Takeover (15 page)

“Not a thing. About that car—they didn’t want me to take it. I sort of stole it.”

Now Lucas actually grinned. “A car-stealing scientist lady. I’m
so
glad you decided to join us, Theresa.”

“My point is, they don’t want you to have it. You might want to leave sooner rather than later, in case they move it away again.”

He threw a glance over his shoulder, but said, “I’m not too worried about that. Bobby and I can shoot one or two of you before any cop could even make it to the car.”

“Unless they use an armored vehicle,” she persisted—perhaps unwisely, but she so desperately wanted them to
leave. Now,
so she could get to the hospital and see Paul before she was fired and possibly jailed for interfering with a police operation. “They could just push the car out of the way without exposing anyone to your fire.”

“Damn,” Bobby said. “That would screw up the transmission for sure.”

“Relax,” Lucas told him. “We see anyone or anything come near the car, we shoot one of these fine people here. That will get them to back off. No one’s going to do anything to your pearl.”

“They probably already have,” his partner grumbled. “You can’t trust them.”

The little boy gave one more convulsive shudder, lifted his head from Theresa’s shoulder, looked directly into her eyes, and screamed.

12:36
P.M
.

“I don’t know any Oliver,” Patrick said. The idea of Theresa’s trying to pass them a clue made him nervous. He wondered what the hell she was doing—first she walked into the lion’s den to save Paul Cleary, his partner, whom
he
should have been saving, and then she starts playing Nancy Drew? If she got out of this alive, he would kill her.

The FBI special agent in charge had been and gone, shaking his head in disbelief at Theresa’s actions. Assistant Chief of Police Viancourt had wandered back in and taken a seat at the small desk, his gaze ping-ponging between Patrick and the hostage negotiator.

“She must have said that for a reason,” Cavanaugh insisted. “Who might know what she meant? Jason, get us through to that ambulance. Maybe the wounded cop knows.”

“Or the lab,” Patrick said. “Her boss, Leo, or Don might know.”

In five minutes Jason reported that Paul had lapsed into unconsciousness and the medics didn’t think he would be coming around soon. In fact, the medics didn’t sound too enthusiastic about his
overall condition, Jason added to Patrick, using a gentle tone that only grated on the older cop’s nerves.

All Patrick needed to know was that Paul was still alive. Though he wondered why…. Why hadn’t Lucas taken a second shot, finished him off? Sure, Paul had been incapacitated and was no longer a threat, but still, most guys kept shooting once they began. Maybe Lucas thought of Theresa’s idea even before she did. Bargaining over Paul had certainly gotten him what he wanted.

Or maybe the guy just wasn’t a killer. But then, what had happened to Cherise?

Cavanaugh, meanwhile, had Don on the speakerphone.
“¿Qué hace allí?”
the DNA analyst snapped.
“¿Cómo pudo usted dejar Theresa ir—”

“La sacaremos,”
Cavanaugh said.
“No se preocupe.”

“You had
better
get her out safely! How could you let her go in there in the first place?”

Patrick leaned over the desk to interject, “Don, who’s Oliver?”

The young man paused, probably in surprise. “There’s a guy named Oliver in Toxicology.”

Cavanaugh explained what Theresa had said to him. “We’re assuming that’s some kind of clue. What is her relationship with Oliver? Are they friends?”

“Nobody’s friends with Oliver—he’s too big a pain in the ass. But Theresa can get more out of him than anyone else. She gave him some stuff from that dead guy this morning. That’s probably what she meant. You want me to transfer you?”

“No, stay with me a minute. Jason will get Oliver on another line. What can you tell me about Theresa? Have you ever seen her under pressure?”

“
Pressure?
We work for Leo.”

Apparently Don also had them on speakerphone, because they heard the boss’s voice in the background. “Hey!”

“This job is nothing
but
pressure. Theresa handles it. The bodies just keep coming in, attorneys get in her face, she just gets colder and quieter.”

“Is she likely to take action?”

Patrick wondered why the hell Cavanaugh wasn’t asking
him.
He had known Theresa since the day she was born—but then Cavanaugh didn’t know that. He spoke up. “No.”

“No,” Leo said.

Don sounded defensive. “She’s very tough.”

“But not assertive,” Patrick said.

“I don’t know,” Leo put in. “She certainly gets uppity enough with me.”

“So she’s more likely to cooperate, to try and keep things calm,” Cavanaugh said.

“Unless they’re going to hurt someone,” Don insisted. “Then she’ll rip the guy’s heart out.”

“I guess we’ve just seen evidence of that. Thank you. I’m going to hang up now. Jason’s got Oliver on the other line.”

“Espero que usted sea tan bueno como dicen,”
Don warned. I hope you’re as good as they say you are.

