Jack Daniels Six Pack (27 page)

“Drop the milk and put your hands on your head, McGlade. You’re under arrest.”

“It’s not milk. It’s filled with concrete.”

“This isn’t a game, Harry. Now put—”

Before I had a chance to finish the sentence, McGlade rushed the front door, swinging the milk jug at the knob like he was bowling. The door burst inward, momentum taking McGlade into the house.

I saw the entire bust fall apart before my eyes, and without even thinking I hobbled in after him.

“Around the back!” I yelled to whoever was listening. “Cover the perimeter!”

The house was dark and silent. All the curtains had been drawn. There was a sickly-sweet smell in the air, disinfectant masking something else. Something rotten. I tried a light switch, but it didn’t work.

“He’s cut the power.” McGlade was halfway down the hall, moving in a crouch. He’d dropped his plastic jug in favor of a .44 Magnum. It was the kind of gun I’d expected Harry to have—big and loud.

“McGlade, you asshole!” I whispered viciously at his back. “You’re blowing this arrest!”

“Just say you deputized me.”

“I’m not Wyatt Earp, McGlade. Now put down—”

“Hey, Charlie!” he yelled. “You’ve got company!”

Somebody screamed. A woman.

“Basement.” Harry rushed through the house opening doors. Closet. Bathroom. Stairway.

We peered down. The stairs were dark and old, curving slightly so we couldn’t see the bottom.

Behind us, cops flooded in.

“Cover me.” McGlade headed down the stairs.

“We’ve confirmed a woman in the basement,” I said into my lapel mike. “We’re going down.” I followed him, keeping one hand on the railing, trying to keep the weight off my bad leg.

“Don’t shoot me in the back of the head, Jackie.”

We made our way down several more steps, the soupy darkness engulfing us. I heard a jingle of keys and tensed, and then a little light went on in Harry’s hand.

“Key light. Best buck-fifty I ever spent.”

The basement floor came into view, and the smell wafted over us like a fog.

“Christ.” Harry wrinkled his nose. “Something dead down here.”

A noise at the top of the stairs made us turn. Two uniforms.

“Flashlight!” I whispered.

They shook their heads. They’d taken off their flashlights when they put on the Kevlar.

“There’s the circuit breaker.” Harry played the light over a wall near the bottom of the stairs. “Go turn on the electricity. I’ll cover you.”

I cleared my throat and passed McGlade on the stairs. There was a sound to our left.

“Help me.”

A growl followed, and then a heart-wrenching scream.

I ran for the circuit breaker.

Chapter 41

T
HEY’VE FOUND HIM.

He has barely started on her, barely even drawn blood, and now it’s all going to end.

He curses, controlling the urge to cut her head off, forcing himself into action.

The Gingerbread Man can handle this. It isn’t expected, but he’s planned ahead far enough to foresee this possibility. He puts the knife in his belt, checks his pocket for the lighter, and grabs his gun.

He hears the front door burst in and he hits the circuit breaker, plunging the house into darkness. Someone yells his name.

Diane screams. He walks to her in the dark, guided by the flame on his Zippo.

“Scream again and I shoot you.”

The gun goes into her mouth to drive his point home. Then he uses the knife to cut her free.

“Kneel, bitch.”

She kneels on the concrete floor, whimpering. He flicks his lighter again and finds the master fuse on the floor, running along the back wall.

Voices.

Charles listens.

One is Jack’s.

Light the fuse and get out of here, he tells himself.

But Jack is so close.

Charles wants to see her one more time.

He goes to his wife and crouches behind her as Jack and someone else descend the stairs.

One last time, Charles thinks. One last dance.

Before everything goes
boom
.

Chapter 42

I
RUSHED THE CIRCUIT BREAKER, OPENING
the panel door and flipping on the main.

The basement exploded in light. Spotlights. Set up on stands and hanging from the ceiling like a TV studio.

And in the center of the lights . . . our killer.

“Hi, Jack.” He was squinting against the glare, hiding behind a kneeling half-naked woman. She had blood running freely down her torso from several dozen cuts. A gun was being pressed under her chin.

My gun.

“Take it easy, Charles.”

