Deadlocked

Chapter 52

Thirty minutes wasn't enough time. Whitney had seen to that. Penn Valley Park stretched from Twenty-seventh Street south to Thirty-first, one hundred and thirty hilly acres of prime green space carved out between Broadway on the east and the Southwest Trafficway on the West. He could get there in a few minutes. If he could stand without falling over. If he could leave Father Steve not knowing whether the priest was alive or dead. And if he could pick up Victoria King and convince Harry and Claire to leave the cops out of it.

There wasn't time to brief a SWAT team and put them in play. Instead, siren screaming squad cars would pour into the park like it was the Daytona 500 and Mary would get a bullet in her face. He would have liked his chances better if Mickey and Blues were in the mix, but by now they were probably interrogating Janet Hook at the halfway house in Kansas City, Kansas. It would take them more than thirty minutes to get to the park and take up positions that would provide him with badly needed cover even if he could reach them.

Whitney's timetable was a deadly obstacle course mined with hard choices, any one of which could blow up in his face. Mason belly crawled toward Father Steve. The priest lay on his side, blood seeping from his wound, pooling beneath his head like an unholy sacrament. Mason felt for a pulse, finding a feathery beat.

Pulling himself to his feet, he glanced around the room looking for a telephone, his electrical hangover lifting when he felt the cell phone clipped to his belt. He pried the cover open and tried to punch the numbers 9-1-1 to summon an ambulance for Father Steve. His fingers were clumsy sausages, missing their mark.

"I already called the police."

Mason looked up, closing the phone. It was the young priest, his robe and collar cast off, his short-sleeve black shirt and pants giving him a more militant than religious slant. He was fit, with ropy muscles, his face slightly flushed, jaw set, and ready for whatever he would find in the rectory. He'd told his congregants to stay back, putting himself at risk instead.

"What did you see?" Mason asked, certain that the priest would accuse him of crushing Father Steve's skull.

"Enough," the priest answered. "Where's your car?"

"On Main, across the street from the church."

"You can't go that way. The police will stop you even if one of my congregants doesn't try to play hero. My car is parked behind the rectory. It's the brown Ford Escort. You better hurry," he said, reaching in his pocket and handing Mason the keys. Mason nodded, clasping him by the shoulder for a moments support. "Go with God," the priest added.

"Tell Him to meet there, Father," Mason said.

Mason shuffled through the kitchen, finding his legs. He hesitated a moment when he saw a paring knife lying on the counter next to the sink. Its three-inch blade gave him little comfort when he stuck it in his jeans pocket, hoping he didn't inadvertently stab himself.

He saw blood on the handle of the back door and wondered if King was hurt. He was careful not to touch the blood, realizing instead that it was probably Father Steve's, having splattered onto King's hands.

He ground the gears on the Ford, pulling into an alley behind the church grounds, then looping around to the east and north to avoid the sirens he heard racing toward St. Mark's. He called Claire, giving her a quick summary, extracting her promise not to call the cops and telling her to meet him in front of her house with Victoria.

"There isn't time," she said. "I'll meet you at the park."

"Don't be stupid!" Mason shouted before he realized she'd hung up. He called back, but she didn't answer, not giving him the chance to argue with her. "Okay," he fumed, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. "Be stupid, just not too stupid to live."

He tried reaching Mickey on his cell phone, knowing that Blues rarely carried one and even more rarely had it on when he did. He told Mason that he didn't need a damn buzzer on his hip that people could ring like they ring the bell for service at the butcher's counter. Mickey's phone rang twice before a recorded voice told him that the person he was calling was outside the cellular company's service area, which meant that the halfway house was in a wireless dead zone.

He turned onto Thirty-first Street from Broadway, driving past the edge of the park, straining for a view, immediately understanding why King had chosen the location. The barn was in a hollow just far enough north of Thirty-first and sufficiently below street level not to be visible to passing traffic, though there was hardly any this early on a Sunday morning. Trinity Lutheran Hospital, closed, empty, and abandoned, dominated the ridge above the ruins to the east. The view from there was blocked by tall trees lining the slope beneath the street that ran between the hospital and the park.

