by Thomas Perry
They stopped at the gate and drove inside while it closed behind them. They waited while the barred entry to the garage lifted to admit them. Just as Stahl pulled into the space beside Hines’s, his phone rang.
“Stahl,” he said.
“Hi, Dick. This is Bart Almanzo. My guys just finished watching all the video of the funeral today. I’m afraid nobody spotted the suspect. There was no face that had turned up on an earlier video.”
“You used the same officers who watched all of the other videos?”
“Yes. Even though by now almost everyone in Homicide has seen all of it. We’ll be getting more tape from businesses along the way, but we blanketed the cemetery with cameras, so it’s unlikely we missed anybody.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Stahl said. “The breaks aren’t falling our way today.”
“Yeah, I heard about the meeting with the mayor. It was on the radio, backward.”
“How did you know it wasn’t true?”
“There’s a growing faction of people who are connoisseurs of the mayor’s stupid decisions. This one is already getting famous. I heard it from a gentleman who is high up in the union. Take care of yourself.”
“Just what I plan to do,” said Stahl. “See you.”
Stahl and Hines went inside through the kitchen entrance and Hines set her purse on the table in the living room. Stahl called over his shoulder: “Scotch?”
“And ice. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She went into the spare room and hung her dress uniform in the closet, then pulled a sweatshirt on over her head and put on shorts.
They sat on the couch to sip their drinks. They kissed gently and then drank some more. After a few minutes together Stahl said, “Does that outfit mean I won’t be tearing your clothes off tonight after all?”
“I hope you’re not disappointed. But I’ve had that pistol belt strapped to me all day, and heavy shoes and all. You’re welcome to take this off me if you want. It doesn’t take as long, so you won’t get bored.”
“Bored? I’m confident that I won’t.”
They moved into the bedroom and made love in the faint light from the skylight streaming in from the living room. This was the first time since the bombing in her apartment, and so it was like coming together after years apart. At first there was a tentative, cautious quality to their movements. They were like people learning all over again to trust their instincts about what the other would want, and to give the other permission to take chances. But soon they were comfortable again, each of them wanting, taking, and giving at the same time. When it was over, the hour was late.
He leaned over her. “Are you okay?”
“Except for the broken bones.”
“Come on.”
They moved together and kissed, a long, quiet moment while their lips touched, they closed their eyes, and they breathed the same breath.
Hines woke up lying on top of the sheets, still touching Stahl. His larger body was giving off heat so she hadn’t noticed there were no covers. She moved her foot to try to hook the sheet and pull it up without waking Dick.
The movement seemed to bring her out of a dream, and she realized she had not just awakened spontaneously. As she saw her phone across the room light up, swung her legs off the bed, and stepped toward the phone, she saw Stahl turn toward his nightstand, where his phone was lit too.
They both read the message at once. “SECURITY,” it said. “Break-in detected. Lock all doors and shelter in place.”
“This is for real,” he said. “Get dressed.”
He stepped into the pants he had taken off at bedtime. She went to the closet and pulled on a black pullover and a pair of black jeans, and stepped into a pair of black flats. She went low, ran to the purse she had left on the table in the living room, and plucked out her Glock pistol and the spare magazine.
In a moment she saw Stahl emerge from the bedroom and step along the wall pushing the .45 pistol he kept in the nightstand into his waistband. He stopped. “Where are you?” he said softly.
“On the floor by the couch. Who sent the message?”
“The building security system. The security guys can send it by pushing a signal on their phones. But if a door or window breaks it comes automatically.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you gave me the new phone?”
“I bought it when you were in the hospital and forgot.”
She said, “What do you want to do now?”
“Stay put. It’s most likely nothing.”
“That suits me.”
“I’m going into the spare bedroom for a minute.”
“To the gun safe?”
“Yes.”
She heard the faint sounds of Stahl moving across the room to the hall, and then imagined she could hear the gun safe swing open, a slight rub of the hinges. She did hear it close and lock. She heard some clicks and metallic slides. In a moment his dark silhouette materialized beside her.
She reached for him, but felt the cold barrel of a rifle. She recognized the distinctive shape. “An M4. Thanks. Is the magazine full?”
“Yes. I got one out for each of us.”
“You’re so thoughtful.”
“I’ve lived here for four years, and I never got an alert message before.”
There was a noise, a faint crunching sound above them. In the dim glow coming from the skylight, Hines and Stahl turned to glance at each other. Stahl pointed at the island with the marble top that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Hines nodded, stayed low, and skittered around the counter to take up a firing position on the other side. She charged the M4 and aimed at the skylight.
Stahl moved back toward the spare bedroom, knelt in the doorway with the muzzle of his rifle up, and began to scan the windows.
The sound of crunching gravel came again, then a similar sound from the other end of the roof, and a third trail following that one. He looked toward Hines. He couldn’t see her behind the marble-topped counter, but he could see her rifle barrel aiming up at the skylight. He looked at the kitchen. There were no windows in there, only a skylight. The outer wall held a wide stainless steel Sub-Zero refrigerator, a stainless steel eight-burner Wolf stove, a vertical pair of ovens. There was nothing but brick and reinforced concrete on the outer walls.
