by Osborne, Jon
Blankenship stretched his aching neck and rolled his shoulders forward, still creeped out by Morgan’s visual equivalent of copping a feel. And it was just plain odd listening to her gleefully recount the caliber of her romantic conquest, as though he’d somehow found himself stuck in an episode of Sex and the City. And Blankenship would know, too. Thanks entirely to his lovely wife and her fascination with the wildly popular program; he could effortlessly discuss the lives of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda with the best of them.
Blankenship was just about to resume his grilling of Morgan when his cellphone rang in his pocket. He dug it out and looked down at the name on the caller ID: Bill Krugman.
Blankenship flipped open his Motorola Razr and pressed it against his left ear. “Yes, sir?”
As always, Krugman cut straight to the point. Sliced straight to the point in this case, actually. “Agent Shaughnessy has been murdered,” Krugman said without preamble, catching Blankenship completely by surprise.
Blankenship’s breath hitched in his throat as his boss’s words slammed hard into his gut like a balled-up fist. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “What?” he said, trying in vain to process the Director’s shocking words but not quite accomplishing the feat. “When? Where?”
“Outside of St. Anthony’s grade school about ten minutes ago,” Krugman answered. “I’m headed over there now.”
Blankenship heard the low hum of a car engine on the other end of the call. He refocused his wavering vision in an effort to keep the room around him from spinning any more but it didn’t work. He needed to put his hands on the table in front of him to support his weight. Poor Shaughnessy. She’d seemed like such a nice woman to him. A damned fine agent, too, from everything he’d heard about her. And it hurt like hell to lose any of your colleagues, now matter how briefly you’d known them. Now he’d lost two of them in the space of less than a week. Hazards of the job, he knew, but that it didn’t make it hurt any less. “Jack Yuntz?” he asked, feeling his anger flare up hot in his chest.
“That’d be my guess.”
Blankenship gritted his teeth. “So do you want me to take over the shootings then?” Now more than ever, Blankenship wanted Jack Yuntz for himself. Needed Jack Yuntz for himself. He had a personal score to settle with the murdering little punk after what he’d driven Dana to. And then the movie-theater shooting and now this.
When Krugman didn’t immediately answer him, Blankenship repeated, “Do you want me to take over the lead on the Jack Yuntz case, sir?”
Krugman grunted into the receiver on his end. For a long moment the Director had seemed preoccupied with something else but now he was back again. “Nope,” Krugman said, his tone letting Blankenship know in no uncertain terms that there was no room for negotiation on the issue. “Same reasons as the ones I gave you last night. I’ll be assigning someone new to take over on that end of things until the task force is up and ready to go. Should be any day now if the state police would finally get its collective head out of its ass. Anyway, with any luck at all, this one will last a little bit longer than poor Meghan. Sad as it is for me to say, I’m afraid that we have another funeral to go to, Agent Blankenship. Tired of them yet? I know that I sure as hell am.”
“Yes, sir,” Blankenship answered. “Sick and goddamned tired of them.”
Blankenship paused, already dreading the upcoming religious ceremony they’d be attending. Hell, he’d barely made it through the fifteen short minutes he’d sat through Dana’s. He shook his head to chase away the thought. One step at a time here. He’d cross that hopelessly rickety bridge when he came to it, no matter how difficult the journey might be for him to make. “So,” he asked, “who’s taking over the lead on the Yuntz case then?”
Krugman grunted again. “Her name’s Claire Wexler. Twenty-six years old. Three-year veteran, which is still a little bit wet behind the ears, I realize that, but she’s a real firecracker. Expert in profiling and jiu-jitsu, of all things. Top of her class at the Academy in 2008. She’s young, Bruce, but she worked on the Buffalo Strangler case last year, so she had the chance to get her feet a little wet too, not just the backs of her ears. Anyway, she really knows her stuff. I trust her completely.”
Blankenship searched his memory for any prior knowledge he might have of Wexler but didn’t come up with anything. “Never heard of her,” he said after a moment.
