by Sussman, Ben
“Can’t. It’s procedure,” the security guard replied. “Now, when we get downstairs-”
Luke screamed as the window behind them mushroomed inwards.
Half a second later, Tom’s face was sheared off in a cloud of red.
On instinct, Matt grabbed his son and threw their bodies down the ground. “Stay down!” he shouted in the boy’s ear.
Another bullet whipped through the hole in the window, landing in Tom’s already collapsing body.
Luke was sobbing into Matt’s shoulder, quaking with fear.
“You’re fine,” Matt tried soothing him. “I’m here, Luke. You’re safe.” He was practically screaming the words, his ears still suffering from the concussive blast of gunfire.
Matt did not know anymore if he was telling his son the truth, but at the moment he had something else to worry about.
With a ding, the other elevator had announced its arrival.
Thirteen
Ashley’s foot had been doing a nervous tap dance as the numbers climbed on the elevator screen. As she approached the top floor, her cover story was formulating inside her head.
“I just came to check up on a client’s cage,” she imagined herself telling a frowning Weatherly. “And what are you doing here by the way?” She knew he would probably see through her lie instantly but she was willing to take the chance. There was no way she was going to lose another client to her competitor. Or miss the chance to gloat about TekStar, come to think of it.
Her train of thought dissipated as her ears caught a muffled popping sound.
What the hell was that?
It came again, much louder this time, accompanied with screams.
As the two doors parted in front of her, Ashley suddenly found that she was screaming, too.
Matt tensed as the elevator doors scrolled open, ready for one of the killer’s partners to put a bullet in his skull.
He could hardly contain his consternation, however, when he instead looked upon the form of Ashley Kane. Her face was frozen in a mask of shock and horror, instantly spotting Tom’s body bleeding out on to the white tiles of the floor. Without even realizing it, her left foot was inching forward to take her out of the elevator car.
“Stay back!” Matt shouted at her.
Her eyes snapped up to meet his.
“What the hell did you do?” she yelled at him.
“It wasn’t me! Just stay in there if you want to live!”
Ashley paused, then gave a small nod and slipped into the back corner of the elevator.
Matt turned his attention back to his son, who was lying beneath him. He adjusted slightly so Luke could move. Before allowing him to rise up, he listened out for any further gunfire. After a moment, he convinced himself that no more was coming and pulled Luke to a crawling position. His boy was hyperventilating, body wracked with shakes.
“Luke, listen to me,” Matt said softly. “I want you to make your way over to the elevator. Stay low but do it quick. Do you understand me?”
Luke nodded and managed to slow his breathing. On all fours, he scuttled to the elevator where Ashley had reached out her arm to help him in. Even though she was a stranger, he went to her immediately, Matt noticed. She held him protectively against her chest. “It’s okay,” Matt heard Ashley say to him and was instantly grateful for her actions.
The killer’s voice appeared in Matt’s ear. “I was very clear with my instructions,” John said.
“You son of a bitch,” Matt hissed. “You’re a coward, you know that? Shooting someone from a hundred yards away is the easy way out. If you were right here next to me, I would tear you apart.”
“I am afraid that would do little to solve your larger problem of the bomb.”
“I think your bomb is a lie,” challenged Matt.
John chuckled softly. “Do you? Well, I will give you a hint as to its location. It is somewhere in your vicinity. It is bright red, so you should be able to easily find it.” Matt’s eyes quickly checked the room but saw nothing crimson jumping out at him. “In any case, you’ve still got a lot to do tonight and you had better move. Get up.”
Matt tamped down his seething anger and hurt while climbing to a standing position.
“Tell the woman to step out of the elevator,” John said, causing Matt to tense.
“Why?”
“So I can shoot her,” came the utterly calm reply.
“No.”
“Defying an order? That would get you shot on the battlefield, Captain.”
“If you kill her, this is over. I’m done, you understand?”
“You do not have the leverage in this situation.”
Matt’s mind worked, arriving at an answer. “Listen, that woman is the only other person in town who might be able to get you what you need. She has access to all the same buildings I do. If I get hurt, she’ll know what to do.” It was a gamble and mostly a lie but Matt made sure to state it boldly enough to sound like the truth. “Think of it as insurance,” he added.
A long breathless beat passed before John finally spoke again. “We have a deal.” Matt heaved a sigh of relief. “For now,” John said. “Get downstairs and do not be slow about it. I see a police car making its way up Wilshire Boulevard right now. Go to your car and I will direct you from there.”
Matt hurried into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. Luke left Ashley’s arms and ran to his father, grabbing on tightly.
“You did good, buddy,” Matt said to him. He looked to Ashley. “Thank you,” he told her.
“Tom. Is he…?” She did not bother to finish the question, knowing the answer. “What the hell is going on here, Matt?”
In a rush, Matt filled her in on his ordeal of the past couple of hours. Ashley listened intently, never interrupting. When he had finished, she just shook her head in disbelief.
“I’m leaving and going to the police,” she told him.
“No,” Matt said. “You can’t. The second you do, he’ll kill you. He knows everything. Every step we make, he’s one ahead.”
