The van keeps moving at a normal clip down a path that wasn’t meant to be noticed, much less traveled. I feel like I’m driving through a jungle, overhanging branches tapping our windshield and scraping the sides of the Taurus.
We still haven’t taken any official police action, but there’s no longer any doubt that we’re following. If this guy’s innocent, he has to be wondering about our intentions.
But he’s not, I think to myself, my pulse banging. This is our guy.
And he knows we know.
“Sosh, where are you?” Carla says into her radio. Another SOS team, Detectives Lanny Soscia and Mat Rodriguez, are in this area doing the same thing we are.
“West of Archer near…Hogan?”
“We’re just south of Rawlings, traveling westbound on an unmarked dirt road. We’re following a white van, driver fits the description. We need assistance.”
“Where on Rawlings?” Sosh calls back.
Carla cusses at the GPS, which is spinning right now, unable to connect. “We’re the first turnoff west of the Equestrian Lakes subdivision, south side. West of…Addendale, I think.”
“On our way.”
I keep a distance of two or three car lengths as the van bounces along.
The van begins to slow. I nudge Carla, who nods.
Up ahead, a clearing, sunlight blanketing the ground. No tree coverage.
A road of some kind? An intersection?
“What’s that up ahead?” I ask Carla, not wanting to take my eyes off the road.
“Can’t get GPS to pull up yet,” she answers. Then, into her radio, she calls to the state police chopper: “Air 6, this is CPD 5210. Do you copy?”
“Air 6 to 5210, what’s your twenty?”
These state troopers and their formality. Carla repeats our location, best she can.
“We’ll try to find you,” the pilot calls back. “GPS is a nightmare out here.”
No shit. The van slows still further, so I do, too.
Then the van reaches the clearing, suddenly cast in the glow of sunlight, while we remain in the darkness of the trees.
The van rolls carefully up onto a small incline, a tiny hill, then comes to a complete stop.
“He stopped,” I tell Carla, who’s busy banging the GPS on the laptop. “What the hell’s he doing? What’s he on? Are those…” I lean forward, squinting.
“Wait—GPS is up,” says Carla.
We say it at the same time: “They’re railroad tracks.”
Not a public right-of-way. No crossbucks or gates or flashing lights. “One of those old crossings, out of use for decades,” says Carla.
“So what the hell is he doing?” I mumble.
“Parking on the tracks.”
Then we both hear it, from our right, the north. The rumbling sound of a train coming.
“Shit.”
“He’s done and he knows it,” Carla says. “Suicide by train.”
With a fifteen-year-old girl inside.
We burst out of the car.
Chapter 3
WE RUSH toward the van, feeling the vibration of the oncoming train underfoot, fanning out on each side as the train horn bellows its warning. The screeching sound of metal on metal as the train tries in vain to halt ahead of the van stopped in its path.
“Chicago police! Chicago police!” I shout as I approach the driver’s door, the side panel emblazoned with the salt-company logo.
In the rectangular side mirror, I catch sight of the man’s face, his eyes intense. The van’s tires screech as they spin into motion, blasting the vehicle off the platform and over the tracks. Just as the train barrels past us, the deep blare of its horn, sparks flying, a high-pitched screech from the brakes.
I’m blown backwards and almost lose my balance. Carla is calling into her radio to the state police chopper, to all units, as we lose sight of the van on the other side of the tracks, blocked now by the freight train.
The train shudders to a halt. “No!” I yell. “Keep moving! Clear this crossing!”
That will take forever. The conductor has protocols. And he’s well down the track. He probably can’t hear me. He’s probably cursing the idiot van driver who just played chicken with him.
Carla drops to the ground, looks under the train. “Can’t see anything underneath!”
I look around me, a tree branch raking across my face.
A tree.
I grab onto the thickest low branch I can find and do something I haven’t done in twenty-five years. I pull myself up onto the branch and look out. No view. Still blocked by the idled train. I find another branch, pull myself up, and straddle it. There.
