Night Terrors (28 page)

Chapter Forty-eight

Putting it in neutral, I climbed out into the cold and, leaning in to steer through the open window, pushed the car to the curb. Some side street, off Fifth.

Sighing, I popped the hood and peered inside, though I didn't know what I was looking for. Dead battery? Faulty fuel pump?

It didn't matter. The truth was, I didn't want to deal with it. Not now, when it seemed as though things were suddenly coming to a head.

I shut the hood and locked the car. I'd let the rental company handle it later. Right now, all I cared about was getting new transport. Buttoning my coat against the wind and the chill, I trudged up to the corner. Where the traffic was.

I was still curbside, looking up and down Fifth Avenue for a passing cab, when my cell rang again. It was Eleanor Lowrey, her voice high, breathless.

“I just got your message. Jesus, Danny, are you
sure
about the shooter? ‘Cause before I go to Biegler with this, I need—”

“That's okay, I've already talked to Neal Alcott and he's on it. Makes sense anyway, since he heads up the task force. Probably deserves the collar.”

I heard her grateful—and obvious—sigh of relief.

“Thank God. I was afraid you'd do something stupid again—like go after this Randall guy yourself.”

“Nope, I'm being a good boy this time. Letting you real law enforcement types earn your salaries.”

“But what tipped you to Randall in the first place?”

“Long story, and I'm outside, freezing my ass off. Soon as I grab a cab—”

“Like hell. Where are you? I'll come pick you up.”

***

We were in Eleanor's unmarked, heading along surface streets toward the Liberty Tubes. I could tell she was driving with no particular destination in mind. Just moving cautiously through the urban maze, violet eyes focused on the thickening traffic, listening to my theory about Harve Randall.

“Ya know,” she said at last, “if you're right, it helps explain something that's always bothered me.”

“And that is?…”

“The night our eyewitness, Vincent Beck, was killed. We never found any abandoned vehicle, which was a real break from the shooter's typical M.O. Just like his using that hunting rifle instead of his usual revolver.”

“I see where you're going, El. We assumed—correctly, I think—that the shooter broke with his standard pattern because he was forced to. Which means that Randall was away from his home base, either his residence or the Wheeling precinct, when he learned that Harry Polk was on his way to interview Beck. Randall was probably in his patrol car.”

She nodded excitedly.

“Sure. Maybe he heard about it from some dispatcher. Or maybe Randall's patrol car is equipped with an onboard computer, linked into the tri-state interface. So he could monitor the task force investigation even if on the road.”

“Whichever. The thing is, once he hears about the Beck interview, he has to get to Steubenville before Harry does. He can't take the chance that Beck hadn't seen something that could expose him. But there wasn't time to get his usual gun—which, by the way, I'm beginning to believe has some kind of totemic meaning for him. It's too specific a weapon of choice, if you get my drift.”

She offered me an indulgent half-smile. “If you say so, Doc…
Anyway
, if there wasn't time to get his usual gun, there sure as hell wasn't time to steal a car.”

“Right. He had no option other than to risk driving to Steubenville in his patrol car.
And
breaking into that gun shop to get hold of a weapon. He couldn't use his own service piece. Ballistics could match it.”

I gave this more thought. “Wheeling, West Virginia, to Steubenville, Ohio. That's roughly twenty-five or thirty miles. Then, after he escapes from the warehouse, another thirty miles back to Wheeling. It's tight, but doable.”

I suddenly remembered hearing the approaching sirens as the Steubenville police sped to the crime scene.

“Funny. Randall must've been barreling out from behind the warehouse just as the local cops were pulling up to the front.”

“The guy's got brass balls, all right.” She stopped at a light and looked over at me. “I just hope nothing spooks him before the bureau closes in.”

“I was thinking the same thing. In fact, I figured I'd have heard something from Alcott by now.”

The light changed and Eleanor turned onto a narrow side street. She kept going until she found an open space, pulled to the curb and cut the engine.

“You giving Biegler a call now?” I asked.

She shook her head. Sat back in her seat.

“Before I call him…before it all cranks up again…I just wanted to explain. I mean, about last night.”

I turned her chin gently toward me.

“Nothing to explain, El. It's
her
, isn't it?…”

Her eyes lowered. “I…I just can't stop thinking about her…wishing things were different…”

I knew what she was talking about, of course. The woman she'd once called the love of her life. Who'd come back into that life last summer, if only briefly…

“I
do
understand, Eleanor. More than you could know.”

Her hand found mine. We sat like that for a long, unbroken moment. As the windshield began to fog. From the heat of our bodies, the twinned breath from our lungs.

Finally, she said, “Don't worry. I'm not gonna screw up the moment by saying we'll always be friends.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Still clutching her hand, I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Drank in, for one last time, the sweet aroma of her. The silken touch of her skin to my lips.

