Takeover (18 page)

This time it really was a whimper. “Oh, God. Tess.”

She was going to die.

1:10
P.M
.

The kick to his groin worked. Lucas doubled over. Unfortunately, he bent right into her and kept going, throwing her to the hard floor and knocking every molecule of air from her lungs. As soon as she sucked a few back, she pushed him off. The automatic rifle lay on the other side of him.

Take him out,
Theresa told herself.
Then you can shoot Bobby.

She reached over him, and he punched her in the rib cage. It hurt, but not as badly as it would have if he’d hit the stomach. She struck back, but she had about one-third his weight and muscle. She sank her knee into his groin once more, but he pressed his thighs together, deflecting most of the blow.

She reached again for the gun.

He bucked and rolled, and suddenly she felt the cool stone floor against her back and a sharp pain at the base of her skull. He sat on top of her, suffocating her, hands and legs pinning her down in a tidy spread-eagle.

What was that about taking somebody out again?

“You really shouldn’t hit me, Theresa.”

“Can’t breathe.”

His weight shifted upward as his face came down to hers. She felt his hot breath against her ear. “You know, if I didn’t have so much on my mind right now, I might enjoy the position I find myself in. How about you, Theresa? You enjoying this?”

Her fingers stretched toward the gun and found nothing but smooth marble. “Get off me.”

“Not until you explain your choice of words to Cavanaugh just now.”

She was out of air and out of ideas. “They know about the explosives.”

His mood got unsexy in a hurry. He sat up, with the unfortunate result of again settling his weight on her slight body. “What?”

“Can’t breathe.”

“What explosives?”

“My ribs are going to break.”

He lifted himself off her, just enough to let her lungs expand. “What explosives?”

“The stuff you have. The homemade RDX. We know you brought it in here and set it where you killed Cherise.”

His face loomed over hers. “What else?”

“That’s it. We don’t know why.”

“I don’t like conflicting with you, Theresa. Of anyone here, you ought to understand what I’m doing.”

She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”

“You’ll have to ask Bobby. He’s the one with the detonator.” He stood, yanking her to her feet by the front of her shirt. She felt the stitching come loose beneath the arms.

It felt better to be standing under her own power. At least it did until he swung her against the wall again, the barrel of the gun under her chin. This time he had his finger on the trigger. She tried not to breathe, but her lungs ached for it, to keep up with the demands of her pounding heart.

“My balls are going to hurt for a week now. I help you out by releasing your boyfriend, Theresa, and this is how you repay me.”

He hadn’t killed her for asking once, so she tried again. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”

“I told you to ask Bobby. But consider this: When the government has killed your whole family, there’s no part of it
not
worth blowing up.”

“What do you mean?” she gasped. “What happened to his family?”

“He’s got nobody left, that’s what I mean. But I do, and here’s where you come in. As soon as that three million arrives, it’s going to be moved into my car. And you, Theresa, will be at the head of the assembly line, with me on your back like a remora. The snipers try to take me out, they’re going to hit you instead.”

With that, he escorted her to the reception desk, not gently, but at least he clutched the back of her shirt instead of her hair. She collapsed next to Jessica Ludlow and wiped her sweating face on her sleeves. She could only hope that one of SRT’s microphones had been dropped behind that particular air-conditioning grate.

The phone was still ringing.

Patrick collapsed onto one of the upholstered chairs. The clock read 1:12, and yet he felt as if he’d pulled an all-nighter.

No, what I did was pull the rug out from under my career.
The assistant chief went by, giving him a cold stare and a wide berth. Patrick had made the guy look ineffectual in a crisis, and that would not bring any recommendations his way.

But Theresa still lived. He could breathe again, maybe quell the tremors in his legs.

“Detective Patrick?”

Peggy Elliott stood next to him, still as fresh and neat and she’d been hours earlier. She’d removed the suit jacket to reveal a tailored white blouse with a gold Summer Reading Club pin on the breast pocket. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, sure. Fine.”

She waited for more without comment, then gave up. “There’s a phone call for you.”

