by Chris Mooney
Darby moved to the raised marble planter, stopped. It came up to the midsection of her chest. Carefully, she draped the phone and wire over the planter and then stared into the darkness, waiting for him to speak.
Finally, he did, his voice still distorted by the voice modulator. ‘For your sake I hope Mr Briggs is with you.’
‘Briggs hasn’t arrived yet.’ Darby hurried into the silence. ‘I brought a throw phone. It was my idea. They didn’t want me to come back here without Briggs, either, but I insisted.’ She felt cold all over, her throat bone dry, but her voice sounded calm and clear. Strong. ‘I found the evidence you left for me in the garbage can.’
No response.
Darby kept staring into the darkness, trying to find him. ‘They pulled the prints off the burner, just like you wanted them to,’ she said. ‘Why did you leave evidence behind with my name on it?’
‘Surely I’ve made my meaning plain, Doctor. You can imagine my excitement when you showed up inside the lobby this morning.’
‘How did you know I’d be there?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘But you knew I was in town. How?’
‘The blessings of social media,’ the gunman replied. ‘Everyone loves sharing their meaningless thoughts, as though we matter. I know you’re not on Facebook, but your friends are particularly chatty, especially when it comes to things like weddings. Have you had a chance to see some of the pictures they posted of last night?’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘You should really dress up more. You looked stunning.’
Then Darby heard a sound, the kind a rolling chair would make. She was expecting to see the pregnant woman, Laura. Instead, she saw the other hostage, the woman with the curly white hair. Her mouth and eyes were taped shut and, Darby noticed, the woman was wearing the gunman’s scarf.
‘I gave a press conference right before I came here,’ Darby said. ‘I assured the public that you want a peaceful solution – that all you want to do is talk to Briggs on live TV. I also told them you’ve agreed to release the hostages and disarm the remaining bombs.’
Big Red began to remove the scarf with one hand, the other holding his weapon. ‘Why would you say such a foolish thing?’
‘Because Danny Hill and Trey Warren are dead.’
The hand working on removing the scarf paused for a moment. Then Big Red whipped the scarf away with flourish.
‘Look at the woman’s neck,’ Big Red said.
Darby already was. The woman was wearing a steel collar, the metal about three inches wide.
‘You can watch her suffocate to death – or not,’ Big Red said. ‘I don’t care.’
‘They believe you killed Warren,’ she said.
‘Of course they do.’ Big Red turned something behind the woman’s neck, but he didn’t take his eyes – or the gun – off Darby.
‘I believe Hill was an accident,’ Darby said.
The woman sucked air greedily through her nostrils as she tried to fight off the gunman; but she had been bound to the chair with tape and plastic cuffs.
‘Hill wasn’t supposed to be home today, called in sick,’ Darby said. ‘They found part of him inside the rubble.’
Big Red twisted the lever or whatever it was behind the woman’s head.
‘Listen to me,’ Darby said. ‘I don’t believe you killed Trey Warren. I’m the only one who believes that.’
‘I didn’t kill him. But I will admit to killing the two retired homicide cops last year, Frank Ventura and Ethan Owen. I tortured and killed them.’
Another twist of the lever and the woman bucked against her restraints as Darby said, ‘I was the one who came here. If you want to torture anyone –’
‘I am torturing you.’
Then Darby made a hard, tactical decision. ‘We can’t find Rosemary Shapiro. No one can,’ she lied. ‘That was the other reason why I insisted on coming back here, alone. Do you have any idea where she might be? What might have happened to her?’
Big Red said nothing.
Turned the lever again.
The woman was gasping. Choking.
‘I also found the second piece of evidence you left for me,’ Darby said. ‘The mural for Sean Ellis. That’s why you left the burner in that particular garbage can.’
‘You’re very clever. You should be a detective.’
