Hostage Taker

by Stefanie Pintoff

  Since Mace never wanted to be surprised when new goods hit the dealers, he told himself this was important learning. He was furthering his education. But who was he kidding? He was bored out of his skull. He needed a diversion to keep from going stir-crazy.

  A compact man with round wire glasses, pocket protector, and a name tag that read BURNS was showing García a handheld device. “This is a directed-energy weapon with dual capabilities. Use it to inflict pain when you’re dealing with a noncombatant you just need to neutralize. It makes your target feel like his skin is on fire.”

  “Is it?” García raised an eyebrow.

  “Not literally. Then see this switch?” Burns indicated a device on the underside of the handheld gun. “It lets you change your force level from nonlethal to lethal.”

  García scowled. “Still a little bulky. Not exactly handheld.”

  “Looks like a lightsaber. Straight out of Star Wars,” Mace chimed in.

  Burns shrugged. “It’s a lot of technology in a small package. Comes in handy with an operation like this, where you’ve got civilians who could interfere with your ultimate target.” He handed García a pair of sporting sunglasses. “This is another device you might find useful.”

  García held the black glasses up to the light. “I’m going to be underground. Probably need a flashlight more than these.”

  They had dark lenses, but red plastic ran the length of their top. A designer might have said it looked stylish, but Mace guessed it concealed some functional purpose.

  “They look like ordinary sunglasses,” Burns explained. “But they have technology embedded that will let you receive data. Photographs. Video. Location specifics.”

  “Kind of like Google Glass?” Mace said with a grin.

  “Way cooler than that,” Burns replied seriously as García put them on. “Let me show you what they can do.”

  Mace’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He answered it and said, “This better be important, ’cause otherwise I’ve got a chance to try a real-life lightsaber.”

  Vernon Brown’s friend Snoopy said, “Got something to write with?”

  “Not handy.”

  “Then listen up. You know I’ve been investigatin’ why my man Vern’s sitting in the clink.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I spoke with a couple guys outta Midtown West. Jeff Simmons and T. J. Pierce. They’re assigned to tracking sensitive items as they move into and out of the evidence locker. A big haul a few weeks ago has been keeping them real busy. First they had to secure it, meaning load it up and safely transfer it from some ratty crime scene to the evidence locker. Then they spent a solid month shuttling pieces of it back and forth to the forensics lab so everybody could learn about it. They weren’t happy when it all disappeared. Reflected badly on them, you know? Now they’re the subject of an investigation and stuck on desk duty. Bored out of their skulls.”

  “So did they steal it?”

  “Don’t think so,” Snoopy said. “Word on the street is that nothing like the stash that’s missing came up for sale. And neither Simmons or Pierce have anything to show for it. There’s no extra zeros in their bank account or new cars in their driveway.”

  “What’s your point, then?”

  “They can’t prove it. But they’ve got a theory.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Here’s the deal. I’m gonna give you the info—and if it works out, you’re gonna pay me back by makin’ sure Vern gets sprung. That he knows old Snoopy’s the one responsible for his freedom. And the high-ups need to give him a big, fat apology.”

  “Sounds like a tall order.”

  “Not for you,” Snoopy said as he gave Mace the names.

  —

  Haddox’s down-and-dirty algorithm turned up one result almost immediately. It identified the Hostage Taker as a Brooklyn native. When he was calm and in control, his articulation was careful. When his temper rose, he reverted to a communication style found primarily in Brooklyn. In other words, he punched his initial consonants. Jumbled his words together. And left off his r’s and g’s. There was also a slight—so slight as to be almost imperceptible—substitution of d for th.

  Brooklyn, Haddox thought. A borough of only 2.6 million people. And that’s assuming he was Brooklyn born and bred and never moved away.

  Brooklyn contained microcosms of different communities—Italians, Greeks, Jews, Irish, African Americans, Germans, and Russians. Now Haddox’s kludge would search for slight variations that might indicate one of those particular groups.

  The final linguistic analysis centered on one phrase. The term house mouse. It was what the Hostage Taker had called Annie Martinez, the NYPD negotiator he had killed. It wasn’t part of the recording—but Eve had remembered.

  As Haddox discovered, it was a common term in three different communities. Haddox put the first—the S&M practitioners—aside for now. Not that the Hostage Taker hadn’t inflicted plenty of pain, but it didn’t feel like his primary motive. Next was the Marines. House mouse was their term for the drill instructor’s gofer. That felt better to Haddox. Annie Martinez had been killed because she wasn’t important enough. Because she wasn’t Eve—the negotiator the Hostage Taker had demanded.

  The third community where the phrase was commonly used was the police. Cops used it to describe a homebody. Someone who did more filing than fieldwork. Haddox liked this scenario because they knew the Hostage Taker understood police protocol and procedures so well. He knows the playbook, Eve had said.

  So which is it? Haddox wondered.

  The more he could triangulate the data, the better his odds of success. So he added a search function that would pick up sex-abuse cases. Anything in the local area, happening in the right years. Then he waited.

