[Jessie Black 01.0] Burnout

by Larry A Winters

“Center City, moving down Chestnut. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to grab him now.”

  Jessie shook her head and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Luck hasn’t exactly been on our side.”

  Leary nodded grimly, his eyes glued to Ramsey. “Keep him occupied,” he said quietly.

  “If you want the briefcase, come here and pick it up,” Ramsey said.

  “You’re going to drop it off.”

  Ramsey was either a much better actor than Jack, or he really had no fear of the man on the phone. “I’m not a delivery boy. I just got out of prison—”

  “Because of me!”

  “—and there are a few things I’ve been waiting to do.” Leary signaled to him again—keep it going—but the gesture was unnecessary. Ramsey seemed to know exactly how to antagonize the man on the other end of the line. “I’ve got a whole list of things I’ve been missing. A good meal. A movie on a nice, big screen, maybe 3D. A drink at a bar. A girl.”

  “You listen to me, you murdering, rapist son of a bitch—” Now there was real rage in Woody’s voice. “I don’t want to hear about all the shit you’re going to do. You deserve to be dead, and the only reason I can live with myself for helping you is that I know—I know—that eventually you’ll burn in Hell.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be there to keep me company.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Leary shook his head and sliced his hand in front of his throat. Jessie felt his panic. The last thing they needed was for Ramsey to tip his hand. He was not supposed to know about the murders his benefactor had committed.

  “Isn’t that where assholes go?” Ramsey said, recovering.

  “You’re calling me an asshole? That’s a laugh. You know how many years I spent keeping animals like you in line? You’re going to bring the briefcase to me.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a house—”

  “Streets change. I’ve been in prison, remember? I may not know my way around as well as I used to.”

  “You won’t have a problem finding this house.”

  Ramsey glanced at Leary. Apparently he’d run out of ways to stall. “What’s the address?”

  “The Dillard house. I’m sure you remember it. Leave the briefcase in the master bedroom. You know, the room where you raped and stabbed a happy family to death? Leave it on the floor. Do that, and we’ll go our separate ways. Think you can manage, killer?”

  “Won’t the house be locked?”

  “You’re a fireman. Knock the fucking door down.”

  Leary was gesturing again, more fiercely now. Keep him on the phone. Already Jessie could hear, faintly, the sound of police sirens coming through the speaker, from Woody’s end of the line.

  “When?” Ramsey said.

  “Now. Tonight, you—” Woody must have heard the sirens, too. The call ended abruptly.

  Leary jerked toward the tech, but the man, holding a cell phone to his ear, was already shaking his head. “Our guys just found his phone discarded on the street. He’s gone.”

  Ramsey looked at Leary. “Now what?”

  “Now we set the trap.” Leary turned to Jack. “Can you spare a briefcase?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

  “Hold on.” Ramsey held up his hands. “What if Woody knows what Dillard’s briefcase looks like? He’ll know right away it’s a trap.”

  Leary didn’t look concerned. “By the time he gets close enough to see the one you’re carrying, it will be too late. We’ll have him.”

  “Sounds like a pretty big risk,” Ramsey grumbled.

  Leary nodded. “It’s one you’re going to have to take.”

  62

  They drove to the Andorra section of Roxborough, in the northwest part of the city, where the Dillard house waited. Leary rolled past the house without stopping, but took a good look. While warm light glowed in the windows of its neighbors, the windows of the Dillard house were dark. No TV screen flickered in the living room downstairs. No reading lamps glowed in the upstairs bedrooms. Even the roof, blanketed in a thicker layer of snow than its neighbors because the house was infrequently heated, had become a reminder of the tragedy that had occurred here.

  In the passenger seat, Jessie said, “No footprints on the lawn.”

  Leary had noticed that, too. But it was unrealistic to think that Woody had not been here. “He must have approached the house through the backyard.” At the end of the street, he turned right.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re setting up a command center in a house on a street that runs parallel to this one. I’m told that from the second-story window, we have an unobstructed view of the back of the Dillard house, and a few sightlines to this street.”