“I’ve got him, Jack.” McGlade assumed a shooting stance. “I can blow his head off from here.”

Charles brought his free hand around to the woman’s front and flicked a Zippo lighter. He held it next to her hand. In her trembling fist was a length of rope. I followed the rope to where it divided into six segments, each leading to the base of a large barrel. They were spaced far apart along the walls of the basement.

It wasn’t a rope at all. It was a fuse.

“Hold it, Harry! Everyone fall back! I don’t want anyone within fifty yards!” In my earpiece, I heard the commotion of my men complying.

“Such a good cop, Jack. Such concern for her people.”

“What’s in the barrels, Charles?”

“Gasoline. Enough to take out the whole block.”

“Stand down!” I yelled into my mike. “Clear out the houses on both sides and call the FDP! It’s all wired to burn!”

The word spread quickly. Panic. Evacuation. Herb came over the air, begging me to pull out. I ignored him.

Only McGlade and I remained.

“You can’t get away, Charles. There’s nowhere to go.”

“You’re wrong there. You’re the one who can’t get away. Once I light this, the whole place goes up. You won’t have time to piss your pants.”

“I’m shooting him,” Harry said.

“Both of you drop your guns. Now, or I light it.”

I took a step closer. “It’s over, Charles. Give up. Maybe you can do a Trainter show from your cell, let him interview you live.”

Charles Kork grinned, pure malice, pure evil.

“Good-bye, Jack. I’m sorry we never got to know each other. I guess I’ll just have to look up your mother after you’re dead.”

He lit the fuse, and then dragged Diane backward, retreating to the other side of the basement. Next to the furnace was a back door. Charles yanked his wife through it and disappeared into the night.

But Harry and I had our own problems.

“Uh-oh,” McGlade said.

I dove for the fuse, which was burning at about three inches a second. I grabbed and just missed, watching the fuse separate into six different flames, each one heading for its own full barrel.

Enough gas to burn the whole neighborhood.

I yanked at the nearest fuse, searing my hand but pulling it free of its gasoline tank. It harmlessly burned itself out.

Scrambling on all fours, I hunted down a second flame and pulled that out as well.

“It won’t go out! It won’t go out!” Harry stomped up and down on a lit fuse with both feet. He looked a lot like Daffy Duck throwing a fit.

“Yank it!”

I turned my attention to a barrel several feet away, the lethal flame streaking toward it. I took two quick steps, pain searing through my leg, and I launched myself into the air, ramming into the barrel, pulling out the fuse and watching the last six inches burn away in my hands.

I looked at Harry, who was standing on the far end of the room, tossing two burning fuses aside. His eyes tracked the floor, following the last flame as it snaked its way to the final barrel.

It was less than two feet from its target, and too far away for either of us to get to in time.

I drew my gun and aimed.

“Jesus, Jackie, ricochet!” Harry crouched down and covered his face.

I fired three times at the flickering spark, my .38 slugs bouncing off concrete and turning the basement into a deadly pachinko game. Cement chips peppered my feet. Harry howled with fright. I exhaled slowly and fired once more, my fourth bullet neatly severing the advancing flame from the rest of the fuse.

Stillness. I took a deep breath.

McGlade peeked through his fingers. “Are we dead?”

Herb’s voice in my ear. “Jack, are you okay? Suspect on foot, in the backyard. Has a woman with him.”

“Move in!”

McGlade walked over to the last barrel, examining it. He pulled out the remaining fuse, about the length of a cigarette.

“Nice shooting, Wyatt.”

I limped past him, pushing through the back door. The backyard was cool and dark, and I couldn’t spot any movement. Red and blue lights swirled from a few houses away, washing over the lawn in waves.

“The bomb is defused, Herb, close the perimeter. Perp ran out the back door. He has a hostage. Do you have a visual? Over.”

“Negative, Jack. We were falling back. We’re coming in now.”

A hand on my shoulder. I spun, bringing around my gun.

McGlade.

“Don’t tell me you lost him.”

I walked away before I did something I’d regret, like shoot him. The important thing was finding Charles.

I couldn’t allow him to kill his wife.

