by J. D. Robb
She pulled out her communicator, contacting Whitney to report and outline strategy for the next stage. Her blood was cool, her mind clear as she began snapping out orders.
She broke off when the room fax beeped. “He’s made contact, Commander. I’m reading it now. He’s giving instructions for the mark to expect a uniformed driver within fifteen minutes. He wants the mark to wait in the room. This indicates the hit is meant to go down here, as anticipated. Mark is requested to release the elevator when signaled by ’link from the lobby. Three beeps. Transmission’s ended. He’ll be moving now.”
“A second team will stake out the Luxury Towers. I can give you two detectives from the Homicide Division and three officers.”
“In civilian attire, Commander. And I need at least one man from EDD to run a trace sweep.”
“You already have three there, Dallas. You’re straining the resources.”
She set her teeth, wishing desperately to be in two places at once. “I’ll send McNab to coordinate with the second team.”
“I’ll squeeze out a van with the necessary equipment. Keep this frequency open.”
“Yes, sir. McNab.”
Insult radiated from him. “You’re kicking me now, when it’s going down?”
“I need you to find his hole.”
“He’s coming here. We can scoop him up.”
“I need you to find his hole,” she repeated, “because God help us if he gets past us and crawls back in it. You find it, McNab, and you block it off. That’s an order, Detective.”
Steaming, he grabbed his coat. “Homicide figures all EDD’s good for is ghost work. Fine when you don’t have the answers, but when you do it’s back to the recorders.”
“I haven’t got time for temper tantrums. See that the other e-men here are fully briefed, then turn it over.” She brushed by him and into the parlor. “Everybody out of this room but Jackison. Take your positions. Weapons on low stun. We want him coherent.”
She lifted her eyebrows at Roarke. “Civilians, in the spare room.” She picked up one of the remote monitors. “You can watch.”
“I’m sure it would be entertaining. Lieutenant, you’ve just shorted yourself one e-man. I’ll take his position. Bend the rules a little,” he said before she could object. “It’ll do you more good than having me twiddle my thumbs.”
She had reason to know he was better with the equipment than the two men she had left. “First bedroom,” she decided. “You’re better off where I can keep an eye on you anyway. Jackison, stay clear of the door. When he rings in, wait for my signal to answer. Peabody, I want you at the door of the second bedroom. Use the security peep. Keep alert.”
She spoke into her communicator as she walked back into the control room. “Team A, in position. Team B. Team C. It’s going down here. Observe but do not approach or delay any uniformed drivers. Suspect will employ house or palm ’link on arrival and use penthouse elevator. Repeat, observe only. No one moves on him. We want him up here. When he’s boxed, you’ll get my signal and close in on this sector.”
“I love it when you talk cop,” Roarke murmured in her ear.
“No civilian chatter.” Eve planted herself in front of the monitors, scanning each to satisfy herself that all her troops were in position. “He’s coming,” she murmured. “Any minute now. Come on, you little prick, walk into my arms.”
She saw McNab exit the elevator into the lobby. Still steamed, she thought, noting his grim face and stiff posture. He was going to have to learn the value of teamwork. She watched him scan the lobby, and did so herself.
A droid walked a pair of silky, long-haired dogs across the colorful tiles. A woman in a severe black business suit sat on the circular bench surrounding the central fountain and snarled into a palm ’link. A bellman guided an electric cart loaded with luggage toward the main doors. A woman came through them, leading a toy poodle on a silver leash. Both woman and dog were sleekly groomed, with matching silver bows decking their hair. Behind her came a domestic droid loaded down with shopping bags and boxes.
Rich tourist, Eve thought. Early Christmas shopping.
Then she saw him. He came in directly behind the droid, wearing the long dark coat, a chauffeur’s cap pulled low, sunshades concealing his eyes. “He’s in.” She barely breathed it. “Possible target entering through main doors. Male, five-ten, black coat, gray hat, sunshades. He’s carrying a black valise. Team leaders copy?”
