Death By Degrees (20 page)

“There are two chambers,” said someone behind me. I turned to see another plainclothes officer standing there. “The first holds a piece of the rock used to seal the tomb after Jesus was laid to rest inside. The second is where Jesus was buried by His disciples.”

“And you can usually go in?”

“Briefly. They keep everyone moving very quickly since every visitor wants to go in. People will usually go in and say a quick prayer. It’s beautiful inside, but there isn’t much time to look around and admire it all.”

“People don’t look happy about it being closed.”

“I was very surprised when they told us you wanted it closed. And the church was far from happy about it.”

“It had already been cleared though? The bomb dogs and everything?”

“Yes, about an hour before we were told to close it.”

I looked at the Edicule and thought I saw someone moving inside. “Is anyone supposed to be in there?”

“No, there was a priest who had gone in. We assumed that there was no problem there. It was more to keep the civilians out.”

I walked toward the Edicule and the figure presented himself. It was an older man wearing the robes of a Greek Orthodox priest – long, flowing black robes and what looked to me to be a cap like the one graduates wear, only taller. Had this been the figure I had seen? The dark robes and the way they moved gave the appearance of something ethereal, like a shadow or a shade. Or had it all been a trick of my mind and the light?

He had a long, gray beard and glasses on, as well as bushy grey eyebrows. He looked the part, the elderly priest who was devoted to his calling.

And then he spoke.

“Hello, Lincoln,” he said, taking the glasses off first. He walked toward us, stepping out of the Edicule and walking across the room to us. He stopped about twenty feet away and took off what I now knew were a fake beard and eyebrows. When the hat came off, it was obvious that it was Crawford.

I had my gun out and on him within milliseconds.

“Not so fast, Lincoln,” he said, slowly raising his hands. I saw it then, a small device with a red button on top – a detonator.

“Make sure they’re coming, we need the bomb squad,” I whispered to the officer standing beside me. He withdrew carefully, stepping backwards without taking his eyes off of Crawford.

People had started to notice what was going on, and the sight of me pointing a gun at a man in priest’s robes was not going well. Some panicked, some were yelling. The first officer came and began shouting in Hebrew. It took some time and a lot of screaming, but people began to turn their attention from me to getting out of the church.

“I can’t let them all leave, Lincoln. You must know that,” Crawford said. His eyes turned toward the detonator as he moved it in front of his body – he was preparing to press it.

I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t. I already had the gun up and on him, all I needed to do was aim and pull the trigger. It wasn’t an easy shot and I only had one chance to hit, if I missed he could still trigger the bomb.

I gently squeezed out one round and it seemed as if everything went into slow-motion. The bullet entered Crawford’s throat just below his Adam’s apple and exited out the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord. He slumped to the ground, the detonator rolling out of his hand onto the floor.

It was the only option, a hit elsewhere could have still given him a chance to detonate the bomb, or it could have caused his hand to clench automatically. Total paralysis was the only option.

I holstered my gun and ran up to Crawford who was bleeding from his neck. He was sputtering as blood dripped from the sides of his mouth.

He tried to speak, but couldn’t. What came out was a series of guttural gasps, but if I focused I could tell what he was trying to say.

“You failed. My heart,” he said. “The bomb.”

“What?”

“If I die… you die.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but as he repeated himself I understood. The detonator wasn’t the only way to trigger the bomb, he had it wired to a heart monitor as well. If his heart stopped, the bomb would go off.

We didn’t have much time. Chen and Kara came running up behind me and stopped when they saw us, me kneeling over Crawford.

“The bomb is in there,” I said, pointing to the Edicule. “I shot him before he could detonate it, but it’s rigged to a heart monitor.”

Chen knelt down and pulled up the sleeves of Crawford’s robe. On his left wrist was something that looked like a watch, but must have been the device he was talking about.

“It monitors his pulse,” Chen said. “We can’t let him die. Clear everyone out!”

The officer began yelling directions in Hebrew. People were already in a panic from my shooting Crawford, and now they began to truly panic. They pushed and shoved each other trying to get out of the crowded church. Some fell and I could hear their screams as people trampled them. Self-preservation was a powerful thing.

I didn’t care anymore. Crawford was the only person with the answers I needed and he was dying in front of me. I had no intentions of leaving.

“Where is she?”

He sputtered some more, his eyes started to roll back. I shook him, slapped his face, and brought him back to attention.

“Where the fuck is she?”

“Not here… France.”

“Where?”

