Criminal Enterprise, page 26
Tomlin walked up to the kitchen and into the front hall, looked through the window and saw blue and red lights reflected on the snowy lawn. Shit, he thought. Out of time. He stepped over Schultz’s body, and the young cop’s, and climbed up the stairs to where Schultz had dropped the machine guns. At least we’re going out shooting.
He shoved Schultz’s automatic in his waistband, opposite his own pistol, and shouldered the assault rifle. Then he stepped back over Schultz’s body and walked into the kitchen, and there was Andrea Stevens standing by the landing, looking at him. “Coach Tomlin?”
She stood there, young and pretty and blond, a lot like his own daughter but confident, self-assured. She stared at him like she’d never been scared by anything in her whole life. Tomlin studied her, an idea forming in his head. How much is a little girl worth? he wondered. How much would Stevens pay to get her back?
He’d mortgage his house. He would empty his bank accounts. Pay every last penny he owned. Anyone would, for a girl like this.
Tomlin grabbed her. “Come on.” The girl screamed and struggled, but Tomlin held her tight, squeezed her so hard he thought he would break her in half, and he opened the door and dragged her into the night.
115
TOMLIN DRAGGED Andrea Stevens, screaming for her life, through the backyard and down the snow-covered ravine to Dragan’s street-racer Civic. The snow had blanketed the windshield by now, and the tracks out of the laneway were filled. Tomlin opened the rear door and shoved the girl in the back, put the assault rifle on the roof, and trained the pistol on her. “Don’t even move.”
He kept the pistol on the girl and looked around the car. Felt around the floor and came out with the half-roll of duct tape. “Turn over,” he told the girl. “Cross your arms.” He taped her arms behind her back, tight, and then taped her mouth shut to keep the little bitch quiet. Threw the assault rifle onto the front passenger seat. Then he climbed in the front seat, turned the key in the ignition, and stood on the gas. The goddamn car wouldn’t move.
The wheels spun, the engine howled, but the car stayed put. Tomlin shifted into reverse and tried to rock the car out. Didn’t work. The front wheels spun and the car rocked a little, and the air outside turned acrid with the smell of burnt rubber, but the car wouldn’t move. Snowed in.
“God damn it.” Tomlin pounded on the steering wheel and looked in the rearview mirror at the girl, struggling, wild-eyed, in the backseat. He forced himself to calm down. Think. “We need a new ride,” he said.
Becca’s Navigator. Tomlin looked up the ravine toward the house. Gauged the distance. Fuck it, he thought. I have an assault rifle and a hostage. Let those bastards try and take me. He climbed out of the car and pulled Andrea out of the backseat. She struggled. He smacked her. She only fought harder. Tomlin grabbed her by her duct-taped wrists and dragged her to the ground beside the car. Lifted her to her feet and shoved her back up the stairs toward the house.
The girl didn’t go easy. Tomlin fought her up every step to the backyard. Across every inch to the driveway. Somewhere out front, more sirens sounded. Cops yelled. Tomlin could see them moving around inside the house, but they hadn’t come into the back yet. Soon, though, they would.
Tomlin dragged the girl to the house. Pushed open the side door and grabbed Becca’s key from the shelf on the landing. He ducked out again, pointed the fob at the snow-covered Navigator, and pressed the button once. The lights flashed as the doors unlocked, and he pressed the button again. Held it until the engine rumbled to life.
He hurried to the truck and pulled open the liftgate. Shoved the girl inside, slammed the gate closed, and made for the driver’s-side door.
Someone yelled something from the end of the driveway. Tomlin looked up and saw a couple police cars, a few indistinct figures. He lifted the rifle and sprayed a burst down the driveway. Glass shattered. People shouted. The shots echoed like fireworks as he climbed behind the wheel. He turned the wipers on high, cleared the snow from the windshield, then wrenched the gearshift into drive and stepped on the gas, and the big truck lurched forward, picking up speed as it descended the driveway.