“Copy that, Lieutenant. In sights. Suspect is taking palm ’link from left coat pocket, moving left of fountain now.”
Then it all went wrong. The poodle started it. Eve saw that for herself. The little dog began to bark manically, broke from her mistress and streaked, yapping and snarling, toward the pair of Afghans.
A vicious little battle ensued, full of noise and fury. In her rush to save her poodle, the woman with the silver ribbons raced over the tiles and shoved past the businesswoman who’d risen to watch the commotion, nearly sending her into the fountain.
The businesswoman’s palm ’link went flying and cracked directly between the surprised eyes of a cop in bellman’s gear. He went down like a felled tree.
There were screams and curses, a major crash when one of the participants rammed a table holding a duet of crystal vases. Three bellmen dashed to assist, the first to arrive receiving a slash of canine teeth for his trouble. One of the Afghans bounded clear and raced toward the main doors and escape.
The dog caught McNab at the back of the knees and sent him headlong into the door he’d just been approaching. Outside it, Eve saw one of her men reach under his doorman’s coat for his weapon.
“Keep your weapons out of view. Goddamn it, don’t draw your weapons. It’s a fucking dogfight.”
But she saw, because her attention was focused on the target throughout the thirty-second battle, the exact moment they were made. The palm ’link was shoved back in his pocket, his stance went stiff with shock, and he bolted.
“He’s made us. Suspect is proceeding on foot to the south entrance. Block south entrance,” she ordered as she ran from the suite and toward the elevator. “Repeat. Block the south entrance. Suspect’s rabbiting, consider him armed and dangerous.” She didn’t bother to glance over when Roarke pushed into the elevator with her.
“He’s nearly to the doors,” Roarke told her, and she saw now that he’d had the foresight to grab up one of the minimonitors.
“Ellsworth, your location’s hot.”
“I see him, Dallas. I’ve got him.”
The instant the elevator doors opened, she was streaking across the lobby. Ellsworth was inside the south doors, and out cold. “Tranq’d him. Jesus.” She pulled her weapon and went through the doors.
“Suspect is out of controlled area. I’ve got an officer down at the south entrance. Suspect is on foot—”
She heard the scream as she raced for the corner. He was dragging a woman out of a car. Even as Eve reached the curb and brought up her weapon, he’d tossed her onto the street and had dived behind the wheel.
Pivoting, she pounded to the sportster she’d parked at the entrance.
“I’ll drive.” Roarke beat her to the car by a stride. “I know the car better.”
With no time to argue, she jumped into the passenger seat. “Suspect’s jacked a vehicle, is heading east on Seventy-fourth in a white minijet, N-Y-C license C-H-A-R-L-I-E. That’s Charles Abel Roger Loser Ice Even. This is Dallas in pursuit. I need ground and air support. He’s got a four-block lead, now approaching Lex.”
Roarke shoved the sportster into turbo, rocketed.
“Make that three blocks,” she murmured, eyes straight ahead when they swung around a commuter tram with a layer of paint to spare.
“He didn’t boost a snail,” Roarke commented, zigzagging through traffic without a single tap for the brakes. “Those minijets have muscle if he knows how to use it. But he shouldn’t be able to outrun us in the long haul.”
As he approached a red light,
Roarke gauged the timing, punched for power, and streaked his way through the crossing traffic, leaving tire squeals and blasting horns in his wake.
“Not if we live through it. Suspect is turning south on Lexington, heading downtown. Where is my goddamn air support?” she barked into the communicator.
“Air support is being deployed.” Whitney’s words sliced through like shards of glass. “Ground units heading in from east and west, should join your pursuit at Forty-fifth and Lex.”
“I’m in a civilian vehicle, Commander,” she told him, then finished with a description. “We’re less than two blocks behind him now and closing. Suspect crossing Fiftieth.”
She barely hissed when a maxi-bus lumbered across their path. Roarke punched for vertical, sending the car in a long sweeping rise that had Eve’s stomach pitching. They leapfrogged over the bus and dived for the street.
