NYPD Red 4 (23 page)

“Who is he calling?” Kylie said. “Is it possible they have someone else in the—”

Every picture on the wall of monitors flickered, turned to gray-and-white electronic snow, and then blipped out.

“Shit,” Cavallaro yelled. “How the hell did they do that?”

I grabbed my radio. “All units, code red. We’ve lost visual contact. We have four suspects in white jumpsuits. Lock it down. Repeat: lock down all exits.”

I raced out of the security room, Kylie right behind me. Saturday night was no longer lonely.

IN AN IDEAL
world, we’d have tracked the theft on video just long enough to have conclusive proof of intention that would hold up in court. We hadn’t quite gotten as much as we wanted, but as soon as they cut the power, all bets were off. The cat-and-mouse game was now a manhunt.

I had officers on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, and as Kylie and I raced up the stairs, I gave the order for them to converge on the third.

The first shots rang out just as we got to the lobby. Seconds later, I got the radio report.

“Shots fired, third floor. Suspects split up and are on the run. I’m in pursuit of one headed upstairs. The others went south.”

The lobby was well covered. Kylie and I ran up to the second floor just in time to see a man in a white jumpsuit racing down the hall. We drew our guns, and Kylie yelled, “Police! Freeze! Drop your weapon!”

He didn’t stop, or freeze, but he did drop something. It wasn’t his gun. Kylie and I both dove for cover as the black canister rolled toward us. It exploded in a blinding flash of light, and the earsplitting blast was magnified by the acoustics of the hospital hallway.

Flash grenades aren’t designed to cause permanent injury, but what they lack in destructive power they make up for in their ability to stun anyone who’s on the receiving end. I couldn’t see for at least five seconds, my legs were shaky when I tried to stand, and my ears were ringing. I helped Kylie to her feet, and by the time we both regained our bearings, our target was at the far end of the corridor.

We got there just in time to see him vault a nurses’ station, grab a fire extinguisher off the wall, and race into a room.

We stopped and took positions on either side of the door. “You’ve got nowhere to go,” Kylie yelled, breathing hard. “Come out with your hands up.”

He responded by firing a shot. The bullet didn’t hit anything, but he’d made his point. He wasn’t giving up without a fight. The gunshot was followed by the sound of glass shattering. And then nothing.

Ten seconds into the silence, Kylie dropped low, darted her head inside the room, and pulled back. “He went out the window.”

“It’s a two-story jump,” I said as we entered.

“No, it’s not,” she said, looking down. “The roof to the emergency entrance is directly below us, which is why he made for this room.”

He had smashed the window with the fire extinguisher, but he’d left jagged shards sticking up from the bottom, and the glass was bloodied.

“Looks like he cut himself up pretty good,” Kylie said, picking up the extinguisher. “Maybe it will slow him down.” She knocked out the glass stalagmites protruding from the sill, climbed out, and jumped.

I followed. It was only about eight feet to the ER canopy. It was a perfect vantage point to scan the area, and I spotted his standout white jumpsuit a block away, just as he ran down the stairs of the Grand Street subway station.

We dropped from our perch onto the top of an EMS truck parked below, scrambled down the hood of the ambulance, and ran toward the station.

Just as we got to the entrance, we heard the train pull in. We raced down the stairs and hurdled the turnstile. About a dozen people had gotten off the train, and we scanned them just in case he tried to double back and blend in with the people who were exiting.

We didn’t see him, and by now everyone who had been waiting for the train was on board. The platform was empty except for a crumpled heap of white Tyvek.

The conductor’s voice bounced off the cavernous walls. “Watch the closing doors.”

I body-blocked one just as it was about to shut, and the two of us squeezed onto the last car of the train.

A woman saw our guns and screamed. “Police,” I yelled as we dug out our shields. “Everybody stay where you are.”

It was a Saturday night crowd, so there were a lot of young people along with the usual melting pot of New Yorkers you find on any given subway ride. Nobody said a word.

