Takedown, page 9
“Why leave your wallet behind to go bird-watching? He was probably out here… I don’t know, doing something, but I think you’re right about him sighting the perp.”
The sound of gravel crunching caught Gavin’s attention. Another bobbing flashlight—no, not one, but two bobbing flashlights were approaching. One was attached to Officer Kelly. The priest Gavin had seen on the tracks had the other.
“This is Father Lauer, sir,” Kelly said, holding a branch back for the priest to enter. He was younger than Gavin had thought, his white hair making him look older from a distance.
“Thanks for coming down, Father. I’m Detective Grella and this is Detective Pi—”
“Oh, Lord Jesus!” the priest gasped and then made the sign of the cross upon seeing the man with the message.
“Do you have a Bible?” Gavin said bluntly, but the priest was apparently too shocked to hear him.
“A Bible, Father?” Chris asked more politely.
“Huh… oh yes, of course. Here,” Father Lauer said, extending a leather-bound book toward Chris.
“Why don’t you just read it for us?” Gavin said, his gaze back on the victim. He knew the book was in the New Testament but didn’t know where.
“Read it?”
“Acts twenty-seven, forty-two,” Gavin said.
“Acts…”
Gavin pointed to the dead man’s chest and drew in the air with his finger as he read each letter and number. The more he looked at it, the more obvious the letters became.
“My God!” Father Lauer said, apparently seeing the ugly slashes come into focus. “Okay, okay, okay,” he said quietly as he flipped through thin pages. “Twenty-six… twenty-seven… forty… here it is. Forty-two.” He cleared his throat. “‘And the soldiers’ plan was to kill all the prisoners, that none of them should swim away and escape.’”
Silence.
“Read it again,” Gavin said.
Father Lauer frowned slightly, then cleared his throat again and complied.
“May I?” Gavin asked.
“Certainly,” Father Lauer said, handing him his Bible, holding his finger on the verse.
Gavin read it over and over to himself, the background noises fading out as he read. No one said a word. Finally, he looked up at Chris. “I don’t get it.”
Chris raised his eyebrows. “What’s not to get? Seems perfectly obvious. He’s the soldier, the prisoners were the people on the train, and his plan was to kill them in the water.”
“Soldiers,” Kelly scoffed. “Whose army?”
Gavin looked at Kelly but didn’t say anything.
“I think I’ll get this place taped off,” Kelly said.
“Thanks, Kell,” Chris said with a thin smile.
Gavin shook his head, then looked toward the priest. “Were you familiar with that verse?”
“Well, not from the verse number, but I am familiar with the passage.”
Gavin looked back at the victim, still shaking his head. “Okay, this guy surprises our—”
“Soldier?” Father Lauer said, unblinking.
Chris’s brow rose expectantly.
“Soldier,” Gavin said with a gracious wave. “They fight. Soldier kills him. Quickly, judging by the lack of other wounds on him. But this victim wasn’t in the plan. He was a detour. Soldier came here to derail a train, not read the Bible, and he’s got to be in a major hurry to leave. But before he leaves, he spontaneously decides to leave a message, to whom I’m not sure, with this obscure verse out of context. I mean, what kind of verse is this to commit to memory? Who is this guy?”
No one answered.
A flashlight was approaching. Kelly was back with the tape.
“FMIs and AMTs are here, Detective,” Kelly called from a few yards away, referring to the forensic crew and medical technicians. He stopped to open a roll of yellow tape. “Oh, and one of the survivors happens to be the engineer.”
“You’re kidding!” Chris said.
“No. He claims to have jumped from the locomotive. He’s in the ICU at Saint Francis.”
“How bad?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know.”
Gavin turned to Chris. “Why don’t you head up there and tell the techs what we’ve got down here. And leave me that flashlight. There’s something else I want to check out.”
“You got it,” Chris said and left.
Father Lauer turned to follow after Chris, but Gavin reached for his arm. “Uh, Father?” he asked, without his usual all-business demeanor.
