The Dark Root (33 page)

Spinney moved forward on the green light, passed under the interstate, and slowed again at another traffic light on the far side. We were just shy of the bridge over the narrow Mascoma River, and stuck between two huge mall complexes, one on either side of us.

I glanced across Spinney, out his open side window, and onto the vast parking lot of the L-shaped Kmart Plaza. There was yet another Oriental restaurant about midway down the row of stores.

Suddenly, I leaned forward in surprise. “There.” I pointed toward the distant restaurant, now half blocked by the opposite flow of traffic.

Heather Dahlin sat up as if stung, her face glued to the window. Spinney kept trying to look to where I was pointing and watch for the light simultaneously. “What the hell is it?”

“Go left—into the parking lot. I think I saw him.”

“Damn.” Not daring to use his siren, in case Michael Vu thought the heat was off, Spinney switched on the blue lights mounted behind the car’s grille. Nobody seemed to notice. He inched into the line of traffic, now coming on quickly, jerking the car forward in stages.

“Come on,” Dahlin urged from behind. “Where was he, exactly?”

“Going into that restaurant.” Spinney swore and hit the gas, lurching in front of a small red Honda, which slammed on its brakes with a squeal. There was a howl of protest from a horn. Just feet away, I saw its driver contorting her face with a torrent of soundless invective. In a second she was gone, as Spinney sped forward, narrowly missing another collision in the next lane, and finally shot into the entrance of the shopping plaza.

“Stop,” I yelled, and opened the door, which was wrenched out of my hand by the sudden arrest of momentum. I leaped out onto the pavement.

“What’re you doing?” Spinney shouted at me.

I was thinking of the two cops we’d just left. “Going around back in case you chase him through.”

I ran across the end of the long line of shops and down a paved service road dotted with overflowing Dumpsters. To my right, noisy and tumultuous, the Mascoma River hurtled near, far, and near again as it passed through a long, sharp-angled S-curve between trash-strewn, muddy banks.

A hulking eighteen-wheeler appeared at the far end of the road and began trundling toward me, gathering speed, despite the road’s narrowness and clutter. I ran faster, hoping to reach the restaurant’s back door before the truck cut me off, but I was too late. I was forced to skid to a stop behind one of the Dumpsters, and wait until the behemoth went by, my hopes of beating the others to the restaurant defeated.

The outcome was predictable. Just as I began running again, Michael Vu exploded from one of the distant doors. He stopped for a moment in the middle of the road, saw me bearing down from his right, and bolted straight ahead.

Facing him, the Mascoma veered back to within fifteen yards of the rear of the buildings, its current and depth mellowed by the hairpin curves just upstream. At the foot of the gentle bank that Vu was running down, there was an eddy of sorts—a gently swirling radius of calm water, where it looked like someone might take a dip in warmer weather. Beyond it, the water flowed its fastest, pushed away from the far bank by a tree that lay anchored in the sandy mud. Overall, the width of the river was about twenty feet.

Vu didn’t hesitate. He reached the edge of the bank at full tilt and took off in a wild flat dive, landing with explosive force in mid-current. For a moment he floundered, his body twisting and rolling; then he grasped the far reaches of the small tree extending to the middle of the stream. He found his footing on the bottom, which was only some three to four feet deep, and dragged himself to the other bank.

Abreast of him now on the opposite shore, I stopped, my feet in the mud, deafened by the river’s tumble. I cleared my revolver, pointed it straight at him, and motioned with my other hand for him to lie down. He hesitated momentarily, suddenly broke into a grin, and began working frantically to pull the tree’s embedded trunk free of the mud. He’d realized—as I knew all along—the futility of both my command and my weapon. Vu was wanted, as they say in the movies, “for questioning.” And while Hollywood routinely makes that an offense deserving gunplay, we both knew it was not.

Swearing readily now, I started into the water.

As desperate as it had seemed, Vu’s flat dive had been the right approach. As soon as I’d waded to the outer edge of the shallow swimming hole, the water’s full power grabbed both my feet and pulled them out from under me. I landed on the rock bed, almost losing my gun, and made a wild grab for the tree just as Vu succeeded in freeing it. As both the tree and I were swept away, I saw Vu take to his heels again, across the gravel bank toward a thick stand of saplings.