“We have to find him before we get to the next station, or we’ll lose him,” Kylie said.

“He tossed the jumpsuit,” I said, “but we don’t even know if he got on the train.”

“Yes, we do,” Kylie said, pointing at the floor.

I bent down to get a closer look. It was small. No bigger than a dime. But it was fresh, and it was red.

Blood.

WE SLID OPEN
the door to the next car and made our way down the aisle until we found another small spatter. We kept walking toward the front of the train.

“Next stop, Broadway-Lafayette,” the automated voice announced.

“We don’t have time to search the whole train before it gets to the next station,” I said.

“Then we’ll make time,” Kylie said, pushing the red button on the emergency intercom.

A female voice snapped on. “This is the conductor. What is your emergency?”

“This is Detective Kylie MacDonald, NYPD. I need you to stop the train now.”

“Ma’am, we’ll be at the next station in less than thirty seconds. Can this just wait till—”

Kylie exploded. “No! There’s an armed fugitive on board. Stop the damn train now.”

Within seconds, the train screeched to a stop.

Guns drawn and badges in plain sight, Kylie and I began to follow the trail of blood. We had just entered the next car when the conductor’s voice boomed over the PA system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re sorry for the delay, but this train has been stopped due to a police investigation. Please remain calm, and we will update you shortly.”

“Son of a bitch,” Kylie said. “If he didn’t know we were coming, he does now.”

We opened the door to the fourth car. Nobody said a word, but a handful of awestruck New Yorkers pointed at an emergency window that had been pushed out.

I jumped up on the seat, climbed through the window, and lowered myself onto the catwalk that ran alongside the track. Kylie dropped down behind me.

This would have been the time to call for backup, but our precinct radios don’t work underground. We were on our own.

The lighting was minimal, and we moved along the catwalk low and slow, knowing there was a man with a gun who could open fire on us from any dark corner in the tunnel.

I heard a noise behind me. I wheeled around and pointed my gun at a figure coming at me from the shadows. “NYPD!” I yelled. “On the ground. Now!”

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, it’s just me. It’s just me.”

“Me” was a young Hispanic woman wearing a conductor’s uniform.

“Get the hell back on that train,” I ordered.

“The engineer just radioed me,” she said, breathing hard. “Don’t shoot. The guy … he’s in front of the train. He’s almost at the station. He’s getting away.”

Kylie and I ran along the catwalk. When we were past the first car, we jumped onto the track bed. A lone figure, about fifty yards in front of us, was hobbling toward the station. He grabbed the edge of the station platform, heaved his body up, teetered on the edge of the platform, and fell backward onto the tracks.

He tried to stand, but at this point we were on top of him.

“You win,” he said, tossing his gun to the ground.

He was about thirty, with close-cropped blond hair and a pleasant white-bread face that was probably pretty good-looking when it wasn’t contorted in pain. “What’s your name?” I said.

“Rick Hawk,” he said. “Can you do me a favor before you start asking too many questions? I’m bleeding out pretty bad here.”

The left leg of his jeans was saturated in blood. “You probably cut a vein,” I said. “If it were an artery, you’d be dead by now.”

“Can you get me to a hospital?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Hawk,” I said. “We just have to see if there’s one left in this city that will treat you.”

WHILE KYLIE AND
I were escorting Rick Hawk back to Hudson Hospital, his partners in crime were being escorted out: the three men who had been on the biohazard truck with him and the woman who had disabled the security cameras.

“It was a fine night for New York’s Finest,” Frank Cavallaro said when we regrouped in his office. “No casualties, and best of all, when I wake up in the morning, I’ll still be head of security at Hudson Hospital.”

With one perp in need of a blood transfusion and the others being transported to Central Booking, Kylie and I decided to call it a night and interrogate them one at a time in the morning.

I got home shortly before midnight.

“Half a day?” Angel said as I walked through the door.

I grinned and resisted the temptation to ask him if my girlfriend was upstairs in the apartment.

She wasn’t. And there was no note.

