He wasn’t sure what, but he needed to do something quickly.
He didn’t have a car, because Amira had driven them and the keys were with her when the Below blew up. So he went with a gut feeling again, and called Ari Hegde as he got Shinsky up and ready to move outside. Jon knew that Hegde and Dixon were sympathetic to GS, but was counting on his guess that, like much of the MPD, they were more loyal to Render than to Gant. He also knew that whatever their politics might be, cops were usually devoted to other police, and the two Chaos Crimes officers wouldn’t want their friends at the Flatiron endangered.
“We’re on our way right now,” Hegde said when Jon asked him if he was near the blast. “Almost there.”
“I’ll be outside John’s Pizza on West Forty-Fourth,” Jon said. “I have one of the killers in custody, and a lot of info you’ll want to know.”
When Hegde said they would come to him, Jon hung up and directed Shinsky toward the front entrance of the restaurant and out onto the street. He wanted to be outside when the two cops arrived, so at least there would be other people around if his gut feeling was wrong and things went south.
The first thing he noticed when he stepped outside was the emerging daylight. The storm was over, and it had obviously done what was predicted by clearing out most of the remaining “black smoke clouds,” as they had been called. There was still a thin layer of gray clouds on the east side of the sky, but the sun was shining through them much like it would normally before the nuclear night had fallen. Since it had just risen and was near the horizon, however, the many tall buildings of Manhattan blocked it from hitting most of the streets directly. Seeing that, Jon remembered that the NYU professors had said it would likely be an hour or more after sunrise before the Dayfall would cause the apocalyptic effects they had predicted.
Even though Jon knew they had been paid to say all that, he wondered now if they had been right about the effects, but wrong about the timing, and whether something unusual was going on. One reason was Shinsky’s reaction to the daylight, even though most of it was still blocked by the buildings. The big criminal was rolling his head and pressing his eyes tightly together, and his body jerked as he tried unsuccessfully to lift his manacled hands up from his back to shield himself from the light. At first Jon thought this might be the kind of effect the NYU professors had predicted, but he himself didn’t feel it, and he realized that it could simply be a natural response for someone who had lived for so long without any sunlight. This interpretation was confirmed as Shinsky soon began to adjust to the partial daylight, and calmed down considerably.
Another reason for Jon’s initial concerns about a possible “Dayfall Effect,” however, was the flurry of activity he saw on the street around him. Crowds of people and cars were moving in nervous waves away from where the explosion had occurred, while cops and emergency workers were trying to get to it. But although the clamor of sirens and panicked voices was certainly chaotic, it wasn’t necessarily apocalyptic. Jon realized that this was probably what would happen anytime there was a huge explosion on a street in Manhattan, and he remembered that the three killers had done this and much more to cause the mayhem at the earlier times when the sun had come out.
So Jon concluded that the daylight itself probably wasn’t causing anything unusual, at least not yet, and he turned his thoughts to what he would do if it didn’t go well when Hegde and Dixon arrived. He figured he could run back into John’s Pizza and the underground, since they probably didn’t know about the access point there, or how to navigate the tunnels. He looked at the map of the underground on his phone to see where he could go down there to elude any pursuers, and he reloaded his gun in case he had to slow them down or stop them.
The two cops from the Chaos Crimes division soon arrived, with several other police cars in tow. They all parked on the street outside the restaurant, but Hegde and Dixon parked closest to him, and were the only ones that approached him when they got out of the car. The other officers either stayed in theirs, or stepped out among the migrating crowds in order to be available to assist them, or direct them out of the way of emergency vehicles that were passing on their way to the scene of the explosion.
Jon and the handcuffed Shinsky met Hegde and Dixon about halfway to their car.
“Who’s this?” Hegde asked, gesturing to the big hairy man.
“He’s one of your Chaos Crimes perps,” Jon said. “Congratulations for apprehending him.” This was the bone he was throwing out in the hope that it would induce the two cops to help him out. “We need to take him to the Flatiron now, not just to book him but also to protect him from some very powerful people who want him dead.”
“We don’t want anything to do with that,” Hegde responded, looking at his partner.
“Nothing,” Dixon said, shaking her head.
“Okay, listen,” Jon said quickly, going to Plan B. “There’s another reason we have to go to the Flatiron right now. Another of your perps is still on the loose, the one responsible for the arson during the daylight hours, and I have it on good intel that he’s laying a huge amount of explosives right under our headquarters.” This was an appeal to whatever altruism and cop loyalty Jon hoped they still had in them. “If we don’t stop it, this will be the worst chaos crime yet, by far.”
This approach seemed to work better, as the two officers looked meaningfully at each other and pulled one another back closer to their car to confer. As they did, Jon could hear an APB being broadcast over their car radio and whatever portable ones they were wearing. He couldn’t make out most of the words because of the noise on the street, but he could have sworn he heard his name spoken more than once. Maybe he was just inferring it, however, from the fact that Hegde and Dixon glanced back at him repeatedly as they listened, and the bad feeling he got from their facial expressions.
When the APB ended, they rested their hands on the guns at their waists and approached Jon and Shinsky cautiously, stopping at a safer distance this time.
“That was from the Mayor’s office, by way of the Commissioner,” Hegde said, looking hard at Jon. “Seems that you are the prime suspect in the Dayfall murders now, and what’s worse you just blew up two fellow cops. Amira Naseem and Frank Halladay are both dead, and according to reports you were in the room with them just before they died, and were even talking to them on the phone when they bought it. What kind of sick—”
“Total bullshit,” said Jon, in shock despite the fact that he should have seen this coming. He looked at Shinsky, who was the only witness to the truth of what happened.
“If you have something to say, you better say it.” This was from the normally laconic Dixon, adding to Jon’s surprise. “You’re pegged as a cop killer, so as soon as someone in uniform recognizes you, you’re a dead man.”
She looked around at the various officers in the vicinity, none of whom were looking their way. Yet.
“I’m being framed by the Mayor,” Jon said. “Shinsky can confirm it.” He looked sideways and up at the big man, who nodded his head briskly. “Look, you guys can believe it about her, can’t you? After all, you’re GS sympathizers, right?”