He followed her to a communication system set up on a reading table in the map room, where other staff could make calls without disturbing the negotiator. Kessler spoke to someone, apparently his wife, telling her not to worry. Jason trotted toward them, listening to his cell phone while devouring another sandwich. Once upon a time, Patrick could eat all day and all night like that. Once upon a time, he’d had that kind of enthusiasm for his job as well.

The librarian handed him a receiver. “It’s the hospital.”

A doctor at the Metro General trauma center introduced himself and asked Patrick if he was Paul’s partner.

“Yes. Thank you for calling me, Doctor. How is he?”

“We tried a plastic graft. It took thirty units of blood, but it’s in place.”

“Is he awake?”

“Off and on. Not much.”

“Can we ask him a few questions, do you think?” Who knew what the two guys might have discussed in front of Paul, when they took him for another bank employee? They might have mentioned their exit strategy, assuming they had one.

“I’m not calling to tell you to come and interview him,” the doctor said with a tougher edge to his voice. “I’m saying if you want to speak to him again, you might want to come here now.”

It wasn’t as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to Patrick. He had been to the full-dress funerals of too many cops killed in the line of duty for that. But he hadn’t really believed it. “He’s going to die?”

The doctor didn’t pause. “He’d be dead already if the nick hadn’t been at the lower end of the femoral and someone hadn’t gotten that belt around his thigh immediately. He
could
recover, but I’m not fully confident of it, and that’s why I’m calling. The police department said you are listed as emergency notification. You and a woman named MacLean, but she’s unavailable.”

Not fully confident.
Patrick had heard versions of that, too. It meant the doctor didn’t think Paul would live through the end of the day.

His eyes drifted to the windows, through which the Federal Reserve building gleamed in the afternoon sun. “You say he’s conscious?”

“Off and on,” the doctor repeated. “I can’t make any promises about that either.”

Patrick sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t come right now. We’re in the middle of something here. I’ll send another officer out in case he wakes up. But I have to stay here.”

“Okay,” the doctor said, and hung up. He had done what he could and undoubtedly had other patients and phone calls to see to.

Patrick called another detective, Sanchez, and asked her to go to Metro. She was sensitive but smart, and Paul had always gotten along with her. She would know what questions to ask if he woke up, know when to call Patrick and when not to. But he, Patrick, couldn’t spend the afternoon sitting next to an unconscious man on the off chance that he
might
come to and he
might
be able to tell them something of Lucas and Bobby.

“How are things going?” Ms. Elliott asked him gently.

“Not good.”

“I had guessed as much. I wish I could help.”

Patrick gestured at the books around them. The tomes held centuries of accumulated knowledge and yet couldn’t tell him how to defeat one man with a gun. “Not unless you know a formula for invisibility. Or how to neutralize RDX.”

“The plastic explosive?”

He probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, but Peggy Elliott had been in and out all day and nothing confidential had found its way to Channel 15. Still, he didn’t clarify. “Or how to deflect bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Sorry.”

He needed to get back to the monitor, to Theresa’s grainy black-and-white image. He could do nothing for Paul, but he still might be able to do something for her.

He stood up and reached for the glass door when Jason said, “Detective, wait.”

The young man held a cell phone to his ear, and a cop had just handed him a receiver from a table unit. “This is the PD in Tennessee, and I’m already on with Lucas’s sister. Can you talk to them?”

Patrick nearly leaped over the row of flat-drawer filing cabinets to grab the phone and identify himself.

“Slow down.” The voice on the other end did not conjure up images of honky-tonks and moonshine stills. The syllables were as neatly pronounced and accentless as any TV anchorperson’s, the pace measured and calm. “Who is this again?”

Patrick repeated himself while enunciating and using a sleeve to mop the sweat from his forehead. He leaned on the cabinets and closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the man’s voice.

“This is Captain Johnson from the Hudson County sheriff’s office in Tennessee. I went out and talked to Jack Cornell, just like you asked.”

“We appreciate that,” Patrick said with fervor. He pulled out his notepad and opened it, discovering that he’d mislaid his pen. He lost a precious second or two patting his pockets before Ms. Elliott handed him hers. “We have a real bad situation up here. One person dead and one cop almost dead, with eight hostages still inside.”

