Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) (6 page)

9.

Ground zero

Ac
tual lead in my Louboutins wouldn’t have gotten us near St. Vincent’s any faster, though the tangle of emergency vehicles outside made parking and walking up take longer than I would’ve liked.

“No TV trucks yet,” I noted, scanning the street as we stepped onto the hospital grounds.

Parker checked his watch. “They’re finishing up the six o’clock now. They’ll be here.”

I scanned the crowd, my eyes lighting on a curly brown head bobbing along the top of it.

“Detective Landers!” I raised one arm when Chris Landers turned his lanky, rumpled-suit-clad frame toward us.

I grabbed Parker and dragged him behind me. “Landers hasn’t had the benefit of your star power,” I hissed when he protested. “Maybe meeting a celebrity will make him chatty.”

Parker rolled his eyes. “At your service.”

Landers met us under a hundred-year-old magnolia that shaded half the circular drive. He nodded absently to Parker and focused on me. “How do you get yourself into these things?”

My eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”

Landers shook his head, his eyes on my notebook and pen. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Who?” That was Parker, because I was pretty sure I knew who, and was busy trying to avoid vomiting on my new heels.

Landers kept his eyes on me. “The shooter. White male, late thirties, average build. One rifle reported. He wants to talk to you. You and Charlie Lewis. That’s all he’s asked for.”

Talk to me. I swallowed the nausea and tried to focus.

Hot damn—the headline fairy had a funny way of making up for Aaron’s silence, but I’d take it.

Nodding to Landers, I pulled out a notebook. “Where’s the phone? Is Charlie here yet?”

“Haven’t seen her.” Landers laid a light hand on my back and pointed me to the tricked-out RV the SWAT team used as a remote command center. I’d only seen the thing a handful of times, and I’d never been inside. Parker stayed close behind me.

“Don’t promise him anything,” Landers coached. “Do ask short questions that will help us find out what he wants.” He opened the door to the RV, turning to look at me. “And whatever you do, don’t piss him off.”

My stomach tightened as the responsibility settled around me. I smiled, hoping the nerves didn’t show, and put one foot on the bottom step. “I have a decent set of interview skills, Detective. And I want to help.” I climbed into the RV, raising my voice over the beeps and chatter of various radios.

“Don’t you ever go home?” Aaron’s voice came from behind me and I grinned and spun on one heel.

“About as often as you do. Your wife remember what you look like?”

Aaron laughed. “She did get me mixed up with the cable guy last Thursday.” He turned back to the console in front of him, lit with a glow from the flat-screens on the wall. SWAT gear-clad cops with long rifles filled five of the screens, the others occupied by the hospital’s four entrances.

“Fast work,” I said, nodding to the video feed. “You heard from anyone inside?”

“A nurse on the fifth floor called 911 with a report of a gun in the ICU. The facility has been locked down, but we’re not sure how or who did it.”

“Security?”

“Probably. But they’re not armed with anything except pepper spray, and we haven’t been able to get through to them. Or anyone else.”

A thousand news clips played in my head on fast-forward. “Dead?”

“Don’t know. No reports of shots fired. But the phones just ring. Dispatch kept that nurse on for six and a half minutes, talked to the shooter for about thirty seconds, and he hung up.”

“Cell phones?”

“Dead zone. They have signal blockers in the patient areas.” Landers slumped into a small black chair that was bolted into the floor. “Something about making sure the heart monitors work properly. And the brass is going nuts because the place is standing-room only thanks to this damned flu thing. This guy has a packed house to bargain with.”

“Don’t they have a protocol for this? I mean, my friend’s kids have ‘lockdown drills’ at school.” I shook my head. “Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned tornado?”

“Everyone has protocol for it until it happens to them.” Aaron leaned back in his chair and sighed. “You can run drills ten times a day, but when someone walks in with a gun, everything but basic survival instinct goes right out of your head.”

I jotted that down. “So what do we know about this guy? He’s a media junkie of some sort, it seems, but what else?”

“Not a damned thing,” Aaron said, spinning his chair to another bank of monitors on the opposite wall. “We’ve tapped into the hospital security feeds, but the guy knows where the cameras are, because he’s been careful to avoid them.”

