Guilty Minds

by Joseph Finder

  “I need a signature, right here,” I said, thrusting the clipboard at him, as if trying to show him something.

  All I needed was a moment of disruption. To disengage his brain from his trigger finger for a second or two. A break state, it was called. An interruption of thought, breaking the coordination between his mind and his weapon as he figured out whether I was for real. Because even though he’d deduced I wasn’t a UPS driver, he wasn’t entirely sure.

  The lanky guy hesitated for a second. He glanced at my uniform, at my clipboard, in the space of maybe a second and a half.

  I turned my left foot and flung the clipboard at his eyes. He jerked his head away. I thrust my left arm over his right, clamping down hard, while with my right hand I grabbed the barrel of his gun. I twisted it clockwise, up and away. He screamed as his trigger finger snapped.

  Then I lunged at him, knocking him to the carpeted floor, my knee at his throat. I had his gun now and jabbed it into his forehead. He screamed again, said, “Jesus, no!”

  “Where’s Vogel?” I said.

  “His . . . his wing.”

  “Where?”

  He thrust his thumb to his right, my left. He indicated a set of double doors.

  “Turn over. I said turn over.”

  I shoved him, and he complied. I yanked out a couple of the heavy-duty cable ties, but apparently he wasn’t finished. He reared up, jerked his right hand back toward me, and I smashed the barrel of the Glock into his left temple.

  He slumped immediately. He was dazed, semiconscious. I secured his wrists together, then his ankles. He didn’t fight me anymore.

  These particular zip ties he wasn’t going to escape from.

  Then I got up and went to find Vogel.

  78

  From the Google image I had a good sense of the house from above. I knew that the house rambled, and that there was a lot more to the house than the few rooms I’d passed through.

  If this guy were telling me the truth, these double doors led to Vogel’s own wing. His residence, maybe.

  Maybe.

  Holding in my right hand the Glock I’d taken off the lanky guy, I opened the double doors with my left. Ahead I saw a long, broad hallway, with more wood paneling, chair-rail height. Here the wood was painted off-white, to match the walls.

  On the right was what appeared to be a bedroom. The door was open, the light off. The bed was unmade.

  On the left was another room, a study or office. More fancy woodwork here, and a long desk, cherrywood with scrollwork on the legs. On top of it, piles of papers. Cables and cords everywhere. In the corner of the room, a printer on a smaller table. The window had a view of the front yard. I could see the nose of the UPS truck. Here the lights were on. As if Vogel had been working there and left abruptly.

  And then I saw Vogel.

  And he saw me.

  He was about thirty feet down the hallway from me, wearing a blue button-down shirt and a pair of dress slacks. He looked like he was about to put on a tie and go out for a meeting with a client.

  I spun the Glock toward him. Vogel’s right hand was moving behind him, to where he probably had a weapon holstered, and I said, “Don’t.”

  Vogel smiled. His right hand stopped moving.

  “What are you going to do, Nick?” he said. “Shoot me?” He smiled.

  I came closer, the Glock pointed at his center mass.

  He’d raised an interesting question. Was I really going to shoot Vogel? Or maybe shoot him in the leg, wound him?

  “Release Mandy and you can walk away,” I said.

  He laughed. “Don’t insult me.”

  “I’ll throw you a phone. You call your guys, tell them to let her go. It’s your only play, Vogel.”

  He smiled, shook his head, as if this was the stupidest idea he’d heard in ages.

  “Put the gun down, Nick.”

  “First make the call. Then I’ll put the gun down.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, brother.”

  I took a step closer. “Don’t make me do it, Vogel.”

  He smiled again, the cocky son of a bitch. “You gonna shoot me, Nick?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I said, and I squeezed the trigger.

  It was deafeningly loud in this enclosed space. Vogel bellowed. The bullet ripped through his shirt, tearing a small hole at the shoulder. A large bloom of blood stained the sleeve of his blue shirt. The round had creased his shoulder, inflicting a minor but intensely painful flesh wound.

  “God damn you, you son of a bitch!” Vogel shouted. His right hand came up to grab his injured shoulder.

  “What’s next?” I said. “Your kneecap?”

  I lowered the Glock and pointed it at his knee.

  “Okay!” he said. “Okay! Jesus!” He glanced over my shoulder for just an instant, and then something came from behind my right side. A sudden movement, a shift in the quality of the light.

  And in that same moment something long and cylindrical—I could just make out its shape—cracked into my right arm, causing me to drop the gun. My arm exploded with pain. I stumbled.

  It was a baseball bat, wielded by someone who’d stolen up behind me.

  The bat came up again, and I threw myself at my attacker, grabbed at the baseball bat. It cracked against my hands, a hot stinging, immensely painful, as I tried to wrench it from his grasp.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Vogel moving away. But I was too preoccupied to stop him. The attacker roared, like a battle cry, as we struggled over the bat. Both of our hands were on it. He pushed it at me, and it cracked against my skull, causing a starburst of pain. With one great lunge, I shoved the side of the bat into his throat. I could hear the crunch of cartilage. He dropped to the floor, both of his hands grasping his throat, gagging, his eyes rolling up in his head.

