Into the Fire

by Gregg Hurwitz

  No glowing red dot to show it was recording.

  Which meant that Brust and Nuñez had turned it off.

  What reason would they have to be in here with him and not want to be recorded?

  “Is there…?” Max’s voice went hoarse, and he had to start over. “Is there someone else I could talk to? Another cop?”

  “Oh, no,” Brust said. “I think it’s best we keep this discussion between these four walls.”

  Nuñez’s eyes were shaded by the brim of his baseball cap. “All nice and soundproof.”

  Brust keyed to Max’s gaze, traced it to the security camera. “Ah,” he said. “All these budget shortfalls have us operating on a shoestring.”

  Nuñez again. “Sometimes we have to turn off the cameras. You know, to save electricity.”

  The words were pleasantly delivered, without a trace of menace. Max was having trouble processing them. Was he reading into some dark intent? Was this all in his head?

  Nuñez fished a digital recorder from his pen-laden shirt pocket. He half turned, shielding Max’s view with a muscular shoulder, and spoke into the microphone softly.

  “Wait,” Max said. “What are you saying?” He looked at Brust. “What is he saying?”

  Nuñez’s voice carried to him then. “—can be used against you in a court of law.”

  “Guys,” Max said. “What’s—”

  “Shit!” Nuñez shouted so abruptly that Max jerked back in his chair. “Oh, shit—grab him, he’s—” He fumbled the recorder in his hands purposefully and then clicked it off. Immediately he was as calm as before. He tucked the recorder back into his shirt pocket.

  Nuñez and Brust looked at Max silently. Expressionless.

  Max had broken out in a full sweat. He stared at the two faces, but they gave nothing away.

  And then Brust set his foot on the chair across from Max and hiked up his pant leg. Strapped to his ankle was a banged-up, nickel-plated .22. He plucked the pistol from the holster and set it on the table between them.

  “What … what’s that?” Max asked.

  “Oh, that?” Once again Brust gave with the grin. And once again Nuñez mirrored it. “That one’s yours.”

  * * *

  The bullpen was bustling, abuzz with overlapping conversations, most of them unpleasant. Perched on a hard wooden chair to the side of the detective’s desk, Evan made sure that each breath sounded labored, pushed through increasing pain.

  The detective—O’Malley by his nameplate—looked exhausted, dark bags beneath his eyes. He wore sweat-matted brown curls in no discernible style and was slender to the point of frail. Lower body weight would prove useful.

  His security key card was in full view, clipped to his belt, but his holster was empty. Evan guessed O’Malley had either locked his weapon in the drawer or secured it in the gun safe before he’d entered the chaos of the bullpen.

  His desk was one of four currently occupied in the immediate area, the other cops conducting similar interviews, keying in similar reports. A drug-animated prostitute waved his arms around, using a high-pitched voice and noodle arms to illustrate his story. “—thought you were my brother-in-law when I approached the vehicle, uh-huh, that’s right. It was all a big mix-up, sweetie pie.”

  The other cops burrowed further into their desks, trying to focus. That was helpful.

  A corridor across the bullpen, guarded by a key-card-protected security door, led back to what Evan guessed were the interrogation rooms. That’s where Nuñez and Brust would have taken Max. They’d need privacy to talk to him. And to do whatever else they needed to do.

  O’Malley slurped at his coffee and reviewed the monitor onto which he’d begun to input the complaint. “Okay, so surname ‘Case,’ first name ‘Justin.’ Is that right, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  A few desks over, the prostitute grew increasingly agitated. “Bitch, puh-lease! I’m a upstanding member of this mothafucking community!”

  Evan set his RoamZone on his knee. Then he dug the Baggie from his pocket, rested it on his thigh just out of O’Malley’s line of sight. He took a deep breath, held it, and cracked the zippered seal. Given the state of his brain, the last thing he needed was a whiff of this stuff.

  The cop at the adjacent desk was no more than five feet away, but his face stayed down as he chicken-pecked at the keyboard with two fingers, his brow furrowed from the effort. The faintest turn of his head and he’d have Evan dead to rights.