I spot the van just as it’s turning left through what looks like a cornfield. “He turned south a few hundred yards up!”
I lose sight of him. But at least I know the direction he’s heading. I climb back down, jumping from the branch and scraping my hands, falling face-first into some foliage that may or may not be poison ivy. “C’mon,” I shout, heading back to the car.
We get into the car. I drop it into gear. I turn the same direction the van is headed, south, and drive along the sloped gravel right-of-way next to the train tracks on my right.
“Air 6, you got this asshole?” Carla shouts. “We’re near Rawlings and the train tracks! A white van. It’s heading southbound now, probably a half mile southwest of the tracks and Rawlings.”
“CPD 5210, we are responding.”
We race along the sloped gravel, our tires slipping and sliding.
“Twelve o’clock,” Carla says to me.
I see it: a large structure on the right-of-way, a big black junction box mounted in the gravel. I can’t plow over it. To the left is unknown terrain, and we could be screwed. Only choice is to go right, nearly hitting the train tracks. Carla braces herself.
“Hope all those years of video games paid off,” I say.
I speed up and swerve to the right, the angle dangerously sharp, Carla nearly falling into me from the passenger seat. We scrape the embankment of the railroad tracks, bouncing downward against the junction box, but the momentum carries us past, the Taurus nearly nosediving into the very terrain I wanted to avoid to the left. We kick up rocks and dust, but the Taurus rights itself, and we barrel forward again.
“Air 6 to 5210, we have a twenty on the white van.”
So do we. Up ahead, maybe a hundred yards. Flying across the train tracks again, back to the side that we’re on, the Baird Salt logo unmistakable.
He’s driving in a square. He’s heading back where he came from.
“CPD 5210 is in pursuit,” Carla says.
“CPD 5210, we can’t track him in those woods.”
Which is why he came back. He knows these woods. He knows where to hide.
We’re on him, at least. But he has a head start. I can only go so fast without losing control of the Taurus on this uneven gravel.
After ninety seconds that feel like an hour, we reach the road where the van crossed back over the tracks. Carla is cool and calm as she relays the developments. “All units, we need to seal off this perimeter. Sheriff 1, you call it; you know this area.”
I floor the Taurus, which responds with its souped-up police-model engine. At least this road is paved, so we can make progress. But so can the van. With the cherry lit up on the dashboard and the siren blaring, I hit nearly ninety miles an hour, hoping nobody or no thing jumps out into our path. I can’t afford to lose the van. We’ve probably got it pinned down now, but that’s not the problem.
The problem is the girl and what he’ll do to her if he feels cornered.
“There, Harney, there—”
We catch a glimpse of the van, turning left yet again. Completing the square.
He’s going back home?
“Suspect is heading north,” Carla calls in. “Air 6, you got it?”
I push the Taurus as hard it can go, then skid into a left turn onto a dirt road, nearly wiping out. “This is the same road,” I sa
y. “The same one where we first saw him.”
Carla calls it in, now on familiar ground. But the driver has the advantage.
We see the van make its final turn up ahead.
“He did all this just to circle back and get home,” says Carla. “What’s so special about back home?”
I pound the brake as we slide into a turn, reaching the turnoff the van just took.
“We’re about to find out,” I say.
Chapter 4
WHEN WE reach the turnoff, we see a DO NOT ENTER sign chained across the path. That makes no sense. How did the suspect get through it and reattach it?
Whatever. I blast the Taurus through, the sign splitting apart before I could hit it.
“Some kind of automatic gate,” says Carla, checking her weapon, adjusting her vest. “Who the hell is this guy?”
We follow a winding road, slowing to navigate the turns. Too slow to overtake the van.
“C’mon…”
Up ahead, the van pulls up to a house of brick and stone, the garage door opening. The van roars inside. Behind us, the sirens of law enforcement—state, county, city—come blaring from Rawlings Road.