Someone started shooting from the road, fast firecracker pops. Tomlin gritted his teeth and sped toward the police cars. A Saint Paul patrol car was blocking the driveway, and he spun the wheel hard, sending the Navigator careening over the snowy lawn.
Another shot. This one put a hole in the windshield. Tomlin gunned the engine and the truck rocked down the slope, bounced off an unmarked sedan, and jostled out to the snowy street as the police emptied their guns behind him.
He was driving too fast. More shots came at him, wild. Tomlin prayed they didn’t puncture the fuel tank. He stood on the brake pedal as the truck hit the road. It slid across the icy pavement and put a big dent into somebody’s Buick, ricocheted off the car, metal grinding on metal. Tomlin hit the gas again, heard the tires struggle for traction, and then the rubber found purchase and he was speeding off down the block, the police still shooting nonstop behind him.
He blew the stop sign and sped down the next block, glanced in the rearview and saw blue-and-reds approaching from the rear. He turned at the next intersection, kept going, kept turning. The SUV’s four-wheel drive held the truck to the road, and Tomlin knew the cops’ rear-drive sedans wouldn’t have a prayer so long as he kept the truck moving.
Andrea Stevens squirmed around in the back, yelling something through her gag. So she was still alive. The police hadn’t shot her. She was going to make a hell of a bargaining chip.
Tomlin blew stop signs until he came to the main road. Then he looked in the mirror. No cops. They’ll be looking for this truck, he thought. You need to swap the plates and go hide somewhere. Then you can figure out what the hell happens next.
He felt very tired, though, and as he turned onto Seventh Street and drove away from Summit Hill, Tomlin realized two things: The first was that Becca’s cheesy workout dance music had been blaring out of the truck’s speakers since he’d climbed behind the wheel. The second was that he’d been shot.
116
STEVENS WRESTLED the Cherokee through the blizzard toward Summit Avenue. Windermere watched him from the passenger seat. He stuck around, she thought. That has to mean something.
They drove across Saint Paul in silence, Stevens’s brow furrowed as he focused on the snowy road. Then he pulled to a desolate red light and glanced at her and saw her eyes on him. He looked away, out over the windshield, and he sighed. She waited.
The light turned green, and he pressed on the gas. The Jeep slid a little, and then the wheels caught. Stevens glanced over at her again. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Carla.”
Windermere looked out the window, the whole city a snowbound apocalypse. “It’s fine.”
“What I said—” He followed John Ireland Boulevard into Summit Hill. “It didn’t come out how I wanted. I made a promise to Nancy. That was my point.”
“I got your point.” She didn’t look at him. “I thought I told you to go home.”
He drove another half block without saying anything. Then he looked at her again. “I had to at least stay until your backup arrived. Couldn’t just abandon you.”
“I’m FBI, Stevens,” she said. “I don’t need you holding my hand.”
He drew back as though she had hit him, and she regretted her words immediately. The Jeep suddenly felt claustrophobic. Windermere reached for the door handle and wanted to scream. Instead, she sat straight in her seat and stared out the front windshield. “Just drop me at Tomlin’s,” she said, hating how hard she sounded. “I can solve this damn thing on my own.”
Stevens shook his head. “I’m staying, Carla.”
“Bullshit. Go back to your family.”
“I have a BCA agent gone AWOL,” he said, and his eyes were hard now, his jaw set. “Like it or not, this is my case now, too.”
Windermere said nothing.
“Let’s just get this thing dealt with,” Stevens said. “Move on with our lives.”
He sounded so run-down that Windermere nearly cracked. She might have, had she not looked out the window at that instant and seen the blue-and-red light show in front of Carter Tomlin’s house.
Stevens slowed the Cherokee. Both agents gaped at the carnage. “Holy,” said Stevens. “Holy—”
“Shit,” said Windermere. Stevens released the brake, and the Jeep idled into the mix.
117
WINDERMERE STARED OUT the passenger window. A Saint Paul police cruiser sat angled halfway into the middle of the road ahead of them, its side panels dented and mangled. Windermere glanced at Stevens. “You see that?”
