“Is that you, Peter?” Josh Hanson called out. “You back?”
“Yeah. Is there a problem?”
“Nah. Mike here is asking questions I just can’t answer.”
I bit my lip as Danton dragged me along beside him.
“What is it you don’t understand, Detective?” Danton asked.
We were coming to the end of the corridor, and I could tell from the direction of Josh’s voice that the others were around the corner to the left.
The bunker seemed almost like a labyrinth—a small maze with a low ceiling and no natural light, and no exit at the end of any of the rows. The tight, cold space was a claustrophobe’s nightmare. It seemed airless, too, because the chilly temperature made it harder to breathe. I closed my eyes to try to concentrate on a way to safely talk us all out of this disaster.
“I’m just trying to learn about all these vintages—what makes them valuable and that kind of thing.”
Mike was the first person I saw when we turned the last corner. He was ten feet away from me, holding a bottle of wine from the long rows of shelves on which the bottles had been stacked after being removed from their cases.
Although Peter Danton had let go of my neck, Mike clearly got a look at the panicked expression on my face.
“Coop—what—?”
There was a long table tucked into the far corner behind Mike, where Luc and Josh had been seated with Jim Mulroy. Luc got to his feet immediately and called out my name.
“I’m fine,” I said, holding out both hands in front of me and urging both Mike and Luc to stay calm.
“Alex was afraid she was missing out on something tasty,” Danton said. “Aren’t you guys still drinking?”
There were several open bottles of red wine—and four half-filled wineglasses—on the table at which they’d been sitting before Danton came back out and found me.
Mike started toward me as Luc tried to catch up with him.
“I’m fine!” I shouted, far too loud to be convincing as my voice echoed off the ceiling and wall.
At the same moment, Danton yoked me with his right arm, dragging me back and reaching out with his left toward a crack between the metal racks of the last row of wine bottles.
Before Mike could reach me, Peter Danton dropped his hand from my neck and lifted a double-barreled shotgun, pointing it directly at the three startled men who were facing us.
FIFTY-FOUR
“I’m happy to pay for the wine I drank,” Mike said, lowering his hand to his side. His off-duty gun was probably in a shoulder-holster under his arm. “No need to shoot.”
“On the house, Detective. Keep your hands away from your pockets. More wine and fewer questions, you’d be on your way home.”
“Alex,” Luc said. “Are you all right?”
I nodded at him while Danton answered. “Sit yourself down, Luc. Back at the table where Jim is.”
Luc stood his ground for several seconds, until Danton fired directions at Josh Hanson.
“There are several lengths of rope in that cabinet behind you, Josh,” Danton said. “Sit them down and tie their hands to the chair, behind their backs.”
“Let me recommend something to you,” Mike said. “You and Josh take a flying head start on us, Peter. Get yourselves out of here right now, before anybody else gets hurt. Go right to the airport, if you’re smart. You can live like a king in the South of France. Like a deposed dictator or any other kind of thug. I bet Gil-Darsin’s villa’s already on the market.”
“Shut up, Chapman.”
“Leave us here for a few hours. Overnight even. You know we can’t call out on these phones. Go wherever the hell you want to go and just let us be. You’re not wanted for murder in France.”
“I didn’t kill the girl there,” Danton said.
“They’re ready to tag that one to Luigi,” Mike said. “Not to worry.”
I could hardly stop trembling from the combination of cold and terror.
“Give me your gun, Detective,” Danton said, as I watched Josh wrap the rope around Luc’s hands.
“My day off, Peter. Left my Glock home in bed. I just came for a ride in the country,” Mike said, lifting his arms in the air. “All in the name of love. Now, if you let Alex sit down, maybe she’ll stop shaking so badly.”
“She’ll get used to it.”
“Come here, Coop,” Mike said. “Go sit back there with Luc.”
