NYPD Red (16 page)

THE SUBWAY WAS out of the question.
Not with a bag full of C4. The bomb-sniffing dogs would have him for lunch.

And now that the cops had seen him, even a taxi was risky. Every yellow cab in the city had a decal posted on its rear window:
THIS VEHICLE IS EQUIPPED WITH CAMERA SECURITY. YOU WILL BE PHOTOGRAPHED.

The hell I will,
Gabriel decided.

It took him ten minutes to flag down a gypsy cab.

There was no meter, and the driver quoted a price back into lower Manhattan. “Fifty bucks.”

Gabe opened the door, shoved his backpack in, and flopped onto the grease-stained, duct-taped rear seat.

Any other time and he would have haggled with the guy.
Fifty bucks? For what? To ride in a hot, filthy death trap that stinks of pine freshener and whatever disgusting Middle Eastern camel shit you’re chewing on? Fifty bucks so I can listen to you rant nonstop on your cell phone with the rest of your goddamn terrorist network? I’ll give you thirty-five, and you’re lucky I’m not a suicide bomber, or I’d blow your ass to Mecca and back.

It could have been a good scene. But not today. Today he had more important things to do.

He gave up on leaving messages for Lexi. Wherever she was, she obviously didn’t want him to know. He’d deal with her later. First he had to deal with Mickey Peltz. He dialed Mickey’s cell.

“Hello.”

He couldn’t believe it. Mickey picked up.

“Mick, where are you?”

“Manhattan. Cops picked me up and brought me to the 19th, put me in an interrogation room, and told me to wait for these two detectives.”

“Jordan and MacDonald?”

Mickey let out a low whistle. “Man, you’re good.”

“It was easy. Those are the same two who are looking for me.”

“Well, don’t worry about me saying anything. I’m not under arrest. They just want to talk to me, and trust me, I’m not talking.”

“Did they call your parole officer yet?”

“They made me call him from the loft. That’s the deal. He’s supposed to be in the room when they question me, but he’s in Sing Sing at a hearing till one o’clock. So now I’m just sitting here with my thumb up my ass till he shows up.”

“Mickey, I can’t hear you,” Gabe said. “Bad cell connection.”

“I said I’m just sitting here waiting for my parole—”

Gabe hung up.

Mickey was an idiot. He’d be oh so cool and cavalier with the cops, but the PO would crush him in no time. Gabe was already writing the scene in his head.

And that would be that. Mickey would open up like a three-dollar hooker at a lumberjack convention.

Gabriel’s cell rang.

Lexi. Please let it be Lexi.

He checked the caller ID. Mickey.

He didn’t answer. Talking to Mickey was a waste of time. What he had to do now was shut the bastard up.

He had till 1:00.

BY THE TIME he got back to the apartment, Gabriel’s clothes were sweat-soaked all the way through. He wheeled the explosives into the bedroom, stripped down, took a quick shower, and tried to figure out what to wear for the next scene.

Lexi would know, but she wasn’t here. He rummaged through their wardrobe supply and did the best he could.

It was 10:30. He had time before Mickey’s parole officer showed up, but first he needed a drink. He grabbed one of Lexi’s champagne glasses from the dish rack and poured a shot of vodka. Not enough to get him buzzed. Just a little something to take the edge off.

He sat down at Lexi’s computer, booted up, opened Firefox, and checked her recent browser history to see what sites she’d been visiting. It was the usual crap—Perez Hilton, TMZ, Astrology Connection.

He checked her email. Maybe she sent him something and he didn’t get it on his cell. But there was nothing.

He opened her recent document folder. And there it was at the top of the list—AltScene.doc with yesterday’s date.

Alt. Scene? Lexi, what are you thinking?

He double-clicked and the document filled the screen.

Who the hell is Pandemonia Passionata?

He kept reading. Halfway through the scene, he stood up, and stormed off to his closet.

The Walther wasn’t there.

He flung the champagne glass against the wall.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
he screamed, pounding his fist against the closet door.

It wasn’t anger. It was agony.