  He glanced at her. The look on her face—one of trust—brought a smile to his face. It had been a long time since either one of them had been anything but awkward in the other’s presence. Tonight he felt comfortable, and he suspected that she did, too. He did not want to think about it too much—over-thinking was one of his problems—but maybe one positive result of this Ramsey debacle was the reopening of communications between them. Maybe she was even ready to give him a shot at being more than a colleague or a one-night-stand.

  “What are you smiling about?” she said.

  “Oh.” He looked away from her, focused on the road. “Nothing.”

  She turned in her seat, looked through the rear windshield as if she would be able to see the car that had been following them, a yellow taxi. But the taxi had stopped in front of the Dillard house.

  “I hope he doesn’t get himself killed.”

  Leary looked at her. “Ramsey? Yesterday, you practically wanted to kill him yourself.”

  “I’m still pretty sure he’s guilty. But....”

  “But you’re not sure beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  “I’ve been thinking about Kate Moscow’s testimony. During the trial, I didn’t really consider any of her theories. They were just verbal artillery, you know? Testimony that I needed to undermine. But now that the trial’s over—” She sighed. “Kristen failed to identify Ramsey’s photo in the photo array. It wasn’t until she saw him in the lineup, after being exposed to the photos, that she recognized him. Isn’t it possible, what Moscow said about unconscious transference?”

  Leary shrugged. He had read some of Katherine Moscow’s journal articles, and they were pretty convincing on paper, but he’d been a detective too long to dismiss the value of eyewitness evidence. Still, he planned to bring Moscow’s research to the attention of the department brass, so they could use her research to improve the identification process. If nothing else, it would have the benefit of cutting off another defense attorney tactic.

  “We can’t worry about any of that now,” he said. “Whether Ramsey’s guilty or not, he was acquitted, right? He’s innocent in the eyes of the law. His case is over. Woody Rushford, on the other hand, has murdered three people that we know of—Rachel Pugh, Elliot Williams, and Amber Gibbons. As far as I’m concerned, nailing Woody is our sole priority now.”

  He turned the unmarked car into a driveway and cut the power. The blue house that loomed above them looked like a typical suburban family home. And it was, its occupants temporarily relocated to a hotel room on the government’s dollar.

  The garage door opened and Leary drove inside. Even though it was unmarked, and even though they were a block away from the Dillard house, he did not want to leave the car in plain sight. He was taking no chances tonight.

  The door connecting the garage to the house opened and Nick Jameson walked across the oil-stained floor to the car. Leary lowered his window.

  “Ramsey’s in, and waiting,” Jameson said. “Hurry up.”

  The window that afforded the best view of the Dillard house was located in a child’s room midway down the upstairs hall. Leary stepped carefully around toys strewn across the carpet. They were mostly action figures. Monsters, soldiers, athletes, policemen. He wondered if the kid
’s imagination had ever produced a scene as tense as the one taking place now.

  The presence of his fellow homicide detectives Jameson and Scerbak was reassuring. Scerbak handed him a pair of binoculars. Leary fumbled with them for a moment, and then the branches of a tree, heavy with snow, filled his vision. He adjusted downward and saw, in the space between the Dillard house and its neighbor, the plowed blacktop of Overlook Lane. Turning carefully to the right, he centered the taxi in his view. Smoke chugged from the exhaust pipe as the car idled.

  Leary touched his index finger to a wheel on the binoculars, zooming in until he could see two shapes inside the car. Jack Ackerman, leaning forward in the backseat, was making conversation with the driver. Leary would owe Earl—who was a cop, not a cabbie—at least one beer for trapping him in a car with that bozo.

  “Do you see him?” Jessie’s voice came to him from his right.

  “Not yet.”

  He zoomed out and scanned the binoculars sideways until the back of the Dillard house filled his view. Snow blanketed the back yard. It also covered the planks of the wooden deck built against the back wall of the house. There was a gas grill at one end of the deck, and Leary felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as his imagination conjured a summer barbecue—Bob Dillard flipping burgers in the sun while his family drank iced tea.

