by John Lutz
During this brief suspension of time, Marcus’s part of the team would batter down the front door and stream inside.
When the stun grenade went off, everyone had precious few seconds to operate in with comparative safety. So all hell would break loose. While SWAT members were invading the apartment from both ends, NYPD uniforms would be entering the building and pounding up the stairs, as reinforcements arrived by car. Five, maybe ten seconds, while the element of surprise applied.
Everything might depend on making the most of those seconds.
Marcus checked behind him. The two men with him were ready with the battering ram that would swing forward on thick leather straps and make short work of the ancient wood door. While the door was still flying open, they would enter with Heckler and Koch MP5 automatic weapons at the ready.
It sure made the mouth dry, Marcus was thinking, when a tremendous roar shook the building. Even here in the hall his ears were ringing. Anyone inside had to be paralyzed with shock.
Marcus waved his right hand and the battering ram slammed into the door, shattering wood and crashing it open on the first attempt. He gulped down his fear and led the way inside, smelling the burned stench left by the grenade.
And within seconds, with mixed emotions of relief and disappointment, he saw through faint smoke that the room he was in was empty.
A dark, bulky figure appeared in the hall. One of Newman’s men.
Quickly the SWAT members moved from room to room, dancing with nerve and purpose, swinging their MP5s in arcs. Shouts of “Clear,”
“Clear,” sounded shortly after each room was entered.
Then: “In here! East bedroom!”
Marcus went.
The small room was suddenly filled with equipment-laden, menacing figures in dark uniforms. They stood leaning forward tensely, guns like extensions of their bodies, alert as prey though they were the hunters.
Their attention was focused on a small, huddled figure wedged between the bed and the wall. A woman in what looked like a faded red robe pulled tightly around her as if for protection, though her bare legs were exposed. Her entire body was shaking so violently that beads of perspiration flew from her wild damp hair.
Guns were trained on her as the bed was pulled farther away from the wall.
Two of the SWAT members gripped her beneath the arms, yanked her upright, then forced her facedown on the bed while handcuffs were snapped around her wrists.
“Cindy Vine?” Marcus asked in a loud voice.
The woman managed to nod.
Cindy Vine couldn’t stop trembling and sobbing while she was informed she was under arrest on suspicion of being an accessory to murder. She began gnawing her lower lip as her rights were read to her.
“Where’s Joseph Vine?” Marcus asked her.
Cindy merely shook her head and continued sobbing. Her hair, which was made even wetter by her tears, was stuck across her eyes. One of the SWAT team gently brushed it aside. She continued to sob.
“Do you know the whereabouts of your husband?” Marcus asked again in a voice neither threatening nor soothing.
But she was sobbing too hard to answer.
They waited patiently until she’d calmed down, then asked again, but she would only tuck in her chin, clench her eyes shut, and remain silent.
Marcus knew that for the time being he’d lost her. Cindy Vine’s stunned psyche had carried her somewhere else. She wasn’t going to talk. He might as well have been questioning a piece of the room’s furniture.
As Horn turned the corner of Vine’s block, he saw half a dozen police cars angled in at the curb, and beyond them a police van. The street was blocked except for one lane that let traffic siphon through. There were knots of pedestrians at each end of the street. Uniforms held everyone back at both ends of the block unless they were residents or police.
Horn showed his shield out the car window, then he parked near one of the cruisers across the street from a rundown stone and brick apartment building that had a skeletal steel framework but no awning over its entrance. A tall uniform was standing directly in front of the entrance with his feet planted wide and his arms crossed. Somebody or other at the bridge.
Horn showed his ID again to the uniform at the door, the large man with the scarred face who’d guarded Anne at the apartment and hospital. The man told him the Vines’ apartment number, on the sixth floor.
A few minutes later, as Horn stepped from the elevator and made his way down the hall toward the open door, he could hear voices, all male, drifting from the Vines’ apartment.
When he entered, there was Rollie Larkin, a plainclothes detective Horn didn’t know, and three dark-uniformed SWAT guys with automatic weapons. Dwarfed by all the good-sized men in the small living room was a thin woman curled in a corner of a sofa with her legs tucked beneath her. Her head was bowed and her lank brown hair was plastered to most of her face, leaving only her nose exposed, reminding Horn of a character left over from Cats.
“Cindy Vine,” Larkin said to Horn, and motioned toward the woman.
“No Mr. Vine?”
“ ‘Fraid not. And the missus isn’t talking.”
The plainclothes detective, a middle-aged chunky guy in a better suit than most cops would wear, leaned down so his head was near Cindy Vine’s. He had his shield out of its wallet and pinned carelessly to his suitcoat’s lapel, and when he bent over, its weight tugged at the dark gray material.
“Mrs. Vine?” he said. “Cindy? You do understand you’d be helping your husband if you told us where he is?”
The hair mask moved and it looked like she might have shaken her head no, but she made no sound.
The detective stood up. “She’s been like that, silent. Probably still in shock from when the SWAT team did their thing. Percussion grenade and all.”