The metal was digging deeper into the woman’s neck and her face was a deep, dark red from lack of oxygen; she was going to suffocate. Darby had her hands on the edge of the marble planter, wanting to jump it, wanting to help the woman and knowing if she did the gunman calling himself Big Red would shoot her and kill her – but she couldn’t just stand here and watch and do nothing.
‘You’ve set all the chess pieces in motion, but I think someone else is taking them off the board,’ Darby said. ‘I’m the only one who believes that, by the way.’
The woman’s nostrils flared, trying to suck in air as she gagged behind the tape, choking.
Dying.
‘If you kill her, I’m done. I won’t –’
The gunshot exploded against her ears and slammed into her skull and she dropped to the floor, on to her stomach. Had she been hit? Where? She couldn’t feel anything through the spikes of adrenaline, and she heard a second gunshot and screaming. Her limbs were working and there wasn’t any pain and she was scrambling and clawing her way to the SWAT agent crouching low and holding the door open for her with the toe of his boot, the man behind him looking down the tactical scope of his MP6 submachine gun, ready to fire, ready to rush inside.
But they couldn’t rush inside because of the bomb, didn’t want to rush inside, wanted to get the hell out of there now. They grabbed her roughly by the arms and as they pulled her to her feet she heard tinny voices exploding over their headsets, heard another gunshot and the anguished cries of the hostages behind her before they dragged her towards the road, to the waiting ARV, the helicopter lights shining down on them like beacons from heaven.
37
+05.43
When Darby returned to the campus, she entered the MCP through the back and immediately went to the rest room across from the galley. The bathroom was modelled like the ones found on aeroplanes: small and nearly claustrophobic with barely any room to move. But it allowed her a moment of privacy to collect herself.
All the way here she kept choking back the image of the woman slowly suffocating to death, blind and bound, bam-bam-bam as the gunshots went off. All the way here she had choked back tears.
There is no greater sin a female law enforcement officer can commit than crying in front of a man. The moment you show weakness, you are ostracized. It had taken her years to prove she was more than just a pretty face. She was smart and she could hold her own with any of them – mentally and physically. But at the end of the day it was still a boys’-only club, and some of them – a good majority of them – wouldn’t see past her tits.
She locked the door and kept splashing cold water on her face, feeling the aching spots inside her stomach and on her body from where she’d hit the floor, from where the SWAT agents had roughly handled her. Once they got her into the back of the ARV, they had checked her over for places where she might have been shot. Sometimes adrenaline could be so powerful you didn’t know you were hit until well after the fact; she had seen it. She was okay, at least physically. Psychologically she was numb, scaled with failure.
Darby shut off the water and grabbed the edges of the tiny vanity mirror, water dripping off her face and pinging softly inside the stainless-steel sink.
She had made the call to go back inside the station, and now one of the hostages was dead. Her fault. She had gone in there without Briggs. She had made the call. Her fault. When this was over, she would visit the woman’s family and loved ones and face each and every one of them and tell them that she was partially to blame for what had happened, that she was sorry. The better, more prudent course of action would be to keep her mouth shut in case
the family decided to sue. That was what her lawyer would tell her. Mistakes weren’t allowed in this new world of lightning communication and TV shows where DNA results were discovered after a three-minute commercial break. The public – the voters – demanded swift and clean justice in easy-to-digest sound bites. Someone had to pay.
But she wasn’t built that way, to run and hide. And she couldn’t hide now, either. Time to accept what had happened and face it head-on and accept responsibility. She quickly dried herself off with the rough paper towels and unlocked the door.
The walk to the command room seemed long and had the sombre air of a police funeral. The agents in attendance, their faces pale and drawn in sorrow and anger and contempt, saw her coming and immediately lowered their voices and averted their gazes and went back to their work. If things had gone according to plan, there’d be high-fives all around, claps on the back and shoulder. But it had gone to shit, and now she had to be shamed. Failure in law enforcement is as contagious as a hot zone virus; she had to be cast out or they would be infected. That was the law of the blue jungle.
