DEAD MAN'S JUSTICE - A Place of Evil (Stone & McLeish Thriller Series of Stories Book 2) (28 page)

Chapter 62

Scarface and Khaled reported back to Maloof and told him that they had the driver of the suspect car down in the basement and asked Maloof what they should do with him.

‘Boys, you disappoint me, do you know who he is? Or why he was out there? If he’s a cop then make him talk,’ said Maloof.

‘But boss I have seen this man before, with the Stone man,’ said Scarface.

‘You mean Brad Stone? You idiot. Why didn’t you tell me? Then shoot him and take care of his body and this time make sure you leave no trace. And get rid of the car.’

‘Okay boss,’ said Scarface.

In one of his moment’s of lucidity Mac heard the door to the basement open and close and the voices coming towards him. He lifted his head and squinted into the darkness and made out two Arabian looking men, they must be Maloof’s bodyguards, he thought. He hadn’t really got a good look at them before but he recognized ‘toothpick man’, the guy with the scar on his cheek, he would never forget that face.

Scarface stood in front of Mac and took off his overcoat and threw it over to the bench. He picked up a bucket from next to the furnace and swung his arms back and threw cold water right at Mac’s face. It momentarily took Mac’s breath away and only served to heighten the pain in his head and jaw when the force rocked his head back. He was jolted into consciousness and he figured that’s what the point was because Scarface started asking questions.

‘We play a leettle game,’ said Scarface, ‘it’s ve-r-ry seemple.’ He paced around back and forth in front of Mac. Khaled had thus far been quiet and stood expressionless with his arms folded across his chest. ‘I ask question. You give answer. If answer wrong. I give you pain.’ Scarface removed the gag from Mac’s mouth and left it hanging loose by his neck. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Not really. This doesn’t seem fair. Why don’t you untie me and we can have a proper game. I give you pain too.’ Mac’s sarcasm produced the obvious response. Scarface unleashed a full force blow to Mac’s abdomen.

‘Are you ready now?’ Scarface didn’t really expect Mac to able to answer for some time; he was just enjoying watching Mac struggle to breathe. ‘What’s your name?’

Mac sucked in as much air as he could and blurted out, ‘Osama Bin Laden.’ Scarface turned to Khaled and they both laughed, they were still laughing as Khaled stepped forward and swung the back of his right hand across Mac’s cheek. The breathing problem took a backseat to the searing pain, Mac was sure he had swallowed a tooth as well as copious amounts of blood. He spat out as much as he could to clear his mouth.

Abdul leant forward; his scarred cheek was an inch from his face as he asked the next question.

‘Why you not die in bomb?’ said Scarface. Mac was keeping count of his pronunciation mistakes in an attempt to keep himself sane. His score so far was five, bad spelling, missing prepositions, saying the ‘w’ in answer and now pronouncing the second ‘b’ in bomb.

‘What and miss this game? I’m having so much fun,’ said Mac.

Mac, sensing that his face was close enough, rocked his head back and gave Scarface a
‘Glasgow Kiss’
, although there was no affection intended, Mac’s forehead landed squarely on Scarface’s nose and he heard a crack as the cartilage separated from the bone. Scarface reeled back holding his nose which was spurting out blood. Mac had started to enjoy the game.

Khaled told Scarface to go to the kitchen to clean up his face. He staggered away groaning. Khaled then calmly walked over to the workshop bench. He was sorting through the tools lying around making a choice, Mac could hear the clinking of metal on metal, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to start making a letter rack for his Mum, his skills couldn't have reached that level of sophistication yet.

  He found what he was looking for and went back over to Mac swinging a ball-peen hammer. Mac’s eyes widened in horror. There was nothing he could do to ward off the inevitable agony.

‘I don’t play games,’ said Khaled. ‘We go to eat now... the game is over.’ Khaled laughed. He dropped the head of the hammer down fiercely on Mac’s right knee, and then lifted it again and brought it down on his left knee. Mac passed out for a second or two with the white-hot crunching pain to both legs. He regained consciousness, but wished he hadn’t.

‘When we finish eat,’ Khaled said. ‘YOU DIE.’

Khaled followed Scarface into a side room and from the noises and sounds of plates clinking and a microwave peeping, they must be eating, he thought, they had a radio switched on too.

Mac was a sitting duck, he was powerless, he thought, he had tried to break free, but the guys were professionals, there was nothing within reach that he could use to cut the ties and his hands were tied at least two feet apart, one on each chair arm, so one hand couldn't work with the other. Smart, he thought.

