A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (43 page)

“They say come out with our hands in the air. They have the area completely surrounded.” She sounded desolate.

“Sit down!” Lou growled. Copeland fell against the wall and slid to the floor. Lou dropped to his knees, then his butt.

“Tell them we’re not coming out.”

It was over now. But for a while he could hold this one spot, hold control: these two under the gun; the threat of death to anyone who entered or rushed him. Control, until they blew them away from all sides at once. He was ready. He watched the two of them against the opposite wall through swollen eyelids.

“They’ll have to come and get me,” he said in a whisper.

A bullhorn voice blared: “MR. CHRISTOPHER, THE AREA IS COMPLETELY CORDONED OFF. COME OUT AND THERE WON’T BE ANY SHOOTING.”

He screamed so they could hear: “Stay away! I have a gun!”

“MR. CHRISTOPHER, THERE’S NO NEED TO RESIST. YOU’RE SAFE NOW.”

“Stay where you are!”

“YOUR WIFE IS HERE WITH US, MR. CHRISTOPHER. LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.”

“Get away,” he screamed.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Maggie sat on the passenger side of the Subaru. Agent Riegelhaupt was at the wheel. He screeched up behind Kilmartin’s green sedan, killed the engine, grabbed Mag, and dragged her across the seat out onto the grass where they crouched clear of the line of fire. She saw three armed men in black scramble up into the rocks above the tiny bungalow.

A cluster of men huddled behind a black van. A uniformed policeman spoke into a giant bull horn. Another in a black jumpsuit motioned to the men climbing the rocks to disperse further right and left. Three more men in black crouched in firing position at the corners of the vehicle. Kilmartin spoke into a bulky car phone.

Mag sat on the ground behind the Subaru and stared at the stones. Lou was in that wreck of a cottage. Maybe wounded. Maybe dead. Her head swirled with the news stories that had filled the hours before she finally collapsed in exhaustion after returning home from the auction and her final talk with Lou.

The story had swamped television news since last night. Eager news readers pushed their resident studio pundits into more and more speculations about who was behind the attack, then cut away to video crews interviewing police and bystanders up in Stony Point who recounted the chaos at the scene. Mag winced at the portrayals of a pitifully bungled bonfire on Bear Mountain Bridge. The election was over. Bliss had lost, but the story lived on and grew.

Reporters stormed the headquarters of the State Police and Fort Montgomery PD. Commuters at Grand Central recounted a strange chase and apparent arrest at the station last evening. Reports leaked out of the 53rd Precinct in the city about that bizarre incident and mysterious disappearance, possibly of the man involved. Every half hour, it seemed there was more “breaking news” of some development in the saga, none of them actually that relevant.

And then that headline in the scandal loving
New York Post
this morning: “LOVERS STILL FREE”. She knew the story by heart: the chief perpetrator and some coed in the attack force luridly portrayed as a variation on Bonny and Clyde. It was all a lie. She knew it was. The imagination of some wild-eyed cub reporter. Yet, it stung. It reached down into the center of her heart and lodged there like a jagged chunk of flint.

Maggie pulled in a huge gulp of air that swelled her chest. She stared hard into the stones and grass at her feet. Focus. Concentrate. Cling to the calm that had settled into the pit of her stomach when Riegelhaupt rapped on the bedroom door and told her to come quick. They had Lou.

It was the last act. Lou was alive in that wretched shack. He was. He was. She knew he was.

Mag heard one loud crack reverberate through the trees to the water tower, across the lake to the ranger’s cabin and back. A dog’s low howl came drifting out over the water. A tiny puff of white smoke rose from a cleft beside one of the boulders above them.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Copeland, feet splayed, his back firm against the wall in front of Lou, suddenly jerked violently and canted to the side noiselessly. A small black hole appeared above his left eye; a thin stream of blood oozed down the bridge of his nose and onto his cheek. Where his head had rested moments before, a large blob of blood and brain matter spattered the wall.

Ashley screamed and scuttled desperately across the floor; clung in a ball to Lou’s left foot. Lou shook her loose and slid to the window. He broke the shotgun, checked that he had two rounds, and then cracked it closed again. He glanced up at the window; saw a small hole in the top pane. A piercing glint of reflected light leaped from the boulders across the road and above a Subaru—his Subaru.

“Sniper,” he muttered. “Keep out of sight.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, guard us in our hour of need...” Ashley blubbered into the crook of her elbow.

The bungalow door flew open. Lou raised the shotgun to fire. “HOLD YOUR FIRE! HOLD IT!”

The first man who entered had been made in the mold of Antonio Banderas in the movie Pancho Villa with the handlebar mustache and all, but he was still credible. He wore a black jumpsuit and combat boots. His baseball cap was on backwards. Lou looked up into his eyes as the man walked over calmly and lifted the shotgun from of his hands. Several more plainclothesmen followed. They stood Ashley on her feet and walked her toward the door.

Without a weapon, Lou felt the last vestige of energy spill out onto the floor to mix with Copeland’s blood. He slumped back against the wall and let his chin drop against his chest.

“Louis.” He opened his eyes and saw Kilmartin squatting in front of him. “Why the hell did you leave Fort Lee? You shouldn’t have done that.”

“It didn’t seem like sticking around was good for my health,” Lou said, closing his eyes again.

“Granted, it was not a pretty sight in the parking lot. The prints from the apartment will probably confirm that we had it right from the start on the Panama connection.”

“Sure. Don’t waste your breath. Just do whatever you’re going to do.”

