Mind Games (17 page)

Max’s grin faded, and he looked down, moving one of his pieces across the checkers board. “Every prison needs an infrastructure. Guards. Doctors. The Leader believes our two units can be part of the cure.”

“Max, tell me this…has anyone ever tried to get out of this place?”

“What, like an escape or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Funny you should ask.”

PERSON OF INTEREST

On the night of the violent stor
m
on Highway 17, Amy’s search team didn’t see the tree fall, causing Cameron’s SUV to spin off the road.

Instead of stopping or looking back, the search team had pressed on through the storm, more concerned with staying on the road amidst the heavy sheets of rain than looking back. Unfortunately, the violent nature of the storm, including its dodgy visibility, fragmented the remaining members of the search party. It wasn’t until twenty miles later when the search team came into a clearing from the storm that they noticed Cameron’s absence.

Amy instructed the team to turn back and search to see if Cameron’s SUV pulled off to the shoulder of the road. But instead of finding the fallen tree or the crash site, the search team – initially assembled for Jennifer Frost – now held the responsibility of finding Cameron Frost as well. Amy remembered the mile marker where the storm came on at full force, but as the search team zipped past, the fallen tree that caused the accident was nowhere to be found. The tree line was entirely intact. Carefully surveying the area in both directions along the highway, Amy and the search team never found Cameron’s crash site or any other evidence of his disappearance. Devastated by yet another missing person added to the case, Amy told the team to head back to the city.

Back at the precinct
,
Vince was eating some pizza he’d picked up from a gas station when his phone went off. Amy had set the active alarm inside Derek Hansen’s weapon closet to trigger when he returned for his stash of money. Upon triggering, the alarm automatically sent an alert to Vince’s cell phone. When Vince received the message, he dropped the pizza in his lap.

“Finally,” Vince said. “Let’s go make that gunslinger weep!”

Amy and Vince reache
d
Hansen’s mobile home and knocked on the yellow splattered door. Derek’s pickup was sitting in front of the trashed yard.

“SFPD! Open up!” Amy pounded on the door.

Nothing.

“Derek Hansen,” Amy persisted, “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Mr. Hansen!” Vince barked.

“We don’t have time for this.” Amy backed away and turned, running for the door with her right leg extended. The first kick was unsuccessful, and Vince made sure she knew it.

“Working those quads, I see.”

“Shut up!” She reset her stance and tried again, but the door was stronger than she thought.

Vince couldn’t help it. “I can call the S.W.A.T. unit if you want.”

“Not a chance.” Amy reset her stance one more time, bracing herself on the ledge of the mobile home porch. “It’s one slime-ball, Vince. We can take him.” She ran and waited a split-second longer before extending her leg into the door, and in one swift motion, the door swung into the house and smacked the living room wall, shattering a nearby mirror.

Derek Hansen sat on the couch, smoking a joint.

He was eating potato chips and listening to 80s rock music. Derek calmly placed another chip into his mouth and chewed, eyeing the two detectives with glassy eyes. He then spoke slowly, jutting his bottom row of teeth forward as he formed the words. “You guys know I’m in New York City right now. You can’t arrest me.”

Amy took a step towards the couch, reaching for her handcuffs. But just as her thumb touched the cold metal of the cuffs, Derek Hansen bolted from the couch and ran into the kitchen, brandishing a butcher knife from the cupboard.

Vince drew his gun, sliding from the front entry to take cover behind the couch. “Hansen, you don’t want to do this.”

Derek clumsily twirled the knife, dropping it just inches from his left foot. Then he rummaged through his kitchen cupboards, searching for another possible weapon.

Signaling Vince, Amy also drew her gun and moved up closer to Derek, taking cover behind the fridge. Vince then moved closer, nearing the kitchen table forming a two-person barrier, blocking Hansen from running out the front door. Hansen was still furiously opening and closing drawers. When he saw Vince’s new position, he jumped back and ran for the set of glass doors near the back of the kitchen, leading to the backyard porch.

