by Tim Stevens
“Where are you going?” asked Harmony.
“To pick up Beth from the precinct house,” he said. “I have to assume she’s a target. It’d be a help if you came with me.”
*
On the ride back to the office, Beth sat in the backseat. She looked pale but composed. Harmony kept glancing back at her until it became clear this was annoying Beth.
The two women had met several times before, back when Venn and Beth were together. Sometimes they’d all gone out for drinks after work, Harmony bringing along whichever boyfriend she was currently dating. It was never the same one twice in a row. Venn didn’t think any guy could keep up with Harmony for long.
Beth and Harmony had gotten along great from the get-go, something Venn found surprising given Harmony’s cynical, suspicious nature. It was she who’d continually urged Venn to pop the question to Beth. Tonight was the first time they’d seen each other since the breakup, and Venn felt the awkwardness in the air.
At the office, Fil nodded politely to Beth, whom he’d never met before.
“Anything?” asked Venn, as they seated themselves. He’d brewed coffee earlier, noted the pot was almost empty, and started fixing some more. They were going to need it.
“Not a lot,” said Fil. “Like the bio on the hospital site says, Dr Brogan is from Minneapolis. Graduated from med school here at Yale, then did his residency training in Chicago, and worked there as an attending until 2011, when he came back to New York.”
Venn glanced at Beth. She nodded. “Yes. That’s accurate.”
Fil looked apologetic, as if he was telling them things Beth could easily have given them herself, but went on. “He had no particular sub-specialism, treating adults with a wide range of psychiatric disorders. Mostly state hospital work, though he conducted a number of private sessions each week, including at the Bonnesante Clinic as we already know. Plus occasional psychiatric evaluations on behalf of the courts.”
Fil went on to list two incidents from the NYPD database, occurring within the past three years, when Dr Brogan had reported being harassed by patients or former patients of his. On one such occasion, an arrest had been made. Both times, the patients were female.
It had nothing to do with the current situation. Venn was sure of it.
“Politically, there’s nothing noteworthy either,” said Fil. “He’s a registered Democrat, but not especially active as far as I can tell.”
Once more, they looked at Beth for confirmation. She nodded.
“No, Paul’s politics are – were – low key. He donated to a few conservation causes, but he wasn’t exactly a firebrand.”
“Rivalries at work?” Harmony suggested.
“Again, no,” said Beth. “I mean, medicine is pretty cut-throat, but not literally. He was a well-liked man. He didn’t screw anybody over to get his job, and he didn’t exploit his residents or others he worked with.”
They continued for a half-hour, poring over what Beth knew of the dead man and what they could find online. He had no family, having grown up an only child and having lost his parents several years earlier. He’d never been married and had no kids.
Venn stretched in his chair, easing the knots out of his arms and back. “Damn it,” he sighed. “There may have been clues in his apartment. And now it’s a burned-out shell.”
Harmony was looking at Beth. “You thought of something?” she said.
Beth frowned faintly. “Nothing, really... but Paul had a thing for backing up data. He was obsessive about it, to be honest. Everything he wrote, every paper and report and essay, he’d keep multiple copies of, on disks and flash drives, which he’d spread out in various locations, like work and his apartment.”
“That could be something,” admitted Venn. “So we get a warrant and search his office at the hospital.”
“I wasn’t thinking only of that,” said Beth. “He left a bunch of flash drives at my apartment. Said you could never be too careful. He once joked that I was the guardian of his legacy, if ever something happened to –” Beth broke off, fell silent.
Venn gave her a moment, feeling uncomfortable. Beside her, Harmony laid an arm across her shoulders. Beth let it rest there.
Gently, Venn said, “I need to get those flash drives, Beth.”
She nodded.
Venn stood. Harmony said, “How we gonna do this?”
“We have to assume the guys who killed Brogan are looking for Beth now,” Venn said. “They may know where she lives. Probably not, but it isn’t worth taking any chances. So: you and Beth stay here, with Fil. I’ll go alone.”
Harmony said, “But if these guys are waiting there at the apartment... You need somebody to watch your back. Like me.”
Venn thought about it. “Okay. The three of us go. You, Beth and me. You and Beth wait in the car, keep a lookout.” He glanced at Beth. “If you feel up to it.”
She said simply, “Yes.”
Chapter 31
The SUV stayed well back, parked in a side street so that Drake could just make out the front of the apartment block from where he sat. Skeet was in the backseat. The twins, Herman and Gudrun, were in the station wagon watching the rear of the building. Rosenbloom was back at the safe house in Bowery. They’d call him if they needed his input.
Which Drake didn’t think likely.
Walusz had approached the building with infinite care, circling it until Drake found the spot he wanted and told him to park. They had all of the guns under the backseat, including the M16.
There was, so far, no sign of any police presence.
To Drake, that meant one of two things. Either the cops didn’t think Drake knew the Colby woman’s address, and therefore hadn’t bothered to post a guard detail on her apartment. Or, this was a setup, a sneakily designed trap, and the moment Drake and his people approached the building they’d be ambushed.