Through a small window high on the outside wall he thought he could hear a car’s engine approach, he was hoping the guards hadn’t heard it over the music.

Ramirez cruised into the dock area and killed his headlights. He ducked his head each time he passed a side road and searched for East India Wharf. He saw the name board and seconds later saw the rear end of Mac’s Taurus and pulled into the next side road and parked up behind a dumpster, where he thought the car couldn’t easily be seen. He made sure his gun was accessible with the safety off, grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment, got out of the vehicle and walked cautiously back to Mac’s car. Right away he knew something was wrong, the driver’s door was open and from what he could see there was no sign of Mac.

The area was quiet; he checked around three-sixty and approached the side of Mac’s car. The keys were still in the ignition; he shone the torch beam inside the car and saw a cell phone on the floor in front of the driver’s seat. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

He wouldn't have just gone walkabout and left the door open, he said to himself, so Mac had probably been taken forcibly from the car. Ramirez walked around the vehicle and trained the flashlight on the ground and saw drag marks in the gravel leading to the building across the divide about twenty yards away. He followed the marks that led directly to a door to the warehouse, there was no number or nameplate, but he was certain that Mac had been taken inside.

He tried the handle but the door was locked.

It’s known the world over that the gap between the police and criminals is getting narrower and narrower. Not just in their looks, but in their methods. They have to think smarter than criminals to catch criminals. Ramirez took one look at the big entrance door and took out a set of lock-picks from his inside pocket and set about getting inside.

He guided the picks inside the keyhole and three simple clicks later Ramirez was standing in an entrance foyer to the building. There was a set of stairs leading up and a set leading down. He tossed a coin mentally in his head and plumped for going down.

There was one long flight of stone steps with a brickwork arched roof leading down to a dark basement with virtually no light whatsoever. As he neared the bottom he began to hear music from a radio somewhere, he thought. He kept to the side wall and took out his gun and held it up next to his right shoulder in readiness. At the end of a short narrow corridor he could see a large metal door, and strangely, a key was in the lock on the outside. The door had a square window at head height; he sidled up to it and peered through keeping most of his head hidden to the side. Through the gloom he saw an old industrial furnace and what he thought was a workshop. He then realized that there was someone at the far end of the room sitting bent over in a chair.

It was Mac.

He could see that he was bound to the chair and his mouth was gagged. He was bleeding from a head wound. Mac’s head was bowed forward, he didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

Ramirez opened the door slowly and the music got louder. It seemed to becoming from a room off the side. The door to it was closed so he crept carefully along the wall towards it and risked a glance through the window. He saw two guys sitting at a table, they were so busy eating and talking they hadn’t noticed him enter the basement at all. They looked like typical thugs, he thought. He knew he had to take a risk to get to Mac. All the other rooms appeared to be dark so he skipped passed the door, keeping his gun cocked and ready.

He passed by the furnace and the workbench and reached Mac without too much trouble, he was able to dispense the chilling fear that he might already be dead when he touched his neck, it felt warm, and there was a strong pulse. Mac stirred slightly and opened his eyes wide when he saw Ramirez before him with a finger up to his mouth making the shush sound. The sight of his gun gave him the most comforting feeling imaginable, and it somehow deadened the unbearable pain.

‘Don’t worry Mac, I’ll soon have you out of here. How many guys are there?’ He removed the gag from his mouth, and Mac managed to whisper an answer.

‘Two.’

‘Sorry Mac, I see they’ve worked you over, are they armed?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac said, though he couldn’t move his jaw properly. ‘When they come back, they’re going to kill me...’ he mumbled through his bloody mouth, ‘...don’t waste time talking, take them out.’

Ramirez stuffed his gun down the back of his trousers, bent down, and started to unbuckle the straps binding Mac’s feet and then he started to work on his hands, one by one. He had no problem with the first hand the buckles came undone easily. He switched to the other hand and heard the music that was coming from the kitchen stop suddenly. Next he heard plates being gathered up and realized he was running out of time. He got an attack of the shakes and it felt like his fingers belonged to someone else.

The door opened and he saw the first guy come out just as the final buckle opened and the leather strap slipped out. The bindings were untied but were still attached to the chair and hanging loose around each wrist. He remembered to put the gag back in Mac’s mouth. He stayed crouched down and saw an electrical cabinet along the back wall, it was a stroke of luck, he thought, and managed to get behind it before they saw him.