  All of the downstairs windows remained dark, but upstairs, a beam of light flicked from the windows of the master bedroom. As instructed, Ramsey had raised the blinds and motioned with a flashlight, signaling that he had placed the briefcase on the floor. Then the light went out.

  “He left the briefcase. Should be walking downstairs now.”

  “May I?” His view jumped as Jessie’s hand clasped the binoculars. He pulled his face from the lenses and watched her raise them to her eyes. “I don’t see— Wait. Ramsey’s out front. Walking to the taxi now.”

  Leary looked at her, then out the window. Without the binoculars, all he could see was darkness punctuated by moonlit snow.

  “He’s in the cab,” she said.

  Tension drained from Leary’s shoulders. They had executed the first stage of the plan without complication. The trap had been set. He hoped the next stage—springing it—would go as smoothly.

  He wondered how long they would have to wait.

  “Leary.” Jessie’s voice was strained, almost a whisper. “A man just walked up the steps to the deck. He’s opening the back door.”

  63

  The yard was ice-cold after the warmth of the house. Leary’s shoes crunched snow as he jogged into the neighboring property. His earpiece crackled with Scerbak’s voice. “I think I just saw movement in the bedroom. Hard to tell with no light.”

  Leary leaned against the vinyl siding of the Dillard house. In the darkness, he could just make out Jameson bounding from the trees at the back of the yard, his heels kicking up puffs of snow as he ran toward the stairs leading to the deck.

  The earpiece crackled again. “Nick just left his footprints all over the back lawn. If this guy looks out the window, you’re busted.”

  “Fuck.” Leary drew his 9-mm, flicked the safety and racked the slide.

  Keeping his back to the wall, he sidled around the corner of the house. Light from the street-lamps reached him as he stepped out from the gloom, making him feel too exposed. He darted along the front. Ramsey had broken the deadbolt on the door.

  “Going silent.” He stepped through the doorway. Jameson should be entering through the back door around the same time, into the kitchen.

  At the sound of a slamming door somewhere above him, Leary aimed his gun up the stairs. Then, silence.

  He climbed, treading the steps carefully to minimize creaks. Below, he could hear Jameson sweeping the first-floor rooms. Hurry.

  His heart raced. Sweat broke out on his palms, making the grip of the pistol feel clammy. He moderated his breathing as best he could, kept the gun extended in front of him.

  He did not want to enter the master bedroom without backup. He peeked into the hallway. The door at the end of it was closed. No light showed through the crack at the bottom.

  Shit. Now Woody had set a trap. If Leary burst through that door, he would be an easy target.

  At a sound behind him, he swung the pistol around. Jameson, standing a foot away from him on the top step of the staircase, froze. Leary turned the gun back in the direction of the closed bedroom door.

  Moving in a crouch, he hurried down the darkened hallway. His pulse thundered in his temples. Jameson followed, ready to provide cover. Leary put one hand on the doorknob and looked at him.

  Jameson nodded.

  Leary opened the door and darted inside, aiming at the shadows. “Don’t move! Drop your—”

  The moonlight that entered through the windows illuminated his surroundings enough to show him that he was yelling at an empty room.

  His mouth felt dry.

  He crossed quickly to the master bathroom, kicked the thin door open. Empty.

  Carefully, he checked the walk-in closet. Empty.

  “What the fuck?” Jameson said from the hallway. The detective gestured with his gun at the briefcase in the middle of the room. Apparently it had not fooled Woody.

  To hell with radio silence. Leary touched his earpiece. “Scerbak? Talk to me.”

  “I can’t see shit.”

  “Well he’s not in the bedroom anymore,” Leary said.

  Jameson snorted. “He got past us? Classic.” He shook his head and leaned against the bedroom doorframe, reached into his jacket to holster his gun.

