“What did you—you asshole!” the wife exclaimed as she ran at him with the knife in front of her.
Steven reacted, hurling the loveseat that had been the useless barrier between him and Barton. The sofa slammed into her, knocking her down. Something cracked and broke. Was it bone breaking, or the couch? In his mind she was a bloody mess under the sofa’s corpse.
Two bodyguards come in from the other direction with guns drawn. Steven turned as they raised their guns to fire. He mentally pushed in their general direction, turning off the brightness of the bullets the way he might slow any other object. They halted and dropped to the floor.
Both men fired again, each firing twice in rapid succession. Four more bullets halted and fell not even halfway to him.
“Kill him!” Barton’s wife shrieked as she struggled to lift the sofa off of her. At least she wasn’t dead.
Steven felt bolder now. Guns weren't the tremendous advantage to the men they would have been otherwise. He focused on one of the guns, forcing it around. He moved the trigger to fire the gun and the gun’s wielder looked on in startled horror as he shot his partner. The bullet tore into the second man’s shoulder and that man cried out just as startled.
The wounded guard stumbled sideways, clutching at his shoulder, until he bumped into a wall. The other guard, a big and burly Hispanic man with black hair slicked back into a ponytail, charged at Steven with a yell. Steven simply deflected the man, changing the angle of his momentum and adding to it. The man soared through the open window and fell, screaming in confused terror.
The shifting sofa claimed Steven’s attention as Barton’s wife finally got out from under it. She reached for the knife where it fell and got up to one knee. The two guards from the elevator lobby came in. They both raised guns they had already drawn.
“Get down! Put your hands on the floor,” one man commanded. Steven now knew their guns weren't a threat to him, but the noise would bring others to get involved. He didn't know how many he could stop. It was time to go.
“He pushed Andrew out the window!” Barton’s wife screamed furiously.
Steven hurled the longer couch at the two new guards. It slammed into them and he heard a crunch—part of the couch or maybe ribs. Both men were down and neither made any other immediate movements.
Barton’s wife, now standing and brandishing the knife, backed into the kitchen screaming, “Stay away from me you bastard!” Terror and horror and befuddlement warred around her wide eyes.
Steven moved to the window. There were people down in the street. It wasn't enough people to call a crowd, but more gathered. Many of them looked up at the gaping window.
Two more men were coming from the bedrooms. They also entered the room with guns out and up. Time to get out. He launched one of them into the other and they both crumpled to the carpet.
He moved out through the still-open door to the elevator lobby. He considered the three elevator doors in a row and a door labeled, ‘stairs.’ Stairs would take too long, he decided; it was time to test more limits.
He glared at the doors to the center elevator and they slid open obediently. None of the elevators were moving. He stepped into the elevator shaft and let himself fall. He stopped himself short in time to step lightly on the roof of the elevator. He was thrilled and scared and proud all at once.
The doors parted for him and he stepped out into a third-floor hallway. He ghosted down the remaining stairs to the ground floor.
A crowd lingered in the elevator lobby, and police officers were escorting them out of the building. He moved into the crowd, praying no one recognized him, as a group of policemen moved into the stairwell behind him.
Red and blue strobing lights lit the night outside. He walked with part of the crowd until he passed the barricade line of police cars. A taxi stopped amidst the confusion. He opened the door and slid himself onto the seat.
He remembered the intersection near his hotel, the only address he could think of. Buildings and what little other traffic there was passed by outside while he rode in silence. Still more police cars raced, brighter from their momentum than their red and blue strobes, to the scene. Numbness buried him. Not just the physical numb he was so used to, but an emotional numb. He was calm. He realized he expected to be shaking, but he wasn't. There were no signs of pursuit or being followed, but he closed his eyes and tracked other cars around him to be sure.
He had killed two men and hurt others. Wasn’t he supposed to feel something about that? But he didn’t. It was just a thing that happened. Ignoring panhandlers as he walked past them bothered him more than this did.
He'd made one man shoot his partner. What if that'd been a head shot?
He made it partly Barton’s fault. Barton had provoked it. Barton was going to kill him in his sleep. He was only alive because he happened to wake up and because he reacted the way he did. He told himself being in that place must have touched upon some fractured part of his former self. The man who reacted that way was the older, criminal him. It didn't mean that was the person he was now.
When the car dimmed to a halt he paid the driver cash, including a decent tip but not one so big to be remarkable. He got out and quietly walked the four uneventful blocks back to the motel.
CHAPTER 31 – GOING IN
The Morrison hotel, while not the tallest, or the most expensive, or the most famous, was still a well-known site in Bay City. Built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and ‘30s, its art déco style had a classic feel Rachel liked. She had never been inside it, for the Morrison was the kind of hotel dignitaries stayed in, where guests wore nice suits and designer dresses and the staff delivered white-tablecloth quality breakfasts on silver platters.
She never liked these kinds of places, or their snobby, elitist patrons. Elegant white men in tuxedos tended to the few older, white rich guests still in the lobby, while black men in suits pushed carts. This time of night, nearly ten, she was surprised to see as many people in the lobby as she did.