“I’m better,” Cavanaugh told him, and hit a button on the phone. “Is this Oliver?”

“Who wants to know?”

Patrick leaned over the microphone. “Oliver, this is Patrick from Homicide. Did you talk to Theresa today?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“
Now
what’s going on?”

“What did she say?”

Patrick didn’t care for the appraising look Cavanaugh gave him, perhaps considering if Patrick would need to be evicted from the command center as well.

“I told her the dirt from the floor mat of that car was oxidized soil. Red clay, if you will.” After another moment he added, “I assume from your silence that means about as much to you as it did to me.”

“Like from the southern states,” Patrick said. “Georgia.”

“Sure, could be.”

“Anything else?” Cavanaugh asked.

“Yeah. About forty-five minutes ago, I called her back with the smear that was on your dead guy’s shoulder this morning. She collected it from…let me see—”

“His suit coat,” Patrick supplied.

“Yeah. And I told her it was cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.” Not even the hollow sound of the speakerphone could disguise the disdain in his voice. “Now I assume from your silence that you have no idea what I just said.”

“Is that C-4?” Cavanaugh asked.

“RDX, actually, but you’ve got the general idea.”

“Plastic explosives?” Patrick sat down. “Can this get any worse?”

Oliver pointed out with unseemly haste, “Things can always get
worse.
”

“Where would they get RDX?” Patrick mused. “Maybe Lucas was in the military. Bobby sure wasn’t.”

Oliver spoke again. “Considering the liberal use of Vaseline as a plasticizer, they probably made it themselves. All you really need is bleach and potassium chloride.”

“What are they going to do with that?” Patrick wondered. “And where is it? It’s not in the car.”

Cavanaugh stared at the monitor. “They could have it strapped to themselves, but I can’t see it. The jackets hang open, and there doesn’t seem to be anything on or under the T-shirts.”

“It’s hard to tell,” Jason offered, “with dark colors against dark colors on a black-and-white monitor.”

“That leaves the duffel bags. Oliver, how stable is this stuff?”

“It all depends on the skill of your amateur terrorist, how thoroughly he filtered the crystals out, et cetera. If it hasn’t gone off yet, that’s your best indication.” The toxicologist paused for a split second, then added, “It’s…um, not near Theresa, is it?”

“It’s about ten feet away,” Patrick told him. “I assume from
your
silence that this situation is less than ideal.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Detective.”

Patrick eyed the monitor. “I’m going over there.”

The air hung still, without even a fishy breeze from the lake to lift the sand-colored strands of hair from Patrick’s forehead. He took the long way around, down East Third and up Rockwell to the rear of the Federal Reserve building. Beyond the sawhorses blocking the roads, Clevelanders were going about their daily business, working, eating lunch, ducking out of the heat and back into the air-conditioning before their ties wrinkled and their makeup ran.
He passed the corner where Pat Joyce’s Tavern used to sit and found himself wishing for his younger years, when whether or not to write out a parking ticket would be the toughest decision he had to make the whole day.

Unless he wanted to walk all the way around the Hampton Inn to the Superior entrance, Patrick needed to enter the building via a plunging vehicle ramp overseen by a guard turret encased in glass, which Patrick assumed to be bulletproof—and air-conditioned, or the poor guy in it would have passed out by now.

His badge got him inside without getting shot. One of the many Fed security SRT responders, sweating in his assault gear, escorted Patrick up to Mulvaney’s office on the sixth floor. The chief of the Fed security force wasn’t happy.

“What the hell did she do that for? Driving that car up to the door! One of my guys got shot at in order to take their wheels away, and she gives it
back
to them?”

“Trying to save a cop’s life.”

“And did she?” Mulvaney’s head bobbed from side to side as he studied his mosaic of surveillance videos. “Did he live?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“There she is, that other girl.” Jessica Ludlow appeared on one of the monitors. She had just stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t seem to care, or even notice, if Patrick tagged along.

They caught up with her in the hallway—the young mother no doubt further terrorized to have a group of large, heavily armed men descend upon her, but that could not be helped. Mulvaney identified himself.

“You have to let me go back,” she said. Her entire body shook, the jumbled blond hairs quivering like plucked harp strings. “If I don’t go back, he’ll kill my son.”

Without thinking, Patrick reached out to pat her shoulder, and she jumped away like a startled rabbit. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Ludlow. We’re doing everything we can.”

“You know who I am? Is my husband here? Where’s my husband?”

Patrick kept his expression neutral. The woman seemed close enough to collapse; learning of her husband’s murder would finish her off. “We’ve evacuated the building.”

“All the employees are next door or sent home,” Mulvaney added.