The van screeches into the garage. The man pops out. The van’s back doors open. He reaches in and pulls out…
…a girl, African American, tied at the hands and feet. Bridget Leone.
Carrying the girl in his arms, the man rushes into the house as we reach the property and squeal to a halt.
I run into the garage, seeing the door to the house ajar. My Glock out and high, I push the door open and shout, “Chicago police!”
I’m in a kitchen, red light flashing in a high corner. An intruder alert?
We race into a sparsely furnished family room—a couch and chair but not much else. A door to the left. To the right, a sliding glass door onto a patio.
And another red light flashing in the corner.
“Bridget! Bridget Leone?” Carla calls out. She tries the door. It opens into a staircase leading down.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure running through the back yard. It’s our offender, the ball cap and build matching the description.
“Bridget!”
A faint but clear “Yes!” comes from the basement.
“I got the perp; you get the girl,” I say to Carla.
I push open the sliding glass door and leap off the patio onto the grass a good ten feet below. I ignore the pain in my ankle and start running.
It’s a thick net of trees, a natural fencing, but I saw where he went in, and I see his hat on the path. I run with my Glock at my side. The path is narrow, the footing uneven. I try to watch for an ambush while running at top speed in an area this asshole knows and I don’t.
Advantage: asshole. But I have some wheels when I’m motivated, and I get the sense this guy does not.
Then I hear him up ahead, his labored breathing, the sound of his footfalls. He comes into my view, running with all he’s got, but it isn’t enough.
“Police!” I shout as best I can while sprinting, my chest burning, my ankle throbbing. I make a decision, stop, aim, and fire at a tree in front of him.
The wood splinters. The man cowers, slowing down.
Then he stops.
“Hands up and turn around!” I shout, shuffling toward him, both hands on the Glock.
He raises his hands. Turns around.
Beady eyes, greasy dark hair, thick nose. A large head rising from a long, skinny neck and sloping shoulders. Big ears protruding off his head like those of some cartoon character. The bandage dangling from his face, the sweat overpowering the adhesive, revealing a decent scar.
“Drop to your knees!” I command.
He doesn’t. Instead, with a poker face, he makes a word with his lips.
“Boo.”
Then he looks over my shoulder, past me.
“Drop to your—”
Then I realize he wasn’t saying boo.
He was saying boom.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Behind me, a deep, thundering explosion. I turn to see the roof blowing off the house, a massive ball of orange and black, the sides of the house caving in.
The entire house, reduced to ash and rubble within five seconds.
I turn back. The suspect has started running again, turning into the thicket of trees and disappearing.
I look back and forth, then holster my weapon and start running back to the house.
Chapter 5
I BAT away tree branches and stumble over a hole along the path as black smoke fills the sky. I feel the searing heat before I reach the clearing.
When I push through the final branches into the back yard, I’m hit with an oven blast of heat and dark soot and dust. I nearly stumble over a young African American girl lying in the grass, facedown, wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
“Bridget?” I bend down, touch her neck for a pulse. “Bridget Leone?”
She opens her eyes, nods, looks up at me.
I cover my hand with my mouth so I can breathe. “Are you okay? Can you move?”
She manages to nod, squint at me, cough.
Around the other side of the house, a state police trooper and a county sheriff’s unit come running. I flag them down. Eventually, they see me through the smoke. “This is Bridget,” I say, while my eyes whip back and forth for Carla. “Get her out of here!” But before I do, I lean into her ear. “Bridget, where’s my partner?”
Still dazed, she shakes her head. She doesn’t know.
The troopers gather her in their arms and rush her away from the blaze, the poisonous soot, the scalding heat.
“Suspect went through that clearing!” I shout to the sheriff’s deputies, pointing. “I don’t think he was armed, but I can’t be sure! Go! And get the chopper on him! Go!”