Darby searched herself, searched for some hard-won wisdom to steady her legs and voice, didn’t find any. All she had was the same talisman she always relied on: her father. His duty and sense of obligation. His unwavering loyalty. A stand-up guy.
And what did all that get him? Murdered. Dead at forty-five.
Her age now.
She opened the command room door to low voices and grim faces.
38
+05.46
Seated at the conference table were Gelfand, Coop, and Alan Grove, who had his portable negotiator phone unit with him. It sat inside what looked like a small, bulky suitcase, and he had plugged it into a speakerphone unit that sat in the centre of the table and also another pair of phones, both of which had no keypad or buttons, just an orange shell of hard plastic.
Grove knew the question she was about to ask and shook his head. The gunman hadn’t called.
Darby slid into a chair, her gaze sliding to the TV, the sound muted. She saw herself speaking to the reporters and then came a smash cut of aerial footage showing her being dragged through the lobby door. The banner below it read: ‘BREAKING NEWS: MULTIPLE GUNSHOTS FIRED INSIDE LOBBY.’
Gelfand answered the next question on her mind. ‘We don’t have any eyes in the lobby yet, so we don’t know who was shot, how bad it is,’ he said sombrely.
Darby folded her hands on the table and studied her thumbs. The room felt uncomfortably warm and reeked of cigarettes and mistakes. Hers.
She licked her lips.
Swallowed.
Said, ‘He killed one of the hostages.’
‘Which one?’ Gelfand asked.
‘The one with the curly white hair. I don’t know her name.’ Then she told them about the device strapped around the woman’s neck. How she had suffocated to death.
Gelfand scratched the corner of his lip with his thumb and stared down at the table. Coop picked at a hangnail. Grove studied the TV playing more shaky aerial footage showing SWAT officers sprinting through the snow and away from the building, assuming it was going to blow.
‘We heard most of your conversation with the gunman,’ Gelfand said after a moment.
Darby was confused.
‘When you entered the station, SWAT used a shielded audio device that picked up your conversation with Big Red,’ Gelfand said. ‘We managed to hear most of it, but there are some parts that we’ll have to get enhanced. I just want to be sure I heard this next part correctly: he said he didn’t kill Trey Warren, but he did say he killed those two retired officers last year, Frank Ventura and Ethan Owen.’
Darby nodded, glanced at her watch. Twelve minutes until the next bomb went off.
Grove turned away from the TV and looked directly at Darby from across the table. When he spoke, his voice trembled with anger. ‘Dr McCormick, I want to go on record saying that what you did … It was aggressive, but it was the right call. Let me say that again: you made the right call. We had to try something – we just couldn’t sit back and continue to wait. And you –’ he tapped his finger repeatedly against the table for emphasis ‘– you were the one who risked her life, no one else. Anyone who says otherwise or gives you any grief is a goddamn fool and an asshole. I’m referring to Police Commissioner Donnelly.’
She appreciated the dry vote of confidence, but it didn’t change how she felt, even when Coop and Gelfand nodded in agreement. ‘Where is Donnelly?’ she asked.
‘Off somewhere having a heart attack,’ Gelfand said. ‘He was watching your press conference, and when you added that part about Briggs promising to go inside the lobby, Donnelly looked like an aorta had exploded inside his chest.’
‘I added that part in case the gunman was watching the news coverage on his satellite phone. I wanted him to think everyone had agreed to play ball with him, that we wanted –’
‘Cut the shit,’ Gelfand said. There was no heat or anger in his voice, just a sad and weary acceptance. ‘You want Briggs to go into the station and shame himself on TV just as much as the Big Red does. That’s why you went off script and said that.’
‘I don’t even know what Briggs is guilty of, how he fits into any of this. Where is he?’
‘New Hampshire, about half an hour from the Mass. border.’
‘So there’s no way he’s going to get here before the second bomb’s due to detonate?’