  O’Malley squinted at the monitor. Taped to the top was a frayed photo of a dachshund wearing a Spider-Man knit sweater. No wedding ring. He rubbed at his eyes once more. “Wait a sec,” he said. “‘Justin Case’? ‘Just in case’?”

  His face snapped over to Evan. Already Evan had the sodden gauze pads in his palm. With his other hand, he hit REDIAL on the RoamZone.

  There was a half-second delay as the call routed through to the Nokia in the dumpster outside. The flashbang’s effect, compounded within the metal walls, literally vibrated the building, the boom loud enough to send a passing officer airborne. Coffee rose from his cup in a brown fountain. The detective to Evan’s side hit the floor, hands laced over the back of his head.

  Evan was up beside O’Malley in an instant, cupping his hand over the detective’s mouth and nose, steadying him and pretending to lean over the desk in an improvised duck-and-cover.

  Desflurane was Evan’s preferred halogenated ether. Its TV-trendy cousin, chloroform, was nearly useless, taking a solid five minutes to be effective and requiring ongoing inhalation to keep the target unconscious. In Evan’s experience the onset of action for Desflurane hovered around two minutes, but a lightweight individual like the unfortunate Detective O’Malley would be functionally incapacitated at the thirty-second mark.

  The drug was also much safer than chloroform, a key consideration if you were planning to knock out an innocent cop.

  Over the furor in the lobby, the desk officer shouted, “Everyone please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion!”

  As the bullpen cleared, Evan caged O’Malley’s head with his arm, tilting him forward at the big monitor to hide his face and the soaked gauze from view. O’Malley whipped his head back to crack into Evan’s, and Evan pulled away just in time so it thudded ineffectively into his chest. A heartbeat slower and Evan would’ve been laid out on the floor with second-impact syndrome, a second concussion ballooning the first, leaving him unconscious or dead.

  Exhaling with relief, he held his grip firm. O’Malley’s knees rattled against the underside of his desk, but already they were losing steam. His eyes rolled up to Evan, showing white, and Evan whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s harmless. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  At last the detective slumped, but Evan maintained the seal over his nose and mouth.

  By now the detectives and cops had grabbed their weapons and were streaming toward the front, herding the citizens with them. Evan held Detective O’Malley in place in his chair and spoke to his unconscious face loudly, “Okay, okay. I’m coming. It just hurts if I move too fast.”

  The exodus from the bullpen was nearly complete, the last of the cops filing through the door to the lobby.

  Evan lowered O’Malley gently to the desk, resting his forehead on the mouse pad. Then he unclipped the key card from the detective’s belt and crossed the bullpen.

  He had no weapon. But he had no time either.

  With a tap of the key card against the pad, the security door clicked open. The corridor beyond had three doors on either side. Except for one, all stood open, likely left ajar in the explosion’s aftermath.

  If Nuñez and Brust had taken Max to a back room as Evan anticipated, they’d have good reason to remain behind during an evacuation. They’d require the privacy.

  Evan gritted his teeth. He had to enter the fray unarmed and face whatever came at him. But he could not afford to take another blow to his head. It would put him out, maybe for good.

  The closed door was locked, so Evan s
tepped back and kicked it in.

  It smashed the wall, the doorknob sticking through the drywall.

  “Hurry up and—” Nuñez cut off his words to his partner, his eyes lighting with alarm at Evan’s bandage-wrapped face, his hand already reaching for his sidearm.

  At the center of the room, Brust stood facing Max over the table, one arm extended, his Glock aimed at Max’s head. An executioner’s pose.

  Before Evan could move, Brust fired.

  36

  Deadweight

  Evan filled the open doorway of the interrogation room, the echo of the gunshot ringing within the reinforced walls.

  Max was gone, knocked clear out of his chair by the head shot, lost somewhere beneath the table, bleeding out.

  Adrenaline surged at the reins, threatening to break free and bolt through Evan’s bloodstream, but he tightened his hold. If Max was dead, he’d still be dead three seconds from now.

