by J. D. Robb
“You go in,” the negotiator said, “and three cops die.”
“Or live. I can tranq him. He’s in serious pain. If the meds are there, he’ll want them. Commander, Feeney trained me, he brought me up. I need to go in.”
Whitney stared into her eyes. “Talk him into it. Make it fast.”
It took her precious moments of bargaining, but she fell into the rhythm of groveling. That, she realized, was what he needed. Not just to be acknowledged as being in charge, but to be shown absolute subservience.
“He could very well fire on you the minute you’re in the door.” Roarke spoke softly as she waited for the MTs to prepare the medications and pressure syringes.
“He could.”
“But you go in without a vest, without a weapon.”
“That was the deal. I know what I’m doing.”
“You know what you have to do. There’s a subtle and dangerous difference. Eve.” He laid a hand on her arm. It took everything inside him not to yank her clear of the room. Get her away. “I know what he means to you. Remember what you mean to me.”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“McNab’s condition is serious. He took a hard hit at close range. The MTs were guarded, but he came around briefly before they transported him. It’s a good sign.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t think about McNab. Couldn’t worry about him now.
“Three others were injured before Halloway grabbed Feeney and used him as a shield into the office. I’d like to know, just for curiosity’s sake, how one man takes out four other cops without taking a single hit.”
“Jesus, Roarke, this is EDD. Half the cops in here are glorified drones or geeks. You’re more likely to see them pulling out an e-pad than a weapon.”
“Lieutenant.” The MT approached with a clear bag of meds. “Set these up like you wanted. Syringe with the red dot on the depressor’s the tranq. Takes a man down in under five seconds. Second’s the dummy. Nothing but a mild blocker. Pills are standard blockers, except for the one with the little yellow stripe. That’s another tranq. You get him to use either of those, he’s down pretty fast. Five seconds.”
“Okay, got it. Back in a few minutes,” she told Roarke.
“See that you are.” And because he didn’t give a damn at the moment about her much-prized rep, he yanked her against him and kissed her.
“Jeez. Save it, will you?” But it warmed her, steadied her as she walked over to the ’link and put through the next transmission. “I got your meds, sir.” She held up the bag. “Pain blockers, oral and bloodstream. The MT informs me that the syringe will clear up the infection, and take care of your headache fairly quickly.”
She held her arms up, turned a slow circle. “I’m not carrying. I know you’re in control. I just want to give you what you need to resolve this situation to your satisfaction.”
“Damn skippy.” He swiped at the blood leaking out of his nose again. He was rocking, rocking, back and forth on his heels as if to soothe away the pain. His sandy hair was standing in mad tufts where he’d yanked at it. Sweat and blood had soaked through the top of his cheery green jumpsuit.
“Come on in, Dallas.” His mouth moved into a terrible grin as he levered his weapon under Feeney’s jaw again. “I’m going to show you just what I need to resolve this situation to my satisfaction. Keep that ’link open.”
He paused, hissed out a breath, then rammed the heel of his free hand against his eye. “Keep that visual so I can see you all the way to the door. Anybody tries to pass you a weapon, this old man is over. Keep your hands up, keep them up where I can see them.”
He drilled the heel of his hand against his eye again, the other rolling wildly as he tried to focus on the screen. “My head!”
“I’ve got the medication to help you.” Eve spoke calmly, slowly as she walked to Feeney’s office door. On either side of it, just out of visual, were two crisis cops in full riot gear armed with lasers. “I need you to release the locks, sir.”
“Anybody tries to rush that door, I take him out.”
“I’m coming in alone. I’m not armed. I’m not carrying anything but the medication. You’re in control here. Everyone knows you’re in control.”
“About damn time!” He released the locks, then shoved Feeney’s head back, digging in with the business end of his weapon.
And now, Eve thought, if she was wrong, everybody died. She eased the door open, then lifting her hands high, nudged it the rest of the way with the toe of her boot.
