Lisa Black - Takeover

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Patrick said automatically as he mashed his butt beneath one shoe. “Is there anyplace we can talk? With air-conditioning? And maybe less noise?”

As he followed the young man through a heavy door into the building, Patrick wondered, for at least the tenth time that day, how this case would affect his chances of becoming the head of the Homicide unit. He had passed the sergeant’s exam with flying colors, but then he’d been doing that for years. There had always been guys with more seniority and a better grasp of ass kissing to move ahead of him. This time, though, he had a shot. McKissack, though not truly a moron, had only slightly more schmoozing ability and nothing like Patrick’s case-clearance rate. This time he had a chance.

He had never thought of himself as an ambitious man. But then, most humans didn’t think of themselves as carnivores until they spied a perfectly grilled filet mignon.

And for the tenth time, it bothered him that he could even think about such a thing at such a time. Though he told himself that the bad guys would give up and Paul would emerge with a wisecrack and a rumbling stomach, Patrick had been a cop too long not to know that it could all go very badly wrong at any moment. They hadn’t killed the security guards, true, but the guards were expected and clearly labeled by their uniforms. If they discovered Paul’s profession, it would startle them, and that was the worst thing anyone could do.

He hadn’t worked with Paul even a full year yet, and they probably wouldn’t even socialize if they didn’t have to work together- the kid was too damn virtuous. He’d have the chief ’s slot in an instant if he asked for it. The department’s golden boy. And why his cousin didn’t want more of a… well, a man’s man… it was beyond him.

Maybe it wasn’t. Theresa just wanted the opposite of her asshole ex-husband, that was all. And Paul was a good cop. Frank would work like hell to get him out of there in one piece.

But still.

At the back of the luggage sorting room, the employees had a corner that doubled as a lounge, with some beat-up armchairs and a pop machine. It was out of everything except Mountain Dew, which Patrick loathed but drank anyway.

The air-conditioning worked. Well.

“Everyone keeps asking me how I catch a cold when it’s ninety-five freakin’ degrees outside,” Eric Moyers groused. “This is how. The tarmac is like a blast furnace, and then in here it’s a refrigerator. In, out, in, out. Then you have people flying in with germs from everywhere in the world. I’m sick all the time, working here.”

Patrick nodded, feigning sympathy but watching the moving belts instead. He decided to invest in a sturdier set of luggage and one of those locks that only TSA could open. “Bobby is the youngest?”

“Yeah. I’m thirty, he’s twenty-seven.”

“How many kids are there?”

“Just the two of us, and Mom. I guess it’s the old ‘growing up without a father’ thing. Our dad split just after Bobby was born. We had my mother’s brother and his wife around for a while, up the street from us for… I don’t know, at least ten years. Then the steel mill cut back. My uncle went to Gary to work, and Bobby didn’t have anyone to follow around. I was working by then, just trying to keep the rent paid.” Eric Moyers stared at the f loor, hands hanging loose between his knees. “First he started coming home from school early. Then he started getting sent home from school early. Then he started getting sent home from school in a police car.”

“How did your mother react?”

“She did her best. She tried understanding, she tried tough love. At first he stole from our neighbors, friends, people who knew our situation and wouldn’t press charges, at least not heavy ones. But Bobby never had the sense to stay where he was safe. Let me describe my brother to you, Officer. He’s never had a job. Ever. Not flipping burgers or delivering the damn paper. The only thing he’s ever done is steal, and he can’t even do that right. I’d understand if he were dumb, but he reads books, he’s a whiz at math. He’d just rather die than work for a living.”

No surprises so far. Frank said the cop’s prayer to himself: Please, God, let me find out something useful. “So he went to jail.”

“He robbed a check-cashing place on Lorain, him and this guy he knew from his high school gym class. Unfortunately, the clerk was the kid they both used to toss into the locker-room trash can, and he sent the cops their way. Bobby got one break-the surveillance tape sucked so bad that you couldn’t tell if he had a gun or a bag in his hand. He got a decent sentence.”

“Where’s the other guy now?” Could this be Lucas?

“Tried to cozy up to a gang of skinheads, thinkin’ they’d protect him inside. They killed him within a week.”

Patrick looked around for a place to dump his empty pop can. The only wastebasket in sight was filled to the brim. “That’s Bob-by’s only conviction?”

“That’s the only felony. He’s got all sorts of juvie stuff.”

“Then he went back for the parole violation.”

“My mother’s hair went gray during his stint at the Mansfield prison. When he got out, it was the whole ‘I’ve learned my lesson’ song and dance that we’d heard a thousand times and that Mom still believed. But when he started bringing drugs home, to the place his mother slept, the place I was paying the rent on, it was time for more tough love. I called the cops, gave him another chance to learn his lesson. Which obviously didn’t take any better than the first time.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Patrick balanced the can in the unsteady pyramid of trash.

“They empty that twice a day,” Eric Moyers told him. “We just dehydrate so fast in this heat.”

“Mr. Moyers. Your brother is in a very dangerous situation right now. I think we’re going to need your help to save his life.”

Eric Moyers pitched his can at the wastebasket, collapsing its contents into a noisy jumble. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

11:43 A.M.

“You think Bobby and Lucas are from Atlanta, Georgia?” Cavanaugh asked. “Why?”

Theresa spoke rapidly, without taking her eyes from the TV. Paul sat terribly still, left arm clamped to his side, hiding his firearm. “The key chain for the car is a red, rubberized relief of men’s faces. I think it’s from Stone Mountain State Park outside Atlanta, where Jackson, Lee, and Davis are carved into a cliff. The dirt I found in the floor mats is clay with iron oxide. Rust, that’s what the toxicologist told me.”

“Georgia’s red dirt,” Cavanaugh said. “Exactly. Don thinks the twig in the trunk is from a magnolia.

They grow here, but they’re especially abundant in Georgia.” “Jason? Is that right?” “Yep. Bobby just served eight months on felony parole violation at the federal prison in Atlanta.” “Give the girl a cigar. What about his cellmate?”

“Thirty-one-year-old black male from Raleigh, name of Dunston Taylor.”

Theresa saw her own disappointment mirrored in Cavanaugh’s face.

“Not Lucas, not even as a middle name, but he did get released the week before Bobby,” Jason went on. “They’re searching the database now for any Lucas who would be out now.”

“What about guards?” Theresa asked.

“They’re searching the employee list, too.”

“So how do two run-of-the-mill scumbags in prison hook up with a bank examiner from the Federal Reserve?” Cavanaugh asked.

Jason didn’t have an answer, and Theresa didn’t care. “Can’t we figure that out later? Right now they just shot and killed one of the hostages. What are we going to do before they shoot the rest?”