My ride didn’t last long. At the next corner, I managed to catch a rock with the bottom of one foot, right myself, and pushing awkwardly on the bobbing trunk, stagger to dry land. From there, Vu was no longer visible, but I did see Spinney and Dahlin explode out the restaurant door on the other bank.

I gestured to them to head back toward 12A, while I began running for the trees. It was not easy going—the saplings stood in tight ranks, amid an undergrowth of strangling brush, and halfway through them I had to scramble up a six-foot sheer embankment, reminiscent of some marine-corps training course. On the far side of this thick band of trees, I found myself in a broad, flat field leading up to the paved access road of the town’s water-treatment plant. In the distance, almost out of sight behind some storage sheds, was Michael Vu, still going at a dead run.

I shoved the pistol back into my wet holster, and put all my efforts into catching a man who not only was obviously in great physical shape, but who was showing a pathological lack of interest in having a friendly chat.

He was almost back to 12A’s ubiquitous line of traffic by the time I reached the access road, and as I watched, he seemed to vanish within it like a stone dropping into a dark well. I ran full tilt, half thinking I might find him spread-eagled and squashed flat by a flood of single- minded commuters. Instead, all I could see was a blur of cars and trucks, and way off on the other side—moving fast—the diminishing outline of my quarry, about to escape for a second time that day.

Yielding to the same kind of passion I’d observed earlier in Heather Dahlin, and stimulated by a rush of adrenaline, I ran out into the traffic, hearing both her and Spinney’s shouted warnings in the distance behind me.

The effect was bone-jarringly cataclysmic. Horns, squealing rubber, screaming voices, and the deadening crunch of fenders accompanied my broken-field dash across the street. Only once did I have to actually slide across the hood of a car that didn’t stop in time, much to the astonishment of its white-haired driver. On the far side, however, Michael Vu was still in sight.

We were now coming abreast of what is called the Powerhouse Mall, a large, roughly C-shaped plaza expensively built in industrial-revolution style—heavy on red brick and large windows. Vu, steering away from the plaza’s trap-like embrace, skirted the parking lot’s open north face and ran alongside Glen Road, a narrow street into which it fed, aiming for the far end of the C, and the relative boondocks beyond it.

Knowing I had no chance of catching him, I jogged on, my energy waning, paying no attention to the shouting of the angry motorists behind me.

Partway across the front of the mall’s parking lot, however, Vu’s luck and mine suddenly changed.

Ahead of us, from farther up Glen Road, came the distant howl of a siren. Vu slowed abruptly, quickly looked back at me, and then cut to his right, directly into the dead end formed by the Powerhouse’s three-sided box. Just at that moment, I saw the Lebanon police cruiser come into view, obviously summoned by Heather Dahlin, hurtling at full speed toward the intersection with Route 12A. Apparently she’d caught them as they were heading east on I-89, and had asked them to take the next exit and double back.

Waving wildly to attract their attention, I began angling to cut Vu off at the mall’s central, southern entrance. I briefly saw the blond driver’s pale face turn toward me, and then the sounds of his brakes as he fishtailed into the parking lot just a hair too late, sideswiping the high granite curb and blowing a tire. As Michael Vu veered again and vanished into the mall’s easternmost entrance, my attention was diverted by a second burst of squealing tires to my back. Expecting Dahlin and Spinney, I saw instead a black sports car with tinted windows swerve to a stop at the parking lot’s other entrance, and inexplicably spin around to return to Route 12A at high speed.

Knowing the two patrolmen were now pursuing him on foot, I didn’t follow Michael Vu through the entrance he’d chosen, but instead continued toward the south door, in the middle of the mall’s C-shape, hoping to hell Dahlin had ordered all the support troops she could locate.

The Powerhouse Mall is two stories tall, elegantly appointed with lots of dark wood and brass, and a long, narrow, lofting central hallway, running east to west, which reaches up to the roof high above. The second floor is restricted to two parallel balconies along this main corridor, meeting at staircases at both ends. Given Vu’s speed and the lead he’d gained, it was possible he’d had time to reach the upstairs—or, for that matter, to hide out in any of the mall’s dozens of stores.

For the moment I stood motionless, watching, listening, and waiting for the others to catch up. What I wanted was a radio.

