Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 78

SOMETHING TERRIBLE was going to happen today. Cindy's latest e-mail assured us of that. And her strange pen pal hadn't been wrong yet, hadn't misled her or lied.

It was a sickening, helpless feeling to watch the dawn creep into the sky and know: in spite of all the resources of the U.S. government, all the fancy vigilance and warnings and cops we could put out on the street, all my years of solv-ing homicides... August Spies were going to strike today. We couldn't do a thing to stop the killers.

That dawn found me in the city's Emergency Command Center, one of those “undisclosed locations” hidden in a nondescript cinder-block building in a remote section of the naval yard out in Hunter's Point. It was a large room filled with monitors and high-tech communications equipment. Everyone there was on edge. What were August Spies going to pull now?

Joe Molinari was there. The mayor, Tracchio, the heads of the fire department and Emergency Medical Task Force, all of us crammed around the “war table.”

Claire was there, too. The latest warning had everyone freaked out that this new attack could be a widespread one involving ricin. Molinari had a toxins expert on alert.

During the night we had decided to release Hardaway's name and description to the press. So far we hadn't been able to locate him, and the situation had only gotten exponen-tially worse. Murder had given way to public safety. We were certain that Hardaway was involved somehow and that he was extremely dangerous.

The morning news shows came on. Hardaway's face was the lead story on all three networks. It was like some nerve-racking doomsday countdown straight out of a disaster movie, only much worse. The thought that any minute in our city a bomb could go off or a poison be spread, maybe even by plane.

By seven, a few of the inevitable Hardaway sightings had started to trickle in. A clerk was sure he'd seen him in Oak-land at an all-night market two weeks ago. Other calls came from Spokane, Albuquerque, even New Hampshire. Who knew if any of them were for real? But all the calls had to be checked out.

Molinari was on the phone with someone named Ronald Kull, from the WTO.

“I think we should issue some kind of communiqu‚,” the deputy director pressed. “No admissions, but say that the organization is considering the grievances, if they show a cessation of violence. It'll buy us time. It could save lives. Maybe a lot of lives.”

He seemed to have gotten some agreement and said he would draft the language. But then it had to be approved, by Washington and by the WTO.

All this red tape. The clock ticking. Some kind of disaster about to strike at any moment.

Then, like the e-mail foretold, it happened.

At 8:42 A.M. I don't think I'll ever forget the time of day.