Shinsky moved forward into the room cautiously, leaving the door open behind him.
“Really happy to see you,” Sturm said menacingly, the whole tone of her voice changing suddenly.
“Aw, come on,” Jon heard Shinsky say, and knew intuitively that Sturm had pulled a gun on the big man, even though he couldn’t see what was happening in the room.
Jon stepped out from behind his pillar, his own gun drawn, and moved slowly toward the Below across the right side of the platform, knowing that he wasn’t visible to the killers because of the angle and the door. Halladay and Amira, who had climbed up from the tracks, also moved out from their pillars toward the door, but they were a lot farther away than Jon because they had to be more careful not to be seen from inside the room.
“Williams isn’t coming back, is he?” This from Shinsky, as Jon heard what sounded like the fastening of handcuffs.
“No,” Sturm’s voice said, “he’s throwing a Dayfall party somewhere else.”
“Can you please make it quick?” Shinsky said, as Jon moved closer to the door and heard the sound of something solid being dragged across the floor.
“Now, where would be the fun in that?” Sturm said. “Sit down.”
Jon imagined the bowling ball–shaped killer stepping aside to get some tape or rope to tie Shinsky to a chair, and figured this would be as good a time as any for the cops to rush the room. He also thought it might be good if Shinsky was still somewhat mobile when they did, because the big man could possibly become a distraction for Sturm. He wasn’t sure about this, but had to make a decision, so he took the leap and gestured with his head to the other two cops behind him that he was making his move and they should back him up.
He was planning to kick the door farther open and assume a firing stance on the right side of the doorway, hoping Sturm might be partially turned away and would surrender, or at least that he could fire before she brought her own gun to bear. He thought that one of his two fellow cops would also have an angle, from behind him, if needed. But he didn’t get a chance to do any of that, because before he could put his foot around the bottom corner of the partially open door, a grenade flew out past him and bounced into the middle of the platform.
A second later, Sturm pulled the door shut from inside and slammed it with a loud bang that Jon initially thought was the grenade exploding. When he realized it wasn’t, everything seemed to blur into slow motion as he yelled and waved for Halladay and Amira to take cover and watched them rush behind the two pillars they had used before. Because Jon was farther away from that cover and actually had to run past the grenade to seek it, he made another split-second choice and decided to forget the pillars and just dive over the edge of the platform, trying to clear it as fast as he could so the shrapnel wouldn’t hit any part of his body.
The grenade exploded at the same time he was going over the edge, and after he landed hard on the dirt and metal of the track, he thought he’d been hit because of the pain shooting through various parts of his body. But a quick inspection revealed that it was probably just a result of the impact of his violent fall, and he also realized he had dropped his gun in the panic. He pulled out the second one he had brought and pointed it over the top of the wall, resting his arms on the floor of the platform so only they and the top of his head were exposed.
The platform was darker now, thanks to the explosion, but at least one of the lights on the sides of it was still working. The door of the Below remained closed, and a quick scan of the platform showed it was empty except for the debris from the blast. So Jon relaxed just enough to look to his left and check on the other two cops, who were safe behind their respective pillars. The sides that had been facing the grenade were mangled, but they were obviously load-bearing and solidly built.
“How the hell did he know we were out here?” Jon said to them, but kept his eyes on the door to the Below.
“I don’t know,” Halladay said, an adrenaline-fueled smile on his face. “Special Forces are special.”
Jon saw the door unlock and open slightly, and started firing on it, as close to the opening as he could get. Halladay and Amira joined him, but it became obvious that the bullets hitting the door were stopped by its thick metal, and any that got through the crack weren’t hitting anyone inside.
The former soldier managed to throw out two grenades this time before pulling the door completely shut again.
The cops cowered behind their respective shelters, Halladay and Amira both hoping that neither of the grenades landed far enough out to reach behind the pillars. The whole tunnel shook twice as hard this time, and much more smoke filled it after the blast, but Jon could soon see that they were still okay.
He also could see that Sturm had opened the door again after the blasts, and was now running through the debris toward the stairway on the right with an almost superhuman dexterity.
“Hey!” Jon got his fellow cops’ attention, gesturing toward the fleeing killer, because they were on the platform and closer to her, while he was still down on the tracks. “Get Sturm. I’ll take care of Shinsky.”
Halladay and Amira took off after the short woman, not moving nearly as fast as she had been, and Jon pulled his aching body up onto the platform. As he did, he realized that the wound under his chin had opened slightly again, and blood was trickling down and staining his shirt. He touched it with his hand to see how bad it was, then wiped the blood on his pants so that his gun grip wouldn’t be slippery. Then he headed across the ruined platform toward the door of the Below, which was hanging open from Sturm’s rushed exit. He was hopeful that Shinsky seemed the type who would give him the evidence he needed. He guessed that was probably why Sturm had been told to kill him—to keep him from talking.
