by John Lutz
“That was a bad idea,” Weaver said, “killing a cop. Haven’t you seen any of those old gangster movies?”
“All of them.”
He made his way along the halls, tried some doors until he found an unlocked one, and slipped into an unoccupied room, pushing the supposedly injured Weaver ahead of him. It was cool in there, and quiet.
He was glad again to have studied the Center’s floor plan, and thought he knew exactly where he was. If he made it about fifty feet to the next cross hall, dragging Weaver along with him, he should be able to turn right and use an exit.
Of course, the exit would be covered by the police, who by now must have surrounded the Center with much of their uniformed force, along with their teams of elite snipers.
The Gremlin went to the dim room’s door and attempted to lock it, but discovered there was no lock. That was when, for some reason, an element of fear crept into his mind. It was a small thing, leaving him no more vulnerable, but it was like having a black cat cross your path. Nothing but superstition, but still . . .
Something else he should have thought of was the young nurse he had let run away after he’d shot, and surely killed, the uniformed cop. If he’d held her as a hostage, she could have become a valuable bargaining chip. Even though she was not the one he had come to collect.
The killer looked around but didn’t see a phone. Probably the Center brought landline phones in and plugged them into wall outlets when new patients arrived.
He pulled his throwaway cell phone from his pocket and pecked out a number that was by now familiar. Quinn’s cell phone’s number. It could be traced to this area, but if he didn’t keep the connection open for a while they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the room he was in.
There was no caller ID on Quinn’s phone, only the number that had most recently called.
Quinn answered and identified himself.
“This will be a short conversation,” the killer said. “It’s time for me to have Pearl.”
Quinn felt the anger grow in him. “I don’t think there will ever be a time for that.”
The Gremlin laughed. God, he enjoyed this! Whoever said victory was hollow didn’t know what he was talking about.
When he heard the laugh, Quinn tightened his grip on the phone. “You’re not going to get off the grounds here alive.”
“After we trade, watch and see if I get off the ground.”
Quinn knew the Gremlin might well have a way. He wasn’t the sort who wouldn’t have a plan B.
Then Quinn recalled Helen the profiler’s words: “He doesn’t want you; he wants what’s yours. He wants Pearl.” Helen had been right from the beginning. He’d been played for a fool. Weaver and her back-from-the-dead act hadn’t fooled the Gremlin. The little bastard had guessed in the beginning that Weaver had only been an arrow pointing the way to Pearl.
“I have Weaver,” the voice on the phone said. “She’ll be actually and forever dead within an hour if you don’t do as I say.”
Quinn told himself that this was going at least somewhat as planned. But he didn’t feel at all ahead in the game.
He wondered how Weaver felt. And the Gremlin.
He knew how Pearl felt, and he didn’t like that, either.
The Gremlin surprised him again. “This place doesn’t have a heliport,” the Gremlin said, “but it does have a flat grassy area up front that will do for one.”
Quinn was thrown by that. It was something he hadn’t considered. “Are you telling me you want a helicopter?”
“Not for keeps,” the Gremlin said.
Quinn thought it wasn’t good that the killer still had a sense of humor. Some of the most vicious psychotic killers he’d encountered enjoyed a good laugh. It at least distracted them for the moment.
The Gremlin was using Weaver as the surest route to Pearl.
“Get me a police or hospital helicopter, and fast,” the Gremlin said, “before it gets completely dark, or I’ll shoot your policewoman, and then everybody will be shooting everybody else. You know how these things get out of hand. Some unlucky sap in the next block will be sitting watching crap on TV and a bullet will come in through a window and blow his brains out.” He tightened his grip on Weaver and stuck the gun barrel under her right eye. “I’m waiting for your answer. You’ve got only so many seconds to make up your mind, and I’m counting.”
Weaver said, “Don’t bargain with the little prick.”
Instead Quinn said, “What happens after you get your helicopter?”
