Brandee Street waited patiently for me to respond. At least, I assumed she was being patient. I couldn’t actually see her face, and the only thing I could hear was an even hiss of the background static. Getting my story had long ago become a personal mission to her. It had started right from the first time I had ever helped the police with a murder investigation, in fact.
Ever since, and including our first encounter, I’d given her nothing more than a handful of “no comments.”
“I really don’t think that this is the right time for an interview, Miz Street,” I replied.
I turned my head and looked out through the window at the night, trying to ignore her. Below, the building lights tossed harsh luminance into the blue-black shadows of the snowy landscape. A soft halo of light seemed to rise above the concrete and steel structures, forming a fuzzy dome of cyan and white, streaked here and there with pale yellow. From this height, it made Saint Louis appear almost as a garish pockmark on the land.
We were cruising in what felt like a straight line, floating over the inner crescent of midtown, thirty seconds away from downtown proper. Up here we were autonomous, shrouded by a sea of darkness. There was still a heavy cloud blanket even though the snow had tapered off to nothing more than flurries hours ago. Above us, there were no stars and no moon, only the dark grey underbelly of the low stratum, illuminated by the reflected light of the city beneath.
The gauges on the instrument panels were rimmed yellow-orange, bringing a tepid illumination to the inside of the helicopter. Out the window to my right, I could see the lights of the vehicular traffic on Interstates Forty-Four and Fifty-Five-red taillights snaking along toward the east and south, yellow-white headlamps streaking north and west.
“Just a couple of questions, Mister Gant.” She tried again.
“Really, Miz Street…” I began.
“Look, Mister Gant, my day started at three a.m. filling in as co-anchor. I haven’t even been home yet.”
“Join the club.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t be right here, right now, if I didn’t think this story was important. Can’t you just answer a few questions?”
“Lay off, Brandee.” I heard Ben’s voice in the headset.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Storm.” Her voice switched from an appeal to a seething rebuff.
“Maybe not, but I’m telling ya’ to back off,” he snarled. “Just friggin’ do something good for a change without expectin’ a payback!”
“Damn you, Storm, I…”
“HEY!” I snapped into the microphone. “Both of you calm down.”
My headache was rallying once again and every inch of my body ached. I had too much on my mind to cope with this sudden outburst of bickering, and I felt like my head was about to explode. Being a part of an investigation was one thing, but everything hinging on me alone was unnerving.
I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I could feel the aircraft roll slightly to the side, and I tensed in the seat. When I reopened my eyes, I could see riverfront now occupied the side window, and the bright, red anti-collision light atop the Gateway Arch was winking in measured pulses, warning us to keep our distance. We completed our veer through a shallow turn and then continued on a straight course.
“Listen,” I continued speaking, now that they had both shut up. “Miz Street, I need you to do me a favor. Just get me to the scene, and I promise I’ll give you guys an exclusive once this is all over.”
“Rowan!” Ben admonished.
“Let me talk, Ben,” I shot back and then continued with a qualification. “Whatever I can legally discuss with you, Miz Street, I will.”
“An exclusive.” She restated the words with an air of suspicion. “You’ll talk to our station only?”
“I’ll go you one better,” I returned. “I’ll talk to you and you alone. It will be your story. No strings attached. Deal?”
I could hear the combination of excitement and mild disbelief in her voice when she replied, “Are you serious, Gant?”
“You ever see the TV show Bewitched?” I asked.
“Sure, but what’s that got to do with anything?” she asked.
I twisted in my seat and turned my face to her. When I was certain she could see me, I splayed out my left hand and placed the index and middle fingers on either side of my nose, pointing in toward my eyes, then said, “Witches honor.”
“Here we are,” the pilot’s voice came over the headset.
I turned my eyes back forward and then immediately gripped the edges of my seat as the aircraft rolled up on its side without warning. We hooked around in a steep, semicircular turn before the pilot brought us back upright. With a smooth hover, we began settling earthward with the nose tilted slightly up.
While I struggled to force my stomach back into its proper place, I shot a glance over at the pilot and noticed for the first time that as years went he was wearing better than a decade more than I was.
“Vietnam?” I uttered the single word query as I felt the skids bump against pavement once again.
“One ninety-second AHC” was all he said.
The aircraft had come briefly to rest on a small, private parking lot for one of the riverboat casinos that occupied dock space in front of Laclede’s Landing. The lot itself was an asphalt plateau situated between Second and Third Streets, ringed by a tall, chain link fence, and under normal circumstances, manned by a security guard at a glassed-in booth. Because of its location along the tiered rise, it actually looked down into the front of the building where Porter was holed up.
