Time to Run (9 page)

“Put the knife down!”

“You don't understand. I'm the victim here. He's . . .” The kid's face seemed to clear, and he looked at his hand. At the blood. “Oh, my God.” Then he looked at the bloody man who lay motionless at his feet. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Pam moved her finger lower on the trigger guard. The experts all agreed that inside of twenty-one feet, a man with a knife could kill a cop before the cop could pull a firearm from its holster. Correcting for the fact that she was scared shitless, but that her gun was already trained on the bad guy, a finger only a quarter inch from the trigger pretty much canceled out that research. If he took a step toward her, she was going to blast his heart out through his spine.

“Listen to me!” Pam yelled. Her voice was firm and strong this time. “Put the knife down and lie down on the ground.”

“I'm the victim!”

“You're the victim with a knife,” she replied. “You're putting me in danger, and you're putting all these other people in danger, too. Put the knife down, do what I tell you, and then I'll listen to your side of the story.”

In the distance, the sound of sirens crescendoed. One of them would be Josh Levine. If he thought she was in mortal danger, he would shoot before talking.

The assailant didn't move.

“What's your name?” Pam shouted.

The kid seemed confused. Perhaps it was the ordinariness of the question.

“Your name,” Pam prompted. “What is it?”

“Um, Ethan. Ethan Falk.”

Pam lowered her weapon a few degrees. “Nice to meet you, Ethan Falk. I am Detective Hastings, and I am here to arrest you. Whether you're innocent or guilty, victim or perpetrator is not my concern. All I know is that right now, there's a man on the ground at your feet, and you're standing over him with a bloody knife. What would you assume if you were in my position?”

“It looks bad, doesn't it?”

The comment struck Pam as funny and she smiled. “Yes, it looks bad. So how about you put the knife—”

“But I didn't do—”

“Listen to me, Ethan! Do you hear those sirens? Those are other cops, and when they arrive, they're going to see you still standing there with a knife. They're going to see the blood, and there's going to be many more guns pointing at you. You don't want that. Please just drop the knife and—”

He dropped it. The knife landed flat on the victim's back. Baby steps.

“Thank you, Ethan,” Pam said. “Now, keeping your hands where I can see them, I need you to step forward into the road—”

Just then, a Toyota driven by a soccer mom in a pink top sped down the parking lot aisle that separated cop from felon.

“Jesus,” Pam cursed. “Really?” Refocus. She stepped out into the roadway and pivoted to her right, keeping more or less the same distance between herself and her suspect.

“Four-four-seven is on the scene.” Josh Levine had arrived.

Pam's portable radio was out of reach while she was covering the killer. She wished she could tell everyone to come in easy. To her suspect, she said, “Ethan, I need you to take two giant steps forward into the street and lie flat on your face, your hands out to the side.”

He seemed to be caught between reality and someplace else.

“Come on, Ethan, I know you can do it.”

“Don't shoot me.”

“I won't shoot you if you don't threaten anyone. Come on, two big steps forward, and then just sprawl on the ground. We'll get past this one step, and then everything else will be easy.”

Josh Levine burst out of the crowd on Pam's left, Mossberg shotgun pressed to his shoulder. “You heard her!” he shouted. “Get on the ground! Now!” He pressed in three steps too close, ruining the safe zone that Pam had been trying to create. “I said now!”

“Josh, shut up!” Pam shouted. The words were out before she had a chance to stop them. But once out, they needed to be followed up. “I've got this. Step back.” She was distantly aware that she was making some great video for the cell phone crowd.

“Look at me, Ethan,” she said. “Not at him, at me. He won't hurt you. But do you see how nervous you're making everyone?” She dared a couple of steps forward, if only to earn the frightened glances that were going toward Levine. More sirens approached, and more units marked on the scene. The entire Braddock County Police Department would be in the parking lot soon.

Ethan took two exaggerated steps forward, taking care not to step on the body, and ostentatiously avoiding the stream of blood, to stand in the middle of the street. If the Toyota had come by then, he'd have been launched over the hood. He walked with his hands out to the side, cruciform, his finger splayed.

“You're doing great, Ethan,” Pam said. “Now, I just need you to—”

Levine rushed him. With the shotgun one-armed into his shoulder, he closed the distance in two or three quick strides. Grabbing the back of the kid's shirt at the collar, he kicked his right foot from underneath him while driving him forward and down. Ethan barely had enough time to get his hands out in front to prevent his face from being smashed into the pavement.

With the kid down, Levine kneeled on the small of his back and pressed the muzzle of the shotgun against the base of the kid's skull. “I've got him!” he announced. He used expert technique to cuff the kid.

Pam's shoulders sagged. She holstered her Glock and approached the two men on the ground. “You didn't have to do that,” she said when she was within easy earshot. “I had this under control.”

“Yeah, but I have him under arrest,” Josh said. “You're not going anywhere,” he said to Ethan Falk.

Anger boiled in Pam's gut, but she swallowed it down. The kid had been one hundred percent compliant.

Josh cocked his head. “Are you pissed?”

“You didn't have to hurt him,” she said.

“You know he killed a guy, right?”

Pam didn't answer. She helped Ethan to his feet and Mirandized him. She did her best to ignore the citizens who crowded her as she escorted her prisoner to Levine's cruiser, and she didn't acknowledge any of the other officers. It was the damn cameras. She just wanted to be out of their range.

“Watch your head,” she said as Ethan lowered his butt into the backseat.

“Detective Hastings?” They were Ethan's first words since he'd been pressed into the pavement.

Pam made eye contact.

“That man kidnapped me when I was eleven years old. You look it up. It was terrible. He was a monster. I'm sorry for what I did, but he was . . . a
monster.
”

Just from his tone, Pam believed him. “Okay,” she said. “Make sure you tell your lawyer. And the prosecutor if you decide to talk to him. The FBI will have a record of your rescue, and that will surely help. We'll talk again in a little while—”

“But I wasn't rescued by the FBI,” Ethan said.

“Then how did you get away? Did you escape?”

Ethan shook his head. “No, I was rescued, but not by the FBI. I was rescued by a guy named Scorpion.”

“Who?”

“That's all I know. His name was Scorpion.”

“That's not a name.”

“Of course it's not a name. But that's what he called himself. He saved my life.”