In either case, Drake was certain Colby wasn’t home. The lights were all out, and she was most likely staying with somebody else, maybe even overnight at whichever police station she’d gone to.
The guy on the phone hadn’t called back to suggest any particular course of action. Drake was damned if he was going to hang around at the safe house, waiting for instructions. He’d done enough hanging around while incarcerated for the past eight years. So he decided to check out the Colby woman’s apartment at the address he’d been given. Just to see if there was a chance, any chance at all, that she was home, and home either alone or without a bunch of cops guarding her.
Drake was accustomed to studying locations for long periods. Before some of the major heists he’d pulled off over the years, he’d been meticulous in his preparations, scoping out the locales sometimes for hours at a time, looking for potential weak points, places where the cops might concentrate their efforts and their numbers and gain an advantage. In exactly the same way now, he examined the apartment block and its surroundings, trying to figure out where the ambush might come from, if in fact there was one set up.
Probably, he thought, the cops would be waiting inside the apartment.
He wished the arms cache Skeet had built up had contained some kind of explosive projectiles. Hand grenades, or RPG launchers, or even CS gas canisters. Armed with weapons like those, Drake might consider storming the apartment and flushing out anybody inside.
But a direct assault under the current circumstances, with small arms, and just the four of them - he didn’t include Walusz, who’d have to stay in the car to effect a quick getaway if needed - wasn’t a good idea. The cops would be prepared, and would have superior manpower and firepower.
No. Drake would watch the apartment a while longer, and then leave somebody, Skeet or the twins, to keep an eye on it overnight. Maybe the Colby woman would return in the morning.
If not, Drake would try the hospital.
The apartment building was off the main streets and the traffic in the vicinity was light, one or two cars passing by every minute. Drake glanced at each one, quickly noted
nothing of interest, and turned his attention back to the building.
At a little before one a.m., as tiredness was beginning to catch up with Drake and he felt his eyelids start to slide downward, a vehicle came round the corner and drew to a stop fifty yards down the street from the apartment. It was a four-wheel drive, a Jeep of some model. Sleepily, Drake watched the driver’s door open and a man get out. The shadows cast by the streetlights obscured the man’s details, but his silhouette suggested he was big.
He walked quickly toward the apartment building, passing through the pool of light cast by one of the lamps.
Drake sat up hard in his seat, adrenalin jolting him fully awake.
God damn it, he was so tired he’d starting dreaming.
He squeezed his eyes tight shut, drove his knuckles into his thighs, using pain to ensure he was awake. Leaning forward, he peered through the windshield, tracking the big guy as he strode toward the front doors.
He passed beneath another lamp, and this time Drake knew he wasn’t dreaming.
As if the guy was somehow aware of Drake’s stare, he faltered in his stride and turned his head to look across the street. Giving Drake a full-on look at his face.
“Jesus Christ,” Drake breathed. “I do not believe it.”
Beside him, Walusz glanced over.
It was a face he’d last seen in the courtroom, at the initial trial, more than eight years earlier. A face that had been in the same location in the gallery, every day of the trial, and which had on the final day, as the judge handed down the verdict, held a look of quiet triumph.
Joseph Venn.
The guy didn’t appear to see anything of interest and continued walking till he reached the doors. He entered a code on the keypad outside and after a second pushed open the door and went in.
Drake was paralyzed for a full ten seconds, aware all the time that Walusz continued to look at him curiously.
Then the spell broke. He pummeled the dashboard rapidly with both fists, like a boxer working out with a medicine ball.
“Holy shit. Joe Venn,” he said. “Holy shit. Joe Venn.”
The mantra burst forth from Drake’s chest, over and over, like a chanted prayer of thanks to some pagan god who’d come through for him.
From the backseat, Skeet was hollering, “What? What?”, not understanding but caught up in Drake’s excitement all the same. Drake twisted in his seat and reached back and grabbed Skeet’s greasy, lank hair in a grip of manly affection. If the position hadn’t been so awkward, he would have hugged him.
“It’s Joe Venn,” Drake gasped, almost sobbing. “Joe Venn.”
“You mean -” Comprehension dawned in Skeet’s raddled eyes.
“The cop who busted me. Put me away. He’s here in New York. He’s just walked into that building. He’s here, right in front of us.”
Though Drake knew that Skeet had never encountered Venn, and had no direct connection to him whatever, he saw tears streaming down the man’s face.
“Awesome, man,” Skeet whispered. “Truly awesome.”
Drake picked up his phone, his hand trembling, and called the twins.
Chapter 32
Venn found the drawer with the flash disks immediately, just where Beth had said it would be. There were around ten of them, and he scooped them all up and put them in his jacket pocket.
He’d stepped through the front door of the apartment with his nerves at a screaming pitch, bracing himself for the attack that never came. He’d flipped on the lights, roamed the apartment quickly with his Beretta drawn, found the place empty.
Out there on the street, he’d experienced the faintest tingling at the back of his neck, and had looked round. But the street was empty, apart from parked silent cars and a solitary man walking his dog.
The cop instinct was so finely tuned, it was sometimes overly sensitive.