“I have to go back,” she repeated. “You can’t stop me from going back to the lobby. He’ll kill Ethan—”

Mulvaney stepped forward, which only made her retreat farther until she bumped into the glass door labeled
BANK LOANS
. “We understand, Mrs. Ludlow. We’re not going to stop you from delivering the money if your child’s life is at stake. I hate to let you go back there, but we don’t appear to have any choice.”

She breathed in a huge sigh of relief; it seemed to fill her entire body with air. After she let it out, she spoke a good deal more calmly. “He wants me to pack this bag with money, like a million dollars or something.”

Mulvaney extended a hand for the backpack, but she held it to her chest. “No, he wants this exact bag back. He’s going to make me or one of the other hostages unpack it and repack all the stuff, so we can’t put any dye packs or locators in with the money. If there is, he’ll kill my son.” Her moment of relief, of trust that the cavalry
could ride in and save her, had passed. The pitch of her voice rose with each word, and she seemed more afraid of them than of the robbers in the lobby.

“Okay,” Mulvaney soothed.

“You have to help me get the money.”

“It’s okay,” the security chief told her. “That, we can do. Come this way.”

“I’ve never even been on this floor.” She followed him, flanked by Patrick and four security guards. “When I got in the elevator, I went to the eighth floor because I pushed the wrong button. But then I used the restroom. I had to. I thought I was going to pee my pants.” She sniffed. “I
had
to. But if I’m not back in twenty minutes—”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Ludlow. You have eleven minutes left, and this won’t take that long.”

Patrick longed to ask her…what? How Theresa was doing? He could watch that himself on the monitors, and Jessica Ludlow had barely met Theresa; the young woman wouldn’t have any insight as to her mental state. Ditto the robbers, but he had to try. “We’ve been watching on the lobby cameras, Mrs. Ludlow, but is there anything you can tell us about those two men? Anything they might have said to each other?”

“No.” She answered Patrick without taking her eyes off the security chief as she followed him through the glass door, nearly tripping in her haste. “They don’t talk much. He says more to us than the other guy.”

“Anything stand out about them? A tattoo? A smell?”

“No. I can’t think of anything, I’m sorry. All I can think about is Ethan and that big gun.”

Mulvaney led her and her escorts past a grouping of desks to a
set of double doors too narrow to lead to a room. The metal latch system in the middle of the two doors had a thin gap for a magnetic card, and a numbered keypad. Mulvaney punched in six numbers in quick succession.

Despite his agitation Patrick found himself curious about the Fed’s building security. It seemed pretty thorough. Lucas must know something about it, at least enough to know better than to try to get around it. “You have the code?”

“The director of this department whispered it over his cell phone about five minutes ago,” Mulvaney said as he gave the latch a twist. The heavy metal doors opened to reveal a set of drawers, each with its own lock. “As soon as this crisis ends, he’ll come in and program a new code, known only to himself and the board. You know how it goes. They don’t let us cops near the money, only the guns.”

Jessica Ludlow stared in dismay. Set into the wall were twelve drawers, three across, four down. Each seemed as wide as paper money was long. Each had a smaller version of the card swipe/numeric keypad latch on its face. “Is that where the money is? How are we going to get in there?”

“Ten minutes.” One of the security guards, who held a stopwatch, announced to Mulvaney.

“That was the second thing the director whispered in my ear,” Mulvaney said in answer to Jessica Ludlow. “I think he found it personally painful.” He opened three drawers with what seemed to be the same numeric code, sliding each one out and setting it on the carpeted floor. Each had been filled to the top with one-hundred-dollar bills, held in bundles with paper bands.

Jessica Ludlow sank to her knees and opened her backpack. One of the security guards tried to pull it away gently. “I’ll fill it for you.”

She wouldn’t let the nylon bag out of her hand. “No! It has to be me…. It’s my son’s life. Please.”

“Of course,” the young man placated. “But it will go faster if I help you.”

She held the bag open as the young man dropped in the bundles. “There can’t be any dye packs, you know, or whatever other security things you might have.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Ludlow,” Mulvaney assured her. “We don’t put anything like that in these drawers. We’ve always assumed a robber would never get this far.”

His tone did not convince Patrick, who caught his eye. Mulvaney seemed to nod, and the Homicide detective said nothing. He was in another agency’s house now and would have to trust their judgment in an area of crime that he, Patrick, seldom dealt with. But any surprise Lucas received might prompt him to kill another hostage. He’d shot Paul; choosing Theresa, who had traded herself for Paul, might have an appealing symmetry to the sick son of a bitch. “We wouldn’t do anything to startle the robbers,” Patrick said, speaking to Jessica Ludlow’s bent head but looking at Mulvaney.