by Lisa Black
“Can’t breathe.”
“What explosives?”
“My ribs are going to break.”
He lifted himself off her, just enough to let her lungs expand. “What explosives?”
“The stuff you have. The homemade RDX. We know you brought it in here and set it where you killed Cherise.”
His face loomed over hers. “What else?”
“That’s it. We don’t know why.”
“I don’t like conflicting with you, Theresa. Of anyone here, you ought to understand what I’m doing.”
She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”
“You’ll have to ask Bobby. He’s the one with the detonator.” He stood, yanking her to her feet by the front of her shirt. She felt the stitching come loose beneath the arms.
It felt better to be standing under her own power. At least it did until he swung her against the wall again, the barrel of the gun under her chin. This time he had his finger on the trigger. She tried not to breathe, but her lungs ached for it, to keep up with the demands of her pounding heart.
“My balls are going to hurt for a week now. I help you out by releasing your boyfriend, Theresa, and this is how you repay me.”
He hadn’t killed her for asking once, so she tried again. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”
“I told you to ask Bobby. But consider this: When the government has killed your whole family, there’s no part of it not worth blowing up.”
“What do you mean?” she gasped. “What happened to his family?”
“He’s got nobody left, that’s what I mean. But I do, and here’s where you come in. As soon as that three million arrives, it’s going to be moved into my car. And you, Theresa, will be at the head of the assembly line, with me on your back like a remora. The snipers try to take me out, they’re going to hit you instead.”
With that, he escorted her to the reception desk, not gently, but at least he clutched the back of her shirt instead of her hair. She collapsed next to Jessica Ludlow and wiped her sweating face on her sleeves. She could only hope that one of SRT’s microphones had been dropped behind that particular air-conditioning grate.
The phone was still ringing.
Patrick collapsed onto one of the upholstered chairs. The clock read 1:12, and yet he felt as if he’d pulled an all-nighter.
No, what I did was pull the rug out from under my career. The assistant chief went by, giving him a cold stare and a wide berth. Patrick had made the guy look ineffectual in a crisis, and that would not bring any recommendations his way.
But Theresa still lived. He could breathe again, maybe quell the tremors in his legs.
“Detective Patrick?”
Peggy Elliott stood next to him, still as fresh and neat and she’d been hours earlier. She’d removed the suit jacket to reveal a tailored white blouse with a gold Summer Reading Club pin on the breast pocket. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, sure. Fine.”
She waited for more without comment, then gave up. “There’s a phone call for you.”
He followed her to a communication system set up on a reading table in the map room, where other staff could make calls without disturbing the negotiator. Kessler spoke to someone, apparently his wife, telling her not to worry. Jason trotted toward them, listening to his cell phone while devouring another sandwich. Once upon a time, Patrick could eat all day and all night like that. Once upon a time, he’d had that kind of enthusiasm for his job as well.
The librarian handed him a receiver. “It’s the hospital.”
A doctor at the Metro General trauma center introduced himself and asked Patrick if he was Paul’s partner.
“Yes. Thank you for calling me, Doctor. How is he?”
“We tried a plastic graft. It took thirty units of blood, but it’s in place.”
“Is he awake?”
“Off and on. Not much.”
“Can we ask him a few questions, do you think?” Who knew what the two guys might have discussed in front of Paul, when they took him for another bank employee? They might have mentioned their exit strategy, assuming they had one.
“I’m not calling to tell you to come and interview him,” the doctor said with a tougher edge to his voice. “I’m saying if you want to speak to him again, you might want to come here now.”
It wasn’t as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to Patrick. He had been to the full-dress funerals of too many cops killed in the line of duty for that. But he hadn’t really believed it. “He’s going to die?”
The doctor didn’t pause. “He’d be dead already if the nick hadn’t been at the lower end of the femoral and someone hadn’t gotten that belt around his thigh immediately. He could recover, but I’m not fully confident of it, and that’s why I’m calling. The police department said you are listed as emergency notification. You and a woman named MacLean, but she’s unavailable.”
Not fully confident. Patrick had heard versions of that, too. It meant the doctor didn’t think Paul would live through the end of the day.
His eyes drifted to the windows, through which the Federal Reserve building gleamed in the afternoon sun. “You say he’s conscious?”
“Off and on,” the doctor repeated. “I can’t make any promises about that either.”
Patrick sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t come right now. We’re in the middle of something here. I’ll send another officer out in case he wakes up. But I have to stay here.”
“Okay,” the doctor said, and hung up. He had done what he could and undoubtedly had other patients and phone calls to see to.
Patrick called another detective, Sanchez, and asked her to go to Metro. She was sensitive but smart, and Paul had always gotten along with her. She would know what questions to ask if he woke up, know when to call Patrick and when not to. But he, Patrick, couldn’t spend the afternoon sitting next to an unconscious man on the off chance that he might come to and he might be able to tell them something of Lucas and Bobby.
“How are things going?” Ms. Elliott asked him gently.
“Not good.”
“I had guessed as much. I wish I could help.”