The barn was close to the church, which gave Mason a chance to be there on time, but not until after King had arrived and chosen his ground. There were multiple entrances to the park and King could easily approach the barn from another direction, keeping hidden until he was ready to reveal himself. Mason and Victoria would be forced to come down the curved circle drive and wait for King in the theater courtyard where they would be both hidden and exposed.

The theatre was called Just Off Broadway, an almost clever play on the name of the nearby street and the dreams of the actors. It was a square building constructed of redwood with limestone corners and a forest green-pitched roof, the entire effect more suggestive of a rustic mountain retreat than an urban oasis for the arts.

The remains of the barn were also made of limestone, all that was left of outer walls with arched doorways and narrow windows. With no structure connected to its walls, it reminded him of a Hollywood back lot rendition of the Alamo.

There was a short stretch of wall in the southeast corner interrupted by the paved parking lot for the theater and the entrance to a courtyard inside the walls. The western wall was an unbroken bulwark that wrapped around the north end where the ground rose into the back of a hillside. The top of that wall was at least twenty feet above the interior courtyard, windows filled with wrought iron bars like it had once been a Wild West jail though it had been built in the early 1900s to house city-owned horses and park equipment.

Turning the car around, Mason parked on the street running alongside the hospital near the top of the driveway that led down to the theater. A few other cars were parked to the north, none of them Whitney's. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes left and no sign of Claire. He circled the car, walked back to Thirty-first Street to stare at the empty street, then back again to the car, repeating the process four more times.

With only five minutes to go, Claire's white Volvo sedan turned onto Thirty-first Street from Broadway, crested a slight rise, and glided to a stop half a block away. Harry was behind the wheel, which only surprised Mason a little. Harry still liked to drive and would fight Claire for the keys if the trip was a short distance over familiar ground with little or no traffic. This trip fit the bill and Mason guessed Claire was too nervous to fight with Harry. Claire and Victoria were with him, one in the front and the other in the back, though he couldn't see their faces clearly enough through the dirty windshield to tell which was which.

Harry got out, walked around the back of the car, and opened the rear door, helping a woman out of the backseat. Mason recognized Victoria King's hat and raincoat from the day before. She hesitated as if uncertain of her surroundings, walking slowly toward Mason, looking back at Harry who nodded encouragement. Harry got back in the car, gunned the engine, and turned around, disappearing as Thirty-first Street dipped back down toward Broadway at the same moment Mason realized the woman was Claire, not Victoria.

"Are you out of your mind?" Mason hissed as she reached him.

"I would be if I let you trade that poor woman like a side of beef," she said. "She doesn't know where she is or what she's doing. We're about the same size and with her hat and coat, Whitney won't know the difference."

"What about Mary?" Mason demanded. "Whitney will kill her if we don't deliver his mother."

"You and I both know he'll kill her if we do once he has his mother back."

"And you don't think he will if we don't?" Mason asked.

"What are you going to do? Adopt him so he thinks you're his mother?"

"We'll keep our distance so he won't know I'm not. You tell him that I won't budge until he releases Mary," she said. "I know it's not much of a plan, but it's the best I could come up with on short notice. Just keep us far enough apart that he can't see me clearly."

"Where did Harry go?" Mason asked.

"Far enough away that you can't make me change my mind. He told me to give you this," she added, handing Mason a gun. It was Harry's.357 magnum, Mason remembered how he used to tease Harry that Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry had nothing on him, Harry grinning and saying the difference between him and Eastwood was that he wasn't shooting blanks.

Mason stuck the gun in the back of his jeans, pulling his shirt out to cover it. He had a gun and a knife, neither of which could offset the odds Whitney had in his favor except for one thing. Whitney would assume he was unarmed. It was a slender edge.

He checked his watch. They were out of time. He studied his aunt. Her slate eyes were clear and unwavering. Her mouth was firm. Her hands didn't tremble. She was magnificent.

"Well, then," Mason said, threading his arm around hers. "Let's go for a walk."