“This is insane,” Charlotte said, trying to keep up with Wade as he marched across the intersection back to the station.
“Arresting bad guys is what we do.”
“But we can wait,” she said. “This is big. The crime lab will surely notify the chief about what they’ve found. And he’ll see past whatever enmity he has toward you and send a tactical force down here to seek justice for those two dead officers.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Because you want to bring down Timo yourself.”
Wade stopped on the sidewalk and faced her. “Because it will be the equivalent of a military invasion. A lot of people who had nothing to do with that massacre will die on both sides.”
“It won’t be our fault,” she said.
“But it will ignite so much hatred that no one in King City will ever put a human face on Darwin Gardens again and it will make it impossible for a cop here to ever earn anyone’s trust.”
“And that matters to you?”
“This is my home,” he said.
“It wasn’t a week ago,” she said.
“It is now.” Wade turned and burst into the station so suddenly, and in such a hard?charging manner, that he startled Billy, who was in the midst of opening a package of Oreos. Billy ripped the package wide open and the cookies went flying.
“What the hell?” Billy asked.
“Grab a shotgun and extra ammo,” Wade said to him, then pointed to Charlotte. “Get us pictures of the guys who match the fingerprints on those guns.”
“What are we doing?” Billy asked as he went to the gun locker and Charlotte went to the computer on her desk.
“We’re arresting Timo Proudfoot and the other assholes who gunned down those two rookies here a few years ago,” Wade said.
“Hot damn,” Billy said and tossed Wade a shotgun, which he caught with one hand. “I love the day shift.”
“Where do we find them?” Charlotte asked. The pages with photos of Timo Proudfoot, Clay Touzee, Thomas Blackwater, and Willis Parsons spit out of the printer behind her.
“We’ll start at Headlights, Duke’s strip club,” Wade said. He took several clips for his gun and a handful of shells and stuck them in his pockets. Billy did the same. “We’ll go in three cars. They won’t be expecting us, so that’s one advantage.”
Charlotte joined them at the gun locker, handed out the photographs, then took a shotgun for herself and some extra ammo.
Billy glanced at the pictures. “Four desperados, wanted dead or alive.”
He hadn’t seen them before, but Charlotte had, outside of Headlights the last time she was there. Wade glanced at the photos too, and recognized them all from his encounter on the street.
“What’s the plan?” Charlotte asked.
“I’ll take the front,” he said. “You two take the back.”
She nodded, pocketing her extra clips. “Are you sure you aren’t overthinking this?”
But her words bounced off Wade’s back. He was already heading out the door to the patrol cars.
Wade sped down Weaver Street, Billy and Charlotte following right behind him like they were in a parade.
He took out his cell phone, asked directory assistance for the number for Headlights, and then had the operator connect him at no additional charge.
A man answered. “Yeah?”
“How’s business this morning?”
“It’s nine thirty. How many people you know go to a tittie bar for breakfast?”
“So I’d have no trouble getting a table,” Wade said.
“What the fuck you want?”
“I’d like to speak to Timo, please,” Wade said. “Tell him it’s Tom Wade.”
The man set the phone down and called out for Timo. Weaver Street ended in a T intersection with Curtis Avenue. Headlights was on Curtis, facing Weaver. Wade could see it right in front of him.
“What do you want?” Timo asked.
“You there with your buddies, plotting mischief?”
“We’re taking turns with Brooke,” Timo said. “She’s on the floor. Her legs are spread and she’s begging us for more in every hole she’s got. Like she does for her daddy.”
Wade stepped on the gas. “I know you killed those two cops a few years back.”
“Then you know what I’m gonna do to you as soon as I’m done with her.”
“Are you going to surrender?” He steered the car so the front door of Headlights was in the center of his grill and closed in fast.
“Fuck you,” Timo said.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Wade drove through the door like a wrecking ball, taking down most of the front wall in an explosion of wood, plaster, and glass. His car plowed through tables and chairs and into the stage, snapping the strippers’ poles.
The bar was to his right. Wade got out of the car, his gun at his side.
Timo popped up from behind the bar with a shotgun, let out a furious wail, and simultaneously fired both barrels at Wade, but the car took the hit.
Wade returned fire. Timo ducked down, and the mirror behind the bar shattered.
A door to Wade’s left flew open and Thomas Blackwater came out firing. Wade shot him in the chest, blowing him back into the room, then continued his advance on the bar, working his way through the rubble.
He heard some more shots outside, but he kept on going. Charlotte and Billy would have to take care of themselves. A dangling glass shard hanging from the mirror frame on the wall showed Wade a skewed reflection of the area behind the bar.
He saw the bottles, the sinks, the rags, and the rubber mats on the floor, covered with broken glass.
Timo wasn’t there.
He leaned over the counter and saw something he didn’t see in the reflection. There was a trapdoor on the floor. It was open, a ladder leading to a storeroom below.
Something stirred behind him. He whirled around, gun drawn, to find Charlotte standing in the doorway to the back room. She was breathing hard, her face dappled with beads of sweat. He could hear someone screaming in agony outside.
“What’s the situation?” Wade asked.
“All clear. Blackwater is dead and Touzee is wounded, shot in the gut. Billy’s got Parsons and one other facedown on the ground and is reading them their rights. You?”
“Timo got away,” he said. Outside, they could both hear a car burning rubber. “That’d be him.”
“What do we do now?” Charlotte asked.