“Well, you have now. Anyway, what’s going on with Helen Morgan?”
Blankenship took a deep breath and blew it out again slowly over his teeth, wondering briefly if Krugman might be trying to replace Dana with someone who reminded him of her. If that turned out to be the case, he wouldn’t have blamed the old man one little bit. Hell, he missed Dana, too. That being said, he knew that replacing her wouldn’t be quite that easy. After all, you could never replace a snowflake once it had melted, now could you? Not exactly, anyway. And Krugman would probably find that out for himself pretty soon. Not that Blankenship was about to tell the Director his business. Wasn’t a good idea to tangle with a grumpy lion, after all, even an old one. Especially an old one. “Talking to Morgan now,” he said, keeping his other thoughts to himself in the interests of self-preservation.
“Getting anywhere with her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In what respect?”
Blankenship glanced across the table at Morgan. She lifted her eyes to him and held his contemptuous stare with a tear-filled gaze of her own. “I’ll need to bring you up to speed on that later on, sir,” he said, looking away from Morgan again and not wanting to get himself even more riled up by the maddening sight of her. “I’ll call you just as soon as I wrap this up.”
Krugman coughed softly into the receiver on his end, making Blankenship briefly wonder if the old man’s hectic schedule was finally beginning to catch up to him after all these years on the job. He didn’t know how Krugman did it in his seventies. It was absolutely mind-boggling. This demanding career was tough enough on him in his late thirties. He couldn’t even imagine doing it for another forty years.
No two ways about it, Krugman was one tough old coot. Skin made of leather. “Make sure you do that,” Krugman said. “And Agent Blankenship?”
“Yes, sir?”
Krugman blew out a slow breath of his own. “Nail that heartless bitch to a fucking cross, would you? And you can consider that an order coming directly from the top.”
Blankenship pressed his lips into a tight line. “With pleasure, sir,” he said. “With pleasure.”
CHAPTER 24
Jack whizzed down the crowded highway at eighty-five miles an hour in the battered El Camino, metal sides shuddering, the smell of burning oil filling his nostrils, the sounds of Turn the Radio Up cranked full-volume on the car stereo. Eric Carmen had given him a very specific and direct order, and Jack was following it to the letter. After nearly eight hours on the road now, he wasn’t thinking about getting pulled over by the cops anymore.
He just wanted to get there already.
The trip was a straight line all the way through – you could have drawn it with a ruler on a map if you’d wanted to – which made for efficiency but numbed a driver’s brain to the point of absolute insanity.
Finally, blissfully, crossing the bridge into the famed city of his birth half an hour later, Jack navigated his way over to Queens and parked the El Camino on Freeman Road, just about a hundred yards or so down the street from PS312, the place where Molly went to school these days.
Jack stretched his kinked-up neck in the driver’s seat of the El Camino and checked the time on his Timex, infinitely happy to have finally come to a stop after all of that maddening driving. He’d practically gone road-blind from the intense exertion, and as a direct result everything appeared a little bit fuzzy around the edges to him now. Almost surreal. He refocused his wavering vision and squinted at the watch strapped around his left wrist. 3:28 p.m. Good timing, at least. Excellent timing, actually. Chalk one up for the home team. Anot
her stroke of good fortune that he shouldn’t have been able to count on but greatly appreciated nonetheless. He’d cut it ridiculously close – no debating that simple fact – but classes should be letting out in just about two more minutes now. Luckily for these particular kids, though, the pulse-pounding situation that had played itself out over in the crowded hallway of St. Anthony’s grade school in Lorain last Friday afternoon wouldn’t be duplicated here today – non-lethal paintball rifle attack or otherwise. Jack wasn’t even armed at the moment, as a matter of fact, had left his guns locked safely away in a storage unit back in Ohio. He figured it made for the smartest choice considering the circumstances. Because if he had been pulled over by the authorities while he’d been taking his long journey to New York City, there had always existed the chance – however slight that chance might have been – that he might have been able to talk his way out of trouble. Stranger things had certainly happened in the history of the world. Much stranger things. And that chance went right out the window for a sixteen-year-old boy without a driver’s license who was illegally transporting assault weapons across state lines – locked, cocked and loaded for bear.
