Rick Mofina - Full Tilt

Get ready! Wait for the right time and get ready!

At the center, analysts updated Lieutenant Mercer that the suspect had left FDR for 63rd.

“Where’s everybody?” Mercer glared at the center’s geocode map. “We need to get people into position to box him!”

They continued tracking the suspect’s vehicle entering the on-ramp for the 59th Street Bridge to Queens. But not enough units were in place to choke the ramp for a proper takedown, not with a hostage situation.

“What about that one?” Mercer pointed to a unit on the map. “Bring him into play.”

At that moment, Cerito’s cell phone rang. It was a dispatcher from the Real Time Crime Center, confirming that he was now live in the hot zone.

“Target vehicle to pass you in seconds, five…four…three…”

Cerito had been idling on a shoulder. When Zurrn’s dark Chevy Impala passed him he slid the transmission into Drive.

“Got a visual! I’m on him!”

“You are to follow unseen and await further orders.”

Mercer was satisfied. Now they could execute a proper takedown.

The center had alerted the 114th and 108th precincts in Queens. Mercer instructed them to seal the bridge’s off-ramp with all available units, marked, unmarked, so that the suspect would have no place to go. The unmarked unit following him would help box him. With enough manpower they could swarm the target car and reduce the risk to the hostage and the traffic.

That way we keep it off the bridge.

It would all be over in about three minutes.

One car was between Zurrn and Cerito as they proceeded along the approach for the upper level. Two narrow eastbound lanes bordered by concrete barriers flowed under the intricate webbing of arched steel trusses. They were in the right lane.

Cerito adjusted his grip on the wheel.

No way is this guy getting outta this!

In Zurrn’s car Kate knew from the steelwork rolling by that they were on one of the major bridges.

Zurrn would be concentrating on driving.

This is my chance!

She whispered a prayer, took a breath, sprang up, shot her hands through the divider’s open gap and clawed at Zurrn’s face. Startled, he swerved, scraping against the barrier as he fought with her. Horns sounded, the car behind Zurrn veered around him into the left lane.

Cerito was now directly behind them.

Witnessing the struggle, Cerito accelerated until he was flanking Zurrn. Cerito hit his lights and siren, flagging Zurrn to stop. Zurrn’s response was to crank his wheel left, slamming his Chevy against the side of Cerito’s Ford, jolting him and detonating the cop’s rage.

“You freakin’ motherfu-!”

Something inside Cerito exploded-for Quinn, for all of Cerito’s bitterness and pent-up anger. Adrenaline surged through him. He mashed the pedal to the floor, pushing the Ford half a length ahead of Zurrn, then he cut him off, forcing the Chevy into the concrete barrier.

Kate fell back into the seat.

Metal crunched, sparks cascaded as Cerito’s fury, and the Ford’s momentum forced the Chevy to jounce up the concrete barrier.

Kate screamed.

The sky, city lights and the East River flashed in a surreal montage as the Chevy sailed over the barrier. Her stomach lurched as she rolled and the car hung in the air for a sickening second before dropping upside down twenty feet, crashing onto the pavement of the single outer roadway of the lower deck, landing on its roof in the path of a VW Jetta.

The impact hurled Kate against the roof, her eyes frantic as the oncoming Jetta braked, skidded and slammed into the Chevy’s rear quarter, plowing it through the steel wire fence, over the edge until the car’s front half teetered in the air over the East River 130 feet below.

Metal crumpled as the car seesawed at the precipice.

The collision knocked Kate’s head, jarring her teeth. Blood flowed from her injuries. Dazed, she tried to escape but was locked inside.

Zurrn was unconscious, his bloodied face buried in a deployed air bag.

Horns were blaring, people were shouting, calling for Kate.

“Don’t move!” a man’s voice boomed. “We’ll get you out!”

A crowd gathered. Cerito had climbed to the lower level and radioed for help. Amid the chaos, construction workers emerged with tools, a rope. Working fast while others helped hold the car, one man used a special hammer to break open the rear windshield. They got a rope around Kate and under her arms.

“Climb out!”

As she clambered, something clamped onto her ankle.

Zurrn had seized her. Metal creaked loudly because his sudden movements had tipped the car’s balance and it began slipping.

“We can’t hold it!” the men felt the car’s rear half rising.

“Come on! It’s starting to fall!”

Kate kicked Zurrn’s head, shook herself free and scrambled through the broken windshield as the Chevy, with Zurrn inside, plummeted nose first into the East River.

The construction workers pulled Kate to the bridge and safety. There, she joined the others staring in disbelief at Zurrn’s car, headlights glowing, then fading in the water as it sank.

Amid the noise and confusion, Kate trembled through her blood and tears as she watched the lights of the police and news choppers and the emergency boats. On the bridge, witnesses shared images and video they’d captured of the crash and plunge.

Sirens wailed. Traffic was frozen. Police had closed the bridge.

Someone had draped a blanket around Kate and was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear them. Her ears rang with one thought:

It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

Soft breezes carried the giant iridescent soap bubble skyward and over Central Park’s treetops before it popped.

A warm memory floated over Kate as she, Grace and Vanessa watched the street artist create another swirly sphere.

It’s like when Vanessa made bubbles in our backyard. Now we’ve got another new memory.

It had been six weeks since Vanessa’s rescue and they’d been taking her recovery day by day. Kate was still shaky from her close call with Zurrn and had taken a leave from Newslead. Together, they were working through the healing process as they moved on with their new lives.

The new bubble lifted off, Kate’s phone rang and she answered it.

“Kate, it’s Ed Brennan.”

Since the search for Zurrn had ended she’d only heard from him a few times.

“Hi, Ed.”

“How are you two doing?”

“A step at a time, you know.”

“Listen, I’m in Manhattan meeting with the FBI. I would like to see you and Vanessa, give you an update. Would that be okay?”

“Sure. Say, three at my place?”

“See you then.”

Later on the subway home, Kate wondered about the update. After Zurrn’s death, Brennan had been working steadily with the task force tying up loose ends of the case in Rampart, New Jersey, Chicago, Minnesota, Colorado and Alberta.

Sorin Zurrn was definitely dead.

Of that, Kate was certain. Divers had retrieved his corpse from the car and she’d insisted on seeing his autopsy photos. He had no family to claim him so the city took over disposal. His body was put in a pine coffin and buried on Hart Island by convicts from Rikers Island who were tasked with such work. There was no marker to draw twisted fans to the grave of one of the nation’s most notorious murderers.

They’d found more remains at the barn site near Rampart, so the known number of people Zurrn had killed, including the Chicago schoolgirl who’d taunted his mother, was twenty-one. The identities of twenty had been confirmed. Across the country in the cities and towns where his victims had lived, people held candlelight memorial services, set up foundations, charities and scholarships.