  Evan couldn’t waste a split second. He was in close quarters with two homicidal cops. They had Glock 22 Gen4s, each with fifteen .40s stacked in the magazine.

  Evan had an ACE bandage wrapped around his head and a lingering concussion.

  But he’d been trained to slow down time in a firefight, to assess the freeze-frame progression of movement and angles.

  Brust remained in side profile, having just fired across the table at Max. A slow-motion ripple spread through the cheap cotton of his shirt behind the right shoulder, stirred into existence by the recoil. He was pivoting toward Evan, his head leading the turn.

  At five feet away, Nuñez was the closer threat. Forty pounds heavier, he was the larger one, too.

  But Brust would have Evan in his sights first. Evan couldn’t reach him in time.

  As he played through the extrapolation of the next three seconds, a pair of thoughts struck him. One: Given his concussion, he hadn’t run the simulated scenarios as quickly as he usually did. And two: That split-second delay meant that he could not cover both men.

  There was no version that didn’t end with him getting shot.

  That’s when the table scooted of its own accord, skittering forward two feet and slamming into Brust’s thigh. Brust staggered, buying Evan another instant to focus on Nuñez.

  The big detective’s hand had already reached the hip holster, the Glock rising, not yet clearing leather.

  Evan drove into Nuñez.

  As the Glock rose, swinging to target Evan’s critical mass, Evan swept it to the side with a cupped hand, accelerating the momentum from the draw. Curling his fingers over the top of the slide, Evan steered Nuñez’s arm along the trajectory it was already traveling, the weapon carried in a straight-armed swivel.

  It whipped through another fifteen degrees, and then Evan jerked the weapon to a halt, the jolt causing Nuñez’s hand to clench.

  His finger constricted around the trigger.

  Evan had halted the pistol with the front sights aligned on Brust’s head.

  Droplets painted the rear wall.

  Brust crumpled.

  Nuñez gasped, a screeching intake of air.

  To his credit he did not release the Glock. He had a better grip on the weapon and was much stronger to begin with, so Evan released the barrel. His other hand was already grabbing for the pens in Nuñez’s shirt pocket.

  As Nuñez took a clunky step to the side to regain his balance, Evan tore a pen free. He spun into Nuñez, throwing his weight backward, slamming his shoulders into Nuñez’s chest, tilting his head forward to protect it from colliding with Nuñez’s chin.

  As Nuñez barked out a grunt, Evan tightened his fist around the pen and slammed it down past his own hip into the inside of Nuñez’s thigh.

  Now the big man dropped the Glock.

  He lurched back stiffly, struck the wall, and slid down to a sitting position, his legs kicked out before him. With disbelief he looked down at the pen protruding from his thigh, the dark stain spreading through the fabric of his slacks. Then he curled his hand around the pen, holding it in place.

  Evan looked past Brust’s fallen body and the knocked-askew table to where Max sprawled on the floor, tilted back on his ass. His foot was still raised from when he’d kicked the table into Brust.

  Behind him there was a black hole where Brust’s round had buried itself in the wall; it must have missed his head by inches when Max hit the floor.

  Evan unwound the Ace bandage from his head, enjoying his first clear breath of air since he’d entered the station. “Thanks.”

  Max’s nod looked like a tremor.

  Evan moved over to Brust and started tugging off the detective’s shoes. The big man’s legs hung from Evan’s grip, deadweight.

  In the corner Nuñez choked out a grunt of pain.

  Evan finished with the loafers and got to work on Brust’s belt. “You’re gonna want to keep pressure on,” he said, not bothering to look over at Nuñez. “The pen is buried in your femoral artery. If you let go, you’ll bleed out in seconds.”

  Nuñez grunted, eyeing his fallen service weapon a few feet past the tips of his shoes. So tempting.

  Evan stripped off his own jeans and stepped into Brust’s pants. A bit loose, but they fit well enough. The button-up took a bit more doing. The collar was stained, but not terribly. Next Evan worked the badge lanyard carefully over the mess of Brust’s head and ducked into it.

