by Rick Mofina
No one at the command post knew what to say, until the man leaning against the far wall broke the silence.
“No one’s going to forget today, Darnell,” Homicide Inspector Walt Sydowski said. “But the best we can do is let people do their jobs. Now, buddy, just step back before you say something you shouldn’t.”
“You saying you want that piece of garbage to live?” Darnell said.
“I need him to live.” Sydowski tapped his notebook on his palm. “We got two armed homicide suspects, fugitive with a female hostage. The bleeder was the wheelman. If he lives, we may learn where his friends are destined.” Darnell was considering Sydowski’s point when one of the command post phones rang. Horn put it on speaker.
“It’s Logan,” the bomb squad tech said from the store’s rear entry. “We’re ready back here. Let’s get them secured.”
“Stand by.” Horn pushed a button on the console for the direct line to the jewelry store’s office and the manager. “David,” Horn said, “everybody hanging in there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’re ready to get you out. You’re on speaker. The EOD people are taking it from here, okay?”
“Okay.”
“David, it’s Logan again. One more time, we need you to describe the grenades.”
The jewelry store manager’s voice betrayed his anxiety as he detailed what he saw. “Round, about the size of a baseball. Light blue with white markings and a lever that is light blue with some black and brown at the end.”
“Yeah. M69s, the training version of the M67 frag,” Logan said.
“What’s that mean?” the manager asked.
“We think they’re nonlethal.”
“You think!”
“We’re not taking any chances, David,” Logan said. “Your floor plan shows you have a walk-in vault. Reinforced with a one-ton steel door. Can you squeeze everybody in, keeping the door cracked for air by wedging it with something thin and metal?”
“Yes.”
“That door must remain open. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Listen carefully.”
Logan explained that a police siren would sound with three short bursts. The end of the third one would give the manager exactly two full minutes to get everyone into the vault. The bomb squad would then blow the store’s rear door. Under no circumstances was anyone to leave the vault until police came for them. If the grenade detonated they’d be safe. The blast would be loud and they’d feel a vibration. Then police would send in the slow-moving remote-control robot to check for the rear grenade before moving on to the front door. It would remove the devices in a bombproof trailer, take them to a safe area, and neutralize them.
“All set, David?”
“Let’s do it.”
Inside the store, Vanessa helped David move everyone into the vault. It was the size of an elevator car. The silence after the last siren yelp was unbearable, quickening everyone’s breathing.
“Oh, God, please.” The young engaged woman slid to the floor, clenching her fiancé’s hand, knuckles whitening. I can’t live without him. Please, God, if we have to die, let us die together.
The manager checked his Timex and began counting down the seconds, bracing his customers. The old watch shopper grabbed a shelf bracket to steady himself for the impact.
“Five...four...three...two...”
The vault shuddered with a thud! Then a tiny ratta-tap-tap like a metal ball bouncing on a hard floor nearing the vault’s door. The manager’s eyes widened, fear sliced through him as through the crack he saw the grenade come to rest against the steel door. The safety clip sprang open.
“Oh. No!”
The manager pulled the vault door shut.
At the command post, Horn reviewed the tactical plan with the TAC team leader for an assault on the van.
“The instant we’ve got the vault people safe, we’ll try one more time to talk him out,” Horn said. “If he doesn’t give it up, then throw some chemicals in the van. If that doesn’t work, we’ll green-light the marksmen. If that fails, flash-bangs, ground-level assault, and extraction.”
The TAC commanders relayed the tactical plan over the radio.
After the smoke cleared from the jewelry store blast, the six-wheel-drive remote-control robot, the size of a lawn mower, hummed as it lumbered like a tortoise over the remains of the rear door. At the end of the robot’s coax cable, the police officer at the control station manipulated its joysticks and switches to study the store’s interior through the remote surveillance camera. He felt relieved at the sight of the detonated grenade outside the vault door. An M69 practice unit. Just hunky-dory. Just a bang and puff of smoke. No shrapnel. No danger. The officer used the camera’s zoom to examine the vault door. The instant he focused, alarm crept over him. The door had sealed. What the hell? Alerting his supervisor, he rushed from his control station into the store.