“We’re almost certain this guy’s name is Nidi Aguirra,” he said, nodding to Copeland, whose eyes now stared lifelessly at them. We’ll know for sure in a little while.

“Right.”

“He’s registered at the college down the road. A post-Vietnam vet from Cristobal. Took the Army route to citizenship. Together with the other one out there on the ground—the one with no face, Javier Lomedico from Caldera—we have our Panamanian perps, dead unfortunately. We have you. We have some more corpses: Walter Anspach, who you knew as Red; Chester Frawley; Sydney Winkler; and Patricia Buck. The four we picked up near the bridge rounds out the picture. So it’s a wrap. Correct?”

Riegelhaupt came in and whispered in Kilmartin’s ear. “You’ve got a visitor,” Kilmartin said to Lou.

* * *

Maggie came in smiling. He looked up at her face, but couldn’t smile. He wasn’t ready for this moment; the surge of joy and shame together took over. She came to him, knelt on the floor in front of him, and took his hands in hers. His eyes were dry but his mouth betrayed a flood of emotion.

“Maggie,” he said, slowly, in a hoarse whisper, trying to hold himself in control. “If they let you, go far away from here.”

“Shh,” she said.

“Be smart.”

“Remember what I said on the phone,” she said.

“I’ve ruined everything for us.”

“Don’t talk.”

“You’ll have to pack up and go, as fast as you can.”

“We’re sticking to our plan.”

“I fumbled our whole life away.”

“Let’s go home,” she said. “They said we could.”

“It’s a trick,” he said, trying to look at her eyes.

“C’mon,” she said, standing.

They got up from the floor and walked together toward the door, but Kilmartin, Riegelhaupt, and others were clustered there, barring the way.

“You said we could go,” she said, staring at Riegelhaupt.

“We need to talk more,” Kilmartin said.

Maggie turned sharply and kicked books out of her way, creating a path to the television set on the bookcase. She cleared the screen of dust with her sleeve and scattered a gaggle of knickknacks atop the VCR with one fierce swipe. She pulled a tape from her handbag and slammed it into the slot on the video player.

When she turned to face them, the screen was filled with static, but in a moment, there appeared the image of a man holding a newspaper in plain view, almost like a hostage. It was Lou. His voice was loud and clear.

“My name is Louis Christopher...”

* * *

Maggie snapped the power off and retrieved the tape. She saw Kilmartin on the car phone in the corner and stared straight into his face.

“There’s a copy that will be in the hands the press. Tell that to whomever you’re talking to. If I don’t make contact in the next twenty-four hours, the tape will be released to the media. Another copy will go to William Severence if I don’t pull it back. Now get out of our way.”

Kilmartin spoke low into the car phone, not moving.

Mag stepped toward him. “One more thing. You specifically, you Ross Kilmartin, are identified in this. If we go, you go.”

Kilmartin, glued to the phone in a continuous conversation, suddenly stopped talking and dropped the phone to his side.

“Let’s talk,” he said. “Leave us alone in here” he said to the others. They left, taking the girl with them.

“Talk? Just tell me one thing, Kilmartin: why did you kill him?” Lou asked.

“Him? I didn’t. I wanted him alive. The sniper took him out. Chalk it up to miscommunication.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Okay, I may have managed the news I gave you at times.”

“Meaning?” Lou said.

“We’ve had these guys under surveillance for a couple of days, since we stopped them at a roadblock on Mine Torne Road. We stuck a transmitter on their Audi and let them go. We hoped they’d lead us to others involved. It worked. We got you.

“You told us about the suit pickup in Battery Park, so we were glued to the limo. But Nidio here got to it before we did and paid off the driver for the suit.” Kilmartin nodded toward Copeland’s corpse on the floor.

“When I saw you in the precinct station, I had already been out to your house with a search warrant. NYPD called me as soon as they picked you up and checked your wallet. Have I covered everything?”

“No,” Mag said. “My phone was tapped. There was a van strategically parked down the street. You had nothing to do with that?”

“We high-tailed it out to Glen Rock when the NYPD told us they had Lou, to search the house for incriminating evidence. We never saw the van. It may have still been there. It may not. No matter, since we weren’t thinking along those lines.”

“You said you had my back, when I left your car in Battery Park. Then, you let them grab me,” Lou said.

“That’s true, Lou. But we still had the transmitter on their car and a helicopter in the air. We could, and did, follow wherever they went. Fact is, we had already found the Fort Lee apartment location from tracking them. That’s where they holed up with the woman last night. We’ve staked it out ever since.”

“You’re quick. An answer for everything,” Lou said.

“I have a question for you,” Kilmartin said. “Who has a copy of that videotape?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything. And right now, I don’t.”

“I’ll never tell you who has a copy of the tape,” Lou said.

“At some point you’ll see the wisdom of telling me everything.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. Kilmartin, I’ve been stupid about a lot of things, but I’m not stupid about you. Your list of perps is missing at least one. Copeland took orders from someone. Who? You? Someone had to have access to my military records for Copeland to know all about my Vietnam experience and misjudgment in Germany. That’s information that’s securely stored in the Pentagon, and very few people have clearance to look at it whenever they like. But the FBI has access to everything if they can convince a judge that national security is at stake, and that’s a very broad mandate. That brings us right back to you. You had the Panamanians at the roadblock and you let them go. You let them grab me at Battery Park. You show up out here in the boondocks out of the blue. How did you know we were here without talking to Copeland? Why did you kill him?”