The Second Mouse (25 page)

Where were the cops?

“The Turkeys have settled in,” a quiet voice said over all their earphones. For no reason beyond playfulness, Mel and his duo had been code-named the Turkeys. The Niemiecs were, blandly, the Bad Guys. At the pre-op briefing, Willy had suggested calling the Secret Service for better labels. Nobody had gotten the joke.

Joe peered over Sam’s shoulder. The dot representing Nancy’s position had stopped moving at the edge of the parking lot. “Looks like we pinned the tail on the wrong turkey,” he murmured.

“Turkeys One and Two are in motion,” came the same voice. “Both armed with M–16s. Heading toward building B—previous location.”

Each structure had been given a letter. B was the one nearest the easternmost taxiway, and the one they’d watched Mel check out a half hour earlier, when he’d arrived alone in the rental van. At the time, they’d had their first fright—he’d almost stepped on the hand of one of the hidden SWAT members while passing by.

Joe risked a peek over the roof’s low wall to see the two shadowy figures of Mel and Ellis reach the corner of the hangar. Around him, half the cops had put on night vision goggles. The sniper, still alone in his far corner, was relying on his scope to give him the same advantage.

A new voice came over the radio. “This is Perimeter Four. Three cars just drove by, headed your way. Pretty sure they were the Bad Guys. Two black sedans—a Ford Fiesta and a Cutlass—and one Explorer SUV, color red.”

Although nobody moved, Joe felt a distinct shift in the air. The last of the three groups had finally arrived. Something was going to happen after all.

The latecomers were the most casual of all, despite what they had at stake. They parked abreast, not far from the van where Nancy was hiding; eight young men got out, not four, as Mel had advertised, and assembled as if preparing to enter a sporting arena. They talked in normal voices; a couple were throwing fake punches. Joe could see several handguns tucked into waistbands here and there—another Mel goof-up.

The group, leaving two members by the vehicles, headed out between the buildings toward the landing strip. From the roof, one of them could distinctly be heard asking, “You sure nobody’s here?”

“Nobody’s ever here at night,” came the answer. “That’s the whole point.”

Joe couldn’t help wondering just how many people were in fact here—certainly enough that they were almost literally stepping on each other.

The group of six reached the grassy patch housing parked planes, halfway to the concrete runway, where, amazingly to the watching cops, three of them flopped down on the ground to wait, stretching out on their backs to gaze at the stars.

“Okay,” came the soft, slightly amused voice in the earphones. “We wait.”

It didn’t take long. In the tradition of drug stakeouts, one standard was that everything ran late, the supposition being that neither dealers nor users were sticklers for time. But this scenario involved a pilot, so it turned out somebody had a watch and knew how to use it. At exactly 2:00 a.m. a faint humming became distinguishable in the sky, growing quickly into the thrum of an approaching aircraft.

The final effect, when it came, was startling if expected. Somehow, Joe had prepared himself for a darker version of what he’d seen at airports during the day—the sight of a plane, its wings wobbling slightly, the bounce and squeal of the tires hitting the concrete, maybe all accompanied by runway lights.

Instead, there was that distant sound, followed by a sudden and very brief stab of a light as the plane quickly pinned down the location of the strip, then more darkness and finally abrupt silence. Totally unseen, the small plane had landed as if large pieces from a film strip had been surgically removed from a movie—one moment it wasn’t there; the next moment it was. But it never appeared on one of the taxiways. It stayed out on the runway, finalizing the accuracy of Mel’s intelligence.

The six men roused themselves and jogged out toward the gloomy edge of the runway, almost vanishing from view.

The whole transaction took less than a minute, barely allowing the voice on the radio to ask, “You get the registration on that aircraft?” and get an affirmative answer. Then there was a sudden burst of noise as the engine coughed back to life, and the plane began receding back into the night.

In the meantime, the jubilant party of six, laden with compact packages, still laughing and chatting, began stepping back out of the darkness.

“Okay,” said the quiet voice. “Just as rehearsed. By the numbers.”

Over his shoulder, Joe heard Sam whisper, “Boss, thought you’d like to know. Nancy’s on the move.”