Patrick gestured at the books around them. The tomes held centuries of accumulated knowledge and yet couldn’t tell him how to defeat one man with a gun. “Not unless you know a formula for invisibility. Or how to neutralize RDX.”
“The plastic explosive?”
He probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, but Peggy Elliott had been in and out all day and nothing confidential had found its way to Channel 15. Still, he didn’t clarify. “Or how to deflect bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He needed to get back to the monitor, to Theresa’s grainy black-and-white image. He could do nothing for Paul, but he still might be able to do something for her.
He stood up and reached for the glass door when Jason said, “Detective, wait.”
The young man held a cell phone to his ear, and a cop had just handed him a receiver from a table unit. “This is the PD in Tennessee, and I’m already on with Lucas’s sister. Can you talk to them?”
Patrick nearly leaped over the row of flat-drawer filing cabinets to grab the phone and identify himself.
“Slow down.” The voice on the other end did not conjure up images of honky-tonks and moonshine stills. The syllables were as neatly pronounced and accentless as any TV anchorperson’s, the pace measured and calm. “Who is this again?”
Patrick repeated himself while enunciating and using a sleeve to mop the sweat from his forehead. He leaned on the cabinets and closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the man’s voice.
“This is Captain Johnson from the Hudson County sheriff’s office in Tennessee. I went out and talked to Jack Cornell, just like you asked.”
“We appreciate that,” Patrick said with fervor. He pulled out his notepad and opened it, discovering that he’d mislaid his pen. He
lost a precious second or two patting his pockets before Ms. Elliott handed him hers. “We have a real bad situation up here. One person dead and one cop almost dead, with eight hostages still inside.”
“Yeah, that’s what that first guy told me. It wasn’t any trouble anyway. We know Jack real well, and he lives near town.”
Patrick didn’t like the sound of this. Cornell probably was someone’s brother-in-law, and they wouldn’t give him up no matter how many northerners got shot.
But the police captain went on. “Jack isn’t a bad guy. He’s a little loopy since he got out of the army, but hell, he was a little loopy before that. He’s never hurt anybody, and he sure could if he wanted to, with that arsenal he’s got.”
“He’s got firearms in his possession?”
“It’s his business. It’s all legal. He’s a licensed dealer, and his paperwork is in order. I should know—he and I go over it regularly. Anyway, what you want to know is, he did get a visit from those two boys you’ve got up there, and he’s more’n happy to tell us all about it. He doesn’t want any trouble that would threaten his livelihood, see?”
“When did they get there? When did they leave? Did they say—”
“Hold on, I can do better than that,” the captain said, his voice spilling into the stuffy, sunny map room like a cool spring breeze. “I’ll let him tell you. He’s sitting right here.”
“Thank you, Captain. Thank you.”
“I’ll get back on the phone when he’s done. Here y’go, Jack.”
A pause, and the sound of a receiver being handled. “Hello?”
Patrick introduced himself for what seemed like the millionth time that day. He spoke too fast again, but Jack Cornell didn’t seem to care. “Yeah, the cops here told me that Lucas is in some sort of trouble. He didn’t tell me nothing about it, and I didn’t ask. And what you’re saying doesn’t sound like Lucas anyway. Could be that nut Bobby, but not Lucas.”
Patrick forced himself to slow down. Their first real break in the case, and he had to make it count. “Let’s start from the beginning. When did they show up at your place?”
“Day before yesterday—yeah, Tuesday. Out of the blue.”
“They had just gotten out of prison?”
“Yep.”
“What were they driving?”
“A white Mercedes.” The man laughed. “I just about bust a gut. A damn Mercedes with pearly paint. That was Bobby’s doing, I think.”
“You knew Lucas from the army?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. Him ’n’ me were in the same unit over in Germany. We worked at the armory. That’s where I learned so much about guns—course, I already knew a lot about guns—so I started this business when I came back. Lucas went and robbed a place, I guess, so he wound up in jail down in Georgia, but I’m telling you, that’s not like him. He’s a real nice guy. Sensitive, even. He was sweet on this girl who worked at a bar in town, and every day he had leave he’d show up on her shift with a couple of roses. That’s the kind of guy Lucas is.”
“Did he tell you where he was heading?”
“Cleveland, yeah. I guess Bobby lives there.”
“What did they plan to do here?”
“Hook up with some of Bobby’s old gang, I guess. They didn’t have any real big plans, I didn’t think. They sure as hell didn’t say nothing about robbing no bank, let me tell you. Bobby was going to look up some old friends, and Lucas said he had to find him a girl. That’s Lucas. He always has a girl.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Did Bobby mention any friends by name?”
“Nope, not that I recall. He might have, but I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“Did he say anything about storing his car in Atlanta while he did his time? Mention who drove it there for him, maybe?”
“No.”
“You didn’t drive it there for him, did you?”
“Sir, I never met this Bobby until the day before yesterday.”
“How were they fixed for cash?”
“No one comes out of prison a rich man. But I guess Lucas had saved a few pennies in some work program at the prison, and Bobby had stashed some in his car before he put it in storage. They didn’t ask me for any, so they must not have been hurting too bad.”