I push them as I soldier forward, my mouth covered by the crook of my arm, taking quick, greedy breaths as I move forward. “Carla!” I shout. “Carla!” Each time breaking into a coughing spasm.
By now, more than a dozen officers are on the scene in their various uniforms. I grab two and yell, “There’s a Chicago police detective here somewhere!”
Mini fires are scattered around the rubble, but the house was all brick and concrete, mostly stamping them out. The real problem is the air quality—beyond treacherous and making it almost impossible to see through the thick blanket of dust and soot.
What I can see: a house, leveled. Parts of a roof and walls scattered about. Utter wreckage. Carla could be anywhere.
“Carla!” I call out, and others join me, calling out her name. Knowing without acknowledging it that if she was still inside the house, she has no chance. But the girl got away, so she probably did, too.
It gets darker by the second. I pull out my Maglite and shine it around. A rescue squad is spraying the remaining fires.
“Billy, you okay?”
I turn. Lanny Soscia, part of the SOS squad. “Can’t find Carla!” I shout.
We look through the debris, pieces of roof, wall, furniture. I break into another coughing spasm. Someone hands me a gas mask.
Then I remember my phone, buzzing just before the explosion. I check it; the call came from Carla. I press the button to call her back and look around.
Through the darkness, only a few feet to my right, a phone lights up.
“Over here!” I rush over, slide down. Carla is lying underneath a slab of concrete that covers her body up to her shoulders.
Her eyes are shut. She looks…she doesn’t look…
“I’m here, kiddo, I’m here.” Her face is painted soot black. I touch her neck and feel a faint pulse.
“Over here!” I yell. “Officer down! We need a medevac!”
Carla coughs, spraying blood, and opens her eyes. I put my hand over her face, trying to shield her as I lie down on the ground next to her. “You’re gonna be fine,” I lie.
Her eyes narrow, a smile without a smile.
Sosh runs up with sever
al officers.
“We gotta get this thing off her,” I say. I try to push on it. Heavy is an understatement, but all we need to do is raise it enough for someone else to pull her out.
“Should we be moving her?” Sosh asks, bent down.
He might be right. You don’t move someone with suspected spinal injuries if you don’t have to. “We can at least get this thing off her,” I say. “Everyone at once; we can do it.”
I bend down to Carla. “Put on this mask, Carla, so you don’t have to breathe this shit.”
I lower the mask to her face. In her weakened state, she manages to bat it away. “Tell Darryl…I love him and I’m…counting…counting on him now.”
“You tell him,” I say. “When you see him later.”
Even in her dazed, battered condition, she manages to shoot me a knowing look. “Tell my baby…his mama loves him.”
“He knows that,” I say, choking up. “Samuel knows, but you’re gonna tell him yourself, goddamn it!”
Officers scramble around us, trying to figure out how to remove this massive concrete wall off Carla’s body.
She winces. “Did the girl…did…”
“The girl’s fine,” I tell her. “You saved her, Carla.”
She rests her head back on the ground, closes her eyes.
“Put on the mask,” I say, “and we’ll get this thing off you.”
Officers have placed tire jacks on each side of the concrete slab, while the others prepare to move the concrete.
Carla wets her lips and tries to speak. “Come…closer.”
I get as close as I can, practically nose to nose on the grass. My hand wiping the soot from her face, caressing her cheek. “I’m here,” I manage, hardly able to speak.
“You saved…my life,” she whispers. “You…know that.” She grimaces from the pain. Tears well up and fall sideways to the grass.
The concrete slab starts to lift, the tire jacks raising it off the ground and a dozen officers struggling to get purchase under it.
“You saved mine, too,” I tell her, making my voice work. “That’s what partners do. We stick together.” I take her hand in mine. “We’re always gonna stick together. You think I’m gonna let you off this easy? You and me, we’re gonna retire together. You and me and Darryl, we’re gonna sit in rocking chairs and tell war stories.”
The Red Book Page 29