Stahl stayed motionless and listened. The sounds of footsteps on the roof had stopped.
43
There was the sound of footsteps moving away, and Stahl felt relieved. They must have tested the steel bars over the skylight and realized they couldn’t enter through it. Then there was a flare of light from above the skylight like a slow, silent explosion that lasted a few seconds and went out. The intruders had only been stepping back and turning away to protect their eyes. Stahl just had time to whisper to Hines, “Thermite!” Hines understood that the mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide was cutting through the steel. Hines heard the sound of a steel bar clattering onto the safety glass above them. She moved her finger to the trigger.
The glass of the skylight showered the floor, and the living room was illuminated by the rapid muzzle flashes of an automatic weapon firing down into the room. The bright, continuous flashes looked like the flame of a blowtorch as the shooter moved his weapon back and forth, sweeping the room below.
Stahl and Hines held their fire and waited for a shot. Then a man dropped from the empty frame of the skylight. He landed on his feet near the couch. Stahl fired three rounds that hit the man squarely in the chest and pounded him off his feet to the carpet. There was more wild automatic fire from the skylight, probably intended to keep the defenders’ heads down.
Instead, both Hines and Stahl fired their M4 rifles at the skylight as rapidly as they could pull the triggers. The automatic fire from above stopped. They both watched the skylight, hoping the man still up there would be visible for a second as he moved to get a better firing angle.
While they watched, the man they had shot popped up from beside the co
uch and aimed a burst of automatic fire at Stahl where he crouched in the doorway. Stahl dived back into the spare bedroom and saw a line of bullet holes appear in the bedroom wall as the man fired through it.
Stahl heard a single shot from Hines’s M4 near the kitchen and the automatic fire stopped again.
Stahl dashed from the bedroom and nearly overran the man. He could see that the man was wearing body armor under his shirt, but Hines had shot him through the skull while he was firing at Stahl.
He found Hines resting her left elbow on the marble counter at the edge of the kitchen. When a rifle muzzle poked down into the room at the edge of the skylight, she fired four shots at the spot where the shooter must be.
Stahl came close to the counter and beckoned. She moved around it after him and then out the steel door into the underground garage. Stahl let her through, then closed the door quietly so the intruders wouldn’t be sure he and Diane had retreated.
Stahl went past the parked cars and along the rear wall of the garage until he reached a door with a pair of surveillance cameras mounted on the ceiling about ten feet to either side. He looked up at the camera to his left, making sure his face was visible to anyone watching the monitor. Then he knocked, waited, and knocked again, but there was no response. He said, “The security guys aren’t in there, or they would have opened up for us.”
“Where could they be?”
“There’s a hallway on this level that runs the length of the building, and a couple of short alcoves off it that go to outer doors.”
“Can we get access to them anywhere?” Hines asked.
“Only if they’ll open up,” Stahl said.
They moved to the metal barrier that had closed the entrance to the garage. Stahl went to the barrier and tried to use a crack between sections to look out at the driveway and the bit of the front lawn near the sunken driveway ramp.
“I can’t see anything,” he said. He hurried to his car and used the butt of his rifle to break the driver’s side window. He reached in and pressed the remote control on the dashboard and the barrier began to rise like a garage door. They both ducked outside, and then up the driveway. As it curved and rose, they saw the body of a man in a dark uniform lying near the side of the building. There was a door open behind him. They scanned the area, but didn’t see anyone else, so they trotted to him. When they got there, they could see his throat had been cut.
“I know him. That’s one of the security guys. It looks like they lured him out to investigate something and then overpowered him.”
Hines pointed at the way his legs had been pulled into the doorway and left there to prop the door open. “Do the security hallways lead to the roof?”
“Yes,” Stahl said. “There are stairs at the ends. That’s probably how they got to our skylight.”
“It looks like they’re still in there.”
They stepped past the dead man into the short hall to the main corridor and continued across it to the only door. Stahl moved to the left by the doorknob, and Hines knelt in front of the door with her rifle at her shoulder. Stahl swung open the door, but there was nobody visible, so they rushed in together, ready to fire.
There was nobody standing. There were security monitors on the wall, and Stahl moved closer to see if he could spot any of the intruders, but the only monitor that wasn’t covered in static patterns or black was the one that showed this room. And then he saw the second body. As he came around a desk, he stepped close to it. The other security guard must have been waiting to hear from his partner when the intruders came in the door behind him and cut his throat too. Stahl sidestepped to keep from stepping in the blood. “Let’s head for the roof.”
They went out to the long corridor and hurried along it until they reached the stairs to the roof. They climbed to the trapdoor set into the ceiling, and Stahl pointed to a bolt that had been opened and was still open. Hines nodded.
Stahl lifted the trapdoor a half inch and tried to crane his neck to look in three directions. After a few seconds he reacted to something. He threw the trapdoor off the opening, popped up, and fired. Then he pulled the trap closed again while there was a barrage of automatic weapon fire. He closed the bolt and pulled Hines down the stairs with him.
