Twist (32 page)

R
unning without lights, they followed from a distance in the Lincoln. Pearl continued leaning forward, peering out the windshield during rapid sweeps of the long wiper blades.

“You sure it’s them?” Fedderman asked from the backseat, still sounding relieved to be in out of the rain. He was steaming and fogging up the windows.

“Not sure all the way,” Quinn said.

“Maybe we should drive up there hard, pile out, and see what we got,” Fedderman said.

“If it
is
Dred Gant and Carlie, that might get her killed,” Pearl said.

“They’re walking like they’ve got someplace in mind,” Fedderman said.

“Not her apartment,” Pearl said. “Too far south for that, and they’re walking even farther south.”

Fedderman looked at her. “His apartment?”

Quinn thought about it. “Maybe. He knows we don’t know where it is.”

“We sure of that?” Pearl asked.

“We’d have had him a long time ago if we’d known his address,” Fedderman said.

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Feds.” Pearl was the one who’d scoured the Internet social networks and phone directories to see if there was a Dred Gant listed anywhere.

There was one. He was eighty-seven years old and African American.

“If he’s got a place to go with her, he must have planned this out,” Fedderman said.

“He couldn’t have known a storm like this would hit.”

“But there was a storm in the forecast.”

“This is not the kind of guy who builds a plan around the weather forecast,” Pearl said.

No one spoke for a while.

“Let me out so I can tail them on foot,” Pearl said.

Quinn didn’t answer, thinking.

“I can raise the hood on my raincoat,” she said. “They’ll never recognize me, never suspect I’d be walking up behind them. I can get close enough to make a positive identification.”

“Without them identifying you?” Fedderman asked.

“Yes.” She put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder and squeezed. “We owe it to this girl, Quinn.”

His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

“That could be Jody,” Pearl said.

Quinn didn’t brake. He didn’t want the red aura of brake lights to be seen. He let the Lincoln coast gradually to the curb, then switched off the interior lights so they wouldn’t be noticed when Pearl exited the car.

“Don’t lose your cell phone,” he said.

Pearl nodded. “My lifeline.”

He wished she had put it some other way as he watched her climb out of the car, into the storm. She opened her umbrella, which seemed pathetically inadequate.

They sat and watched her almost disappear into the darkness and swirling rain.

“Whaddya think?” Fedderman asked.

“Gotta be his apartment,” Quinn said, and steered the car slowly away from the curb.

It took him a minute or two to find the ideal speed not to gain ground, but to keep in sight what was unfolding in front of them.

Gant continued pushing Carlie along so they maintained a steady pace, even though from time to time she stumbled and almost fell. He had his right hand up the back of her jacket and must be holding a weapon—possibly a knife, since Sal had been stabbed—at the base of her spine. The barely discernible hooded figure behind them, keeping to shadows and building fronts, was only gradually moving closer. Then Pearl was lost to the mist.

The hurrying couple turned a corner. They walked along an avenue lined with four- or six-floor walkup apartments. Some of them had been rehabbed and converted to condos or co-ops. Quinn knew that if Gant was taking Carlie to one of the buildings on the west side of the street, it would back to a block of deserted warehouses and the river. There wouldn’t be much escape territory in that direction, unless Gant owned a boat.

Gant and Carlie did turn left, took four stone steps up, and entered a rehabbed six-story building with distressed brick facing. Air conditioners jutted from some of the windows. Flanking the ornate wood door were identical concrete urns with geraniums in them. Lush vines grew up the side of the building the detectives could see. There were lights on in about half the windows.

Quinn steered the Lincoln to the curb and stared at the building, waiting.

A window became illuminated on the second floor, front. Another on the side of the building with the vines. Corner unit.

He backed the Lincoln to where it was less likely to be seen and draw suspicion, and switched off the engine so no exhaust would be visible.

Pearl, who’d been waiting for the car to park, piled into the passenger seat.

“Them,” she said.

Quinn nodded. Fedderman continued staring at the building.

“What now?” she asked, checking the mechanism of her nine-millimeter Glock. She thought of it as her cliché gun, the one most fictional detectives favored. Fictional detectives knew their stuff. She was deadly with the Glock.

Her mouth was dry, her heartbeat elevated. She worked a round into the Glock’s chamber. The oiled metal slide and click of the action gave her a certain satisfaction.

“I’ll call Renz,” Quinn said. “We need to do this hard and fast. And right.”

D
red Gant locked his apartment door behind him. Then he took Carlie’s purse and umbrella and tossed them onto the sofa. She watched the revolver come halfway out of her purse.

