Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  ‘I’m on it,’ Bellefonte said, peeling off.

  Isabel looked up at Archer, her eyes having immediately brightened when she’d heard her adoptive mother’s name. ‘Vargas is coming here?’

  ‘Of course. To be with you.’

  ‘He’s in your city area somewhere,’ Shepherd said into the speakerphone in the NYPD Bureau conference room, Ledger, Marquez, Hendricks and Ethan all gathered in there with him. The group had gone from being totally immersed in the case to feeling increasingly disconnected with the lack of communication from their detectives in the field over the last sixteen hours or so. ‘Archer was working with one of your guys.’

  ‘Leo Bellefonte,’ a fellow detective from New Orleans PD’s Homicide Division said. ‘He’s one of our most experienced guys; always near his cell much as he grumbles about it. No reason we can come up with why he’s not picking up, unless somethin’ bad’s gone down. Your guy stay in contact usually?’

  ‘Almost all the time. And when he hasn’t, there’s been trouble,’ Shepherd replied. ‘Anything unusual gone down since Archer arrived?’

  ‘Couple things, now you mention it. There was an incident at Carousel Gardens yesterday, but ya’ll heard about that, right?’

  ‘Yeah, we were informed.’

  ‘The employee who messed with the ride computer and hit Bellefonte with the 2x4 is in holding. But there was somethin’ else; an arrest went down last night in the French Quarter. Your guys were jumped by a pair of carnies from a touring fair. Bellefonte filed paperwork this morning, charging one of them.’ They heard a rustle of paper as he flipped through the report. ‘Says they thought your guy was looking to bust them, so they followed him from Lafayette and jumped him in a bar. Put PCP in his drink and tried to stab him after it’d kicked in.’

  ‘They recovering?’ Marquez asked.

  ‘He and Detective Bellefonte were fine.’

  ‘No, I mean the two carnies.’

  They heard the lieutenant laugh. ‘How’d you know? Yeah, they took a beating. Report says your guy was responsible. But Leo coming in to file this is the last anyone’s seen or heard of ‘em today. He’s got a junior detective of ours working with him, Johnny Ruiz, but he’s not answering his cell either.’

  ‘So where the hell are they?’ Ledger said. ‘What’s happening here?’

  ‘We’ll keep on trying to raise ‘em.’

  ‘So will we,’ Shepherd replied, ending the call.

  ‘It ain’t likely something’s happened to Archer and Alice as well as Bellefonte and the other detective, Ruiz,’ Marquez said, breaking the ensuing silence. ‘Our two aren’t exactly easy to get one over on.’

  ‘I know,’ Shepherd said, rising from his chair. ‘But I get worried when those two go dark.’

  ‘So does the Department’s insurance handler,’ Ethan added. ‘It usually costs them money.’

  ‘So why have they gone silent?’

  ‘The ARU guys from London called again, Shep,’ Josh said, walking back into the room. ‘Chalky’s recovering but his mom’s in a bad way.’

  ‘Alive?’

  He nodded. ‘They found her in her basement, unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. Looks like McGuinness stabbed her and threw her down there and left, thinking she was dead. The ARU guys thought she was a goner at first too.’

  ‘She pulled through all that?’ Marquez asked.

  ‘Broken arm and hip, and severe blood loss. She’d been down there for two days. Docs say she’s lucky to have survived; another hour or so and she wouldn’t have. With what we’ve learned about McGuinness, I’d say he was probably in a hurry or he’d have finished her off. Sounds crazy, but that spill down the stairs is the luckiest thing that ever happened to her.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Marquez whispered.

  ‘Vargas?’ Shepherd asked.

  ‘No worker at her hotel in D.C. has seen her since she walked through the lobby just before dawn,’ Josh replied. ‘The camera on her floor was blocked off by several helium balloons. Same as in the parking lot.’

  ‘Abducted?’ Marquez asked.

  ‘The tires on her rental car are slashed,’ Josh replied, as Marquez swore, looking worried. ‘Any more from Archer?’

  ‘Just that text, hours ago, telling us to let Issy through Louis Armstrong airport,’ Shepherd said.