My clothes looked and felt like they’d been worn by a tunnel rat. I peeled them off, took a shower, put on a clean pair of boxers and a T-shirt, opened a cup of peach yogurt, plopped down on the sofa, and flipped on the TV.

It was twelve fifteen on Sunday morning—day thirty of my ill-fated experiment to cohabitate with the woman I loved. Tryouts were over, and I’d pretty much blown it. I was about to be cut from the team.

This is your life now, Zachary
, I thought.
Sitting around the apartment in your underwear, clicking the remote, and spooning down fermented milk laced with bacteria and the fruit of your choice. Pathetic.

I was just settling comfortably onto my pity pot when the front door opened.

“Hi.”

It was Cheryl.

I sat upright. “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded. “I’ve been sitting around waiting for you all night.”

I tried to keep a straight face, but it was impossible. The two of us cracked up. It wasn’t going to change the facts, but at least it broke the ice.

“My mom had an extra ticket to see
Pagliacci
, and, having nothing better to do, I went,” she said.

“Pagliacci is the new guy who plays for the Knicks, right?”

She laughed and sat down on the sofa next to me. “You’re home early from an all-night stakeout. Did you catch the bad guys?”

“Five of them.”

“Congratulations. So I guess you’ve been too busy to think about where the two of us go from here.”

“Just the opposite. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

“And?”

“You want to give me your decision first?” I said.

“No. It’s on you, Zach. Man up.”

“I love you,” I said. “And I don’t want to lose you.”

“I love you too,” she said, resting her hand on my knee. “And I definitely don’t want to get lost.”

“I heard what you said Friday morning at the diner. I thought living together would bring us closer, but it turns out all it does is underscore how much time we spend not living together. You always seem so damn happy to see me when I walk through the door; I never thought about how you must feel when
you
walk through the door, and I’m not there.”

“It feels lonely,” she said. “I know I’m home, but it still feels like the apartment is empty.”

“Okay. Here goes. Manning up,” I said. “I realize that not living together works a lot better than living together. I’m willing to go back to the way it was.”

Her eyes closed for a second, then she opened them and smiled. “Good call. I think we’ll both be happier.”

I did my best to smile back. “Plus, now I get my dresser drawers back,” I said.

She wrapped her arms around me. “Not all of them. Just because I like waking up in my own bed doesn’t mean I want to do it every morning.”

SOME COPS CAN
crack a major case and ride high on their success for the rest of their careers. Having cracked a politically sensitive crime spree, I’d have been happy to have the euphoria last for a few days, but five hours after I hit the pillow, my trip on the glory train went completely off the rails.

My cell rang. It was Kylie.

“What?” I grumped into the phone.

“Cates just called. She wants us in her office in twenty minutes.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t elaborate. All she said was, ‘Don’t be late. Howard Sykes doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’”

I jumped out of bed and started throwing on clothes.

“What’s going on?” Cheryl asked, still half asleep.

“I’m not sure. All I know is that Howard Sykes is meeting me and Kylie in Cates’s office.”

“He probably wants to give you the key to the city after what you did last night.”

I looked at my watch. I was pretty sure the city didn’t start handing out keys at 6:26 in the morning.

I grabbed a cab to the One Nine. Kylie was waiting for me outside. We bolted up the stairs and were in Cates’s office by 6:44. Sykes was already there.

Cates skipped the usual foreplay. “Did you interview Rick Hawk last night?” she asked.

“The man was in no condition to talk,” I said. “He was a couple of pints low on blood.”

“Did you run his name through the system?”

“Our priority was getting him on life support,” Kylie said. “The task force collared four other perps, so we turned the whole lot of them over to Central Booking to sort out. Why? Did Hawk have any priors?”

Cates nodded toward Howard Sykes. It was his show now.

“He had one big prior,” Sykes said. “Three years ago, Staff Sergeant Richard Hawk saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers, coalition partners, and civilians by holding off a half dozen Afghan suicide bombers who breached a NATO base. He was awarded the Silver Star.”