With great speed, he ran and slipped on the kitchen floor, falling headfirst into the glass door, shattering it with his skull. The piercing shards of glass left tiny cuts across his face, and he hit the ground, letting no time pass before pushing himself up with his arms. The bits of glass pressed into the palms of his hands, but the pain only increased his adrenaline. Hansen pushed himself up, barely brushing the glass from him as he ran on the porch.

Vince followed close behind, jumping over the shards of glass just under the doorframe.
“
Stop! Hansen, it’s over
!
”

But Hansen had already clambered across the wooden surface of the porch. His socks pulled up splinters. He lunged behind the stainless steel grill and planted his feet against the porch railing, pushing the grill with his upper body. The heavy grill slid at first, scraping like the brakes of a small train. Hansen dug his feet against the railing, pushing the grill with now bloodied hands and grimacing with his now bloodied face. Showing pure resistance, the whites around his pupils bulged like a bullfrog as he shoved the grill over, toppling it to the ground. The gray propane tank clanked and squealed as it hit the porch. One of the cooking prongs that had just been dangling from a hook on the handle of the grill had fell underneath the propane tank, landing just in the right spot where it both pierced the tank and sparked simultaneously, causing a fiery explosion that sent Hansen flying over the porch railing and into the bushes behind him.

Vince and Amy kept their distance from the grill, and jumped off the opposite side of the porch before Hansen pushed the grill over. But the blast from the propane tank pushed them even further from Hansen. Amy covered her face with her shoulders to avoid burns from the blue fireball: more sound than flame.

As the empty propane tank spun in a wild frenzy of smoking aluminum, the side door of the grill fell off in a clank. Although brief, the explosion left a black ring on the porch. As Amy peeked through her elbow, she saw Hansen running from the bushes.

His pants were on fire. As the orange and yellow flames engulfed his jeans, Hansen ran in figure eights, screaming in agony before rolling on the ground to smother the smoking denim.

Amy pulled herself up, slightly weak from the shock of the blast and tried to yell to Vince over the sharp ringing in her ears, but the words came from her mouth in a jumbled mess of vowels
.
“Ooo uuuu iiii!!”

Vince pressed into a crab position from the blast and used his wrists to push himself back on his feet. Hansen’s yard spun around him in a blurred vision that was nothing more than a smear of green and orange and yellow. He groped the grass for his gun and when he found it, Vince aimed it directly at Hansen’s rolling body. The moving target was too much for Vince’s uneasy palms, yet he reached towards the trigger and fired one shot into the sky. Vince tried to shake the blurred lines from his eyes and almost lost his balance while Amy kept yelling. The words were clearer now, but Vince felt as though he were hearing them through cotton balls shoved in his ears.

“On’t oot im! Vince! No
!
DON’T SHOOT HIM
!
”

Vince moved closer to the smoking blur of Derek Hansen with both his hands clutching his gun. He fired another round into the bushes near the porch. His walk became a march, moving in strong strides towards Hansen. He was about to shoot him right then and there.

“Vince! Don’t!” Amy lunged towards Vince and batted the gun from his hands. She stepped in front of Hansen and put out a foot, pressing it into his lower back to stop him from rolling. But Hansen wasn’t ready to go down.

He hooked his smoking ankle around Amy’s inner-knee, pulling her down into the grass before digging his fingers into the lawn, yanking himself forward like a leopard escaping a trap. And in no less than two long leaps, he was over the backyard fence, chasing Hansen down the sidewalk. Vince gained on him, following the smoke trail from Hansen’s jeans.

Within a block, Vince tackled Hansen, shoving his face into the pavement and twisting his arms behind his back.

“Sit down, you bastard!”

Amy wasn’t far behind, and she pressed her knee into Hansen’s back as he cuffed him. “Derek Hansen, you are under arrest for possession of illegal weapons and the murder of Fred Stefani. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…”

This time, Derek didn’t squirm or fight or try to run.