“You say Lucas isn’t a violent type. What about Bobby?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about Bobby, even though I spent most of Tuesday talking to him. Lucas was kind of quiet. I guess after being in jail for a while, he didn’t have much to say. That Bobby, though, he couldn’t stop talking.”
“About what?” Patrick swallowed, needing something wet in his throat. He thought longingly of the cooler down by Cavanaugh and decided that all phones that still had cords should have been thrown out years ago.
“His car. It needs new carpet—he said that about a million times. His friends, how it was going to be just like old times. You know how that goes, you can’t ever go home again because you just ain’t the same person, you know what I mean? But I didn’t say anything. I felt the same way after I got out of the army, so free I could bounce off the walls. Oh, and his family.”
“What did he say about his family?”
“That they’re all dead and he’s the last of his line. Like in that book about the Mohicans, you know? He seemed to think this was important in the grand scheme of things, that there weren’t nobody left but him. I’m not making fun of him, mind, though he did get on my nerves a bit. But family’s important, so I could see why he felt bad about it.”
“What happened to his family?”
“Cops.”
“Cops?”
“That’s what he said, cops killed them. No, actually he said ‘the damn justice system of the United States of America’ killed them, that’s what he said.” Cornell’s voice faded for a moment as he said to someone there with him, “Shut the door, will you? It’s freezing in here.”
“You’re cold?” Patrick couldn’t remember what cold felt like.
“June in the mountains. Anyway, I told Bobby to find a nice girl and have some sons, and then the whole bloodline thing won’t bother him so much. He just laughed.”
“What about Lucas? Did he mention his family?”
“He’s only got a sister. He said he called her and she didn’t answer, but she’s in the service, too, so she might have been transferred. They never seemed to be too tight anyway.”
“Did either one of them mention the Federal Reserve Bank?”
“Nothing about no bank, no.” He seemed firm on that, but then he had seemed firm on everything so far.
“Did they pay you for the guns? Or were they a gift?”
Silence. Then, “Guns?”
“Two M4 carbines?”
More silence before he said, “They stole them.”
“They stole the guns from you?”
“They were part of my private collection, like, not for sale. When I woke up yesterday morning, Lucas and Bobby were gone, and so were the guns.”
“They never asked you for them.”
“Nope.”
Patrick didn’t believe him. Apparently the Tennessee police captain didn’t either, because Cornell’s voice continued, muted, as if he had turned away from the receiver. “I didn’t tell you, Johnson, because I didn’t want to get the guy in trouble. He’s my friend. We took enemy fire together.”
Patrick heard the Tennessee cop asking: “In Germany?”
“Well, sort of.”
“But the guy stole from you. What sort of a friend is that?”
“I don’t believe he did.” Jack repeated this into the receiver for Patrick’s benefit. “I think it was that Bobby. He and I got on okay, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know him. I don’t know what he’d do or not do.”
“Cornell,” Patrick put in.
“Hmm?”
“Any other guns—missing? Besides the two M4 carbines?”
No hesitation
this time. “Nope.”
“What about the RDX?”
Another pause, but when he spoke, he had none of the prior sheepish tones. “Say what, now?”
“The plastic explosives. Did Lucas or Bobby get those from you, too?”
“I don’t have no plastic explosives, I don’t know nothing about no plastic explosives, and I don’t want to know about no plastic explosives. That shit’s wicked. Some of it exploded at our base in Germany. Lucas took some shrapnel, and another guy got his hand blown off. They say it’s so safe, but not if the guy with the detonator don’t know what he’s doing.”
“You don’t know where Lucas would get some?”
“Lucas wouldn’t fool around with that stuff either. He’d wanted to go Special Forces, underwater demolition, until that injury. And he knew the guy that lost his left hand, too. Combat engineer.”
Patrick straightened his spine, stretching the vertebrae. Cornell sounded positive again, truthful. “Where is he now? This combat engineer?”
“He’s not in the army, I can tell you that. They shipped him out on permanent disability.”
“Where does he live?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Michigan? Montana? I heard he went to work for a civilian contractor—demolition work—and got blown up his second week. You can’t tell me it wasn’t on purpose. It broke his heart to leave the army. He was weird that way.”
“He’s dead? You sure?”
“I heard that from someone. I forget who, though.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t think I ever knew that. He was just the guy who got his hand blown off, you know what I mean?”
“Did Lucas know anyone else who worked with explosives?”
“Not that I know of. But it’s a big army.”
“Yeah.” Patrick could not think of anything else to ask. No doubt a million questions would occur to him as soon as he hung up, but he couldn’t help that. He thanked Cornell, asked to speak to the police captain again, and thanked him as well.
“I believe him,” Captain Johnson said. “For the most part. I think he’s fudging a bit on the two guns—he might have given those to Lucas, for old times’ sake—but whatever you asked about plastic explosives, he told you the truth. I’ve known Cornell a long time. He don’t lie too often and he’s transparent as hell when he does.”