Then, jarringly, my cell rang. Eleanor and I both started, as though jostled from a dream.

“Christ!” I grabbed up the phone.

“It's Barnes again, Doc.”

“Lyle? Where are you now?”

“On the road. I boosted a car from the Bureau motor pool. Look, I only got a minute, so shut up and listen. I figure I owe ya.”

“Owe me? What are you talking about?”

Eleanor was staring at me in confusion, but I held up a warning hand. Something in Barnes' voice, some mix of urgency and manic excitement, worried me. I was right.

“Let's face it, Danny.
My
gut agrees with yours about Harve Randall. But guts aren't evidence, and our guy is too smart to stick around once he knows somebody's checking out his time logs.”

“Shit, Lyle, what did you do?”

“Now don't get all pissed off, but I called Wheeling PD and asked for Randall. Identified myself as FBI. Desk guy told me Randall was on his way back to the precinct, so I asked him to patch me into his patrol car.”

“You
what
?!…”

“I got Randall on the phone and told him we knew he was the shooter.
That
sure got his attention.”

I couldn't even find words to speak.

“C'mon, Danny. I had no choice. A guy like Randall finds out we're circling his ass, he doesn't just take the collar and hire a lawyer. He's gone. In the wind.”

“Sure, Lyle, now that you've
warned
him—”

“But here's the beauty part. I offered him the one sure bait he couldn't resist. The one thing he'd
have
to do before taking off for parts unknown.”

I took a breath. “You told him where to find
you
.”

“And he bit! No way a determined, methodical, anal guy like that leaves town before crossing
my
name off his list. You know it's true, Doc. I'm his ultimate prize. The guy who first ID'd and bagged his idol, John Jessup.”

Phone still at my ear, I gestured to Eleanor with my free hand to start the engine. We needed to get back on the road. Fast.

“Where are you meeting him, Lyle?”

He hesitated. “Ya gotta understand, I was makin' it up as I went along. Thinkin' fast, just tryin' to keep him talking. On the line.”

“
Where
, Lyle?…”

“Look, I just said the first thing that popped in my head. Remember Braddock, where the Bureau had me stashed in that shitty Motel 6?”

“Yeah.”

“When they brought me there, I noticed a big building just outside town. Some kind of abandoned steel mill.”

“I saw it, too. Is that—?”

“I'm meetin' Randall at the main gate, east side of the building. The place looks like it's been deserted for years. Like on the edge of nowhere. I gave him an hour to get there. No cops, no Feds. Just him and me,
mano a mano
.”

“My God, you're out of your fucking mind!”

“I guess
you'd
know, Doc. Anyway, I gotta go. Almost there. I just called because…”

I heard a rasping, exhausted intake of breath on the line. And wondered, for the hundredth time, how he was managing to stay upright.

“Look, Danny,” he said quietly, “in case this thing goes sideways, do me a favor? Call up my son in Chicago and tell him…shit, just tell him his old man's sorry. About everything. Okay?”

I shouted into the phone.
“Lyle, don't! Please—”

But the line had gone dead.

 

Chapter Forty-nine

I'd looked over at Eleanor, but hadn't had to say a word. She put her unmarked in gear, did a squealing U-turn and sped up the street, back the way we'd come. By the time we were driving up the highway on-ramp, she'd reached out her open window, put the mobile warning light on the roof, and hit the siren.

As we headed east, toward Braddock, I gave her a brief recap of what Barnes had said. And was on his way to do.

“Lunatic,” was her only comment, before grabbing up her dashboard mike and calling for backup. From both the Pittsburgh PD and the Braddock local blues.

“Have them alert the FBI, too,” I said. “If they can get past all the bullshit gatekeepers. Alcott and his people know the location.”

As she explained the situation to the dispatcher in her clear, unhurried voice, I replayed my conversation with Barnes. Something else had finally become clear.

I'd always been troubled by the illogical pattern of the shootings. The geographic inefficiency of the order of the murders. First, Earl Cranshaw in Steubenville, Ohio. Then Judge Ralph Loftus here in Pittsburgh. Then back to Ohio—Cleveland, this time—for the initial failed attempt on ADA Claire Cobb.

I realized now that Harve Randall hadn't been interested in efficiency. He was killing those he held responsible for John Jessup's death
in ascending order of
their importance.
At least, how
he
saw it in his supremely rational, deeply disturbed mind.

Cranshaw, the prison guard, may have been Jessup's actual assailant—the serial killer had died at
his
hands during that riot—but he hadn't been the one who put Jessup in prison. Cranshaw was merely a blunt instrument, as far as Randall was concerned. The smallest cog in the complex legal machinery that had victimized Jessup.

