David Handler - The sweet golden parachute

“Who actually did the killings, Eric? Who kept bashing Pete in the head with that pipe until he was dead? Who poured that lye down Tolly’s throat? I’d re-eally like to know.”

Eric blinked at Mitch rapidly, saying nothing. He’d grown extremely pale.

“Give it up, Eric. Just admit what you did. I can help you.”

“Guys, what’s taking so long?” Danielle called to them from out in the hall. She appeared in the doorway, looking harried. “Come on, will you? People will have to eat standing up.”

“Lock that door behind you, hon,” Eric blurted out.

Danielle stared at him, bewildered. “But why?”

“Mitch knows everything, that’s why.”

“Well, not everything,” Mitch pointed out. “A whole lot of blanks still-”

“Danielle, lock that damned door!” Eric barked. “Do what I tell you!”

“Don’t do it, Danielle,” Mitch cautioned her. “That would be really stupid, and we both know you’re not stupid.”

Danielle seemed frozen, so paralyzed by fright that she could hardly breathe. Mitch could actually hear her gasp for air. And then he heard something much closer to him.

He heard Eric whip open his Leatherman knife.

Before Mitch could react, the gangly farmer had a strong left forearm wrapped around his throat and the three-inch razor sharp blade held to his jugular vein, its tip pricking his skin.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Eric warned Mitch, hugging him tightly against his own body. “Lock it, Danielle. And go make sure the front doors are locked, too. Hurry!”

She flew into action. Locked the hallway door behind her, then dashed up the aisle and pushed open one of the foyer doors. Mitch could hear her throwing the bolts on the church’s three big double doors out front.

“Don’t do this, Eric,” he said hoarsely, feeling the man’s hot breath on the back of his neck. “It will end badly, believe me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Mitch,” he growled in response. “But I will. So just shut the hell up.”

“Eric, what are you doing?” Danielle protested as she scurried back down the aisle toward them.

“Tie his hands with my belt,” he ordered her. “Now, Danielle.”

She obeyed, yanking Eric’s worn leather belt from the loops of his pants, her eyes goggly with fear as she bound Mitch’s hands tightly behind him. As soon as she’d finished, Eric shoved Mitch roughly to the floor. The microcassette recorder tumbled from his jacket pocket. Eric promptly stomped on it hard with his work shoe, then removed the tape and stuffed it in his pocket.

Mitch lay there with his hands bound awkwardly behind him, his shoulders screaming in pain. “You’ll be so much better off if you just turn yourselves in,” he said, squinting up at them in the sunlight that streamed through the church’s windows. “You can’t get away.”

“Yeah, we can,” Eric assured him. “We have a bargaining chip. We have you.” He rummaged in Mitch’s pockets for his cell phone. “What’s Des’s number?”

“Just hit redial.”

Eric did, then held the phone to Mitch’s ear.

Mitch heard her say, “Still kind of busy here.”

To which he said: “I know, I know, and I’m sorry to bother you again. But something slightly urgent has come up…”

Here’s what Des did after she got the call that would change her life forever:

She thanked Andre Forniaux, mobile vet, for his time and she ran like hell for her cruiser, cursing the day she ever met a pigment-challenged New York widower by the name of Mitchell I Am a Big, Fat Fool Berger. From the front seat of her ride she called Soave to scream at him that Eric and Danielle Vickers were holding Mitch hostage inside the Congregational Church and would slit his throat unless they got exactly what they wanted.

Eric had snatched the cell phone from Mitch to tell her what that was: A private jet with enough range to fly them nonstop to “somewhere like the Cayman Islands.” A car to deliver them to that jet, and a briefcase filled with $1 million in cash. Once they arrived at their destination, safe and sound, Mitch would be freed.

“Otherwise, your boyfriend dies,” Eric had promised her, his voice sounding alarmingly high-pitched. “Understand?”

Des had responded, “I’ll have to get back to you, Eric. Just be cool, okay?”

Quickly, she alerted her troop commander of a life-threatening hostage situation. He’d send cruisers to secure the area. Also notify the district commander, who’d bring the state’s high command into the loop. Soave, meanwhile, reached out to Emergency Services for a hostage unit. There would be a negotiator to try to talk them into giving up. There would be a SWAT team. If Eric and Danielle refused to back down then snipers would take them out-assuming they had a clean shot. If they didn’t, the team would have to storm the church with overwhelming force. Although that would be a last resort. This was a house of worship, after all, and these were not hardened gangbangers. Just an organic farmer and his pigtailed wife who happened to have gone nutso.

This was Mitch.

Des floored it down the center of Dorset Street with her siren blaring and her lights flashing, pounding the wheel as she drove. Mitch had promised her he wouldn’t do anything crazy. She should have known better. Should have stopped him while she had him.

The fool. The big, fat fool.

She was the first to arrive on the scene. Immediately ordered the Food Pantry patrons from the area. Answered no questions, told them no lies. Simply said that there was a public safety situation and they would have to leave. She combed the parish offices, which were mostly staffed by volunteers. None were present. The offices were deserted. The hallway door to the church was shut. And no doubt locked from the inside by Eric and Danielle.

She heard the sirens as half a dozen troopers from the West-brook Barracks pulled up. Their job was to close off every intersection within two blocks of the church. While they did that Des undertook her own personal recon by pacing all the way around the outside of the church, stepping quietly on the gravel. She checked out the service driveway around back, where Mitch’s truck was parked next to Eric’s. The back door to the Fellowship Center kitchen. The handicapped ramp, which provided wheelchair access to the old church by way of the Center. There was no other back way into the church. No rear windows. Just a pair of Bilco cellar doors, presently shut.

She circled back around to the front of the church, crossed Dorset Street and stood there on the opposite sidewalk, trying to take it all in as her heart pounded and her knees trembled. She was absolutely frantic. But absolutely no one could know this. Des had to keep it together. Stay focused on what she was looking at:

The stately church faced east from behind a hundred feet of pale winter lawn. Two huge old oaks framed its entrance. Six steps led up to the three double doors. The church’s north and south sides were made up mostly of windows, upstairs and down. The downstairs windows were at least twelve feet up off the ground, so there was no chance of her catching sight of them in there. Maybe from a second-floor window in one of the neighboring houses. The church’s upstairs windows were roughly even with the rooftops of those three-story colonials. Above the sanctuary there appeared to be an attic space-the roof beneath the clock tower was slightly peaked, and there was a fanlight there beneath the two-story-high clock. Atop the clock sat the bell tower, and above that the gracefully tapered steeple that soared some ten stories up into the blue sky, where she could make out a chopper approaching from off in the distance.

A slicktop pulled up out front with a screech and out jumped Soave and Yolie. They immediately marched across the street toward her.