A pair of uniformed officers, both women of color like herself, squirmed near the elevators, understandably out of place in this holdout of white male privilege. She offered the pair a sympathetic nod as she entered an elevator.
She already knew the room number, 1410. Sixteen stories tall, the hotel still fell eight floors short of the condominium tower Ambrose had entered.
Lieutenant Thorne stood with a cohort of police officers, some in uniform and some not. Thorne introduced her to the team, some of which she had met at briefings before and some borrowed from a more local precinct.
“So here’s the problem,” Thorne said, leading her to the balcony door. The tower across the corner was an upscale mix of gray stone and shiny steel, some windows black and some clear. Much more modern than the more classic, yellowed stone facade of the hotel.
“Meet what the Vice people call Barton Tower,” Thorne explained. “Barton owns the whole building and lives in the closer penthouse suite up there. Vice won’t let me or the guys in until they get here. Somebody should be here any minute.”
Some of the windows in the penthouse suite glowed as none of the penthouse-level windows were blackened. The biggest set of windows, expansive floor-to-ceiling ones, led into a room where a couple of people milled about, but the hotel suite was a few stories too low to see into the room.
“Hey, can we get up on the roof and maybe see what’s going on in there?” she asked.
“Problem two,” Thorne complained. “Barton has a helipad on the roof. A couple years ago a trio of thieves tried to break in through said roof. Ever since then he’s had a watchdog drone on the roof. It also surveys nearby rooftops for ‘suspicious activity.’ Which would include us if we're sitting up there with binoculars.”
“Warrant?”
“Problem three. Barton’s someone the local judges are really careful around. Unless we can show proof that Ambrose is actually in Barton’s condo we can’t get the warrant. The reasoning is that Barton probably woul
dn’t shelter a federal fugitive in his own condo, so he could be in any unit in the building. Nobody is gonna give us the kind of warrant to lock down the whole tower to do a room-by-room.” Thorne turned away from her to face out the balcony window and sighed.
“So we know he’s in the building but we can’t get him,” she summarized for him.
“Not right now. Coffee’s coming. Should be here in a bit. The next question is how long do we sit here and wait?”
She let the question go unanswered, and they stood in silence. Radio chatter confirmed a lack of activity at all the building’s exits. Nine different numbered teams watched the building.
Things remained quiet until the door banged open. An older white woman in a gray blazer and black slacks barged in. The scowl on her face emphasized the sagging beginning in her cheeks.
“You must be Moore,” the woman accosted the only other woman in the room.
“Special Agent Rachel Moore, yes,” she confirmed, extending her hand. The woman ignored it, instead opening her blazer to expose the captain’s badge on her belt and then crossing her arms contemptuously.
“I’m Captain Whitman, vice. You’re just trampled over a complicated situation, agent.”
“I’ve been given some of the details,” Rachel pointed out. “I’m not here to step on toes, just to apprehend a federal fugitive.”
“Yeah. Well, Barton has to be treated kinda carefully, agent. Otherwise lots of things can get ugly and more complicated.”
“I understand a lot of people, in multiple departments, are after him. Trust—”
“I don’t think you understand shit, agent,” Whitman interrupted. “Damned straight multiple departments. Vice, Organized Crime, Major Crimes...you want the whole damned list? Here’s what you need to understand, agent: This is my guy, my operation. There’s a shit-ton of money and resources already committed around this guy. You are not going to screw that up for your little—”
“SHIT!” Detective Martín yelled. Rachel, and everyone else in the room, turned to look out the windows in the direction a uniformed officer pointed. A hole gaped in one of the big windows in Barton’s suite.
“Someone just went through the window!”
Discretion now less important than knowing what was going on, Rachel slid open the balcony door and stepped out, ignoring Whitman’s protests. A body lay on the street below, a burlier looking figure than her scrawny fugitive.
In a blink, the hotel room bustled with activity. Half the people ran out of the room and headed for stairs and elevators while the other half barked orders and questions over radios. A pair of gunshots rang out across the open air between the buildings. An instant later four more in rapid succession.
“Pat!” she called out, “get that all cordoned off. Captain Whitman, I think things just got more complicated. And for the record,” she added, “not by any of my doing.”
She turned to head back inside—waiting here was no longer useful—when she heard a scream. She turned in time to watch a second body falling. This one a pony-tailed man in a suit.
“Screw this,” she decided. “Pat, call it, we’re going in.” She ran across and out of the hotel room while Whitman raged questions and accusations. Not career-building responses.
Thorne caught up before the elevator door closed just in time to come between her and Whitman. Two other officers joined them. Thorne radioed instructions to the numbered teams to move in, to seal off the area but get civilians out of the way. One of the other officers relayed instructions to dispatch to get ambulances on the scene. “Multiple shots fired, at least two down,” the officer relayed.
The elevator ride was an eternity, but faster than stairs. By the time she made it out of the hotel, walls of police cruisers had blocked off the streets and red and blue strobes stabbed at the night and reflected off towers all around. People already spilled out of the building, and uniformed officers directed them.
By the time she crossed the street and made it into the tower’s main lobby, a pair of uniformed security men stood out of the way as officers surged into the stairwells and commandeered elevators. She and Thorne pushed their way into one. She was not about to sprint up twenty-three flights of stairs. Thorne followed her lead.
