Brooklyn Knight (10 page)

“It’s been checked into the property room.”

“Well, why don’t we head there, eh?”

But then, before either detective could answer the question, a piercing siren slashed its way through the gray interrogation room, echoing throughout every other room, hallway, and stairwell in the building as well. The men all recognized it as a standard New York City fire alarm.

They were also all quite certain they knew, considering the way their evening had been going so far, from exactly where the alarm must have been set off.

“Denny,” barked Dollins, throwing his massive body up and out of his chair, “get Bridget outta here—move!”

No one argued. As partners, both detectives knew they were responsible for the safety of any civilians in their charge. Bridget had to be their first concern. Dollins, younger than LaRaja, single where his partner was married, took the riskier of the two immediate jobs from which both men knew they had to choose. At one time LaRaja would argue such choices vehemently. After a stern lecture where his wife ganged up on him with Dollins, however, he learned to live with the inevitable.

“Knight,” the large man bellowed as he grabbed up his coffee cup, “you’re with me—let’s go!”

Any other time—under normal circumstances—both detectives would have been exiting the building, working to get those under their protection to safety. That night, however, was different. Though none of them had any proof, there was no doubt in the minds of any of the three
men that something—somehow—had gone wrong in the property room. Though none of them had the slightest proof, they were all certain that if the building truly was in flames, the fire must have started there—and that no matter what was the actual reason for the blaring alarm, for some reason they could not fathom, the Dream Stone was behind it.

“Lead on, Detective,” answered Knight, making a flourish with his right arm. “It’s your building.”

And the damnable piece of rock was the only reason Dollins was willing to take a civilian into danger. As far as he was concerned, there was something suspicious about everything that had gone down that night. On every occasion the Brooklyn Museum had needed the cooperation of the police for anything, his brain reminded him, Knight had always been in the middle of it. And, the detective had always walked away from each situation, from every one of their encounters, feeling that he had been in some manner played—never told the entire truth.

“This way.”

As the two men reached the door directly behind LaRaja and Bridget, the professor called out to the older detective, admonishing him;

“Take care of her.” As Knight’s eyes locked with Bridget’s for a moment, he gave her a grin meant to bolster her courage, adding, “After all, she has quite a great deal of work to do in the morning.”

“I’ll certainly see what I can do, Doc,” answered LaRaja, a wry smile crossing his face despite their situation. It was but an instant’s respite, however. Once out in the hallway, the older detective directed the redhead toward the front door and kept her moving until the pair disappeared into the crowd heading in that direction. Dollins and Knight forced their way in the opposite direction, against the current, moving into the first stairwell they could reach.

Conversation had ceased between the pair as they fought their way through both the crowd and the growing smoke. Preparing to open a door to the basement, Dollins was slightly startled when three uniformed officers burst through from the other side. Half-blind and gagging, they stumbled into the first-floor hallway, gasping for air. Grabbing one man by the shoulder, as much to keep him steady on his feet as well as to capture his attention, the large detective asked;

“Phillips—what’s goin’ on down there? Couldn’t you guys lay some fire extinguisher action on it or somethin’?”

“Property room,” the man answered weakly. Coughing violently, he forced his voice back under his control, then added, “Didn’t see what started it. Couldn’t get near it, really. Smoke, everywhere. All of a sudden like, out of nowhere. Bitter, makes you gag … had to run… .”

Dollins and Knight looked at each other for an instant, simply staring. The professor gave his head the slightest of nods, which was apparently good enough for the larger man. Moving into the stairwell, the detective stopped the pair for a moment at the top of the stairs. Popping the plastic lid off his coffee cup, Dollins told his companion to hold still. As the professor complied, the detective poured coffee across the top of his own sport coat with half its contents. The other half he splashed on the lapel of Knight’s suit coat. Throwing away his cup, the detective grabbed the edge of his jacket, moved it up to where it could cover his mouth, then directed the professor to breathe through the wet material of his own coat.

“It’s no gas mask, but it’ll filter a lotta the shit we otherwise would end up breathin’. Ain’t no tellin’ what’s burnin’, but from what Phillips said I’m thinkin’ maybe we don’t want all that much of it gettin’ in our lungs.”

Knight did as instructed, giving the big man a grateful nod.
The detective accepted the acknowledgment, then started down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, even as he made a slight prayer that the lights would not cut out on them. The smoke had already thickened within the stairwell to the point where it made Dollins more than a bit apprehensive. The professor was also feeling an extreme touch of apprehension himself, but for a completely different reason.

Knight respected Dollins’ abilities.

Three times their paths had crossed over the previous few years in an official manner. The last had been in Red Hook, when Dollins had miraculously escaped death despite scores of rounds being fired at him from nearly point-blank range. He had been decorated for his valor when the shooting ceased, but despite the fact that he had willingly smiled for the television cameras and happily accepted his upgrade to sergeant, the incident had continued to gnaw at him.

Although the detective knew there was no rational reason for him to think so, Dollins believed the professor had somehow kept him from being murdered that day. It was an absurd notion, he had told himself then—continued to tell himself. Knight had been behind him, face to the ground. There was nothing he could have done. The detective knew this, knew as certainly as he knew anything, that there was no way the professor could have possibly interceded with Fate on his behalf.

“He’s not God,” Dollins had told himself over and over, “no matter how much he acts like it.”

But, despite all logical approaches to the incident, the big man knew in his heart that he should not have lived through that evening. There was absolutely no reason for him to still be alive, outside of something on the order of Heavenly intervention—and angels had not been reported as being sighted anywhere near Red Hook that evening. He had checked.