Stevens nodded. “This guy’s Buick took a hell of a beating itself.”
Tomlin’s front lawn looked like it had just hosted a monster-truck rally. A mess of tire tracks led from the empty driveway to the road—directly through the mangled cruiser. There were people everywhere: city cops running around blind, neighborhood looky-loos, and kids—teenagers—all over the place. Total chaos.
“Becca Tomlin’s Navigator is gone,” said Windermere.
Stevens followed her gaze and nodded, grim-faced. They climbed from the Jeep and started up toward the house. The teenagers were everywhere. They milled about in little clusters of kids and parents, five or six little groups spread across the grounds. Tears and hugs all around. Windermere looked at them. “What the hell happened?”
“A party.” Stevens surveyed the lawn. “A pity party for Heather Tomlin. I told Singer to make sure he got rid of the kids.”
Windermere frowned. “Guess he didn’t.”
“Andrea wanted to come tonight.” Stevens shook his head. “Had to ground her to keep her inside.”
Windermere looked at him. Then she looked at the clusters of kids and parents again. “A party,” she said. “Jesus.”
A big Saint Paul city cop came barreling at them from the driveway. “Who are you?” he said, his hand on his holster.
“FBI.” Windermere showed him her badge. “What happened?”
The cop studied the badge and stepped back and looked sheepish. “Guy made a run for it,” he said. “Ruined my cruiser.”
Shit. “Someone chasing him?”
“Three units. Tough night for a chase, though.”
Windermere looked at the empty driveway again. “He took the truck, huh?”
“That’s right.” The cop nodded. “Broke through the line and sped off. Crushed my cruiser like it was a Hot Wheels toy.”
“Where’s the BCA agent?” said Stevens.
The cop looked at him, looked at Windermere. Then he looked up at the home. “Maybe you want to see it for yourself.”
They followed the cop through the clustered families toward the mansion, every light in the place blazing. To a one, every kid they passed had the facial expression of a plane-crash survivor, and as she approached the house, Windermere felt a sense of foreboding, like whatever these kids had lived through, it was awful, and evil, and waiting inside.
The cop led them up the front steps and stopped by the door. “It’s messy.” He looked briefly at Stevens and then back at Windermere.
Stevens frowned. “Let’s just see it.”
The cop shrugged and pushed open the door. Another city cop stood inside, and the first cop nodded to him. “FBI.”
The second cop stepped aside, and Windermere saw the bodies.
118
THERE WERE TWO BODIES. A big guy at the base of the stairs. A beard and red flannel and a shot at close range through the forehead. The other body was Singer. Stevens swore. “Son of a bitch.”
The BCA agent lay flat on his back in the hallway, his blood pooling red-black around him. There were at least three shots in his torso, and his service pistol lay on the hardwood a few feet away. Stevens crouched beside the body. Swore again.
Windermere looked at the cop by the door. “So what the hell happened?”
The cop shifted his weight and avoided her eyes. Saint Paul police had arrived to check out the report of shots fired, he said. Screwed the pooch a little bit before someone spied Singer’s abandoned sedan and clued in to the Tomlin factor. “We called for backup,” he said, shaking his head, “but the guy moved too fast.”
He’d taken his wife’s Navigator. Sprayed the uniforms with machine-gun fire and then drove the truck straight at the line of patrol cars, swerved at the last minute and cut across the lawn, played bumper cars at the curb, and hightailed it down the street.
“That truck handles a lot better than our Impalas, I’ll tell you,” the cop told her. “Hell of a blizzard out there.”
Windermere looked him over. Then she pulled out her cell phone and called the FBI office. Reached Mathers, working the night shift. “Supercop,” he said. “You in on this mess in Saint Paul?”
“I need to update our APB on Carter Tomlin,” she said. “He’s in his wife’s Lincoln Navigator SUV—”
“We shot it to shit,” the cop interrupted. “He won’t get far.”
