Enigma (FBI Thriller #21)(2)
“Dillon, they’re not cops to him, they’re here to take him to the people he fears. If he snaps, he might hurt Kara and the baby. His paranoia is out of control, he’ll do whatever he thinks he has to do.” She leaned into him. “I know a way you can get into Kara’s house without anyone seeing you. What do you say?”
Another cop car pulled up to the curb, the officers quickly taking cover. Detective Mayer shouted through a bullhorn, “Sir, we’re not here to do you any harm. There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt. We can talk, we can figure this out. Tell us the problem, tell us how we can help you.”
“Don’t lie to me! I know who you are. They found me and sent you. I can beat them, at least for a little while. Leave or I’ll kill you, all of you if I have to! Do you understand me? They don’t know everything. I figured it out; I fooled them! I got away from them. Get back!”
Savich heard tears bubbling in his shattered voice. And a deep well of madness, and fear.
The man screamed, “I’ll kill everyone to stop them, do you hear me? I’ll kill all of us!”
He fired off another half-dozen rounds through the small space between the tightly pulled drapes. A front tire on the lead patrol car burst, and bullets shattered the passenger-side window of the Crown Vic, sending Detective Mayer to his belly.
They couldn’t return fire, they had no idea where Kara Moody was.
The distant sirens were closer now, and soon there would be pandemonium in the street. Savich would lose his chance. Dr. Janice was right: He had no choice. The man was unpredictable and dangerous, and he had an assault rifle. Savich felt the familiar weight of his Glock on his belt clip and hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. He saw Sherlock’s beloved face, remembered Sean’s manic laughter when he’d beaten his father at a new video game, and prayed he wouldn’t take a bullet. Savich said to Dr. Janice, “Tell me how to get in the house.”
As she spoke to him, Savich texted Metro detective Ben Raven.
Urgent. Come to 2782 Prospect Street.
Hostage situation. Mayer here. Bail me out.
Savich heard the man yelling again, his panicked madness giving way to something like determination, and acceptance. “I mean it! It has to stop. I won’t let them hurt her. Leave. Tell them they can’t have her!”
Savich climbed over Dr. Janice’s fence and dropped onto Kara Moody’s side yard. There were only three high windows on the near side of the house, no chance the man would see him. Savich pushed through a planting of red petunias and white impatiens, cut through a huge star jasmine that covered a root cellar door at the back of the house. Dr. Janice had lived next door for fifty years and knew the original owners had dug out the space to use as a bomb shelter, something from another age.
He moved the jasmine away, saw the moldy wooden door Dr. Janice had described to him. It wasn’t locked. The rusted handle creaked and groaned as he pulled it open and looked down at rotted wooden stairs that disappeared into blackness. He pulled out his cell phone to use as a light, and carefully stepped down the stairs until he felt the rotted wood begin to give way, and jumped, knees bent, to the dirt floor. He felt a rat carcass crunch beneath his boot, breathed in stale, nasty air, cooler than outside, and nearly coughed, but managed to hold it in. He doubted anyone had been in this shelter since the Nixon administration. His cell light haloed spiderwebs draped from open beams, crisscrossing the space, and more rodent carcasses littered the dirt floor. Jars were lined up on warped wooden shelves, covered with mold, dirt, and spiderwebs. Straight ahead another set of sagging wooden stairs led up to a door. Dr. Janice had told him it opened into a closet in the second bedroom, the baby’s room.
He thanked heaven for small favors when the stairs held his weight. He tried the narrow door at the top. It was locked. He grabbed the wooden rail to steady himself, reared back, and slammed his shoulder against the lock. It held. He reared back again and this time he kicked it, nearly lost his balance, and felt his heart do a mad flip. The door popped open. He prayed the man hadn’t heard him.
He shoved the door slowly outward, pushing aside cardboard boxes stacked against it, until he had enough of a path to pass. He eased the outer closet door open slowly and looked into a room painted a light blue. A bright mobile with the name Alex hung over a crib, and next to the crib was a rocking chair with a blue throw and a dresser painted with Walt Disney characters. Everything was ready for the baby’s arrival.
He stepped quietly into the hallway, guessed he was thirty feet from the living room when he heard the man screaming at the cops again. “Bastards! They sent you, didn’t they? But they don’t want me dead, not yet at least, so he told you not to kill me.”
Savich heard Kara Moody’s voice, soft and low, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. She sounded controlled, trying to keep him calm. He prayed she could hold herself together a bit longer. It might help keep the man from shooting her . . . and then possibly himself.
Savich held his Glock at his side and walked as quietly as he could through the updated kitchen toward an arched opening to the dining room. The L-shaped living room was beyond it, and he saw Kara Moody first, her ankles and wrists duct-taped to a chair, her long straight dark hair straggling around her face. A burgundy Redskins T-shirt covered her big belly and her loose white cotton pants. Her narrow feet were bare. She was in her midtwenties, and pretty. Her eyes were fastened on her feet, trying to avoid the man’s eyes, and his attention. Savich moved forward, saw the man standing by the window in profile, the assault rifle held loosely at his side. Savich wondered where he’d gotten hold of that killing machine. He was swaying back and forth. Was it from stress or drugs? Probably both. He’d sounded young, but still, Savich was surprised to see he was no older than twenty-five, slight, maybe one forty, and no taller than five foot nine. There was a light beard scruff on his narrow face. He might have been good-looking if rage and fear weren’t contorting his face. He wore a wrinkled shirt over baggy chinos that looked like he’d lived in them since he’d escaped from wherever he’d been held, from the people who’d probably been trying to take care of him. Were they the gods he was running from, the gods he believed had found him so quickly and sent the police to bring him back?