“Hell of a thing to have happen in your home,” Horn said. He moved over and stooped down so he could see Cindy Vine’s pretty but haggard, tearstained face beneath all the hair. She continued her empty staring at the carpet. “Mrs. Vine, has anyone apologized to you for breaking in the way they did?”
She raised her head slightly and glanced at him, then looked back at the floor, or maybe at his shoes.
“Would you accept my apology?”
She sat up suddenly so her back and cuffed wrists were pressed against the sofa, then threw her head back so she didn’t have to look at him and was staring at the ceiling. She closed her eyes.
He took that for a no.
Horn straightened up, feeling it in his knees and hearing cartilage crack.
“We’re getting old,” Larkin said behind him. “Fucking shame.” Then to the detective with the dangling badge, “Take her in. Do her a favor and call Legal Aid.”
Cindy Vine moved like a zombie as she was led from the apartment.
“Any idea of hubby’s whereabouts?” Horn asked Larkin.
“No. And so far there’s nothing in the place by way of a clue. SWAT team says that when they broke in, the bedroom TV was on.”
“We have to assume Joe Vine knows about Mandle’s death,” Horn said.
“That’s where Cindy could help us, if she would.”
“When she gets a lawyer and rejoins the real world, she might be more willing to cooperate.” Horn knew that Cindy Vine would have little choice, once her attorney filled her in on the facts and told her she herself was in trouble with the law.
“A blood sample was taken from Mandle before his trial,” Larkin said. “The DNA from it matches that of the corpse found in the building. Mandle probably didn’t get far after his escape, with the bullet wound in his chest. Got to a phone somehow and called Joe Vine for help, then hid out in the condemned building’s basement and waited for Vine.”
“Who found him dead or shot him with the other guard’s gun,” Horn said. “And decided he’d be useful in murdering my wife.”
“You’re half right,” Larkin said. “ME said there was only one gunshot wound and it wouldn
’t have been fatal. Mandle was stabbed in the back.”
Horn looked hard at Larkin, taking in what he’d just heard. It made Vine all the more dangerous. “In the back, huh? Cold-blooded even with his friends, and cautious enough he didn’t want anyone to hear a gunshot.”
“Yeah. Pretty chicken-shit. You’d think the sonuvabitch would have some kind of code. Just about everybody does.”
“His code,” Horn said, “is whatever’s in his best interest.”
“Shoulda gone into politics, or to more John Wayne movies as a kid. We also gotta figure he’s in possession of the other dead guard’s gun.”
“He’ll have more than that to work with by this time. Kinda guy that can make a weapon out of Jell-O.”
“Did Anne get to the cabin okay?”
“I haven’t heard yet from Bickerstaff and Paula,” Horn said. “It’s a long drive.”
“Plenty secluded?”
“Surrounded by woods. Anne’s brother’s a dedicated hunter, only uses it for that.”
“I sent along a detail so security will be in place shortly after Anne arrives. It’ll be impossible for Vine to get to her even if he somehow figures out where she is. You can check it out later and be in overall command.”
Horn walked over to the window to watch Cindy Vine being loaded into the back of a patrol car for her ride to captivity and interrogation. A woman in a jam not of her own making, with a difficult time ahead. But maybe that was wrong. Maybe she’d urged her husband on, driven just as he was because of their son. It sure wasn’t a perfect world.
“There was a human hair stuck beneath the duct tape over Emily Schneider’s mouth,” Larkin said. “It turned out not to be hers. We took some hair samples from Vine’s comb to see if we come up with a match. We will. There’s going to be a solid case against Vine. We have no worries on that account.”
Horn nodded, but he didn’t think evidence would make much difference.
They were going to have to kill Vine.
Paula was standing at the bureau in Harry Linnert’s bedroom and packing a blue vinyl club bag. Toothbrush, deodorant, gun . . .
“You’re going to spend nights on a stakeout?” Linnert asked behind her, still not quite believing it. That she was a cop hadn’t really hit home until now. Not like this, anyway.
“A security stakeout,” Paula said, continuing with her packing. “It will probably only be for two or three days and nights.”
“You’re guarding some big shot? Some Mafia witness or something?”
She laughed. “Nothing like that.”
“I couldn’t stand for you to be in any danger.”
“I’m not, usually, except for being surrounded by too many doughnuts.”
“They haven’t ruined your figure.”
He came to her and kissed the nape of her neck, then turned her around and kissed her on the lips. The world, everything, slowed down and became better when she was in his arms.
She confided in him, explaining the situation.
He gave her another kiss. “You be careful, you hear?”
She nodded. “For you and for me.”
When Horn used the cell phone to call home from his car parked across from the Vines’ apartment building, there was a message on his machine to contact Kray at the Rion Hotel.
He turned the air conditioner on high, sat back, and punched out the Rion’s number then Kray’s extension.
Kray picked up on the first ring. “Horn?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been reading the papers, watching TV news.”
“Spending a lot of time in your room.”
“It’s my information center, such as it is. After Emily Schneider was killed, this operation really started to bother me. Then when you told me about Joe Vine. Jesus, you can imagine.”