  I knew he was down, permanently.

  I turned, saw the spatter of blood in the carpet where I’d shot Vogel. He’d left a trail of blood, which I followed down the hall and then to the right, along another hall, and then the spatters got denser and more profuse.

  Right in front of a white-painted windowless steel door.

  The safe room.

  He was inside.

  79

  Vogel’s voice rasped over a loudspeaker mounted high on the wall. “Backup’s on the way, Heller. It’s over. Go home.”

  “It’s over when Mandy’s released. Make the call, Vogel.”

  “Was I not clear about the terms of the deal? Go back to Boston, and Mandy walks free. Not till then. Enough of your games.”

  I saw a CCTV camera mounted next to the loudspeaker and realized that, though I couldn’t see him, he could see me. I thumbed the magazine release on the lanky guy’s Glock and saw that the magazine was empty. It was a Glock 17, the standard MPD service weapon, and its standard magazine had a capacity of seventeen rounds. With only one round in the magazine. And I had just fired it. At Vogel’s shoulder.

  Vogel must not have seen that the gun was empty, because he said, “Don’t waste the ammo, brother. The walls are ballistic fiberglass and steel. You’re going to need a howitzer.”

  He was telling the truth, of course. He was safe from bullets in there.

  “Are you really going to hide in your steel box?” I said.

  “You’re locked out.”

  “Yeah? I think you’ve locked yourself in.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Make the call,” I said again. “Here’s how it’s going to work. Your guys bring Mandy to whatever intersection you want, in DC or wherever you say. I have a guy who’ll pick her up and confirm she’s okay.” Balakian, a.k.a. Kombucha, was standing by, waiting for my call.

  He gave a dry chuckle. “Or what?”

  “Make the call.”

  “See, Hell
er, that’s where your plan falls apart. You have no leverage and you never did. In about ten minutes, five of my most capable employees will be here. They’re going to see an armed and dangerous intruder who’s obviously just wounded several men and set off a firebomb on my property, and they’re going to do what the law permits them to do: take you down. At that point, Mandy Seeger will be irrelevant.”

  I shoved the Glock into the waistband of my UPS uniform pants, as if it were loaded and could come in handy at any moment. Then I folded my arms. “Beautiful house,” I said. “You build it yourself?”

  “Most of it.”

  “The woodwork is extraordinary. It must have taken you years. It’s a real shame.”

  He said nothing.

  I took out my cell phone and held it up for the camera. “There’s a phone number programmed into this phone,” I said. “As soon as I hit the speed-dial, it will detonate the second gas bomb. Which is sitting in your living room. It’s gonna turn your house into a fireball. The house that you built so lovingly. Within an hour all that beautiful woodwork is going to be charcoal.”

  Another long pause. I was about to resume speaking when he said, “I make one phone call and Mandy Seeger is dead.”

  “And here’s the thing,” I said, ignoring him. “Here’s the best part. You’re sitting in a ten-by-twelve-foot steel box. In the middle of a roaring house fire. Now, the average house fire burns at eleven, twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And steel’s a great conductor of heat. Your steel coffin will rapidly reach around two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And you know what’s going to happen to you?”

  Silence.

  “Well, first you’ll start sweating. It’ll be really uncomfortable. Then blisters will start breaking out all over your skin. By then you’ll be in excruciating pain. If you’re lucky you’ll go into shock. It’s probably the worst way to die.”

  Silence.

  “Ever roast a pig in a box? That’s what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to roast like a pig. Only you’ll be roasting alive. Vogel—that’s a German name, right?”

  Silence.

  “What does Vogel mean in German?”

  Silence.

  “It’s been a while since high school German, but I’m pretty sure that Vogel means bird. So maybe it’s more accurate to say you’ll roast like a bird. Like a barbecued chicken. Human cremation takes place at between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred degrees, so you’re probably going to end up as just ashes. They probably won’t be able to identify you by your dental records.”

  “You’re full of shit, Heller. You’re not going to do it.”

  “How’s your shoulder?” I said, and I smiled. “You know about the blood on my hands. You know what I’m capable of.”

  “You’re not going to do it, Heller. Because Mandy Seeger is being held in the basement. Right below me. And I don’t think you’re going to want to burn your friend alive, too.”

  I have a knack for recognizing lies. And I knew he was telling the truth.

  80

  I wanted nothing more than to run. To find the basement door and get down there immediately.

  But I forced myself to backtrack down the hall to Vogel’s office. There I looked around quickly and yanked the power cord from the desktop computer. The cord was six feet long and sturdy. Then I grabbed a couple of USB cables.

  I returned to the safe room and looped the power cable around the door lever and looped that up to the mount for the CCTV camera. Pretty quickly I’d knotted the cables securely.

  He wasn’t going to get out of that safe room any time soon, and not without help.

  I turned and raced back down the hall in the general direction of the front door. I flung open door after door, finding closets and bedrooms and bathrooms.

  And finally the right one. The basement. I dropped the empty Glock and descended the stairs.

  The air felt cooler. I smelled a dank odor as I descended the dimly lit wooden stairway. Lights were on downstairs. I heard low voices.

