Lisa Black: Takeover

Now he wrinkled his nose at a heart-attack victim who had lain in her own kitchen for several days before being found, and he opened his mouth to go on.

“Theresa!” Don Delgado, moving with uncharacteristic haste, pushed aside a gurney to approach them in the badly lit hallway. As the occupied gurney was stopped, none too gently, by the tiled wall, the young DNA analyst grasped both her shoulders, and she knew that something was very, very wrong. “Theresa. There’s a problem.”

Her throat tightened. “Rachael,” she rasped out.

“No.” His shiny olive skin had paled, which did nothing to reassure her. “Your dead guy from this morning-”

“Him.” She jerked her head to the gurney that rested against her hip.

“Yeah. He worked for a bank downtown. Two guys just tried to rob it. Security tried to contain them, and they grabbed a bunch of people in the lobby as hostages. CPD has the place locked down, but at the moment it’s a standoff.” Okay, she thought. Why is that so- “It’s Paul, Theresa. He’s in there with them. He’s one of the hostages.”

8:14 A.M.

“There’s nothing you can do, honey,” Frank told her over the phone. “Just don’t panic. He’ll be okay. No one’s dead yet.”

Yet? “What happened?” she asked for the third time, her Nextel crammed to her ear. She barely felt the hard folding seat of the old teaching amphitheater underneath her, or Don’s arm around her shoulders. Her brain had disconnected from her body, and her body, with animal instinct, knew that survival lay in staying calm and quiet. Hysteria would attract disaster, like lightning to a metal pole.

Her brain, meanwhile, worked to keep up. “What happened ?”

“We had a takeover about ten minutes ago. Two guys rolled up in front of the bank and went in, armed with some heavy guns. They grabbed some Fed workers before security could do anything, but one guard who’s either stupid or crazy ran outside and removed their car. So they stayed put, with the guns and the hostages. Paul had gone to the Fed to talk to the coworkers and the boss about Ludlow. I had roused a neighbor to get the scoop on our little family, so he went on without me. No one is hurt, Tess. You getting me? ”

Something smelled bad, she thought. Literally. A pathologist must have opened up the first victim in the autopsy room next door, and for once her stomach rebelled at the odor. “How do you know Paul’s there? Maybe he’s not there.”

“Fed security has cameras in the lobby, and I spoke to the guy who took the car-Paul had to show his ID to get through the metal detector. But he’s not hurt, that’s what you have to focus on.”

“Have you called him? Does he answer his-”

“Tess. He’s in plainclothes. If these guys haven’t searched him for the gun and badge, then they probably don’t know he’s a cop, and I don’t want to tip them off by ringing his Nextel. Don’t call him.”

She shivered, and Don’s arm tightened around her. “Okay, yeah… if Ludlow is somehow related to this, then these guys have already murdered today.”

“I know.”

The upset in her stomach melted into a pain, flowing through her insides like a cancer. The helplessness felt even worse; she failed to see how her expertise in forensic science would help in a bank-robbery case. “I’m coming-”

“The situation is stable at the moment, and they’re calling in the negotiator. If everyone stays calm, it might be all right. In the meantime I need you to work, Tess.”

“Work?” He might as well have suggested that she paint her nails. How could she possibly work at a time like this?

“The car. I’m having it brought out to you.”

She’d crushed the phone to her head so hard that it hurt, and she switched ears. Don’s arm slid from her shoulders, but he stayed in the seat beside her. “I’ll come there.”

“No-”

“You’d have to flatbed it here, to avoid losing any evidence, and how are you going to get a wrecker in there? You probably have the streets full of cop cars, don’t you?”

He didn’t have an immediate answer, and she knew she would win. “It would be much faster for me to come there. We don’t have time to argue about it.”

He sighed, surely knowing her argument for the BS it was. “No, I guess we don’t. Come on out-at the moment this car is all we’ve got. I’d like to know if these two are responsible for Ludlow. I’d like to know if they’re high, if one is diabetic, if they left their cell phone in the glove compartment, or if the registered owner has been stuffed into the trunk. Look at this car, Tess, and tell me everything you can about these guys.”

“I’ll be right there.”

She took the DNA analyst with her, for both extra help and moral support. They had been through bad times before and understood that the way to keep going when only a heartbeat from disaster was to act as if it were just another day on the job. Don Delgado- younger, the third son of a black mother and a Cuban father, who grew up in the DMZ near East Ninety-third and Quincy-and Theresa had little in common besides attitude, and both could not have cared less.

Now they surveyed the 1994 Mercedes-Benz parked on the grassy mall between the public library and the convention center.

She could see the Federal Reserve building, stately and aloof, its pink granite gleaming in the sun. Metal barricades and red NO ACCESS tape closed off East Sixth Street from Rockwell to Superior. The sports coupe had a pearlescent paint job that appeared a pale peach from one angle and a warm caramel from another. “As getaway cars go,” Theresa said, “they could have chosen a less conspicuous one.”

She barely heard her own words, her mind occupied with Paul’s fate. Was he crouched on the floor with his hands on his head? What if his jacket fell open and the badge showed? Would they shoot him? Had they already shot him?

“Maybe that’s the idea. Who robs banks in a Mercedes?” Don turned to a uniformed female officer, leaning against her marked unit. “Who is the car registered to?”

She stopped staring at his many physical attributes long enough to admit, “I don’t know.”

“Find out.”

“SRT is probably doing that.” She meant the Special Response Team, a catchall phrase for cops who respond to out-of-the-ordi-nary calls.

“There’s no reason you can’t do it, too.”

Theresa saw the young woman’s admiration of the handsome Don turn to a scowl. Perhaps all her friends were around the corner at the standoff or at least on the field trip providing extra security for the secretary of state’s visit, and here she was, sweating next to an old German car, taking orders from a hottie with no wedding ring and an all-work, no-play approach.

“Now would be good,” Don added, smiling sweetly. “We need that information.”

The woman walked out of earshot, with her radio and a notebook. Don continued to click photos of the car, front and back, driver’s side, passenger side. “At least the owner isn’t in the trunk, right?”

“Yeah, they checked.”

“They didn’t wait for us?”

“If someone had been inside, they’d need medical attention, from the heat if nothing else.” In some ways Theresa had been right not to inspect the car at the medical examiner’s office. Their only garage had lousy lighting; at least the grassy mall blazed with brilliant sunlight. She would have to stand the heat to have the illumination.

The exterior of the Mercedes had been well maintained, even beyond the fancy after-market paint job, its only flaw being a slight dent in the back bumper. The tires were beginning to bald, however, and the front right showed irregular wear.