Philip nods up ahead. I’m ready.
“Okay, David, no problem. But you have to give us a little time.”
Philip stops the car. I pull the handle, open the door, roll out. As soon as I hit the pavement, Philip drives off. It all happens in a matter of two, three seconds tops. I crouch down and hide behind a gray Hyundai as I say, “How much time?” to Semsey without missing a beat. “I don’t want to shoot the warden.”
“Nobody wants that.”
“But you’re forcing my hand. This is all bullshit. Maybe I’ll shoot him in the leg. Just so you know I’m serious.”
“No, David, look, we know you’re serious. That’s why we’ve been keeping our distance. Just be reasonable, okay? We can make this work.”
I dart between cars, heading toward the entrance to the mall. No suspicious cars have followed us in. No suspicious people are in the area. “Listen, Semsey, here is exactly what I want.”
I enter the lower lobby of the mall and take the up escalator.
I’m free. For now.
Chapter 14
Max — FBI Special Agent Max Bernstein — paced the warden’s reception area in a fury.
Max was always in constant motion. His mom used to say that he had “ants in his pants.” Teachers complained that he was disruptive because he never stopped squirming in his chair. One teacher, Mrs. Matthis in fourth grade, begged the principal to let her strap him to the back of his chair. Right now, as always when he entered a new space, Max paced the room like a dog getting used to his surroundings. He blinked a lot. His eyes darted everywhere except to the eyes of another human being. He chewed his fingernails. He looked disheveled in his oversized FBI windbreaker. He was short of stature with a thick steel-wool head of hair he could never quite comb into place on the very few times a year he tried. His constant yet inconsistent jittery movements had led to him being good-naturedly dubbed Twitch by his fellow federal officers. Of course, back in the day, when he’d first come out of the closet at a time when no other federal agents were following suit, the ever-creative homophobes had switched the moniker from Twitch to — ha, ha, ha — Bitch.
Feds can be funny.
“He got away,” Detective Semsey, the local cop who had unsuccessfully tried to handle this, told him.
“So we heard,” Max said.
They’d set up home base in Warden Philip Mackenzie’s reception area because the actual office was still a crime scene. A street map of Briggs County was hung on a wall to trace the path of the warden’s car with a yellow highlighter. Old-school idea, Max thought. He liked that. There was a laptop computer providing a feed from the helicopter’s camera. Semsey and his cohorts had watched it all go down. By the time Max and his partner, Special Agent Sarah Jablonski, arrived, it was all over.
There were seven other people in the reception area with Max, but the only one he’d known before five minutes ago was Sarah. Sarah Jablonski had been Max’s partner, his lieutenant, his right hand, his indispensable associate, whatever other term you need to understand that he adored her and needed her, for sixteen years. Sarah was a big redhead, a full six feet tall, broad at the shoulders, and she dwarfed Max, who was more than six inches shorter. Their size difference led to a somewhat comical appearance, something they used to their advantage.
Two of the other men in the room were federal marshals under his command. The other four were with the prison system or local police. Max sat down in front of the computer monitor. His right leg jackhammered in what would probably be diagnosed as restless legs syndrome if Max ever decided to look into it. Everyone in the room watched Max as he replayed the end of the video over and over.
“You got something, Max?” Sarah asked.
He didn’t reply. Sarah didn’t press it. They both understood what that meant.
Still staring at the screen, Max asked, “Who here from the prison is highest ranked?”
“I am,” a meaty man who’d sweated through his short-sleeve dress shirt said. “My name is—”
Max didn’t care about his name or rank. “We are going to need a few things pronto.”
“Like?”
“Like a list of any visitors Burroughs had in recent days.”
“Okay.”
“Any close family or friends. Cellmates he might have talked to or who’ve been released. He’s going to need to reach out to somebody for help. Let’s get eyes on them.”
“On it.”
Max rose from the chair and began pacing again. He gnawed on the nail of his index finger, not gently or casually, but like a Rottweiler breaking in a new toy. The others exchanged glances. Sarah was used to this.
“Is the warden back yet, Sarah?”
“He just arrived, Max.”
“We ready?”
“We ready,” she said.
Still pacing, Max gave a big nod. He stopped in front of the laptop and hit the play button again. On the tape, Warden Philip Mackenzie was stepping out of his car and waving his hands in the air toward the helicopter filming him. Max watched. Then he watched it again. Sarah stood over his shoulder.
“You want me to bring him in now, Max?”
“One more time, Sarah.”
Max started the video from the beginning. Periodically he would leap with the grace of a wounded gazelle from the computer screen to the map, trace the route with his gnawed-on index finger, go back to the computer screen. All the while Max fiddled with the dozen rubber bands — exactly a dozen, never eleven, never thirteen — he kept around his wrist.
“Semsey,” Max barked.
“Right here.”
“Give me the play-by-play of this ending.”
“Sir?”
“When did Burroughs get out of the car?”
“In the Wilmington Tunnel. You see here?” Semsey pointed on the map. “That’s where the warden’s car entered the tunnel.”
“You were talking to Burroughs?”
“Yes.”
“As they entered the tunnel?”
“He hung up right before that.”
“How long before that?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. Maybe a minute. I can check the exact time.”
“Do that later,” Max said, still staring at the computer screen. “How did the call end?”
“I was supposed to call him back when the copter was ready.”
“That’s what he said to you?”
“Yes.”
Max frowned at Sarah. Sarah shrugged. “Go on.”
“The rest, well, it’s all on the video,” Semsey said. “When the warden’s car enters the tunnel, we lose sight of them.”
They play that part on the computer screen.
“Burroughs knew that, right?” Max said.
“Knew...?”
“He mentioned there was a copter in the air, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so. He made the copter, what, fifteen minutes earlier. He told us to get it away from him.”
“But you didn’t comply.”
“No. We just moved it farther away so he couldn’t see or hear it.”
“Okay, so they enter the tunnel,” Max prompts.
“They enter. Our copter waits on the other end because, well, we can’t see into the tunnel. The ride from one end to the other shouldn’t take more than a minute or two.”
“But it took longer,” Max says.
“The warden’s car didn’t emerge for over six minutes.”
Max presses the fast-forward button. He hits play again when the warden’s car exits the tunnel on the other end. Almost immediately, the car pulls to the shoulder. The warden gets out on the driver’s side and starts to wave furiously.
The end.
“So what do you think?” Max asked Semsey.
“About?”
“What happened with Burroughs.”