I shared a cab with Jack. My legs were jittery as I kept redialing Amanda's number on my cell phone. It went right to voice mail every time. I called 911. Tried to figure out what the hell was going on. I got the feeling from the exasperated woman on the other end that I wasn't nearly the first to call it in. I hung up without learning anything.
I called Curt Sheffield, praying there was some sort of mistake. His voice instantly told me the situation was worse than I imagined.
"Dude, 911 got about a hundred calls in a three-minute span," he said, his voice breathless and uneven. "All from newspapers and television stations. The NYPD has a freaking battalion on our way down there, but man, they're going to be a few minutes, the choppers say there's already a few dozen reporters at the scene. Somehow you guys at the news desks got wind of this before the cops did. Listen, Carruthers is on the rampage. I'll call you soon as I know anything."
Curt hung up.
"What'd he say?" Jack asked. His voice was scared, his breath slightly sour.
"Nothing we don't know," I said. "But it seems like the news crews got tipped off somehow before the NYPD. There might be a few reporters down there already."
The cab rounded the corner, arrived at 199 Water Street.
Or at least got as close as it could. Because when we saw the crowd in front of the building, both of our jaws dropped.
Jack said, "I have a small quibble with your definition of the word 'few.'"
Surrounding the building's entrance were at least a hundred reporters and a dozen news vans. They lined the street like a cattle drive stuck in Neutral.
"What the…" Jack said.
"Hell…" I finished.
Dozens of sports-jacketed journos were in the middle of writing copy while news correspondents were already being primped for their on-camera reporting. Cameramen were pushing and shoving, jockeying for the best lighting to both hide their stars' blemishes and capture the best angle of the building behind them. It was an unmitigated madhouse.
And there wasn't a cop in sight.
"This has to be a mistake," Jack said. "I've never seen anything like this."
"No way," I said. "This is no mistake."
Looking at the building, I could see several confused people staring out their office windows down at the gathering outside, oblivious to what was going on just a few floors above or below them. And in the time I took to assess the situation, three more news vans pulled up, five more nattily dressed reporters piled out, followed by several burly not-asnattily-dressed cameramen. They all joined the horde and began applying makeup.
There were no cops anywhere to be seen.
Roberts.
He couldn't have taken the office more than twenty minutes ago. That's when I spoke to Amanda. That's the last I heard from her.
"Crazy son of a bitch," I said. "Roberts tipped off the press before hitting Water Street. Only a sick fuck would call the press prior to a crime he intended to commit. He called the press so they'd show up before the cops. He wanted it like this."
"This isn't just one newspaper," Jack said. "I think everyone who's ever held a press badge is here. Informing a thousand reporters about a hostage situation in New York is like throwing a slab of rancid meat into an ant farm."
Roberts wanted the press to have the kind of unimpeded access cops would normally prevent. Right now, the news crews were free to roam. There was no yellow tape, nobody holding the crowd back, no gruff detectives or crisis management teams giving inconvenient "no comments."
This was the very definition of a free press.
A reporter wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and fiberglass hair walked up to the main entrance, cupped his hands and peered inside. He cocked his head, turned back and shouted, "Jesus, I think I see someone lying down behind the security desk. I think I see blood, I think the security guard is dead." He turned to the cameraman. "You think we should go inside?"
His cameraman, six-four with a body that looked like it was fueled at the local Krispy Kreme, carried the camera over to him. He glared inside.
"Why not? Let me get a light reading, make sure this thing will transmit."
Suddenly I was sprinting over to the entrance. I shoved fiberglass hair against the side of the building and pressed my forearm into his chest.
He struggled, tried to pry my arm away, yelped, "Get the hell off me!"
"Goddamn it, you don't know who's watching. If you so much as touch those door handles I'm going to break them off and strangle you with them."
He could see in my eyes I wasn't kidding. He relaxed. So did I. He smoothed out his jacket, told the cameraman, "We're good out here." Then he turned to me. "I had a great spot out front. If someone steals it I'll have your ass."
