’re a civilian. We can’t let you do that.”

  I looked at him. “Look. One: I’ve done this before. I’m quick. Most likely, I’ll see him before he sees me. If he does spot me, all he or you or anyone else is going to see is a streak—the place where Danny Logan used to be. Besides, even if he starts shooting at me, perhaps the two of you could maybe shoot back? Distract him a little. Two: we don’t have time for this. He’s either inside, in which case we need to know right now so Greg can order up his hostage team, or else he already left, which would also be sorta handy to know so he doesn’t get away while we’re sitting around here with our fingers up our butts staring at an empty store. I’m going up.” I looked at both of them.

  “I’m coming, too,” Miguel said.

  We stepped out from behind the truck and walked slowly up to the front door. The “closed” sign was out, but the lights were on. I tried the door, but it was locked.

  Miguel looked at me. “What now?”

  “Let’s see.” I knocked on the glass door, hard enough to rattle it in its frame. I listened hard and thought I just might have heard a noise in reply, but I wasn’t sure.

  “You hear anything?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  I leaned forward and put my ear to the glass. “You do it.”

  Miguel banged on the door. This time, there was no mistaking it: someone inside gave a muffled scream.

  “Stand back!”

  Miguel looked at me. “What?”

  “Get back!” I stepped back and then gave a quick side kick right to the middle of the door, cutting my follow-through short like we did when we pulled our blows in training.

  It worked—the tempered plate glass door crumbled into a million pieces and fell to the ground.

  “Shit!” Miguel yelled.

  I ignored him. “Sylvia!”

  “Mmm!” A muffled cry came from the direction of the observation room.

  “C’mon,” I called to Miguel. I pulled my 1911 for the first time that day as we sprinted back to the observation room. I burst through the door, gun drawn. Sylvia and Mike were taped to their chairs, with a strip of tape across their mouths. Mike was in bad shape, looking pretty blue. I peeled the tape off his mouth first, and he immediately started gulping in air. Miguel peeled off Sylvia’s just as Greg and two other SWAT team members ran in.

  “You’re alright,” I said to Mike, watching for an instant as the color returned to his face. I turned to Greg. “You’d better have your guys search the place.”

  “No!” Sylvia cried as her tape came off. “He left! He took Libby with him! Oh my God, he had a gun. He took Mike’s keys and he locked the front door, and then he taped me and Mike, and then he took Libby and he ran! He just took her!”

  “When?”

  “Just a minute ago!”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “I don’t know. They went out the mall door! Oh hurry, Danny! Find her!”

  Miguel turned to Steve. “Stay with these people. Call it in.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. Our diminishing group now consisted of Miguel, Greg, the two SWAT team members from inside the gallery and the three who were outside. Plus me. We hustled out of the observation room and burst through the mall-side door.

  * * * *

  “Which way?” Greg asked as the three SWAT team members who’d been posted outside the door ran up and joined us.

  I looked north toward Main, only sixty feet away. The four other SWAT team members that we’d left behind at Laskin’s store rounded the corner and headed our way, bringing the SWAT group back to ten. I turned and looked south, past Evelyn Freeman’s photography shop toward Jackson. “Well, I doubt he’d turn back toward Main—too many cops. I think he had to have gone south. There’s still no police cars that way. He’d have probably been drawn to that.”

  Greg nodded. “I agree. Lead on.”

  We set off at a jog, looking for any clue, any kind of sign that Libby might have been able to escape.

  The rain had started while we were underground and now it misted down, causing little halos around the streetlights in the mall. It was nearly dark, and there were only a few people walking in the mall—none of them tall and big like Laskin or short like Libby, but all of them frozen with curiosity at the sight of ten heavily armed SWAT team members, jogging through the mall two by two, on the trail of a couple of ordinary-looking guys.

  “We’re gonna need a bread crumb,” Miguel said. “A sign, something.”

  “That’s right,” Greg said. “If he made it around the corner down there, it’s going to get a helluva lot harder.”

  He was right. Every corner Laskin rounded that took him away from the scene multiplied the number of places he could hide exponentially. Soon, it would get out of hand. I nodded. “That’s … wait!” I raised my hand. “Look.” I pointed. We had passed Freeman’s photography store plus one empty space and were standing in front of the entrance to the Lyon Building’s lobby. A bright brass key was sticking in the door lock, a crowded key ring dangling below, rocking gently back and forth. The door had a little gap, not all the way closed. “This door is always closed. Those must be Mike’s keys.” I turned to Miguel. “How’s that for a bread crumb? They’re inside.”