I knew Mike wanted me out of the way in case he and Peter reached the point of exchanging gunshots, but I couldn’t bring myself to move farther into the corner of this death trap of a vault.
“She’ll stay right here until I see your heat,” Danton said, slamming the shotgun against my back.
“I’m telling you, man. Sometimes I just don’t pack. Like you, the night you slit Luigi’s throat.” Mike gestured by running his finger across his neck. “I mean it’s more quiet than shooting him, but it left so much fucking blood all over the houseboat. It would have been much neater if you’d just pumped one or two shots in his gut.”
“Hurry up, Josh. Time to pat down the detective.”
“Stop squirming,” Josh Hanson said to Luc, who seemed to be trying to help Mike in his own way.
Mike leaned one hand on the metal shelf below a row a bottles. “You were smart to wear gloves, though. I gotta give you that. Crime Scene tried everything to get DNA outta that place. Not a whit.”
“I’d take credit for surprising you with my intelligence, Mike, but then you’d be able to say ‘gotcha.’”
Mike was rolling his head to the side. I thought he was signaling me to break away from Danton and take shelter in the next row over.
“Oh, I can still say ‘gotcha,’ my man. You know they found a pair of latex gloves in the canal, caught up under Luigi’s arm, in the material of his jacket. I guess too much Gowanus sludge had gotten inside to get DNA out of them to see who’d been wearing them, and most of his blood had washed off in the canal. Tested positive for blood, but in amounts too minuscule to test.”
“Convenient,” Danton said. “Search him, Josh.”
“Almost there, Peter.”
“But there weren’t even any traces of blood on the two fingers of the right-hand glove,” Mike said. “So I’m thinking you were the killer, and your chopped off, mutilated digits didn’t reach to the tip of the gloves when you were wearing them. So no blood got on them when you sliced the Squid. Not even a drop. How’s that for a deduction?”
“You should keep your thoughts to yourself, Detective. In fact, if you hadn’t been so curious about narcotics trafficking in Africa fifteen minutes ago, and about what’s behind the wine labels in the bottles here, you and these lovebirds might have been on your way back home.”
It was Mike who had triggered Danton’s suspicions, not Luc. But that hardly mattered, now that we were captured in his lair.
Josh Hanson tugged at the rope behind Luc’s back to secure it, did the same to Jim, then started to walk toward Mike. I don’t think I had ever seen my friend react so quickly. He swiveled in Hanson’s direction, bringing with him a bottle from the shelf he’d been leaning on and cracking it against the side of Hanson’s head.
The bottle splintered and the wine spurted out. Hanson fell to his knees and toppled onto his side, screaming in pain. Shards of glass were lodged in the skin on his face like arrows shot out of a bow.
“Run, Coop!” Mike shouted at me.
I pushed at Danton while he used both hands to raise the shotgun. I knocked him off-balance and he cursed at me as he tried to regain his footing.
Luc yelled for me to get out of the way, too, and the last thing I saw before I turned the corner—looking for an escape route—was that Mike had unholstered his revolver and was pointing it at Peter Danton.
FIFTY-FIVE
I ran to the massive steel door as fast as I could. I pushed against it, just like I did at the door of Luc’s home the night this all began one week ago. Nothing gave, and I didn’t kno
w which lever to touch or pull to get the lock to respond to me.
I turned my head and saw Danton eyeing me, having rounded the corner to get away from Mike.
He was coming in my direction, still almost thirty feet away down the long corridor, holding the shotgun with both hands. Behind him, Mike stuck his head out and pointed his revolver at Danton.
Before he could take aim, Danton darted into one of the side aisles. Mike moved cautiously into the center corridor, inching his way forward.
“Look for a panic button, Coop,” he called out to me. “There has to be one somewhere.”
I didn’t want to take my eyes off Mike, for fear that Danton would shoot or charge toward him. I stepped backward toward the door, then glanced from side to side to see if there was anything as obvious as a panic device.