So much for self-defense
.

He led Carlie to the bedroom and forced her to lie down on her stomach on the bed. Within a few seconds he produced a thick roll of duct tape. It was all happening so fast and so smoothly she couldn’t gather her thoughts.

She gave a grunt and wheezing sound as he knelt with his knee on her ass and crisscrossed the tape between her wrists to bind her arms behind her. Then he ripped another piece of tape from the roll and fixed it firmly and roughly over her mouth. It crossed her mind that she’d have a hell of a bruise there; then she realized how trivial that was compared to her other problems. He made sure she was breathing freely through her nose, then reinforced the first rectangle of tape with a second, longer piece.

He did not tape her ankles. He wanted her to be able to move. She felt him remove her shoes, though, and heard them thump on the carpet as he tossed them aside. She would have to be barefoot, if she tried to escape.

Barefoot or not, she knew she wasn’t going to tiptoe out of here. She was going to have to run like hell.

She knew she wouldn’t get very far.

Carlie remained lying motionless on the bed. She could hear the killer moving around and knew it would be hopeless if she got up and attempted a dash to freedom. That could happen only in her mind,
and he knew that
. Her legs were trembling. Her heart was pounding so rapidly she could feel the vibration running through the mattress.

She saw the killer return to the bed. He was carrying a long black scarf, twirling it so the material became twisted and tubular. She thought he was preparing to strangle her, and she emitted a helpless moan. Her bladder released.

That seemed to amuse the killer. He smiled as if enjoying some interior joke and then put the scarf to use not as a garrote but as a blindfold. He yanked it tight and knotted it at the back of her head, pulling her hair in the process. Her eyes began to tear up behind the twisted material.

There was nothing around her now.

Nothing but blackness the rest of the way.

At least she still had her hearing. Some of it, anyway.

Carlie listened to the killer’s footfalls on the old, squeaking floor. The sound was muffled because the scarf blindfold was also over her ears.

“I found the gun,” he said, startling her with his closeness. “The one that was in your purse.” He was leaning near enough that she could feel his breath on her face. “I appreciate it, but I prefer a knife.”

Then he was still. Holding his breath.

There was more muffled creaking, this time from upstairs. Or outside the apartment, on the stairs.

Suddenly his hands were beneath her arms, pinching flesh, and she was yanked painfully to her feet.

He half shoved, half dragged her across the floor. She banged a knee painfully on what was probably a door frame. Then they were crossing smooth tile; she could feel the rough grout line between each piece. The kitchen? A door opened.
Yeeowch!
Her toes thumped across a threshold.

Behind her, the door closed.

Cool rain on her face.
Jesus! We’re outside!

 

 

The killer shoved her into the maelstrom of wind and rain and lightning flashes. Thunder that made her ears ache.

She couldn’t get her mind around what was happening. Couldn’t turn off inane thoughts.

Water trickled down beneath her tunic, like playful cool fingers, despite the warmth of the night.

Carlie decided the killer knew exactly where he was going. He had a destination, wasn’t running wild to avoid the law.

She was on a rough concrete walk, then on wet grass that tickled her toes.

Onto a hard surface, with a scattering of gravel on it that stung her bare feet.

She heard a scraping, creaking sound, then what sounded like something small and metallic tinkling on concrete. A few seconds later she was sure she heard a door squealing on its hinges. It must have opened inward, because she bumped her big toe on it as he pushed her inside wherever it was they’d gone,

The door shut behind her with a wooden, rattling sound, and the noise outside abated but didn’t cease. She was no longer being rained on.

He led her through darkness, over what felt like a smooth concrete floor. Not a clean floor, though. Now and then something small and sharp hurt her tender soles. For several steps her right heel stamped and re-stamped something sticky.

 

 

The NYPD Tactical Unit (the department’s version of SWAT) members had entered the killer’s apartment building and were as swiftly and silently as possible leading the other occupants down the stairs and outside to safety. The noise of the storm helped to mask what was going on.

The unit was minutes away from using a battering ram and a flash-bang grenade to charge into Dred Gant’s apartment and bring under their control whatever was happening inside.

Quinn and Pearl were poised in the building’s small foyer, waiting for the bang of the grenade.

The go signal.

Everyone was counting on surprise to help them save Carlie Clark’s life.

They were counting on surprise to end Dred Gant’s.

 

 

There was sudden pressure behind Carlie’s knees, and she was saved from collapsing to the floor by strong arms, and then forced to kneel.

