Storm Front (19 page)
Authors: Robert Conroy
* * *
“Chief Bench, where are you when I need you?” Mayor Carter snapped into his phone. A few moments later, his chief of police was in his office. Bench’s eyes were red, and his face was pale, almost gray. He looked nauseous, which went well with the likelihood that he had a hangover. Otherwise, he seemed fairly lucid, although he stank of booze and old sweat. Carter shook his head. The man was a pig. He would have to go before the spectacle he’d made of himself rubbed off on the office of the mayor.
“Chief, I want you to fire Sergeant Stuart.”
“What?”
“Damn it, Bench, you heard me.”
Bench snickered, then tried to flick some dirt off his shirt. He stopped when he realized it was a stain. “Well, do you have a reason for wanting to can him, or is it because he pisses you off? Y’know, we do have a few little rules around here involving the termination of public employees. The last time I checked, he got an outstanding personnel evaluation from DiMona, which was signed off by both you and me, which also means it’s gonna be difficult to make a case to throw him out. He’s not a part of the union, but we do have written procedures regarding stuff like canning his ass without just cause, so you’ve got to give me a good reason before I can even start.”
“Well, didn’t he let that reporter in?”
“No, the doors were open and she walked in.”
“Damn it, you know what I mean. Someone told her to come here and spy on us. Was that Stuart?”
“Uh-uh. I really think that someone else did it. Maybe DiMona called her. He hates my guts, and he’s not that fond of you, either.”
“But Stuart is DiMona’s boy.”
“Still can’t just fire him.”
“Then suspend him.” Carter was getting frustrated and suspected that Bench was enjoying his discomfiture.
“Can’t do that either, and even if we could, we shouldn’t because we don’t have any extra cops around here. But why are you so gung ho on getting rid of him? Don’t bullshit me. The reporter thing doesn’t cut it.”
“He punched me and made me give him the list of defective buildings I’d put up.”
Bench laughed. “That’s priceless, although it does explain why you look like shit.”
Carter was desperate. “I just want all this to go away. You know the FBI’s after me, don’t you?”
Bench laughed again and stood up. Then he glared at Carter with a semblance of dignity he hadn’t shown in years. “Of course. I’m one of the guys who tipped them off, you dumb arrogant fucker. I’ve been telling them all about the way you’ve screwed the city, and I’m getting immunity in return. Now that all my shortcomings are going to be on the eleven o’clock news, I’m going to retire and save the city the aggravation of sacking me. Have a nice day, Mayor.” He turned and walked out of the office. He slammed the door behind him.
Bench grinned as he walked down the hall to his office. It wouldn’t be his for much longer, but that was okay. He heard a sharp thudding sound and turned back to the mayor’s office.
* * *
Traci Lawford lived by the heat vent in her second-floor bedroom that had become a prison. It was both a source of warmth and knowledge. Sometimes Tower and Raines moved off and she couldn’t hear them very well, but, more often than not, they came through loud and clear.
They were arguing again and she didn’t know whether that was good or bad. The snow hadn’t let up, which should have meant she was safe. The snow was her friend. She needed a friend.
The argument between her two tormentors directly concerned her. They’d picked up something on the radio about her, and they were considering leaving now and not waiting for the weather to break. However, they didn’t know where the cops were. Logic said they were in the closest houses, but no one was visible. Traci had gone to a window and tried to signal, but got no response. She could scarcely see the nearest houses. They were little more than shapes in the snow, which meant no one could see her either. She wanted to scream. If the police were out there, why didn’t they come?
Media exposure had been one of her fears and it had come true. Someone, someone on her list of so-called friends, had contacted the media without a thought to her safety. She gritted her teeth. If she ever got out of this, she’d kill whoever it was.
The absurdity of the situation struck her and she almost smiled. If she ever got out of this, she’d thank God, not go looking for revenge. Her survival was paramount. What happened in the next few minutes, up to a couple of hours, would determine whether she ever saw her husband again, or celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday.
Now they were talking about using her as a hostage when they left and killing her when they got clear because then she would be just so much additional weight on the snowmobile. They wouldn’t even just throw her off because she knew too much. No, they’d decided that they would shoot her in the back of the head. She was terrified and wanted to break down, but willed herself not to. She had to stay focused.