Before I heard the noise, I could see the enormous rack behind Mike’s back—almost to the ceiling of the vault, at least fourteen feet high—begin to tilt. Danton must have been pushing at it. I screamed to warn Mike, but the wine cartons began to fall off the uppermost shelves, crashing to the ground all around him as he covered his head with his hands.
The wine was as red as blood, spilling out and gushing from the broken glass as it cascaded over other cases and onto Mike’s head and body.
“Are you okay?” I yelled out to him.
“Keep it up, kid. You know I’ve got a thick head.”
There was no way Mike could free himself from the cartons and bottles fast enough to follow Danton. I couldn’t see Danton, of course, but I could hear movement as he seemed to be struggling with something—maybe another heavy table or piece of furniture—deep in the row into which he had receded.
I turned around to examine the sides of the great door more closely. Off to my left was a small yellow box, the size of a light switch pad. I tugged at the cover and pulled it open. Inside was a black button with the word ALARM written below it.
I pressed the button, half-expecting something to ring inside this airtight space, but there was no sound. I pressed it again, with no idea who might be summoned, if the device was even connected to anyone in the outside world—on or off the grounds of Stallion Ridge.
Now I returned my attention to Mike, who was on his feet, digging his way out of the debris around him. I started to move toward him, but he held out his left arm, motioning me to stay in place. The revolver was in his right hand.
There were two distinct sounds I could hear. The farther one came from Josh Hanson, moaning as though he was still immobilized by pain. The other must have been Peter Danton, dug in behind the overturned shelves of wine, but making noise as though he was scraping something with the end of the shotgun.
I needed to take cover, but there were so few places that afforded it, and I didn’t know whether there were openings within any of the other rows in this bizarre maze. I feared that Danton would emerge from some part of this hideaway which he knew so well, ready to shoot his way out.
Each time Mike took a step to position himself closer to the row into which Danton had disappeared, the glass and cardboard beneath his feet gave his movement away.
“Come on out, Danton,” he called. “I got you trapped in there. I can wait you out all night.”
Mike was trying to peer between the metal racks to look for Danton, so he was no longer paying attention to me. I crouched down and quickly ducked over into the first aisle to my right—Danton was off somewhere to the left—and got down on one knee. If I could eventually move closer to Mike, maybe I could help him draw a bead on his human target.
The scraping noise stopped. Suddenly, there was a blast from the shotgun, aimed in Mike’s direction, that sounded like cannon fire because of the confines of the shelter.
My hands reflexively flew up over my ears, and it looked as though the pellets had shattered another dozen bottles of some ridiculously expensive vintage.
Mike swiveled quickly again—obviously safe—and flattened himself against the wooden wine crates that bordered the adjacent row of shelves.
As I readied myself to go forward to help him, I could see a flash of steel out of the corner of my left eye, as though something on the door was in motion.
I froze in place, watching the enormous handle—the size of a car’s steering wheel—turn in a circle, around and around again.
“Mike!” I called out, torn between diverting his attention from Danton and needing to let him know that someone was about to open the vault door.
“Stay back,” he said. “Get way back in that aisle, will you?”
Danton fired again, this time spraying the ceiling with shotgun pellets. He was laughing as he spoke. “Find the alarm, did you, Alex? Who do you think is going to get here first? The town police or my foreman?”
Terrified that someone who worked for Peter Danton would be the next man through the door, I kept my eyes riveted on the steel handle. The soundproofing of the shelter made it impossible to hear anyone or anything from outside.
I was so focused on its gyration that I nearly jumped out of my skin when Mike fired his gun. When I turned my head, I could see another bottle smashed by his bullet. This time, a fine white powder—cocaine, no doubt—poured over the side of the divided vessel, like grains of sand running through an hourglass.
Why was Mike wasting a bullet that we might desperately need in the coming seconds?
“Here goes your fortune, Danton. There’ll be blow all over the floor of this goddamn place,” he said. “What vintage is it? Château Calamari 2012?”
