The Dark Halo, page 30
Coombes ran to the edge of the pool and looked into the water. If Dorsey could’ve got out on his own he would’ve done so by now. He hadn’t. The doors were shut and a silver bubble of air still remained in the cabin. He put his gun away.
He took off his suit jacket, tie, gun holster, and shoes, then jumped into the water. The cold gripped his chest tight, knocking the air out of him. He took several deep breaths, then ducked under the surface, pushing himself down. Without goggles or a face mask, his vision was poor. The water, and whatever chemicals were in it, moved directly over his eyes.
He drew level with the passenger door window and grabbed the Mustang’s door handle to hold himself in place. He saw Dorsey inside the cabin. The internal dome light was on and he could see water pushing in through the air vents in thick jets. The water was halfway up Dorsey’s chest. The other man turned and saw him through the glass.
The big crazy smile was gone, replaced by panic.
Coombes tugged on the handle, but the door wouldn’t open. Water pressure was holding it shut. Either he’d have to wait until the pressure equalized, or he’d have to break the glass.
He thought of Nicolas Sutton and Billy Lass.
Maybe he didn’t have to do anything.
The helicopter crew had seen him dive in. He’d tried his best. Who, later, would know any different? All he had to do was wait it out. With a bit of luck, the monster would die right in front of him. Not what he’d had in mind, but he could live with it. For sure Olivia could live with it, maybe all the victims’ families could.
The water level was just below Dorsey’s shoulders now. At this rate, it would only take a couple of minutes to completely fill with water. He held up a finger to indicate he’d be back in a minute, then kicked off the floor of the pool and rose back to the surface.
He took an urgent breath of air. It stung him deep inside, like the air was poison. Coombes swam to the edge of the pool and let his forearms rest on the side. He was a strong swimmer and a half-decent diver, but he was exhausted and the water was cold.
All he wanted was to be warm, and asleep.
Lights were coming on in the house next to the pool, the owners finally realizing that something was happening in their yard. Sirens were approaching, he wouldn’t have the scene to himself for much longer.
He rapidly inhaled and exhaled, flooding his blood with oxygen, then ducked down under the water. Swimming down to the car took more out of him this time, the water pushing him back like it was getting paid for it. When he reached the window, he saw that the cabin was nearly full, the water now up to the top of Dorsey’s neck.
The rapid progress of the water surprised him; the pressure would almost be equalized. If it occurred to him, Dorsey would soon be able to open the door and swim out on his own. But it looked like something had happened to Gabriel Dorsey while he’d been up at the surface. Like he’d been screaming into the shrinking bubble of air that was keeping him alive.
Like he’d lost his mind.
The water became bright as day. The searchlight was directly overhead.
Coombes tapped the glass to get his attention. Dorsey’s head spun around, eyes wide, the water briefly covering his mouth and nose. In about thirty seconds, he’d have to tilt his head back to suck his last air off the ceiling. Coombes smiled at him and waved. Dorsey lost the last ounce of his sanity. His arms pumped the water with fury, his teeth biting together.
Then, just as suddenly, a calm seemed to sweep over Dorsey and his eyes became focused and hard. He reached into his jacket and pulled something out. It took Coombes a second to make it out.
The silver revolver.
He kicked himself backward through the water until he hit the side wall of the pool. A shockwave bubble formed around Dorsey’s revolver and a narrow cone of gas instantly appeared in front of him.
Coombes flinched, but nothing hit him.
Three more shockwaves appeared within the Mustang as Dorsey emptied his weapon at him. With the passenger window now gone, the rounds got within a foot of his chest before stopping. The water had stopped them dead. He thought of the tank at the lab where they test-fired handguns to recover rounds. Instinctively, he’d used the water to protect himself.
Relief gave way to anger.
He surged forward and caught Dorsey as he came through the destroyed window. Coombes punched him on the nose and a pink cloud of blood surrounded his face. They grabbed at each other and fought as they floated to the surface.
He took a deep breath, then another.
The helicopter was directly on top of them now, fifty feet off the deck. The surface was choppy, water spraying in all directions. It was going in his mouth and up his nose. His arms and legs felt heavy and Dorsey easily got out of his grip and swam to the edge of the pool. He raced after him, limbs aching. Dorsey hadn’t spent the last two minutes holding his breath, fighting his own buoyancy in the water, he was fresh.
Coombes’ suit jacket and shoes sat in a small pile in front of him. He remembered his firearm underneath and the thought gave him a burst of energy, enough to lever himself up out of the pool and onto his feet.
He gagged uncontrollably and almost a pint of water emptied out of his throat. His eyes streamed. Dorsey slammed into his side and they rolled together on the concrete apron next to the pool.
Blows rained on his head and neck before he could respond. He punched Dorsey in the side of his body, the first part of him that he could reach. He was lucky, he felt a crunch from one of Dorsey’s ribs. He hit him again and again in the same spot until he felt the rib snap and break free.
Dorsey collapsed in pain and roared.
Coombes pushed him off his chest, spun him around and cuffed him, hands behind his back. Once Dorsey was secured, he got him in a seated position. He leaned in close to Dorsey’s ear.