“So he’s there a lot,” I said, more to myself than to them. “An employee?”

Aaron shrugged. “Possibly.”

“Landers said he wants to talk to me and Charlie.”

Aaron sighed, running one hand over his face before he nodded. “He got on with dispatch to say he wouldn’t talk to us. Only to you. Something about the public having a right to know.”

“Guessing he didn’t share what they have a right to know?”

Landers snorted. “Of course not. Where’s the fun in that?”

I sucked in a deep breath and squared my shoulders.

“You have a callback number?”

Aaron picked up a phone.

“I do. You ready for this?”

“Never know what the day will bring, right? That’s why I love this job.” I tried for another smile, but from the sympathy on Aaron’s face, I wasn’t fooling anyone.

He dialed, and I tried to keep my heart from exploding. Aaron’s voice was far away: “I have Nichelle Clarke here from the
Telegraph
, just like you asked. Are you ready to talk to her?”

I shut my eyes for two beats and whispered a fast prayer, putting a hand out. I opened them when Aaron didn’t give me the phone.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said. “She’s standing right here—”

His eyes narrowed, his lips disappearing into a thin white line. “No, sir.” He shot a sideways look at Landers, who could’ve been hiding psychic powers the way he rolled his eyes and muttered, “Of course.”

“Of course what?” I hissed, my eyes flicking back to Aaron as he spoke again.

“Impossible. We’ll all be waiting for you to call us back. Just don’t do anything rash in the meantime.”

He cradled the phone and Parker, who’d been so quiet I’d forgotten he was there, boomed “What now?” from behind me.

Oh. Uh-oh.

“He doesn’t want to talk to me on the phone.” The words came out in a robotic monotone as my knees went to water, my eyes finding Aaron’s.

Parker’s long fingers closed around my elbow and I leaned on my friend as Aaron nodded. “Face to face, he says. Wants Charlie to bring a camera in. Seems our guy has a soapbox and he wants an audience.” He turned to a young officer with serious brown eyes and a buzzcut who was working another phone. “You get anyone yet, Dawes?”

Dawes shook his head. “They just ring, sir.”

I got my feet back under me and nodded an all’s well to Parker as Landers slammed his hands down on the console in front of him. “There are almost three thousand people in there, dammit. Blow the delivery door and let’s go in.”

Aaron’s left hand drifted to his temple, his foot bouncing hard enough to shake the chair. “Let’s see if he calls back. At least give it a few minutes. Right now we have less chance of injuries if we wait.”

Landers shot me a look, and I froze—his single raised brow said more than I needed to know.

Could I?

I coughed the fear out of my throat and turned to Aaron. “Let’s talk about this.”

He raised one hand. “Absolutely not. I can’t send you into an active shooter situation. He was explicit—no cops, you and Charlie come alone.”

I nodded. “I got all that.”

“It’s too dangerous, Nichelle. Too much for us to ask. This isn’t what you signed up for when you decided to be Lois Lane.”

“She is pretty tough,” Landers said. Before Aaron got his mouth open to shush Landers, Parker rounded on him with a roar the shooter probably heard from inside the hospital.

“You are not sending her in there.” His flat tone and lack of volume control left no room for a question mark.

Landers tipped his head to one side, unruffled. “Officially? Hell no, I’m not. But everyone in town knows Miss Clarke’s reputation for tenacity. Could I really stop her if she was of a mind to get inside?”

Parker stood up straighter, his voice falling lower, and shouldered between me and Landers. “If you’re any good at your job, of course you could. But if you were any good at your job, you wouldn’t consider offering up my friend as a sacrifice to get some information, would you?”

Landers balked, his shoulders slumping a bit. I shoved Parker to one side and shot him a shut-the-hell-up look from the corner of my eye. “I’m standing right here. And you know damn good and well there’s no keeping me out of a story I want into.”

“Nichelle, you cannot be serious.”

No, I could not. I could not walk into a building to interview a crazy man with a gun. God knew what he wanted with me. Maybe he had a crush on Charlie, but I hadn’t been on TV in months, and last time I was, it was with a banged-up face.

Then there was the other hand. The one that made me run on caffeine and Pop-Tarts six days out of seven making sure my copy was the best in town.