Before leaving the apartment, he couldn’t help but look round. He’d never been there until now.
So this was Beth’s home. Despite the unfamiliarity of the place, he recognized traces that were unmistakably hers. The furniture, for one, in a modern, funky style he had to admit he didn’t much care for (but would never dare admit to Beth). The heavy drapes she favored over the front windows. And the pictures on the walls, watercolor landscapes painted by her mother, which had hung in Beth’s and Venn’s own house just three months earlier.
The knife twisted in Venn’s belly once more.
God. Was it ever going to get easier?
On an impulse, Venn went into the apartment’s single bedroom. He felt guilty, like a burglar, intruding on Beth’s most private place in the home. And the pain in his gut intensified, because just a few months ago her bedroom had been his bedroom too.
He glanced around, looking for traces of Paul Brogan. It wasn’t out of morbid jealousy. Brogan might have left something there, an item of clothing, which Beth may have overlooked, and which could contain some kind of a clue. His face burning with shame, Venn opened the closet doors and rummaged. No: only her clothes hung there. They were as familiar to Venn as his own, and he fought the urge to press them against his face, inhale the smell of her.
The buzzing of his phone wrenched him back to reality. It was Harmony.
“You okay in there, slowpoke?”
“Yeah. I’m on my way down.”
He turned out the lights, locked the door behind him and went down the stairs. The lobby was empty, and dimly illuminated by two rows of unobtrusive ceiling lights. Outside, through the glass entrance doors, the street was in darkness.
Venn pressed the door release button when a pair of headlamps washed across the lobby, as a car turned outside.
His hand was on the door, pushing it open. At that moment his phone vibrated in his pocket.
Venn’s thoughts caught up with his actions after only a brief lag.
His phone was ringing.
It was probably Harmony.
If Harmony was calling, only seconds before he would have joined her anyway, it had to be a warning.
Venn dove not out through the door, but back into the lobby and behind the wall to the side of the door, as the glass door exploded inward in a shower of fragments and the unbelievable chattering roar of automatic fire burst in through the sudden breach between inside and out.
He hit the floor and rolled and came up in a crouch with the Beretta drawn, averting his face involuntarily as the shots smashed into the walls and the doors and the desk of the lobby, ripping splinters of plaster and plastic and wood and punching great ragged holes. The noise was deafening, overwhelming, so that the yells and screams that followed from elsewhere in the building were in comparison as thin as insect hums. The firing went on, the angle varying as the lobby was hosed with bullets.
One gun, Venn realized. There was one rifle firing. Though that didn’t mean there weren’t others out there.
He fumbled out his phone, which was still buzzing, and shouted into it, “Harmony -”
Her voice was barely audible over the gunfire and he had to press the phone hard against his ear to form a seal. “One car,” she yelled. “Driver and two passengers, front and back. The front passenger’s the one with the gun. I’m returning - ah, shit -”
And down the line he heard the shorter report of a handgun blast, once, twice, three times.
No, his mind screamed at him. Harmony.
Beth...
*
Beth was in the backseat of the Jeep, Harmony behind the wheel where she’d shifted over when Venn had got out.
Through the windshield, Beth watched the SUV pull out of the side street and swing in a smooth arc until it stopped ten yards from the entrance to her apartment building.
The realization took a second to kick in.
That SUV. It’s the same one as before.
She opened her mouth to tell Harmony but even as she did so, the other woman said, “What the hell?” and Beth saw the window on the passenger side slide down and something poke through.
A gun barrel. A rifle of some kind.
Beth couldn’t see though the glass doors of the lobby from this angle, but she’d seen the lights go out in her apartment windows a few seconds earlier, and she knew Venn was on his way down.
Harmony grabbed her phone and hit the call key as her other hand brought out her gun.
The rifle began firing, the rhythmic chatter a cacophony, bouncing off the high walls of the buildings lining the street.
Beth put her hands over her mouth and stared through wide eyes as the SUV rocked with the recoil and the glass front doors to the lobby exploded.
“Venn,” she could only whisper.
Up front, Harmony was shouting into the phone, and Beth registered that that was good, it meant Harmony was talking to Venn, and he’d therefore been able to answer.
The understanding hit Beth that she needed to get down, get her head below the level of the windows, and she flattened herself on the backseat, her face pressed against the leather.
A microsecond later, the window above her burst inward, peppering her with nuggets of glass. This time, Beth screamed.
Another gun. And close by.
Her eyes had squeezed shut reflexively as soon as the shot had come, but they flicked open as she felt a hand, vise-like, grip her shoulder.
Harmony’s face was inches from hers, down in the gap between the front seats, and the cop was yanking her forward so that Beth tipped into the cramped space of the footwell.
An instant later she felt the impact of shots punching the rear door panel, heard the shriek of metal tearing and the ripping of the leather seat on which she’d been lying
From where she lay, crammed awkwardly between the backseat and the ones in front, she saw Harmony raise her head and her arm to the level of the window. The crash of Harmony’s gun filled the confined space of the Jeep, twice, three times, four and five. From outside, Beth registered the smash of glass, the squeal of tires against roadtop.