“I have a message from a friend of mine,” he said.
He reached down to Dorsey’s hands and yanked his right index finger to the side, snapping it.
Dorsey screamed, but the prop wash of the helicopter sucked it away like it never happened. He fought to free himself, but against steel handcuffs he was wasting his time.
Coombes gripped his shoulder one handed and held him in place while he waited for Dorsey to calm himself. The veins and tendons in his neck stood out like he was about to explode.
“You son of a bitch!”
Dorsey continued to rant and Coombes filtered it out by moving his head two inches closer to the rotor blades above him. He had no sympathy for Dorsey, not after what he’d done. As far as he was concerned, the man in front of him was no man at all, he wasn’t even human. He was a monster and deserved to be treated as such. Soon enough, the vitriol came to an end and he leaned in close once again.
“My friend’s message has five more parts. Mention this to anyone and I’ll make sure you get it. Do you understand? Every cop in this city wants you dead. LAPD, Sheriff’s, even the Highway Patrol. I put the word in the right ear, it’s done.”
“How do you expect me to hide this?”
“You were in a car accident, genius.”
Dorsey said nothing, his teeth clenched hard together. Red and blue lights strobed through the trees beyond the raised bank and across the side of the house. Doors were slamming. They were about to have company.
Coombes grabbed the next finger.
“Do we have a deal, or do you want the rest of the message?”
“We have a deal! We have a deal! Jesus!”
A moment later, he saw close to a dozen figures moving toward them, one of them was Grace Sato. He smiled; it was impossible not to. Now that backup had arrived, the helicopter pulled up to about three hundred feet, the searchlight expanding to encompass everything around them. The sound of the rotor blades died back and it was a relief to be free of it.
Sato smiled at him. “Wow, you look terrible.”
“Thanks, Grace.”
She circled around behind him and looked at Dorsey’s hands. If she noticed the broken finger, she didn’t say anything.
“Johnny. The watch.”
He hadn’t noticed it in their struggle, but Dorsey was wearing the Rolex Submariner he’d been wearing in the hotel video. Coombes nodded.
“Good catch. We should bag it before he gets booked in case it…goes missing. Check his pockets for the camera. I assume you got the other one?”
“You bet. Right where we thought it would be.”
She pulled on gloves while he and Becker pulled Dorsey to his feet. The watch was in front of the handcuffs, so she was able to remove it without uncuffing him. Dorsey turned toward her, face twisted with pain and anger.
“I’m going to want that back, bitch.”
Coombes flicked his hand casually against Dorsey’s broken finger, causing the other man to yelp. Sato glanced at him, a question in her eye, then turned back to Dorsey and emptied his pockets. A camera and a transmitter unit were in his left pocket. She took the opportunity to bag up his cell phone, and keys. When she was done, he read Dorsey his rights then two muscular uniformed cops took an elbow each and dragged him away.
Coombes tagged along. He wasn’t ready for it to be over.
They went up the raised bank and down the other side, through the hole in the hedge. One of the SUVs lay waiting, back door open. The cops launched Dorsey inside like he was a bag of soiled laundry and were about to slam the door closed when Coombes arrived.
“Guys? A minute?”
They shrugged and left him to it. He leaned inside the SUV.
“You made this personal to me. That was your mistake.”
He got a flash of the earlier arrogance, the sneer.
“Those cameras were transmitting video, Coombes. I uploaded it all online two hours ago. Sutton’s confession, you shooting him, the sister in the trunk. No one’s going to believe I did what he’s already admitted to. I’ll be released before you’ve changed your shirt.”
Coombes shrugged like that was possible, like it was none of his concern.
“Then you have nothing to lose by telling me.”
“Telling you what?”
“Why you killed all those people. I need to understand. It’s just you and me here. A couple of coyotes, separated from the pack.”
Dorsey smirked.
“They were my investors. They owned 51% of my company and they were trying to force me out before the IPO. They’d get billions, I’d get pocket change. It was my company, Coombes, my invention. These people were nothing but corporate vampires. Thieves. They got what was coming to them.”
“This was all for money?”
The question irritated Dorsey, like he was talking to a child.
“That’s how it started…after a while it was just too much fun to stop. Vandenberg was the last investor; the others were just people that annoyed me. As long as there were coins left, I had to keep going. I can’t explain it, it was like they called to me. I was the Ferryman.”
They’d been trying to find a link between kills when half of them were irrelevant. It explained a lot, particularly Haylee Jordan whose death always defied explanation. None of it surprised Coombes. Oftentimes, a question raised by an investigation was more interesting than the answer. Truth could be random, disappointing.
“And Nicolas Sutton?”
“Stole my girl for a one-night stand. Destroying him was an utter pleasure. Something you’re going to understand very soon.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You drove straight home from that hotel. The Metro Grand. That was pretty stupid, Coombes. I was able to follow you all the way there, no problem. I could have killed you or your wife any time I wanted. You’re alive because I didn’t.”
“I’m not some fat industrialist that you can sneak up on and knock over the back of the head.”
Dorsey nodded.