“What if I can really help, Parker?” I asked, catching his gaze. “Instead of failing to make people feel better after someone dies, I could stop people from dying. How can I walk away from that?”

“How about because he just said the guy has a gun? He could just want to kill you. He could want high-profile hostages. Maybe he wants to…” He trailed off, a horrified look coming over his face. “I don’t want to think about it. You cannot go in there.”

Landers sighed. “He’s right.” He turned to Aaron. “You want to wait?”

“Just for a while.”

I planted both feet and reached for a pen. “I’m going inside.”

Parker opened his mouth and I raised one hand. “Possible psycho. I heard. I also heard the bit about there being thousands of people locked in that building. He asked to talk to me. I’m the only person who can help right now.” I turned to Aaron, who sported wary eyes and a hard line to his mouth. “Put a vest on me and call him back.”

“A vest doesn’t protect your head, Clarke,” Parker said, his tone a mishmash of tension and defeat. “You don’t need the story that bad.” He glared at everyone in the RV in turn, his eyes coming to rest on Landers. “And you don’t need to go do this guy’s job for him.”

Landers came half out of the chair and I put a hand on his arm. “His heart is in the right place. Find me a vest.” I turned back to Parker and tried for a reassuring smile. “I’m always careful. This is more about making a difference than the headline. That’s just a nice bonus.”

Landers turned back to Aaron. “What d’you say? Whole lot of people in there. You think he’ll cave, or do we put kevlar on her and station SWAT at the doors?”

Aaron’s foot bouncing went from shaking the chair to shaking the floor under my feet as he locked his baby blue eyes with my violet ones. “This is a whole other level of dangerous. I might venture to call it stupid even.”

“I’ve seen stupid before. I prefer to think of this as brave.”

I didn’t blink.

“That’s a fine line, sometimes.”

He didn’t either.

Three hours (minutes, in which my heart hammered enough for three hours) of staring later, he shut his eyes. “Find her a vest.”

I opened my mouth to reassure everyone (mostly me) that I wouldn’t get myself killed, and the door swung wide, a familiar purr coming from outside. “Which detective asked to see me, again?”

Charlie.

Damn.

“Impeccable timing, as always,” I said a little too brightly, turning around. “Looks like our lucky day, Charlie. The shooter won’t talk to our friends here, but he wants to talk to us.”

“Us? As in, you and me?” Her eyes took on an ambitious sheen, and I could practically see thoughts of “Channel Four exclusive report” flashing across her head in neon. She could get it on the air six hours before I could have it on people’s doorsteps. “Just point me to the phone.”

“No phone. He wants to see you,” Landers said. “Active shooter, one rifle, no known shots fired.”

Charlie froze. “See me?”

“The two of you.”

Ambition vanished, incredulity and fear taking its place. I turned back to Landers while Charlie gaped. “Three. Two…” I murmured.

He raised an eyebrow and I rolled my eyes back toward Charlie, trying and failing to avoid smiling when she found her voice and howled. “One,” I whispered as she screeched, “What?”

Landers blinked, then put a finger in his ear and wriggled it around. “I’m standing right here. And I only have the two eardrums, like everyone else.”

Charlie ignored him and whirled on me. “Have you lost your mind? How the hell could you be thinking of going in there?”

“I might be able to diffuse it before anyone gets hurt. He wants to talk to me. I talk to people for a living. Why not?”

“Because this dick just said the words ‘active shooter,’ that’s why not.”

“No need for name calling,” Landers drawled.

“You’re a detective, aren’t you?” She tossed her hair.

I coughed over a laugh and shook my head. “Now, children.” I raised a brow at Charlie. “I’ll take that as a no?”

She narrowed her eyes and stomped out the door. Landers didn’t look sorry to see her go. “She always so easy to get along with?”

“She has her moments.” I turned back to Aaron.

“At least one of you has some sense of self-preservation.” He shook his head.

“No takebacks,” I said.

“You. Will. Be. Careful.” He punctuated each word with a slam of his hand on the console. “I mean it, Nichelle. I’ve seen you do a lot of shit in the name of a headline, but this guy has to know the chances of him coming out of there alive are fairly low. Maybe Charlie’s right.”

“Charlie’s almost never right.” I tried for flip, but the tremor in my voice gave away my frazzled nerves. “At least not when I can help it.”