“This can’t be the only option.”
“I’m sorry, Ashley. I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear this from, but we’re in this together now.”
“My God,” she whispered, still shaking her head.
The elevator dinged as it arrived in the lobby. Matt grabbed Luke and stepped out on to the marble floor, finding it empty. Ashley hesitated behind them.
Matt turned, imploring, “Please. You’ve got to come with us.”
She exhaled, throwing her hands up. “Fine. You win, like always.” Her heels made noise next to Matt and Luke’s feet as they hurried to the Porsche.
Climbing inside, Matt placed Luke in the cramped back seat, Ashley taking the passenger seat. As she helped Luke get buckled in, something caught her eye and elicited a horrified gasp.
Matt’s head whipped around to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“What did he tell you about the bomb again?” Ashley asked him.
“He said it was in my vicinity. And that I couldn’t miss it because it was bright red.”
“Matt,” Ashley began, then lost the words.
“What is it?” he said in exasperation.
But then he noticed what Ashley was staring at.
The only bright red thing in the car.
Luke’s shirt.
Fourteen
The clock in the homicide division had been running seven minutes fast for the past decade. It was something that Detective David Larsen never failed to notice for all these years, but he realized that he had never bothered to adjust it in that time either. As the second hand swept past the six o’clock hour, he brought his eyes back to the paperwork on his desk. The pile stared back at him just as it had the previous night.
Filling out reports was Larsen’s least favorite part of the job but one he understood was still necessary. He insisted on doing his papers by hand, which irked the twentysomething computer guy to no end
after he implemented a web-based system. What that arrogant millennial failed to realize, and what Larsen knew all too well, is that the people he dealt with often asked to see those reports. For them, there was something reassuring about seeing real handwriting on there; something that perhaps told them their case had been important and was handled by an actual person, not a cold, uncaring machine.
Since those people were the family members of homicide victims, Larsen believed they had earned that right.
He cast his gaze about the room. Two red-eyed detectives huddled over mugs of coffee in the corner, while the new guy on duty was whispering into a phone at his desk. Other than them, the place was empty. Larsen had been working the night-shift in homicide for six years now. When he had volunteered for the hours, his captain had been surprised.
“You’ve got seniority,” Captain Melville said, his bushy eyebrows raised.
“That’s why I’m asking. I know I’ll get it,” Larsen replied.
“Everything alright?” Melville asked.
Larsen’s icy stare was enough of an answer for the captain, who leaned forward in his chair with a nod and acquiesced.
At the beginning, it had been difficult to make it through the night. Eventually, though, he discovered his savior in caffeine. Finding the office-issued coffee tasting only slightly better than a warm sack of goat urine, he began bringing in his own coffee beans and grinder. Now, there was no drowsiness that a mug full of dark roast could not dispel.
As he lifted his coffee cup to his lips, the new young detective appeared at his desk.
“Looks like you got the same Father’s Day gift as me, huh?” the man said.
Larsen looked at him in confusion until his inquisitor motioned at the mug. “#1 DAD” was emblazoned in red across the cup’s white background.
“Oh. Right,” Larsen finally said, taking a sip.
“Son or daughter?” the other cop said, clearly not understanding that Larsen was uninterested in talking further.
“Why?” grumbled Larsen.
“Just wondering. How old?”
Before Larsen could answer, the phone on his desk lit up. He made an apologetic shrug to the young cop and snatched up the phone.
“Detective Larsen,” he said into the receiver.
“It’s Sergeant Donaghee. I got something for you.”
“How many bodies?” Larsen automatically responded, grabbing a pen and a pad from his desk drawer.
“Just one. But get ready for it to take up your whole night.”
Thank God, thought Larsen. Less than an hour later, he was rethinking his gratitude.
Never had a nametag been so helpful, the detective thought. Twenty-six minutes after he had received the call at his desk, Detective Larsen was staring down at the corpse of Tom Grafton. Most of the security guard’s head had been blown away, so the only thing identifying him was the small plastic pocket tag that was engraved with Grafton’s last name.
Larsen was on his haunches, hovering over the body. He glanced behind him where the large window lay shattered by the bullet that had killed Tom. Standing up, he ran a hand through his hair and took in the whole scene. In his mind, he floated up above the room and stared at the crime scene as if it were a painting in a museum. It was this ability to take a large step back and notice things as a whole, instead of tiny fragments, that Larsen felt gave him whatever edge he possessed. He was known as being the cop who got cases solved. His work was not flashy or riddled with showboating that cried out for attention and promotion; he simply got the job done. As he got older and more cantankerous, Larsen thought it was an important work ethic that many people had seemed to forget about.
Larsen crooked a finger at the uniformed policeman in the corner and the man drifted over on queasy legs. His eyes steadily avoided the body.
“First time at a murder scene?” Larsen surmised.
The policeman nodded. “Does it ever get any easier?”
“I know you want me to say ‘yes’ but, no, it doesn’t.”
Another nod as the cop’s eyes cut away from the gruesome sight. “You had some questions for me, sir?” he asked.