They ran along the corridor all the way back to the control room. He said, “There are at least five still up there on the roof, and maybe others in some of the other apartments. We should get out of here.”
“I’ve got a spare key hidden in the gas cap of my car.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before I broke a window in my car?”
“I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
“Let’s take your car and get out of here,” said Stahl.
“Right.”
They left the security control room. Hines went to her car while Stahl slipped out of the garage and moved along the sloping driveway to the lawn. He prepared to open the gate manually when a pair of headlights appeared at the end of the block—then another and another.
The cars were three big black SUVs, but he couldn’t see any white markings or police equipment on them. Could they be cops? Three cop cars wouldn’t all come in from the same direction.
He crawled to the front of the building near the door propped open by the dead security man’s body, and watched from behind the shrubbery. A moment after he reached a hiding place in the foliage men began to appear from the building. He saw three men hang from the edge of the roof and drop to the lawn. The front door of his condominium opened and two men half-carried, half-dragged out the body of the man Diane had shot in his living room.
He heard running footsteps, and five men ran out of the security hallway past the dead guard. He saw other men emerge from dark places all over the property in twos and threes and head for the street.
The two men with the body set it on the lawn only a few feet from Stahl. He knew they were going to get others to help pick it up and take it with them to one of the SUVs.
He crawled out a few feet on his belly, took his cell phone out of his pocket, and reached under the body armor of the dead man. He slid the phone under the man’s belt and into the front of his underwear. Then he withdrew, creeping backward into the dark entrance to the building, and became still.
Four men ran back from the edge of the street and lifted their fallen comrade. When they reached the three SUVs that had pulled up at the curb, they loaded him into the rear cargo space of the last one.
The three SUVs began to move. As soon as they were down the block, Stahl got up and ran to the driveway and into the garage, where Hines was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car.
She said, “What did you see?”
He said, “They’re leaving in three black SUVs. If we don’t find out where they go, we’ll never find them.”
“Get in,” she said. “We’ll go after them.”
“Hold on,” he said. “Give me your phone.”
She took her phone out of her pocket and handed it to him. “What happened to yours?”
He said, “When I bought our new phones, I programmed them to locate each other.”
“I know.”
He pulled her door open. “Get out. I need your car.”
She got out.
“I put my phone on that dead guy’s body, and I’m going to use yours to track it. Tell the cops to get Almanzo and have him track me on your phone.” He got into her car, started it, and drove out to the driveway. While he waited for the gate to open he turned on Diane’s phone and engaged the GPS locating application.
A map of the nearby area appeared on the screen followed by a red dot with a circle around it. The dot was heading for San Vicente Boulevard. He began to drive up the street toward San Vicente, but not fast enough to intercept the three vehicles, or to pull within sight of them.
Stahl looked at the dashboard of Diane’s car. Diane had filled the gas tank recently. He was not surprised. She was a woman who had lived alone for years and learned early in life to keep a c
ar’s tank full, change the oil, and keep the tires properly inflated. It wasn’t a stupid car. It wasn’t sporty and eye-catching. It wasn’t cute and underpowered. It was a simple black Toyota Camry with a decent-size engine.
He put Diane’s phone in the holder she’d installed on the dashboard for it, so she could talk or use the GPS for directions with her hands free. When he had to stop for the next red light, he reached for the M4 he’d left leaning against the passenger seat. He removed the magazine and looked at the slot along the front to count the copper-jacketed noses of the rounds inside. He’d fired twelve rounds, which left him eighteen.
His Glock 30 pistol held only ten .45 rounds and one in the chamber. He had another ten in his spare magazine.
Stahl had no intention of engaging in a gun battle with these men. He might as well shoot himself here and save the drive. But it felt better to have something to fire if he made a mistake. He might be able to delay his death for a while.
The tracking signal on Diane’s phone was strong. He followed a course parallel to the one the dozen men were on. Before long he could see that they were heading northeast consistently, not speeding or taking reckless chances. The symbol of Stahl’s phone stopped at some intersections and went steadily through others, which meant they were obeying traffic signals. They were being careful not to appear to be fleeing.
They crossed Wilshire Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, and Hollywood Boulevard. They climbed into the hills at Crescent Heights, and stayed on the road as it became Laurel Canyon. He checked the screen of Diane’s phone often as he drove, careful on the winding road to stay back where the vehicles he was following couldn’t see him.
He couldn’t be sure the vehicles were together anymore. He had slid his phone into the dead man’s clothes. All he had was a fairly reliable indication that he was following a corpse.
44
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“This is Sergeant Diane Hines, badge two eight nine six three. I’m at the home of police captain Richard Stahl, Seven Twenty-Three Anthony Drive. We’ve been attacked by several men armed with fully automatic AK-47 rifles. They killed two security guards here in order to gain entry. They’ve driven off in three black SUVs, and Captain Stahl is following them using a cell phone GPS program. It’s essential that you transmit this call to Captain Bart Almanzo, the commander of Homicide Special.”