They heard the guys talking in Arabic but didn’t understand. Scarface told Khaled to move the car, he was probably referring to Mac’s car when he said in English,
‘Put it in river,’
and the guy disappeared through the big metal door.

Mac upped Scarface’s bad English
score to six.

Scarface made his way over to Mac. From behind the cabinet Ramirez saw Scarface’s hand reach into his shoulder holster and take out a gun. Mac closed his eyes and prayed that Ramirez would not hesitate to strike at the right time. He knew the gun was going to be used on him, and soon.

The walk from the kitchen to his chair should only have taken ten seconds at the most, but each step towards him appeared to take forever. Scarface’s feet moved in slow motion and Mac’s eyes never left the gun in his right hand. At about five seconds in, Scarface began to raise the barrel of the gun in a smooth upward arc and he timed it to perfection, by the time he reached Mac, it was dead level and trained directly at Mac’s forehead. His whole body went numb at the thought of his impending death.

Mac’s brain registered the next second in four equal movements –
Scarface’s expression changed, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed – his forefinger started to squeeze the trigger – Ramirez stood up quick as lightening and took his aim – Mac held his breath when the shot was fired.

Maloof heard the gun shot up in his office on the second floor, and he figured it was over. Khaled was on his way out of the building to dump Mac’s car when the shot rang out, he stopped walking for a second, and then carried on to the car.

The bullet had hit dead center of the forehead, if you are a confident marksman and sure of your accuracy, it’s the best choice of shot to exact maximum damage, the bullet enters the brain, it expands on impact and all functions are totaled, survival is zero.

Scarface’s body dropped to the floor like a slaughtered cow in an abattoir. He was dead before he hit the ground.

An FBI field officer manning an observation post on the roof of the adjacent warehouse to Maloof’s, was monitoring all movements in and out of the building. He called in a report having seen two unidentified persons entering the front door. He’d been put on full alert and told to look out for anyone other than Maloof or his men that might interfere with their operation. A technical officer back at Pennsylvania Avenue received the photos via email, and using facial recognition software analyzed the two head shots taken by the field officer using a night vision camera. The final report was sent through to Agent Wade’s smart-phone and in his anger he squeezed the cell phone so hard the screen almost cracked. He turned to Gray, who was driving their car over to HQ, to show him the photographs of Ex-British Army Officer Ewen McLeish and Senior Detective Eduardo Ramirez of the New York City Police department.

Agent Wade said, ‘
Gray, turn this car around and get me over there right now.’

Chapter 63

Tariq Karimi had risen quickly through the ranks since joining the police force straight from university. His good reputation was not gained because of his enthusiasm and dedication to the force, but also his analytical and methodical approach to detective work. He was always keen to go the extra mile to assist his senior colleagues and hoped to get his chance as a rookie detective soon to put his undoubted attributes to good use. Of course it also helped that he was the office wizard when it came to anything requiring computer know how, most established detectives still preferred the seat-of-the-pants approach to solving crimes, however when they needed that special help, they always turned to Tariq.

Even in the short time it took Finch and Stone to drive back through the early evening traffic, Tariq had begun to make progress on the possible origins of the sounds recalled by Tameka and Sofia. He had started to correlate them to known sources.  Tariq had a CAD program that enabled him to overlay geotechnical maps, on which he could highlight reference points. He started with the helicopter routes, which airport transfer companies used, and then looked at private charter operators around the whole of the
New York district.

He initially established a radius line denoting a distance thirty minutes out from the mean of the three ‘drop points’ where the first three girls had been found, this was based upon Detective Finch’s observation that the releases had been made at approximately one hour intervals, and working on the theory that just one vehicle was being used, the time for drop journey and the return drive to collect the next girl, must have been around an hour. It was a rough calculation, but it was somewhere to start. Tariq gave the radius line the color blue on the CAD overlay on his screen.

The police received a favorable response from the Federal Aviation Administration and their Regional Strategic Policy Unit emailed the helicopter routes between JFK, LaGuardia and Newark International Airport’s over to Tariq. He ignored, for the sake of clarity, the inner-city tourist helicopters as their routes were irregular and haphazard. 

In the CAD program Tariq could assign colors to almost any line or feature on the chart, like gridlines, boundaries and specific points, like you would with a pushpin on a wall map.

He decided to color all the important helicopter routes with a red line.