  He made for a passable detective.

  Nuñez watched the fashion show, his upper lip wrinkled back from his teeth like a dog’s.

  As Evan adjusted Brust’s belt around his own waist, Nuñez let go of the pen and lunged for the Glock.

  Blood spurted onto the tile, powerful blasts timed to his heartbeat.

  Evan shook his head. “Mistake.”

  Nuñez toppled over. His hand pawed the floor a few times and then stopped. He stared glassily at nothing.

  Evan smoothed down the shirt, adjusted the badge at his stomach, and freed the handcuffs from the hard leather belt pouch. Then he walked over and tugged the baseball cap from Nuñez’s head. It fit perfectly.

  Max still hadn’t moved. He remained on the floor, breathing hard.

  “Look at me,” Evan said. “Look at me. You’re okay. Get up.”

  Max obeyed.

  “Turn around.”

  Max did.

  Evan slapped the cuffs on him and started to march him out.

  “Wait,” Max said at the door, his voice hoarse with shock. He chinned back at Nuñez. “The thumb drive. He has the thumb drive in his pocket.”

  Evan went to Nuñez’s slumped body and dug through his pant pockets. As he extracted the thumb drive, a slab of smooth metal slid out and clattered on the tile. Not just any metal.

  Liquidmorphium.

  Evan glared at the Turing Phone. Then he scooped it up, wrapped it and the thumb drive in his jeans, and tucked the bundle under his arm.

  They exited into the corridor.

  The bullpen was still empty save for O’Malley, who was just now stirring at his desk. As they passed, Evan paused behind the slender detective. “Apologies.” He picked up the soaked gauze from where he’d dropped it on the desk, pressed it over O’Malley’s nose and mouth once more, and left the detective sleeping on his keyboard.

  Gripping Max’s cuffs in the back, Evan steered him roughly out onto the sidewalk.

  The uniforms were setting a perimeter, holding off onlookers. By now most of the detectives had clustered around the dumpster, comparing notes and shaking their heads. A few looked up at Evan and gave him a nod.

  He nodded back.

  Evan manhandled Max across the street, into an alley, and out the other side.

  The Ford pickup chirped twice and unlocked when Evan hit the key fob. He released Max’s cuffs and let them fall into the gutter as Max climbed into the passenger seat.

  Evan shed Brust’s badge, left it with the handcuffs in a trickle of dirty water by the curb drain, and drove off.

  37

  Whac-a-Mole
<
br />   Returning to the Lincoln Heights house felt like defeat.

  And yet here Evan and Max were, standing on the splintered floor of the living room, a grim silence filling the darkness between them. They’d barely spoken on the drive here, staring through the windshield, lost in separate thoughts.

  “I thought it was over,” Evan said. “I was wrong.”

  Max’s posture was clamped down, his arms half crossed, one straight, the other gripping the opposite biceps. His knuckles were bloodless, his hand shaking down by his thigh. It looked like if he let go, he’d fly to pieces.

  “Max. Max.”

  A focus came back into his eyes.

  “You’re safe now,” Evan said. “Right now, in this moment, you’re safe.”

  He took out Nuñez’s Turing Phone and thumbed through recent calls. The directory had been completely wiped.

  Except for one outgoing call.

  He felt a tickle at the back of his skull, the next threat worming its way to the surface. Three problems had arisen. And he’d dispatched all three.

  But if this mission had taught him anything, it was that the next problem was waiting just around the corner, blade in hand. And if his concussion had taught him anything, it was that he was playing Russian roulette. There were only so many dry clicks he’d get before the hammer dropped on a live round. It seemed cruelly fitting that his final outing as the Nowhere Man refused to end, as if the universe itself would not allow him to let go.

  The time stamp on the Turing showed that the number had been dialed shortly after Max entered the Hollywood Station and turned himself in. The call had lasted twenty-seven seconds.

  As the lead officers on the case, Nuñez and Brust had been alerted to Max’s presence by the desk cop. And then Nuñez had immediately contacted whoever was at the other end of that phone number.