by Jack Quaid
Griswold Street had turned into a police station. Fistfuls of uniforms had cordoned off the area and nervously wandered along the straight lines of police tape that kept the spectators out.
Deacon swung his head left to right, up and down the street, then did it again just to double-check. ‘Jesus Christ. Where the bloody hell is he?’
‘Ease up,’ Campbell said with a nod to the car park the street had turned into. ‘It looks like the traffic is a little congested out there.’
‘We can’t sit around here all day,’ Deacon whispered.
‘We won’t have to,’ Campbell said and cocked his finger through the blockade to a police van that had just pulled up to the police tape.
Sullivan shifted his weight to get a better look as the uniform leaned down to talk to the driver. The uniform nodded a couple of times, buying whatever story the driver dished out, and waved the van through. It moved slowly and cautiously through the maze of patrol cars and rolled to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Glare bounced off the windows. There was no way of seeing who was behind the wheel.
‘Is it him?’ Deacon asked, palming his weapon.
Sullivan hoped it wasn’t. He clocked the alley again. No sign of Jones or any backup.
‘It’s got to be him, right?’
‘It’ll be a hell of a coincidence if it isn’t,’ Campbell said.
The driver’s window rolled down. Goldsberry grinned and hung a hairy arm out the window. ‘Do you guys need a lift, or what?’
Everybody relaxed. Everybody but Sullivan.
Campbell turned to the group and focused his attention on Monique and Sarah. ‘All right, kids, we’re going to make our way over to that van. We’re going to move fast, but we’re not going to run. We’re going to be cool. Very, very cool.’ He tapped Monique on the chin. ‘Little one, what are we going to be?’
‘Cool?’
‘That’s right.’
Sullivan looked for Jones, SOG, even a parking inspector.
Nothing.
‘Let’s roll,’ Campbell said.
Sullivan hated the plan.
Because it might actually work.
He stayed close to Monique as they stepped off the gutter. The view was grander streetside. Uniforms, prowlers, and ambulances were scattered along the road and bent around the curve of the Westin, into State Street. It was a sea of blue and white, with the occasional yellow of a stray taxi double-parked in the street.
Monique pulled free of his grip, making a run for it. Sullivan grabbed her wrist, pulled her back. Then he saw what she saw: her father.
Jones had turned the corner. He was a good forty feet away. Too far to fire and hit anything but still close enough to try. He pulled his revolver and limped as fast as he could up the footpath. ‘POLICE!’ he yelled. ‘POLICE!’
Jones’s screams woke up the scene. Every uniform’s attention was directed to where his finger pointed. It took a moment for them to catch up to what the fuck was happening. Fast or slow, when they did, their service weapons were yanked from their holsters, and at different pitches, but all with the same anxiety, they yelled, ‘POLICE!’
Campbell’s unit didn’t do second thoughts. Sidearms came out of pockets and waistbands and waved in the air.
Sullivan didn’t touch his.
‘What do we do?’ Hogan yelled.
Campbell turned. Badges descended from all sides. They were outnumbered five to one and, after the first round was fired, those numbers would triple.
‘Campbell!’ God yelled. ‘What are your orders?’
Campbell looked at the scene. Saw the guns, cars, and cops and swallowed hard. ‘Take ’em down! All of them!’
Gunfire cracked through the air and rang in the damaged eardrums of those on the scene. Campbell’s unit formed a small circle around Sullivan, Monique, and Sarah.
Half the uniforms ducked for cover. They were cops, not soldiers, and getting killed for $19.50 an hour wasn’t in their career plans. The other half were trying to be heroes. But adrenaline had taken over, and they weren’t thinking clearly. They fired randomly and hit nothing.
Jones waved his arms in the air. Through the staccato cracks of gunfire, Sullivan heard him yell, ‘Hold your fire, hold your fire!’ in various fragmented forms that nobody paid any attention to.
The unit reloaded. They were fast. There was the sound of their rounds still bouncing off the buildings as magazines were slammed back in and the shooting started again.
