A Rush to Violence (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

In the dark she created, Beth Spellman waited.

She kept her gaze rooted to the far right window and waited for the shooter to step away and grab the silencer for his gun, wherever that was, before she acted.

She could feel him watching them—green blobs with orange cores. That’s what he called them when the new man arrived—the older man who spoke with the air of sophistication the rest of them lacked. When the shooter turned his head so it was in profile, she could see the glasses he was wearing, which looked like goggles. Something she’d seen in the movies.

“Let’s move,” the older man said. “The street is quiet. Get what you need. They’re going nowhere.”

The shooter took off the goggles, stood up, walked away. Beth Spellman saw her opportunity and took it.

“The left side of the staircase,” she whispered to the group. “Duck around behind it and use it as a shield. Then we go to the bathroom.”

“I can’t see anything,” Barbara Moore said.

“Take my hand,” Gloria said.

“Why did you shatter that light bulb?” Jack asked. “What gave you the right?”

“You could have just killed us,” Brian Moore said with an edge. “You’re not running this, Beth. Stop acting as if you are.”

But Beth didn’t answer. She knew she’d made a mistake. A big mistake. She’d apologize for it later.

If there’s a later.

She closed her eyes and knew she couldn’t think that way. She had to focus. She needed to get them out of the mess she had created. But the voices in her head wouldn’t listen. They were there to argue and to belittle, not to cooperate. They were there to remind her that she was just a fifteen-year-old girl, not an adult, and thus incapable of the sort of rational thought required in a situation as dire as this. She wondered if they were wrong, tried to press the self-doubt back, but failed.

I can do it.

You can’t do it.

Yes, I can.

You screwed up.

We’re not dead yet.

You honestly thought you could do this? You seriously thought you could be as good as your father?

I can be.

You’re not and you know it.

We’re not dead yet.

Give it time, girl.

But there was no time, though there were advantages. She knew this end of the basement better than anyone but her mother. The bathroom was straight ahead of them. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark and she could see the pale door ahead of her. What she couldn’t tell was if the bathroom was large enough for all of them to fit into. And if they couldn’t fit, Brian Moore was right. She likely just cost some of them their lives. The mere thought of it was like opening a window, through which a tide of self-doubt came flooding back.

You’re a murderer.

I had no choice. No one was doing anything. I had to act.

You didn’t have to kill him.

I had to do something.

You didn’t. You had no right.

I had every right. My life was in danger, too. It’s still in danger.

Your mother would have done something. The Moores. Jack.

But they didn’t. They just sat there. Nobody was doing anything. I saw what looked like a hammer on the bench. I was sure it was a hammer. I knew I could lure him to it. And it worked. I killed him.

That’s right—you killed him. And look where you are now. The house is surrounded by men. You’ve pissed them off. Two of their own are dead because of you. They’re going to shut all of you down because of that. You’ve killed everyone, including your mother and sister. It’s all on you, Beth. You’re the murderer.

Above them, a door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps on the floor. “Listen,” she said.

Metal scraped across wood. Probably a table. No voices. No footsteps. And then she heard Katie catch her breath. Beth looked down and saw her sister looking at the far left window.

A man’s face was filling it.

The group took a step back toward the staircase, but Beth stood firm. Could he see them in the dark? He could if he was wearing the goggles the other man was wearing, but he wasn’t. She could see that. Better yet, his face was pointed in the wrong direction. It was turned slightly to the right, where they weren’t standing. It appeared as if he couldn’t see them.

But he will if we move closer.

Footsteps above her. A door slammed shut. People talking outside, wherever outside was. Where were they? Still in Manhattan? One of the boroughs? She had no idea. Probably Jersey. Maybe Brooklyn or the Bronx. Somewhere more private than the city center itself. She had no concept of time or place or why she ever thought that she could solve this. She had acted on instinct. She had killed that man on instinct. She wanted him dead because she wanted his rifle. She got both, but now they were in a worse situation than before and it was all because of her.

What have I done?

When the man at the left window cupped his hands against the glass to shield out the street light, a paralyzing sting of terror shot through her. Now it looked as if he was looking at them.

She kept still.

What would Dad do?

He wouldn’t shoot. Instead, he’d isolate everyone somehow. Get them in a safe spot. Get them to a place where they had some sort of protection. Then he’d plan. He’d wait. When the time was right, he’d shoot.

Bathroom
.

“Mom,” she said.

“What?” Her voice was tense. Terse. Angry and afraid.

“I need you to get everyone to the bathroom. Did you see it earlier? Do you know where it is?”

“I know where it is, Beth.”

“Can you see it now?”

“I can see it,” Jack said.

“Can you see it, Mom?”

“I can see it.”

“We need to get everyone inside.”

“There’s a man at that window,” Barbara Moore said. “If we move, he’ll see us and he’ll shoot us.”

“He doesn’t have a silencer. I saw his gun—doesn’t have it. They won’t shoot without it, especially not outside where it will be heard and draw attention. We need to be quick.”

“I can’t see,” Katie said.

“I’ve got you,” Gloria said. “Don’t worry.”

“We don’t have time,” Beth said. “You heard him upstairs. He’s got the silencer now. We have to get to that bathroom. It’ll offer us a wall of protection. Then we deal with them.”

“Really?” Jack said. “Because silencer or not, that man is looking right at us. He’ll shoot us if we move.”

“I don’t think he will,” Brian Moore said. “Beth is right. They can’t risk a gunshot fired from the street, regardless of where we are. Someone will call nine-one-one. The cops will be here in minutes. They need the silencer and it’s coming.”

“
Everyone, move to the far left,” Beth said. “Hurry. Keep out of the light. Snake your way around and get in the bathroom before it’s too late.”

Everyone moved.