“You won’t,” he stopped and more blood trickled out of his mouth, “find her.” The next word chilled me to the bone. “Underground.”

“Is she alive?”

The sound he made sounded like a harsh mix of laughter and death rattle. I was losing him.

“Is she alive, Crawford?” I was screaming at him, shaking him, doing everything I could to keep him present.

He looked me in the eyes, his cold, hard stare meeting mine, and spoke. Whether or not it was clear, I heard him clearly, like we were having a normal conversation.

“You’ll never find her. Not before it’s too late.”

With that his eyes rolled back once more and I could see the life leaving his body.

“No, you’re not dying yet. Tell me where she is!”

I started doing CPR, pushing down on his chest as hard as I could to keep the blood flowing. More than anything, I wanted to bring him back. Staying alive was secondary. Every time I compressed his chest it pushed blood past the monitor he wore on his wrist, every compression bought us a few more seconds.

“Fucking tell me,” I yelled, screaming at a dead man. “Tell me where she is.” Tears were streaming down my face, my blood was boiling and all I could see was images of her locked away somewhere wasting away to nothing.

“You fucking son of a bitch, wake up! Tell me.”

Chen came out and saw what I was doing. “Link, keep going, not everyone is out yet. They’re trying to defuse the bomb now.”

“Go,” I said to him. “Get Kara and get out.”

“No, Link.”

I wasn’t going to lose everyone. My voice deepened to almost a growl as I turned and told him to get out. That time he listened.

“Keep going, Link, don’t stop, okay?”

I thought I could see a tear in his eye as he turned to leave, to try to make it through the crush of people jammed up in the doorways.

I kept pushing on Crawford’s chest until I could feel the muscles in my chest and arms burning. With every push I hoped he would sputter some more and come back to life, ready to finally answer my questions. It was never going to happen, he was long gone.

How long could I keep this up, how long until there was no more blood to push through his body? Or would the pressure be enough?

It seemed like it had been hours when an officer came out of the Edicule and told me to stop. They had succeeded where Crawford had been convinced we’d fail. The bomb was defused.

It was over.

I stopped the CPR and leaned back. We had won, just barely, but we had won. Voices echoed throughout the domed room and in moments a hush fell over the crowd. People relaxed, they stopped pushing and shoving, some fell to the knees and began to pray, others cheered and applauded. In only a few minutes they had gone from believing they were going to die to knowing that they were saved.

Some seemed to find solace in that fact. They uttered their prayers, hugged their families and marvelled at the gift that they had been given. In reality, they’d never lost anything, it had only been temporarily misplaced. What they had now, that sense of life and joy and happiness and purpose, had been absent long before they walked into this church. It was what we took for granted every single day, but they had found it once more. They never lost a thing.

And yet I had lost so much.

Chapter Twenty-One

I
t was all over. Of course, there was still the paperwork and press conferences, interviews and everything else we needed to do before we could finally put a ‘closed’ stamp on the case file. Since he had started, Crawford had been responsible for sixty-eight deaths, not including his own. I didn’t include Kat among the dead – as far as we were all concerned she was still a missing person. Nothing was going to make me give up hope.

The Israeli officer who had disarmed the bomb had done an incredible job.  I couldn’t imagine having to do that job, everything hinging on you.  And there was a lot riding on it.  If the bomb had gone off, the church likely would have been destroyed and Crawford could have easily reached the death toll he was looking for, somewhere in the range of the Mark of the Beast – 666.

It didn’t take long for the news to break worldwide, and when it did it brought Kat to the forefront. To see her face plastered on international media as the final victim and still missing drove a dagger through my heart.

“It’s everywhere, Chen. TV, radio, internet, everyone is asking where she is. It’s almost more talked about than Crawford’s death and what we prevented here.”

“The lead investigator’s wife is a victim, that’s all they see. It’s drama, Link. More drama for the news, you know how it is.”

Eddie must have heard the conversation. His fingers moved in the flurry I’d grown accustomed to and a new page took over the projection screen. It was a picture of Kat, her profile photo from teaching, on a Facebook page dedicated to her.

“I wasn’t sure about showing this to you, Lincoln. But people are posting condolences and everything here. They’re trying to get the word out to help you bring her home. It’s been up only for an hour now and there are already nearly a hundred thousand likes. They’re pulling for you.”

I was speechless. With that many eyes opened around the world, we’d bring her home soon enough. Someone would see something, someone would call us eventually. But all of this was based on her still being alive.

I never heard anyone come in, didn’t know there was someone behind me until they announced themselves. When I turned around I saw a man standing there in full uniform, medals draped from his chest. He held his hat in his left arm and outstretched his right hand toward me.