Monique tried to run. Sullivan yanked her by the wrist, slamming her down. He looked for a way out. The alley was too far back. Between it and them, stray bullets bounced off storefront walls and cars. Maybe Sullivan could get one of them out; maybe. But both Monique and Sarah? Not a chance.
Campbell grabbed Sarah by the arm. ‘Fall back to the van!’
She screamed, reached for Monique. Campbell dragged her along to the van. She couldn’t reach her daughter.
Uniforms surrounded them. Their bullets cracked through the air and tore into the bodies of scattered vehicles with clinks and clanks.
Sullivan held Monique down. She tried to wriggle free, but he was too strong. His ears rang.
He whipped his head around so fast he only saw fragments of the scene.
Muzzle flash.
Gun smoke.
And, from behind a Toyota, frozen in a moment of panic, came Jones. His eyes shifted up from his daughter, with her face pushed to the concrete, to Sullivan. His head cocked sideways as his mind backpedaled over everything that had led up to that moment. The mysterious phone calls, the inside intel, and he knew it was Sullivan.
Deacon grabbed Sullivan under his arm. ‘Come on!’
Sullivan clocked the street. Waves of uniforms and plainclothes alike pushed around the scattered vehicles, all with their weapons out and moving in fast.
Deacon yanked again. ‘Let’s go, damn it!’
Rounds bounced up from the concrete. Sullivan looked back at the divvy van—it was now the safest place on the street.
‘Covering fire!’ Sullivan yelled.
Deacon and Hogan stepped in front and blasted rounds. Sullivan dragged Monique to her fee and shielded her as they made the disjointed half-dozen steps to the back of the van. He tossed her in and followed.
The rest of the boys didn’t waste any time. As if it were practiced, and it probably was, God unloaded his clip and jumped inside. Then Hogan did the same, as did Deacon, slamming the door closed behind him.
Campbell slapped his fist on the wall. ‘LET’S ROLL!’
Sullivan felt the van pull a sharp one-eighty-degree turn.
Hogan fell to the floor.
Everyone was thrown around.
There were no windows in the back. Sullivan didn’t like that. He gripped Monique tightly, put one hand on the roof, his leg against the bench seat on the opposite side, and braced himself for the insanity they were about to drive through. The roar of the engine filtered through the cab and into the rear. Goldsberry was punishing the stolen police vehicle and, by the feel of it, punching his way with force out of the blockade. A car alarm rang out somewhere, and when bullets started piercing the walls of the van, everyone jumped to the floor.
Goldsberry hit something.
The van shuddered, and the engine stalled.
The yelling and footsteps of approaching uniforms surrounded the van. Sullivan took a breath. He hoped it was the end, that cops would surround the vehicle and that Campbell would rather spend the rest of his life in a cell than go out in a blast of gunfire. All he had to do now was get Jones’s family out of the back of the sweaty van and this mess would be over.
Then the engine started up; Goldsberry gunned the accelerator. There was movement, more yelling, and gunfire.
And hope drained from Sullivan’s heart.
The van shifted into second gear. They pulled a hard left and, when it shifted into third, Campbell picked himself up off the floor and smiled. ‘Now, that wasn’t so bad,’ he said.
Everybody laughed. Sarah held her daughter tight, and Sullivan felt nostalgic for his quiet days of being locked in a jail cell.
Chapter Threnty Three
Jones caught up in time to see the van take a turn on Woodward Avenue and disappear around the corner. While some badges attempted in vain to chase it on foot, others slowed to catch their breath and make sense of what had just happened. Jones did neither. For a moment, he didn’t move at all. Then his legs gave way, and he crumbled to the ground. He still had his eyes hooked in the direction of where he last saw the van, hoping that something, anything, would happen and it would reappear, but he knew it wouldn’t. He knew they were gone and that Angus Sullivan was the only hope he had of seeing them again.
Chapter Twenty Four
When the van stopped, Sullivan opened the doors and stepped out into an underground car park. It was darker than it should have been, and except for construction machinery, the place was empty and not yet in operation.
