Takeover (25 page)

3:46
P.M
.

Chris Cavanaugh shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Start from the beginning,” Lucas instructed her.

She kept her voice steady and strong. “You mean when Mark Ludlow died? Or when you, Bobby, and Jessica met in art therapy at the prison in Atlanta?”

“Talk quieter, unless you want me to have to dispose of those three guards as well. There’s no air ducts in this outer wall anyway, so you don’t have to be clear for the microphones.”

“How do you know about that?” Cavanaugh demanded.

“I studied under an expert. Your book was quite popular at the prison library, by the way—you should let your publicist know.”

“Let’s
go,
” Jessica Ludlow repeated.

“In a minute. Go on, Theresa.”

“Jessica’s an artist.”

Lucas reached one hand toward the young mother, then stopped as he remembered the cameras. But their eyes met, and she smiled, for the first time all day. “She’s a fantastic artist. Do you see any
of her stuff hanging in her house? No. Ludlow didn’t appreciate it, and besides, it was
his
house.”

Theresa shifted, drawing her knees toward her chest. “Yeah, he wouldn’t even put her name on the deed. So you two met when Jessica worked in art therapy at the Atlanta jail, and you fell in love. But Mark Ludlow got wind of it and asked for a transfer, just as you were about to be released?” She made the last sentence into a question, but Lucas nodded. “You followed her here. I’m guessing that’s where things went bad.”

He said, “All we wanted was a divorce, and custody.”

Jessica spoke up, quietly. “I would even have considered
joint
custody. But Mark said no way. He said no court would allow even visitation to someone on felony parole, and I figured he was probably right.”

“We had no choice,” Lucas said to Theresa. “You’re a mother. You must understand.”

“So you killed him.”

“We argued. Bobby hit him with the gun, just kept hitting. I told you he had poor impulse control.”

“Convenient,” Theresa said. “But I don’t think so. You have a cast-off pattern of bloodstains traveling up your pant leg.”

“So I killed him.”

“You couldn’t be swinging an object and get a neat pattern like that on yourself at the same time. You were standing perpendicular to the swinging weapon, at a slight distance.”

“So it was Bobby. Like I said.”

“Bobby is wearing khakis, light enough to see any bloodstains present. There aren’t any”—her eye fell on his bloodstained corpse—“or weren’t. It’s possible that for some reason he had time
to change his pants and you didn’t, but I doubt it. Neither of you has spare clothes in the car. But Jessica had a closet upstairs, and besides, she probably ruined the pants she wore with the bleach she used to clean up the kitchen.” She turned to the girl. “You probably didn’t plan this, but even though I found the damp mop, I didn’t think the floor had been recently cleaned, because Lucas left a coating of sand particles from the floor mats in the car, just as he’s done on the marble tile here.”

Jessica merely shifted her baby in her arms, her smooth face as innocent as ever.

“You now had a problem,” Theresa went on. “You and Bobby dragged the body outside and planned for Jessica to go to work as if nothing had happened, but you knew she’d be the obvious suspect. You had to run off together, but in such a way that Jessica would appear to be innocent. She and Ethan would have been kidnapped by a violent bank robber and presumed dead. No one in Cleveland had any knowledge of your affair, unless Mark confided in a new friend.”

“Tell everyone he’d been cuckolded?” Jessica snorted. “He wasn’t the talkative type.”

“There it is again—you speak of him in the past tense. You said your husband ‘didn’t’ eat with you, not ‘doesn’t’ eat with you, when you weren’t supposed to know he was dead.”

Jessica glared at her. Lucas frowned.

Theresa kept talking. Any delay would give Frank and the other cops time to figure out what to do. “He wasn’t the talkative type, but you are. You told me so yourself. That’s the real reason Cherise is dead, isn’t it? You told her about Lucas.”

She and Lucas exchanged a glance, hers abashed, his merely sad.

“You didn’t kill Paul, a cop. You tried to keep your murders to a minimum, but Cherise had to go. The only way this could work is if no one had any idea you two were lovers. Jessica disappeared with a ruthless felon, never to be seen again. A tragedy, but forgotten in a week or two. However, cops—and the public—hate being duped. If they figured it out, you’d be on the evening news from coast to coast.”

“But now
you
know,” Lucas pointed out, and the fact that he seemed more sad than angry scared her to death. “And Chris here, who didn’t have a clue, as I can see from the expression on his face.”