Dahlin and Spinney didn’t take long to reach me, red-faced and out of breath. With the growing puddle around my feet, the three of us made for quite an attraction, just as I hoped Michael Vu had, bursting through the other entrance.

“Ask the Lebanon boys if anyone saw him,” I told her. “Maybe then we can zero in on a general area.”

She keyed her radio and passed along my suggestion. Spinney took off for the staircase behind us to block it off. A couple of minutes later, the radio announced, “Someone saw him heading south toward the staircase. Don’t know if he took it or stuck to the main hallway.”

Dahlin turned to me. “Why don’t you join Spinney and work down both sides of the balcony? I’ll wait here for the backup. Shouldn’t be more’n three or four minutes. The patrolmen can either start working the east wing or stay put by their entrance. Your call. You’re running this show.”

That was a sensitive technicality that routinely gave feds their resented reputation. I started moving in Spinney’s direction, playing down her last comment. “Sounds good. They’re already inside—might as well keep ’em coming.”

I joined Spinney, climbing two steps at a time, and took the balcony across from his.

The two balconies were about ten feet wide, bordered by a waist-high, ornate railing to the inside, and a string of shops opposite, lined up like a row of fancy New Orleans apartments. I removed my gun from its holster and walked with my hand hidden under my jacket, as if protecting something from the rain—an image my soggy appearance made blatantly ludicrous. I tried to ignore the loud squelching from my shoes.

Each one of the shops had large interior windows, making them comparatively simple to check inside without actually entering. At every door, my badge displayed in my free hand, I inquired of each salesperson if they’d seen a soaking-wet Asian male recently. This process was less nerve-wracking than it could have been, because I was also checking for the same kind of wet footprints I was leaving behind me. It seemed reasonable that where there were no prints, there was also no Michael Vu. Assuming he hadn’t taken his shoes off.

Shop by shop, Spinney and I worked our way up the line, keeping track of each other visually, and of Heather Dahlin below.

Until I saw the glimmer of water on the floor.

I was standing opposite a clothing store filled with racks blocking my view of the interior. I stood quietly for a few moments, watching for movements, or reactions from the few shoppers inside. I couldn’t see a clerk at the register near the door.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Spinney looking over at me. I gestured at the store, and then at my feet and the trail I’d left. He nodded and moved up so he was facing the store’s front door, albeit across the chasm.

He didn’t quite make it. There was a sudden flurry of movement near the counter, and Michael Vu—his long black hair plastered to his face—appeared from a small storage closet just behind the register, his arm wrapped around the neck of a terrified young woman, whose hands gripped his forearm in a struggle for more air. He wrestled her out onto the balcony, staring for a moment at both Spinney and me. In his free hand was a switchblade.

I held my breath. Hostage situations were unpredictable, dangerous, and volatile and only rarely ended up as happily as on TV.

I showed my gun, as did Spinney. “Let her go, Michael,” I said, loudly enough to attract Dahlin’s attention from below. In the corner of my eye, I could see her bringing the radio up to her mouth.

“Fuck you,” Vu shouted back. “You go away or she dies.”

“We’re staying put, Michael, and more cops are on the way. Killing her will do nothing for you.”

He looked around wildly, as if expecting a marine division to appear out of the blue. “
I
won’t be killing her.
You
will.”

“Look,” I said. “We don’t even have a warrant for your arrest. We want to have a talk with you—that’s all.”

He began shaking, swinging the woman before him like a rag doll. “Oh, sure. Right. A little conversation. That’s bullshit, man. You think I’m a dumb fuck?”

Suddenly, he arched his back, lifting the girl’s feet off the ground, and shouted, “Well, I’m
not.
” He pushed her over the railing and bolted down the length of the balcony.

The girl screamed and grappled at thin air as her body cantilevered over the top of the railing. Only as she was dropping into free-fall did one leg instinctively hook onto the rail and leave her momentarily hanging like a clumsy acrobat. I got to her just as her leg slid free, and snagged her ankle with my left hand. Despite her small size, the sudden weight pulled me to my knees, hammering the railing into my armpit. I gasped in pain, focusing all my strength on not letting her go. I rose slowly to my feet and began hauling the girl toward me, using her leg like a rope. Moments later, several startled shoppers began helping me pull her to safety.