Horn wasn’t sure he could. “You’re not the one killing women,” he said. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“It’s just that I know what someone like Vine can do. How he can be impossible to find, then how deadly he can be. I know his moves. More than that, Horn, I know his counter-moves. Because I taught them to him. The kind of training he had, that I was trained to provide, I had to get inside his mind. I know his mind. I can help you like no one else can.”
He was probably right, Horn thought.
“My advice is to get Anne out of the city, out of an urban environment. Vine is trained to be his most deadly in cities, where we ran night strikes and did certain difficult . . . jobs for the government.”
“She’s in a secluded wooded area, in a cabin owned by her brother.”
“That’s good. Urban and mountain terrain are where you don’t want her. Is there lots of underbrush?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t take it for granted that Vine will make noise moving through dry brush. There are ways not to. Thick woods?”
“I was there once. The woods are plenty thick. Gently rolling hills.”
“Water nearby?”
“I recall a creek. Maybe a couple hundred yards beyond the place.”
“Not big enough for a boat or canoe?”
“Definitely not. Probably even dry this time of year.”
“Dry creek beds are like highways through wooded areas,” Kray said. “Vine knows how to travel them.”
“We’ve got that covered,” Horn assured Kray.
“Whatever you do, don’t let Anne accept any package, delivered or mailed. The same goes for any strange object placed outside the cabin, especially one virtually calling for a woman to pick it up. It should be checked before she touches it. She should stay away from windows, especially at night with a light on inside. The thing to remember is he can kill from a distance. There are ways you wouldn’t imagine.”
“We won’t underestimate him,” Horn said.
“Good luck, and if you want me there when and if you get him cornered, please call on me. I might be able to help you in unexpected ways, and at the same time atone for my sins.”
“A church is the place for expiation. A priest rather than a cop.”
“You understand what I mean, Horn. I know you do.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Horn admitted. “But I don’t think I can help you. I’ll keep what you said in mind, though. And thanks.”
“Good luck,” Kray told him again, in a way that left no doubt that he meant it.
Horn sat in the car with the engine idling, wondering if maybe he was being overconfident. Vine was trained in methods beyond those usually dealt with by the NYPD. And the truth was, Horn hadn’t really thought of everything, not so far, and that disturbed him.
He started the car, but before driving away used the cell phone to call an old friend named Morris Beiner on the bomb squad. Men like Mandle and Vine knew how to get their hands on explosives, or they could make explosives themselves.
As the phone on the other end of the connection rang, he remembered Kray’s cautionary voice: . . . he can kill from a distance. There are ways you wouldn’t imagine.
All those years in the NYPD, Horn thought. Maybe he hadn’t seen it all. Maybe nobody ever saw it all.
He thought about Anne, hidden away and heavily guarded, and in more danger than she knew. Vine’s motivation might be more understandable—raw, irrational vengeance—but he was no more an ordinary killer than was Mandle. They were both practitioners of the same rare trade. Death’s craftsmen, even artists, in a world of dilettantes.
Maybe there are ways I need to imagine.
48
When they’d left her alone in the cabin, Anne stood in the center of its main room and looked around. It was a small structure, not much more than the single room in which she stood, with a tiny kitchen area, a bathroom, and a crude staircase that led to sleeping lofts. At least it had indoor plumbing, though her brother told her it sometimes didn’t work all that well. She made a mental note to check it as soon as she got unpacked. Maybe before.
Though the construction was crude
—stained cedar planks on the outside and on one of the inside walls—there was a certain coziness about the way the place was furnished. A large nubby sofa faced the big stone fireplace. Antlers and stuffed fish were mounted on the walls, along with a few unframed prints of hunting scenes. The floor was rough-hewn cedar, with an oval red and gray woven rug in its center. There was a smaller woven rug in the same colors in front of the fireplace. Framed photos of her brother holding up fish he’d caught over the years were propped on the mantel, and above them an old rod and reel were mounted on the wall. There was a mustiness about the cabin, made somehow pleasant by the underlying acrid scent of all the cedar.
Anne looked over at her suitcase, placed just inside the door, then up at the sleeping lofts. Is this really going to be home for a while?
She hadn’t been here in years and didn’t even recall if the place had a generator and electricity. But she was relieved to see a light switch on the wall, and that there was a ceiling fan mounted high on the beamed ceiling. Electrical cords extended from the oversized lamps on tables at each end of the sofa. It would be dark soon. At least she’d have light.
There was a knock on the warped plank door as it creaked open. Anne felt a thrill of terror, then relaxed.
It was only Paula, who’d driven her here.
Paula smiled. “Sorry if I spooked you. I forgot something.”
Anne was spooked, all right. She wondered how secure she really was in the cabin.
Cindy Vine was finally talking, but hestitantly. Horn and Larkin watched through the one-way glass of the precinct interrogation room as a detective named Millhouse, whose specialty was sly interrogation, questioned her in the presence of her Legal Aid attorney. The attorney was a handsome, stern woman in her forties named Vicki Twigg, who, in private practice, had almost been disbarred five years before for her romantic involvement with her client. Rumor had it she’d also been doing drugs but had cleaned up that act before it destroyed her personally and professionally. Horn knew Twigg could be her old clever and unprincipled self from time to time. Cindy Vine hadn’t done badly in the luck of the draw.