He sat back and wondered if this would all help; the screen was a mass of lines with a circle of blue and a criss-crossing network of red helicopter routes from airport to airport.

Finch and Stone arrived back at the precinct and they were eager to see how Tariq was getting on. Stone was pinning all his hope on Tameka and Sofia’s information, it was pretty much their only solid lead, and with under two hours to go before the last drop time, as anticipated by Finch, there wasn’t a lot else they could do. They had less than ninety minutes to find the remaining two young girls, one of which was Stone’s daughter Laura.

They could see that Tariq was busy at his pc; he called out and told them to look at the screen that was dropping down from the ceiling adjacent to the glass information wall. Tariq had a projector hooked up to his computer, he plugged in the VGA cable and an exact replica of the CAD file on his monitor appeared on the six foot by four foot white screen. Finch and Stone stood in front of the screen and Tariq walked them through what he had done so far.

‘Guys, what you’re looking at is a geotechnical map of the New York area, centered mainly on Brooklyn and Queens, where most of the abductions took place. From the mean of the...’

‘Mean?’ asked Finch.

‘Mean, is the average, err...call it the center of a triangulation of the three locations, okay? ...where we found the three girls, Tameka, Sofia and...’ he paused for a second when he realized that Jessica’s position was where her body was found. ‘...Jessica’s body. About that point I’ve created a circle, you can see that in blue, which equates to a radius of thirty minutes travel time, in accordance with your basic theory Detective Finch.’ Finch raised his eyebrows realizing that he did in fact come up with the theory.

‘Got it, this is CAD right?’ said Stone. Although it had been thirteen years or so since Stone left university, all construction drawings are produced in CAD these days so they can be circulated by email and used by whoever has a computer. Stone was quite familiar with the software.

‘Yeah,’ said Tariq.

‘Carry on,’ said Finch.

‘Okay, I then got info emailed over to me from the Air Authorities’ RSPU showing the helicopter routes between JFK, LaGuardia and Newark. That’s the criss-cross network you can see in Red.’

‘Good Tariq, there’s a few places where the two intersect but I guess we need to narrow it down even more, what else you got?’

‘I’m waiting for an electronic copy of the underground subway network for Brooklyn, I’ve made a visual assessment, but I want the real deal so we don’t make any mistakes.’

‘Great work Tariq, I don't know what we’d do without you.’

Tariq thought they were easily impressed, to him it was fairly elementary stuff, but he was glad they appreciated his work.

Stone and Finch had not eaten for hours, a junior officer brought in a box of pizza and they both tucked in. Finch put in an internal call to Gruffnick to update him on the situation. He had heard about Jessica Wong’s unfortunate death from Tariq and he had already made an announcement to the media. He told Finch he’d been trying to contact Ramirez without success, he was worried that he might go it alone to try to find Maloof. Finch, loyal as ever, said Ramirez wasn’t that stupid but he too hadn’t heard from him, or Mac for that matter, for over an hour.

Grolnick said that when they had pinpointed the possible location for the remaining girls, to keep him fully informed by radio every step of the way. He said he’d coordinate CSI and the paramedics and as soon as he had confirmation that they’d been found, he would handle the fall out and follow up with the media. Finch understood and was glad to have his support in the absence of Ramirez.

Tariq’s computer made a pinging sound, he swung his chair back around and checked his inbox.

‘It’s here. I’ve got a .dwg file of the subway network.  Give me a few minutes and we may have something.’ Tariq opened up the file and superimposed the layer onto his existing geo-map.

He clicked on the legend and found the layer containing the subway routes that ran through
Brooklyn from Manhattan Island. He assigned the color yellow to the lines and saved the file. Finch and Stone were following his mouse moves on the big screen.

‘Okay, let’s see what we’ve got?’ said Tariq, and the beauty of the software and its facilities were there or all to see. ‘Oh my god, look, there’s just one single coincident of all three colors. We’ve got it guys.’ Tariq jumped out of his seat and ran over to the big screen and hit the point with his finger. ‘Look!’

On the bottom quarter of the map, over near Brooklyn Heights by the east river, three lines converged and produced a brown spot. The red helicopter route from JFK to Newark airport crossed the yellow ‘L’ line subway from Rockaway Parkway to 8th Avenue and they both intersected the blue thirty-minute radius line. It was the only place on the map where this happened.

‘It’s got to be,’ said Tariq.