“His wife’s SUV,” Windermere told Mathers. “Look out for body damage, gunshots and the like. This guy just killed a BCA agent, and he’s on the move again. Talk to the state patrols in Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Iowa. The Canadians, too, at the border crossings. Tell them to keep an eye out for this guy and his truck.”
“Gotcha,” said Mathers. “What about Henderson?”
“Good point.” Windermere turned to the city cop again. “The woman, Tricia Henderson. She was here, too?”
The cop shook his head. “All the kids say the guy came alone.”
Windermere relayed it to Mathers. “Henderson’s somewhere else,” she said. “They split up. Keep looking for her, but Tomlin’s job one.”
“I’ll get the word out,” said Mathers. “You talk to Doughty?”
“No,” she said. “Was I supposed to?”
“Last I heard he was pissed. I thought you guys patched up your differences.”
“We’re all pissed, Agent Mathers,” she told him. “There’s a psychopath on the loose. Keep me posted.”
Stevens still hadn’t moved beside Singer’s body. Windermere walked to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He was rigid beneath her touch.
“Mr. Stevens?”
Tomlin’s eldest daughter stood in the doorway, looking at Stevens across the bodies. Windermere straightened and hurried across to her. “Come on, honey,” she said. “You don’t need to see this.”
The girl ignored her. Stared at Stevens. “Did you talk to Andrea yet?”
Windermere stopped. She turned back to Stevens, who was looking at the girl with a forced plastic smile. “I’ll call home in a bit, check on her,” he said. “I’ll tell her everything’s over and that you’re fine, okay?”
“No,” the girl said. “That’s not what I mean.”
Something about the look on her face made Windermere go cold inside. “What is it?” Windermere asked her. “What do you know?”
Heather had the spotlight now, and she shied away from it. Gathered herself and looked at Stevens again. “She was here, Mr. Stevens. She snuck in with everybody else.”
The smile dropped from Stevens’s face. “God damn it. Where is she now?”
“She’s gone, Mr. Stevens.” The girl started to cry. “Nobody knows where she went. She’s just gone.”
119
ANDREA STEVENS LAY in the back of Coach Tomlin’s SUV, struggling with the duct tape that bound her wrists together. She felt the truck slow but couldn’t see anything except streetlights and snow, wedged as she was in the cargo compartment.
She’d heard Coach Tomlin throw his guns into the backseat. If she could just get her hands free, she could take one of the guns and shoot him. Then she could escape, and maybe someone would tell her what the hell was going on.
The big man who’d taken everyone hostage said Heather’s dad was a murderer and a drug dealer and a bank robber. Andrea had figured the guy was a whack job at first, some weirdo with a gun and a grudge, but then Coach Tomlin had come home with that rifle and he’d basically copped to everything. Then he’d killed the big man, and the police officer, too.
So he’s a murderer, Andrea thought. What does that mean for you?
Don’t think about that. Focus on getting free. Tomlin had taped her up tight, but she’d managed to work her wrists looser. Not completely free, not even close, but just loose enough to give a little hope.
She felt the truck pulling over, and then it came to a stop. Tomlin groaned from the front seat. “Jesus, fuck,” it sounded like. Maybe he got shot, Andrea thought. She had put her head down and tried to pray when she’d heard people shooting, but she was being jostled around too much to focus on God. So she’d tried to make herself small and—miracle—it had worked. Nobody had shot her.
But maybe Tomlin was shot. He could be dying right now. The police would find the truck and his body and then they’d find her in the back. Her dad would be furious, but she would be safe, so he would have to get over it, sooner or later.
Tomlin coughed, a wet, phlegmy sound that made Andrea want to puke, and then the truck started moving again. Crap, she thought. Not dead yet. She wedged herself in against the floor and the backseat, and worked again to free her hands.
I wonder what he’s going to do with me. She remembered the way the coach had been looking at her just before he’d grabbed her, and she felt her insides go cold. At fifteen, Andrea was already used to the sidelong looks from men double and triple her age. The way Coach Tomlin had looked at her, though, was nothing like those other men. Those other men wanted her for their own perverted reasons. In Tomlin’s eyes, she’d seen only hatred.