  ‘She’s running to him.’

  ‘So why isn’t he answering us?’ Ledger asked.

  ‘To protect her? I dunno. He’ll have a good reason.’

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ Marquez said. ‘He needs our help. He’ll pick the girl up from the airport too, so we could get NOPD or airport security to locate him. Find out what the deal is.’

  ‘He wouldn’t cut us off like this if he didn’t have a real good reason,’ Shepherd said. ‘I trust him. We do what he seems to want and hold back. For now.’

  Troubled and still not satisfied, Marquez looked at the case files she had spread out all over the table, then turned and left the room. She went down the stairs, across the building and ended up at the analyst pool, catching one of the analysts, Tamrah.

  ‘Yo, T, got a moment?’

  ‘What’s up?

  ‘We have everyone in the Bureau’s next of kin contact details on file, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do me a favor? Get Sam Archer’s sister on the line, or her husband.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘I expect so. But they’re his only family here.’ And Sarah lives in D.C., which is where and when we lost contact with Alice, she thought, watching Tamrah bring up the relevant files.

  McGuinness used a member of Chalky’s family to track him down and find out where Issy was.

  It had just occurred to Marquez that the same thing might’ve happened to Sam.

  At Louis Armstrong airport, Archer was just opening the back door for Isabel to climb into the car when his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen, but then saw it was a withheld number.

  Any of his people would call from their own cells or unshielded numbers, which they’d been doing all day and which he’d been ignoring.

  He thought of Sarah and that call this morning, threatening her life if he talked to anyone. He answered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I know she ran to you,’ a voice said.

  Archer looked at Isabel inside the car, who was staring back at him, trying to read his face. He watched her initial excitement and relief at being reunited fade, becoming replaced by anxiety as her eyes studied him. She didn’t miss a trick. He gave her a one second gesture with his finger, pointing at the call, then stepped away from the car.

  Bellefonte was walking back down towards them with a bag of potato chips and a sandwich for the girl, but increased his pace when he saw Archer mouthing it’s him. The NOLA detective gave the food to Issy, then reached into his pocket and withdrew his own cell phone. He found the recorder application, and stepping away from the vehicle, out of the girl’s earshot, held it up beside Archer’s phone which was now on speaker.

  ‘You know who this is?’

  ‘I do,’ Archer replied, talking slowly. He’d become accustomed to the Louisiana accent since coming here and spending time with Bellefonte. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’

  ‘Bet you have,’ McGuinness replied.

  ‘I went down to Kemah Boardwalk in Galveston a few days ago. Apparently some kids went missing there, some years back. No-one knows what happened to them.’

  Pause. ‘How tragic.’

  ‘Yeah. As tragic as an incident that took place with a touring family carnival that runs all over Louisiana. Bunch of people fell out of a ride onto concrete, back in 1996. An accident, everyone thought. But not according to a guy who used to work with the show when he was a teenager. He told us all about you and the missing safety pins. Said you two used to be really good pals, before he got suspicious that you were thinking about killing him too.’

  No response. Archer thought McGuinness had hung up
for a moment, but glanced down and saw the call was still connected.

  ‘So?’

  ‘We know you live in Boston. We know you have basically an entire lab’s worth of chemicals in your basement, and put acid in the sprinkler system in case of unwelcome guests. We know you killed seven people in New York, blinded an officer on Boston’s Special Operations team, murdered another and crippled the rest of their task force with nails and shrapnel you packed in the walls with explosives.’

  ‘Shouldn’t go where they’re not invited. I don’t like break-ins.’

  ‘So what about those kids at Kemah? And why does Isabel Vargas have to die?’

  ‘That’s not her real name.’

  ‘It is now.’

  ‘I got paid to get rid of her. I don’t leave things unfinished.’

  ‘You didn’t get a dime for those children in Texas.’

  A laugh came down the phone. ‘Pays to keep your hand in.’

  ‘We’ll find you. Know that.’

  ‘I’m planning on it. We meet tonight. You give me the girl, your sister lives. You don’t, my employer’s men will take turns raping her before killing her. They seem the type to enjoy that shit. I’ll call you back in ten when y’all had a chance to fully imagine them options.’ He laughed. ‘Not like she can run away, is it.’

