The Frenzy War (43 page)

Mace let Landry into the house. The lieutenant seemed flustered. “Thanks for coming.”

“Don't mention it. Are you okay?”

Mace gestured to Anna sitting on the living room couch. She held Patty, who slept with her mouth open. “This is Anna Sanchez. She and her family live downstairs.”

“Hello,” Anna said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Landry said. “The squad cars are in position downstairs.”

Mace lowered his voice. “I'm trusting you to take care of everything here.”

Landry opened one flap of his coat, revealing his Glock. Then he opened the other, revealing a shotgun. “Don't worry.”

“Thanks.” Mace offered his hand, which Landry shook.

He hurried out the door, and halfway down the stairs his cell phone vibrated. He took it out without slowing down. Glancing at the display, he ignored it. When he opened the door, the two POs stationed outside turned in his direction.

“If you need to get inside, buzz Lieutenant Landry on the second floor.” Circling the house to the driveway, he saw the strobes of another RMP at the far end of the street. His cell phone vibrated again. He climbed into his SUV and backed out of the driveway. Five minutes later when the cell phone vibrated a third time, he took the call. “Mace.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Mint said.

“I've been a little frazzled,” Mace said.

“Let me rephrase that. Where the hell are you now?”

“I'm halfway to Ossining,” he said, twisting the truth.

“Jesus, Tony, why? There's nothing you can do there.”

“I need to keep moving. I can't just sit around the house waiting for a call I know isn't coming.”

“You really think the Brotherhood grabbed Cheryl?”

“I know it.”

“Why not the Class Ls? Gomez made their existence public.”

“The last thing the Class Ls should want is more

publicity. Cheryl did a pretty damned good job discrediting everything Gomez said.”

“I'll give you that. You were in hot water there for a minute.”

Thanks.

“Where the hell does that leave the investigation?”

“I'm going to find my wife. When I do, I'll find the Brotherhood. It's that simple.”

“If you're planning to ride around like the Lone Ranger, I hope you plan to have a Tonto with you.”

“My team is standing by if I need them.” For the first time since accepting his position as head of the task force, Mace felt comfortable with the idea of killing every member of the Brotherhood of Torquemada.

C
heryl awakened in darkness. Trying to move, she realized her hands were cuffed behind her back. She heard an engine and felt a vibrating metal floor, and occasionally a bump caused the vehicle to shake.
Blindfolded,
she realized.

She remembered seeing the van ahead of Colleen's vehicle in the road, then men garbed in strange paramilitary uniforms surrounding the car.

Colleen!
Was she alive or dead? Was she also in the van, if that's what this was? As badly as she wanted to know the answers, she decided to feign unconsciousness. The vehicle made a sharp turn, and she rocked from side to side.

“Right up to the door,” a male voice said.

The vehicle seemed to turn around and back up. A moment later, the engine turned off and the back doors swung

open, admitting frigid air.

“Come on. Get up,” a different man said. “That chloroform should have worn off ten minutes ago. Don't make us drag you.”

With reluctance, Cheryl managed to sit up. “It's hard to move with my hands cuffed.”

Hands grabbed her biceps and hauled her to her feet. She heard the doors of another vehicle close.

“Walk forward.”

She obeyed, and a hand held her head down, presumably to keep it from bumping the ceiling. “Watch your step.”

Cheryl did, setting foot on some kind of platform outside. The van doors closed behind her, and she shivered. A key turned in a lock, and a door swung open. She heard no traffic noise, no neighborhood voices.

We're not in Manhattan anymore, Toto.

The hands on her arms guided her inside. The door closed, and her captors moved her forward.

A concrete floor. Echoing footsteps. No heat.

An abandoned building? A warehouse?

“Colleen?”

“Stay quiet,” another male voice said.

Cheryl tried to guess how many of them there were by the footsteps, but there were too many to separate. They stopped her, and she heard a rattling sound. Then they pushed her into a space with stuffy air and crowded around her, and she heard the rattling sound again.

A freight elevator.

The elevator descended, and she adjusted her feet for balance. “Where are you taking me?”

No one answered. The elevator stopped, the door rattled open, and her captors guided her out.

Just one floor. The basement.

More footsteps but no echo this time.

Lower ceilings.

The footsteps stopped, and the hands held her steady. A bolt slid into place, a door opened, and the hands guided her inside a room. Something moved ahead of her—something weighty and swift—a very large animal. She recoiled at the padded footsteps, her heart pounding. The hands held her arms straight down, and she heard the clinking of chain links before metal manacles snapped around her wrists and ankles.

Then Cheryl felt the blindfold around her head being untied, and sudden light filled her sight. She found herself staring at a wild animal: matted hair, blood-spattered flesh, squatting in filth. Hearing footsteps behind her, she spun to see a shadow dart through the doorway. A moment later, the door slammed shut, and she heard the bolt on the other side slide into locked position.

She turned back to the pitiful creature chained to the floor near the far wall. “Rhonda?”