He was too high to attempt another escape.

Back at the Fourth Precinct
,
Derek Hansen received mild care for the burns on his legs: nothing more than some disinfectant and ace wrap bandages. Vince made Hansen tend to his own wounds since they had been self-inflicted.

Next, Vince brought Hansen to the interview room, dropping his file on the metal table before he sat across from him. Derek’s eyes were still glazed over, and his greasy brown hair fell across his face in jagged clumps. The smoky odor from the incident just minutes ago lingered on him. Colonies of acne covered Derek’s dimpled cheeks, and he stroked his scraggly goatee as Vince asked him the first question.

“So, we both agree that you’re a dumbass?” Vince opened the file. “No argument? Great. You should be glad my partner and I didn’t get hurt. Let’s just say that wouldn’t have helped your case.”

Hansen confidently leaned back in his chair. He shook his head and motioned to zip his mouth shut, almost chuckling to himself.

“I’m not going to waste any time with you, Hansen. You killed Fred Stefani. We have your prints on the gun and the bullets. The evidence is conclusive. Now here’s what I want to know.” Vince leaned forward, sliding Hansen’s file aside. “Why did you do it, Derek? Why did you kill Fred Stefani?”

Hansen shook his head and put his hands up, smirking.

“You don’t want to talk? Alright, fine. I’ll talk. We found quite the pile of C4 next to some cardboard boxes in Stefani’s basement. Were you aware of that the night you killed Stefani?”

Hansen sat still and said nothing.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Now, were you also aware of his targets? It was a rather impressive display – hard to miss.”

Still nothing.

“Okay, then. Stop me if I’m wrong. Mr. Hansen, we checked Fred Stefani’s bank account, and I’m not sure if you’re going to like what we found. We couldn’t really figure out why Stefani was targeting civilians – seemingly at random. But all we had to do was follow the money. I’m assuming you knew about Stefani’s victims. The victims of the San Fran Bomber.”

Hansen starred blankly ahead.

“Good, then you know why he targeted them. They owed him money. Every last one of them. Funny thing is Stefani wasn’t the only name on the account. You weren’t just friends with Fred Stefani. You were business partners, am I right? And that’s why you killed him.”

Hansen ran his tongue over his upper teeth and scratched under his right eye with his pinky.

“Surely you can’t deny that, Hansen.” Vince crossed his arms over his chest. “So why did you kill him? Was it money? Or maybe you just didn’t like him.”

Looking to the ceiling now, Hansen appeared to be counting the tiles.

Vince wanted to jump across the table and grab Hansen by the shirt. He wanted to threaten him and lay not just Stefani’s murder on Hansen, but all of the bombings too. But Vince knew it was more important to let Hansen confess on his own. “What was going on with your business, Mr. Hansen? It must have been something to kill for.”

“Sloppy.” Hansen released just the one word.

“What do you mean, sloppy?”

“Stefani was sloppy,” Hansen repeated. “All he cared about was the money.”

“The money. Right. And when the clients didn’t pay him, he didn’t send a warning or a letter…he sent a bomb.”

“That’s right.”

“And you thought that was sloppy?”

“It just didn’t make any sense. Why would you kill off half your clients like that?” Hansen rubbed his temples. “It’s just bad business.”

“You know it’s more than that, Derek. Your clients were purchasing illegal weapons. But some of them must have paid you. How did you want to run the business?”

“The whole thing could have been prevented.”

“How?”

“I kept telling Stefani to have a meeting with the clients at his house to talk things over, but all he could think about was violence. He just wanted to get rid of them passively.”

“You think a mail bomb is passive? No, I don’t buy it, Derek. You must have agreed to those bombs. You helped make them didn’t you?”

“No! I had no part of that. That was all Stefani.”

“And yet you waited. Yeah, you waited until the bombings actually happened. They were in the newspapers, TV; of course you were aware of the exposure the bombs were getting. You can’t tell me you didn’t participate in it.”