Lethal Measures

by Leonard Goldberg

  A young woman pushing a baby carriage approached.

  The policeman stepped back to give her room.

  Now the carriage was positioned between the policeman and the Blalocks. The cop moved back farther, almost touching the green van parked at the

  curb. The red-haired woman smiled at the policeman as she reached into the carriage.

  He thought she was adjusting the angle of the bonnet to keep the bright sun out of the baby’s face.

  Eva had the gun with a silencer out before the policeman could even begin to react. The first shot went into his abdomen, the second into his shoulder. He stood stupefied for a moment, then dropped to the sidewalk.

  Eva rapped twice on the van door, and it instantly opened. She grabbed Jean-Claude by the collar of his shirt and threw him inside. Quickly she turned back to Joanna and pointed the gun at her forehead.

  “Get in or I’ll blow your head off!”

  Eva shoved Joanna into the van, then Kate after her.

  “Hey! Hey!” The owner of the ice cream parlor came running out of his shop.

  “What are you doing?”

  Eva whirled and fired again at point-blank range. The rotund man dropped like a dead weight. Now Eva was inside the van, slamming the sliding door shut.

  “Go!

  Go!” she yelled at Rudy.

  The policeman in the black-and-white cruiser watched the Chevy van drive off. He searched for his partner but couldn’t find him. Then he saw the crowd gathering.

  A woman screamed.

  The policeman threw open the door of the squad car and ran for the ice

  cream shop. He didn’t see the motorcycle that ran over him. Thursday, April 15, 2=40 p.m.

  Jake hurried through the automatic doors and into the ERat Memorial Hospital.

  The area appeared to be in a state of chaos. Nurses and orderlies rushed by, some pushing gurneys, others carrying plastic bags of fresh plasma and whole blood. A young doctor was trying to yell orders above the turmoil. Jake stepped back and waited impatiently as another gurney passed. The body on it was motionless and completely covered by a sheet.

  “Jake! Over here!” Farelli called out. He was standing by the door to Trauma Room 1. At his feet was a transparent container that held a policeman’s badge and weapon.

  Jake waited for a wheelchair to go by, then quickly walked over.

  “How many dead?”

  “None of ours,” Farelli reported.

  “At least, not yet.”

  “I just saw a body on a stretcher. Who was that?”

  “A suicide,” Farelli said.

  “Some guy took a dive off a nearby hotel.”

  The door to the trauma room opened, and an EKG technician with her machine came out. Jake and Farelli moved aside as she hustled down the corridor and into another room.

  Jake took out his notepad and rapidly flipped pages.

  “All right, tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Nada. A big zilch,” Farelli said.

  “Did anyone see Joanna?”

  Farelli shook his head.

  “Nobody saw her or anything else.”

  “No witnesses at all?”

  Farelli shook his head again.

  “Jesus,” Jake hissed angrily.

  “How the hell did that happen? How the hell did they pull it off

  without anybody seeing anything?” Farelli shrugged weakly.

  “I got no idea.”

  “Somebody should have seen something,” Jake snapped.

  “These bastards aren’t invisible.”

  “Weathers said it happened in a flash.” Farelli took out his notepad and began turning pages.

  “One second Joanna was there, the next she was gone. All he remembers is seeing a dark van drive away.”

  William Weathers was the policeman who had been stationed in the squad car adjacent to the ice cream parlor. While running across the street to aid his partner, he was hit by a passing vehicle and sustained a badly fractured leg.

  Farelli had spoken with him briefly in the ER.

  He turned to another page in his notepad.

  “Weathers couldn’t be sure of the van’s make. Ford or Chevy, maybe.”

  “And I’ll bet the driver didn’t stop.”

  “Nope. He just kept on going. And, again, there were no witnesses.”

  Jake cursed under his breath, wondering how the terrorists could have worked out so many details in such a short time.

  “That hit-and-run driver was probably a part of the plan.”

  “Could be,” Farelli said, nodding, “Everything else was so well-executed. It was like a commando strike.”

  Jake nodded back.

  “That fits too. Remember, Eva Reineke was being trained as a Green Beret before they booted her ass out.”

  “Well, they must have trained her real good,” Farelli said sourly.

  “Because all she left behind was a baby carriage and two shot-up bodies.”

  The swinging doors to Trauma Room 1 abruptly opened, and a heavyset surgeon came out into the corridor. He was middle-aged and balding with a thick mustache. The front of his scrub suit was soaked with perspiration.

  “How is he doing?” Farelli asked, holding up his shield.

  “He’ll live,” the surgeon said.

  “But he’s got a compound fracture of the tibia that will have to be surgically repaired.”

  “Can we talk to him?” Jake asked.

  The surgeon hesitated before shaking his head.

  “We’re moving him to the OR right now.”

  “All we need is a few minutes,” Jake implored.

  “A person’s life may depend on it.”

  The surgeon hesitated again, then said, “Make it quick. When the

  orderlies with the gurney get here, he goes.” Jake hurried into the room, Farelli a step behind. A nurse was adjusting the flow rate of the IV in Weathers’s arm. Jake approached the surgical table, his eyes going to the dressing atop the jagged bone sticking out of Weathers’s leg.