Traci accepted as fact that they were planning to kill her. She did not accept as fact that she had to go quietly or easily. They had shamed her, hurt her, and humiliated her, but they had not destroyed her. For some reason she recalled a line from the movie
Independence Day.
She would not go easily into the night if she could possibly help it.
Traci stood up and walked nervously to the window. It was time.
* * *
Mike squinted through the night vision scope. He thought he had seen motion at the second-floor window, and had mentioned it to the other cops.
“Thank God you said that,” said Officer Charley Donlan. “I thought I was going nuts. For an instant I thought I saw a naked woman up there, but then the snow got in the way.”
Mike wondered why Donlan hadn’t mentioned it in the first place. Was he afraid the others would laugh at him? If it was a woman, naked or not, it had to be Traci Lawford. At least they knew where she was. His hunch that she was on the second floor was correct. Now all they had to do was take advantage of that small fact.
“How do I look?” asked Petkowski from behind him. Mike was startled by the apparition in white, then grinned.
“You look like a Russian soldier at Stalingrad.”
“Nah, I thought I looked like a management trainee for the KKK.”
Petkowski was wearing a couple of white sheets that had been pinned and roughly sewn together. A pillowcase hid his head. He carried an M4, the carbine variant of the military’s M16 that was also covered by white bedding. Out in the snow, he would be damn near invisible to the unaided eye.
“You sure you want to do this, buddy?” Mike asked.
“Hell yes,” Petkowski answered with a trace of indignation. “Now give me a kiss goodbye, sailor.”
Instead Mike patted him on the head and wished him good luck. All the kidding in the world couldn’t hide the fact that Petkowski was going to crawl through the deep snow to the Lawford house. Fortunately, they didn’t think that Tower and Raines had anything in the way of night vision or thermal imaging gear. If they did, Petkowski was screwed.
After he got to the house, they didn’t have a real plan. It would depend on where the bad guys actually were and what they might do. One of Hughes’ cops was going to attempt the same thing, but from the other side of the house.
It was nuts, Mike thought, but did they really have any other choices?
Petkowski opened a door that was out of view from the Lawford house and dropped down into the snow. Within seconds it was as if he no longer existed. Night vision didn’t help. Infrared, however, picked up the traces of his body heat and registered him as moving with exquisite slowness towards the foreboding dwelling.
* * *
Maddy Kovacs was confident that the worst of their ordeal was over. Now all they had to do was wait to be rescued and taken home. Well, maybe rescued was too strong a term. It was not as if their lives were in danger. They were dry and safe in a school, not bobbing around in the ocean on a lifeboat. Nor were they endangered by fire. In fact, a little warm fire might be a welcome diversion.
Wilson Craft’s death had been a tragic accident, nothing more. Perhaps all they’d been was terribly inconvenienced, although the late Wilson Craft might feel otherwise.
Maddy wondered if she had a home to go to. Her condo was well built, she thought, and it did have a steeply pitched roof that should have shed a lot of the snow, but you never knew. Neither of her roommates had made it home yet, and calls to neighbors about her property had gone unanswered.
“Just where the hell is everybody,” she muttered to herself and drew surprised stares from a couple of sleepy children and grins from Tessa and Lori. The two girls had been surprisingly helpful. They were able to communicate with the children at a different level than she could. No matter how friendly a teacher might be, she was still a teacher, an authority figure.
At least she had no pets to worry about. Not even a goldfish. Several teachers were concerned about cats and dogs, although they all admitted that the animals would be more uncomfortable than in any real danger. They’d all been left with water and food as on any other day, so the real worry was where a dog might go to poop and pee, and if it got bored, what would it chew on. Cats used litter boxes, of course, and were above getting bored. If cleaning up dog shit from the family room carpet was the worst that happened, they would have fared well.
She left the classroom and walked down an empty hallway. It was good to be alone, if only for a few moments. Life in Patton Elementary in many ways did resemble being on a crowded lifeboat. She opened the door to the gym and stepped in. Wilson Craft, the maintenance man, had fallen and died on that floor and there was no longer any trace of either him or the frantic efforts to save him. It was as if he’d never existed.
