Opening Moves (43 page)

With my shoulder I couldn’t do it, couldn’t carry him. One of the hostages was a big guy, bigger even than me. After I freed him from the plastic cuffs, I had him pick up Radar’s body.

Even though I had the FBI jacket on again, I knew that the SWAT team would be tweaked, looking for any movement, ready to fire, so as I nudged the front door open, I did so slowly, carefully, my arms to the side, hands out. “It’s over!” I yelled. “The hostages are okay.” I hesitated. I couldn’t help it. “Sergeant Walker is gone.”

At least a dozen news cameras were aimed at me from across the street.

I stepped aside and held the door open. The man who’d been a hostage and was now carrying Radar’s limp body, joined me outside. As I’d instructed him, he stayed stationary long enough to make sure the cameras caught the image of him standing there, just as the kidnapper had demanded.

Then, he lowered Radar to the ground and held up his hands as he edged away from me. Four SWAT members rushed forward, I slowed them down, told them what’d gone down inside, then three of them bent over Radar’s bloody body while the fourth walked toward the EMTs to lead them over here. They would roll Radar away, a blanket drawn up over his head as they passed the media, all those news cameras. Then transport him. Lights off.

The shock hit me all at once.

I began to crash.

The adrenaline that’d been chugging through me since I first entered the slaughterhouse seemed to dissipate in one fell swoop. That, along with the impact of what had happened to Tod and Radar, were all working to drain my strength and I felt weak, disoriented.

You still have to find Tod. You still need to get the guy who took him.

As the EMTs approached, I found myself unable to stand on my own and I leaned against the side of the building to keep from dropping to the ground. Ralph came sprinting up to me, then supported me while two EMTs hurried toward us with a gurney.

I was vaguely aware of the Flight for Life helicopter landing in a vacant parking lot down the block. If it was for me, I wasn’t so sure I needed it, but it would definitely make the trip to the medical center go a lot faster.

I blinked to keep focused, but was overwhelmed by the melee of law enforcement personnel suddenly swarming around us. As always with these things, there were too many people here: cops, lawyers, a hostage negotiator, counselors, the police chaplain, SWAT, Lyrie and Thompson from the task force, support personnel. As I collapsed onto the gurney, I saw some of the officers were helping hostages out of the bank.

Then I was lying on my back, staring at the darkening sky and the paramedics were wheeling me toward the helicopter and the world was spinning in a slow, delirious circle and all I could think of was Radar and what had happened to him and his family.

96

Joshua watched it all.

Bowers emerged from the bank entrance, then the guy carrying Sergeant Walker’s bloody corpse appeared behind him. Somehow Bowers had overpowered Walker and taken him out.

Or did Radar take his own life?

Was it possible?

Either way, a cop had died. It’d been filmed. It was over. Joshua was certain that the man who’d called him earlier in the day, before sunrise, would be impressed.

And they would finally meet.

He made his way through the crowd inside the cordoned-off area, then went back to the moving truck to take care of the boy.

Ralph crouched beside me as the paramedics worked to cut off his jacket so they could get to the bullet’s entrance and exit wounds. As they did, he said to me softly, in a voice meant only for me, “People see what they expect to see.”

When I looked at him, I realized he knew. “How did—?”

“You’re not the only one who notices things. The bloody shirt Radar had on—that’s the one you were wearing when you got here.”

So, he’d figured it out: when I was standing outside the door and the SWAT members first rushed forward, I’d told them the truth, and one of them had quickly informed the paramedics—
pretend he’s dead, buy us some time.

I kept my voice low. “I didn’t know if anyone else was on the line when I called from the bank. That’s why I said what I did, when I told you he was dead.”

“It was smart.”

“He almost didn’t go for it.”

“Thank God he did.”

Hopefully, it would provide us the window we needed to save his son.

The helicopter rotors started gearing up and I had to yell in order for Ralph to hear me. “We need to find Tod!”

He shouted that he was on it, that he would find the boy. I asked him one last question: “Do we know who the woman was, the one in the slaughterhouse?” But before he could answer, my attention was drawn to something else.

A moving truck at the end of the street, turning the corner.

“No,” Ralph replied, “but we’re gonna find out!”

I grabbed his sleeve and pointed to the moving truck. It was too far away to make out the plates, but when he saw it, he realized what I was thinking, spun, and bolted back toward the squads parked beside the bank.

97

Ralph cussed.

He hadn’t been able to get to a car in time or maneuver past the news vans fast enough, and the moving truck had disappeared before he could catch it. He hadn’t even been able to identify which company it was from.

