by Rick Mofina
“Where do you live?”
“Don let me die!” He raised a hand; then it dropped.
“Tell me your name and where they were supposed to go.”
“Don let me—” His head lolled to one side.
The ambulance creaked to a stop at the hospital. The rear doors swung open. Staff worked swiftly, rolling him into an emergency room. Sydowski went to the nearest counter to make notes. He had a dead cop, a robbery homicide with a hostage, two fugitive suspects, and a third critically wounded. He was tired and ran a hand over his face.
“Would you like a coffee, Inspector Sydowski?” A nurse set a ceramic mug with a health campaign logo on it next to his notebook. “It’s fresh.”
Sydowski smiled, showing his gold crowns. At six feet three, a trim 180-pound build, a tanned face with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, he was a good-looking man. “Thanks.”
The nurse left him to his work. Sydowski hated hospitals. His wife, Basha, had died in one several years ago. It nearly finished him. But he hung on to his girls, his old man, the job, his birds. Then there was Louise.
He’d met her nearly two years ago at the Seattle bird show. A beautiful sixty-something grandmother and part-time actor who looked like her forty-year-old daughter. What Louise saw in an old flatfoot like him was a mystery. He slid on his bifocals, popped a Tums in his mouth, and flipped through his notes.
Louise wanted to sell her place in San Jose, get married, and move in with him in Parkside. After months of talking about it, Sydowski had finally agreed. In two days, they were supposed to fly to Las Vegas to get married. But he was getting cold feet. Living together would be fine, but he didn’t know about the marriage part. He wasn’t sure how to tell Louise.
Earlier today, Sydowski was getting ready to drive down to the Sea Breeze Villas seniors’ complex in Pacifica to ask his old man for advice when he got the call from the homicide detail. A police officer had been murdered in a jewelry store heist and he was the primary. All vacation time canceled.
Sydowski called Louise. Las Vegas would have to wait. She detected the measure of relief in his voice and understood. She was an intelligent woman. It was one of the things he loved about her. She had him dead to rights on everything. Sydowski sipped his coffee and returned to his notes.
They had to ID the dying suspect, chase down his network. Sydowski’s gut roiled telling him his case was going to get worse. He crunched on another Tums. It never stopped. In over two decades in homicide, he had surpassed four hundred cases, held the highest clearance rate in the state, and had seen just about every kind of murder there was to see. But they just kept coming. His cell phone rang. It was his boss, Lieutenant Leo Gonzales.
“What do you know, Walt?”
“I’m at the hospital with the suspect from the van.”
“How’s it look for him?”
“Not good.”
“What do you figure happened?”
“I figure the crew is robbing the place, when August happens to roll up on the getaway van.”
“That’s the early indication from dispatch.”
“So they grab a hostage for a vehicle and unload on August and their wheelman to try to erase their tracks.”
“Fits. You got anything we can jump on for the hostage?”
“Not yet.”
“This is shaping up to be a major ball buster. Make you wish you retired and went fishing in the mountains. Feebees are going to big-foot it. The national networks are calling.”
“Wonderful.”
“I need you back to the scene, work your homicide, throw robbery and the feebs anything on the hostage. We need a lead on her to blast out data on her vehicle.”
When Sydowski finished the call, a doctor in surgical greens, face mask undone, straps draping down his chest approached him.
“You’re Inspector Sydowski, with the shooting victim?”
Sydowski nodded.
“Dr. Verdell. The patient’s internal injuries were massive from five gunshot wounds. I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”
Great, Sydowski thought.
Now he had a double homicide. He turned to the counter, making a note in his book. And if they didn’t find the hostage soon, odds were good he’d have a triple.
7
Reed refused to believe it was Ann.
For the longest time he stood alone telling himself that it was a mistake. Numb to the chaos, he began slipping into shock as though waiting for someone to wake him. Ann. He had to find her.
Reed left the alley, went around to the street, ducked under the yellow tape, and headed straight for the crime scene.