A 911 emergency dispatcher patched through a locksmith with the vault’s security firm. Police had contacted him earlier, requesting he stand by a phone in case he was needed. Calmly he guided the tactical officers through steps to open the vault door. Their first attempt failed but not the second. The officers swung the door open as far as it would go.
“Thank you! Thank you!” The engaged woman cupped her hands to her tear-stained face.
“Oh, thank God,” Vanessa said.
“Everybody okay?” a TAC officer said, directing them out to the back alley. “Paramedics are down the block. It’s all over, folks. All over.”
News helicopters thundered in the distance, while TV and still photographers situated in alleys and rooftops half a block away recorded the rescue. Police hurried the robbery victims from the scene as EOD used the robot to recover the second grenade from the front door. Like the first, it was a nonlethal training model.
“What about the woman the robbers took?” David, the manager, asked a TAC officer. “Is she okay? We heard gunshots in the street.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
In the street the bleeding gunman in the van ignored the negotiator’s final plea for surrender.
“Okay,” Horn said, “do it.”
The order was relayed to the TAC gas teams, prompting the thunk-thunk of tear gas canisters from each side of the street into the van’s cab. The truck rocked, clouds billowed from the driver and passenger windows. Coughing. The driver’s door cracked. A handgun emerged, a boot found the ground. More coughing. The door opened. A bullhorn crackled.
“Throw down your weapon!”
The man emerged, coughing, staggering into the street, disoriented, soaked in blood, still gripping his pistol. Snipers lined him in their crosshairs. When he doubled over to vomit, the TAC team moved in, shoving him to the street on his stomach, kicking his gun clear, boots crushing the back of his neck, legs, pinning him to the pavement, searching him, handcuffing him. He moaned, squirming in a growing pool of vomit and blood. The rest of the team cleared the van.
“Nothing,” one of them said.
A siren blasted and two ambulances crawled to the carnage.
Sydowski arrived just as paramedics began working on the shooter.
“He alive?” Sydowski flashed his star. “Sydowski. Homicide.”
They heaved him onto a gurney.
“Barely. Looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.”
They slid the gurney into the ambulance.
“I’m going with you.”
“What?”
“I’m going with you.” Sydowski pulled himself into the rear, searching for something to sit on near the shooter’s head.
“Walt!” His partner, Inspector Linda Turgeon, arrived. “Leo called me in. Horn briefed me. What’s our game plan?”
The paramedics were closing the rear doors.
“I’m going to the hospital with this guy. I’ll call. You contain the scene.”
“All right.” She gave a small wave.
As the ambulance doors were slammed, S
ydowski saw TAC team members and uniformed officers from the district huddled near the patrol car of their slain friend.
Turgeon was relieved no one had contaminated her homicide scene. She pulled on latex gloves for an initial inspection of the officer’s corpse, his open eyes staring at his visor. She followed his death gaze to the snapshot of a boy, his grin splattered with his father’s blood.
FIVE
Reed watched it go down, crouched against the rooftop railing beside Henry Cain, a Star photographer.
They had slipped by the outer police line to a California Sierra Bank, half a block away, climbed the service ladder to the roof and a good view. Cain’s face was clenched behind his digital Nikon camera as he gently rolled its long lens, shooting the jewelry store rescue and the TAC team jumping on the gunman, all unfolding within yards of the dead police officer.
“Do you believe this, Tom?”
Reed didn’t answer. He was jotting down details in his notepad, pages lifting in the breeze as he sketched a little map of the event. A stickman for the dead cop, next to: How old? Years on the job? Family? WHAT HAPPENED? It was winding down fast, ambulances and police cars were moving in everywhere. Reed closed his book, heading for the ladder.