“Yes?”
Gavin looked to see where Kelly was, making sure the officer and anyone else was out of earshot.
“What is it, my son?”
“If I ask you a question, can it be just between you and me?”
“And God. Would you like to confess something?”
Gavin nodded. “Yeah, I mean, no. I mean… do you believe… have you ever had any experience with… demons?”
The priest’s expression turned to one of concern as he studied Gavin’s face. He looked at the victim, the poor man who had probably tried to stop the soldier. Then his gaze returned to Gavin.
“I don’t mean this,” Gavin said intensely. “Have you ever experienced demons living in people… or animals?”
The priest thought for a moment. “Have you been seeing demons, Detective?”
Buck would not have asked that, was Gavin’s first thought. Buck would have immediately known what he was talking about. Suddenly demons were the last thing Gavin wanted to talk about. He felt embarrassed and wished he had not mentioned it. What was he thinking? He should know better than to ever talk about this with anyone, not even a priest. “Forget it.”
“Detective?”
“Come on. I’ll walk you out of here.”
“Wait,” Father Lauer said, now grabbing Gavin by the arm. “I’m sorry. The answer to your question is yes. Please tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Do you have a card?”
“Yes,” the priest said, fishing for a wallet.
Gavin took the card without looking at it and put it in his wet pocket. “I’ll call you,” he said, then left, Father Lauer following close behind. When he broke the treeline Gavin stopped, a thought forming that would not allow him to leave.
“What’s the matter, Detective?”
“Huh… oh, nothing. I need to get back to work.” Gavin jerked his chin toward the sounds of the yelling paramedics up by the stretchers. “Sounds like you’re needed up there.”
The priest nodded. “We’ll have to finish our conversation later,” he said, his feet starting in the direction of his calling.
“Yeah, later.”
“Call,” the priest said as he struggled up to the tracks and stretchers.
Gavin stayed behind at the edge of the treeline. He didn’t answer, didn’t listen, shutting the priest off as he would an infomercial with his TV remote. Click, gone. He needed to get back to work. Focus. Think. He looked down the treeline, away from the train wreck, and then into the woods where Kelly was taping the crime scene. How many different directions could the soldier have fled?
Crunching gravel and bobbing flashlights made Gavin turn. It was Chris with the forensic techs.
“Right through there.” Chris motioned with his light beam. “Watch your step.”
The techs followed Chris’s directions and were quickly in their element. No gasps or stunned silence from those guys. No matter how gruesome or shocking the scene, they engaged in their usual deadpan humor. The only thing Gavin found amazing about them anymore was that they never grew tired of the same jokes. They must teach them at forensics school, he’d decided.
Gavin refocused his attention back to the dark, quiet treeline at the bottom of the tracks, away from the noise of the crane, choppers, hustling emergency workers, Feds, and the priest who wanted to play doctor with Gavin’s mind.
“—body home?”
Gavin turned. Chris. “What?”
“Hello… I said, ‘Is there anybody home?’You’ve got that faraway look.”
“He was probably leaving.”
“When he met our friend back there? Yes.”
“And he was probably leaving the same way he came.”
“Yes, more than likely.”
“So if he came from this side of the track, he was probably waiting for the train somewhere along here.”
“I’ll buy that. But why this train? If he simply wanted to derail a train, he could have more easily done it from the other side of the bridge. The access to the sanctuary paths is easier over there, and he wouldn’t have had to carry all that equipment up as steep an incline.”
Gavin nodded. “Let’s walk,” he said, motioning into the dark. “I agree. This train may have held a particular attraction for him.”
“Any thoughts?” Chris asked as his flashlight joined Gavin’s, slowly scanning the ground and treeline as they walked away from the wreck, looking, searching for that lost car key, that wallet, that coin… something he would have touched before putting those latex gloves on.