But the bus had blocked their view just long enough. “He’s turned off. Damn it. Which way?”
“Right,” Roarke decided. “He was shifting to the right lane before the fucking bus.”
“Suspect believed to now be traveling west on Forty-ninth. Ground and air support adjust direction to pursue.”
The light changed as they reached the corner. Roarke readied to whip for the turn. New Yorkers being what they were, pedestrians surged forward into the street as the light beamed yellow and, in defiance of the electric blue bullet bearing down on them, didn’t give an inch.
“Idiots, assholes.” Eve barely had time to finish the thought before Roarke was airborne again and skimming down the sidewalk. “Don’t kill anyone, for Christ’s sake.”
He nearly nipped the outer edge of a glide-cart umbrella, terrorized a trio of Hasidic Jews carrying their briefcases of gems to market. A Bosc pear heaved by the cart operator sailed past Eve’s window.
She caught sight of the fishtailing rear of the minijet as it rounded the corner on Fifth Avenue. The glide-cart on that corner wasn’t as lucky. She saw the unit upend and the operator go sprawling.
“We’re losing ground here. He’s on Fifth now.” She checked the skies and ground her teeth when she spotted media copters rather than cops. “Commander, I need my air support.”
“A hitch at Control. Support delayed. Deployment in five minutes.”
“That’s too late, too goddamn late,” she murmured, and felt little satisfaction when she heard the scream of sirens approaching from the rear.
“We’ll take the long shot,” Roarke decided. His smile was as sharp and deadly as a laser when he punched the sportster into sharp vertical, into full-speed nose lift that had the blood draining out of Eve’s face and her fingers digging hard into the buttery leather of her seat.
“Oh Christ, I hate this.”
“Just hang on. We go up and diagonal, we’ll cut his lead.”
And over twenty-story buildings at approximately a hundred miles an hour.
The street dropped away as they rose up into the arena of tourist blimps and air tram commuters. Eve got a much closer look at the New York City Tourist Board’s pride and joy than she cared to. The monotonous recording touting the joys of the Diamond District blared in her ears.
“There!” She had to shout over the noise, pointed due west. “Blue minijet. He’s caught in a jam on Fifth, between Forty-sixth and Forty-fifth.” Then she spotted another, half a block ahead of the first. “Shit, there are two of them. Take us down, park it on the sidewalk if you have to. All units, two blue minijets on Fifth, both stopped. One between Forty-sixth and Forty-fifth, the second between Forty-fifth and Forty-fourth. Block southbound traffic on Fifth at Forty-third.”
Her stomach tripped over her throat as Roarke took them into a dive. He leveled off ten feet above street level, set down with barely a shimmy in a maxi-bus lane directly across from the northernmost minijet.
Eve leaped out, aimed her weapon at the driver. “NYPSD. Out of the car, keep your hands where I can see them.”
The driver was male, midtwenties. He was wearing a lime green Day-Glo jacket and matching pegged pants. Sweat poured down his face as he got out of the car. “Don’t stun me, for God’s sake, I’m just a runner, that’s all. Just making a living.”
“In the position.” She reached out, spun him around. “Hands on the roof of the car.”
“I don’t want my wife to know about this. I want a lawyer,” he demanded as she patted him down. “I’ve only been doing runs for six months. Give me a fucking break.”
She dragged her restraints from her pocket, dragged his arms behind his back. Even as she snapped them on, she knew he wasn’t her man.
“Move one inch from this spot and I’ll zap you unconscious.”
She started off at a jog, then slowed as she watched Roarke walk back toward her from the other car. “All I got is an illegals runner with the brains of a toadstool.”
“The other car’s empty,” he told her. “He’s ditched it.” Jaw set, he scanned the street crowded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Three criss-crossing sky-glides were jammed with people. Grand Central was a crosstown block away. “We lost him.”
chapter eighteen
Two hours later, Eve was in the Tower, explaining the failure of the operation to Chief Tibble.
“I take full responsibility for the unsatisfactory outcome of the operation, sir. The performance of the officers involved in the task force is not to blame.”
