James Patterson: 7th Heaven

“You saw him this morning?” I asked.

“I talked to him on his cell.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

She shook her head. “He only told me because I wanted to borrow his car.”

I left marshals behind to interview Weinstein and his students, but as Conklin and I left the building, I felt terra firma shimmy beneath my feet.

Hawk’s death last night had sent Pidge underground.

He could be anywhere in the world by now.

In the parking lot across from the Gates Building, some kids were clinging together in clumps, others dazed and wandering. Still others were laughing at the unexpected excitement. News choppers circled overhead, reporting to the world on an incident that was a total disaster.

I called Jacobi, covered one ear, and summed up the situation. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was that we’d blown it and that Vetter was still out there. I tried to keep my voice even, but there was no fooling Jacobi.

I heard him breathing in my ear as he took it all in.

Then he said, “So, what you’re saying, Boxer, is that Pidge has flown the coop.”

THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT and their SWAT team rolled up alongside our squad car as we braked on a crisp, well-shorn lawn. In front of us was a three-story colonial-style house only a couple of miles from the Stanford campus. The detailing on the house was authentic to the period, and the neighborhood was first class. The mailbox was marked VETTER.

And Hans Vetter’s car was in the driveway.

Walkie-talkies chattered around us, and radio channels were cleared. Perimeters were set up, and SWAT got into position. Conklin and I got out of our car. I said, “Everything about this place reminds me of the homes Hawk and Pidge burned to the ground.”

Using a car door as body armor, Conklin called out to Hans Vetter with a bullhorn. “ Vetter.You can’t get away, buddy. Come out, hands on your head. Let’s end this peacefully .”

I saw movement through the second-story windows. It was Vetter, moving from room to room. He seemed to be shouting to someone inside, but we couldn’t make out his words.

“Who’s he talking to?” Conklin asked me over the roof of the squad car.

“Has to be his mother, goddamn it. She’s gotta be inside.”

A TV went on in the house and was turned up loud. I could hear the announcer’s voice. He was describing the scene we were living . The announcer said, “A tactical maneuver that began two hours ago at Stanford University has changed location and is centered in the upscale community of Mountain View, a street called Mill Lane -”

“Vetter?Can you hear me?” Rich’s voice boomed out through the bullhorn.

Sweat rolled down my sides. The last pages in 7th Heaven depicted a shootout with cops. I recalled the images: bloody bodies on the ground, Pidge and Hawk getting away. They had shielded themselves with a hostage .

Conklin and I conferred with the SWAT captain, a sandy-haired pro and former U.S. Marine named Pete Bailey, and we worked out a plan. Conklin and I moved quickly to the Vetter house and flanked the front door, prepared to grab Vetter when he opened it. SWAT was positioned to take the kid out if anything went wrong.

As I neared the house, I caught a whiff of smoke.

“Is that fire?” I asked Rich. “Do you smell it?”

“Yeah. Is that stupid fuck burning his house down?”

I could still hear the sound of the TV inside the Vetter house. The news announcer was getting a feed from the chopper overhead and was keeping up with the action on the ground. It made sense that Vetter was watching the television coverage. And if Rich and I were in the camera’s-eye view, Vetter knew where Conklin and I were standing.

Captain Bailey called to me on our Nextels, “ Sergeant, we’re going in .” But before he could give the order, a woman’s voice cried out from behind the front door.

“Don’t shoot. I’m coming out.”

“Hold your fire,” I shouted to Bailey. “Hostage coming out.”

The knob turned.

The door opened and gray smoke swirled out into the dull, overcast day. There was the sound of a well-oiled motor, and under the shifting plume of pale gray smoke, I saw the leading edge of a power chair bump and maneuver, then stall on the threshold.

The woman in the chair was small and frail, maybe palsied. She wore a long yellow shawl draped over her head, fanning out over her shoulders, bunched loosely across her bony knees. Her face looked pinched, and diamonds sparkled on the fingers of her hand.

She turned her frightened blue eyes on me.

“Don’t shoot,” she pleaded. “Please don’t shoot my son!”

I STARED INTO Mrs. Vetter’s ice-blue eyes until she broke the spell. She turned her head to the side and cried out, “Hans, do what they tell you!” As she turned her head, the yellow shawl dropped away. My heart bucked as I realized that there were two people sitting in that wheelchair.

Mrs. Vetter was sitting in her son’s lap.

“Hans, do what they tell you,” Vetter mimicked.

The chair rolled forward onto the lawn. I saw clearly now. Vetter’s huge right hand was on the chair’s power controls. His left arm crossed his mother’s body, and he held the muzzle of a sawed-off, double-barreled, twelve-gauge shotgun hard against the soft underside of his mother’s jaw.

I lowered my Glock 9 and forced a level of calm into my voice that I didn’t remotely feel.

“Hans, I’m Sergeant Boxer, SFPD. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. So just throw that gun down, okay? There’s a safe way out of this situation, and I want to get there. I won’t shoot if you put down that gun.”

“Yeah, right,” Vetter said, laughing. “Now listen to me, both of you,” he said, pointing his chin at me and then at Conklin. “Stand between my mom and the cops. Now, drop your guns, or people are going to die.”

I wasn’t afraid. I was terrified.

I tossed my gun to the ground, and Conklin did the same. We stepped in front of the wheelchair, shielding Mrs. Vetter and her wretched son from the SWAT team at the edge of the lawn. My skin prickled. I felt cold and hot at the same time. We stood locked in this horrifying vignette as the smoke around us thickened.

With a muted boom , flames broke through the windows at the front of the house as the living room flashed over. Shards of glass exploded into the front yard, and sparks rained down on our heads. Conklin held his hands out so that Vetter could see them.

He shouted, “Vetter, we’ve done what you said. Now, drop your damned gun, man . I’ll take care of you. We’ll surround you all the way in, make sure you’re okay. Just put down the gun.”

There was the roar of the backdraft and then the whine of sirens as fire trucks neared the scene. Vetter wasn’t giving up. Not if I was right that the wild glint in his eye was defiance.

But Pidge had given himself no exit.

What the hell would he do?

VETTER LAUGHED LOUDLY.

For a split second, all I could see were the beautiful, open-mouthed choppers of a kid who’d had the best dentistry in the world. He said to Conklin, “Can’t you just see Francis Ford Coppola directing this scene?”

I heard a faint click and then a thunderous KABOOM .

I’d never seen anything like it before.

One minute I was looking into Mrs. Vetter’s eyes, and in the next moment her head exploded, the top of her skull opening like a flower. The air darkened with a bloody mist that coated me and Conklin and Vetter with a red sheen.