She couldn’t take it any longer. There was too much at stake, too many unknowns, too big a chance for everything to go wrong. Nancy eased herself out from behind the van’s seat, where she’d been struggling in vain to see anything out of the windshield, and peered out the side windows for some sight of the two men by the cars.

She saw them to her right, loitering by the Explorer, smoking, their attention drawn by the sound of the airplane’s engine. She took advantage of the diversion to silently open her door, slip out, and scuttle soundlessly toward the shadows cast by the nearby buildings. Once there, totally hidden, she jogged along the wall, aiming for where Mel had told them earlier that he planned to make his interception.

Her timing was good. As she reached the corner and faced the open aircraft parking area and the two taxiways, she saw not only the approaching band of drug dealers but, from the sides, the shadows of two rifle-toting dark figures emerging from separate corners to cut off the larger group.

Mel’s loud voice pierced the night. “This is a robbery. Stop where you are and drop your weapons.”

The group froze. Mel and Ellis continued forward, their M–16s becoming clear in the half-light. Surprisingly to Nancy, she noticed that they’d also donned black ski masks, adding a menacing aura to their sudden appearance.

“You can give it up or die. Real simple choice,” Mel said, lifting his rifle to the firing position and adding, “These are fully automatic weapons.”

The six men looked from one hooded gunman to the other in silence. Finally, one of them very slowly cleared a semiautomatic from his waistband, crouched slightly, and dropped it onto the ground.

“Everybody,” Mel ordered. “Now.”

The other five followed suit. As they did, Ellis faded back slightly, swung around, causing Nancy to duck out of sight, and shouted, “You two, keep coming with your hands up.”

The men from the parking lot, attracted by the sound of voices, were caught unawares as they approached between the buildings. Transfixed by the change of events, they followed orders, passing Nancy without notice.

Mel waited until all eight were herded together and had deposited their guns on the ground.

“Take five steps back and drop the packages,” he then ordered.

They complied as before, creating two piles of belongings.

“Take five more steps back, get down on your knees, cross your ankles, and put your hands behind your heads. Do it now, do it fast, or you will die.”

Nancy crouched, transfixed, incredulous that Mel’s plan was actually working. She watched as the group once more did as they were told.

Mel was now standing just ten feet in front of the eight kneeling men, his weapon still up and aimed.

“My partner,” he explained, “will now come up behind you, from the back row to the front, and tie your hands together. Do not struggle, do not say a word, and lie down on your face when he’s done. If you don’t, I will shoot you and he will go on to the next man.”

Ellis circled around behind them, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and extracted a bundle of white plastic zip ties from his pants pockets. One by one, he bound the men’s wrists together and pushed them facedown on the grass. The entire operation went without a hitch, ending with Ellis standing at the head of a group of eight prone people, all utterly still.

For a split second, as if stunned by his own success, Mel didn’t move, his rifle in place, now aimed vaguely at Ellis. They stood facing each other as if caught in a photograph.

And then everything changed.

The night vanished. With the flip of a switch, everything they could see, from the buildings to the runway, from the tethered planes to the dark spaces between the hangars—all of it became awash with blinding, painful, lightning-white light, supplied by over a dozen powerful roof-mounted halogen searchlights.

Simultaneously, a booming voice on a loudspeaker intoned, “This is the police. Do not move.”

But Mel did move. With a ballet dancer’s grace, he fired once into Ellis’s chest, threw his rifle far to the side, and took three fast steps backward just as the SWAT sniper fired a single round where he’d just been standing.

Before anyone else could react, Mel was kneeling with his own hands on his head, shouting, “
Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.
”

As if magically, in the moment it took for all this to occur, he was surrounded by a circle of heavily armed, black-clad, helmeted police officers, all aiming their guns at him.

Ellis, for his part, was still slowly falling, a bright red string of blood working its way down the front of his ballistic vest.

Nancy, screaming, broke free from her hiding place and was instantly knocked down by a cop.

“
Hey, Ellis,
” Mel shouted, removing his ski mask while keeping his hands in sight. “Surprised?”