“I’m alone, Captain Halloway,” she said, stepped in, shut the door at her back.
She risked one fast glance at Feeney. She read the anger, the frustration on his face. And saw the bruises gathering under his jaw where Halloway had rammed his weapon time after time.
“Put the bag down on the desk.” Halloway licked his dry, cracked lips as she obeyed.
“Take a step back, hands behind your head.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why are there two syringes?”
“Sir, the MT said that you might require a second dosage for full relief.”
“Come around the desk slow.”
She could hear him keening under his breath, like an animal beyond pain.
He couldn’t be thirty yet, she thought. He couldn’t be thirty and a few hours before Feeney had dressed him down for fighting virtual aliens.
Blood trickled slowly out of his nose. The left sleeve of his jumpsuit was red from wiping at it. She could smell his sweat, his blood, his fury pumping.
“How many times you have to bang this old bastard to make lieutenant?”
“Sir, Captain Feeney and I have not been intimate.”
“Lying bitch.” He swung out, backhanding her faster, harder than she’d anticipated. Off balance, she fell back into a chair. “How many times?”
“As many as it took. I lost count.”
His head bobbed rapidly. “That’s the way it works. Somebody’s always screwing somebody so they can screw somebody else over.”
“Everyone knows you’ve achieved your rank and position through your own merits.”
“You got that. You fucking-A got that.” He pawed a blue blocker out of the bag. “How do I know this isn’t poison? Here.” He shoved it into Feeney’s mouth. “Swallow it! Swallow it or I do her.” He swung the weapon toward Eve.
They were close, but not close enough for her to see if the pill had a thin yellow stripe. She waited, counting off the seconds as Feeney swallowed to see if she’d already lost the gamble.
But his eyes stayed clear. “Halloway.” As did his voice. “Everybody here wants to resolve this. You need to tell us what you want so that everybody walks out.”
“Shut up.” He sliced his weapon down Feeney’s cheek with casual violence. Then pawed another pill out of the bag, popped it in his mouth, chewed it like candy.
“Maybe those syringes are poison. Get one out, get one out.” He chewed a second pill. “We’ll have a little test.”
“Yes, sir.” She pretended to fumble a bit as she reached in the bag. “I’m sorry. I’m a little nervous.” She took out the dummy. “Do you want me to administer this, sir, or would you prefer to do it yourself?”
“You go ahead and administer it. No,” he said when she started to rise. “Sit right there. Pump it into yourself. You live through that, maybe you live a little longer.”
She kept her eyes on his as she turned the syringe toward her arm, settled it, depressed the plunger.
“I followed your orders, sir. I’m sorry you’re in pain. It’s difficult to think clearly when in pain. I hope, after this medication alleviates your physical distress, we’ll be able to resolve this situation to your satisfaction.”
“You want to make captain, you’re going to have to start banging me. I’m in charge now. Get up, get up! Give me the damn syringe. These pills are useless.”
She stepped forward. There was blood in his ears now. She kept her eyes locked on his as she lif
ted the syringe. “This will work faster.”
She set her thumb on the depressor.
“Poison!” He screamed it, jerked away. “Poison! My head’s exploding. I’ll kill you. Kill all of you.”
She heard the rush at the door, pictured the sharpshooters taking aim. He was a cop, was all she could think as she leaped at him, deflecting his weapon an instant before the stream struck her.
She brought the syringe down on his shoulder and pumped the tranq into him.
“Hold your fire! Hold fire!” She shouted it as Halloway ran in circles around the room, screaming as he ripped at his hair. “I disarmed him. He’s unarmed.”
The door burst open. She leaped between Halloway and the lasers. “I said hold your goddamn fire.”
She whirled around. It was taking longer than five seconds. Halloway was throwing himself against the wall. Shrieking, weeping. Then his body danced, as bodies do when a stream takes them down.
Blood fountained from his nose as he pitched forward.
“Get medical in here,” Eve ordered as she rushed over to kneel beside Halloway.