  The basement appeared, on first glance, to have roughly the same footprint as the floor above. Bare concrete walls segmented it into a number of open rooms. It seemed to go on forever. It was, for a basement, relatively high-ceilinged: around nine feet. On the ceiling were soundproofing tiles.

  The voices were a little louder, and I could tell they were coming from a TV in one of the open rooms. In the closest alcove were steel shelves that held white boxes marked with dates and letters. The Centurions’ client files, probably. All along one wall were garden tools, neatly hanging from hooks on a long expanse of pegboard.

  I sidled along the wall of tools toward the source of the TV noise, which seemed to be coming from the next alcove. There I saw what at first looked like chain-link fence. When I got closer—though still about twenty-five feet away—I realized I was looking at a holding cell. A twelve-by-twelve-foot standalone cell whose walls and ceiling were made of welded wire mesh. The sort of cage you might see in a small police detention unit. In one corner, a bare steel commode. In another, a sleeping bag on the floor and a steel bench.

  And on that bench sat Mandy Seeger.

  She was slumped, in a hooded sweatshirt, and looked weary and alone. She didn’t see me.

  About ten feet from the holding cell sat a very large guy in a chair staring dully at a TV mounted on the ceiling. He wore a white short-sleeved polo shirt and a shoulder holster. He looked to be around three hundred pounds, much of it fat.

  He didn’t see me either. He was watching some reality show about deep-sea fishing.

  The basement was soundproofed, and he was watching TV, but he still must have heard the bomb. And the shot I’d taken at Vogel. But he must have been ordered not to leave his post. He had a prisoner to watch.

  “Yo!” I shouted, walking toward the fat guy. “Vogel sent me down here.”

  The fat guy turned to look at me, a guy in a brown UPS uniform. He whipped a Glock out of his shoulder holster and aimed it in my direction. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Man, there’s eighteen feds with windbreakers upstairs. You want to get out of this, follow me.” I came closer. “Get her out of there and let’s go.”

  “Huh? Feds? Where?”

  Then a cell phone began ringing.

  His.

  With his free left hand he pulled out a phone. Then, with the thumb of his gun hand, he hit the answer button, a neat little move. He must have done it before.

  He answered it. “Yes, sir.”

  I knew who it was.

  Slowly I drew the Ruger out from under my shirt and held it at my side.

  As he listened, his eyes roamed the basement.

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

  Mandy, in the cage, was watching me, frightened.

  “Got it,” he said.

  Then he pocketed the phone.

  “Stop right where you are,” he said. His gun was trained on me. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “Okay.” I took another step.

  “I said, freeze,” the fat guy said.

  In one fluid motion I pulled the Glock up directly in front of my chest.

  But the fat guy leveled his Glock and fired first.

  Directly at me, from around twelve feet away.

  Mandy screamed.

  It felt like someone had slammed me in the gut with a baseball bat. I doubled over. The pain was immense. The wind was knocked out of me. I tumbled backward, against the wall of tools, grabbing my chest, gasping, as the Ruger flew out of my hands and went skittering across the floor toward the fat guy. All around me tools clattered to the floor. Something had gashed my neck.

  The light body armor I was wearing was only 6.5 millimeters thick, weighing less than two kilograms, and it had saved my life. But it sure felt like I’d broken a few ribs.

  I sprung to my fee
t, and I saw the fat man reaching down to grab the Ruger.

  A stupid move. Maybe he thought I’d been seriously wounded or was even dead. But it gave me a couple of seconds that I needed.

  I reached for the closest tool at hand, a long-handled pair of garden shears with its jaws open. Grabbing it by one handle, I hurled it at the fat man like some ninja hurling a throwing star.

  He yelped as one blade of the shears sank into the side of his neck. He fell to his knees, reaching for the shears, and I grabbed a large garden spade.

  The fat guy fired at me again, but the round clanged against the steel blade. I pulled it back and swung it at the guy, hard. Though I was intending to land the blow on his chest, hoping to knock him to the floor, he had suddenly tipped forward and the shovel blade slammed into his ear.

  There was a geyser of blood and I knew it had sunk in deep. The man collapsed onto the floor, the blood pulsing from an opening in his skull.

  I grabbed the key from the retractable reel on the left side of his belt and yanked it off. I felt the spray of hot blood.

  Mandy was screaming, and my ears were ringing, and I staggered toward the cage.

  Even with the soundproofing, I could hear the faint distant warble of police sirens.

  81

  The beaten-earth yard around Vogel’s compound was crowded with a fleet of police vehicles, mostly from the local Maryland force. Kombucha was standing next to his unmarked car in a black overcoat. He waved when he saw us emerge from the compound.

  I was glad to see him. I never thought I would be.

  “You look like you need medical assistance,” he said, approaching.

  I shook my head. “I’m good,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I was in a lot of pain, but only when I breathed. I knew the wise course of action was to get to a hospital and get checked out and make sure I hadn’t also injured my spleen or my lungs. I’d been shot while wearing a ballistic vest before. I knew what could happen.

  The wise course of action wasn’t what I chose, and Mandy couldn’t persuade me otherwise.