  —

  García was having bad dreams already, and it wasn’t even close to bedtime. Haddox had downloaded a few files to the special optics glasses. Just to be sure things were working. Now García had access to the partial schematics of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, marked with the possible location of hostages. He also had photos and plenty of data about the explosives that were rigged throughout the Church.

  García didn’t like these high-tech glasses. He wanted to stay focused on what was real and immediate. He didn’t need extra images filling his head. Wasn’t that the problem in the first place?

  He took the glasses off. Stuck them on his belt. Maybe he’d try again later, if he ran into an issue.

  He’d gone into plenty of houses like this before. His mission had been pretty much the same: Take out the insurgents. Rescue the civilians. Then get the hell out.

  The only difference—and it was a big one: When he’d been on overseas duty, no one cared if the house blew. Not once all innocent civilians were safe.

  He didn’t have a good feeling about this. It had the potential to be a major bloodbath. And there might not be a damn thing he could do to stop it.

  —

  Eli was waiting. He’d commandeered two machines, and had his favorite databases open and running. Mace strolled right up to him and handed him the names.

  “Check these guys out for me, will ya?” He turned, thought of something, turned back. “Want some more coffee?”

  “Do bees sting? Do bears shit in the woods?” Eli grinned. “Except I can’t believe Julius Mason is offering to fetch me a cup of coffee.”

  “Don’t get used to it. I only do favors when I need something bad.” He noticed that Eli had changed shirts. The new one was a bright green New York Jets jersey. He must’ve had someone grab it for him from one of the tourist traps on Broadway.

  “What am I looking for, exactly?” Eli typed the first name into the database.

  “The usual. Any big purchases. Any sudden infusions into their bank account. Basically anything to indicate they might have stolen a whole lotta explosives and sold ’em for a tidy profit.”

  “What if they didn’t sell it—but used it themselves?”

  “Then we’d h
ave a pretty good line on the man inside. Say, you feelin’ okay?”

  Eli suddenly looked as green as his new jersey. Eli shook his head. “Think I ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

  “You didn’t have a hot dog from the vendor on Sixth, did you? They get me every time.”

  —

  Despite Haddox’s misgivings, it turned out that his bad apple search—combined with his other parameters—provided the necessary magic to narrow the field. At first, he thought his data points were too obscure. But once he combined the right age with the right time period with the right borough, only four sex abuse cases fit his parameters. It would have been impossible to miss one case in particular. That of John Timothy Nielsen.

  The list of those who claimed to have been victimized by Nielsen was not small. Once the first victim was brave enough to come forward, more than fifteen boys—many of them grown men by the time of Nielsen’s arrest and subsequent trial—came forward with additional accusations. Haddox’s search cross-referenced their names against the results of his broader search.

  A Brooklyn native.

  Once an altar boy in a Parish in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

  Who ended up a Marine or part of the Thin Blue Line.

  With an estimated eighty-one percent chance of being Irish. Or an estimated seventy-six percent chance of being Italian.

  Within moments he had generated a couple of names.

  Paulie Corsillo, son of a Marine, had joined up at age eighteen. Paulie barely waited forty-eight hours after graduating from Saint Xavier’s, the local Catholic boys school. His parents had been proud. Following the family tradition, they bragged. A jarhead, just like his old man. A captain who’d served in the Far East and the Middle East before coming home to Brooklyn.

  Paulie had done three tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. He was decorated, having received two special commendations and one Purple Heart. He had trained as a sniper, but had just barely missed making the cut. So he worked as a sapper, defusing hundreds of bombs. Roadside IEDs. House Borne IEDs. It was painstaking work. Requiring a certain kind of temperament. A temperament Paulie had—right up until the day he didn’t.

  He wasn’t held captive by the Taliban for long. It was only nine days—after which a prisoner exchange was brokered. The Americans didn’t participate, naturally. Americans always balked at negotiating with terrorists. But a third party brokered the deal, and Paulie was sent home permanently. Nine days with the Taliban had apparently triggered serious anger issues on his part, and the Marines didn’t need that kind of liability. Between the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and the Mahmudiyah killings, things were bad enough for the American military.

  When he returned home, Paulie refused any kind of therapy. He insisted his only issue was that he hated the Talibs for what they had done to him. In his mind, they deserved every ounce of loathing he could muster. Soon he figured out he hated someone else, too. Someone much closer to home. Someone who’d done things to him that were equally terrible and just as perverted.

  When the original complaint was filed against John Timothy Nielsen, it was Paulie Corsillo who spearheaded the action. He wanted to make Nielsen suffer and pay. To make sure no other boy was abused the way he had been. It was only right.

  Haddox liked Paulie as a candidate for being the Hostage Taker. The military background and deep knowledge of explosives made perfect sense. His anger issues were well documented. No doubt his captivity with the Taliban had left a less visible, but no less permanent, scar than the shrapnel damage that led to his Purple Heart. And his motive was perfect: a vendetta against the Church, which he believed had failed him.

  Sean Sullivan was also in his early forties, just like Paulie. They’d been born at the same Brooklyn hospital: Kings County between Clarkson and Winthrop. Been baptized in the same parish in Bensonhurst. Even served as altar boys at the same time. Their paths differed in three important respects.