"You'll have to try it with broken arms. Look, there's a nice spot, go set up. Get away from here."
He walked away. Then I turned back to the building. That's when I heard the first siren. I could see the reflection in the doorway as half a dozen squad cars pulled up and a phalanx of uniformed officers filed out. Radios came out as the first cops to arrive called in reports. They circled the building's entrance.
One cop came closer. I heard him say, "We don't know what floor they're on."
"Ninth floor," I said.
"And who are you?"
"Henry Parker, I'm with the Gazette. My girlfriend is up there, she works here. Amanda Davies."
The guy waved his arms and another cop came over. This cop was tall, thin, with a handlebar mustache.
"Captain James O'Hurley."
"Henry Parker."
"You have knowledge of this situation?"
"I just know I was on the phone with my girlfriend, she's an employee who works on the ninth floor, when I heard a gunshot. Then the line went dead."
"Who's your girlfriend?"
"Her name is Amanda. Davies."
"Can you think of any reason why Miss Davies or her coworkers would be in danger?"
I took a breath. "William Henry Roberts. He's up there."
O'Hurley's face darkened. I saw a flash of anger in his eyes. The other cop looked at him.
"That's the guy killed Joe." O'Hurley nodded. "Roberts is supposed to be the grandson of Billy the Kid or something, right? Hey, kid," he said, clearly meaning me, "you work at the Gazette, didn't you write some stuff about this guy?"
"Yeah," I said. "I did."
"How much do you know about him?" O'Hurley asked.
I held up my hand, the stitches still embedded in my skin.
The cop whistled.
"Manners aren't his strong suit. Let's say I know Roberts a lot better than I'd like."
"He did that to you," O'Hurley said, "and that's your girlfriend up there, then…" He paused, realized what was going on. "Maybe you shouldn't be here."
"You try and drag me away," I said. "And it won't be pretty."
"Fine," O'Hurley said. "But stay out of the way. If we need your help we'll ask for it."
"No problem, but Roberts is in there and I know he's going to hurt Amanda. I know it. That's why he came here. That's why he called the press first. He wants people to see every second of this. You don't do that kind of thing if you're looking to steal a few grand and disappear to the Caribbean." I noticed the rest of the cops were hanging back. "Are you going in?"
"Not yet," O'Hurley said. "We need to assess the situation, take his demands if there are any, and then figure out a strategy. Rushing in there might cause panic, stress and force
Roberts's hand."
"This sick bastard killed one of our own," the other cop added. "He's either spending the rest of his life getting reamed up the ass in the shower or he's getting a one-way ticket to the juice chair."
"But what about Amanda?" I asked.
O'Hurley said, "We have no reason to believe she's in immediate danger. If she is the intended target, we have the hostage negotiation team en route."
"You might be negotiating for a body, Captain."
"Listen, Parker, I can imagine what you're going through.
Trust me, this freak will get what's coming to him. But we need to minimize collateral damage."
"By collateral damage you mean my girlfriend."
"That's right."
"You think he called the press just so he could try out his new stand-up routine? He's going to do something terrible, and if you guys don't do something soon it'll be too late."
"That's enough, Parker." O'Hurley pointed to where several cops were putting up blue sawhorses, stringing up yellow tape. "Wait behind the line with the rest of the press."
I watched as the cops herded several reporters behind the barricade. They put up a fight. They always did. But in the end they always moved back, docile.
Docile wasn't going to cut it today. Roberts was pure evil.
He wasn't going to wait for the cops to "strategize."
I waited until O'Hurley's back was turned, then I pushed the other cop aside and bolted toward the building.
I heard someone yell, "Stop that guy!" but it was too late.
I shoved the glass doors open, saw that the elevator was stuck on nine and not moving. Without hesitating I sprinted toward the end of the hallway, banged through the stairwell door and began my climb to the ninth floor.
When I got to five, my breath beginning to leave me, I looked down. Nobody was following me.
Four flights above was a man who was preparing to do something unspeakable to Amanda. Clenching my right fist, feeling the stitches threaten to pop, I continued climbing.