‘Tariq, you’re a genius, you might just have saved two girls lives,’ said Finch.

Tariq enlarged the part of the geo-map around the brown spot, a road passed through the spot in an area near the docks. On the road were five large rectangular buildings all in a line. The subway route cut across the line tangentially and passed directly underneath building number four along the line.

‘Guys, I’m pretty confident that this is the building here,’ he circled it with a black marker pen, ‘...helicopters fly in a band,’ he explained. ‘It could be anywhere up to a hundred yards wide, and our thirty minute estimate of the outer limit, is just that, an estimate. Subway maps are accurate to within five yards, they have to be, so this is the building where the girls felt the vibrations.’

Stone and Finch could only look on amazed at Tariq’s ability to sift and compile all the technical data and come up with the right result.

‘We should move Finch, we have the location, thanks Tariq,’ said Stone.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

Finch and Stone set off for the area that Tariq had circled, enlarged and printed off. They had a road and satellite photo of the surrounding buildings. Finch grabbed a radio from the communications room and tested the reception with Tariq, who was going to stay in close contact with them the whole time back in the precinct. Finch had arranged for a SWAT team to be ready and he left all other back-up to Grolnick who could, in a real emergency, call on a chopper to speed up logistics.

Mac and Ramirez heard footsteps in the outer corridor and realized that the other Arab was on his way back. Ramirez rushed forward and hid at the side of the furnace. Khaled opened the door and started to walk across when he noticed Abdul’s body lying on the ground in front of Mac. His hand went automatically to his holster but Ramirez had his gun up to his temple before his hand was half way there.

Ramirez clicked the gun to let him know he meant business, ‘Freeze. Police, put your hands up,’ he said. Khaled had probably watched enough American movies to know what to do. Ramirez removed his gun from the holster and passed it to Mac. ‘Walk,’ he said and gestured with the barrel of his gun over towards Abdul’s body on the ground. ‘Stop.’

Ramirez removed all the ties from Mac’s feet and hands and asked him if he could stand. He said he would try and placed his hands on the chair arms for support and pushed himself up to a standing position.

‘How’s that?’ asked Ramirez. All the time keeping his gun trained on Khaled, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Even though it must have been only forty degrees inside the basement, Mac was sweating from the exertion, he could cope with the head wound a little now and his jaw had reduced down to a throbbing ache, but it was his legs he was most worried about. The hammer blows had seriously bruised his legs just above the knees, he was lucky they weren’t broken, he thought. He tried to move forward one step, the pain was excruciating, but he winced and moaned and swung the other leg and almost lost his balance. Ramirez grabbed his shoulders and steadied him up. When he was a few paces away he told Khaled to sit down in the same chair. Mac stood still and had Khaled’s own gun pointed at his head whilst Ramirez tied him up in the same way they’d tied Mac and stuffed the same gag deep into his mouth.

Ramirez walked forward and removed Scarface’s weapon from his limp hand, ‘He won’t need this anymore,’ he said.

Mac asked Ramirez to go over to the bench and bring him the ball-peen hammer, the handle was sticking out and was plain to see. ‘What do you need this for?’ he asked.

‘Watch,’ said Mac. He hobbled to within a foot of Khaled’s legs, he raised the hammer high above his shoulders and held it there, ready to drop it. Khaled’s eyes closed, his hands gripped the chair legs in terrified expectancy of the pain he knew he was about to experience.

It didn’t come.

He opened his eyes in incredulity, then they narrowed in disbelief, as if to ask Mac ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t play your cowardly games,’ said Mac, and flung the hammer as hard as he could towards the bench.

‘Come on buddy, he’s harmless now,’ said Ramirez.

Mac continued to take short, stilted steps forward and got faster and faster until they were by the metal door.

‘Ramirez?’ said Mac. Ramirez stopped as he was opening the door, his hand still on the handle. ‘Thanks. You saved my life back there.’

‘No sweat man, let’s get out of this dungeon. There’s someone I want to find. By the way Mac, here’s your cell phone, you left it in the car.’

They were standing in the lobby, Mac took the phone and Ramirez headed up the stairs, ‘Wait for me, I won't be long.’

Mac suddenly realized what he was going to do.

‘You're going after Maloof, where’s your back up?’

‘Don’t need it, this is personal,’ he said. Ramirez stopped for a moment, took Scarface’s gun from the back of his pants and gave it to Mac. Before Mac could talk him out of it, he disappeared up the flight of stairs.