“Henry, I gotta get to the victims.”
“Hang on, I’m coming with you.”
Grasping the metal handles of the ladder, they began descending to the street when they spotted a tangle of emergency vehicles at the end of the block.
“Hold it.” Cain stopped, raising his camera to shoot.
In the distance between two ambulances, Reed saw a young woman. Distraught, cupping her hands to her face. A paramedic and a female police officer were comforting her.
The rapid-fire clicking of Cain’s Nikon, the choppers, flashing lights, the biting ammonia traces of tear gas, made it crystalline for Reed.
This is my job.
He had wrestled with self-doubt since he had taken time off. The last few months had been agonizing. Sitting alone all day in an empty house at his keyboard, staring at a computer screen, listening to the clock tick down on the rest of his life. No sirens, no crime scenes, no yellow tape, no anguished victims forcing him to navigate his way through tragedy so he could report it. No trips to the Hall to battle detectives like Walt Sydowski, no prison interviews with murderers, or face-to-face meetings with drug dealers, thieves, pimps, hookers, gangsters, and hard-core losers. No sources calling him at all hours with tips that he turned into front-page stories under his byline. It had all evaporated.
One morning at breakfast, Reed’s son, Zach, looked up from the Star.
“Doesn’t it bug you, Dad?”
“Does what bug me?”
“Your name’s never in the paper anymore.”
At that moment, something flat-lined. Was it really over for him?
Sure, somewhere in the reaches of his memory lay good reason for him to leave daily crime reporting. Ann was right, his job had exacted a toll. But that was behind them. He had worked hard to get it all under control.
Now, as Cain’s camera whirred, as the helicopters pounded in time with his pulse, Reed knew the truth. He couldn’t quit. Not today. Not in the middle of a story like this. A botched jewelry store heist, a dead cop, bombs, and a blank check to write the hell out of it.
Joycean...
“Okay, Reed, let’s go,” Cain said.
Moving down the alley, Reed was determined to find one of the victims, someone to give him a sense of what went on inside. His cell phone rang. It was Molly Wilson, a Star reporter, at the opposite end of the scene.
“Hey, Tom, I’m near the command post. I’ve got witnesses to the cop shooting. Where are you?”
“In the alley. Going for the store victims. Gotta go.”
“Hold on, ask about a hostage, Tom.”
“A hostage?”
“My witnesses say a woman was taken hostage by the suspects who shot the cop when they fled. Police are going to put out descriptions and a vehicle when they have more.”
It took half a second for Reed to absorb what Wilson was telling him.
“Okay. Thanks.”
A hostage? Fugitives? Man. It just keeps getting better. Reed slid his phone into his pocket as they neared the area where police and paramedics were comforting the victims. Concentrating on what he had to do, he searched the group for any news competitors who had beaten him there. No sign of anyone else yet. He cast an eye around for any uniforms who might keep him away. Clear so far. Reed flinched at the sharp horn blast behind them. A police equipment van wanted to crawl by. Cain stepped into a doorway, indicating he was staying put to take photos. Reed moved for the police van, then walked alongside it, using it to bring him to the edge of the circle around the victims.
Can't get any closer than this.
Expecting to be ordered away at any moment, Reed drew on his years of working crime scenes. Just blend in. Keep out of the way. You’re not even here. It was happening so fast. Reed didn’t produce his pad, but noted everything: the manager recounting events to a detective, then the old man getting his vitals checked by a paramedic. The young couple, sitting in the rear of an ambulance comforting each other. Then, in between the crackling of the emergency radios, Reed heard a gasp.
Next to him, leaning alone on the fender of a patrol car, was a young woman. Her nameplate said VANESSA JORDAN. It looked to him that the female officer inside the car was on her radio trying to contact someone for Vanessa, who stood there, quietly sobbing, fists clenched, arms folded, holding herself together, tears streaming as she raised her face skyward, inhaling air as if she had surfaced from something cold and horrible. This could work.