“When did you get the call?” Larsen withdrew a ballpoint pen and slim pad from his side pocket.
“About forty-five minutes ago. The security company called it in, per their standard procedure. They said an alarm had been tripped and their guard was going upstairs to check it out.”
Larsen jotted the info down. “You didn’t see anyone coming in or leaving?”
“No, sir. Came in through the front lobby and, when it was empty, I went up here to check things out. That’s when I found him,” he gestured without looking at the security guard’s body.
“Okay, thanks. Leave your cell number with the guy over there in case I have some more questions.”
Larsen drifted over to the bullet-scored picture window, peering at the building across the way. A sea of tinted office windows stared back at him. He turned back towards the room.
“Anyone got some binoculars?” he called out. The activity paused as the room looked at him with collective confusion. He gestured out the window. “I need to look at something across the street,” he explained. A minute later, someone had found a pair for him. He raised them to his eyes and scanned the windows across the way that he believed would be the right height. At last, he found it.
“There,” he pointed with his finger when a junior detective named Kerr joined him. “Fifth window from the right on the sixteenth floor. There’s a hole cut in it about the size of a silver dollar. Enough to put a gun barrel through.” He handed the binoculars over to the other man so he could see. “Get a team over there to check it out. See if anything was left behind.” Though I doubt you’ll find anything, he added silently.
His big picture thinking was already informing his gut that there was something strange about this crime scene. It was not some crackpot shooting randomly but instead bore the hallmarks of a professional reining in a situation that had spun out of control.
A ding announced the elevator where a gray-haired man in glasses and a wrinkled polo shirt exited. His hand flew to his mouth upon seeing Tom’s body. Larsen crossed to him.
“Can I help you?” the detective asked.
“I’m Bart Lorenzo, the owner of the building.”
“Ah, right. Mr. Lorenzo, can you tell me if you see anything wrong with the room here? Besides the dead body lying on its floor, I mean.”
Lorenzo began wringing his hands and glanced around. He nodded at the propped open door that led to the server room. “That should be closed for security.”
Larsen cast his eyes where the nervous man was pointing. Beyond the gate was the dimly lit server room, humming softly. He moved inside, Lorenzo on his heels.
“This isn’t going to, uh, get released to the public, is it?” the owner asked tentatively. “I’ve got the insurance company, tenants, stockholders…”
“Do you know where the alarm was tripped from?” Larsen said, ignoring Lorenzo’s questions.
“Yes, I checked the computer log when I came in. It’s right over here.” He led Larsen over to the far corner of the room, gasping when he saw the cage door ajar. “Someone’s been here. This is where the panic switch is.” He gestured at a red toggle switch.
The detective leaned in, peering at the black server box. He could see a large puncture wound in its top and the frayed wires at its back. “Somebody wanted this box to break.”
“Why would they want to do that?” Lorenzo wondered aloud.
“I’m not sure yet,” Larsen paused, spotting something white tucked between the broken wires. He reached back behind the box and pinched it between his forefinger and thumb.
“Did you find something?” asked Lorenzo, leaning forward.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“In technical police terms, we call it ‘a clue.’”
He pulled his discovery out of the cage and into the gloomy light. It wa
s a white business card with the name Matt Weatherly and Server Solutions embossed on it.
“That’s the company that owns the box,” Lorenzo explained upon seeing the card.
“Thank you, Mr. Lorenzo.” He motioned for the man to exit, earning a sour look from him.
Larsen turned his attention back to the dead server box, speaking aloud to the empty air. “Alright, Matt Weatherly. I got your breadcrumb. Now let’s figure out where you’re leading me.”
Fifteen
A blur of black metal zipped through the Hollywood back alley, nearly clipping off the legs of a slumbering homeless man, before disappearing around a corner.
John checked his digital watch, which informed him that he had exactly thirteen minutes to arrive at the next building before Weatherly was at his own destination.
But first he had a stop to make.
He twisted the throttle, gunning the Suzuki Hayabusa through a yellow light. The motorcycle made it easily, a testament to its speed. In Japanese, “hayabusa” was the term for peregrine falcon, a hunter known for its stunning high-speed vertical drops. The bike was no less impressive, topping out at over 200mph when needed. John had made some slight modifications – dampening the exhaust pipe and replacing vulnerable points with bullet-resistant metal. Clad in a black sweater and matching pants, he appeared to be an extension of the motorcycle when he bent forward to get maximum torque; another fleeting shadow among the ones cast by the moon.
As he turned off the main thoroughfare, his bike silently prowled through a warren of side streets. At last he saw his destination: a dim alley between two nondescript office buildings. He angled the bike into the alley and pulled to a stop, noticing the gleaming silver Audi parked up against the far wall. He switched off his engine, tamped down the kickstand and swung his legs off of the motorcycle. A second later, the car’s lone occupant opened the driver door. A tall, slim man with graying hair exited, his eyes nervously meeting John’s before scanning the alley for any potential threat. Clearly, nerves were plaguing him, and he stood by his car while shakily lighting a cigarette as John approached.