Locked, cocked and loaded for human beings.
Finally exiting the El Camino and stepping out into the weak afternoon sunshine that was struggling down from the gloomy gray skies above, Jack squatted down next to his beat-up vehicle and bounced up and down several times like an Olympic hurdler preparing for a very important upcoming race. He might need to run here, after all, and if that was the case he wanted to be completely ready.
Taking a deep breath through his nostrils in order to steady nerves that were already humming in delicious anticipation of what would come next, Jack pulled down the black ski mask over his face and began walking briskly toward the school. Every little bit of camouflage helped in these sorts of situations and with the frigid winter weather nipping away at everybody’s noses today the mask shouldn’t draw too much unwanted attention to his person. Jack didn’t know if the FBI would be looking for him out here in Queens as well, but there was no point in taking any unnecessary chances at this relatively late stage of the game.
He paused and shook his head as the cold wind kicked up even more, cutting through his body with all the efficiency of an electric chainsaw and nearly slicing him in half at the waist. At least, he didn’t see any point in taking any more unnecessary chances. Coming out here to Queens today to see Molly was dangerous enough as it was. Out-and-out stupid, actually. But he wanted to see his little sister again. Needed to see her again, for that matter. Needed the brief soul-refresher before he resumed his deadly little game of cat-and-mouse with the feds back in Ohio. After this, he’d leave Molly alone again until he could finally arrange for them to be reunited once and for all.
After a few more minutes of steady walking, Jack finally came to a stop in the middle of a pack of parents who were waiting for their kids on the opposite side of the street from the school, immediately feeling safer in the crowd. Fifty feet in front of him, a pair of crossing guards wearing reflective yellow vests held large red STOP signs in their hands and stamped their sneakered feet against the pavement in the middle of the street in an effort to get the blood in their toes flowing again, readying themselves to direct the impeding foot-traffic that would soon be crossing the wide road.
Just then, the long, sustained sound of a shrill bell sliced through the chilly afternoon air like a switchblade knife, signaling a long-awaited end to the school day. On the other side of the street, dozens of children immediately began to emerge from the building, smiling happily and waving in anticipation of their impending reunions with their parents.
Brief, one-sided conversations rang out all around Jack, making him miss the days when he’d heard similar sentiments coming from his own mother, Stephanie Mann:
“Hey, Sally! Over here!”
“Patrick? Honey? Ready to go?”
“Billy! It’s Mom. C’mon, boy. Let’s go already! It’s freezing out here today!”
“Elyse Mia Mull! You come here this instant, young lady! You are not to pull anyone’s hair!”
Jack scanned the faces of the children crossing the street, looking for his little sister. He frowned, not seeing her anywhere. And that was when a sickening thought occurred to him, dropping his stomach like a heavy lead anchor at sea. He was a fool. An idiot. An absolute fucking moron. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Molly might be sick today, hadn’t even gone into school. Unbelievably, though, just then, an all-too-familiar voice sounded on Jack’s right side, maybe ten feet away, if not even closer than that. “Molly? Molly Yuntz! I’m over here, baby girl!”
Jack turned to his right. His jaw tensed briefly before practically smacking into the center of his chest on its downward journey. The voice calling out for Molly belonged to none other than his former foster mother, Mrs. Macklin, who was waiting for his little sister near the curb, decked out in a bright red scarf and matching woolen cap.
Jack cut his stare back to the road. Molly’s distinctive curly blonde hair bobbed up and down in the wave of children that was still streaming across the teeming street under the hyper-vigilant protection of the crossing guards.