He reached for the phone. I only half-heard the conversation as Landers hauled a kevlar vest out of a bin under the counter. Snatching the thing, I yanked it on and let Landers fasten it up as Aaron replaced the receiver.

Aaron rolled his eyes as Landers pulled the last strap tight.

“What am I looking for?” I squeaked, trying to wriggle a more comfortable posture in my twenty-pound corset.

Aaron handed me a two-way radio. “Keep this on, and scream if you need help. He’s going to open the front door. Go up to the fifth floor, and announce yourself loudly. But don’t go back into the ICU.” The words were stern. “I want you near the windows. Let him come to you.”

I glanced at the rooftops of neighboring buildings. There were snipers up there as sure I knew a Manolo from a Louboutin.

“Y’all aren’t going to shoot him if he hasn’t hurt anyone, are you?”

“We have no way of knowing that,” Aaron said. “What we do know is that there are thousands of hostages in that building, and we have to neutralize this situation as quickly as we can.”

Shit. I didn’t want to get anyone shot, especially without a feel for what was going on.

“I’ll be safe,” I promised, my voice reflecting more conviction than I felt.

Landers flashed a thumbs-up, and Aaron shot me a dad-like look. “I’m allowing this against my better judgement. And only because you’d probably find a way to sneak in. This way, I get to put a vest on you.”

In perfect fairness, I’d snuck into many a crime scene. But a face-off with a gunman and no cops present wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, so I couldn’t say for sure what I’d have done if the evening had gone differently. Did it matter? I was about to walk into the exclusive of a lifetime. I pulled in a steadying breath and followed Landers out of the trailer and up the sidewalk.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he said.

I pulled my BlackBerry from my pocket and opened a new text message to my editor.
Stop the presses and clear the front. I’m going in to interview the shooter who shut down Saint Vincent’s.

“I generally pride myself on being smart,” I said, tucking the phone away and looking up at Landers. “And I have no interest in coming out of here with any more holes than I’m going in with.”

It was so…quiet.

I’m not sure what I expected, but dead, utter, you-could-hear-a-gnat-sneeze silence was pretty far down my list.

I’d been through the doors at St. Vincent’s a million times. The hospital has noise. Muzak. Loudspeakers. Phones. People.

Bustle.

Not today.

The front desk was empty, and the lack of sweet old lady smiles from the candy stripers was more ominous than the stillness. Something was definitely wrong here.

I pulled in a deep breath and uprooted my feet from the tile just inside the door, turning to nod at the SWAT captain who’d walked me in and wondering if I was really brave or just really stupid. Some days, it’s a toss-up.

Squaring my shoulders, I strode to the elevators and jabbed the “up” button. Of course I was scared. But I’d dump my shoe collection into a storm drain before I’d let on.

The elevator crept upward and I patted the vest, assuring myself everything would work out fine. I had a radio to Aaron in my bag, and a mission—get myself, and everyone else, out of the building safely. I was good with people. And Aaron had SWAT on point at every door, ready to blast in at my first gasp. It was fine.

The bell for the fifth floor binged and the doors whispered open, loud in the silence.

Still no people.

I walked past a nurses’ station and peeked into a patient room. Rumpled bed, half-eaten dinner on the tray. No patient.

I kept walking, the
click-clack
of my stilettos on the tile echoing off the walls like firecrackers.

The squeak of a door froze my Louboutin in mid-air.

I turned, a single eyeball peering at me through the barest of door openings. It widened, and the door slipped shut again. The sign marked it as the break room.

Hoping the staff had jammed everyone in there, I kept walking.

No blood was a good sign. No gunfire was a better one.

The ICU was at the end of the hallway, the sliding glass doors closed. It took eleven hundred years for me to walk close enough for them to open.

“Who’s there?” A man’s voice, high and stressed.

And a rifle cocking.

Shit.

I cleared my throat. “Nichelle Clarke,
Richmond Telegraph
.”

“Miss Clarke?” He sounded unsure. “You’re alone?”

“The police said you wanted to talk to me.” I took a teensy step forward. I wanted to see the guy. I didn’t want to get shot, though. “You ready to chat?”

Sneakers squeaked across the floor.