Gelfand sighed heavily. Shook his head. ‘We located the reporter, Carlson. The call from the hostage, it came directly to his cell number. He spoke to the woman but said she couldn’t answer any questions, just read off those lines. We’ve got a pair of agents with Carlson in case the gunman calls again, so we don’t have to learn about any breaking news developments on Twitter.’
‘Shapiro?’
‘On her way here. Power went out last night on the Cape and her cell phone didn’t charge so she couldn’t call.’
‘And Sean Ellis, what did she have to say about him?’
‘She said she can’t discuss any aspect of the case because the city asked for – and received – protective orders to keep depositions and documents sealed, including depositions given by former officers. But she did suggest we might want to take a look at the fingerprint evidence used to convict Ellis.’
‘So, they’re all connected somehow – Danny Hill, Trey Warren and the two dead cops from last year.’
‘And Shapiro.’
‘And the former mayor,’ Darby said. ‘He’s at the centre of this. He have anything to add, Howie?’
Gelfand shook his head. ‘Did Big Red say why he suffocated those two cops last year? We couldn’t hear what he said.’
‘No. He just confessed to killing them.’
‘I can tell you one thing: Anita Barnes’s grandson, String Bean? Danny Hill was the lead detective on that case.’
‘The evidence files and murder book?’
‘On their way here.’
‘What about the Sean Ellis case?’
Gelfand now looked uncomfortable.
‘I served BPD with a federal subpoena to turn over all the files, on the basis we may be dealing with a corruption issue or possibly a criminal enterprise.’
That took some balls, Darby thought.
‘Agents are at BPD’s Hyde Park storage facility gathering everything as we speak,’ Gelfand said. ‘The subpoena also covers the personnel files of the officers involved, but the lawyers and police union will fight us on those. Donnelly is still fighting to take this away from us, claiming we’re using the Ellis case as a bullshit stalling tactic to keep this thing with the gunman on our side of the court.’
The phone nestled inside Grove’s portable hostage negotiating unit rang.
‘Let it ring,’ Grove said to them. ‘I want him to think –’
Darby jumped to her feet and grabbed the phone.
39
+05.50
The gunman’s robotic voice echoed over the speake
rphone: ‘Is this line being recorded?’ he asked.
‘You bet your ass it is, you son of a bitch,’ Darby replied.
‘Dr McCormick. Good, you’re there. I want to go on record as saying I did not – I repeat, I did not – kill Trey Warren. And Danny ‘Mr Murder’ Hill was an accident. He wasn’t supposed to be home today.’
A part of Darby felt vindicated. Her theory on Hill had been correct.
She was about to speak when Big Red said, ‘Go to five-forty-eight Greenview Street in Dorchester. The woman who lives there, Clara Lacy – I want you to move her and her family someplace safe. BPD, Donnelly, the FBI – they’re not to know her location. They’re not to be trusted. Don’t send anyone else, she’ll only speak to you.’
‘I’m not your errand bitch,’ Darby said. All eyes were on her, the men wondering what she was doing. She didn’t look at them, only at the speakerphone. ‘I gave you a chance back there – I told you what would happen if you killed that woman, what I –’
‘The second IED is located at one-fifteen River Street in Hyde Park, a place called C & J Automotive Repair.’
‘How do we disarm it?’
‘You only have nine minutes left. Your people won’t make it there in time.’
‘How do we disarm it?’
Big Red didn’t answer. Darby thought he had hung up when he said, ‘It’s a seven-digit code. Enter it into the keypad and the bomb is rendered safe.’
Rendered safe was another cop term, which again strengthened her feeling that the gunman had been law enforcement or had some law enforcement background.
‘The garage is closed up and boarded, you’ll have to break down the front door,’ Big Red said. ‘The bomb is to the right, inside the office.’
‘The code?’
Big Red rattled off a series of numbers. Everyone wrote on notepads.
Darby had a pen but no paper; she wrote the code on her palm. She saw the sequence of numbers and felt her stomach turn.