There must be a lesson in that,
she thought,
and maybe someday I’ll figure out what it is.
Maddy shivered. It was colder than expected in the gym. Of course, with no heat there was no reason for it to be warm. But she didn’t expect it to be quite as cold as it was.
She felt a drop of moisture on her cheek. Snow. She looked up and saw a patch of light through the roof and wisps of snow filtering down. There was a hole in the roof, and, as she stared in disbelief, it seemed to widen.
“Oh God,” she said and walked carefully from the gym as if the sounds of her steps would disturb anything. When she got to the hallway she called out for Donna Harris, who came up quickly, recognizing the urgency in Maddy’s voice.
“What’s up?”
Maddy swallowed hard. “The roof. I think it’s beginning to collapse.”
CHAPTER 16
Stan Petkowski crawled slowly through the snow. Each motion was choreographed by him to make as little of his body as possible visible to anyone in the house. In effect, he was swimming, leaning forward and dragging himself with his arms while his feet tried to find the ground beneath him. When he stopped, which he did only when he needed to catch his breath, the snow came up to the middle of his chest. He thought about going into the snow and burrowing like a rabbit in a cartoon, but this was real, not a damned cartoon.
Still, he was not a fool. He did not believe for an instant that he would be totally undetected. For one thing, his crawling left a trail. When the snow finally stopped, anyone in the house would be able to follow that trail and see where it ended and his priceless body began. He would be an unmissable target. Stan hoped the snow kept up for at least a little while after he reached the house and blurred evidence of his passing. Also, as he crawled, he got wet, and the sheets that covered him were becoming translucent as they dampened, reducing their effect as camouflage.
Oh well,
he thought,
who ever said this would be easy?
He paused behind a massive lump on the Lawfords’ front lawn. It was a large ornamental shrub that had been turned into a snow mountain. It hid him from anyone in the house and gave him a chance to rest. He burrowed into it and tried to warm up. At least he was out of the wind and the snow no longer fell directly on him. It was almost an igloo and igloos kept Eskimos warm, didn’t they? So why was he still cold?
He radioed to Mike that he was about fifty feet from the house and there was no sign of life or any indication that he’d been spotted. It reinforced his own opinion that the two bad guys, Tower and Raines, were a long ways from being rocket scientists. But Stan had not made corporal and survived a decade on the force by underestimating an adversary, especially heavily armed murderers. The thought of what the two men had done to the couple in the motel made him shudder. He had no idea who Traci Lawford was, but he could only guess that she was being subjected to an ordeal that no human deserved.
He looked up at the looming building. He had to get closer. He had to see just what the hell was going on inside that big house.
Stan radioed Mike that he was going to move closer and again began his slow, laborious crawl. After what seemed an eternity, he was up against the brick wall of the Lawford house. The building was solid brick and not a façade like new houses. It would make a helluva good fortress if it came down to a gunfight. Shit, why did the bad guys draw all the high cards?
He was beneath a window. He asked Mike if there was any indication of undue light or heat from behind it and was assured that there wasn’t. As far as technology and the human eyeball could determine, the room was empty, although there was probable occupancy of the room farther to Stan’s right as he faced the building.
Stan raised himself to where he could see in over the snow piled against the window and confirmed that the room was indeed empty. However, he did see a snowmobile in another room and just visible down a hallway. He radioed that info to the others. If the killers tried to escape by that route, they would have to exit the rear of the house. Petkowski was grateful he was in the front. He checked and the window was locked. Just as well. He had no urge to crawl in and confront Tower and Raines all by his Polish lonesome.
Stan checked with Mike and was told to sit tight. “Easy for you to say,” he whispered in mock anger. “You’re in a nice dry house while I’m freezing my ass off in a snowbank.”
Stan was about to add something else when he heard the sound of a window opening above him. He looked up through the falling snow and saw a naked woman leaning out.
* * *
Officer Clyde Detmer wondered if he was making the right decision. He’d been offered a decent pension and was considering taking it. He would miss being a cop. But he already missed riding a motorcycle and giving tickets to people who thought they were either above the law or who professed blindness when it came to the speed limit and stop signs.