The large, paved section of the short city block was almost completely devoid of any vehicles, having been cleared earlier by the authorities. In fact, the only cars up here were a few police cruisers parked at strategic points and a single, official-looking sedan.
Behind us on the next block was an enormous electrical sub-station that serviced a large portion of the city. Flanking the building on the left was another portion of the substation, and on the right was an open lot that butted against Biddle Street. A second vacant warehouse sat behind the one before us with aging railroad tracks in between.
Upon initial inspection, there didn’t really seem to be any place for Porter to go where he wouldn’t be spotted immediately-even if he was able to get past the local perimeter. I found a small amount of solace in that fact considering that I had left Felicity essentially alone.
I was just pulling the headset off and handing it back to the pilot when my door swung open. The roar of the helicopter’s engine, which had leapt in volume the moment my ears were uncovered, now vaulted up the scale even farther. I turned quickly, somewhat startled.
“MISTER GANT?!” A voice managed to make its way to me from the parka-wearing young woman who was holding the door wide.
I nodded at her, fiddled about with the release in my lap until the belt came free, then pulled myself out of the seat and through the opening. Ben was already climbing out of the back and levering the door shut when I set foot on the pavement.
I turned back and gave the pilot a quick nod as I shut the front door and felt it latch. The three of us then hunched over beneath the rotor wash and scurried away toward the dark sedan several yards to the south.
I heard the repetitious thump growing behind me as the collective once again tilted the rotating blades and applied lift to the aircraft. The whine of the engine rose, and the helicopter hovered upward.
“I’m Agent Kavanaugh with the hostage negotiation team,” the young woman told us as we came to the rear of the four-door vehicle, carefully modulating her voice against the sound of the aircraft. She quickly popped the lid on the trunk and after reaching in, withdrew a Kevlar flak vest. “Before we go down to the street, Mister Gant, you need to put this on.”
“What for?” I asked. My voice was starting to go hoarse from all the yelling. “Eldon Porter doesn’t use a gun.”
“Standard operating procedure, sir,” she returned.
“I don’t need it.”
She started to respond then paused as the helicopter rose past us and nosed off into the night sky, taking with it the brunt of the noise. As it faded into the background, she dropped her volume several notches and spoke. “Mister Gant, let me explain this briefly. Number one: you are a civilian, and from this moment on, you are my responsibility. Number two: the simple fact is we have no way to know for certain what he has with him in the way of weapons. Number three: as long as you are on the scene, you go by our rules. And, finally, number four: we don’t have time for this. So put the damn vest on now!”
“Fine.” I gave my reluctant agreement and started shrugging off my coat. “Give it to me.”
I had been subject to wearing one of these before, and I’d hated every minute of it. Granted, it had been right at the end of a muggy Saint Louis summer. The temperature had been hovering around ninety even though it was the middle of the night. And, on top of that, I’d been plagued with an aggravating itch that the vest had rendered unreachable for the duration.
Still, even discounting all of those factors, body armor had been one of the most uncomfortable things I’d ever worn.
I slipped into the vest and in the process realized just exactly how sore I was. My body creaked like an old, wooden sailing ship, and I suspected I had bruises forming on top of bruises. I grimaced and forced my torso into the armor then wrestled with the Velcro straps. I wriggled about inside the somewhat bulky protective garment as I smoothed them down. Agent Kavanaugh inspected the closures, taking a moment to rip several of them open and pull them tighter.
“I was thinking I might like to breathe,” I declared with a sarcastic bite as she tightened the last one.
“I was thinking I might like you to walk away alive,” she retorted without looking up. “You’re no good to us dead.”
“Thanks for the compassion,” I scoffed.
She didn’t miss a beat with her own acerbic reply. “You’re welcome.”
Ben handed me my coat, and I struggled to pull it back on over the vest.
Agent Kavanaugh was already climbing into the driver’s seat of the sedan when she called to us. “Come on!”
We followed suit; Ben took the front passenger seat while I jumped into the back. I was still pulling my door shut when Kavanaugh spun the tires against the slushy pavement and expertly whipped the vehicle around in a tight half-donut.
I rocked inward and felt the door partially latch then sat up and looked forward. I happened to catch a quick glimpse of Ben’s injured right hand as he twisted to look back at me. He was holding it balled up in a tight fist and cradled against his chest. Even in the dark, I could tell it was covered in blood, and when I looked up at his face, I saw immediately that he was mutely coping with severe pain.
“You really need to have that hand checked out, Ben,” I told him. “It doesn’t look very good.”