“Only the obvious. Six-o’clock train. Rush hour. People going home from work. I’m not familiar enough with Oyster Bay employment to know who would be on this train, but I would think that a good place to start.”
“What about the glove?” Chris asked.
“What about it?”
“The ointment inside to prevent fingerprints.”
“I noticed. A lot of work to go through when he could have just used a different glove.”
“Exactly. He thinks too much. Very creative, but not much experience. It was close to ninety degrees today. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it would have been to wear that glove?”
“Uncomfortable enough to not put it on until he had to,” Gavin said.
Chris smiled. “Which is why we’re looking for where he waited while waiting for the train.”
“Yes. He may have been waiting for a long time, making sure no one saw him enter. Maybe reading a book, chewing gum.”
“Taking a dump is what I’d be doing if I were going to derail a—”
“Look at this,” Gavin said, holding his beam on the gravel hillside.
Chris’s light joined in. “What?”
“The gravel all along here has been smoothed.” They got closer. “Footprints.”
“Looks more like a landslide.”
“Remember, he was carrying sixty, seventy pounds of gear. The climb would have been rough.” Gavin shook his head, trying to make sense of the disturbance.
Chris turned. “That would mean he came out somewhere around here.”
Gavin followed Chris’s lead to the treeline, where both men stopped, their flashlights beaming a sneak peek of where they would search for more clues in the light of day.
“Okay, so he waits for the train to go by and starts up to the track.” Chris used his flashlight to follow the would-be footsteps. “Heavy prints. And it looks like he was having trouble around there. Maybe had to rest, or he slid back, or fell dow—”
“Wait,” Gavin interrupted, beaming his light to a place Chris had just passed. “What’s that?”
“What?”
“That!” Gavin said, moving closer. A moment later they were both crouched over what appeared to be a crumpled, empty cigarette pack.
“Looks fresh enough, not waterlogged or dirty. Maybe it got away from him when he fell.”
“Got a pen or something?” Gavin looked about to find a twig to pick it up with.
“Of course I do,” Chris said. He opened a pocketknife, slid it into the pack, picked it up, and displayed it between them, the word Camel visible as he turned it. “Being prepared is a big part of the job. It’s what separates the real pros from the—”
“Just shut up,” Gavin said as he eyed the pack closely. “Now this here could be pre-glove.”
“Oh no,” Chris said soberly, his chin pointed in the direction of the derailment. “The long night just got longer.”
Gavin turned and took a moment before he saw him and groaned. “I thought I told you to put up the No Politicians sign.”
“I did. He must have taken it down on his way in.”
Senator Bruce Sweeney appeared to be setting up for another one of his political photo shoots. The presidential election was a year and a half away, but it was quite obvious that it was never too early to get started campaigning, even though Sweeney denied any interest in the candidacy.
“No class,” Chris said, shaking his head. “There should be a law that disqualifies anyone who thinks he should be the most powerful person on earth from being able to collect votes.”
“Then how would anyone become president of the United States?”
“Everyone just votes for whoever they want to and the one with the most votes is president, whether they like it or not.”
“Great idea, Chris. Our next president would be Tiger Woods.”
“No, it would have to be a Clint Eastwood type, but younger. Someone with a face you’d be afraid to say no to. That’s all a president really needs to be—a face. Everyone else around him does the work. All we elect is a face, so it better be one that means business.”
“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
Chris tapped his index finger on his head. “The wheels are always turning, Gav. I can’t help it, they just are.”
A lone cameraman turned a light on the senator as another man gave what appeared to be instructions.
“Good. When Senator Sweeney asks who’s in charge, I’ll tell him the guy with the squeaky head.”
“Oh no, you don’t. I’m not getting on camera with him. You were here first.”
“So what does that mean? Wait, don’t answer that. I can hear your rusty wheels turning, and I don’t know if I can deal with the answer.”