“Dollins,” Knight shouted through his lapel. “I believe there’s something wrong here, something no one has taken into consideration.” By that point the pair had reached the bottom of the stairs. Directing the larger man’s attention to the base of the door before them, the professor said;

“The smoke coming under the door. The smell of it, the color—doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious to you?”

“What’dya mean?”

“Besides the fact this building is one big block of concrete, that there shouldn’t be all that much about it that could burn, I don’t think this smoke is coming from a fire.” Taking a deep breath through his jacket, allowing himself to capture a sense of the reeking billow, Dollins answered;

“I’m thinkin’ you may have somethin’ there.” Taking an extra sniff of the air, studying it for a second, the detective added, “Yeah, that don’t smell electrical. And it sure don’t smell like wood, neither.”

“Trust me when I tell you I have no idea what’s happening here, Detective,” said Knight, his eyes beginning to sting. Wiping at them, trying not to cough, he added, “But after what I’ve been through so far tonight, I really do believe you should draw your weapon before we go through that door.”

“You what … ?”

Dollins gave the professor a long, hard look, his mind splitting in a number of directions. A half-dozen voices all barked at the detective, urging him to as many different courses of action. Yes, he did not trust the professor, but to what extent? On the one hand, he knew in his bones the man was hiding something from him. Almost certainly far more than one thing. But on the other hand, he also firmly believed that it was Knight who was responsible for his not dying in Red Hook.

If he was really up to something
, the part of Dollins’ brain he
relied upon the most whispered to him,
if he was actually one of the bad guys, then why bother saving some cop he knows doesn’t trust him?
Dismissing the other factions warring within his mind, Dollins growled through his coat’s lapel;

“Stay behind me.”

Pulling his service revolver, he gingerly touched both the doorknob and the door itself with the barest ends of his fingertips, testing for heat. Finding them both relatively cool, he started to open the door. Hesitating, however, the detective bent over instead, fumbling at his ankle. When he stood up again, Knight could see the large man had removed a second weapon from his backup holster.

“You open the door,” he ordered the professor. “Then I’m through first.”

Knight nodded, moving forward. On a nod from Dollins the professor pulled open the door. Then, both men plunged into the thick smoke on the other side and rushed headlong into madness.

“Christ,” cursed Dollins softly, trying not to breathe deeply as he did so, “I can hardly see a thing.”

The hallway the two men entered swirled with a deep, gray smoke, one containing hints of an oddly light, bluish haze. As on the other side of the doorway, neither man felt anything much in the way of undue heat coming toward them as they moved outward into the basement. Both continued attempting to breathe through their jackets as best they could, but the sparse amount of coffee Dollins had splashed them with was rapidly drying out.

“My God,” said Knight harshly, coughing as he did so, “doesn’t this building have sprinklers down here?”

The oddly colored smoke stinging their eyes, the pair continued to fumble their way forward, their senses straining to understand what was happening. Rather than answer verbally, Dollins instead pointed toward an alcove ahead of them. As the two men entered, the professor saw what the detective was leading them toward—a watercooler.
Understanding what was expected of him, Knight immediately set to filling cups of cold water.

“Yeah, you’d think they woulda run some kinda sprinklers down here by now,” growled Dollins. “That’s the way’a things, though—building’s just too old. Budget keeps going toward luncheons for the top brass. Us grunts’re probably lucky we even got the damn smoke alarms.”

“I guess so.” The professor mumbled his answer as he splashed the detective and then himself in the face to relieve the growing pain in their eyes. After that he doused both their heads and then their jackets. Dollins did not even look in the professor’s direction, his focus aimed down the hall, as were the weapons he held in each hand.

Pointin’ guns at a fire
, thought the detective.
They might as well call the men in the white coats to get their nets and come on over.

Despite his attempt at humor, however, Dollins kept both his weapons pointed down the smoke-filled hallway. Though it made no sense and would be considered insane by any reasonable person, something within him, some primal section bound deep within his soul, refused to let him waver. Something was being hidden by the oddly colored, strange-tasting fumes. Something terrible enough to set off all the alarms within his mind at full alert.

As he kept his eyes focused dead ahead, Knight held a cup to the big man’s lips so he could take a drink.

Dollins gulped the first half deeply, then used the second half to gargle before he swallowed, realizing that would be the last relief he would know. Diverting his attention for the briefest of moments to his companion, he saw that the professor had taken his own drink. Not seeing any reason to hesitate further, Dollins started them down the hallway once more.

The two men encountered no one else as they continued
making their way steadily forward. With the fire alert siren still blaring they could hear nothing else, either—could barely understand even each other. So loudly did the alarm echo in the narrow corridors of the underground section of the precinct house that when it suddenly ceased being broadcast it was actually several seconds before either Dollins or Knight realized the thing had gone silent. Both men stopped moving, pausing to listen to their surroundings.

Fire, each of them knew from bitter experience, possessed a very distinctive sound. They were also listening for any other possible noises, such as any others who might still be in the basement area—friendlies who might be trapped somehow or intruders who might have been the reason the alarm had been set off in the first place. Able to detect nothing out of the ordinary, the pair continued their cautious forward movement. Once they turned the last corner between them and the property room, however, the sounds reaching them changed.

Dollins turned to the professor, moving close to ask him if he might be hearing the same thing the detective was. Before the larger man could speak, however, Knight gave his head a sharp nod, making his eyes go wide so as to indicate that he was as suspicious of the sounds reaching his ears as was Dollins. Both of them understood the need for silence as they continued onward as cautiously as possible.

Once they were within ten feet of the heavy steel door to the property room, Knight caught hold of the detective’s arm. Pulling on it hard enough to signal he wished the big man to stop, the professor drew Dollins close, then whispered to him;

“That sound, that hissing sound—do you recognize it?”

The detective gave over a few seconds to intent listening, then whispered back;