Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

44

Halloran sat in the driver’s seat of the cruiser, listening to the crackle of static from his shoulder unit, feeling like a coiled spring about to shoot through the windshield.

The minute the warehouse door had closed behind Sharon, the radios had stopped working, and he’d panicked. He’d jumped out of the car and run across the street to the MPD unit parked there, scaring the hell out of a blond kid behind the wheel who looked about ten years too young to be wearing a uniform.

‘Oh yeah,’ Becker said after Halloran’s hurried explanation. ‘We have a lot of trouble with reception in some of these old buildings. Some kind of metal they used to reinforce the concrete plays hell with the radios. Should clear up when she gets upstairs where there are some windows.’

So now he was waiting, counting seconds in his head like a kid trying to figure out how far away lightning was. She’d do a walk-through of the big downstairs garage before going upstairs; that was a given; but goddamnit how long would that take? She’d already been in there three minutes and forty-four seconds.

Sharon had locked the shoulder radio transmit key in the ‘on’ position before she left the car, and on her way to the intercom box next to the big warehouse door, she’d heard Halloran say, ‘I can hear you breathing.’

Something like a mild electrical shock – startling, but most certainly not unpleasant – had run through her body when he’d said that. She smiled now, remembering the feeling.

She’d heard the radio start to clutter up the minute the door closed behind her, and figured she had about five minutes to check the garage and get upstairs before Halloran started shooting his way in.

For two long years she’d felt nothing coming off him except the indifferent waves of a man who worked hard to keep whatever he was really feeling under tight control. But in the last few days she’d poked a big hole in that indifference and let the caveman out. Never mind that she could outdraw, outshoot, and probably outfight the guy, for all the difference in their sizes. Halloran felt a primitive compulsion to protect her, and Sharon felt a primitive compulsion to let him. That, she figured, was the way it was supposed to be.

She didn’t like the garage, although there was no reason she could find to feel that way. It was well lit, spotlessly clean, and completely devoid of shadowy nooks and crannies. She could see damn near every inch of it without taking a step, and there was no reason in the world to expect that anyone else was down there; but still, she felt uneasy.

She held her breath for as long as she could and listened to the tomb-like silence.

Nothing.

There were two cars parked near the back wall: a black Range Rover and a Mercedes, both silent, both dark. A mountain bike and a big Harley Hog leaned on their kickstands nearby.

She dropped to a crouch and peered beneath the cars, feeling a little silly for doing it. And when she stood up again, she did something even sillier. For the first time in her life outside of a target range, she unsnapped her holster, lifted out the big 9mm, and chambered a round. The unmistakable ratcheting echoed in the big empty space, and just the sound of it embarrassed her a little.

Better safe than sorry, she rationalized, sweeping her gaze along the back wall as she started to walk toward it. There was a freight elevator in the center that had rumbled down as she entered, with interior lights that showed it was empty behind the wooden grate.

In the back left corner was a man-sized door marked STAIRWAY. In the right corner was another door with a black-and-yellow high-voltage sign on the front.

Cars first, she told herself, then the doors, and why the hell are my hands sweating?

Grace was staring mindlessly at her computer screen, mesmerized into near stupor by the white blur of tracking information that was scrolling down her monitor.

The Wisconsin deputy Magozzi had sent over had just called from downstairs. Grace had talked to her for a few minutes, then used the remote to key her in and send the elevator down.

Mitch came out of his office, lugging his briefcase and laptop. His suitcoat was rolled up in a ball under his arm. He stopped at Grace’s desk and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m going to take off. Are you okay?’

She covered his hand with hers and smiled at him. ‘I’m going to be fine. You go home and take care of Diane.’

Mitch looked at her for a long moment, giving her everything with his eyes, like he always did. ‘You know, Grace,’ he said softly so he couldn’t be overheard, ‘if you change your mind about leaving, I’ll be right beside you. Nothing could keep me from that. Nothing.’

It was always there between them, this remnant of a first love that men seemed to cling to for all of their lives. But usually Mitch wasn’t this overt and it made Grace a little uncomfortable. ‘I know that. Go home, Mitch.’