“Yeah, that’s what that first guy told me. It wasn’t any trouble anyway. We know Jack real well, and he lives near town.”

Patrick didn’t like the sound of this. Cornell probably
was
someone’s brother-in-law, and they wouldn’t give him up no matter how many northerners got shot.

But the police captain went on. “Jack isn’t a bad guy. He’s a little loopy since he got out of the army, but hell, he was a little loopy before that. He’s never hurt anybody, and he sure could if he wanted to, with that arsenal he’s got.”

“He’s got firearms in his possession?”

“It’s his business. It’s all legal. He’s a licensed dealer, and his paperwork is in order. I should know—he and I go over it regularly. Anyway, what you want to know is, he
did
get a visit from those two boys you’ve got up there, and he’s more’n happy to tell us all about it. He doesn’t want any trouble that would threaten his livelihood, see?”

“When did they get there? When did they leave? Did they say—”

“Hold on, I can do better than that,” the captain said, his voice spilling into the stuffy, sunny map room like a cool spring breeze. “I’ll let him tell you. He’s sitting right here.”

“Thank you, Captain. Thank you.”

“I’ll get back on the phone when he’s done. Here y’go, Jack.”

A pause, and the sound of a receiver being handled. “Hello?”

Patrick introduced himself for what seemed like the millionth time that day. He spoke too fast again, but Jack Cornell didn’t seem to care. “Yeah, the cops here told me that Lucas is in some sort of trouble. He didn’t tell me nothing about it, and I didn’t ask. And what you’re saying doesn’t sound like Lucas anyway. Could be that nut Bobby, but not Lucas.”

Patrick forced himself to slow down. Their first real break in the case, and he had to make it count. “Let’s start from the beginning. When did they show up at your place?”

“Day before yesterday—yeah, Tuesday. Out of the blue.”

“They had just gotten out of prison?”

“Yep.”

“What were they driving?”

“A white Mercedes.” The man laughed. “I just about bust a gut. A damn Mercedes with pearly paint. That was Bobby’s doing, I think.”

“You knew Lucas from the army?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. Him ’n’ me were in the same unit over in Germany. We worked at the armory. That’s where I learned so much about guns—course, I already knew a lot about guns—so I started this business when I came back. Lucas went and robbed a place, I guess, so he wound up in jail down in Georgia, but I’m telling you, that’s not like him. He’s a real nice guy. Sensitive, even. He was sweet on this girl who worked at a bar in town, and every day he had leave he’d show up on her shift with a couple of roses. That’s the kind of guy Lucas is.”

“Did he tell you where he was heading?”

“Cleveland, yeah. I guess Bobby lives there.”

“What did they plan to do here?”

“Hook up with some of Bobby’s old gang, I guess. They didn’t have any real big plans, I didn’t think. They sure as hell didn’t say nothing about robbing no bank, let me tell you. Bobby was going to look up some old friends, and Lucas said he had to find him a girl. That’s Lucas. He always has a girl.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Did Bobby mention any friends by name?”

“Nope, not that I recall. He might have, but I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Did he say anything about storing his car in Atlanta while he did his time? Mention who drove it there for him, maybe?”

“No.”

“You didn’t drive it there for him, did you?”

“Sir, I never met this Bobby until the day before yesterday.”

“How were they fixed for cash?”

“No one comes out of prison a rich man. But I guess Lucas had saved a few pennies in some work program at the prison, and Bobby had stashed some in his car before he put it in storage. They didn’t ask me for any, so they must not have been hurting too bad.”

“You say Lucas isn’t a violent type. What about Bobby?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about Bobby, even though I spent most of Tuesday talking to him. Lucas was kind of quiet. I guess after being in jail for a while, he didn’t have much to say. That Bobby, though, he couldn’t stop talking.”

“About what?” Patrick swallowed, needing something wet in his throat. He thought longingly of the cooler down by Cavanaugh and decided that all phones that still had cords should have been thrown out years ago.