“What? You a doctor all of a sudden?” he retorted.
“Ben…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it taken care of when this is over.”
We rocked to the side as Agent Kavanaugh whipped the vehicle out of the lot at a sharp right angle, sped forward, and then made another ninety degree turn to the right. She accelerated down the hill, only to quickly apply the brakes, fishtail the sedan through another right hand turn, and bring it skidding to a halt diagonal to the curb.
“Well, that was fun,” Ben quipped as he turned back to the front and reached across with his left hand to open his door.
Our no-nonsense escort already had my door open and was hustling me from the back of the vehicle. Once I was out, she led me toward a small clutch of very serious-looking individuals.
A trim man, looking to be in his late forties or early fifties, was at the center of the activity. He was wearing a headset that appeared to be connected to a large, gadget-laden, black box. Upon close inspection, the container looked to me like a deep suitcase. The hinged clamshell of the case was wide open, displaying a patch panel and compact recording equipment, as well as an array of switches and dials.
He fixed his gaze on me and gave a questioning raise of his eyebrow. He must have received a response from Agent Kavanaugh as he immediately executed a satisfied nod of his head and continued talking.
“Yes, Eldon,” he said into the headset microphone. “He’s here. I’m looking right at him. Can’t you see him from the window?”
He grimaced for a moment, and I wondered what Eldon was saying to him. His response that followed a few seconds later gave me a clue.
“No, Eldon, I’m not trying to trick you into giving away your position. I just want to make sure you know I’m telling you the truth. Yes… Yes, I know. Yes, that is him. Okay, fine. Now, according to my watch, we came in well under your deadline.”
He continued staring at me with that as his only acknowledgment of my presence. Around us, members of the team appeared to be taking notes while others seemed to be in the process of arranging them on a large board.
“All right, Eldon,” he said. “I can let you talk to him for a minute, but I’m going to need something from you… Hey, Eldon, I kept my end of the bargain. You wanted Mister Gant here, and I made good on my promise. He’s on site. This is all give and take, Eldon.”
I studied the man as he worked, wishing I could apply the same detachment that I was witnessing in him. At the same time, I wondered if that detachment was merely a stoic front and that perhaps he internalized these things even more than I did.
“Okay then. I want you to put Miss Sullivan on the line, so I know she is okay. Simple, right?” He paused for a moment. “Give and take, Eldon, give and take. Right now it’s your turn to give… Okay… That’s good… Thank you.”
He paused again, and I waited.
“Miss Sullivan?” the man suddenly said with a questioning note in his voice. “This is Special Agent Scott McCoy with the FBI. Have you been harmed in any way? Miss Sullivan? Miss Sullivan?”
Agent McCoy’s eyes hardened, and the lines in his face grew deeper as he frowned. In that instant, he actually seemed human as opposed to just the detached automaton I’d been watching for several moments.
“That wasn’t much of a conversation now was it, Eldon?” he said into the microphone. “Okay… Calm down, he’s right here… Yes, I’m going to put him on the line. Hold on.”
McCoy twisted back a half turn to the box and pulled out a handset. When he turned back to me, he held it down to his side and fixed his stare with mine. “All right, this is how we need to play this, Mister Gant…”
I shot him a concerned glance, looking first at the handset by his side then at his headset. He noticed it immediately. He turned the handheld phone up so I could see it. “We’re fine, there’s a talk button on this, and right now my headset is muted.”
I nodded, feeling a little chagrined at having questioned him.
“Now, I’m going to put you on the line with Porter,” he continued. “We will be listening in. The only thing I want you to do is calm him down. Once you’ve done that, we take over again. It may sound crass, sir, but you just became a carrot for us to dangle in front of him.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” I returned. “But you probably aren’t going to like how I calm him down.”
He shook his head at me. “Mister Gant,” he said. “We heard your conversations with him earlier so we get the picture. Truth is I don’t particularly care what you have to do as long as you don’t make him any promises. I just want that hostage out of there alive.”
“Believe me, the feeling is mutual,” I replied.
He held the handset out to me. “Press the button to talk, and let it go if you want to say something to us without him hearing. Remember, NO promises. I’ll handle the negotiating. Understood?”
“Yeah,” I affirmed. “You negotiator. Me carrot. No promises.”
I stepped forward and took the device out of his hand then drew in a cleansing breath. I let it out slowly from my mouth in a thin cloud of steam and then felt myself join with a solid ground. I placed the handset to my ear and squeezed the talk button.
“Listen up you sonofabitch,” I said with more than just a hint of sincere anger. “You are really starting to get on my nerves.”