“I guess that depends on what you and our phony, miraculously reborn girlfriend here decide. If she cooperates, the helicopter will simply drop down somewhere and let her out. If she doesn’t cooperate, the same thing will happen, only from higher up.” The Gremlin laughed. “I’ll bet there’ll be some TV copters, too. Recording everything. It will be immortal on the Internet.”
Quinn stood thinking it over. At least the psychopath wouldn’t be at the controls and wouldn’t crash the helicopter.
“It isn’t as if you have a choice,” the killer said.
Quinn knew he was right.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll try to get you a helicopter. It won’t be easy. I’ll have to make some phone calls.”
Quinn used his index finger to peck out Renz’s number.
In the building’s lobby, Renz answered a Center phone and listened to Quinn’s concise request. Since all calls in or out of the Center were being monitored, he already knew the contents of Quinn and the killer’s earlier conversation, so it didn’t surprise him. Wouldn’t have surprised him, anyway. Desperate people often viewed helicopters as if they were magic carpets that could swoop down and lift them out of trouble. It was wishful thinking.
Most of the time.
He said, “I can get us a helicopter.”
“I need it fast, Harley.”
“You’ll get it.”
Renz didn’t bother telling Quinn that somewhere along the line, probably in his brief stint in the army, the Gremlin had learned to fly a helicopter. That was only seven months before he went AWOL and was given a dishonorable discharge. What Quinn didn’t know might not hurt him. Or Renz.
Quinn relayed Renz’s answer. There were few people in the country who had the popular commissioner’s push. A skillful social climber and de facto extortionist, he knew almost everyone connected to law enforcement. And not only in New York.
When he heard, the Gremlin grinned. The gun was still pointed at Weaver’s head. She looked as if she’d just swallowed a smile.
People who lived on the edge, Quinn thought. Why did he understand them so well?
He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a window.
It was subtle, but if he’d looked closely enough he might have noticed he was smiling.
It wasn’t a nice smile.
Things got worse.
Renz called Quinn’s cell phone and told him as much.
“We’ve got more information,” Renz said. He sounded frazzled and desperate.
“Another phone call?”
“A letter, actually. Remember the Ethan Ellis death? Looked like suicide by car?”
“Of course.” Quinn could feel everything enlarging, getting more dangerous. “You saying murder now?”
“Nope. Suicide by car. There was a suicide note in an envelope stuck down between the seats. Had your name on it. From Ellis.”
Now Quinn was dumbfounded. The possibilities his mind grasped were slippery and temporary.
“Note said he was being controlled by the Gremlin. Said we’d find out how. The thing is, we’ve gotta act fast. Ellis planted explosives in about a dozen buildings. He knew where and how to plant them. Not only will the buildings come down, but the way and sequence in which they fall will cause them to bring down strings of surrounding buildings, sometimes over a dozen at a time.”
“Like dominos,” Quinn said. He felt his heartbeat accelerate. Fear creeping in as he tried to grasp what he’d just heard. What it meant.
“But with people inside.” Renz said. “Manhattan will be mostly debris when the chain reactions occur.”
“What’s supposed to detonate the explosives?”
“Timers that will activate sequentially so the most damage can be done. A car driven a route south to north, mostly along Broadway, is supposed to send out signals the length of the island that will activate the timers as it passes. That way the right buildings will come down in the right sequences.” Renz’s voice got heavy. “This will all happen within minutes after the first timer is activated.”
“So somebody other than Ellis is supposed to drive the car and make the bombs live?”
“Nope. That’s not our problem, now that we know their plan. Ordinarily we’d simply stop all north-south traffic, at least minimize the damage.”
“Why can’t you do that now?”
“We don’t have to worry about a car or truck,” Renz said. “The killer wants a helicopter. The device used to signal all the detonator timers to start ticking is simply a bastardized cell phone. A brief helicopter flight over Manhattan with that thing broadcasting will cause approximately the same damage as a nuclear bomb.”