  Greg called his men up and left orders for two of them to remain outside the building entrance, control traffic, and call in the developments. The rest of us went inside.

  As soon as we entered, I raised my hand in a fist. For just a moment, I’d heard a very distinct clomping sound—the sound of footsteps somewhere above us on the building’s open stairwell. It would have been hard for anyone to mask his sound, but Laskin weighed 240. The footsteps stopped right after we entered.

  I pointed upstairs. “Footsteps,” I whispered.

  Greg nodded. “Got it. How many floors?”

  I held up four fingers.

  He nodded again, then he pointed to one of his men and signaled for him to stay in the lobby. “No one comes in; no one goes out,” he whispered. He turned to me. “Lead on.”

  We moved quickly up the stairs. We didn’t make it past the second floor landing when I heard a door open above us. I raised a fist again. For a moment, I heard outside noises, then the door closed, and it was silent.

  Miguel tilted his head. “What was that, traffic noises?”

  I nodded. “That’s right. He’s on the roof. Let’s go.”

  We moved out. I was reasonably sure Laskin wasn’t tricky enough to swing a door open and closed for a decoy, then backtrack and wait to ambush the guy who went to investigate, especially if he had to control a hostage all the while. Then again, he definitely had a gun and, because of that, a person might not get any second chances. I picked up the pace, but I was not stupid about it. I was careful to clear each landing before we exposed ourselves. As we ascended, Greg left a man on the landing of each floor, to guard against the unlikely event Laskin was trickier than I thought. I moved us out again. Somewhere around the third floor, the thought occurred to me that any notion of “protecting the civilian” had apparently vanished somewhere back around Sylvia’s shop. For the moment, anyway, I was an equal, if not the de facto leader.

  I reached the top floor and held up a fist. After carefully peaking over the landing, I stepped up and waved everyone up to follow. “This door here leads to the last stairway—the one that goes up to the roof. Let’s open it, clear it, and then we’ll head on up.”

  Greg nodded, then he moved his people into position. “On three,” he whispered. We took positions on each side of the door and watched as Greg used his fingers and counted.

  At three, one of the men reached over, turned the handle, and pushed the heavy door open. The stairway was empty.

  I pointed up the stairs to the landing. “The landing up there is small, maybe six by six, tops. And the roof door swings in, so there’s only room for two or three guys.
I’m one of ’em.”

  Greg nodded. “You earned it.” He turned to Miguel. “Me, you, and Danny go through first?”

  Miguel nodded.

  Greg turned to the remaining five guys. He pointed to one. “You guard this landing. The rest of you, wait for our signal, then follow us out onto the roof. Keep your eyes open.”

  Miguel led the way up the stairway. When he reached the top, I grabbed his shoulder. “Hold it. When you go outside, you’re going to see a mechanical room just to your right. I think there’s an HVAC unit in there. That’s your nearest cover.”

  He nodded and reached for the door again.

  I grabbed his shoulder again. “Wait!”

  “What?”

  “You know, when you open that door, Laskin’s likely to start shooting. It’s likely to get dangerous real quick.”

  “Yeah? No shit.” But he thought about it for a second, and then he nodded. “Okay. You’re right.” He stepped back. “You’d better go first.”

  I smiled. “What? I was just reminding you, dude. You’re supposed to be the public servant here.”

  Greg pushed past me. “Get out of the way, you bozos. I’m going through first. I’m the only one here wearing body armor.”

  In the army, I was a reasonably macho guy, not one to shirk going through a door first. But what the hell? Greg had a point. Besides, I didn’t live through two combat tours by being stupid.

  “It’s all yours,” I said.

  He nodded. We stood to the side of the doorway, and then Greg turned the knob. He gave me a quick nod, and I pulled it open from behind. He burst through the door and disappeared onto the roof.

  Chapter 22

  There were no gunshots. Miguel peeked around the corner, twice. “Greg’s good,” he whispered. “He’s up against the building. I can’t see anything else, though.”

  “So we don’t know where Laskin is?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  I nodded. I heard footsteps behind me—the remaining SWAT team members from the roof team were making their way up the stairs. As soon as they arrived, I passed off door duty to one of them and peeked outside. From twenty feet away at the mechanical room, Greg noticed and gestured to us. I looked at Miguel. “Let’s go.”