He looked at her for a moment longer, then turned for the elevator.

‘I sent it down for that deputy Magozzi sent over,’ Grace remembered. ‘She should be up in a few minutes.’

Mitch shook his head. ‘I’ll take the stairs. See you guys.’ He waved to Roadrunner and Harley, who were so focused on their monitors they just lifted their hands in farewell without looking up.

Down in the garage Sharon was hurrying now, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the concrete as she walked past the open freight elevator.

She figured she’d eaten up three minutes checking the cars and the padlocked door with the high-voltage sign on it, and she was starting to worry about Halloran calling out the National Guard before she could check the stairway and get upstairs, where she hoped the radio would work again.

She still had her gun drawn, but by now her uneasiness was fading and her hands had stopped sweating. Any enclosed space would tell you if it was empty, if you just listened to your senses, and once she’d checked out the cars and banished the mental bugaboo of the only viable hiding places, all of her senses came through loud and clear, telling her she was absolutely alone down there.

She was ten feet from the stairwell door when it opened suddenly and one of the Monkeewrench geeks bopped out, then froze comically at the sight of her gun. ‘Oh my God. Don’t shoot!’

Sharon relaxed. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled a little sheepishly and looked down to holster her gun. ‘I’m Deputy Sharon Mueller. . .’ she started to say, and then she looked up and saw only eyes, and in that instant she knew she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Both her hands jerked automatically, one toward the useless radio on her shoulder, the other to her holster, and all the time she was thinking crazily, See, Halloran? I told you I might be able to see something, I told you I was good at this . . .

. . . and her hands were still moving, too fast to see, too slow to do any good, and then she heard a soft popping sound and felt a bite on her throat above the vest, goddamnit, above the fucking useless vest, and then there was a gush of something warm and wet running down her shirt and her right finger moved spasmodically against nothing but air, trying to pull a trigger that wasn’t there again and again and again.

Magozzi hurried down the hall toward Tommy’s office, took a step inside the door, and skidded on an empty Chee-tos bag. ‘Jesus Christ, Tommy, this place is like a minefield. What have you got?’

Tommy stabbed a finger at the monitor in front of him. ‘I got a name. D. Emanuel. That’s your boy.’

‘That’s Bradford?’

Tommy grinned and rubbed his Buddha belly. ‘You bet your ass. First I checked the county Saint Peter’s School is in, and then I was going alphabetically until I figured a high-school kid wouldn’t travel too far, so I did the adjacent counties and got a hit on the second one. Livingston County. Brian Bradford changed his name to D. Emanuel the day after his eighteenth birthday.’

Magozzi grabbed the phone and punched the extension for Homicide. ‘No first name?’

‘Nope. Just D.’ He gestured at another monitor. ‘I’m running a New York and Georgia search on D. Emanuel now, see if anything pops.’

‘Gino!’ Magozzi barked into the phone. ‘The kid changed his name to D. Emanuel. Check it on the lists.’ He was just hanging up the phone when Tommy frowned at one of the monitors.

‘Well, that’s weird.’

‘What?’

‘I got a marriage certificate for D. Emanuel in Georgia. But this can’t be right.’ He leaned closer to the monitor as if that would make the information more clear. ‘This D. Emanuel married James Mitchell . . . It’s got to be a different one.’

Magozzi was tense, almost rigid. ‘No it doesn’t.’

‘Same-sex marriages in Georgia? I don’t think so.’

‘Brian Bradford is a hermaphrodite.’

Tommy’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re shitting me. Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘We didn’t tell anyone.’

Tommy was looking at the screen, shaking his head. ‘James Mitchell. I’ve seen that name.’

‘It’s about as common as dirt.’

‘No, I mean recently. Give me a minute. Christ, it had to be in the FBI file. That’s the only thing I’ve been working on.’ He slid over to another keyboard and started typing frantically.

The phone rang and Magozzi snatched it off the hook.

‘That’s it, Leo. D. Emanuel was on the registration list, but not the admissions list. He’s the guy. Is Tommy running it?’

‘Yeah, we’re working on it. I’ll let you know.’