“Call dispatch, tell them what we have,” Wade said as he retraced his steps back through the rubble to his car. “Wait here for the medical examiner, the ambulance, and the detectives to arrive.”
He got into his car.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Same place as Timo,” he said. “The Alphabet Towers.”
“That’s insane. It’s a fortress. You don’t stand a chance against them all.”
“I don’t want them all,” he said. “I just want Timo.”
He backed the car up the way he came in and charged southbound on Curtis Avenue, dragging his front bumper against the asphalt and leaving a trail of sparks.
It wasn’t until he was closing in on Timo’s Escalade, and could see the three Alphabet Towers looming in the distance, that he felt the blood trickling down his leg and the deep sting in his thigh. Either a bullet had grazed his leg or he’d taken a little buckshot. Either way, it wouldn’t slow him down much.
They were nearly at the towers when Wade tried to edge past Timo on the Escalade’s driver’s side. Timo swerved toward him and the two cars slammed together in a shower of sparks and screeching metal.
Timo sped ahead and Wade let him, until the patrol car’s left front edge was beside the Escalade’s right rear bumper.
That’s when Wade executed a routine pursuit intervention technique maneuver, clipping the edge of the SUV.
On most cars, this simple action, when properly done, will spin the fleeing vehicle sideways in front of the patrol car, allowing it to be rammed.
But since SUVs are heavy and have a higher center of gravity than most vehicles, the PIT maneuver can have another, more devastating effect.
Which it did this time.
The Escalade fishtailed, flipped, and rolled down the street, jumping the curb in front of the Alphabet Towers and flattening the wrought iron fence.
The armed sentries scattered to avoid being crushed by the tumbling Escalade before it finally came to rest on its side, crumbled and smoking, ten yards shy of the entrance to Tower B.
Wade parked his car at the curb, drew his gun, and strode up to the vehicle. The Escalade was smashed up and bleeding gasoline, but otherwise, it was intact.
And unoccupied.
The windshield was kicked out and a few drops of blood led from the Escalade to the front door of Tower B.
Wade looked up at Duke Fallon’s penthouse on the twentieth floor and he thought about all the stairs, all the people, and all the guns that stood between him and knocking on Duke’s front door.
So he walked back to his car, popped the trunk, and took out a road flare.
He pulled the cap off the flare, struck the scratch tip, and ignited it, sparking a hissing flame that was like a blowtorch.
The sentries were beginning to regroup and move back toward him when Wade tossed the flare into the trail of gasoline that was leaking from the Escalade and ducked behind his squad car.
“Motherfucker!” one of the sentries yelled, and they all scattered again.
The flames roared along the fuel trail like a lit fuse and into the undercarriage of the Escalade. The SUV exploded in a red?hot fireball of glass and metal that rose from the ground and into air like a fist of flame and then landed again.
Wade stood, gun at his side, and walked past the flaming wreckage to the entrance of the tower.
And waited.
He didn’t move as the sentries, and some of the residents, closed in behind him, blocking the path between him and his car. They carried guns, knives, chains, lead pipes, and untapped reservoirs of hatred and resentment. There would be no turning back, but he knew that even before he’d left the station.
Within a few moments, an enraged Duke Fallon burst out of the building in one of his expensive tracksuits and holding a gun in each hand. He was flanked by half a dozen very muscular, very angry, and very armed men.
Wade held his ground.
“This shit will not be tolerated,” Duke yelled, gesturing with one of his guns at the burning car. “This is my fucking house you’re disrespecting and that disrespects me.”
Wade shrugged it off. “You think this is bad? It’s nothing compared to the tidal wave that’s about to sweep through here and wipe you out of existence.”
Duke laughed and pressed his gun to Wade’s forehead. “Is that what you think you are?”
“It’s not me you have to worry about.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Duke said, “especially after I put a bullet in your head.”
“The chief knows that Timo was one of the assholes who killed those rookie cops that were slaughtered here. Before the day is out, the chief is going to come and get him with all the men and firepower the department has got. And if you make the chief do that, he won’t stop with just one man, not with a dozen TV news choppers overheard. He’ll have to put on a good show for them. So he’ll scorch the earth of you and every insect that’s crawling on this toxic patch of dirt that you consider your kingdom. The horsemen of the apocalypse are coming, and the only hope you have of stopping them is by giving me Timo.”
Duke glowered at Wade for a long moment before lowering his gun and turning to one of his guards.
“Give me a fucking phone,” Duke said. The guard held a cell phone out to him. Duke traded it for one of his guns and made a call. “Send Timo down here now.”
Duke pocketed the phone.
An instant later, Wade heard a scream of such unmitigated terror that it made him shiver. He looked up and saw Timo plummeting from one of the upper floors, his arms and legs flailing.
As Timo’s body dropped through the air, his scream became louder and almost musical, conveying with bone?chilling intensity the betrayal, disbelief, and mindless terror that he felt as he stared down at his unstoppable fate.
Timo’s body smacked into the burning Escalade and burst like a water balloon filled with guts. There was a loud hiss as the moisture hit the jagged, red?hot metal and the air filled with the coppery, acrid stench of burning flesh.
There were more screams and wails, from within the crowd and from the scores of onlookers drawn to the windows and balconies of the tower above, but none were as haunting as Timo’s final cry.
Wade almost felt sorry for him.
“Are we done here?” Duke asked. “I don’t want to miss Dancing with the Star s.”
Wade nodded and Duke went back inside.