Worst Case

  Chapter 94

  COMING DOWN THE hall, Parker was grateful for the speed with which all this was happening. There was no time to think. Which was good. If she’d had to think about things, she knew she’d be walking in the opposite direction.

  A couple of Stock Exchange cops were crouched by the last security station, staring through the window of the entrance to the trading floor. Parker badged them.

  “Where is he?”

  A couple of brokers cringing behind the trading desks whispered loudly.

  “Watch it, lady. That guy’s nuts.”

  “He’s got a gun,” a pudgy white guy with thinning black hair told her.

  She stepped out into the space.

  “You actually thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you, shit for brains! Yes, I’m talking to you, scumbag!”

  “Who are you?” Mooney called over the microphone.

  “Me? I’m a moral person who went to work today,” Emily screamed. “You, on the other hand, are a common murderer, a killer of children, a serial killer, and probably a pervert.”

  “Hey, lady!” one of the brokers said. “Shut up! You’re going to get us all killed!”

  “I am not!” Mooney yelled.

  “I am not!” Emily said, mimicking him. “Who are you kidding? You got off on killing every one of those kids.”

  “Those kids, as you call them, were worthless, useless. They deserved to die!” Mooney screamed. “Their parents should have educated them better. Should have taught them the importance of being human.”

  “Oh, you’re teaching all of us humanity?” Emily screamed. “My mistake. I thought you were just killing children!”

  Chapter 95

  CHECKING MY WATCH, I knelt down next to the tactical “mouse hole” the HRT guys had already made into the hallway wall to avoid the explosives. At the top of the narrow stairs, I unscrewed the fluorescent light and laid it down carefully on the dusty, worn marble tiles and slowly opened the door.

  About twenty feet away with his back to me, Mooney stood at the front railing of the balcony with his captives, yelling down at Emily. Between us, dividing the balcony in half at an angle, was a five-foot-wide stripe of bright sunlight that fell from the Stock Exchange’s front window. I stared at the light intently for a moment before I opened my mouth.

  “Francis! Over here! Hey, don’t listen to her!” I called to him.

  Mooney swung around toward me, angry and confused. He shook the detonator at me.

  “You’re sneaking up on me? Try something, and I’ll do it!” he screamed. “Right now. I’ll do everyone! Where are the fathers? Why is no one listening to me?”

  I stared fearfully at the two high school kids and the security chief’s son, all of whom Mooney had bound himself to. They were pale, listless, sweating, eyes glazed with stress and shock. I thought of my oldest boy, Brian, only a few years younger. I wanted them to live. I wanted us all to live. I had to make this happen. Somehow.

  “Francis! Calm down, man! It’s me, Mike Bennett,” I said, raising my hands slowly above my head. “I’m not sneaking up on you. I have the fathers in the hall here behind me, like you said. I’ll let them in. You let the boys go. Will you work with me?”

  Mooney took a step toward me. His eyes behind his glasses were gleaming now, filled with an unsettling intensity. His taped-together hands holding the detonator were shaking now. I watched his right-hand index finger twitch as it hovered over its trigger.

  I struggled to come up with something to calm him down. Emily’s tirade was supposed to be just a distraction, but it had gotten him so riled up, he might set the plastic off by accident.

  “Where are they?” Mooney demanded, peering into the darkened doorway at my back.

  “At the bottom of the stairwell, Francis. They’re waiting to come up,” I said.

  “You’re lying,” Mooney said.

  “No,” I said, making eye contact with him as I shook my head. “No more lies, Francis. We just want what’s best for everybody. For you. For those kids. The fathers really want to take their sons’ places. They appreciate that you’ve given them the option, in fact.”

  “Yeah, like I believe that,” Mooney said. He took another step closer, his eyes squinting as he tried to peer deeper into the dim stairwell.

  “I won’t let anyone go until the fathers come up those stairs and stand in front of me. That’s the deal, Mike. No negotiating. Bring them up here right now.”

  I turned around as if I heard something behind me.