Outside the window above them, the man watched them and turned around. Through the glass, they could hear him: “Where is Dan? They’re moving toward the bathroom.”

“Run,” Gloria said.

They ran.

Beth reached for the doorknob, expected to find it locked, but it wasn’t. Instead, it swung open. The relief that coursed through her at that moment was as high as it was temporary, because when she looked inside and finally saw the bathroom, she knew they wouldn’t all be able to fit into it. It was too small. A mere box with an antique-looking toilet in the center of it. No basin. Just a toilet.

She pressed her mother and Katie inside, heard them say how tight it was.

“Put Katie onto your shoulders,” Beth said.

“I can’t. The ceiling is too low.”

“Then hold her in your fucking arms.”

Barbara Moore moved inside and stood on the toilet just as the window next to them shattered. Katie screamed at the sound just as Jack squeezed inside. His rifle banged against the door Beth was using as a shield and she waited for them to maneuver so Brian Moore, the largest member of the group, could fit in.

But it wasn’t happening.

There was no room.

She looked up at Moore and saw the defeat on his face just as a bullet pierced the top of the door and blew it into splinters. Beth ducked in surprise and fear as Moore spun toward the window to shoot back, but he was too late. The sound of another muffled gunshot whiffed into the room, he stood motionless for a moment, the gun dropped from his hand, and then he collapsed to his knees before he fell on his side.

The moment stretched.

Barbara Moore took a breath to scream, but whatever sense she still had left in her must have taken hold because the scream instead turned into a thick, heaving sob.

“Help him,” she said. “Somebody, help him.
Please.
”

Beth looked down at Moore, who was wheezing. He wasn’t dead. The bullet must have struck his chest and connected with a lung. Pierced it. It sounded like a whistle when he took a breath. She grabbed Jack by the arm and told him to put pressure on the wound.

“Stay low. Use the door for protection.”

“The door won’t do shit, Beth. Look at the top of it. They’re using hollow point bullets. We don’t stand a chance.”

She refused to believe that was true. But the way Brian fell made it so his head and part of his torso was sticking out beyond the door. To finish him off, all the shooter had to do was aim at his head and send the message that they were not screwing around.

There was only one thing she could do.

With her own gun in hand, Beth Spellman fled across the room, the darkness rolling over her back until she no longer could be seen in spite of her mother’s cries for her to come back. She held her arms out in front of her. She stumbled once on the uneven dirt floor and righted herself just as she passed the staircase—and the basement door that swung open above them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The cab turned right onto Columbus Avenue and made it a block before it had to stop for a red light at the Seventy-Third Street intersection. Six blocks to Seventy-Ninth Street, then several blocks left before they got to Eliot Baker’s brownstone, which was just shy of Riverside Drive and the park beyond it.

If they caught a string of green lights, they could be there in ten minutes. But if the world decided to conspire against them—and at this point, Marty expected it to do just that—such a short distance could take them up to twenty minutes if traffic was thick.

The good news is that it didn’t appear to be. Soon the cab was jolting up the avenue, with the wind whipping through the open windows and stirring their hair as if they ironically didn’t have a care in the world. The driver cut onto Seventy-Ninth and before long, there it was—Eliot Baker’s home, which was slightly more impressive in person than it appeared in its blurry image on Google Maps.

On the sidewalk were a few people, who turned to look at the cab as it neared them. A group of guys hanging out on a hot summer night. Too dark to get a make on any of them. Marty wanted to regroup with Jennifer alone before they approached the house, so he asked the driver to drop them at the end of the street.

The cab rolled past the men, who turned to look at them as they passed, but since they stood in shadow, it was too dark to see their faces. Were they Carr’s men? Probably not. Carr’s men were with his family, Jack and the Moores. Some of Carr’s men also were looking for Camille. Still, since Carr and Baker were in bed together, better to play it safe and think that they were part of Carr’s “army,” which presumably was being funded by the Millers.

The cab stopped, Marty handed the man a fifty and they got out on the right side.

“Hold up,” the driver said. “You got change coming.”

“Keep it,” Marty said.

“I love this neighborhood,” the man said, and he drove away.

Alone on the sidewalk, Marty and Jennifer went over the plan they decided upon earlier and then started walking toward Eliot Baker’s house. The men who were there earlier were gone, which caused Marty to pause. Why had they left?

“Did you see those men earlier?” he asked Jennifer.

“I did.”

“Where are they now?”

She looked down the street. “Not here.”

“You said Baker rents out the other half. They could be there, they could be with Baker or they might live in one of the houses on either side of Baker. Keep your ears open.”

As he said this, a man and a woman emerged from the house to the left of Baker’s and, laughing, they started down the street. The man hailed a taxi, they slipped inside and as the car drove past them, Marty got a look at the man’s face, which was illumined by the light of his cell phone. Thirties. Blond. The woman’s head on his shoulder.

“Party?” Jennifer asked.

“Maybe. Just be careful when you knock on the door. He won’t see me, but I’ll be beside you.”

They walked up the tall flight of stairs on the right side of the townhouse. Jennifer pressed the doorbell and waited. It was late, but since Baker was working with Carr, he might be expecting interruptions at any point.

Beyond the door came his voice: “Who is it?”

“It’s Jennifer Spellman, Eliot. I have a few more questions for you.”

“Why didn’t you just call?”

“Because I need you to identify someone in a photo for me. Two minutes and I’m gone.”

He said something neither of them could hear, there was a pause and then he started to unlock the door. Marty reached for his gun, held it low and leaned as far back in shadow as possible. When the door swung open, Jennifer was bathed in a cool white light. She was holding a manila envelope. He waited for her finger to tap her thigh, which was her signal to him that Eliot Baker didn’t appear to be carrying.

“I would have preferred a call,” Baker said.

Tap.