“Fucking circus.” Tibble tapped a huge fist lightly on the surface of his desk. “Dogfights, injured civilians, the primary officer hot-rodding around and over the city in a souped-up, two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports jet. The damn media flybys caught you shooting across town in it. That’s going to look just dandy for the departmental image on screen.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Eve said stiffly. “My department-issue unit was recently destroyed and has yet to be replaced. I opted to utilize a personal vehicle until my new unit is issued. Departmental procedure allows for this contingency.”
His fist stopped pounding as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Why the hell hasn’t your unit been replaced?”
“The automatic requisition was not processed, for reasons I can’t explain, Chief Tibble. My aide applied again today for a replacement, and was told that it would take approximately a week to never.”
He let out a long breath. “Idiot paper pushers. You’ll have your replacement by oh eight hundred, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir. There’s no question that the operation today was unsatisfactory. However, Detective McNab has pinpointed the Luxury Towers as the source of today’s transmission. I’d like to join the sweep and search team deployed there.”
“How many angles of this investigation do you intend to handle personally, Lieutenant?”
“All of them, sir.”
“And have you considered that your objectivity might be in question in this matter? That you’ve begun to pit your ego against the killer’s. Are you investigating a series of homicides, Lieutenant, or are you playing his games?”
She accepted the slap, agreed that she deserved it, but she wouldn’t back off. “At this point in time, sir, I don’t believe I can do one without doing the other. I realize that my performance in this matter has been substandard. It won’t continue to be.”
“I’d like to know how the hell I’m supposed to give you a dressing-down when you keep beating me to it.” He pushed away from the desk and rose. “Consider your wrist officially slapped. Privately, I’ll tell you that I don’t find your performance in this matter substandard. I’ve watched the recordings of the operation. You command well, Lieutenant, with authority and without hesitation. Your strategy to entrap this perpetrator can’t be faulted. Damn poodle,” he said under his breath. “And you were denied air support due to some foul-up at control—a foul-up that will be fully investigated. Consider yourself officially supported.
“Now . . .” He lifted a small clear globe filled with glinting blue fluid, turned it so that the tiny enclosed sea ebb
ed and flowed. “The media will no doubt enjoy our embarrassment today. We’ll just take that on the chin. Will he contact you again?”
“He won’t be able to stop himself. He’s likely to have a period of silence. He’ll sulk, have a temper fit, and he’ll attempt to find some way to harm me physically. I’d say he’d consider that I cheated, and it’s his game. Cheating would be a sin, and he’ll want God to punish me. He’ll be scared, but he’ll be pissed, too.”
She hesitated, then decided to lay out her thoughts. “I don’t believe he’ll return to the Luxury Towers. Whatever he is, Chief, he’s smart. He’ll know that if we could get as close as we did today, it’s likely we’ve begun to track his transmissions. He made us in the lobby today, so he’s got sharp instincts when it comes to cops. He walked into us at the hotel and we blew it. But if we can find his equipment, if we can find his hole, we’ll find him.”
“Then find his hole, Dallas, and bury it.”
She swung by her office to make copies of all audio and video discs from the failed operation. She intended to study every second of every disc.
“I told you to go on home,” she said when she saw Roarke waiting for her.
He rose, walked over, and rubbed his knuckles over her cheek. “How much skin did Tibble leave on your hide?”
“He barely stripped any, considering.”
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“Fault doesn’t matter, responsibility does. And this was mine.”
Understanding, he rubbed her shoulders. “Want to go out and kick some poodles?”
She let out a short laugh. “Maybe later. I’ve got to get my record copies then I’m heading over to join the search and sweep team.”
“You haven’t eaten in hours,” he pointed out.
“I’ll grab something at a QuickMart.” Disgusted, she scrubbed her hands over her face. “Goddamn it, Roarke, we were inches away. Inches. Did he see Baxter go for his weapon through the door? Did one of the team look too hard in his direction? Did he just smell us?”