“The intersection ahead is clear… now!” Angel said.
Chapel stepped on the gas and the Lexus shot through the open space, just as the traffic light overhead turned from yellow to red. The Lexus bounced and jumped on its suspension as he hit a trench dug through the asphalt, but suddenly the yellow cab was dead ahead.
Chapel pulled around the cab, trying to get level with it. He could see Julia and the intruder in the backseat. He had her in some kind of choke hold, and he was shouting at the cabbie through the partition.
There was blood on the partition. Who the hell was this guy?
He didn’t look like the detainees Chapel had seen in the grainy surveillance footage Hollingshead had shown him. This guy’s hair was cut short and his face was clean-shaven. Of course, that transformation would have taken only a few minutes in a train station bathroom. Chapel was certain this had to be one of the men he was looking for. It was just too unlikely that this was some random criminal who had broken into Julia’s apartment the same day her mother was beaten to death.
Besides, Chapel had seen the way the man moved, the strength in his arms. That was exactly what Hollingshead and Banks had tried to warn him about. The detainees were stronger and faster than anyone Chapel had ever seen.
“Angel,” Chapel said, “the owner of this Lexus — how’s his insurance?”
“She’s got a five-hundred-dollar deductible,” Angel told him.
“Send her a check,” he said, and he yanked the steering wheel over to the side, slamming the nose of the Lexus right into the left rear wheel of the cab.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+9:10
Metal screeched and safety glass shattered. The steering wheel jumped in Chapel’s hands like a wild horse trying to break free of a rider, and the car under him skidded and floated over the asphalt, all control lost. The cab spun around and broke through the blue wooden barrier, sending broken scraps of wood flying in the air. Orange netting wrapped around the windshield of the Lexus, obscuring Chapel’s view. A moment later the air bag exploded in his face and he couldn’t see anything.
“The cab has stopped moving,” Angel told him.
The air bag deflated almost instantly, and Chapel already had his seat belt off. He shoved the door of the Lexus open and ducked out, keeping his head low. He didn’t think the detainee had a weapon but he wasn’t about to find out the hard way.
Dashing around the front of car, he came at the cab with his handgun in a two-handed grip. He saw the cab was up on two wheels, its front end propped up by broken wood and a pile of gravel on the far side of the barrier. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Someone tumbled out of the passenger door. He raised his weapon but lowered it again when he saw it was Julia. She looked banged up, a little, but he didn’t see any blood on her. “Dr. Taggart,” he called. “Are you all right?”
“He went through there,” she shouted back, pointing at a building on the far side of the broken barrier.
He had to hand it to this woman. She was a civilian and she’d been through more than her share of shocks and horrors for one day, but still she kept her wits about her. She knew what was important — catching this man. She could look after herself.
Chapel clambered over the shattered barrier and ducked around the side of the gravel pile, a giant backhoe giving him cover on his other side. Dead ahead was the building she’d indicated. Its ground floor was lined in sheet glass windows, but they’d been covered over with brown craft paper held on with duct tape so he couldn’t see inside. The door of the building might have been locked up tight, but now it was hanging open on one hinge. He recognized the detainee’s handiwork.
“Angel,” he said, “what does this building look like inside?”
“It’s been gutted. Used to be a department store, but it went out of business two years ago. The current owners tore out all the copper wiring and anything else of value and have left it empty ever since.”
“So you’re telling me there’s no power in there. No lights.”
“I’m afraid so. Be safe, Chapel.”
Not much chance of that.
Chapel shoved his back up against the window just to the right side of the door. The door hung open wide enough for him to get a glimpse inside. He saw a bare concrete floor, with pillars here and there holding the ceiling up. Piles of construction debris, an old wheelbarrow, and a stack of two-by-fours sat inside. The light streaming in through the broken door only illuminated a small patch of the floor.
He saw no sign of movement. For all he knew the detainee had just run through this building and out a back door. If he had, the chase was over.
Every instinct in Chapel’s body told him that wasn’t true. That he was standing right outside of a death trap.
He shoved the door out of its frame with one foot. The remaining hinge gave way, and it fell outward, smashing onto the sidewalk. Chapel ducked inside before the noise had stopped and got his back up against the nearest pillar.
He could hear nothing. The place stank of mildew and dust. Nothing alive but rats had been in there for a long time.
Chapel held his breath.
He waited.
Finally he heard what he’d hoped for. A footfall, the sound of someone big, human sized, crunching the dust underfoot.
“This building is surrounded,” he shouted. “Your only chance is to turn yourself in. I promise we won’t hurt you.”
“I’ve been hurt before,” the detainee said.
His voice came from much closer than Chapel had expected. He couldn’t be more than ten feet away.
“Thanks to you, I know what it feels like to be shot.”
“Yeah? How was that?”
“It woke me up pretty good. Made me not want to get shot again.”
A sense of humor. Not what Chapel had expected. The detainee’s voice was deep, but not gruff. It had no accent as far as Chapel could tell — which meant the detainee probably wasn’t of Middle Eastern descent, nor Russian. He had considered the idea that the detainees might have been foreign combatants, al-Qaeda or Taliban who had been brought to the States for questioning, but the voice sounded altogether wrong for that.
“How are we going to play this?” Chapel asked.
“Why don’t you step out where I can see you. Then we’ll figure it out together.”
The voice was calm. There was no fear in it. No rage, either. Chapel had seen what this man did to Julia’s apartment — and to Dr. Bryant’s body. That had taken real anger, blinding fury. But this man sounded about as angry as if he was trying to solve a difficult Sudoku puzzle.
“You sound like a reasonable man,” Chapel said.
The voice laughed, with genuine mirth.
“You don’t know anything about me,” the detainee said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t make that mistake.”
“I know you killed Helen Bryant, and that she was just the first name on your list. I know you went to Julia Taggart’s apartment, probably to kill her, too — even though she isn’t on your list at all. Care to tell me why you did that?”
“Bryant had to see. She had to understand what she did to us,” the detainee told him. There was an undercurrent of anger in the words, now, and Chapel knew he’d struck a chord. “As for the daughter, well. Her child — the person she made to love. To really love. I wanted to show her, show her how that hurt!”
So much for reasonable. It sounded like every word the detainee spoke now was making him angrier.
“Look, calm down; I’m actually here to help you,” Chapel said.