“Asaf Shapir,” he said. “I am the Commissioner of the Israeli police.” The Israeli officers in the room that hadn’t noticed his arrival did now. They stood at attention and showed their respect to the head of the police department.

“Thank you,” he said as he shook my hand. I nodded. “You and your team have done unbelievable work here. You’ve save countless lives and one of the most important heritage sites in the country. Words cannot express our gratitude.”

I nodded again, unsure of what to say.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t meet with you sooner, but it wasn’t easy to arrange for everyone we had working on this. There were a lot of strings to pull.”

“I’m sure. Thank you. We wouldn’t have been able to do all of this ourselves.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Detective. I hope that you find her safe and sound. In the meantime, you probably want to be getting back to France. I’ve been told you have children there.”

“Yes,” I said. “They’re staying with Detective Chen’s wife.”

“You’re needed there then, more than you are here. I pulled one more string and got you a flight out of the country and back to Lyon. If you’ll come with me, you’ll leave as soon as we get you to the base.”

“The base?”

“I made one last request of the military. You’ll be home tonight.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearing six in the evening. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but I chose not to argue it. They were bringing me home, that was all that mattered.

“Once your reports are complete, send them through the INTERPOL office to us.”

“Thank you.”

He led me outside to a waiting vehicle and within minutes we were en route to the air force base. I took out my phone and dialed Julie’s number.

“Hello?”

“Daddy, are you coming home now? Julie said you stopped him.”

“Yeah, Link, we did. I’ll be home very soon.”

“Did you find mommy?”

“Not yet, but we’re still looking.”

He started to cry. “I saw her on the news, daddy. Her picture was there and they were saying that she might be dead.”

“She’s not, Link. We’re going to find her.”

“We want you home. Kasia has been crying all day, and I’m trying to be strong because I don’t want her to be scared, but I can’t.”

He was breaking down. I could hear his anguish, picture the tears. I needed to get home.

“You’re doing great, buddy. You keep being the big man, alright? I’m going to be there tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, but I knew he wasn’t. “I love you.”

“Love you too, bud. See you soon.”

I hung up the phone and dried my eyes.

The Commissioner seemed like he wanted to say something, but the right words never seemed right enough. We rode in silence until we arrived at the air force base and I was taken out to the runway to meet my chariot.

An hour later we were well on our way back to France, flying at high altitude somewhere over the Mediterranean.

“I’m still very impressed,” said the pilot midway through the flight. “Almost everyone passes out their first time.”

It had been close, I wasn’t even sure how I’d managed to hold on. Sheer force of will, I guess. The last thing I’d expected to see waiting on the runway was an F-15 fighter jet. It was a training model which allowed for me to have a seat behind the pilot. They fitted me with a flight suit and before I knew it, we were off.

The pilot had gone a little easier on me, avoiding the fifty-thousand feet per minute climb. We reached altitude at nearly sixty-five thousand feet after a couple of minutes and began cruising at over twenty-five-hundred kilometres per hour. Never in a million years.

It was hard to reference how fast we were traveling, but something in me knew it was ridiculous. It had to be. We were only in the air for about an hour when we touched down in Lyon, the French having been kind enough to accept a foreign fighter jet at a civilian airport.

There was a vehicle waiting to take me home and even with the light traffic in Lyon at the time, it seemed like the longest part of the trip. The anticipation of getting home and holding the kids once more was almost too much to handle; the disappointment I felt at coming home alone was.

It didn’t matter. The moment I opened the door and walked in they charged toward me like I had been gone for months. I knelt down and they wrapped their little arms around my neck and squeezed tightly. As we held onto each other, things began to come back together. Bit by bit, the pieces of my world were falling back into place even if they did so around a gaping hole in the middle of the puzzle. The hole would get smaller, but it would never close all the way. Somewhere out there, the last piece of the puzzle was waiting for me to find it.

“I’m home, and I’m not going anywhere else,” I said.

They squeezed tighter.

“I’m sorry, daddy,” Kasia said.

“For what?”

“For not talking to you yesterday and today.”

“It’s okay, honey, you were upset. It’s fine.”

I turned my head to look at her face, the red and puffy eyes as she wept into my shoulder. Link was crying too, but I could see relief in his eyes. He’d done a good job as man of the house, a burden no one his age should have ever been required to bear.

“You did good, Link,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of your sister.”

He looked up at me and smiled through the tears.

We were by no means complete, but we were together once more.