Ellis sat heavily on his heels. He was staring at his bloody hands, his rifle still dangling from his shoulder.

One officer seized Mel, pushed him hard to the ground, and pulled his hands up behind the small of his back.

Mel paid no attention. “You double-crossing fuck—takes one to know one, right?” he shouted at Ellis. “You think I didn’t know you were screwing my wife? You may have squealed to the cops, but I fucked with your vest. Your bullets are dummies, too, asshole—just like you.”

The cop frisking him finally yielded to temptation and mashed Mel’s face into the grass, stifling him.

Joe stepped out of the building and freed a sobbing Nancy from the police officer pinning her to the ground. Holding her by the upper arm, he escorted her over to where two paramedics were trying to tend to Ellis, starting an IV and readying a defibrillator.

But it was clearly a lost cause. In the blinding new light, it was obvious he was dead, his naked chest, its clothing cut free, already touched with the lifeless pallor that comes like the counterpoint of a blush.

Nancy, all hope gone, collapsed by his side.

Chapter 22

T
he next time Joe visited Michelle Fisher’s neighborhood outside Wilmington, there was already the tinge of winter’s approach in the air. He still drove with the window down, but only because of the sun. Nights were beginning to declare the need to cover up.

He parked opposite Linda Rubinstein’s ramshackle house and opened the car door to welcome her enormous dog, who this time was on patrol outside. The beast, a mix of perhaps a half-dozen large-headed canines, planted his snout in Joe’s groin to get his ears scratched. Joe didn’t argue with him. He couldn’t exit from the car in any case.

“Bogey,” a sharp command rang out.

The dog paid no attention.

Linda, still in slim jeans and a T-shirt, but with an open men’s dress shirt over the top as well, appeared from around an outside corner of the house. She was carrying a basket with tomatoes in one dirt-stained hand.

“Bogey,” she repeated. “Leave the poor man alone.” She reached and yanked him back by the collar, adding, “I hope all your friends believe you when you tell them how your crotch got wet.”

Joe laughed but couldn’t resist checking. He was fine.

“How are you?” she inquired, leading the way to the sagging porch. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Really?” he asked. “I’ll have to tell Doug Matthews that. He was hoping you and I would get something going.”

This time she laughed, reaching the porch, putting the basket down, and waving him to his earlier perch on the railing. “If you weren’t a cop, he might’ve been right. You want something to drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. You don’t like cops? I didn’t get that when we met.”

She settled into her chair. Bogey wandered off. “It’s not a blind prejudice,” she said. “Just something born of my time in the city.”

“Things might be different up here,” he told her.

She smiled. “Is that an invitation?”

He tilted his head and made a regretful face. “No. I’m afraid not. I’m here officially—at least sort of.”

“Ah,” she said, studying him.

He studied her in turn for a moment before commenting, “You haven’t asked about the case.”

She widened her eyes, but the look in them remained careful. “I figured you’d tell me if anything had happened. Has it?”

“In a way,” he confessed. “But not how you might think.”

“Really.” She said it as a statement.

“Yeah. Every once in a blue moon, it ends up that what we had from the start was all we ever needed.”

“Like when a car kills a pedestrian?”

He shook his head. “No. There we need to know if the driver was drunk. Or the pedestrian. Did they know each other beforehand? What was the lighting at the time? And on and on. Those actually get pretty complicated. I’m thinking more about a case like Michelle’s. Before, that is,” he added, “someone changes how everything looks.”

She didn’t respond, but he felt a stillness settle over her, as if she were waiting to hear a distant but telling mechanical click.

“Newell Morgan was pretty awful to her, wasn’t he?” Joe asked.

She barely nodded. “I told you that.”

“Yes, but you phrased it in terms of his being her landlord—wanting her out so he could sell the house. There was more to it.”

“That’s all I knew.”

“You also said you’d never met him.”

She hesitated. “Did I? I might have, once. I was over there a lot.”

“So was he.”

She didn’t answer. She tried to swallow without revealing it to him.

“Newell Morgan was after Michelle sexually. He wanted to replace his son in her bed.”