In my ear, Benedict and his men swept the block, while I took a walk across the backyard lawn. I gripped the .38 in both hands, holding it at an angle away from my body, ready to point and shoot at anything that grabbed my attention.

“Jackie! I found something!”

McGlade was holding up some kind of hook.

“Nice work, Harry. Now sit on it and spin.”

“It was right on the ground, next to this manhole.”

It took a few seconds to register, and then I hobbled over. McGlade used the hook to pry up the cover, dragging it off to the side. He flashed his key light down into the hole.

“Stinky. Think he’s down there?”

“Jack!” My earpiece buzzed. “We have a man and a woman, four doors down. Team is moving in!”

“Roger that, Herb. McGlade and I . . . Harry!”

Harry disappeared down the hole.

“Dammit! Herb, we found a manhole in the yard, Harry just went down. I’ll contact you again in a minute.”

I got on my knees and peered down into the sewer.

“Harry! Get up here!”

“Sorry, Jack,” he called up. “You did this to me. I have to catch the guy to clear my good name.”

“Goddammit, McGlade, you don’t have a good name! Harry! Harry?”

He yelped once, then didn’t answer.

I reloaded, told Herb my intention, and then went down after him.

Chapter 43

T
HERE IS NO
BOOM
.

Charles stops, hunching down in the sewer line, filthy water up to his ankles. He holds his breath and listens.

No explosion. No screaming. Nothing.

What’s going on?

He wraps his hand in Diane’s hair and pulls her along. If the cops aren’t burning, they’ll be coming after him. He has to hurry.

It’s dark as ink, foul, claustrophobic. The narrow pipe forces him to run in a crouch. His wife whimpers, dragging her feet, slowing him down. He jabs her with the knife to get her to move.

“I told you to run!”

After the fourth or fifth jab, she falls down. Continued poking doesn’t make her get back up.

Damn her. Charles hates to end it here, in a sewer where he can’t even see her face. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. He wants to take his time, make it last, feast on a banquet of her agony.

A clang, in the distance. Someone opening the manhole cover.

Jack.

Charles reaches down, slashes at his wife in the darkness. Such a disappointing ending. She deserves so much more.

Then he scurries away from her. He moves by feel, counting his steps. Sight is minimal, but he’s walked the route several times. Before he became a media darling, Charles always kept his kills hidden. The sewer is the perfect hiding place for corpses—he can bring them here without witnesses, no one notices the smell, and the rats take care of any evidence. Throughout these pipes are the remains of a half-dozen people he’s killed.

After twenty-four paces he stops, feeling for the grating. It’s two feet before him. Taped to it is a flashlight.

He crouches in the concrete tube and flicks on the light, briefly. Finding the clasp, he opens the rusty gate and slips down four feet into the main line.

Now he can walk upright rather than bent over. The sewer main is wide as an alley. Filthy water runs down the center in a putrid, brown stream. Charles doesn’t know how deep it is, and has no desire to find out. On either side of the flow is a ledge, a catwalk that can be treaded upon when the water level is low enough.

His smartest escape route is to follow along the right wall, down to the end of the block, and then turn left and go eight blocks over. He’ll pop up in an alley, right across the street from the public garage where he keeps his second car, and far from the searching pigs overhead.

But he isn’t ready yet. He still has to deal with Jack.

The lieutenant can’t be allowed to live. She found him. She’ll find him again. Charles doesn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, waiting for her to pounce.

It will end here.

The Gingerbread Man checks his bullets and switches off his light.

Noises are coming from the sub main he’d exited moments before.

He hunches down and giggles, ready for the fun to start.

Chapter 44

T
HE LADDER WAS MADE OF STEEL
bars, rusty and slimy. Descending was a complicated ordeal where I had to hop down each step, since my bad leg refused to bend. When I finally reached the bottom, I stepped on something.

“Jesus, Jackie!”

I was on Harry’s leg. He shoved me off and flicked on his key light, pointing it in my face. McGlade was on his ass, in the middle of a large slick of gunk.

No—not gunk.

Blood.

“My God, Harry—”

“I slipped. It’s not my blood.”

My stomach churned. The wife.