THERE WERE AT least thirty cops on the scene and none of us saw the gun. But as soon as I heard the first shot, I had no doubt what we had on our hands.
Active shooter—an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.

Our Counterterrorism Bureau issued a book on the subject. I’ve read it three times, and what stands out for me is this:
Active-shooter attacks are dynamic events. Police response depends on the unique circumstances of the incident.

In other words, when the bullets start flying, we can’t tell you what’s going to happen. You’re on your own.

The first shot hit Shelley Trager. He stopped abruptly, his hands to his chest. A potted plant, one of two that stood in solemn repose on either side of the front door, broke his fall, and he slid to the ground, his face contorted in pain.

The crowd hemorrhaged in every direction, and that’s when I got my first look at the shooter. A woman in black. She was standing directly behind the metal barricade, right arm outstretched, gun pointed at the people caught in the front doorway of the funeral home.

Her?
Ninety-six out of every hundred active shooters are men. Our heads had been wrapped around looking for a man.

My gun was out, and I bolted across Madison as she pulled the trigger a second time. She was not a pro. Her one-armed shooting stance was all wrong, and her hand kicked back when she took the shot. I have no idea who she was aiming at, but I watched as the bullet drilled through Henry Muhlenberg’s skull, exiting in a trail of blood, bones, and brains.

The crowd was in chaos. With the barricade trapping them on one side, and the funeral home on another, a handful of people ran north toward 82nd Street, but the bulk of them came running straight at me, heading for the opposite side of Madison. The shooter, who was less than ten feet from Spence and Kylie, turned her gun toward them.

I stopped, trying to line up a clean shot.

And then I went down hard.

A large man in a purple sweatshirt had broadsided me, kicked the gun out of my hand when I hit the ground, fell on top of me, and screamed, “I got him, I got him!”

I heard another shot, then another, then a third, as more wannabe-hero civilians piled on top of me.

I had counted five shots in all. And then nothing. Five seconds passed. Seven. Ten. The gunfire had stopped.

The Counterterrorism Bureau was right. Every active-shooter event is different. I had no idea what was going to happen, and now with my face pressed to the oil-streaked pavement, I had no idea how this one had ended.

I COULD HEAR NYPD coming to my rescue. “Let him up, let him up. He’s a cop.”

“He has a gun,” the fat guy directly on top of me yelled back in a thick southern drawl.

“He’s a
cop,
you idiot. We all have guns. Now get off him.”

And then, from ten feet away, another voice—loud, official, conclusive. “She’s dead.”

Who’s dead?

I was at the bottom of a dogpile that must have been four or five guys high. I could feel the load getting lighter as the uniforms dragged them off one by one.

Finally, the 250-pound guy who brought me down, who turned out to be a high school football coach from Batesville, Mississippi, got up and reached out to help me.

“I’m sorry, Officer. It’s just that I saw you running toward a bunch of people with a gun…”

Who’s dead? WHO’S DEAD???

I stood up, got my bearings, and pushed my way to the front of the funeral home.

“You laying down on the job again?”

It was my partner, service pistol still in her hand, the hint of an inappropriate smile on her face, and, most important, not dead.

“You all right?” I said.

“No. But I’m better off than she is.”

The woman in black was lying on the sidewalk, face up, two bullet holes in her chest, one in her forehead.

“You do that?” I said.

Kylie nodded.

Perfect shot group.

“I saw Trager and Muhlenberg go down,” I said.

“Muhlenberg was dead before he hit the ground,” Kylie said. “Shelley has a few broken ribs, but he’ll be fine.”

“A few broken…how is that possible? I saw him take a direct hit to the chest.”

“The son of a bitch was wearing a vest.”

Trager was lying on Madison, a jacket propping his head up. I knelt down beside him.

He smiled up at me. He still had the crooked teeth of a kid who had grown up in poverty. At this point, he had enough money to straighten them a thousand times over, but he kept them as they were—a daily reminder of his roots.

I smiled back. “You were wearing a vest?” I said.

“My wife bought it for me. I think Bloomingdale’s was having their annual Kevlar sale.”

“Your wife bought you a bulletproof vest?” I said. “Really?”