“I
asked
you to leave him out of it.”

“What I said goes. They’ll never strafe that car if he’s in it. You, I’m not so sure about—chivalry died a long time ago.” He stood up. “Jessie, take the tie-wraps out of the side pocket there and loop their feet together. Just one ankle. Make sure it’s tight.”

He stood back, holding the automatic pistol. On the monitor it would seem as if Jessica followed his commands out of fear. She slid the sleeping Ethan to the floor, gently propping his head on her purse.

“That’s the real reason for the cough medicine, isn’t it?” Theresa asked her. “To keep him quiet and still during your getaway. He’s really out—I hope you didn’t give him too much.”

“You think I drugged my own baby?” Jessica kept her voice down, too low for the microphones in the ducts to pick up, and yet she hadn’t sounded that angry when accused of her husband’s brutal murder.

“I think he hasn’t coughed or even sniffled once all afternoon. You stained his nose with the fruit juice to make him look as if he had a cold so that the day-care lady would tell you he couldn’t stay there. You came with a convenient supply of snacks for him, since you knew she wouldn’t be giving him lunch.”

Jessica placed one plastic tie around Theresa’s right ankle and one around Cavanaugh’s left, then connected the two with a third. She pulled them tight enough to cut off the blood supply. “This whole thing has
been
for him,” she declared.

“The same thing on their wrists,” Lucas told his girlfriend.

Theresa protested. “No. It hurts.”

Jessica slid the strap over Theresa’s right hand without hesitation. Theresa held it in place so that it tightened around the bones, to keep it from rubbing the already damaged area. The hand might go numb, but it was the best she could do.

Over at the reception desk, the phone began to ring. Lucas ignored it, as she expected him to. He could not risk crossing that open area where the snipers could sight him through the clear window.

Cavanaugh asked, “What’s the purpose of this, Lucas?”

“Here’s the plan: Jessie, put Ethan in the rear driver’s-side seat. You’ll have to drive.”

“But I’ve never even been in that car!”

“Just press the gas and steer. It’s an automatic, and we don’t have much choice. I’ll go out behind you two. The snipers are all on the other side of the street, right, Chris?” When the negotiator didn’t answer, Lucas slung the rifle over one shoulder and pulled a handgun from the back of his waistband, pointing it at Cavanaugh’s head. Then he repeated the question.

“I don’t know! They don’t tell me where the snipers are! It’s too easy for me to slip and give something away.”

Lucas considered this. “That’s true, I remember reading that. I’m not worried about the ones on the library anyway. The car will block me,” he added to Jessica. “Any on the roof of this building will have to aim straight down, and the awning will block their view up until the last second.” He swung the gun’s barrel toward Theresa and Cavanaugh. “You two will get into the rear passenger’s-side seat. I’ll ride shotgun, if you’ll excuse the expression.”

Theresa formed a picture in her mind, and not a pretty one. She figured that the cops could handle a vertical shot, desperate at this last chance to stop Lucas—and he intended to stay plastered to her back once again. All of a sudden, she wanted to vomit.

“On your feet,” he ordered. “Jessie, pick up Ethan. Get ready to run. Move fast, but don’t panic—they won’t shoot at you. Here’s the keys. Get in, start the car, and drive. Don’t worry about me—I’ll be inside.”

Theresa and Cavanaugh got to their feet, gingerly, trying to coordinate their movements. They managed not to fall, but three-legged-race walking required their full attention. She twined a few of her fingers around his. He smiled and gave them a squeeze, but she hadn’t done it as a show of moral support. “Try not to yank on my wrist.”

“Sure.” The smile disappeared.

She felt a twinge of guilt. “I’ll try not to bump your chest.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be an option. There can’t be a lot of room in that backseat, not with those two duffels in the middle.”

“Shut up.” Lucas half crouched behind them, holding on to the back of Cavanaugh’s shirt with one hand and poking the handgun
into Theresa’s spine with the other. He kept his head below the level of their shoulders. “Go, Jessie.”

Clutching her son, she ran out and around the front of the Mercedes. Lucas pushed, and Theresa and Cavanaugh made for the passenger side in their stumbling gait. He opened the door and slid in. Lucas separated from them, jumped into the passenger seat, and faced them before Theresa could pull in her arms and legs. The barrel of the weapon appeared beside the headrest. He had only to hold down the trigger and she and Cavanaugh became hamburger.