Danton fired again, this time lowering his aim to try to get a piece of Mike.
I directed my attention back to the steel entry. The handle was still, but someone was pushing against the door. As it opened into the room, the man who’d been pressing on the door fell forward onto the ground, grabbing his left leg as he rolled on his right side.
He was dressed entirely in denim—blue work shirt and jeans—and I guessed him to be one of the Stallion Ridge staff. He was bleeding profusely from his leg, and although the soundproofing kept his voice from penetrating the space before the door opened, he was howling now.
Behind him, standing in the doorway with a rifle pointed directly at Mike, was Gina Varona.
FIFTY-SIX
“Put it down, Gina,” Mike said, before he was able to lift his revolver.
I hadn’t liked the woman from the moment her name had come into the mix, and now we were all at her mercy.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she said, never flinching as she held her position. “Where’s Peter?”
Gina was Brigitte’s best friend. Of course they were all in this together.
“Getting high,” Mike said, since there was no answer from Danton. “What else did you think he’d be doing?”
She had ignored me at first, but still holding the gun on Mike, Gina spoke to me directly. “Get off your knees, Alex. Out of that row, over to Chapman.”
I looked at Mike for direction and he shook his head at me. I didn’t move.
“Tell me where Peter is,” she asked again.
Another blast from Danton’s shotgun, this one missing Gina Varona’s head by only inches. I was almost as stunned as she seemed to be, and suddenly there was more commotion as Danton—having moved shelves and worked his way out of one dead-ended row—emerged from the next one into the narrow main corridor between Mike and Gina, trying to make his way to the door.
“Stop!” Mike shouted at him.
But Danton ignored the command, and with his weapon steadied on Gina, he continued his mad charge.
It was Mike who fired first, missing Peter Danton altogether, his bullet ricocheting off the end of a wooden crate.
But Gina Varona got off a shot before Danton could pull the trigger, and the killer crashed to his knees—his chest ripped apart by the impact—falling to the cement floor a foot away from where I kneeled.
FIFTY-SEVEN
“I’m so sorry, Gina. I didn’t trust you from the minute we were i
ntroduced,” I said.
“I didn’t like you much either. What did you walk into here today?”
We were standing together next to the large barn, in the sunlight—Gina, Luc, Mike, Jim, and I. The township police—who had responded to the panic alarm within ten minutes—were swarming around the shed. Two ambulances had left for the local hospital, one with Josh Hanson and the injured foreman on board, and the other with the body of Peter Danton.
“Mike and I drove up here looking for Luc, but we interrupted a business meeting between your partners.”
“I found out a little late that I didn’t get the invite,” Gina said. “Don’t you hate when that happens?”
She had an arm around my shoulder, trying to lighten me up.
“Totally.” I was taking deep breaths, trying to keep an eye on Luc, Jim, and Mike as they walked away from me to talk with the cops.
“Luc and Jim Mulroy drove up together,” I said “We came because Luc was supposed to spend the day in town, but left the city without letting us know. We certainly weren’t expecting Armageddon at Stallion Ridge, or we’d have brought reinforcements.”
“Josh Hanson’s the new kid on the block.” Gina said. “Peter’s been trying to push me out. I think Josh is more his type, in terms of a business partner.”
“What made you come up here today?”
“I called the gallery to speak to Peter this morning,” she said. “We haven’t been getting along too well lately. That’s when Eva told me he’d had a call from Jim, and that he disappeared quite suddenly. Said he had to check something here in Connecticut. I decided to drive up and protect my own interests. Nothing’s been right since that girl was killed in Mougins.”
“But you thought to bring a gun,” I said, still wary of Gina.
She smiled. “That’s the Tiro a Segno in me. The Rifle Club. I’ve always got one in the trunk of my car. You never know when you’ll get a chance for some target practice.”
Night Watch Page 36