Two police to chase the athletic and armed Sturm, and one cop to secure and question the handcuffed Shinsky.… It seemed like a reasonable plan. But as Jon rounded the edge of the door to enter the room, Shinsky charged through it like he had done earlier in the day and throughout his football career, only this time his hands were shackled behind his back. But the effect was the same—Jon went sprawling backward to the ground with his gun flying away from him, and the big perp took off across the platform and the tracks, clearly heading in the direction of the exit below John’s Pizza.
It took Jon a while to find his gun, which had slid over the edge into the darkness of the train tunnel, and he moved after Shinsky more slowly than usual because of the injuries from his leap over that same ledge. And Jon couldn’t shoot him because he needed him intact for questioning. As a result, he wasn’t able to catch up to the handcuffed man until they got to the basement of the pizzeria.
After Shinsky stopped to unlock the door down there before entering, giving Jon the last few seconds he needed to close the gap, the big killer instinctively maneuvered behind a row of food stores to keep Jon from having a clear line of fire. And he kept going through the basement, apparently knowing there was a stairway up to the ground floor on that side. Jon was glad he had asked the manager about that, and even happier that he knew there was no external exit on that side of the restaurant. So he simply went up the stairs on the near side, to cut Shinsky off when he tried to cross the main floor. If he had followed him across the length of the basement, the big guy might have gotten out to the street and managed to escape.
But as it was, Jon waved his gun and badge around after he got to the main floor, so that the diners there left hastily through the bar and the front entrance. Then he greeted Shinsky with the gun and a smile when the perp tried to cut back through the restaurant, waved some more to get him to sit down on the floor, and cuffed his ankle to a post at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the balcony.
Now that his prey was finally secure in his custody, Jon looked around to make sure everyone had left the ground floor, and looked up to see that the diners and staff had cleared out of the balcony as well. As he did, the stained glass high up on the magnificent domed ceiling and the overall “churchi
ness” of the space reminded him of his youth, and the thought entered his mind that maybe the God he had put on the shelf long ago had delivered the evidence he needed to have success in this job, rather than the failure he had feared. But then he realized that he’d better question Shinsky and get that evidence before some crooked police or GS agents showed up in response to the evacuation, and somehow screwed up everything he was trying to do.
“Listen, Shinsky,” Jon said as he crouched down closer to the large figure. His instinct told him that “good cop” was a preferable approach with the man, who looked more defeated than defiant at this point. “Your friends at Gotham Security obviously want to kill you, so the only way you can be safe is with us. You need me to help you with that, so I need you to tell me all about their plans right now, so we can stop worse things from happening. And I want you to say it into my phone, so I can give it to the Mayor and she can use it against your boss—you know, the one who gave the order to kill you.”
Shinsky kept looking down and didn’t answer right away.
“I’ll talk on one condition,” the big man finally said.
“What?” Jon said. Normally he wouldn’t negotiate with criminals, but he was desperate to get what he needed from this one.
“You have to kill me afterwards, before anyone comes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to go to jail.… I won’t make it without a fix. And I don’t want to end up in Sturm’s hands again.… He’s a nutbag who enjoys torturing people. I’d rather die quickly at your hand than slowly at his, or locked up.”
“That’s a tall order,” Jon said.
“It’s easy. There’s no one here. Shoot me and take the cuffs off. I’m really big, I rushed you. I’ve killed dozens of people in the last few weeks alone.”
“Okay,” Jon said, making another quick decision as the sound of a distant siren fell upon his ears. “Fine. I’ll kill you.”
26
DAYFALL MINUS ZERO
Jon pulled out his phone, turned on the camera, and asked Shinsky who had paid the NYU professors to create panic about Dayfall.
“That was Render,” the killer said. “He truly believes that the city will be better off under his control.”
“And who hired you and the other mercs to murder people when the sun came out, in order to create more panic?”
“That was Gant. Render didn’t know he was doing that.”
“How…?” Jon reacted. “Come on.… How could Render not have been involved in crimes using GS resources?”
“Render trusts Gant, they’ve known each other since they were kids. And Gant’s the brains of the outfit, he has access to everything.”
“So Render wasn’t complicit in any of the murders?”
“He wouldn’t go to those lengths himself, because he really does care about the safety of the city. But he did create an atmosphere of … let’s say, pride and prejudice among his underlings—an atmosphere that caused them to believe his power and protection should be promoted at all costs.”
Shinsky seemed awfully intelligent for a hired killer, Jon observed, but then remembered the sketchbook they’d found in the Below, and the fact that a meth habit will degrade anyone’s life.
“Render’s actually said, more than once,” the big man continued, “‘We must do whatever we can to wrest control.’ Gant took that very literally and seriously.”
Jon heard a siren again, somewhere outside on the streets. He didn’t know whether or not it was headed his way, and he knew most of the police would be positioning themselves to prepare for Dayfall, which was about to happen. But he decided that this was enough from Shinsky, so he called Mayor King.
“Ma’am,” he told her, “I have video testimony from one of the killers that Gareth Render paid off the teachers to write that stuff about Dayfall, and that his assistant Nelson Gant engineered the murders and chaos crimes so the city would feel unsafe and vote Render in to take your place.”