“Maybe, but your wife would’ve been easy pickings. I went back to your home the next day after you were gone. Sat in my car across the street thinking about how to kill her. Something special, so you’d know it was me. That you’d got her killed. While I was waiting for the muse to strike, a big guy in an expensive suit turned up. She answered the door in a robe. Didn’t look like there was much underneath it. She was very pleased to see him.”
Coombes said nothing, his face frozen like a mask.
“You already knew, huh?”
There was a tonal difference between how Dorsey had told him about the cameras, and how he’d told him about his wife. One was true, the other was a lie. He didn’t need to examine it too much to know which was which. There would be no video of the shoot-out with Sutton, of that he was certain.
Coombes waved over the uniformed cops.
“Take this garbage away before I do something I regret.”
47
The next day there was only one thing left to do, and that was to lay it all out to the public who paid for the whole show. It was considered good policy to highlight success because there seemed to be a never-ending tide of anti-police narrative in the press that needed to be offset. It amounted to feeding the same beast that was trying to eat you and hoping it would give you a break in return. To him, talking to the press was a chore. He took no pleasure in it, and anyone who did was a politician to him, not a cop.
Coombes gave a carefully-worded summary of the capture and arrest of Gabriel Dorsey. The pending trial limited what he could say, beyond the list of charges facing Dorsey, which was substantial and took several minutes to go through. Not on the list, was the death of Nicolas Sutton, or the kidnapping of Olivia. It was a tough pill to swallow; but there wasn’t enough evidence to make either case. This didn’t prevent him from closing up by stating that Sutton had given his life to save his sister and should be considered the final victim of the Ferryman.
When he turned to hand over to Gantz to finish up, he instead saw the captain approaching with a smile on his face. From day one, Block had done nothing more than file his nails, but now that there was good news, he had appeared out of nowhere to take credit. Coombes pretended not to see him and swung his shoulders wide, forcing the captain to step hastily to the side to let him past on the narrow stage.
Out in the press pack, a woman laughed.
The laugh was sharp and clear. It seemed to bounce around the walls like a goofy machine-gun, and it caused a ripple of follow-on laughter from other members of the press. He’d turned Block’s moment of glory into something comical, and he knew there’d be some form of payback coming.
Out of politeness, he stood at the back next to Becker and Sato to watch Block fumble his way through a speech. It was about as interesting as watching paint dry, and he let his eyes move around the room.
After a moment, he saw Sullivan. She was looking back at him, a big smile on her face.
It was the first time he’d seen the journalist since he’d fed her the line about the coins. The mundane truth of the coins had still to come out, but he didn’t think she’d mind when it did. By the time the trial came around, her position at the Times would be secure and she’d be all set for the main crime seat when it became available.
Coombes thought again of Dorsey’s claim that he’d uploaded the Sutton shooting footage to the internet. The claim hung over him like a cloud. If it was true, he was in a lot of trouble and the case against Dorsey would be substantially weakened. Sutton’s confession might convince a lot of jurors who wouldn’t care much about why it was being recorded or Sutton’s motivation for admitting it.
It had been ten hours now. If the footage was out there, he thought it would have been found by now, while people were still actively looking for Ferryman content. In any case, there was no point worrying about something he could do nothing about. He was certain it was no more than a worn-out play by a sick killer who had no more moves left.
They had located Dorsey’s red Toyota Corolla on the street outside Teddy Sutton’s home earlier that morning. As he had surmised, it was still registered to the previous owner, but it looked like that was where Dorsey’s precautions had ended. His fingerprints were all over the vehicle. The passenger side footwell contained the real prize; the rare Nikes with a treasure-trove of DNA evidence on them.
Dorsey’s luck had finally run out.
Block finished up and closed down press questions due to the trial that still lay ahead, then turned and walked away from the podium. He shot Coombes a foul look but said nothing.
The room was already half empty. Some had left while Block was still speaking, knowing it was going nowhere. The members of the task force left the stage and walked down steps at the side to where the press was clearing out. He wasn’t surprised to see Sullivan waiting for him.
“Congratulations, Coombes. I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She stepped closer and messed his hair up with her fingers.
“I told you that you’d suit it short.”
He saw Sato watching closely.
“You have a loud laugh, Sullivan. I think the whole of America heard.”
“I make all kinds of loud noises once you get to know me.” She glanced at Sato. “Don’t worry, honey. I don’t mean to stand on your toes, I’m just shooting the shit.”
Sato gasped and walked away, her face scarlet.
“Thanks a lot. I’m going to be fighting fires all day now.”
“She likes you, Coombes. Maybe as much as I do.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that and she laughed at his expression.
“Here’s my card. Call me. We can get another drink.”
She put a card in the front pocket of his suit jacket, winked and walked off. He turned to watch her go, and again she looked back and caught him. A captain with six 5-year service stripes on her sleeve approached. He knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.
“Chief wants to see you.”
He knew better than to ask when.
Coombes had never met the Chief of Police before and had managed to live his life just fine. When he got to his outer office, he was told to take a seat and wait. It was only when he sat that he wondered why the Chief wanted to see him. It couldn’t be for making his captain look like an idiot on national television, that wouldn’t be handled by anyone but by Block himself. If not that, then what?