Still, he had nothing to complain about. He had a bad habit of being sarcastic, about work and his weight, and he knew that annoyed some people. His job this day wasn’t difficult and it did enable him to work with kids, which he enjoyed. He also liked working with their teachers. With only a few exceptions, he respected them. He had an associate’s degree in criminal justice and had toyed with the idea of getting his bachelor’s, but his wife talked him out of it. He was fifty-five, she reminded him. Just what would he do with the degree? Teach? There were more teachers than there were jobs in Michigan; ergo, he would not go back to school.
When the severity of the storm became obvious, he volunteered to get out of the offices and help control hundreds of antsy kids. The little kids responded well. The bigger ones were different. With them, he decided, it was like trying to herd cats. Raging hormones and pent-up energy barely accounted for it. It more than kept him busy, but he did feel he was doing something useful. Along with having a cop’s command presence, Detmer was a large man.
He was deeply grieved on hearing of the death of Wilson Craft. He had known the man, and while he and Wilson had never been close, his death was a tragedy nonetheless.
Even after the power went out, he still convinced himself that things were pretty much under control. However, when the fire alarms started screaming and the sprinklers went off, he wondered just what the hell else could go wrong. He told those teachers who were too surprised to think that they should get the kids under tables and desks while he went to find the source of the fire. Normally, everyone would have filed out of the building and gathered on the lawns and in parking lots. Only thing was, that was clearly impossible unless it was an act of utter desperation, and his gut said it was a damned false alarm.
“There’s smoke reported down by the library,” a very harassed Nancy Hamlin announced. It was her second year as principal and Wally wondered if she wasn’t in way over her head.
“Then why did all the sprinklers in the building go off?” Clyde asked. Nancy said she had no idea.
A few seconds later, they and the sirens stopped. “I’m going down to the library,” Detmer said. “I’ll bet you a dollar that some jackass kids set it off.”
Nancy smiled wanly. “I will not bet against you.”
* * *
Chief Bench turned and walked toward the mayor’s office again. He was more sober than he’d been in days as he opened the door and walked in. The mayor was nowhere to be seen, but there was the sound of moaning and the smell of cordite and blood.
Thea Hamilton followed the chief and walked behind the desk. “Oh, Christ,” she said and began to vomit. Carter lay face down on the floor in a widening pool of blood and what looked like pieces of skull and brain matter. A handgun lay beside him. Behind them, voices yelled for help.
EMS techs and other cops arrived quickly and began to work on the mayor’s limp form. Bench stepped aside to allow them through. A sheet of paper on the mayor’s desk caught his eye and he picked it up. The heading was Carter-Sheridan Construction Company and it was a list of addresses. As quickly as he could without his glasses, Chief Bench read the list and the brief accompanying text. It said that these were the properties the FBI was investigating for shoddy construction, and there were nearly fifty of them. Sampson’s Super Store was on it, which provided an answer to why the mayor shot himself. At least five people were now dead at the store and many injured. The mayor was looking at major jail time for his involvement in the deaths and the fraud. Bench had done dumb things in his life, but he’d never endangered anyone. He found little pity for his fallen boss.
“I didn’t know the mayor could shoot a gun,” Thea said.
“He can’t,” Bench responded. “He’s still alive. Once again, he’s fucked up.”
Bench allowed his eyes to wander down the list. One additional building caught his eyes—Patton Elementary School.
Jesus,
he thought,
now the stupid bastards have put little kids in danger.
* * *
“Damn you, Wally. You said this was going to end soon.”
“Hold on to your delicious little gubernatorial panties, Lauren, it is ending, just not as fast as we’d all like. Besides, the word ‘soon’ is very subjective. How soon is soon to God, for instance? A billion years? Think about it. This could be it for the rest of our lives. Maybe a new ice age just began and we’re privileged to see it.”
“Shut up, Wally, and get serious. Make it stop.”
Wally Wellman glanced at the computer monitor that showed the latest satellite update. Another look at the radar and satellite report confirmed what he’d said. The line of demarcation now cut through the metropolitan area like a knife. To the south and west of Detroit, around Romulus and the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, there were reports of clearing skies. The plows trying to clear the airport runways were beginning to make some progress. It would be a long time before planes moved, but there were places where the runway was actually visible.