  Leary said, “No, don’t—”

  A hatch opened in the hallway ceiling behind and above Jameson. A man dropped from the attic, and landed in a crouch. A gunshot cracked. The noise was stunning in the enclosed space, the flash of light blinding.

  Jameson stumbled toward Leary and landed on his knees. He dropped his gun and clawed frantically at his back like a man with a hard-to-reach itch.

  Leary rushed past him.

  He heard the man’s footsteps charge down the stairs. He started to follow. Another bang, a hundred times louder than the gunshot, sounded behind him. Heat seared his back and punched him off his feet.

  He threw his arms out, tried to stop or at least slow his fall, but it was no use. He banged his way down the steps. Pain flared in his leg as it twisted, his chin as it collided with carpet-covered wood, his elbow as it struck the wall. All he could do was clutch the pistol in his right hand and hope it wouldn’t go off in his face. His shoulder slammed hard against the marble floor and his body slid to a stop.

  He rolled over. The front door was open, but seemed a million miles away. Wind whooshed past his face, the air being sucked upward. From his position on the floor, he could see smoke curling around the bend in the staircase above him. He smelled the noxious odor of synthetic fabrics burning.

  A fire. Woody had set off some kind of bomb.

  He tried to move. Pain coursed through him. Reaching for his earpiece, he realized it was no longer there.

  “Nick!”

  No response, just the sounds of the fire spreading—crackling, blowing, breaking its way across the upper level of the house.

  He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but pain flashed through his left leg, roiling his gut with nausea. He cried out. Reaching down, he carefully touched his leg. His fingers traced the jagged edges of a broken bone just beneath his skin. Oh, no.

  A shadow fell over him, and with a struggle, he raised his gun. But it was only Jessie, standing in the doorway with Scerbak. Both of them were panting from their run from the other house.

  He winced as Scerbak grabbed his shoulders and started to lift him. “No!” His leg screamed with pain. “My leg ... broken.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Jessie said. The light of the spreading flames reflected from her skin.

  “Where’s Woody?” Leary said.

  “The explosion threw us off,” Scerbak said. His eyes slipp
ed away from Leary’s. “I dropped the binoculars.”

  “Jesus, Scerbak.”

  “What about Jameson?” Jessie said, looking back at the staircase.

  Leary shook his head. The air felt like it was full of tiny stinging insects. They bit at his eyebrows, raked his throat, burrowed into his lungs. “No way he survived that. Leave me here. You need to find Woody. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

  Scerbak barked out a laugh. “Leave you here? Are you kidding? You’ll be cooked alive.”

  Leary knew he was right. Black ribbons had already appeared in the wallpaper behind Scerbak. The stink of burning glue made it hard to breathe. Looking up, he saw flames writhing on the walls and dripping toward them like liquid. Black smoke already obscured the ceiling. He heard a groaning sound, coming from the house itself. Another groan followed, louder. “Run!”

  But his warning came too late. The ceiling buckled, cracked and poured plaster, wood, and fire down on top of them.

  64

  Several blocks away from the Dillard house, Earl, the cop who was their escort and pretend taxi driver, popped open the driver’s side door. “I’m gonna have a smoke.” He didn’t wait for either of his passengers to comment before he closed the door behind him, leaving them alone in the car.

  Jack turned to Ramsey, who was staring out the window. Judging by the distant expression on his face, it wasn’t this snowy suburban street that was on his mind.

  “Not exactly what you dreamed about in prison, huh?”

  Ramsey looked at him. “What?”

  “Your first night of freedom. Not what you expected, right?”

  Ramsey snorted. Instead of relaxing, the grim clench of his jaw seemed only to tighten as the night dragged on. “I’ve wanted to ask you something, but I had to wait till the trial was over. In case someone was listening.”

  “Good thinking,” Jack said. If only all of his clients had been as wary as Ramsey, he might have won even more trials. All of the phone lines in prisons were monitored, and all letters were read. A prisoner of the state had no privacy, even when meeting with his lawyer.