“Is there a way to fly the same route and neutralize the timers or detonators by broadcasting a different signal?”
“That’s what everyone here is trying to determine. We decided to talk to you about what we consider our only alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Give the helicopter pilot what he wants.”
“Which is?”
“Pearl.”
As Quinn stood in the suddenly cold silence, he was sure he could hear the distant but persistent thrashing sound of an approaching helicopter.
77
It was dusk, and they heard the helicopter before they saw it. The engine itself wasn’t that loud, but the air passing through the thrashing rotor blades as they provided lift and balance soon made conversation impossible unless it was shouted.
Downward-aimed lights illuminated the dimming landing area. The copter dropped to about twenty feet, toward the center of the circle of brilliant light. It rotated until its nose was pointed north and the craft was parallel to the building.
It settled in gradually, and the choppy, thrashing sound, the one from the Gremlin’s nightmares, lost volume as the rotors and vertical tail propeller slowed and the engine idled.
The helicopter looked much larger on the ground. It was gray with a red cross and bore the lettering of one of the hospitals in the area, St. Andrew’s. The killer had never heard of it. Didn’t care.
A plainclothes cop came to the fore of the knot of people, then edged closer to Quinn and whispered, “Renz said to tell you the guy at the controls was a former attack helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He volunteered for this job.”
That was good to know. Confirmation. At least the Gremlin wouldn’t be at the controls when the craft tried to take off.
“That’s where they met,” the cop said. “Both those guys can fly a chopper.”
Great, Quinn thought. He could almost feel the odds shifting, and not in his favor.
With Quinn beside her, Pearl trudged toward the helicopter as if her feet were heavy.
The side door on the helicopter slid open.
Weaver stood leaning against it, the blasts of air from the rotors plastering her hair over her face. She was feigning a weakness she didn’t feel. She was actually revved and ready for action. The pilot, a stocky guy with gray hair cut so close he was almost bald, slid over where he was visible and extended his hand to help Weaver climb inside. An encouraging signal that he was ready to get away from their exposed position fast. Another figure, no doubt the Gremlin, was barely visible seated in back
Weaver made a move as if to climb into the chopper, but Quinn squeezed her shoulder and she stopped.
“Wait,” he said to her, “wait . . .”
“I’m no longer useful,” she said, her head turned toward Quinn so the others couldn’t read her lips. “He’s sweeping up after himself.”
He knew what she meant, and that she was right.
The look on the pilot’s face was fear. The figure in back fired a small, silenced handgun.
Wearing an astounded expression, the pilot slumped forward. He scrambled to get out of the helicopter, fell to the ground, and died staring up at the slowly rotating blades.
While that occupied everyone’s mind, the small nimble figure in the helicopter moved quickly to the front of the craft. He leaned forward, aiming the gun at Weaver. The helicopter’s speaker system was on. “No one else has to die,” the Gremlin said. “Quinn, give me Pearl and I spare the police lady. Disobey, and we’ll see if she can come alive yet again.”
Pearl had moved to the side of Quinn and now she edged forward and was standing beside him.
The Gremlin said, “Come forward, police lady.”
Weaver, trembling, took a step toward him. He was seated in the helicopter, leaning slightly forward. Quinn knew the snipers had no clear shot at that angle. The Gremlin also would know it.
This kill-crazy little psycho is going to do this, get what he wants. We can’t stop him.
“Police lady,” the killer said, “step forward.”
He grinned as she obeyed. “I no longer need you,” he said with a twist of false regret.
That was when Quinn understood that the Gremlin had known from the beginning that he, Quinn, would make his double switch, sending Weaver to play herself, Weaver, playing Pearl. There had never been a dead woman whose heart had resumed beating.
As the Gremlin took aim at her, Weaver bolted. He shot her in the shoulder, and she fell.
Pearl had stepped around Quinn and was moving toward the helicopter.