“First body was Barton,” Thorne relayed from his radio earpiece. “Second one of his thugs. Gun with him has been fired. Techs are on the way.”
“Whitman’s gonna love that,” she replied, pleased the vice captain had been slower and hadn't kept up in the building-to-building dash. She’s probably still bitching and trying to figure out what went wrong instead of commanding. She sighed and shook her head, disappointed.
Uniformed officers there before her moved to secure the condo.
The scene inside was one of chaos only beginning to settle. A crying, burly man in a suit lay cuffed on the floor, a uniformed officer applying pressure to a bleeding shoulder wound. Overturned couches lay haphazardly in places no interior decorator would tolerate. A large plasma screen TV hung shattered on one wall. Officers snapped pictures of the whole scene including fired bullets and spent shell casings lying on the floor near the center of the room. Two other suited men sat against a wall, their hands cuffed behind them, both looking bruised and battered.
One officer recognized Thorne and led them to the kitchen where another watched over an auburn-haired white woman in a satin robe. She looked similar in age to Rachel and perhaps slightly pudgy. Fit and muscled legs showed below the robe hem resting on her thighs as she sat on a stool. She pushed hair out of her face with a hand holding a wad of tissues. Her other hand, sprouting bruises that continued clear down to her elbow, held an icepack to her cheek and jaw. Her face was red and puffy from crying. Rachel could guess who this was.
“This is Sandy Barton,” the officer explained anyway. “The wife.” The officer excused herself and left the kitchen. An evidence bag enclosed a large kitchen knife on the counter behind Mrs. Barton.
“Mrs. Barton, I’m FBI Special Agent Rachel Moore, this is Lieutenant Thorne from the BCPD. Can you tell us what happened here?”
“There...was a man,” Mrs. Barton began hoarsely, her breath still heavy from sobbing. “Some business associate of my husband’s. I don’t know all of what happened, but the man threw Andrew through the window. Andrew was two-fifty...two-sixty pounds, not someone just anyone can pick up, let alone throw. It doesn’t make any sense.
“I went to see what happened, and, um, the guy was standing there like nothing had happened. I think I screamed. Some of our bodyguards came in, but then the guy threw a goddamned sofa at me! I didn’t see much of what happened for a bit after that. I had to get out from under the couch.” She rubbed at her neck, craning her head far to the side. She winced as she stretched her neck out. Purpling bruises peeked out there, too.
“But then I came back to the kitchen to get away. I grabbed that knife. I thought he was gonna kill everyone. I know there was some fighting. When it got quiet I looked out and saw that one of the men was shot and the other two had been beaten unconscious. I went to grab my phone—it was charging in the bedroom—and call nine-one-one, but by the time I got to it there were cops already here.”
“Do you know who the man was?” Thorne had a notebook out.
“I know...I know who my husband is...was, detective, and the kind of work he did. I stayed out...I stayed out of that part of his life.” Her breath got heavier and her shoulders lifted, but her eyes stayed steady. She didn't move her hands; her left still pressed the cold pack to her face and her right stayed in her lap still clutching the wad of tissues.
“Could you tell us what he looked like?” Rachel asked.
Now her eyes darted around a little. “Brown hair...brown hair, I think. Um, dark jacket. Uh, blue jeans, maybe? Yeah...yeah, blue jeans.” Rachel wasn’t buying it.
“Mrs. Barton,” Thorne asked, “if we brought in a sketch artist, do you think you could help us get a description of the man?”
“Um, I don’t
know. It was all pretty confusing. I...I don’t know that I saw much or very clearly. Maybe one of my husband’s men could help you more than I can. I’ll try if you want, I guess.”
“I understand, ma’am,” Thorne said with a frowning gaze the woman didn't meet. Rachel even more didn't buy it. The words were right, the tone was right, the inflections were right. Something wasn’t though.
“L-T,” an officer said from the doorway to the living room, “I think you two oughta come see something.”
She followed the officer, confident Barton’s wife wouldn't be going anywhere, and Thorne followed.
A plain-clothes detective stood near the center of the room, slowly turning circles and scratching his head. She had met the man before but couldn't remember his name. Ramirez, maybe.
“Get out of my goddamned way!” Captain Whitman bowled into the room, shouldering aside policemen at the doorway. “You!” she blustered at Rachel.
Rachel raised her hand before the red-faced captain could say more. “Captain, ‘your guy’ is out on the street in a pool of his own blood. Down there, I’d consider giving you jurisdiction. Here, right now? This is a homicide scene. Unless you’re a homicide captain, your jurisdiction no longer trumps mine. You aren’t, are you?”
“No, I’m—”
“I don’t care. My fugitive did this. ‘Your guy’ might be dead partly because you didn’t want me in your precious way. You’re done here tonight, captain. You can take your precious little white ass downstairs where ‘your guy’ is.” She would probably pay for that outburst later, but oh, it was so satisfying. Worth it.
Whitman’s face screwed up in a rage about to speak, or yell, or scream.
“Uh, uh,” Thorne said, interposing himself between them. Whitman stormed off in a huff.
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