Driving along the Hudson with his siren on, Mace couldn't help but remember when he had made this same drive two years earlier. During their private interview, Rodrigo Gomez

had seemed repentant. Tonight the serial killer had tried to destroy Mace through implication.

A quarter of a mile ahead, Mace saw bright lights in the road, surrounded by dense trees on one side and the river on the other. Drawing nearer, he saw an ambulance, a fire truck, and two police cars, and within the glare of their strobes, several cars and a Manhattan Minute News van. He slowed to a stop, got out, and strode to the scene, the wind from the Hudson blowing his hair. Shelly and Norton stood with a pair of police officers, causing him to raise his eyebrows, and Colleen stood with Ryan and several crewmen by the ambulance. He stared at a sidelined vehicle with broken windows.

“Tony,” Colleen said. “Thank Christ you're here. I'm so sorry. I tried to get away!”

Mace held her biceps but stopped short of embracing her. “It's okay. Tell me everything.”

As Colleen recounted what had happened to her and Cheryl, Shelly and Norton joined the party. Mace listened in grim silence as Colleen described the same assailants that Willy had seen at the funeral home. There was no doubt in his mind that the Brotherhood of Torquemada had taken Cheryl, but for what purpose? Did they even know who he was, or had Cheryl simply caused too much of a stir in their eyes?

“I'm so, so sorry,” Colleen said, tears streaming down her face.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. These men were trained killers. You're lucky to be alive.”

Ryan's chest rose and fell. “If I'd been here—”

“Be glad you weren't. They'd have ended up killing you.” Mace's cell phone vibrated, and he saw a familiar name on the display, which he ignored.

“You should be at home with your daughter,” Norton said. “You can't be involved in this aspect of the investigation. You're too close to it now.”

“I'm the only man for the job, remember?”

“That was before this. You're a liability to the operation. That you don't even see that shows how clouded your judgment is.”

“What operation?” an Ossining PO said.

Mace felt himself growing hot. “I'm going home now.”

“What about me?” Colleen said, sniffling.

“She needs to come to our station and make out a full report,” the Ossining cop said.

Mace glanced at Norton.

“This is way too public for us to contain,” she said.

Mace looked at Colleen. “I'm sorry.” He turned to Ryan. “You'll wait for her, right?”

“Yeah, sure. Someone's got to arrange to have this car picked up anyway. None of us is going to drive it in this weather with no windows.”

Mace turned on one heel and returned to his SUV. After turning the vehicle around and driving off, he called the number on his display screen.

“Hello?” a familiar voice said.

“You sound well for a dead man.”

“I think you should meet me,” Gabriel said. “We know where they're holed up.”

“How do you know my name?” the blood-spattered young woman said.

“The whole city's looking for you,” Cheryl said.

“Really?” Rhonda stood straight and placed one hand over her crotch and the other across her breasts.

“Don't bother. You don't have anything I haven't seen before. Why did they take your clothes?”

Rhonda's face twisted with rage. “Because they're animals.”

“I can't argue with that.”

“Are my parents really dead?”

Cheryl's heart sank. How had she come to be in this position? “I'm sorry, but yes.”

Tears filled Rhonda's eyes. “I didn't want to believe it … I'm glad I killed one of them.”

Oh no.
“What do these men want with you?”

Rhonda just stared at her, as if unable to speak.

“Are these men the Brotherhood of Torquemada?”

“The one I killed was a woman.”

Oh, my Lord.
Cheryl studied the blood spatters all over Rhonda's body. “What happened to your arm?”

“They cut it off.”

Cheryl's head throbbed. Jesus Christ, she wanted to get out of here! “How many of them are there?”

“I don't know. I've only seen four.”

Cheryl looked around the cell for any means of escape but saw none. “You and Jason worked together at Synful Reading, which was owned by Gabriel and Raphael Domini.

Jason and both of your families were killed, and today Synful Reading and the Domini Funeral Home were blown up. Gabriel and Raphael are the targets, aren't they?”

Rhonda stared at Cheryl with hardened eyes, her lips twitching.

This girl is making me nervous.

“How do I know you're not one of them?”

Cheryl looked at the floor between them. “Are those buckets what I think they are?”

Rhonda nodded.

Cheryl walked over to the buckets, dragging her chains behind her. She unzipped her slacks, squatted over one bucket, and released her urine.

Rhonda turned her back to her. “At least it's just me in here. They used to have a camera on the wall, but I threw a head at it.”

The sound of the urine was loud, and Cheryl shuddered. When she stopped and stood up, Rhonda turned around again.

“I'm sorry for your sake that they brought you here,” Rhonda said. “But I'm happy to have company. Hey, don't I know you?”

Cheryl buttoned the flap on her slacks.

“You're that reporter for Manhattan Minute News. My mother used to watch you. Why do they want you?”

“I guess we'll know soon enough.” Cheryl couldn't help but think about Patty and how much she wanted to see her grow up.