  “Okay, Francis,” I said. “They’re on the stairs right behind me now. Why don’t we do this? Why don’t you come forward a little and look in the doorway first. You can verify that it’s them. Then you can untangle one of the kids. I don’t want you to think it’s a trick.”

  Mooney stood there, thinking about it.

  “Okay,” he said, taking another step.

  As he came forward, I watched the sunlight from the window glance off his shoe. The light came up his leg, his torso, his two hands grasping the detonator as if in prayer.

  “Got him,” the FBI sniper across the street said into the radio in my ear.

  I dove to the floor.

  Chapter 96

  STANDING IN THE dusty light, Mooney looked at me in confusion as I hit the deck. Then he turned toward the window I’d lured him in front of.

  The shattering of the long front window of the Exchange seemed to happen after Mooney was hit. One second, he was standing there, and the next, the window shattered spectacularly, and he was down, sitting on the floor.

  The blood pumping from Mooney’s wrists looked black on the bright faded marble. I scrambled up as Mooney fruitlessly tried to squeeze the detonator trigger. He was having trouble because his blown-apart hands and wrists were now only barely attached to his arms.

  The .50 caliber sniper bullets had missed the detonator but hit him through both wrists, completely severing the nerves in both hands.

  I felt sorry for Mooney as he wriggled on the floor, moaning and pumping blood.

  But that was before he whispered, “Amen,” and lurched up and forward, going for the trigger with his chin.

  The third shot came before I’d closed half the distance. The final bullet caught Mooney on his temple. Instead of falling forward, he fell over safely to the side.

  “Cease fire!” I yelled into my radio as a thunder of steps came up the balcony stairs.

  “No!” I screamed at Jeremy Mason, who’d turned to look at what was left of Francis X. Mooney.

  I knelt down in front of the young man tangled in the strings of explosives, shielding him from the sight of Mooney’s body. He’d been through enough. We all had.

  “Don’t move, son. It’s going to be okay now,” I said, wiping at the madman’s blood freckled across the boy’s face.

  Chapter 97

  I WAS TRYING to extricate the boys when one of the bomb techs tackled me from behind and shoved me back toward the stairs.

  The St. Edward’s students came down less than five minutes later. Both of the dads were crying openly as they met them in the building’s foyer. Even the burly security chief, Quinn, sobbed as he wrapped his arms around his doorman son, who appeared a few minutes later.

  The cops and brokers crowded outside on Broad Street broke into a cheer as the fathers and sons came out. Someone started up a chant of U-S-A for some reason. Relieved that we were both still alive, Emily and I hugged before heartily joining in.

  It took the bomb techs half an hour to secure and remove the explosives. After they left, I went back up to the balcony with Emily and the Crime Scene guys. Head shots are horrible, and this one was no exception. Mooney had actually been shot out of his shoes. I stared at the bloody gouges the .50 caliber rounds had also taken out of the old building’s stone walls. Mooney had made an impact, all right.

  I stood there silently with Emily as the medical examiner zippered the body bag closed.

  “Check this out,” one of
the CSU guys said, coming up to me with a sheet of paper in a plastic evidence bag. “It was stuffed into the pocket of Mooney’s jacket.”

  WARNING TO A WORLD ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION was its title. It was a litany of what was wrong with the world. Facts about poverty and famine and disease. Across the bottom, Mooney had scribbled NO ONE IS LISTENING! in red pen.

  Emily lifted an eyebrow at me as I removed the sheet from the plastic. I tore it in half. Then in half again.

  “That bastard invalidated everything he had to say the second he started hurting innocent people,” I said, ripping it a third time. “Screw his message, whether it’s true or false. I’ll take C, none of the above.”

  I felt Parker’s hand on the back of my neck as I tossed the ripped paper off the balcony.

  “Amen, Mike,” she said as the torn pieces disappeared among the stock tickets that littered the floor.