More important to Randall was Judge Loftus, the man who'd sentenced Jessup to prison. Then, one step higher up, Claire Cobb, the ambitious assistant district attorney who'd prosecuted him. Dave Parnelli, Jessup's ineffective defense attorney, was most likely to be next. Or else maybe the jury foreman. Regardless, there was no doubt who Harve Randall would want to save for last: Lyle Barnes, the famed FBI profiler who'd started that legal machinery going. The one most responsible for Jessup's ultimate fate.

Eleanor's terse voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Ya know, Danny, that call from Barnes doesn't make sense. He knows what he's doing with Randall is dangerous. Hell, it's c
razy
. So why call and tell you about it? Unless he wants you to
stop
him…”

I concentrated my gaze on the night-shrouded highway.

“I doubt it. Or else he wouldn't have waited till he was practically there to tell me. No, I'm afraid it's something else. Think about it. Barnes has nothing left in his life. No job, no family. In
his
view, anyway.”

“Are you saying…?”

“Look, he knows there's a good chance he's not going to survive this encounter with Randall, and he—I think he intends to go out in a blaze of glory. And he wants
me
to bear witness to it.” I paused. “He wants to feel at least one tug on the other end of the rope.”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

Her hands tightened on the wheel. “Well, even if you're right, he's not gonna get his wish. You hearin' me, Danny? When we get to this old deserted mill or whatever, we stay in the car, wait for backup…”

“By that time, it may be too late. And you know it.”

“Okay. Then
you
stay in the car, and I'll—”

“Not gonna happen, El. And you know
that
, too.”

“For God's sake,
look
at you! You're the walking wounded. Remember, I
saw
how messed up you are—!”

I jabbed my forefinger toward the windshield.

“Here come the Braddock exits. Take the second one and hang a left.”

Still fuming, she peered ahead, smoothly changing lanes and angling onto the correct off-ramp. Slowing just enough to keep us from going through the guardrail as we curved around, then speeding up again on the surface road.

“We're not through talkin' about this, Danny.” As she wove in and out of traffic, oncoming vehicles moving to the curb before our wailing siren and flashing light.

“Maybe
you're
not, Detective, but
I
am. I'm going in after Barnes, with or without you. Feel free to arrest me afterwards.”

Too focused on her driving to argue further, at least at the moment, she grudgingly followed my directions. Which I silently hoped, given my unfamiliarity with the town, would prove correct.

We'd gone a dozen blocks down the main steet when I spotted the abandoned steel mill I'd seen that time before, from the back seat of Alcott's town car. Its long, saw-toothed silhouette loomed black against the blacker night, the knobbed buildings and spindly towers like the bleak, skeletal remains of some huge prehistoric creature.

Eleanor had seen it too, and turned onto the next side street we came to. This led to an unlit, winding dirt road, at whose end was a corrugated metal sign that rose up suddenly from the darkness, ablaze in the glow of our headlights. Extruded block letters, stained and paint-flecked, indicated the twin entrances to the mill, east and west. We followed the arrow pointing east, and were soon rumbling along ice-encrusted gravel toward the sagging wire-mesh fence that formed a wide oval around the plant.

When we reached the east entrance, we passed through a tall, rusted gate which had recently been forced open. Its lower struts had gouged a curved groove in the frozen earth, and a chain dangled from the gate's broken lock.

A hundred yards ahead, two empty vehicles were parked at sharp angles to the massive steel doors of the east entrance. One was an unmarked sedan, presumably the car Barnes had stolen from the FBI motor pool. The other was a police cruiser, bearing the insignia of the Wheeling PD.

No other cars were in sight. Nor did I hear the sound of approaching sirens. Or FBI choppers.

I glanced over at Eleanor, who was slowly bringing her car to a stop behind the other two vehicles.

“Backup's not on-scene yet,” she murmured, as much to herself as to me.

Almost at the same time, we peered up through the windshield at the shadowy expanse of buildings that stood, silent and implacable, before us. And whose length receded back into the maw of night, as though swallowed by it.

“Damned thing must be a mile long, all told.” I squinted at the ribbed, elongated shapes and uneven array of smoke stacks. The windowless, black-bricked walls and slanted roofs.

I turned to Eleanor's profile.

“They're in there. Both of them.” My voice an awed whisper, as though the dark, somber buildings themselves could hear. “Somewhere.”

She nodded, lips pursed. Then she cut the engine, unholstered her service weapon, and opened her door. The ceiling light came on, bright, ghostly white.

I readied myself for another round of protests from Eleanor, but instead she merely looked at me. A kind of sad, knowing resignation in her eyes.

“C'mon, then.”

Before I could respond, she'd unclipped a sturdy, department-issue flashlight from below the dashboard and tossed it to me.

Without another word, we got out of the car.