“She said I’m high enough on the food chain that if some
meshuggener
is out there killing people, odds are I’m on his list. I hate it when she’s right, but in this case I’m willing to make an exception.”

I stood up. “You’re a lucky man, Shelley.”

“I know, I know.” He sighed. “And she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

“Zach. Over here.”

Spence Harrington was sitting on the front step of the funeral home. “You see that?” he said, pointing to a chunk of the building’s brownstone façade that had obviously taken a bullet. “Another half a second, and that would’ve been my head. Kylie shoved me out of the way. Saved my life.”

“I think she saved a lot of lives,” I said.

“You’ve got one hell of a partner,” he said.

“So do you.”

Kylie came over holding the shooter’s purse. “Her name is Alexis Carter, twenty-eight years old.”

“Alexis,” I said. “Lexi. The girlfriend J.J. told us about. What’s her address? He may still be there.”

“She has an Indiana driver’s license. There’s nothing in here that connects her to a New York City address. Damn it, Zach, I never thought about looking for the girlfriend. I was totally focused on looking for a man.”

“We were all looking for a man,” I said. “Gabriel Benoit.”

“And we’re still looking for him,” she said. “Let’s make sure this whole scene is locked down. Have the uniforms get statements from everyone in the crowd. I don’t care if it takes all—Zach…her cell phone. It’s vibrating.”

“Answer it.”

She scrambled to pull the shooter’s cell phone out of the purse. “The ID says ‘Gabe.’ It’s him.”

“Put him on speaker.”

She pushed the answer button. “Hello,” she said.

“Who is this?” the voice on the other end demanded.

“This is Detective Kylie MacDonald, New York City Police Department.”

“Where’s Lexi? Where is she?”

“I have a better question,” Kylie said. “Where are you?”

The line went dead.

THE BIGGER THE crime, the more likely it is that someone important will show up to keep the cops from solving it. In our case, it was a close personal friend of Shelley Trager, who just happened to be the mayor of the city of New York.

Trager was on an EMS stretcher, about to be transported to Lenox Hill Hospital, when the mayor and the rest of his entourage arrived at the crime scene. After congratulating his friend on being smart enough to wear a bulletproof vest, His Honor turned on Kylie.

“Detective MacDonald,” he said. “Aren’t you the one who told me you were going to catch this maniac before he left town? The way you keep promises, you have a bright future ahead of you. As a politician.”

“Stan!” Trager yelled from the stretcher. “If it hadn’t been for MacDonald, there’d be more bodies piled up outside this funeral home than there are inside. The same goes for Detective Jordan. You got good cops here. Don’t be a schmuck. Let them do their job.”

“Fine,” the mayor huffed. “And I’ll do mine. I’m going to pull the plug on Hollywood on the Hudson week.”

Trager winced in pain as he propped himself up on one elbow. “Hop in the ambulance, Stan, and I’ll drop you off at Bellevue, because you’re out of your fucking mind. What message do you want to send to Hollywood? If the shit hits the fan, New Yorkers run from a fight? Or that we’ve got the fastest, smartest, bravest police force in the world, and nobody—anywhere—backs up the film industry like NYPD Red?”

“So what are you saying, Shelley? If we quit now, the terrorists win?”

“I don’t know who would win,” Trager said, “but I can damn well tell you who would lose. You bail out now, and next November you’ll be lucky to get half a dozen votes on Staten Island. Grow a pair, Stanley.”

“All right. I’ll give it one more day.” He turned to Kylie. Anyone who thought he might apologize for jumping down her throat, or at least congratulate her for bringing down an active shooter, didn’t know him very well. “Who’s the dead girl?” he said.

She told him.

“Now what?” he asked.

“We’re going through her text messages and her voice mails,” Kylie said. “She’s only one degree of separation from Gabriel Benoit, the guy we’re looking for. We’re closing in on him.”

“I’ll ask you one more time,” the mayor said to Kylie. “You still think you’re going to catch this guy?”

“Yes, sir,” she said without missing a beat. “Absolutely.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Kylie actually sounded more confident than she did when she answered the same question two nights and four dead bodies ago.