  “How are you feeling?” Jake asked.

  “Like shit,” Weathers said through parched lips.

  “My leg is killing me.”

  The nurse looked over.

  “Do you want another shot?”

  “I’m all right,” Weathers said, but he was clenching his jaw against the pain.

  “We have to talk fast because you’re on your way to the OR,” Jake said urgently.

  “I know.”

  “Start from the moment Joanna Blalock left the hospital.”

  “She walked out the back entrance with Keely in front. They went through the parking lot to the park behind the hospital. That’s where she met her sister and the little boy.”

  “Did you ever lose sight of her?”

  “Not at that point.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The women sat on the park bench while the little boy played,” Weathers continued.

  “There wasn’t anything or anybody unusual. You know, women with kids and babies. That kind of thing.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed.

  “Were there any baby carriages?”

  “Yeah, there was a ” Weathers winced as a sharp pain shot up his leg.

  Perspiration poured off his face. He turned to the nurse.

  “Maybe I’ll have that shot after all.”

  The nurse injected Demerol through the IV tubing.

  Weathers felt his head floating, the pain now more of a dull ache. He forced himself to concentrate through the haze.

  “You said there was a carriage,” Jake prompted.

  Weathers nodded.

  “It had a big bonnet. A young woman with red hair was pushing it.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  Weathers thought for a moment.

  “She didn’t come back by me, so she must have gone out the back of the park.”

  And then to the ice cream parlor, Jake thought. He exchanged knowing glances
with Farelli. The woman pushing the carriage was probably Eva Reineke, doing a reconnaissance run to make sure everything was in place.

  “What happened next?” “Nothing much,” Weathers said, trying to moisten his lips with his tongue.

  “A motorcycle roared by and stopped at the light, then went on.”

  Jake leaned forward.

  “Did you see the rider?”

  “A skinhead with tattoos on his arms.”

  “Old or young?”

  “Older. Middle-aged. Maybe fifty-five or so.”

  The description fit Walter George Reineke. It had to be him, Jake thought.

  “Then what happened?”

  “They left the park and walked over to the ice cream parlor. I—” The door swung open with a loud bang, and an orderly came in pulling a gurney after him.

  Jake looked over to the nurse.

  “I need another minute.”

  “No can do,” the nurse said.

  “It’s moving time.”

  As the nurse and orderly went about shifting Weathers from the table to the gurney, Jake kept asking questions.

  “When you reached the ice cream parlor, was the van already there?”

  “It was parked right in front of the loading zone.”

  So damn smart, Jake was thinking. Not only did the van block Weathers’s view, but it made him park the squad car across the street.

  “Did you notice anything about the van? Color? Make?”

  “I didn’t pay it much attention,” Weathers said as the pain started to return.

  “I know I should have.”

  You’re goddamn right you should have, Jake wanted to say, but he held his tongue.

  “Then the van drove off and I heard a scream,” Weathers went on.

  “I got out of my car and headed across the street. Then something roared by. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “Roared?”

  Weathers nodded as the nurse and orderly rolled the gurney toward the door.

  “It sounded more like a motorcycle than a car.”

  Now the trauma room was empty and silent, the floor littered with used dressings and IV tubing and paper wrappings. The air was filled with the odor of old blood.

  “He said he didn’t pay the van much attention,” Jake growled.

  “He must have had his head up his ass.”

  Farelli nodded.

  “He didn’t play it too smart.”

  Jake began pacing the floor, kicking at the litter as he went by Farelli.

  “He got sloppy and he got lazy. And he just might have cost Joanna her

  life.” “They were up against pros, Jake. I’m not sure any of us could have done much better.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” But Jake knew Farelli was right. The terrorists had a perfectly designed plan that they executed with precision. They knew exactly how to take out both cops. He turned back to Farelli.

  “Who do you figure ran over Weathers?”

  “The skinhead on the motorcycle,” Farelli said at once.

  “Do you know who that was?”

  Farelli shook his head.

  “Walter George Reineke.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said firmly.

  “It was him. The FBI profile said he was in his late fifties but looked younger. He was balding fast, so he often shaved his head. And he had tattoos on his arms and was a motorcycle freak. Now, who do you think ran over Weathers?”

  “Old Walter George himself.”

  “I guess he decided to come up and help out his little girl.”

  Farelli smiled crookedly.

  “That’s what daddies are for.”

  Jake started pacing the floor again, still angry with Weathers for screwing up, but angrier yet with himself. He should have insisted that Joanna stay in the forensics laboratory during the day, with a cop at her side and another at the door. But the park had seemed so innocent and so easy to guard. It wasn’t the park that caused the problem, though. It was the trip to the ice cream parlor that had turned out so deadly. Who could have known? Who could have even guessed?

  But you knew they were coming after her, Jake berated himself, you knew it. And you weren’t there when she needed you the most. And that was the story of your whole goddamn life.