It had all been one smooth, practiced motion. Through the twisted scarf material over her ears, she heard the muffled ripping sound she’d come to know was tape being yanked from its roll. Now her ankles were forced close together and taped in the same crisscross manner as her wrists. She would remember that sound for the rest of her life.

She was helpless. Her bare knees pressed against the hard concrete felt bruised. They burned with pain. She couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t make a sound that would be heard ten feet away, couldn’t herself hear if someone else made such a sound.

The only sound she
could
hear, like a distant, muffled drumbeat, was the pulsing rush of her blood.

She knelt in darkness.

 

 

The last of the building’s occupants, an elderly man and woman, both with snow-white hair and poker faces, were led outside rapidly and almost soundlessly by the tactical team.

Quinn wondered if all the armed force was necessary. There was no history of the Lady Liberty Killer using a gun, or even carrying one. Helen the profiler had said he might well choose another way to go, a leap from a high window, or a dash in front of a vehicle or beneath the wheels of a train.

Or he might deliberately draw gunfire.

Suicide by cop? Always possible. Even with this killer.

One of the two Tactical Unit guys in the foyer looked sternly at Quinn and motioned that he and his partner were going up the stairs first. That made sense, since they were experts at this and were protected by Kevlar body armor.

Quinn didn’t respond.

Probably the Tac Unit guy had been warned that what made sense to other people didn’t always make sense to Quinn.

And Pearl?

Who the hell knew what Pearl was going to do?

T
he killer used his knife to pry an old and rusty hasp from rotted wood. Screws and the part of the hasp that held the padlock dropped to the floor.

Gant used his foot to slide aside the lock and what was left of the hasp. He was standing before a row of storage units lining the back wall of a deserted warehouse. The units all had oversized doors that were six feet square, with walls rising eight feet. Both the common walls and the doors of the units were made up of vertical wooden slats. Each slat was about four inches wide, and the spaces between the slats were about an inch.

Carlie’s body tensed as she heard the faint sounds of the killer’s approach. He hoisted her halfway to her feet and carried her into the storage unit he’d opened. He forced her to kneel again, in a back corner of the unit. When she’d settled down, he moved back to crouch alongside her against the brick wall. Moisture had worked its way between the bricks, and they smelled of damp mortar and the implacable passage of time. Carlie and the killer were in the shadows.

If they were quiet, they might be missed by anyone entering the warehouse.

But if they
were
noticed . . .

He removed from his pocket the revolver that had been in Carrie Clark’s purse.

The one she’d been urged to carry for protection.

 

 

The Tactical Unit commander, a unibrowed lieutenant named Springer, gave the signal, and two hefty men hoisted the battering ram, swung it backward, forward, and immediately smashed the door open. Hardware flew and the damaged door bounced off the wall.

The tech guy nearest to the opened door tossed the grenade inside and it exploded with an immediate blast that slammed Quinn’s eardrums with pain. He saw that most of the Tactical Unit had their mouths open to avoid hearing loss from the concussion.

All of this within a few seconds, because the Tac guys were on their way inside to take advantage of the approximately five seconds before the apartment’s occupants shook off their disorientation and paralysis.

Quinn and Pearl followed them in, and stood listening while the Tac Unit dashed throughout the apartment, yelling as they cleared each room. They were strength and controlled fury in action.

The apartment was unoccupied.

As soon as Quinn realized that, he dashed down the hall to the kitchen and what was a side door to the passageway to the next block. Without a word exchanged, he knew Pearl was following. He could feel her behind him, off his right hip.

Into the wind and rain they went, Pearl on his heels. Quinn figured they were ahead of the Tac team, but not by much.

No sign of Dred Gant or Carlie.

Quinn stood still for a few seconds, as if consulting the maelstrom.

What would he do if he were Gant? If he held a terrified, compliant woman who could be used as a hostage?

He wouldn’t want to surrender that final card to play.

Almost directly across the deserted street, what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse loomed.

Quinn jogged toward the sprawling brick building. The Tac Unit leader wouldn’t yell for him to stop. This wasn’t the time or place to make any kind of noise.

Quinn was braced for a bullet as he approached the warehouse, counting on the killer being addled, unsure of how to cope with his hostage and his rapidly deteriorating situation.

Pearl moved up and was suddenly alongside him, nudging him hard in the ribs.

Quinn looked where she was pointing. One of the series of wide doors to the warehouse was open a few inches. They moved toward it.

On the soaked concrete in front of the door lay a rusty hasp and padlock. The hasp had been yanked from the rotten wood, or possibly pried away with a knife.

To lose momentum was to increase danger. Quinn acted.