13
The WWX girl of the month near ringside swung the long mallet with both hands and smashed the huge WWX gong as the background music changed into a flesh-pounding, earsplitting, guitar-and-drum power jam. Jackhammer Hoban stepped out from behind the curtain onto a dark stage. Overhead spotlights blasted him from three directions, and the sold-out coliseum erupted in boos. Two giant screens came alive with old footage from past Jack-hammer action.
A long ramp led to the illuminated ring where Tyrant was pacing. Hoban knew Tyrant had been reluctantly brought out first because they couldn’t wait any longer for him. Oddly, he didn’t care. From now on, everyone would be waiting for him, in and out of the ring.
Hoban breathed in deeply—not from nervousness. He had an urge to breathe, to feel every air molecule fill his lungs. He couldn’t remember ever doing that before. Except for him and the ring, the rest of the coliseum was dark, but he could see people in the shadows twirling light sticks. He found curious pleasure in his ability to see them. And the music was clear and crisp. Human lungs, human eyes, human ears, not like a dull-sensed tortoise, he thought. But he didn’t know why he was thinking such things at all, much less at a time like this. He laughed at his thoughts and at the crowd. He didn’t care whether or not they were booing or cheering. He liked the music, the lights, the attention. But most of all, he liked what he was going to do with Tyrant, who was now standing mid-ring, hands on hips, flexing his lats as wide as possible. Strangely, though he couldn’t remember ever seeing a live one,Tyrant reminded him of a flared king cobra, ready to strike, a thought that didn’t frighten him in the least.
Hoban started toward the ring. As he stepped onto the long ramp there was a deafening explosion at his sides—billowing, beach-umbrella-size mushroom clouds and a colorful array of continuous shooting sparks. Somehow he’d forgotten that was going to happen, but it didn’t startle him. In fact, he felt great, above everything around him. Above everyone around him.
“Tyrant rules!” someone shouted as he passed amid other similar shouts, but he paid no attention. Idiots. His focus was on the man in the ring. Puny human, he thought, not knowing why the word human kept coming into his mind.
The WWX girl who had smashed the gong, then sensually ascended a small portable stairway to the ring’s ropes, now stepped on the bottom rope with her knee-high black leather boots and lifted the middle one for Hoban to enter through.
“Get him,Tiger,” she said as he stepped up to the ropes.
More lights—not spots this time but flashes from cameras all around. He paused to look her up and down and figured the cameras were more interested in her than him. That would change after tonight. He gazed into her eyes. Blue eyes that jumped out in contrast to her jet-black hair and dead-white skin. Her black leather clothing did little to hide what the cameras wanted to catch. But he sensed something else about her. Something familiar.
“I’ll see you after the fight,” she said with a wink.
“I know,” he said, his voice low and raspy, then entered the ring.
“About time, moron,” Tyrant sneered, just loud enough for Hoban and the referee to hear.
Hoban said nothing, just glared at Tyrant and thought how two, maybe three more of him would be a greater challenge, more fun.
The referee became animatedly instructional for the audience, but in reality was saying nothing about any supposed rules, only wishing them a safe contest and warning them not to crash into him. About twenty feet away from the ring was the table where the announcers and commentators sat. Two men in suits, a wrestler who was supposed to fight the winner—who, of course, they all knew would be Tyrant—and a woman, Tanya Grossman, daughter of fan-despised WWX owner, Michael Grossman. Behind them were TV cameras and sound-mixing-board operators with headphones on. Two other men with TV cameras on their shoulders walked about, mostly focused on the shouting audience.
When the music stopped, the four corner posts simultaneously exploded with more fireworks. Enough coliseum lights came on to illuminate the audience.
“And now for the main event we’ve all been waiting for,” the announcer in the suit said, his amplified voice echoing throughout the vast hall.
Hoban continued to stand still as Tyrant paced and flexed for the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen… In what has been called the WWX contest of the century, a rematch of the challenger, seven feet and three-hundred thirty pounds of revenge, the former WWX champion of the world, Jack… Hammer… Hobaaaannnnn!”