“Hey!” Alarm on the face of a huge uniformed officer. “Hey, you can’t go down there!” Keys jingled behind Reed. Police barked into radios. “We’ve got press breaching the cordon!”
Trotting now, Reed was blind to the storefronts blurring by. A deathlike stillness arose from an evacuated ghost zone, void of traffic, of people, of life. Nearing the patrol car with the dead cop inside, he saw detectives probing it like somber reapers, the air punctuated with radio bursts, heavy with the smells of the bakery, the gunfire, tear gas, natural foods store, candles, flowers.
And fear.
A vise tightened against his chest as he came to the overturned wheelchair next to the empty parking space, clutching the jewelry store receipt he had snatched from Vanessa Jordan. He stood there running his fingers over Ann’s signature. The last thing she touched. It can’t be true. He searched in every direction, praying for her to emerge from a doorway, an alcove. Please.
Ann.
Homicide inspectors and crime scene techs working over the murdered officer locked on to him. “Hey, that’s Reed from the Star. How’d he get in here? He’s trampling all over our scene. Get him out of here.”
A big detective marched toward him. “Hey! Reed! You trying to be an asshole?” Sydowski eyeballed him. “Get the hell out of here, or I’m going to charge you.”
“It’s Ann. Walt. They took my wife from the store. She’s the hostage.”
Reed told Sydowski what the clerk had said, then handed him the receipt. Sydowski passed it to his partner, Linda Turgeon. Then two huffing uniformed officers clasped Reed’s shoulders, yanked at him. “Sorry, he got by us. Let’s go, pal.”
Sydowski raised a hand. “Hold off.”
Robbery detectives arrived. “You’re the guy who was just talking to our witnesses, then ran off with evidence.”
“Listen up.” Sydowski stopped them. “You better hear this.” Sydowski passed the receipt to them, noting the time on it, going over the story again with Reed. The huddle of cold serious faces grew as Reed repeated his story.
“We’re just getting that from the victims,” a robbery detective said. “Do you have the particulars on your wife’s car?”
“Yes.”
Reed slid the papers from his wallet for the detective, who turned away to call a dispatcher to put out information on the vehicle used by the 187 suspects. “The 851 is a 2003 Jetta. Four-door silver. California tag—”
Sydowski asked Reed if Ann had a cell phone.
“Yes.”
Turgeon took the number and called the service provider.
Sydowski called the 911 dispatcher, then said to Reed, “Try calling Ann, get her to call 911 now, so we can maybe get a fix on her whereabouts. Can you do that?”
Reed nodded, fumbling for his phone.
“Push up your volume, set your phone on the trunk of this car here. I’ll listen with you and tape it after you make the call.”
Reed nodded, barely noticing another detective he didn’t recognize standing behind Sydowski, listening carefully. FBI credentials were clipped to his suit jacket. Reed steadied himself, then dialed Ann’s number. He set the phone down, then leaned into it with Sydowski, who placed his small recorder next to it. The sound was loud and clear. One ring, two, three... “Hi, this is Ann. Please leave me a message.” Reed glanced at Sydowski, who shook his head slightly. Re
ed left no message and ended the call.
“It doesn’t mean anything right now, Tom,” Sydowski said.
Down the block, to the pissed-off news-people held back behind the police line, it looked like Tom Reed of the San Francisco Star was given some kind of exclusive access to the scene.
“That’s not the case,” an officer returning to the tape said.
“Oh, really?” Vince Vincent, a TV reporter with News 99, stuck out his chiseled chin. “Then tell us what the hell is going on.”
“Give us some time here.”
“You got about thirty seconds.” Vincent shot his finger at the officer. “My desk is on the line to the chief right now, so you better tell us what’s up with this bullshit.”
“Take your finger from my face, sir, and take my word. You don’t want to trade places with him at this point.”
“That so? Why don’t you let me be the judge of that while you start telling us what’s going on down there?”