Deacon and God hopped off the back of the van and smacked each other a high five. Their adrenaline was running high, and they hadn’t yet learned how to control it. Sarah and Monique were both pale, shaken up, and scared. So was Hogan. He put his palms flush against the side of the van and vomited. Sullivan envied the others. He had neither the high of adrenaline running through his veins nor the fear of death. He felt nothing. It was a nothingness that he recognized in Campbell. Both of them calm and resolved. Both of them comfortable with the violence and ugliness.
A few blocks away, a siren wailed, faded, and was replaced with another. The rolling thunder of emergency services hammered past the car park entrance.
‘Where are we?’ Sullivan asked.
Deacon faced the wall, pissed against it. ‘Clifford Street,’ he called.
‘That’s only a couple of blocks from the Westin.’
‘They’ll be looking for us trying to escape the city. Inside it is the last place they’ll look,’ Campbell said. ‘Let’s head up to the office.’
They caught the elevator to the twentieth floor, and when the doors opened, they stepped out into an open-plan office. It was unoccupied, with wires hanging from the roof and a floor made out of concrete.
‘All right, boys!’ Campbell yelled. ‘Grab five.’
Hogan flat out hit the ground. Laid there, facedown on the concrete. It was as if his mind had exhausted his body and he was just trying to make it through the day, and by the look of him, Sullivan doubted he would.
Deacon burnt off his energy with push-ups.
God put Sarah and Monique against a wall and kept them under guard.
Sullivan turned three hundred sixty degrees, sussed out his situation. The furniture was minimal. A few tables, a couple more chairs, and not much else. At the far end of the floor was Con ‘Horse’ Gracie with a half-a-dozen homemade C4 explosives, rigged with electronic timers, laid out on the table. In seventeen years as a cop, Sullivan hadn’t seen gear that impressive outside the DPD.
Horse didn’t look up. ‘How did we go?’
‘A little rougher than expected,’ Campbell said.
‘That’s life,’ Horse replied and continued his work with the explosives.
The office floor was wide-open. No matter where Sullivan stepped, he would be seen by the others, which would make a call to Jones not impossible, but difficult if he wanted to avoid a bullet in his gut. He leaned against the window. Floor to ceiling, with a view of the city. Grey rooftops underneath a blue skyline, and beneath them both, gridlocked traffic. Vehicles at a standstill that would probably stay that way for the rest of the day, unless the DPD evidenced up the Westin mess in a few hours and opened up the traffic, which wouldn’t happen.
Sullivan slid his hand into his pocket and felt the phone against his leg. He pulled it out, keeping it close to his body, dragged it over his stomach, to his chest, then tilted it to dial. The screen didn’t light up when he pressed the buttons. He flipped the phone over. It had taken a hit in the escape and was busted.
‘Shit,’ he muttered.
‘Hey,’ Campbell called. ‘What are you doing all the way over there?’
Sullivan tilted his head toward the glass and, beyond it, the city outside. ‘Just enjoying the view.’
‘When you’re done sightseeing, would you like to come over here?’ He pointed to Horse. ‘You too.’
Sullivan shoved the busted phone into his pocket and headed over, with Horse not far behind him. Everybody huddled around Campbell.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re hitting home runs, but the day is long, and there is much to do, so let’s get cracking.’
Hogan picked himself up off the concrete. He unzipped a bag and took out an iPhone. God dragged two chairs across the floor and pushed them against the plasterboard wall.
Campbell pointed to Sarah and Monique. ‘On your feet.’
Sarah, a superstar cop’s wife, didn’t take orders, or shit. She looked at Campbell, hard. ‘No.’
He took three steps and stood over Sarah. ‘One way or another, you’re sitting on that chair.’
Her face hardened. ‘I don’t think so.’
Campbell gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Alright.’ He swung a left hook. It hit her like a brick and, in an instant, she was down.
Sullivan palmed the weapon in his waistband, took half a step, and then paused. He could take three out, maybe. Not four and certainly not five. If he tried, he wouldn’t make it out of the building, and Sarah and Monique wouldn’t make it through the day.
