Darby climbed inside, quickly found the empty spot on the edge of the right bench mounted against the wall and sat. A SWAT officer banged a gloved fist twice on the wall, the signal to get rolling. The APC lurched forward, and just before its rear doors slammed shut she caught sight of the copter taking back off.
Six SWAT officers, all men, in heavy black assault gear and with black greasepaint on their faces, crammed the benches. Her attention locked on the seventh man — a big white guy standing near a partition behind the driver, looking away from her and his men. He held on to one of the metal handles installed on the ceiling while he talked on a phone connected to an encryption pack. He stared down at the floor listening to the person on the other end of the line, his jaw muscles bunching as he bit down hard on the wad of gum wedged between his front teeth. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late forties, and in the dim interior light she could make out the stubble on his shaved head, the webbing of fine white lines around his narrowed eyes.
Has to be Trent, she thought, tying her hair behind her neck using one of the elastics she always wore around her wrists. She could feel the stares coming from the black-painted faces. They were trying to size her up.
SWAT was still strictly boys-only. It didn't matter if she could shoot the balls off a flea or that she could go head to head with any one of these bozos and have him on his knees sobbing in less than a minute; right now they couldn't see past her tits. They were probably wondering how she'd be in the sack. The Puerto Rican-looking guy sitting to her right — a dead ringer for one of her favourite Red Sox players of all time, Manny Ramirez — held a gas grenade launcher between his knees and had no problem checking her out like she was a piece of meat.
Darby turned to him, grinning, and said, 'Something on your mind, cowboy?'
He licked his lips, and she expected him to say how she looked like Angelina Jolie. More than one person had said they had the same lips and eyes, but Darby didn't see it. She had auburn hair, for one, and green eyes; and, unlike Mrs Brad Pitt, she had a permanent scar on her left cheek, courtesy of being hit by an axe that had fractured her cheekbone. The surgeons ended up removing the bones and installing something called a MediCor implant.
Instead, the Manny Ramirez-looking guy said, 'You the same Darby McCormick who was involved in that shootout at the garage with the Boston police commissioner?'
She nodded, knowing where this conversation was headed.
'That recorded conversation between you and Chadzynski, where she admits to all of her foul deeds?' He whistled. 'That broad was one cold and cunning bitch. She sold her soul and for what? To protect that Irish gangster prick Sullivan — and a serial killer to boot. Damn smart of you using your cell to record that conversation.'
Darby had a captive audience. She saw the grins and nods from the other men seated around her, leaning forward to listen to her every word.
'Lucky you that conversation got leaked to the media,' he said. 'Otherwise, no one would've believed that shit.'
'I'm assuming you have a point here.'
'Got some friends at Boston PD.'
'Congratulations.'
'Word is you released that recording to the press.'
Darby shook her head and chuckled softly. Amazing. The cops she met now didn't care about Chadzynski being exposed for the corrupt and cunning bitch she was; how the woman had, over the course of her career, orchestrated the murders and disappearances of several dozen state cops, federal agents, Boston patrolmen, undercover detectives and eyewitnesses. With a phone call, she had removed from the earth anyone who had tried to expose Frank Sullivan's horrific methods. Thomas 'Big Red' McCormick had been one of her victims. Yet the only thing every cop wanted to know was whether she had been the one who had leaked the Chadzynski tape to the media.
'Wasn't me,' Darby said. Technically, that was true. Coop had been the one who had released it to the press. She had only forwarded him a copy.
Manny Rameriz leaned in closer. She could smell his stale cigarette breath.
'You'll have to forgive me for asking this, but me and the boys here are wondering if you're recording this conversation right now?'
'What do you think?'
'I think I should pat you down just to make sure. Nobody here wants to be on the news. You know how reporters can slice and dice things to make you look bad.'
Darby smiled. 'Touch me and you'll be picking your broken fingers out of your ass.'
Manny seemed to be seriously considering making a move. He opened his mouth, about to speak, when a wail of sirens cut him off. The APC had picked up a police escort — several of them, judging by the multiple sirens.
The big white guy standing at the end shouted into the phone: 'Tell him we're on our way, ETA ten minutes.'
The gruff and raspy voice belonged to the man she had spoken to earlier. Gary Trent slammed the phone back against his cradle, walked down the APC and took a seat across from her.
2
'That was the command post,' Trent shouted over the sirens. 'CP said the subject is threatening to start killing the hostages.'
Darby leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. 'How many?'
'Four. He's got them tied up in this bedroom right here.' He turned slightly to point to a whiteboard showing a layout of the house. 'He's drawn down the shades on all the top-floor windows, so there's no way we can get a clear shot.'
'You already got a sniper in position?'
Trent nodded. 'He's on the roof across the street. It's the only place offering a clear view of the bedroom. Spotter's using a thermal-imaging scope, so we can make out their heat signatures pretty clearly. One hostage appears to be tied to a chair; the other three are on the floor. At the moment, everyone's alive, but this guy's getting edgy, threatening to kill them. I'm hoping he'll hold off until you get in there and talk to him.'
'I'm not a hostage negotiator.'
Trent flapped a hand. 'I know that. But you know the family. Mark and Judith Rizzo.'
The name triggered a flood of memories and mental snapshots. There was one that stood out from the others: that overcast morning she'd spent in the couple's kitchen of their Brookline home, a place where the greatest threat to kids was getting hit by a car. The previous day, on a late October afternoon with the sky beginning to grow dark, their youngest child, their ten-year-old son, Charlie, told his mother he was going down the street to visit a neighbourhood friend. The mother told him to be careful and to ride his bike on the sidewalk, not on the main street, and returned to making dinner. Charlie hopped on his blue Huffy and vanished.
In her mind's eye Darby could see Mark Rizzo, a man with thick, bushy black hair and olive skin, sitting at the kitchen table next to his wife, Judith, a curvy, pale-skinned Irish Catholic eleven years his senior; could see the parents staring down at a mess of photographs sprawled across the blood-red tablecloth, both unwilling to touch them, terrified that by picking one to run on the TV and in the newspapers they'd seal their son behind it, imprison him someplace where they'd never see or hear from him again.
And they never did, Darby thought, returning her attention to Trent. The APC was driving fast now, the engine's low, deep rumbling vibrating through the metal bench and climbing through her limbs. The air, much warmer than before, reeked of gun oil.
Trent shouted, 'The kid disappeared over a decade ago, right?'
'Twelve years,' Darby shouted back. Charlie Rizzo's abduction had been her first field case.
'You ever find his body?'
Darby shook her head, a part of her still thinking back to that morning in the Rizzos' kitchen. Standing behind the parents were Charlie's older sisters, blue-eyed curly blonde twins named Abigail and Heather, tall for their age and wearing tight Abercrombie amp; Fitch T-shirts stretched over curvy frames still holding baby fat. Abigail, the