“Pearl!” Quinn shouted behind her.
“Keep walking or I’ll shoot him, darling.” The Gremlin wore his grin like a mask.
Pearl kept walking toward him. When she was close enough, he leaned slightly farther to grab her and pull her the rest of the way inside the helicopter, still with the gun aimed at Quinn.
Quinn stood staring.
Quinn . . .
Pearl accepted the Gremlin’s hand up. As she raised herself into the helicopter, she squared her body toward the Gremlin.
Quinn hadn’t moved, except for extending his right arm slightly toward Pearl and . . . what? Pressing a key or button on his iPhone? Signaling?
In those last seconds, the Gremlin sensed that something was very wrong. His face twisted meanly. His eyes implored. “Quinn, you don’t know—”
The blast was loud and sounded more than anything like a shotgun being fired. Its source was like something that used to be called a belly gun.
It was a shaped charge. The Gremlin would have appreciated that.
It wasn’t just Weaver who’d been wearing a bulletproof vest. Quinn had been sure that Helen the profiler was right when she said it was Pearl the killer wanted most of all. Given a choice, he would choose Pearl, who was the most important thing in the world to Quinn. Weaver had been wearing her unaltered vest. Let the killer think he was the one who’d decided on Pearl. Her vest had been altered in the front, and contained a small iron plate on which was a shaped charge aimed like a shotgun and full of nails and ball bearings. The explosive had been fitted to Pearl’s midsection, outside the vest, and aimed straight forward. Her baggy hospital gown had covered the vest. Pearl had been instructed to aim her navel at the Gremlin.
It had worked.
Pearl had trusted Quinn and he’d come through. Weaver had suffered only a slight shoulder injury. She would live. Pearl, who had been target and become weapon, would live.
Pearl was sitting stunned and bent forward, and still had a stomachache, but the vest had diffused most of the pain of the charge’s powerful kick. Her sore muscles would soon heal.
The Gremlin had taken the full force of the blast. It had been concentrated on him as planned. A shaped charge, directing its blast forward. The shrapnel of nails an
d ball bearings had blown him almost in half. He still looked astounded at having been killed by a woman.
Defeated by a gadget.
Pearl thought maybe they would bury the Gremlin with that same astounded expression on his face. She hoped so.
She hoped they would bury him deep.
Epilogue
Two weeks later, a man in a wrinkled gray suit and no neck came into Q&A, stood just inside the door, and glanced around. He was average height but broad, and had about him the look of a bill collector who loved his work. He walked directly to where Quinn was seated behind his desk. Fedderman stood up across the room, wondering.
But the broad man smiled and offered his hand to Quinn. “Frank Quinn.” He said it as if he were telling Quinn and not asking him. “I’m Henry Safire.”
“What can I do—”
“Listen,” Henry Safire said. “That’s all I want. Just . . . listen.”
Quinn settled back in his chair. “You’d better not tell me I need insurance.”
“There’s something we thought you should know.”
“You’re off to a bad start. Who are ‘we’?”
Safire drew a badge from his pocket and flashed it at Quinn. “I’m Homeland Security.”
Quinn leaned forward and studied the ID and badge. He sat back. Said, “I’m listening.”
“You might have some of this info,” Safire said, ”but I’m here to keep you up to date. We’ll start with Ethan Ellis, the architect-engineer who died in that car accident. He committed suicide.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“You know about the envelope with your name on it tucked into his car’s seat cushion,” Safire said. “We read it and don’t want anyone else to ever know about it. Ethan was into some pretty bad behavior. Compulsive. Illegal. Harmful. There is proof of that, but no point in letting the tiger out of the bag. Ethan Ellis was being extorted. Compromised. He had to obey orders, or some things harmful to him would have been given to the media and sensationalized. You were part of what Ethan planned in order to spare his family and reputation.” Safire made a tent of his fingers. Looked at his nails, which were chewed almost to nonexistence.