He took a step in Molly’s direction before he could stop himself, his heartbeat slamming painfully against his ribcage. Suddenly, the quick flash of a yellow reflective vest in the dull sunlight overhead diverted his attention away from his little sister. From the middle of the road, the large male crossing guard made eye contact with Jack. The man immediately dropped the STOP sign in his hand, clattering it down onto the pavement at his feet. “You there!” he shouted accusingly, pointing a finger at Jack. “Freeze! FBI!”
Jack froze as he’d been instructed despite every last instinct in his body that was screaming out for him to just move. A moment later, the man’s partner, a woman, joined him. Both moved toward Jack simultaneously, reaching around to the rear waistbands of their jeans as they did so.
Molly looked over at Jack and caught his eye. Her own big blue eyes went saucer-wide. “Jack?” she asked in confusion. Then recognition set it and an excited smile lit up her beautiful face. “Jack? Is that really you?”
Molly’s voice slammed Jack’s brain back into gear, like the rusted gears of a car’s engine finally catching hold. Turning away from his pursuers in a fluttering of his trench coat around his legs, he sprinted down the street in the same direction from which he’d come, bumping shoulders with people in the crowd and thanking his lucky stars above that he wasn’t carrying any weapons on him today that would have slowed him down.
Moving just as fast as his furiously pumping legs would carry him, he hoped against hope that he could somehow make it to the El Camino in time to make his getaway.
Breathing hard, Jack turned his head and caught a glimpse of the crossing guards in hot pursuit over his left shoulder, people who obviously weren’t really crossing guards at all. Guns drawn, they were catching up to him steadily now that they’d extracted themselves from the crowd of people that had initially gotten in their way. If nothing else, the motherfuckers were fast. Too fast. Even faster than Jack, it seemed.
Jack’s ears rang. Acrid stomach bile flooded into his mouth. He swallowed back the foul taste; grimacing against it. He wasn’t going to make it to the El Camino in time; even he knew that, not even close. Glancing desperately to his left, he spied a wide alleyway between two buildings and cut into it, hurting the tendons in his right knee badly in the process and knowing in his heart of hearts that it was all over for him now. There was nowhere left for him to run. Nowhere left for him to hide.
A large blue dumpster sat halfway down the alley. A mountain of bulging black garbage bags were piled up against the side of the dumpster closest to him. A hiding place, however flimsy that hiding place might be. Jack headed for it. One last chance. Maybe his pursuers would be too stupid to check the dumpster, unlikely as that possibility might seem right now.
Only one way to find out.
He glanced back down the alleyway behind him. The FBI agents still hadn’t reached it yet. Good. Still a chance here. Still some hope. Reaching the dumpster, he began to climb in but stopped suddenly when he caught sight of two orange pylons on the far side of it.
Holy fucking God.
Holy fucking Satan.
The pylons flanked an open manhole. The cover sitting next to it had NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC WORKS stamped across the middle.
Jack bolted for the opening in the ground, changing his plans on the fly. More hope, however slight. Entering the hole, he braced his feet against the attached metal ladder inside and reached back up for the pylons, throwing them down into the darkness below before struggling with the heavy manhole cover. Using every last bit of his strength, he finally wrenched it into place above his head; afraid he might throw up his own soul.
Jack panted hard as his pulse pounded away madly in his wrists. His mind raced with a jumble of disjointed thoughts that slammed into each other before shattering away into a million glimmering shards like a dropped mirror. Then he simply waited for the checkmate move to come from the feds; for the unreported beating they’d undoubtedly deliver to him right before hauling his murdering ass downtown and beating the crap out of him some more.
After all this time and after all the beautiful killings he’d gotten away with scot-free, Jack simply waited for the end to come.
Just as he’d known it would all along.
CHAPTER 25
Special Agent Terrance Langley reached the wide alleyway just off Freeman Road first, thrusting in his Bureau-issued Glock to lead the way. His partner, Annie Williams, caught up with him a moment later, coming a panting stop beside him in the entrance to the alleyway. Sweat slid down her temples from the intense and all-too-fresh exertion of the chase.