  Chapter 98

  EMILY GOT OFF easy. She didn’t have to buy dinner that night after all. Parrish and Mason got together and insisted on throwing a dinner for the entire task force at none other than the famous Tavern on the Green on Central Park West.

  They rented out one of the small dining rooms for the nearly one hundred cops who showed up. Schultz and Ramirez, who’d arrived early to the open bar, looked like they were into double-digit Bellinis. Most likely looking at a pay-grade increase, they wrapped their arms around each other when the hired ten-piece swing band started playing “New York, New York.”

  “I want to wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep,” they sang, Rockette-kicking infront of the laughing tuxedoed musicians. “To find I’m A number one, top of the list, king of the hill.”

  “See, I keep telling you this department is one class act,” I said, taking Emily by the hand. I danced her around the room with its crystal chandeliers and hand-carved mirrors. When we weren’t dancing, we drank. Champagne, of course. By the time we sat down to dinner, we were laughing deliriously, too loudly probably, and not caring in the slightest.

  The waiters were all over us in a way I’d never experienced before. French champagne glass after French champagne glass. Out of curiosity, I peeked at the menu and noticed that they were three- and four hundred dollars a bottle.

  “What you did at the Exchange took guts, Emily,” I said, tossing back another thirty-dollar glass. “You really looked good in there.”

  Veuve Clicquot suddenly sprayed from my nose as Parker found my thigh under the table.

  “Isn’t that a coincidence?” she said, staring into my eyes as she knocked back her own glass. “You look good in here, Detective.”

  Emily and I both sprinted through the dinner for some reason. Our spoons clacked on the tiramisu plates before most of the cops at our table had even started.

  “Where are you guys going?” my boss asked as we said our quick good-byes. “You’re the stars of the party. Parrish and Mason haven’t even gotten here yet.”

  “Uh,” I said, “Emily has to, uh . . .”

  “Catch a flight,” she finished for me. “Got to get home tonight. Back down to DC. Boy, I can’t miss that plane.”

  The taxi ride back to Emily’s hotel was hot and heavy and way too short. It consisted of what every perfect New York City evening is made—the swirling Times Square lights, silk, nylon, sharp red nails, a grinning, envious cabbie.

  We almost knocked down a high school senior class from Missouri as we speed-walked to the hotel’s elevator. The elevator door was closing when I stuck out my arm at the last second. The door rolled back open.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Emily said.

  “I just remembered something,” I said tentatively.

  “It’s the nanny, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It is, Mike. It’s definitely the nanny, whether you realize it or not. Oh, well.”

  She kissed me for the last time then. She grabbed my lapel and slammed her lips into mine viciously. She seemed so warm this close. I wanted to get closer. I don’t think I can properly express how much I wanted to ride that elevator up.

  Then Emily even more viciously shoved me away from her. She actually kicked me in the knee with a high heel to get me moving out of the elevator car.

  “Your loss, cop,” she spat, extremely pissed and extremely hot with her blouse tails out, her flushed cheeks, and red hair mussed. “Your fucking loss, Bennett, you goddamn asshole.”

  My breath went away as I watched the vision of Emily Parker erased by the elevator door.

  My loss, I thought to myself.

  “Damn fucking right,” I said to the doorman on my way out.

  Chapter 99

  I WAS STILL feeling no pain as I got home. There were streamers and a hallway full of balloons. An extra-large Carvel sheet cake was defrosting in the fridge. Seamus, master of ceremonies for MC’s surprise bash, held court in the kitchen, directing the decorating and food prep.

  “But, Grandpa, if this is a party, who’s going to DJ?” Shawna said.

  “Who do you think?” Seamus said, offended. “Sister Sheilah doesn’t call me ‘Father Two Turntables and a Microphone’ for nothing, you know.”

  “What about the clown, Grandpa?” Chrissy, our baby, wanted to know. “And I don’t see any balloon animals.”

  “It’s on the list, child. Please, have ye no faith?” Seamus said, lifting his clipboard. “Now, Julia. How close are we with the pigs in a blanket?”