She hoped Rachael was not watching.

“Get in,” he said. “Shut the door or I’ll shoot you both.”

She heard a loud
plunk,
and something struck her calf. Two divots appeared in the pavement outside. She heard more toward the front of the car and retracted her body without thinking. There
had
been snipers on their side of the street, and she hoped that bullets would not penetrate the top of the car. Cavanaugh yanked the door shut, and then they were moving, with her butt on his thighs and the top of her head rubbing the upholstered roof. She remembered to breathe just as they approached the intersection of Rockwell and Sixth.

3:58
P.M
.

“Go straight,” Lucas instructed, though he did not stop facing Theresa and Cavanaugh in the rear seat. He reached back and locked their door. “Keep up the speed so they can’t jump out. Don’t stop for anything.”

“What now, Lucas?” Chris Cavanaugh asked, and Theresa couldn’t believe how calm he sounded. Their bound wrists caused her right arm to bend double and stretch behind her; he slipped his left arm over her head to relieve the strain. The duffel bags created a solid, cloth-covered wall between the two halves of the car. She could only assume that Ethan lay sleeping on the other side. As she ducked her head under Cavanaugh’s arm, she noticed a swatch of white at her feet. Her lab coat—she had left it in the car, and Brad had plopped the money-filled duffel bag right on top of it.

“Roll down your window, Jessie.” Lucas unzipped the end of the top duffel bag and reached in. He had perhaps six inches of clearance between the top of the bag and the roof of the car, and
he pulled out a bundle of money. “Rip the band off this and throw it out.”

“How am I supposed to do that and drive at the same time?”

“Just throw it. It doesn’t have to be neat, as long as it gets people into the street. They’ll slow down the cops.”

The negotiator pressed. “Where are you going to go?”

“That’s a good question, Chris, but I don’t have time to discuss it. Turn right when the road ends, Jessie. Don’t slow down any more than you absolutely have to.”

“Red light.”

“Run it.”

“I hate driving!” she snapped at him.

“You’ll be fine. Just keep throwing.” He rolled his window down a few inches, and even the hot breeze came as a relief. He caught Theresa’s eye. “Don’t think about jumping out.”

She had no intention of it. The idea of the pavement scraping off most of the skin on her face dissuaded her, but more than that, she was not ready to let go of Lucas and Jessica. Paul might be dying because of them, and they were not going to go free. “What about the explosives, Lucas? The ones you cooked up on Jessie’s stove last night? By the way, where did you find a health-food store open in the middle of the night?”

“What?” Cavanaugh breathed in her ear.

She prodded the lab coat with her free left foot and felt a thin item under her toes—probably a pen. She never carried much else in her pockets. “You can make plastic explosives with Vaseline and potassium chlorate, otherwise known as salt substitute. It’s sold at health-food stores, among other places.”

“Didn’t use that,” Lucas said, tossing loose bills into the wind.
“I used Solidox, for welding. There’s a twenty-four-hour hardware store in a place called Maple Heights. Turn left on Ninth, Jessie.”

Lucas must have removed it from the teller cages across from the security guards, or he would have used it to prevent the cops from pursuing. “So where’s the explosive?”

He smiled at her. “Right here, with us.”

She thought of a suicide pact but dismissed that immediately. Lucas had planned, very carefully, to get away, and he would not abandon that plan. And whatever else Jessica might be, she clearly was not the kind of mother who’d let any harm come to Ethan.

Harm to Theresa and Chris Cavanaugh, however, was a different story. If they lived to tell, the whole day’s efforts would be for naught. Jessica and Lucas would be hunted down, convicted on two counts of murder, and go to jail for the rest of their lives. Ethan would be raised by strangers.

Theresa and Cavanaugh had to die. No other option existed.

Not a pen, she suddenly thought. A scalpel. The sterile, disposable scalpel she’d used to cut the bloody carpeting from the trunk of this car. She had put the protective cap back over the blade and slipped the scalpel into her lab coat.

“The explosives aren’t in the car,” she pointed out. “We went over it.”

“Nope. They’re in the backpack.”

She and Cavanaugh slid forward suddenly as Jessica hit the brakes.

“Watch it, Jessie.”

“A car pulled in front of me. What do you mean, in the backpack? Get them out.”