‘Are you going to play nice?’ Campbell asked.
Without so much as a whimper, Sarah and Monique sat where they were told, against a plasterboard wall that was still covered with mismatched pink and white undercoat. They held hands.
Hogan readied the iPhone, set it to video. Pressed record.
Chapter Twenty Five
The corner of Michigan and State buzzed with police activity. A perimeter was set up, larger in scope and more heavily guarded than before. Journalists pushed against the tape and periodically yelled out questions to uniforms who didn’t know any more than they did. News vans with parking tickets on their windshields and cameramen on their roofs captured images of State Street. A wall of police cadets walked shoulder to shoulder from the storefronts on one side of the street across to the other, their heads to the ground, looking for any tiny piece of evidence.
Jim Jones pushed through the line and limped down the middle of the street. Sweat ran down his face while his eyes darted at the crowd. He saw Fisher by a newspaper stand, debriefing all three of his SWAT teams. Jones made his way to the front of the group and took a swing at Fisher. It was a useless haymaker: big and wide, and with enough of a lead-up that everyone saw it coming.
Fisher sidestepped. Jones lost his footing. His bad knee gave out, and his own punch sent him to the ground.
‘For Internal Affairs, this really is a step down,’ Fisher said.
A couple of guys laughed.
Jones peeled himself up, got in Fisher’s face. ‘You piece of shit, I told you what they were doing.’
Fisher shoved a crooked finger at him. ‘Don’t you put this on me. Don’t you dare try and put this on me.’
Jones swung again. This time, Fisher’s feet were planted, and he was cocky. The blow bounced off his jaw. Fisher had taken a punch or two before. Knowing it wasn’t the end of the world, he countered with a left body hook.
Jones lunged and took them both to the concrete. As fast as it started, it was over with SWAT pulling them apart. They panted and struggled, but when they settled down, they were let go.
Either they hadn’t seen her or she had just arrived, but Chief Mackler stood there, O’Conner and her senior staff backing her up. ‘Are you boys finished?’ she asked.
Fisher panted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where are they?’ Jones yelled.
‘We’re looking into it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that we’re looking
into it.’
O’Conner stepped forward. ‘We’ve got a big mess on our hands. We’re just trying to get our heads around it.’
‘I want my family back.’
‘Walk with me,’ Mackler said. They stepped away from Fisher, SWAT, and Mackler’s staff, and made their way across the street, where there were fewer people and ears. ‘We’re going to get them back,’ she said and lit a cigarette. ‘We’re chasing down CCTV footage on Clifford, and the city are pulling up everything from all their red-light cameras. The city may be big, but it’s not big enough for Campbell to disappear in.’
The phone in Jones’s pocket vibrated; a text message. The number was blocked, the message only a hyperlink. It sent him to YouTube.
Mackler looked over his shoulder. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
They waited for the video to load. The first frame they saw was of Sarah and Monique, in chairs against a stark plasterboard wall.
Sarah’s first few words were silent. Jones turned the volume up.
‘You have two hours to hold a press conference. In this press conference, you will confess to the kidnapping of Monique Jones, when she was an infant, from Nina and Charlie Walters, and the subsequent bribes and lies you conducted to cover up the incident. You will then tender your resignation.’ A hand entered the side of the frame. In its palm was a revolver. It pushed into Sarah’s temple. ‘You have two hours.’
Jones frantically tried to play the clip again.
REMOVED BY USER was all he saw.
Mackler grabbed Jones by the arm and pulled him off State Street and into an alley. ‘Is this fucking true?’ she asked. ‘Is she not your daughter?’
Jones mentally panicked. His mind pulled in a hundred different directions, all at the same time. He couldn’t speak.
She slapped him. ‘IS IT TRUE?’
‘Of course not!’
Mackler stepped back. She took a breath and ran her fingers through her hair. The warm air cutting through the alley cooled the sweat on the back of her neck. ‘Where’s he getting this shit from, then?’