  When everything was ready, I called upstairs to Mary Catherine’s cell phone.

  “Mary, I just got a call into work, and Seamus is nowhere to be found. Could you come down for emergency babysitting?”

  “Give me five minutes, Mike,” she said sadly.

  She was there in three.

  “Hello?” Mary Catherine said as she stepped slowly into the darkened apartment.

  I hit the lights.

  “Surprise!” we yelled.

  Mary Catherine started crying as all the kids lined up and handed her their gifts with a hug. There were a lot of Starbucks cards and World’s Best Teacher mugs. When Hallmark starts its World’s Best Nanny line, we’ll be the first customers. I thought MC was going to need resuscitation when Chrissy handed over her present: a homemade salt-dough doll of Chrissy herself.

  “How old are you now?” I said when I caught Mary alone in the kitchen.

  “That’s a rude question to ask a lady,” Mary Catherine said.

  “Nineteen?” I guessed. “No, wait. Twenty-two?”

  “I’m thirty, Mike. So there. Are you happy?”

  I was genuinely surprised. MC looked like a college kid. So that explained it, her nuttiness. Turning thirty. Women didn’t like that or something, right?

  “Well, at least you’re calling me Mike again instead of Mr. Bennett. I must have done something right. Saints preserve us.”

  I produced the gift I had gotten on the way home from Emily’s hotel. Striemer Jewelers on 47th was actually closed when I arrived, but the owner, Marvin, who was working late, owed me a favor.

  “If this is about our, eh, collision, all is forgiven, Mike,” she said, staring at the small box. “I’ve already forgotten it.”

  “Open it.”

  She did. Inside was an amethyst pendant on a white gold chain, her birthstone.

  “But,” she said. “This is . . . How can we . . .”

  “You tell me,” I said into her ear as I put the necklace on her. “I don’t know a damn thing about anything.”

  An aching expression of sadness was in Mary Catherine’s face as her eyes went from the sparkling pendant to me.

  “We’ll talk after all that champagne wears off, Mike,” she said as she started to leave. I tried to grab her arm on the way out, but I missed, and she was gone. Second time tonight, I thought. Way to go, Mr. Smooth.

  “Check me out!” Seamus yelled from the living room. I lifted my cake as the sound of an electric guitar started up. What now?

  Seamus was standing in front of
the TV. In his hands was the plastic guitar from the kids’ Guitar Hero game. His eyes were closed, and he was biting his lip as he wailed the “Welcome to the Jungle” solo. I don’t know what was louder, his Slash impression, the kids’ shrieks of laughter, or my own.

  “Well, what do you know?” I said, gleefully atomic-dropping down onto the couch in the middle of my guys for a front-row seat. “The clown showed up to the party after all.”

  Chapter 100

  I WAS STILL catching up on Detective Division reports from the Mooney case two weeks later. Unfortunately, having my paperwork done for me had lasted exactly until the task force was disbanded.

  The last and most aggravating detail of the case continued to stare at me, usually from the cover of a newspaper, morning after morning. What the hell had happened to Dan Hastings, the abducted Columbia kid?

  I was banging out my fourth backed-up incident report of the morning when Chief Fleming came rap-rap-rapping at my office door. In her hand was the only perk of working at One Police Plaza, authentic takeout from neighboring Chinatown.

  We ate in her much larger office. Outside her window, a big yellow sun shone brightly off the honking, unmoving Brooklyn Bridge traffic.

  I scanned the East River for bodies floating among the garbage beneath the bridge as I worked my chopsticks. I believe in a working lunch.

  The chief pointed at the New York Post on the desk behind her as we cracked fortune cookies.

  “Seen the latest?” she said.

  “Let me guess. ‘Mike Bennett, slacker, still too dumb to locate missing Ivy Leaguer’?”

  “It’s not about you for a change. The first victim, Jacob Dunning—his father has created a charitable foundation in his kid’s name.”

  I managed to roll my eyes and shake my head at the same time.