Joe could almost see Linda’s brain analyzing what she should say next.

Finally, she went where he would have in her place. “Am I in trouble here?”

He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, so his eyes and hers were on a level. “I don’t think so. But that’s why I’m here. I do think you’ve done things you haven’t told me about—things that normally would get you into hot water. But if I’m right, and if you confirm them, then I’m willing to let things rest as they are.”

“So,” she said, striving to sound natural, “what do you think I’ve done?”

He smiled and straightened. “That would be too easy. I’ve got to find out if the truth and my suspicions are one and the same. My telling you what I think would be a poor way of doing that.”

She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I see what you mean. Puts me in a tough spot, though. If I say too much—more than you suspect—then I land myself in jail for no good reason. You’re asking me to risk suicide.”

He smiled. “Interesting choice of words.”

She stared at him, and he could see at that moment an almost visible cloud lift from her brow.

“He almost pulled it off,” she then said.

“Getting into Michelle’s bed?”

“Yeah. He came by again and again, wearing her down. She started saying she could see maybe making an accommodation. He’s just another guy, you know? Nothing a shower can’t wash off, right? Things like that. But it was killing her.”

“It did kill her,” he suggested.

Linda’s face saddened. “Well, yeah, in the long run. But at least he wasn’t the primary reason anymore.”

“Because of you,” he stated.

She paused before finally nodding. “Yeah. I was there the last time he came by. I gave him hell. Told him that if he kept at it, he’d end up in prison, being put to the same use he was trying to put her to, only by a bunch of hairy guys. I also said I’d tell his wife and everybody else who gave a damn.”

“And that did it?”

“He was a pig. He wasn’t brave. Plus, he was going to get everything else he was after. Michelle didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The house was his, and she was going to end up on the street. All I did was spare her that last humiliation.”

She sighed deeply and, staring at the floor, added, “At least I thought so.”

“But she did commit suicide,” Joe suggested quietly.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “A while later. Not so much because of him, though. At least I can claim that. It was more the rest of it—Archie, the lack of money, her kids not wanting contact. In a way, it was even Adele and me doing what we could. Our offers of help just highlighted how badly off she was.”

Linda looked up at him, her own burdens and struggle commingling with her sorrow. “Michelle died of a broken heart. She just turned on the gas to make it real.”

“And that’s where you came in.”

She touched her upper lip with her fingertip and stared thoughtfully at the floor.

“You really have figured this out, haven’t you?”

He nodded without saying a word.

“Yeah.” She said the word slowly, dragging it out. “At the time, I was just so mad, you know? I had to blame somebody. And he was so easy. So deserving. I hated it that she would just be allowed to slip away, and that a bastard like him wouldn’t suffer a single thing. It wasn’t right.”

Joe kept silent, letting her work through her story.

“It wasn’t like I really pinned it on him,” she said a little defensively. “Not that I wouldn’t have tried if I’d known how. I would’ve put his fingerprints on her throat, the creep. But all I could do was muddy the waters a little. Turn off the gas, fiddle with the tank, crawl through from outside, open the windows . . . I did what I could to draw your attention to there being someone else involved.”

“You buried Georgia.”

She’d gotten a little worked up admitting all this, and his comment brought her up short. Her face softened. “Poor Georgia. I doubt Michelle even thought about her. Such a sweet old cat. She didn’t deserve being killed without a thought.”

She stopped speaking for a while, simply staring off into space. Joe let her be.

But she gazed at him eventually and asked, “That’s what tipped you off, wasn’t it? Burying the cat.”

He smiled at her, enjoying the way her brain worked. “It helped. Newell would’ve just thrown her in the woods or forgotten about her.” He didn’t mention how Mel—had he even been remotely involved—would have done the same.

Linda sighed again, shoving her hands between her thighs like a child. “God, what a life. So, what now? You lock me up?”

Joe rose instead and shook his head. “No. You actually did me a favor, pointed me places you knew nothing about. It didn’t get Newell in trouble, but we put some bad people in jail along the way. Things have a funny way of working out.”

She nodded, smiling sadly. “I guess they do sometimes, if not always according to plan.”