  Jake took a deep breath, trying to push his guilt and anger aside and focus in on the problem he faced finding Joanna before the terrorists killed her. What was the single most important thing that could lead him to her? What questions had to be answered first? He thought again about the events outside the ice cream parlor. The cops. The shooting. The scream. The motorcycle. There were no clues, nothing to go on. He went through the events again, slower this time.

  “The van,” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “Wherever the van is, that’s where Joanna will be,” Jake went on, now

  concentrating on possible ways to identify the vehicle. “First, check out all stores within a ten-mile radius that sell baby carriages.”

  Farelli began scribbling in his notepad.

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help us. They sure as hell wouldn’t leave their license number with the store.”

  “No, but maybe a clerk carried the carriage out to the van. Maybe he remembers it. The make, the year. Who knows?”

  “But chances are it’s going to be a stolen vehicle,” Farelli said thoughtfully.

  “Maybe they dumped it.”

  “They’re probably still using it,” Jake told him.

  “When you’ve got five or six people to move around, a van is the best way to do it.”

  Farelli nodded.

  “Particularly if you’ve got those tinted windows.”

  Jake wrinkled his brow and concentrated harder, trying to cover all possibilities.

  “Of course, they could have stolen yet another van to switch over to. Kind of like a backup.” Jake slowly rubbed his hands together.

  “Get a list of all vans stolen in the greater Los Angeles area over the past ten days. Pay particular attention to the dark-colored Chevies and Fords.”

  Farelli looked up.

  “Weathers was just guessing when he said Ford or Chevy.”

  “I know. But first impressions are usually the best ones.”

  Farelli jotted down a final note.

  “Jake, I think our best chance to ID the vehicle is to talk with Weathers’s partner and the ice cream shop owner. They were the ones closest to the van.”

  “I guess,” Jake said, unconvinced. Sometimes the people closest saw the least.

  But then again, he thought, the van was parked out front for more than a few minutes. Maybe the ice cream shop owner got a good look.

  “How are they doing?”

  Farelli shrugged.

  “They rushed them up to surgery before I got here.”

  Jake started pacing again.

  “We’ve got to find that damn van.”

  “And hope the doc is close by.”

  “Yeah.” Jake sighed, knowing they were hoping against hope. He wondered why Joanna posed such a threat to the terrorists. Was it something she knew or something she was close to finding out? Maybe. But why kidnap her? Why not just kill her like they tried to do the day before? There was no rhyme or reason to it. Nothing made sense here. Nothing.

  “Jake,” Farelli said quietly.

  “You know there is a real chance the doc is already dead.” “I don’t think so,” Jake said as a picture of Joanna flashed through his mind.

  “If they’d wanted her dead they would have shot her on the spot. And they wouldn’t have bothered to take Jean Claude either.”

  “Why do you think they grabbed the kid?”

  “Insurance,” Jake said.

  “They’ll separate the kid from Joanna and Kate and promise not to hurt him as long as Joanna cooperates. And of course they’d never try to escape unless they had Jean Claude with them.”

  “That may al
l be true,” Farelli said somberly.

  “But come the nineteenth they’ll kill the doc.”

  “I know.”

  “And the boy and his mother.”

  “I know that too.”

  The door to the trauma room opened, and the heavyset surgeon entered. He had on a new scrub suit but was already starting to sweat through it.

  “I’ve got bad news,” he said.

  “What?

  “Jake asked.

  “The cop who got shot died on the table,” the surgeon said without emotion.

  “One of the bullets tore through his pulmonary artery. He didn’t stand a chance.”

  Farelli looked away, shaking his head sadly. He had known Joe Keely for ten years. A good cop with a wife and teenage children. A daughter about to go to college whom Joe couldn’t stop talking about.

  “Does his wife know?”

  “Not yet. We’re trying to contact her now.”

  Jake asked, “What about the ice cream shop owner?”

  “He’s not doing so good.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  “It’s touch and go,” the surgeon said, turning for the door.

  “Last I heard they were having trouble keeping his blood pressure up.”

  Thursday, April 15,4:32 p.m.

  No! No!” Kate yelled, holding Jean-Claude tightly.

  “My baby stays with me.”

  “It’s going to be dark and damp in the cellar,” Eva said calmly.

  Kate turned away, placing herself between Jean-Claude and the terrorist.

  “He stays with me.”

  “If the boy starts screaming and crying, we’ll gag and tie the three of you up.

  Understood?” Eva’s voice was controlled and non-threatening, but she kept her hand on the butt of the pistol that protruded from her coat pocket.

  “And once you’re bound and gagged, you’ll remain that way.”

  Kate glanced over at Joanna, uncertain what to do. She couldn’t let them have Jean-Claude. She just couldn’t.

  “Well?” Eva asked as she reached for the door to the cellar.

  “Make up your mind.”

  There was a tense stillness in the hallway. No one moved. Outside, somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

  “What do you want?” Joanna asked, trying not to show her fear. Her eyes darted down the hall of the house, looking for a way out. The male terrorist was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, adjusting the silencer on his weapon.