stepped away, apologized even. “Instead, I draw a fucking crowd and knock a man into a pipe. He's likely in a damned coma. Cops are all over my ass. Your fault, Phillip, your damned fault!”
“ My fault? How so?”
“ Bloody fool. You're getting so arrogant, so reckless that you don't care what happens to me.”
And now here they sat parked in a dead-end box canyon of a place within sight of the Super Dome with a victim, the tools that would mark him as the Skull-digger, and the police in pursuit. He thought his heart would burst.
“ Calm down,” Phillip told him. “Calm down and get to work.”
Grant replied, “You fool! You almost got us caught back there.”
“ Shhh… think I hear something.”
Grant listened intently. He heard it, too. A slow rumble over gravel and potholes, followed by silence; then the sound of a door squeaking ever so inaudibly open but not quite silent, followed by an even noisier second door squeak. A look in his rearview mirror told him the situation. “The cops. They're here.”
“ We've talked about when and if this day ever came, Grant. It's going to be OK. Just remember how to play it.”
He un cuffed the girl and quietly opened her door, telling her to run, that she was free. She moved like a zombie, but she did fall out and get up, attempting to escape in her heavily sedated state, creating the diversion Phillip knew she would.
Meanwhile, he reached for the shotgun attached to the sidewall, and gingerly crept back toward the rear. He'd secured the shotgun when he'd first outfitted the van for just such a moment. He called out that he was giving himself up and unlocking the door.
“ We put in your location and the license plate,” said Doyle to whoever was in the van. “You did call it in, didn't you, Tony?” he whispered to Labruto.
“ Yeah, but that was back a ways, when we were in Jackson Heights.”
“ Maybe you'd better call it in again-now!”
Labruto inched back toward the unit, but like Doyle, he watched the door latch jiggle and then came a thunderous pop, telling them the driver had suddenly unlocked it from the inside. Yet the doors remained closed. And the two officers remained anxious, their weapons pointed.
“ Open it up and come out with your hands on your head!” ordered Labruto.
Collin Doyle thought he heard a sound from the side of the van, and even as he shouted, “May be two of them, Tony!” his eyes darted from the rear door to the direction of the sound of clumsy footfalls. Labruto glanced for a moment, and, seeing a woman stumble into view, shouted, “Hold your fire, Doyle. It's the woman.” Just as Labruto said this, Grant viciously kicked open the rear doors, resulting in an explosion of noise as he sprayed both officers with one round each of buckshot to face and upper torso. Both Labruto and Doyle fell to the sodden earth and weeds, even as Grant reloaded both barrels. The crackle of the buckshot wafted out over the river and toward the Super Dome. Silence followed the two explosions. Seeing no movement, hearing not so much as a moan from either policeman, Grant believed the shotgun blasts at such close range had killed both men.
No doubt they had called in the plate, learning it was stolen. No doubt backup was on the way.
He grabbed Selese Montoya and shoved her unceremoniously into the rear of the van, leapt in and secured her completely-ankles, wrists, head. He then grabbed the new license plate and quickly changed it out. Tossing the old plate into the van, he closed the doors and went to check on the two cops.
Labruto had worked his way up to a sitting position, bloodied, dazed and attempting to steady his gun to fire. The noise he made against the gravel surface alerted Grant who turned from Doyle's silent body to find him self staring at Labruto's gun. Grant could not understand why the policeman did not fire, but it was written in his eyes. He hadn't the strength to pull the trigger.
Labruto fought to get the words out, bluffing. “Don't maa-kee me ffff.”
Grant grabbed up the shotgun and fired again, instantly killing Labruto this time. Doyle had not moved an inch since the first round. Grant let it be, rushing back to the driver's seat and tearing away from this place. To do so, he had to back over Labruto's body to get out of the dead end he found himself in.
He wound his way back toward the interstate ramp, hearing sirens on the way. He sped onto the ramp and blended in with a stream of dense traffic on the interstate.
Quantico The same hour
Everyone on Jessica's team was asked to pull a double shift, and no one balked. They had gotten word that AOC had lost the final and deciding round in their battle. Still, AOC found ways to delay, and so Jessica had asked all her people to stay on board. Phone calls to home were made, cots were set up, a catering service was called in for food, drink and coffee urns.
The doctor list was still being closely examined against what little they knew of the Skull-digger. A doctor named Simon Wells looked like a good candidate from his picture and a history of violent episodes that had lost him his career. Several others appeared good leads, inclpding a domestic disturbance arrest against Dr. Jervis Swantor. Jessica immediately recalled the man from the yacht in Florida, and J.T. reminded her of both his suspicious behavior at the crime scene, which Combs had told them about, and his having attended the Jacksonville victim's funeral. They had cleared him as a serious candidate when Lorena Combs had done a complete background check on him. They hadn't taken Swantor as a serious candidate then, and he didn't look any better now. No other suggestions that he was violent had been reported to law enforcement since his wife's complaint months before. There was no coincidence in his coming up on VICAP; it was the same report Combs had flagged earlier. “Still, if and whenever we get access to Cahil's vistors online, I'd like you to check for Swantor's name.”
One after the other doctor on the list fell to the wayside as alibis, time and geography cleared them. But Simon Wells still appeared worth a look, as his case was so curious.
Eriq Santiva's Cuban features looked particularly weary when he entered the task force unit. Everyone cheered on seeing him, knowing he had fought and won against AOC.
“ Yeah… finally…” he replied to them all, a bit embarrassed at the show of gratitude. “We finally have a victory over those damned AOC lawyers. The important thing is that we now have access to their database.”
This was met with mutterings and shakes of the head.
Eriq stared at Jessica and then J.T. “Don't tell me you're still waiting to hear from them?” asked Eriq. “The order was given over an hour ago.” He looked at his watch, which read 9:05 P.M.
“ Yeah, they're still stalling,” replied Jessica. “Now it's some nonsense about technical difficulties.”
“ The judge's order was plain enough.” Eriq found a chair and fell into it. “Tell me Jess, John, tell me that you've had some progress, that you've got something in the works.”
“ We've got a curious fellow here,” said Jessica, holding a readout of the information she had amassed on Simon Wells. “A tip from the ex-wife of a Dr. Simon Wells looks of interest. Wells was listed as a juvenile offender in VICAP-J.T.'s idea to check it. Anyway, Wells came under scrutiny when a high school student. He was put on a minor watch list for possible serial killer tendencies due to his cruelty to animals.”
“ Fits the profile,” commented J.T. “Not unlike Cahil.”
“ Really. Of course, the juvenile-offender program of violent criminal activity. Why didn't we go there sooner?”
“ It doesn't come up on its own with VICAP requests. You have to key it in separately,” said J.T.
“ Oversight,” said Jessica.
“ Perhaps it wouldn't have been if I'd been able to get you more help down here.”
“ In 1984, at the age of sixteen, he was at the American Academy for Young Men in Lauralie, Massachusetts, when that private boys' school had something of a scandal involving the ingesting of cooked cat brains. Some other students in the dorm objected to the odors coming from Wells's room, where he often cooked on a hot plate. While the American Academy downplayed the incident, the state wasn't so willing to sweep the incident under the official rug. Still, after some initial moves against Wells to try him in juvenile court, it was dropped. However, the DA contacted the closest FBI field office and reported the incident, which was placed in our files more than a year after the incident. The man who sent in a report, an agent named Alvin Degrasso, interviewed the kid.”
“ What did this Degrasso find?”
“ He found that Wells roamed the campus and town of Lauralie for its stray cats, offered them a home and soon they disappeared.”