“You’ll know everything in a short time.”
Not soon enough. Molly Wilson pulled out her cell phone and punched Reed’s number, breaking from the pack at the tape when it began ringing, watching Reed with the police in the distance.
“Hold it,” Sydowksi cautioned Reed after the first ring, then said to the other detectives, “Keep it down. Okay, Tom, same as before.”
They both leaned near the phone ringing on the trunk, the tape-recording light glowing red as Reed pushed the phone’s talk button and said, “Tom Reed.”
“Tom?” A woman’s voice, but distant unclear.
“Ann? Ann, where are you?”
“No, Tom, it’s Molly. What’re you doing in there? You’re drawing a lot of heat.”
“I can’t talk right now.”
“Wait Tom, you got some kind of scoop. I don’t understand.”
“Molly, I have to go.”
“Damn it Reed!”
“Get off the line, Wilson. Don’t call me again.” He hung up.
Glancing up from his notebook, one of the robbery detectives said, “The suspects have Ann Reed’s home address.” The circle of investigators grasped the significance.
“Better get people over there and clear it,” the lieutenant commanding the scene said. “Tom, you expect anyone to be at your home at this time of day?”
“No.”
The commander recited the address into his cell phone. “I want this off the air.” He ordered cars to set up for TAC to clear the house.
Reed began listing Ann’s children’s clothing stores in the Bay Area. Calls were made. Detectives and cars were dispatched.
“Tom,” the detective next to Sydowski said, “Steve McDaniel, San Francisco FBI. We’re going to help set up on your home phone in case Ann calls or the suspects make demands or contact. We’re going to need you at home.”
“Hold up. Something else.” The robbery detective flipped through his notes. “Witnesses said when the suspects went through your wife’s wallet they saw a photo of your son. Where is he now?”
“Zachary. Oh God! He’s in school right now.”
“It’ll be all right,” McDaniel said.
“They’ll know where he is, what he looks like. I have to get him. I have to be the one to tell him.”
“Take it easy,” McDaniel said. “Come with me, we’ll go there now. We’ll call SFPD district people to sit on the school. What school is it? We’ll call the principal to quietly remove Zachary from class, and hold him so you can pick him up. Let’s go.”
“I don’t want anyone to know yet,” Reed said, telling McDaniel the name of his son’s school so calls could be made.
“No one’s going to know, Tom,” McDaniel said as they hurried from the scene.
A few feet above them, the TV camera lens peeking between the cracks in the billboard covering the balcony withdrew unseen. It had recorded everything.
For, unlike the reporters held back by police, this TV crew had been ensnared by events as they unfolded around them. They’d captured everything, including every word Tom Reed and the police had exchanged.
“You get the address of the school?” the young pretty reporter said to the cameraman.
“Baby, we’ve got it all.”
The young woman grinned, her full red lips unable to contain her white teeth and glee over the gold they had mined today.
8
Ann Reed’s heart hammered against her ribs in the aftermath of the shooting.
Please, God. Help me.
The red-faced man had forced her to the backseat floor of her car. He had handcuffed her wrists and held her head down with his leg, pressing her face against Zach’s baseball glove, ripping the cover of his sports card magazine.
“One wrong move, one sound, and we’ll kill you.”
The metal of the gun muzzle knocked against her skull.
The white-faced man drove while his partner passed him items from one of their duffel bags. Ann tried to think. Be smart. Be calm. Remember details. Maybe she could plead with them? But they’d shot a police officer before her eyes. She was a witness.
Somebody, please help me.
Before her head was forced down, she had seen the driver yank off his wig, wipe away his makeup with a wet cloth, then slip on a ball cap. All within seconds. She saw his outline but could not identify details. From the movements of the man holding her, Ann sensed he was now also removing his disguise.
It wasn’t long before the car gathered speed as it clicked, then hummed along an expressway to disappear into the streams of traffic that webbed across the metropolitan Bay Area. How would police find them?
