Takeover

front grille.

Be careful, her grandfather had always instructed her. Don’t ride your bike in the street. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t drive too fast.

She had always listened. But surely there had to be a time when caution produced diminishing returns. “Do they understand that we’re in a hurry?”

Beside her, Jason sketched the coupe’s outline on one page of his notebook. “They understand they don’t want to get blown up.”

She swallowed her frustration. The poor guys must be close to passing out, working with all that protective gear in this humidity. And an explosion would cause a great deal of damage to her coworkers’ automobiles, not to mention what it would do to herself and Jason. Be smart and think, she told herself. This car was all they had. If Cavanaugh had sent her to it just to get rid of her, he wouldn’t have spared Jason. “What’s that on your belt, that remote that Cavanaugh told you to bring?”

“It’s a one-way radio. It connects with our phone equipment, so I can listen to both sides of the conversation. I can’t talk to them on it, but it will keep me up with current events if they call Chris again.”

“Is he always so…” Words failed her. Abrupt? Peremptory? Unsympathetic?

“Chris? He’s pretty matter-of-fact, but he has to be. Aren’t you matter-of-fact around dead bodies?”

“They’re already dead before they get here,” she said, aware that this did not answer the question. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Chris has to stay calm because no one else will. There isn’t time to second-guess. This has been a reasonable job so far. Sometimes the bad guy just shouts threats for an hour or two, nonstop, and Chris has to stay with him for every second. These guys, I’m beginning to think, are professional criminals. They rob banks for a living.”

Despite the sweat trickling down her spine, a chill swept her skin. “So they’re more likely to use violence.”

“Less likely,” Jason assured her. “They have a more reasonable assessment of what will and will not happen, and they’re able to judge accordingly. They know that should they go to jail-and by the time they come out of the bank, they’ll have accepted that they’re going to jail-their sentence will be much less if they haven’t hurt anyone. Other hostage situations-like political terrorism or psychotics or domestics, which are the worst, let me tell you-are much more dangerous.”

She suspected that unlike his boss, Jason had a few minutes to try to make her feel better, and that he had slanted his statistics for her sake. But she appreciated it.

“You might want to duck,” one of the bomb squad guys told them, shouting to be heard from behind his Plexiglas face shield. “Or go inside.”

She crouched in the shelter of a Grand Marquis. It belonged to a pathologist of whom she was not particularly fond, and she hoped any flying debris would shatter its rear windshield instead of herself or Jason. But if they blew up the Mercedes, what would Lucas do? If they didn’t… “Do you have a tracking device to install on this?”

“They have that downtown and can pop it on just before we give it back. It only takes a second. We’ll also add a remote switch, so that even if they take off in it, we’ll be able to kill the engine at any time.”

The bomb squad yanked the wire, which pulled the latch under the front grille and released the hood. Nothing happened. They slowly opened the engine area and continued their exam. After another ten minutes, they started stripping off gear. “It’s clean.”

Theresa pushed herself up from the bumper of the Grand Marquis just as Don appeared on the loading dock.

“What are you doing out here, chica ?” the DNA analyst inquired. “Trying to get yourself blown up?”

“Risking heatstroke.”

“You’re doing okay?” The young man came closer, studying Theresa’s face, ready to provide comfort if it was wanted or put it aside if it wasn’t.

“Aside from the heatstroke.” She could not take time for sympathy. If she started to cry, she wouldn’t stop.

Don nodded. “You’ve brought company?”

She introduced Jason.

Don told them, “Come on in for a minute. I’ll tell you what I’ve got so far.”

Reluctantly Theresa abandoned the car a second time and followed her coworker. Jason went with them, pausing to stare at the array of cotton-draped gurneys in the dock area. “Don’t you refrigerate these things?”

“These people,” Theresa snapped. “People. Yes, of course we do. These folks are either on their way in or on their way out. I need to stop at autopsy. You can wait in the parking lot if you want to.”

Jason remained in step with Don and her. “No. I’ve seen dead bodies before. More than I care to think about.”

“I hope that’s not a reflection on Cavanaugh’s negotiating abilities.” She was being a total bitch, and she knew it-but felt powerless to stop. Being back in her own world loosened some inhibitions, and stress freed the rest.

“Nope. Gulf War.”

She let out a breath, moved past the door with letters spelling AUTOPSY on its frosted glass. “Sorry. I’m glad you’re not going to faint on me, though. I want to ask Dr. Johnson here about her victim. Okay if we take a detour, Don?”

“Always a pleasure to visit the good doctor.” He followed them through the door.

Mark Ludlow’s autopsy had just been completed. The diener, or autopsy assistant, had placed the victim’s partially dissected organs inside a red biohazard bag and then into the torso’s cavity. He’d sewn the flesh back into place, over the bag, with heavy black thread and not particularly neat stitches.

Christine Johnson stood near the head. The exposed skull lay in fragments, which she was piecing together on the stainless-steel table like a macabre jigsaw puzzle. She peered at Theresa with that all-seeing doctor gaze that can tell when you’re not sleeping well or haven’t touched a vegetable in a month. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay. Paul’s all right, so far.”

Christine, tall, black, and caring, stripped off a glove to reach out and put a hand on Theresa’s shoulder. Theresa remained rooted to the ground. As with Don, if Christine hugged her, she might collapse in her sympathy and hunker there for the rest of this crisis. “What can you tell me about this guy?”

Christine summarized, “The late Mr. Ludlow had deposits of cholesterol in some veins and a precancerous lump in his left testicle that might have become a bad scene in another few years. Otherwise he was perfectly healthy until someone hit him over the head with something heavy, three times.”

“Can you tell me what it was?”

“A piece of thin pipe, maybe. But one impression has more of a defined, oval shape to it, so there might be two different weapons, or two surfaces on the same weapon.” The doctor frowned. She didn’t often encounter a weapon she couldn’t immediately identify. Her interest in the instruments of death bordered on the unhealthy, or so Theresa occasionally pointed out.

“Metal?”

“I can’t be sure, but I haven’t found any wood splinters.” With blue-latex-gloved fingers, Christine turned the right wrist outward to display the victim’s palm. “He held up his hands to defend himself and got two fingers broken, but he also had some skin scraped off. Whatever they used, I’m betting it isn’t smooth.”

“I think I should wait in the hall,” Jason said. “If you don’t mind.”

Christine glanced at him. “Who’s this cutie?”

“His name’s Jason, he works with the negotiator.”

“So you met Chris Cavanaugh? What’s he like? Does he look as good in person as on TV?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you,” the doctor said. “Jason, tell him I read his book.”

“Christine-”

“Okay, okay. That’s all I have, anyway. I wish it were more.”

Theresa continued to stare at the remains of Mark Ludlow, noting the reddish areas where the blood had pooled after death and then coagulated. “The lividity is all on his back, consistent with the way we found him.”

“Yep.”

“Don’t blows to the back of the head force someone down on their face? You’d think the last blow would be on the ground.”