The cops cowered behind their respective shelters, Halladay and Amira both hoping that neither of the grenades landed far enough out to reach behind the pillars. The whole tunnel shook twice as hard this time, and much more smoke filled it after the blast, but Jon could soon see that they were still okay.
He also could see that Sturm had opened the door again after the blasts, and was now running through the debris toward the stairway on the right with an almost superhuman dexterity.
“Hey!” Jon got his fellow cops’ attention, gesturing toward the fleeing killer, because they were on the platform and closer to her, while he was still down on the tracks. “Get Sturm. I’ll take care of Shinsky.”
Halladay and Amira took off after the short woman, not moving nearly as fast as she had been, and Jon pulled his aching body up onto the platform. As he did, he realized that the wound under his chin had opened slightly again, and blood was trickling down and staining his shirt. He touched it with his hand to see how bad it was, then wiped the blood on his pants so that his gun grip wouldn’t be slippery. Then he headed across the ruined platform toward the door of the Below, which was hanging open from Sturm’s rushed exit. He was hopeful that Shinsky seemed the type who would give him the evidence he needed. He guessed that was probably why Sturm had been told to kill him—to keep him from talking.
Two police to chase the athletic and armed Sturm, and one cop to secure and question the handcuffed Shinsky…. It seemed like a reasonable plan. But as Jon rounded the edge of the door to enter the room, Shinsky charged through it like he had done earlier in the day and throughout his football career, only this time his hands were shackled behind his back. But the effect was the same—Jon went sprawling backward to the ground with his gun flying away from him, and the big perp took off across the platform and the tracks, clearly heading in the direction of the exit below John’s Pizza.
It took Jon a while to find his gun, which had slid over the edge into the darkness of the train tunnel, and he moved after Shinsky more slowly than usual because of the injuries from his leap over that same ledge. And Jon couldn’t shoot him because he needed him intact for questioning. As a result, he wasn’t able to catch up to the handcuffed man until they got to the basement of the pizzeria.
After Shinsky stopped to unlock the door down there before entering, giving Jon the last few seconds he needed to close the gap, the big killer instinctively maneuvered behind a row of food stores to keep Jon from having a clear line of fire. And he kept going through the basement, apparently knowing there was a stairway up to the ground floor on that side. Jon was glad he had asked the manager about that, and even happier that he knew there was no external exit on that side of the restaurant. So he simply went up the stairs on the near side, to cut Shinsky off when he tried to cross the main floor. If he had followed him across the length of the basement, the big guy might have gotten out to the street and managed to escape.
But as it was, Jon waved his gun and badge around after he got to the main floor, so that the diners there left hastily through the bar and the front entrance. Then he greeted Shinsky with the gun and a smile when the perp tried to cut back through the restaurant, waved some more to get him to sit down on the floor, and cuffed his ankle to a post at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the balcony.
Now that his prey was finally secure in his custody, Jon looked around to make sure everyone had left the ground floor, and looked up to see that the diners and staff had cleared out of the balcony as well. As he did, the stained glass high up on the magnificent domed ceiling and the overall “churchiness” of the space reminded him of his youth, and the thought entered his mind that maybe the God he had put on the shelf long ago had delivered the evidence he needed to have success in this job, rather than the failure he had feared. But then he realized that he’d better question Shinsky and get that evidence before some crooked police or GS agents showed up in response to the evacuation, and somehow screwed up everything he was trying to do.
“Listen, Shinsky,” Jon said as he crouched down closer to the large figure. His instinct told him that “good cop” was a preferable approach with the man, who looked more defeated than defiant at this point. “Your friends at Gotham Security obviously want to kill you, so the only way you can be safe is with us. You need me to help you with that, so I need you to tell me all about their plans right now, so we can stop worse things from happening. And I want you to say it into my phone, so I can give it to the Mayor and she can use it against your boss—you know, the one who gave the order to kill you.”
Shinsky kept looking down and didn’t answer right away.
“I’ll talk on one condition,” the big man finally said.
“What?” Jon said. Normally he wouldn’t negotiate with criminals, but he was desperate to get what he needed from this one.
“You have to kill me afterwards, before anyone comes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to go to jail…. I won’t make it without a fix. And I don’t want to end up in Sturm’s hands again…. He’s a nutbag who enjoys torturing people. I’d rather die quickly at your hand than slowly at his, or locked up.”
“That’s a tall order,” Jon said.
“It’s easy. There’s no one here. Shoot me and take the cuffs off. I’m really big, I rushed you. I’ve killed dozens of people in the last few weeks alone.”
“Okay,” Jon said, making another quick decision as the sound of a distant siren fell upon his ears. “Fine. I’ll kill you.”
26
Jon pulled out his phone, turned on the camera, and asked Shinsky who had paid the NYU professors to create panic about Dayfall.
“That was Render,” the killer said. “He truly believes that the city will be better off under his control.”
“And who hired you and the other mercs to murder people when the sun came out, in order to create more panic?”
“That was Gant. Render didn’t know he was doing that.”
“How…?” Jon reacted. “Come on…. How could Render not have been involved in crimes using GS resources?”
“Render trusts Gant, they’ve known each other since they were kids. And Gant’s the brains of the outfit, he has access to everything.”
“So Render wasn’t complicit in any of the murders?”
“He wouldn’t go to those lengths himself, because he really does care about the safety of the city. But he did create an atmosphere of… let’s say, pride and prejudice among his underlings—an atmosphere that caused them to believe his power and protection should be promoted at all costs.”
Shinsky seemed awfully intelligent for a hired killer, Jon observed, but then remembered the sketchbook they’d found in the Below, and the fact that a meth habit will degrade anyone’s life.
“Render’s actually said, more than once,” the big man continued, “‘We must do whatever we can to wrest control.’ Gant took that very literally and seriously.”
Jon heard a siren again, somewhere outside on the streets. He didn’t know whether or not it was headed his way, and he knew most of the police would be positioning themselves to prepare for Dayfall, which was about to happen. But he decided that this was enough from Shinsky, so he called Mayor King.
“Ma’am,” he told her, “I have video testimony from one of the killers that Gareth Render paid off the teachers to write that stuff about Dayfall, and that his assistant Nelson Gant engineered the murders and chaos crimes so the city would feel unsafe and vote Render in to take your place.”
“And Render told Gant to do this,” the Mayor said.