He had local law enforcement send some cars out looking for it, then returned to the SWAT van.

A call was waiting for him from Gabriele at the department. She asked about Radar and Pat, he told her what she needed to know, then asked her to get some officers to start calling moving companies that had trucks out today. She informed him that Richard Basque had been transported to the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center for surgery on his broken jaw.

“Do we know the name of the victim yet?”

“Not yet. But she has a tattoo on her left ankle. A custom job. We’re calling parlors now to try to find out who did the artwork.”

Ralph thought about Tod, about the victim, about what he could do right now. He told Gabriele, “I’m gonna go talk to Basque.”

Then he hung up and took off.

Joshua left the boy in the moving truck in the parking lot of the Kohl’s department store where he’d purchased the shoes earlier in the day and where his car was waiting for him.

An anonymous phone call to the police would lead them to the truck, which he’d rented under a false name. They would find Tod Walker in the back, safe and sound.

Once in his own vehicle, Joshua turned on the police scanner and heard that a man named Richard Basque had been arrested at a slaughterhouse in Milwaukee. By the sound of it, by the description of what he’d done to the woman, Joshua realized it was almost certainly the man who’d killed the women in Ohio and Illinois, the Maneater.

The suspect had been transported to the medical center to be treated for “injuries sustained during his apprehension.”

Joshua had a decision to make: stay clear of Basque or go and meet him.

If he’s transferred to jail, you might not get another chance.

Perhaps the safer choice would be to lie low, see how things played out, but the desire that’d been lurking inside him for so long, the one that’d led him to orchestrate all of this—that overriding longing to meet someone like himself, a partner, someone who would understand him—was so overpowering that in the end Joshua couldn’t hold himself back.

Once he was on the road, he called in Tod’s location from his portable phone, then directed his car toward the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center.

While we flew to the hospital, I tried to piece the case together.

Who was capable of doing something like this? Committing these crimes this week?

Everyone is capable of the unthinkable, Pat. All of us are, you told Taci that yourself.

Motives.

You can never untangle people’s motives.

But who? Who was he?

He knows the city, knows that neighborhood near the train yards…He went to Pewaukee to steal the Taurus…He got the mattresses from the mission…

According to Calvin, our guy used that boxcar as his anchor point and most likely lives or has an activity node in the Franklin Heights area.

Everything matters.

Yes, and he knows drugs, had access to Propotol, could’ve met Adele when she was in Milwaukee after that fender bender.

After she was taken to the hospital.

Wait.

The kidnapper got his hands on an amputation saw, had a connection to the homeless mission—they offer free medical care.

A doctor could’ve gotten into the school, convinced that secretary that he needed to talk to the Walker children.

Oh, there was definitely something I needed to check on.

We were close to the medical center. I could call it in as soon as we landed.

98

The helicopter nestled onto the landing pad.

The paramedics had bandaged my shoulder and my leg and given me some saline solution in an IV, and I was much less dizzy now than I’d been outside the bank.

As soon as we were in the building, I told them unequivocally that I needed a phone. They tried to hold me back and get me a hospital gown since I had no shirt on, but I hobbled to the nurses’ station, and, despite the objections of the woman behind the desk, I picked up the receiver.

I reached Officer Gabriele Holdren at HQ. Apparently, she’d already spoken with Ralph and he hadn’t been able to get to the moving truck before it got away.

“Gabriele, pull up the accident report of when Adele Westin had the traffic incident last summer and had to spend the night at the medical center. See if you can find out who the doctor was who treated her—we might not have it, but the hospital will if you can find the date.”

But even as I said the words, other thoughts about the case caught me, carried me in another direction entirely.

Tod’s kidnapper had referred to Radar by his nickname, but only people at the department did that. He hadn’t drawn undue attention when he dropped off the shoebox. It had to be—

Someone who knows Radar…who knew to switch the plates on the stolen car to bypass an APB, someone who’s been to crime scenes and knows how to avoid leaving prints, DNA.

I thought again of big guys on the force. Caucasians approximately six feet tall.

Wait.

Thompson was the one who first dug up the copy of Griffin’s catalog, he goes to church in the Franklin Heights area…

I could hardly believe what I was considering.

He used to patrol over by the train yards. He was there at the bank just now … He was the one standing sentry by Colleen’s door on Monday…

Thompson had left this morning to check on the Franklin Heights addresses. The next time I saw him was at the bank. He would’ve had time to get Tod and drive over there. The timing worked.

Timing and location. It’s always about timing and location.

We were looking for a person who could get access to the children in the school…