“How you holding up?” Reed said.
“I need...” Vanessa’s voice trailed. She was trembling.
“Sorry, Vanessa,” Reed said, checking to make sure no one was approaching. “Can I help you with anything? Tom Reed from the San Francisco Star.”
“I need to call Stephen, my boyfriend. I need him.”
“Use my phone, Vanessa.”
She accepted his phone, her fingers trembled over the keypad, and she passed it back. “Could you please dial for me?” She dictated the number carefully. Reed dialed, waited until it began ringing, then gave it back. Vanessa pressed it to her ear.
“Stephen? Stephen, it’s me. Oh, baby, come and get me. Please come now,” she said, bending her head to hear as Reed led her to a quieter spot between two ambulances, almost out of sight
“I’m okay but that woman...What? Yes, that was us on the TV news. They got us out okay but, baby, it was horrible...”
Reed glanced around, loving every second of his luck but fearing he would be discovered.
“They put a gun to my head. I thought I was going to die and never see you again—” A hand went to her mouth, stifling a sob. “I let them in, they looked like an old couple, this woman pushing an old man in a wheelchair, only it’s a man, dressed like a woman, and they had a machine gun and started shooting and they made me get the jewels. They had hand grenades.”
Hand grenades. Reed’s skin began to tingle.
“Oh God, they took my customer. She came in to buy a gift and they put the gun to her head and took her. What? I don’t know. I’m with the police people. Stephen, please, I need you to come and hold me, please. Please.”
Vanessa passed the phone to Reed, who noticed TV cameras at the end of the alley. Damn! Others were arriving. He’d heard a detective shout something about keeping the press back. Vanessa Jordan buried her face in her hands.
“Vanessa, can you tell me some more about what happened? Would it be okay? I’ll take some notes.”
“Reed?” Her blinking eyes peered over her fingertips at him as she nodded. “Tom Reed?”
“That’s right.” He pulled out his notebook and pen. “Just quickly, they’re going to move everything in a second, I just need to know a little more about what happened.”
“That older gentleman was looking at wa
tches, that couple was looking at engagement diamonds. David, the manager, was in the back.”
“They took a woman?”
Vanessa nodded, clutching a tissue to her trembling mouth as she worked on recounting details for Reed.
“The woman had come in to pick up an order when the robbers came in, shouting that it was a holdup. They ordered everyone on the floor and started shooting the displays. One of the robbers had these hand grenades clipped on his chest, he was wearing like a bulletproof vest. I was sure we were going to die....”
Reed’s mind raced. It had to be a sign, this story coming to him on this day, the very day he was supposed to quit. Christ, he realized he could never quit. This was more than his job, this was what he was. And God help him he loved it. He didn’t look up from his notes, writing frantically as he encouraged Vanessa to keep talking.
“...one of them looks out the window, gets all freaked, something’s wrong, something’s wrong, so they go to my customer.”
“The woman?”
“Yes and oh God, they put a gun to her head, asked about her car, her family, I think they looked at pictures of her son in her wallet and, like, threatened her. She begged them to just take her car but they handcuffed her to the wheelchair, took her. And then—oh God—”
“Then what happened, Vanessa?”
“Then we heard the shooting in the street. Dear God, that poor woman, what happened? Is she hurt? Did they find her?”
“What can you tell me about the woman, Vanessa? Her name?”
The story was gripping, coming together nicely, Reed mapped in his mind, envisioning how in a heartbeat everyday people found themselves facing death. Police began shouting at the news crews to get back.
“She was very pretty, very nice suit, pearls, early thirties, brown hair.” Vanessa brushed her hand to indicate the cut and Reed noticed the crumpled paper in her hand was not a tissue.
“What’s that? Do you know her name?”
Vanessa swallowed. Looked at the slip of paper. “I forgot. This is hers, her credit card receipt. I picked it up. I was holding it for police—”
“May I see it?”