She’d seen death too often to mistake it. But still she checked his pulse.
“Damn it. Damn it.” She beat a clenched fist against her knee, looked over to meet the knowledge in Feeney’s eyes. “We lost him anyway.”
Chapter 5
“He really caught you a good one.” Eve crouched down to where Feeney sat under the ministrations of a med-tech. She pursed her lips as she examined the long, shallow gash that scored his cheek. “Been a while since you took one in the face, huh?”
“I don’t stick my nose in the knothole as often as other people. You and me, we’re going to go a round, Dallas. I taught you better than that. Adding a hostage—”
“Do I look like a hostage? I don’t recall getting locked to my desk chair with my own restraints lately.”
Feeney sighed. “Dumb luck that worked. And dumb luck—”
“Is a nice bonus to solid police work. Somebody told me that once.” She smiled at him, laid a hand over his. Under her touch, his hand turned so their fingers linked.
“Don’t think I owe you one. Not for dumb luck. And you make sure your man knows that—ah—business about banging and whatnot was just smoke.”
“I know he’s seething with a black jealousy and planning on whomping on you, but I’ll do what I can to calm him down.”
He nodded, but his grin faded as he looked away. “Caught us with our pants down, Dallas. Pants down around our goddamn ankles. I never saw it coming.”
“You couldn’t have. Couldn’t have,” she repeated quickly before he could speak. “He was sick, Feeney. Some virus, some infection. I don’t know what the hell. Morris is working on it. It’s the same deal that happened to the guy Trueheart took out. It’s in the computer. It’s got to be in the computer.”
Jesus, he was tired. Sick and tired. All he could do was shake his head. “That’s science fiction crap, Dallas. You don’t catch anything but eyestrain from a unit.”
“You put Halloway on Cogburn’s unit. By the end of the day he’s exhibiting the same symptoms as Cogburn. Deduction 101, Feeney, science fiction or not. There’s something in that thing, and it goes into quarantine until we’ve got some answers.”
“He was a good kid. He screwed off some, but he was a good kid, and a decent cop. I got on his ass this morning, but he needed a boot. Saw him sniping with McNab this afternoon and . . .”
Feeney rubbed his temples. “Oh Christ.”
“They’re taking care of McNab. He’s going to be okay. He’s tougher than he looks. He’d have to be, wouldn’t he?” She worked up a smile when she said it and ignored the sick dread in her belly.
“Four of my boys hurt, one of them dead. I’ve got to know why.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to know why.”
She glanced back at Halloway’s cube, at the old, broken-down data center on his work counter.
Absolute Purity, she thought.
She went back into Feeney’s office. Halloway’s body was already bagged. The blood that had burst from him was splattered like some mad drawing on the industrial beige wall.
She gestured to the MT who’d fixed her the tranqs. “What do you make of it?”
He looked down, as she did, at the body bag. “Some sort of rupture. Damned if I know. I’ve never seen anything like it, not without severe head trauma first. You need the ME’s take. Maybe a brain tumor, maybe an embolism, massive stroke. Awful damn young. Couldn’t hit thirty.”
“Twenty-eight.” He had a fiancée who was rushing back from a business trip in East Washington. Parents, and a brother, coming in from Baltimore.
And if she knew Feeney, Detective Kevin Halloway would be buried with all the honors due a badge who’d gone down in the line of duty.
Because that’s just what had happened, she thought as they carried the bag away. He’d been doing his job, and had died because of it.
She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why. But a young EDD man had died today, for the job.
“Lieutenant.”
She turned toward the door, and Whitney. “Sir.”
“I need your report as soon as possible.”
“You’ll have it.”
“What happened here . . .” He stared at the blood on the wall. “You have answers to that?”
“Some. More questions than answers. We need Morris to examine Halloway immediately. I believe he’ll find similar neurological damage as he found in Cogburn. There are answers on Cogburn’s data unit, but it can’t be examined until some reasonable safety measures are devised. I do know Detective Halloway wasn’t responsible for what happened here.”