“And Render told Gant to do this,” the Mayor said.
“No, I’m afraid not—not according to my suspect.”
“But he must have known about it, right?”
“Maybe, but apparently he wasn’t openly complicit. My suspect says Render wasn’t prepared to go as far as Gant, and Gant took it further than he would have approved.”
“Do you believe this?”
“Yes,” Jon said, looking down at Shinsky. “I’d have to say I do. A lot of the facts in the case are swirling in my head right now, so I need to think it all through. But initially this does seem to fit what I’ve seen. We’ve been assuming that if GS people are involved, Render would have to be behind it.… But I think this all actually could have been done without his knowledge.”
“Well, I’m not inclined to believe it,” Rielle King said. “But it’s enough for me to work with. Just the scandal of the payoffs alone will disqualify that asshole, not to mention the cloud of all the murders by people from his company.…”
She thought for a few moments, and then started thinking out loud again.
“On the other hand,” she continued, “this evidence isn’t as incriminating as what I’d hoped for. I can definitely use it as a threat to make him give up on the referendum, and probably leave the city. But if he got ahold of the testimony you have, he might be able to pin it all on Gant and keep fighting.…
“Send me the video right now,” she concluded after another few moments of silent thought. Jon did, and when she got it, she added, “Now erase the video. I don’t want it getting around and somehow making Render look better than I want him to look.”
“It’s erased,” Jon said, after fiddling with his phone for a moment.
“Is the suspect who gave the testimony in police custody?”
“No, he’s here with me.”
“Good. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Could you eliminate him and make it look clean?” she asked.
Jon looked down at Shinsky again.
“Yes,” Jon said. “In fact, that’s what he wants me to do, believe it or not.”
“Good. Then do it.”
Jon pulled out the gun he had put away after he secured Shinsky, and pointed it at the big man’s head. He pulled the trigger twice, and the pounding sound of the shots reverberated through the air from floor to high ceiling of the old church building.
“It’s done,” Jon said.
“Good boy,” Mayor King said on the other end of the line. “Keep playing your cards right and you’ll be a very rich man.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Jon said.
“Just clean up that mess.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Jon said, and hung up the phone.
He stood still for a few moments, then he looked at the video of Shinsky’s testimony, which was still on his phone, and sent it to another cell phone he had before Mayor King had given him this one. Then he looked at Shinsky himself, who was alive and well on the floor, because Jon had fired just above his shoulder.
“You promised,” said the big man, clearly disappointed that he wasn’t dead.
“I did,” Jon said, “but you know what they say about promises.”
Looking around and noticing that no law enforcement or GS agents had arrived yet, Jon called Halladay to find out what had happened with their pursuit of Sturm.
“We lost him,” Halladay said. “Now we just got back to the Below, and are checking it out.”
“What’s in there?” Jon asked.
“A lot of explosives,” Halladay answered, but he must have had his phone on speaker, because Jon then heard Amira say, “But there’s even more missing.”
“You think Williams took them somewhere?” Jon said, remembering Sturm’s comment about the bomber “partying” in another part of the city.
“Are you talking about the stuff in that room?” Shinsky spoke up from the floor, and Jon just looked at him without answering. “I know where he’s taking it.” Jon looked at him some more
. “He’s gonna put it below the Flatiron Building—the plan was to kill a few birds with one stone when the sun comes out. It’ll cause more panic than ever when police headquarters goes up, and it’ll thin out the force so that GS will have to secure the city. It might even get rid of the Mayor herself, if she’s there at the time.”
“Did you hear that?” Jon said into the phone.
“Yeah,” said Halladay, then Amira chimed in again. “There are some underground maps here with some markings that support what he’s saying.”
“Are they in that room now?” Shinsky asked.
“Yeah, why?” Jon responded.
“They need to get out right now. Williams and Sturm rigged it to blow at Dayfall, and Sturm set the timer while I was in there. The sick bastard wanted me to sit there for a while knowing I was gonna buy it, and the blast would be the first chaos crime of the day, killing a bunch of people in the subway and the streets above.”
“Halladay, Amira,” Jon said. “You need to get out.… Shinsky says it’s rigged to blow, on a timer.”
“I found it.” Jon heard Amira’s voice in the background on Halladay’s phone, and he could almost feel the pall that fell on both his partners.
“The count is down to a few minutes,” Amira said. “The good news is I know how to diffuse the detonators; the bad news is I doubt we can get all of them in time. And it only takes one of them to set all this off—that’s why they use so many.”
“Stop talking and get out of there, for God’s sake!” Jon said, but he didn’t sense that either of them was moving.
“The thing is,” Amira said, “there’s a lot of people above us who will probably be killed or wounded if we don’t stop this. And it would take both of us to even have a chance to do it in time.”
Now Jon’s two partners had to make a life-or-death decision. He could almost see them looking at each other. He thought of telling them to leave again, that they could still get far enough away, but then he held his tongue.
“How do we do it?” Halladay asked Amira.
Dayfall Page 17