No one spoke.
They monitored radio news reports. Ann heard a police scanner identify checkpoint locations as they drove and drove. Which way? South down the peninsula? North? East across the bay? Which way?
Ann closed her eyes, trembling at the odds mounting against her, remembering that she’d just filled her car with gas. The jewelry store called on her cell phone to say her order was ready. She’d been headed to the bank. The deposit bag was in the front, locked in the glove compartment. It had cash from her stores. She gasped in silence, choking on a sob. She tasted the salt of her tears rolling down her cheeks into Zach’s glove. She inhaled its leathery smell, which mingled with Zach’s scent from his shampoo and traces of Tom’s cologne from game nights. She heard their voices, saw them rushing off to the diamond. Ann brushed her cheek tenderly against Zach’s ball glove. Oh God. It felt as if they were with her now.
Why is this happening? It can’t be real. Would she ever see Tom, Zach, and her mother again? All Ann could feel was the metal of the handcuffs and the car’s motion taking her further and further from her life.
It was as if she were falling from earth.
God, please. Help me.
At that moment Ann tightened her fists, realizing she was still clutching the piece of jewelry she had bought for her husband.
9
Reed followed FBI Agent Steve McDaniel to his car. “I’ll need directions to the school,” McDaniel said. “South of the park. Turn left at the light.”
McDaniel was in his mid-thirties, dark tanned, average height and build. Wore a navy suit. Reed noticed a few stray bullets on the carpet that likely got away from him when he loaded for the standoff.
“I forgot your name,” Reed said.
“Steve McDaniel. I’m new here from LA Division.”
“You’re new to this city and you’re the case agent on my wife?”
“Sir, I’ve had three years with VCMO in Los Angeles, most of them on kidnapping cases. Before that I was with SEAFAT in Seattle. We brought in a lot of violent fugitives.”
“Make a left after the next light.”
McDaniel’s cell phone rang. He took the call, then said to Reed, “It’s the principal at Zachary’s school. She’s got him in her office. How far away are we?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes,” McDaniel said into the
phone, then hung up.
Reed watched the street flow by. Watched the world continue turning even though his had stopped. Ann had been stolen and here he was giving street directions to the FBI agent on the case. Why didn’t he grab Sydowski? The old homicide bull was the best. Why didn’t he quit the Star yesterday, or sooner, like Ann wanted? He could’ve been with her today. What were the last words he’d said to her this morning? What were they? He couldn’t remember. Something was shaking. Coming apart inside. Why did they take his wife?
“Tom, did you hear me?”
“No.”
“More people will meet us at your house. We’ll get your son, then set up a trap on your home phone.”
“What for?”
“Ann might call home. You know that with a trap we’ll get a lock on the number.”
“You think she’ll call?”
“In many cases, it’s the first place people try to call if they get to a phone.”
“What about the other cases?”
“Tom, the suspects might try to contact you.”
“You really think so?”
“I do.”
“I think I know what her chances are.”
“They may have needed her car, needed her as a shield to buy time and distance.”
“They already killed a cop in cold blood and you think they’ll spare my wife?”
“Tom, a number of scenarios are possible. We don’t know what we’re dealing with just yet.”
“We do know what we’re dealing with. Cold-blooded murderers.”
The fear inside Reed began rising again, flaring with images. They could rape her. Kill her. Toss her body into a dumpster. He stared at his cell phone in his helpless hand. Silent. The green power light blinking like a heartbeat. Reed covered his eyes with one hand. Ann could be dead already.
“There it is.” McDaniel pulled alongside the two SFPD black-and-whites at the front of the school.
He badged them, passed the school security officer, who was chatting with two SFPD uniforms. McDaniel and Reed strode through the entrance, down the polished floors of the locker-lined hall. It echoed with the din of classes in progress. Passing an opened door, Reed exchanged quick glances with a male teacher, tapping chalk in his palm.