“We
discussed
this.”

“The picture’s in the backpack!”

“Exactly. The picture that you couldn’t resist stealing, even though as soon as they realize it’s missing they’re going to know that you’re not some sweet little innocent secretary!”

Jessica continued to snake a hand into the duffel now and then to throw more money out the window. Theresa could only glimpse the top of the girl’s head, not her expression, but she sounded as if her vocal cords were made of solid titanium. “It’s a damn
Picasso
!”

“I had the perfect plan! All we had to do was get away, and no one ever would have figured it out, and you had to screw it up because you couldn’t keep your hands off some stupid piece of canvas!”

“It’s one of the Vollard Suite!”

“It’s not worth the rest of our lives!”

Theresa recalled how the dog had barked when Lucas forced Jessica over to the elevators, but not so much, now that she thought about it, when he returned. That was because
Jessica
was carrying the plastic explosives, or at least part of them. Jessica the artist, who knew where the fancy furnishings from the executive’s redecorated office had been stored and how a tiny amount of explosive would blow the door’s lock, and who returned from that trip with paint flakes on her pants. Jessica, who loved art almost as much as she loved her son, and possibly more than she loved her boyfriend, because she might have ruined their chances for a future together.

This was why Lucas had been so angry when she returned to the lobby with the backpack. Not because she brought less money than he counted on but because he found the painting when he unzipped the bag.

“You had to have the money!” Jessica countered. “Why did we
have to hang around for that stupid shipment? We could have lost them in the convention-center traffic if we left earlier!”

“If you hadn’t taken that painting, we could have started over again somewhere. You would be an artist, I’d manage the gallery. But if they figure out we worked together, they’ll never stop looking for us. We’re going to have to stay underground forever now, Jessie, and that’s going to take a lot of money.”

Theresa continued to watch him but hooked her foot underneath the loose part of the lab coat. Slowly she inched the pocket up as she inched her free left hand down. If Cavanaugh felt her movements, he gave no sign.

Lucas calmed his voice but spoke with teeth gritted against each other in a way that would have been comical if they hadn’t been hurtling down a city street in a car carrying $4 million and a bomb. “If it gets destroyed, they’ll assume some other bank worker took advantage of the confusion to sneak it out.”

“If it just disappears, they’ll assume the same thing.”

“If he turns around,” Cavanaugh breathed into her neck, “we’ll strangle him. You may have to grab the gun. Keep the barrel pointed up.”

She moved her head in a nod, tiny enough to be taken as swaying with the vehicle. Her fingers dipped into the pocket. She had always appreciated the deep pouches, but now they made it difficult to reach the scalpel. Her thigh protested as she used her foot to pull the pocket a fraction of an inch higher.

It took only the slightest glance down for Lucas to notice her raised knee. “What are you doing? Stop wriggling.”

She squirmed more, and the plastic weapon slid into her hand. “There’s not a lot of room back here.”

But while Lucas watched her, his mind stayed on his girlfriend. “It’s your fail-safe, Jessie. If they catch us, you can always say you were coerced. But if they catch us with that painting, they’ll know you were in on it with me, and you’ll never see Ethan again. Everything I’ve done has been for you, can’t you see that?”

He did it all for love,
Theresa thought.
He’s been trying to tell me that all day.

Jessica tapped the brakes, then sped up. “Where are we
going
?”

“Drive into the bleachers. Just like we talked about.”

Bleachers? Suddenly Theresa realized why they were heading north on East Ninth, when there was nothing at the end of it but Lake Erie. The Hall of Fame induction concert. Those tall scaffolds covered in rock-and-roll-black cloth on the East Ninth pier, where she and Paul had scouted out the reception facilities on the
Goodtime II.

“What if I get the wrong spot and hit a pole?”

“Just drive where I point. Brian told me exactly where to go.”

“What about them?”

“Keep throwing the money, especially the closer we get.” Lucas peered over the headrest. “I’ll take care of them.”

Theresa’s heart sank. Cavanaugh’s arm tightened around her waist.

Jessica remained silent, apparently mulling this over. Theresa heard sirens behind them, but not nearly close enough. In Lucas’s sideview mirror, she could glimpse pedestrians milling in the street, stopping cars to pick up the scattered bills.