  First, Sean’s family was Irish—and thus a world away, culturally, from Paulie’s Italian clan.

  Second, Sean’s family was a family of cops and firemen. When a Sullivan boy turned eighteen, he chose the NYPD or the FDNY. He’d have no more have enlisted with the Army, Navy, or Marines than he’d have drilled a hole in his head. Even after 9/11 happened—and Sean did like a lot of young men and enlisted in the Marine Reserves—he saw himself as a cop through and through. When the time came to serve his tour of duty overseas, he didn’t do it for honor or country or apple pie. He did it for the boys in blue.

  Third, Sean and Paulie’s paths diverged significantly when Sean’s parents separated—and his mother decided to leave the neighborhood for suburban Long Island. Sean moved when he was twelve; his return visits to the old Brooklyn neighborhood became sporadic.

  It’s likely his family never knew what he claimed to have suffered at the hands of Mr. Nielsen. From the sealed complaint in the DA’s files, Sean was one of the luckier ones: His forced relations with the teacher lasted only three months. He had testified on the QT, using an assumed name. He wanted only to corroborate what others said. To make sure justice was meted out to this priest. But no more. No headlines, no public vendetta. All Sean wanted was to return to his own life on the Island.

  Never mind how that life was falling apart. His wife was divorcing him. By all accounts, he had a rocky relationship with his thirteen-year-old daughter. He had filed for bankruptcy. He was on suspension from the NYPD, the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation.

  That last part fit, but not what Sean was accused of stealing. Drugs and money. Easy to pocket. Even easier to deal on the streets.

  One more thing: Sean had trained to serve in one of the NYPD’s elite counterterrorism units. That training had taken him to Afghanistan, Egypt, and Pakistan, where he and other team members had liaised with numerous military operations. He’d have learned about explosives and received sniper training. But was his learning sophisticated enough?

  Sean had plenty of issues. But he lacked the clear sense of anger—and motive—that Paulie had.

  Yet one fact troubled Haddox. Angus MacDonald—the one true witness they had at this site—claimed to have seen a cop entering the Cathedral.

  Angus’s description was vague. It centered on a raincoat and a certain bearing to a man’s walk. Plus, the timing was all wrong—because the hostage crisis was well under way by the time the cop allegedly entered the Cathedral.

  It was equally likely one of New York City’s forty thousand Finest had wandered into early-morning Mass and found himself entangled in a situation he hadn’t bargained for.

  Haddox decided: He would present all these facts to Eve. She was the expert. Let her decide what she thought.

  Assuming the Hostage Taker wasn’t talking a load of lies and blarney, Haddox was convinced: The man causing so many problems inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was Paulie Corsillo.

  The profile fit. More important, the data fit. And in Haddox’s experience, the data never lied.

  —

  Eli ran the database search Mace had requested, but he needed time to think about the results. Especially now that Haddox had forwarded the two names he had uncovered.

  This was all shaping up in a way that made Eli uncomfortable. He honestly wasn’t sure what it meant. It didn’t help that John kept calling him on the job. He’d now ignored two voicemails and five texts. He wasn’t feeling very well.

  Eli breathed in and out, tried counting slowly to sixty, but the urgency couldn’t be ignored. He stepped away from his computer. Lurched out the door of the MRU. Half ran, half walked toward an area ten yards behind Atlas, where a big gray Rubbermaid trash can had been brought to handle the trash generated by a few hundred agents and officers.

  He leaned over and emptied the contents of his stomach.

  When he finished, an NYPD tech officer was standing beside him, offering a tissue.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Happens at p
retty much every crime scene I’ve ever attended. Not a big deal.” She pointed. “There’s a water station over there. Might help you feel better.”

  Eli nodded miserably. Nothing was going to make him feel better.

  APPROACHING DEADLINE HOUR

  6:59 p.m.

  We continue to talk with Cliff Raymond, internationally renowned security expert and former FBI agent. Mr. Raymond, we know the FBI has the lead here and must have a top-notch negotiator on the job. What can you tell us about what’s happening?

  RAYMOND: Here’s a remarkable statistic for you—about ninety-five percent of all hostage crises are successfully resolved through negotiation strategies. Hostage negotiation is basic psychology, and most negotiators are among the most skilled practical psychologists you could ever meet.

  But hypothetically speaking, what happens if talk fails?

  RAYMOND: Well, from the earliest hours of this incident, I can guarantee you that a SWAT team has been on standby outside the Cathedral. If a tactical rescue is authorized, their first priority will be to isolate and contain the Hostage Taker or Takers. They will do so with every effort made to preserve life and—especially in the case of Saint Patrick’s—mitigate property damage.

  We also have a representative from the Catholic Church on the line—Monsignor Bill Geve.

  What can you tell us about the Church’s concerns, Monsignor?

  MONSIGNOR GEVE: It’s because I’m so concerned that I’m calling in to you today. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is the most important Catholic landmark in North America, if not the Western Hemisphere. And I am not satisfied that the FBI will do what is necessary to protect it. So I’m asking all your listeners—if Saint Patrick’s is important to you as a Catholic…as a New Yorker…or just as a concerned citizen—please call the mayor’s office and let him know!