He pushed Pearl away with one hand while with the other he slowly opened the old wooden door. The rain provided enough lubricant to keep the hinges from squealing. At the edges of his vision, he was aware of the Tactical Unit taking up positions around the warehouse.

Probably Dred Gant was inside.

Definitely, if he was in there, he was going to leave dead or in police custody.

His old police special at his side, Quinn eased around the partly opened door, into the warehouse.

Into complete darkness.

 

 

Then a crash and blink of illumination. There were dirt-marred skylights that provided some clarity when lightning flashed. Breaks and cracks in the roof, and in some of the glass panes, allowed slender trickles of water to reach the floor and puddle with a faint splashing sound.

Quinn got away from the door and moved behind a steel supporting beam. It wouldn’t provide much protection from gunfire, but some.

There were few places to hide in the warehouse. The only cover appeared to be a row of slatted storage compartments lined along the back wall. Even during lightning flashes, it was difficult to see what—if anything—was inside them.

Another flash, brilliant and flickering. Quinn knew that the Tac team was moving closer, silently fanning out in the front part of the building. They would soon be inside.

 

 

In one of the lockers close to the midpoint of the back wall, the killer checked to make sure Carlie’s bonds and gag were firm. Then he settled back in the darkest corner of the wooden structure.

He crouched low, with his hands in a prayer position, holding the revolver as if it were a religious icon, and waited for Quinn.

 

 

The situation was, for the moment, a standoff. Quinn, Pearl, and the Tactical Unit didn’t know exactly where Gant was—or even if he was actually in the building. With each lightning flash they tried to learn more, but nothing changed between flashes. The rain outside and the heat held by the warehouse caused the vast space to mist up near the skylights. A similar mist began to rise from the damp concrete floor. Soon it would be difficult for the Tac team to see a clear target.

With the life of a hostage in the balance, they couldn’t take chances.

 

 

After the mad rush through the night to the warehouse, Dred Gant was recovering his perspective.

Now he began to realize his situation wasn’t hopeless. He could walk out of here with the revolver’s barrel in Carlie’s ear. There would be an opportunity to talk to the press, who would no doubt be gathering like vultures anticipating carrion. He could tell them who he was, what he was, what they were.

Then he, and no one else, would mete out life or death.

Flashlights winked on in the thickening mist, no doubt held by cowards hiding behind concrete pillars or steel supporting beams. Trying to draw a shot so they could locate his position. To see if they could take him out with a clear, clean shot that didn’t endanger Carlie. Let the fools search. The killer didn’t think the feeble beams of light would penetrate the mist and darkness so that they could find him.

He had the whip hand here.

 

 

The Tac Unit commander, Springer, used a flash of lightning to imprint his surroundings in his mind. He then made his way over to where Quinn crouched with Pearl behind a rusty steel support.

“Those wooden storage bins,” Springer said. “Count nine units over from the left side, and that’s probably where he is.”

“What makes you think so?”

“One of my guys, watching through his night scope, saw the glitter of an eye.”

Quinn glanced over at the barely visible dark form of the man. “You’re kidding?”

“No. The glitter of a human eye is quite distinctive.”

“But whose eye—”

Quinn’s words caught in his throat as he saw movement out ahead of him.

Pearl had straightened up. She was holding a flashlight, moving slowly toward the storage bin the Tac commander had pointed out.

“Where the hell—” Quinn began, but Springer gripped his arm.

“No, no!” he whispered. “Don’t do anything to draw attention to her.”

“I want to draw attention
away
from her!” Quinn said. “If he shoots—”

“We’ll have his position and he’ll be dead within seconds.” Springer gave a grim smile. “Besides, I think she has something in mind.”

“Like getting herself killed?”

“Like exchanging hostages.”

“Why would she want to do that?”

“To provide opportunity so we—or she—can take him down.”

“And why would she think he’d even let her get close?”

“He knows if he shoots her, he’s dead immediately.”

“That’s what he wants.”

“Not that way. And only at the time and place of his own choosing. And something else. Who do you think the killer really wants the most?”

“Pearl,” Quinn said through clenched teeth.

“And you,” Springer said. “He’d love to have both of you. All he needs is for you to be dumb enough to go after Pearl.”

“He’s already got Carlie.”

“Could be she’s already dead,” Springer said. “Either way, in the killer’s mind, you and Pearl are unfinished business.”

“Maybe we’re giving the sick asshole too much credit,” Quinn said. “You think he’s got a plan. Maybe he doesn’t even have a gun.”

Springer shrugged. “Maybe he’s got both.”