Could she stab him? She’d have to get him in the neck. Disposable scalpels were handy, but also cheap and thin, and they would snap in half at even medium pressure. It would be a one-shot deal.
The jugular or nothing. A shallow slash would only make him mad.

She could press it into Cavanaugh’s hand. He was stronger, trained in hand-to-hand. Let him do it. He’d have to reach around her, but he could use his right hand, and she would have to use her left. She would be free to grab the gun barrel, to keep Lucas from shooting them in the time it took him to bleed to death.

Because maybe she didn’t have what it took to kill a man, and this would be a bad time to find out.

They approached the end of East Ninth, where it dead-ended into the pier. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sat to their left, and the World War II submarine, the
Cod,
to their right. The huge stage and seating for the induction ceremony concert rose directly in front of them. The fishy smell of the lake air blew through the car from the open windows.

“How are we going to get to Brian?” Jessica asked.

“We’ll stay under the bleachers. Everyone will be looking at the explosion.”

The painted guitars outside the rock hall sped by. Jessica couldn’t have been driving more than twenty miles an hour, but falling out onto the pavement and possibly a curb at that speed could easily kill them both. Theresa would rather stay in the car, except that the car was going to blow up. Lucas intended to drive the car into the hidden caverns under the seating and set off the explosives. If the bleachers collapsed, it would take even more time before the cops could tally the bodies.

The explosives were in the backpack, and the backpack was in one of the duffels, with the money. The duffels were too heavy to be carried by one person.

“What about the money, Lucas? If you detonate the explosives, won’t you lose part of your take?”

“Just one. I can get the other one out.”

One of the bags would blow along with the car, for the same reason Jessie now threw bills out the window. Money distracted people, and no one would ever believe that he would have left it behind after all he’d done to get it. If the money wound up in the wreck of twisted metal, then Lucas must be in there as well. It would be months before the DNA got sorted out. He’d salvage enough for Jessie and him to start a wonderful new life together. She’d sell her paintings, and they’d travel the world.

If they got away.

“You’ll never make it,” Theresa told him. “It’s impossible to get out of this car and away from it fast enough. The concert area is a little concrete peninsula, with only one bottlenecked way in or out. Every cop in the city will surround you in thirty seconds, and there’s nothing to the north but water.”

“And,” he reminded her, “boats.”

One shot,
she thought. As much as she wanted to be the one who took him down, the man who put Paul at death’s door, she had to be practical. She had always been practical. Her grandfather had taught her that.

She pressed the scalpel into Cavanaugh’s right hand and slipped off the protective cap. He was right-handed, wasn’t he? She tried to remember how he dialed the phone…. Yes.

She moved her left hand to the back of the front seat, pretending to steady herself as Jessica barreled over a speed bump. “You don’t have a boat. You don’t even have a car.”

“Ah, but, Theresa, what’s better than having a boat?”

Cavanaugh squeezed her fingers, but she didn’t know if that meant
good luck
or
grab the gun.
“Having a friend with a boat,” Theresa said.

“Exactly.”

“But you don’t have any friends either.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

Jessica spoke suddenly. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Yes you can.” While maintaining a firm hold on the gun, Lucas twisted out of his jacket, then produced yet another plastic tie-wrap. “You two, put your hands up here. Just the tied ones.”

“What if Ethan gets whiplash?” Jessica fussed.

“He won’t. It’s just canvas, it won’t hurt us. Right there—see the section with the white stripe at the top? Aim for that.”

Jessica sped past the end of East Ninth Street, down a narrowed pavement and beyond a sign reading
NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT
. Spindly trees grew from circles in the pavement, but no other turf presented itself as a soft place to land.

“Give me your hands!” Lucas demanded again, lowering the barrel of the gun to point it at them.

Theresa grasped the headrest with her bound hand and leaned forward, as if she wished to discuss this in private. “Why don’t you just shoot us now? You didn’t show much enthusiasm for killing Cherise—is that because you don’t enjoy it?”

She never heard his answer. Instinctively mirroring, as most humans will, he leaned toward her ever so slightly. She grabbed the gun barrel.

Using the back of the seat as an anchor, Chris Cavanaugh pulled himself forward and struck downward with as much force as he could accumulate in the tight space. The scalpel entered Lucas’s
neck, and the handle snapped off. Theresa closed her eyes against the spray of blood and felt the burning metal within her palm as Lucas pulled the trigger of his handgun. She let go. The bullets entered the roof.