  During the call, Vargas had emerged from the Terminal, eliciting a squeal of excitement from inside the car, and Isabel had leapt out, running over to hug her adoptive mother with as much force as she had with Archer.

  However, when Vargas looked over at Archer, her smile faded, seeing him holding the phone with Bellefonte’s cell recording the conversation beside it.

  ‘Sarah’s not answering her phone,’ Archer’s brother-in-law Jack Hardy told Marquez worriedly. ‘I called her office and the same deal.’

  ‘And she’s there today? Not in court or meeting a client?’

  ‘Her assistant Kelly is always there, even if Sarah isn’t. Nothing from either of them.’

  ‘We need to get Metro on it,’ Josh said, once she’d passed on what Jack had said. He’d come down from upstairs and joined her just in time to hear the call.

  ‘I’ll get them to check out her office,’ Tamrah said.

  ‘OK.’ Marquez ended the call, and looked at Josh.

  ‘Archer’s sister?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Got a feeling they won’t find her in D.C., right now.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘If I had to guess, I’d say she’s been taken to Baltimore.’

  FORTY NINE

  ‘So what do we do?’ Bellefonte asked, as soon as he, Vargas and Archer had played the recording back. The three of them were standing away from the car, the doors closed. Issy was inside eating her food, the three adults not wanting her to hear the recording or their conversation.

  ‘Before we decide on a plan, what happened to you?’ Archer asked Vargas. She told them quickly about Vincent’s story, how she’d been apprehended, her escape through the streets of D.C. and what Bianca Stefani had planned, describing their face-to-face encounter and short journey in the car. After she was done, Archer and Bellefonte reciprocated, telling her about Six Flags, McGuinness’ employment there and the time he’d spent in the ruins of the park, post-Katrina with the evidence they’d found of his activities.

  ‘So should we get Isabel into protective custody?’ Bellefonte suggested.

  ‘If we get police involved, they’ll kill my sister. These people aren’t playing around.’

  ‘I’ve been in our Department for over twenty years,’ Bellefonte told them. ‘I know who we can trust.’

  ‘That helps us, not her.’ Archer thought about it, then looked at them both. ‘If we don’t hand Issy over, which clearly we’re not gonna do, Sarah dies. We also don’t know who’s keeping tabs on us right now. We took every possible step to convince the world Issy had been shot. We smuggled her out of the country, and then kept her new location in a foreign country a mystery, a secret known by very few. Yet McGuinness still managed to find out somehow and track her down.’

  ‘Thought that was because of the ME?’ Bellefonte said.

  ‘He knew she was alive, but not exactly where she was.’

  ‘He just won’t quit,’ Vargas said. ‘The bitch from Baltimore won’t either. She’s as crazy as he is.’

  ‘And more innocent people are going to die if they get in their way.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Bellefonte asked again.

  ‘We can make a stand,’ Archer replied, after a pause. ‘Draw them out. Let them think they’re winning. Then smash them before they realise what’s happening.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If we can eliminate McGuinness, as well as Stefani with her guys if they show up, and have Metro or Baltimore PD on stand-by to rescue Sarah once we locate her, she could survive.’

  ‘That’s a lot of ifs,’ Bellefonte said.

  ‘And it all depends on us dropping them before Stefani can give the order to her guys, once they realise they’re under attack,’ Vargas replied.

  ‘Any better ideas, I’m listening. But we can’t keep running and running. It’ll never end.’

  Pause.

  ‘Where are you planning to do this?’ Bellefonte asked. ‘In the city? Just the three of us? Like you said, we don’t hit them fast, your sister will get murdered.’

  ‘Somewhere we’ll hold the tactical advantage, where we can draw them out. And people not involved in this won’t be at risk.’

  It took a moment, but then the NOPD detective caught Archer’s drift. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a bad idea.’

  ‘We plan it out carefully, it can work,’ Archer said. ‘In fact, I think it’s the perfect place.’