“I have to brief Chief Tibble and the mayor before we speak to the media. I’ll let you ride on that one, for now,” he added. “For the moment, the official word will be that Detective Halloway was suffering from some as yet undetermined illness that caused his aberrant behavior and resulted in his death.”
“As far as I know that’s exactly the truth.”
“I’m not worried about the truth when it comes to the official word. But I want it, the whole of it. This matter is your only priority. Any and all other investigations you have ongoing are to be passed on. Find the answers.”
He started out, then pivoted back. “Detective McNab regained consciousness. He’s moved up from critical to serious.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When she walked out of EDD, she spotted Roarke, leaning idly against a wall and working with his PPC.
Anyone less like a cop, less like a victim, she’d never seen. As far as the other element that frequented cop shops, he could still slide in, silkily though, to that dangerous group.
He looked up, held out a hand for hers.
“You couldn’t have done more than you did.”
“No.” She knew that, accepted that. “But he’s still dead. I put the murder weapon at his head. I didn’t know it, couldn’t be expected to know it, but that’s what I did. And I don’t even know what the weapon is.”
She rolled her shoulders. “Anyway, McNab’s awake and moved up to serious. I figure I ought to swing by and take a look at him before I head home.”
“Interview him?”
“I’ll give him some stupid flowers first.”
Roarke laughed and had nearly lifted her hand to his lips when she jerked it down. Hissed.
“Darling, you really shouldn’t be so shy about public displays of affection.”
“Public’s one thing, cops’re another.”
“Don’t I know it,” he murmured and went with her to the garage level.
“I’ll ride along with you. One of us should see that Peabody gets a bit of food or has a shoulder.”
“I’ll leave that end to you.” Eve climbed behind the wheel. “You’re better at the ‘there-theres’ than I am.”
He touched the ends of her hair. Just needed to touch. “She held up very well.”
“
Yeah, she hung.”
“It isn’t easy, when someone you care about gets hurt or is in danger of being hurt.”
She slanted him a look. “People want easy, they should hook up with an office drone not a cop.”
“Truer words. But actually, I was thinking how difficult it was for you to stand and watch Feeney being threatened with death for nearly an hour.”
“He was handling himself. He knows how to—” It rushed up through her, grabbed her by the throat with spikey claws. “Okay.” At the exit of the garage she stopped, dropped her head on the wheel. “Okay. Scared me. Jesus, Jesus. He knew just where to hold the damn weapon. Just the right point. One jerk and Feeney’s gone. Gone in a blink and there’s nothing you can do.”
“I know.” Roarke switched to auto, programmed in the address for the hospital, and leaning over rubbed the back of Eve’s neck as the vehicle streamed into traffic. “I know, baby.”
“He knew it. We looked at each other, and we both knew. It could be over so fast. No time to say anything, do anything. Damn it.”
She laid her head on the seatback, closed her eyes. “I wheedled him into taking that unit, bumping it up in line. I know, I know what happened, what could have happened, wasn’t my fault. But there it is anyway. He’s got a neck like a stupid rooster. It’s got bruises on it where Halloway kept jamming the weapon under his stupid droopy jaw. How many times did his life pass in front of his eyes? Never see his wife again, his kids, grandkids.”
“You take on the job, you take on the risks. Someone’s always reminding me of that.”
She opened her eyes now, looked at him. “Must be tempting to smack her back for being such a tight-ass know-it-all.”
“Oh, infinitely.” He played his fingers lightly over her cheek. “But someone’s always beating me to it.”
She smiled now. “I don’t get hit in the face every couple weeks anymore, I don’t feel right. I’m okay.”
“Yes, you are.”
She was steady again when she strode into the hospital admission’s lobby. Steady enough to snap like a wolf at the dozen reporters already camped out and trying to sniff out a story.
“No comment.”