Not so to the north of the city. “Wally, we’ve got more than a foot of new snow in the roadway behind where the Guard has cleared it. The plows are having to replow what they’ve already cleared. It’s like a tar baby. We just keep getting in deeper.”
“Not my fault, Governor. I only make the announcements. As they say, I’m in marketing, not production.”
“Wally, don’t be a smartass. I’m beginning to like you again, so don’t screw it up. Oh, that’s right, I always did like you—just some days more than others.”
Wally grinned. He liked the idea of her liking him. “Seriously, Lauren, it is beginning to clear, but that’s the key word—beginning. When the front passes, it seems to turn off rather quickly, but it’s still not going to be instantaneous and it’s got a long ways to go before it reaches you. You’re on the northern fringe of it, so it’s going to be a while before any change comes through to where you are.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that. I just need somebody to complain to and you’re the lucky one.”
Lucky me, indeed,
thought Wally with a smile.
And don’t ever stop calling me.
* * *
Traci Lawford leaned out the window and looked down at the deep, white snow. It looked so inviting, even fluffy like a pillow. The cold, wet wind on her bare skin told her that it was treacherous, not gentle. And it might cover something very harmful should she jump and land on it.
Even though it was her own yard, she was disoriented both by the abuse she’d endured and the snow that had wiped out any semblance of familiarity. The yard that she’d taken for granted now looked alien and threatening. Worse, she hated and feared heights. She’d gotten physically ill watching scenes of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center. What terrors could motivate a person to do something like that? Now she was beginning to realize the answer—total desperation. Here, Tower and Raines were the all-consuming flames.
Put it in perspective,
she ordered herself. She was not on the top of the World Trade Center. No, she was only a dozen or so feet above a snow-covered lawn. Those people in the house were going to kill her if she didn’t free herself. She couldn’t depend on the possibility of cops coming to help her. She had to get out of the house.
Traci leaned farther out the gabled window and eased herself onto the roof. The snow was deep and the footing slippery, especially since her bare feet got cold quickly and lost any sense of touch. She managed to get herself out onto the roof and sat there, shivering and naked in snow that was over her waist, and contemplated her next move. She was two stories above the snow-covered ground. Did she really have the courage to jump?
From inside the house, she heard the door to her room open, followed by angry shouts. She climbed up to the top of the gable. Now she was almost three floors up. Her feet dislodged some snow and a small avalanche fell.
Below her and unseen, Petkowski spoke softly and carefully into his radio. “Did anyone see that? Where did she go? I lost her.”
“She’s on the roof,” Mike answered, “and just out of your view. Oh, shit. Someone’s at the window and it’s got to be one of the bad guys looking for her.”
Mike gave the radio to Officer Donlan and picked up a rifle. The range wasn’t all that great, but he only had sight of part of the target’s body and the blowing snow distorted the view. He only assumed the person in the window was either Tower or Raines, but he wasn’t certain. He didn’t want to kill an innocent person. What if Traci Lawford wasn’t the only hostage in that house? They’d assumed she was alone, but what if she wasn’t? What if there was a girlfriend, or a lover, in that house? Hell, what if it was a small kid?
The man in the window disappeared. Had he realized that their prisoner had flown? It occurred to Mike that the man might have assumed that Traci Lawford had jumped instead of being just above him on the roof. Good—let him think that.
But she couldn’t stay up there forever. Minutes would be more like it. Mike didn’t know how long it would be before hypothermia set in. Considering her total nakedness, the snow depth, and a wind chill well below freezing, it wouldn’t take long before she was incapable of functioning and not much longer after that before she was dead.
Across the yard, Traci Lawford’s cold hands lost their grip on the roof and she slid off the gable. As Mike watched in horror, she slid down the roof and, arms flailing, fell soundlessly into the snow by the house, only a few feet from where Petkowski waited. A second later, Traci Lawford began to scream in agony and flop around in the snow that trapped her.
* * *
The roof at Patton Elementary fell in sections that seemed like waves. Still, it happened fast enough that there was no real way to escape the torrent of white snow and roofing debris that buried many in the school.
One moment Maddy and Donna were looking up at the shuddering ceiling and wondering what their next step might be, and then they heard a roar and the roof came down on top of them. They tried to run, but were quickly engulfed and buried.