  ‘McGuinness worked there before Katrina, and lived there after. He’ll know the park inside-out. That’s his backyard, Sam. Not ours.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he’ll think. We can use that against him. He’ll get cocky.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘He’ll make mistakes. Everyone does, especially when they’re overconfident. And it’s isolated. Out there, no risk of anyone innocent getting in the way.’ He looked at Bellefonte. ‘Alice is dead on. They’re never gonna stop. We have to end this now, for good. Or one of them will succeed.’

  Vargas was nodding in agreement. ‘Stefani told me she’d never quit hiring men like McGuinness to come after Issy, until one of them got her. You shoulda seen the hate on this bitch’s face. She’s crazy.’

  ‘We tell McGuinness to meet us at Six Flags, good chance he lets her know too,’ Bellefonte said. ‘And if she shows up, she ain’t gonna come alone. Or unarmed. Far from it.’

  ‘That’s what I’m expecting. So we plan for that.’ Archer glanced at Vargas. ‘We’ve done something like this before.’

  Bellefonte exhaled slowly as he looked at his two NYPD counterparts, noting the strain on their faces but also their determination. He could see they were both tired, but at the same time, recognised they were going to see this through. With or without him.

  ‘You really think just the three of us could beat them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Archer said, looking at Vargas. ‘We plan smart? I think we could. But what’s the alternative? Issy hunted for the rest of what could end up being a very short life?’

  ‘We’ve got another big problem, if we get into it with them at the park,’ Vargas added.

  ‘Resident security,’ Archer said, as she nodded. They’d told her about the rotations who kept an eye on Six Flags to prevent unauthorised walk-ins.

  ‘They see us or the gang from Baltimore, they’ll be straight on the radio or dialling 911,’ she said. ‘If Stefani’s crew get one whisper that NOPD are getting involved…’

  ‘Are we sure Stefani or McGuinness will hear radio chatter?’ Bellefonte said. ‘From down here?’

  ‘I’m not running that risk,’ Archer said. ‘It’s not hard to cut into a police radio scanner if you ha
ve the right gear. And if they spot back-up showing up at the park, they’ll know we started yapping.’

  ‘If we do this, I’ll deal with the guards,’ Bellefonte said, seeing the pair weren’t going to be swayed. ‘Tell them there’s an operation going on and I’m taking over for the night.’

  ‘And if they try to call your division for confirmation?’ Vargas asked.

  ‘I’ll secure them and take their weapons. We’re gonna need all the firepower we can get, anyway.’

  ‘You’ll be in seriously deep shit.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of wearing a badge, anyway,’ he said. ‘Might as well go out with a bang, right?’ He looked at the other two, his flash of levity fading. ‘So, assuming we make it through, what happens after to your sister?’

  ‘We call Shep and the others, and try to locate her as fast as we can,’ Archer said. ‘Inform Metro in D.C. and police in Baltimore.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to brief him before? Get Metro and Baltimore PD to start scoping it out?’

  ‘I can’t take that risk. All it’d take would be a mistake by any one of them and she’s dead.’ He sighed. ‘Police there should have a good idea where these guys hang out if they’ve taken her there. Somehow, we try to get her back before whoever’s holding her realises we took out Stefani and McGuinness.’

  ‘I love your confidence. That’s one narrow timeframe, my man.’

  ‘Story of my life.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m done running,’ Vargas said quietly. Archer nodded, having continued throughout the conversation to monitor the passengers exiting the airport through the Terminal doors, a stone’s throw from the three cops and Issy, who was still sitting patiently in the car, far more relaxed now Archer and Vargas were close by.

  ‘So am I.’ He looked at her, then at Bellefonte. ‘Let’s take them on.’

  ‘Is the girl with you?’ McGuinness asked, once Archer had called him back. He was talking with him inside the car on speaker, Vargas having taken Issy out for the moment to ‘stretch their legs’ and catch up after their respective flights.

  ‘No. But I know where she is.’

  ‘You lie to me, you’ll regret that shit. One of my employer’s men told me all about the family photos your bitch sister had in her office. Ya’ll seem to know some of the things I like doing to kids.’