The Burning Edge Page 2

  The pressure of the gun on Lisa’s head was gone, along with the four suspects. In their wake, Lisa’s ears rang with the shrieking of the victims. They consoled each other. Some huddled over the corpses. Lisa didn’t know how much time had passed before the chaos blended with approaching sirens.

  The first police officers rushed into the center through every door with handguns and pump-action shotguns drawn and trained in every direction, ordering everyone to kneel and keep their hands up, palms out.

  “They’re gone! Help us, please! We need ambulances!” a perspiring, overweight man pleaded.

  More police arrived, along with paramedics who tried to aid the men who’d been shot, but it was futile.

  “Miss, please. Are you in any pain?”

  Someone was talking to Lisa.

  “Miss, you have to let us help, you have got to let go.”

  I’m never letting go. I’m alive…

  “Miss, please.”

  Lisa couldn’t answer. She blinked several times before realizing she was holding the hand of the dead cop beside her.

  “Take care of him,” Lisa said. “You have to take care of him. They just shot him.”

  It’s my fault. I dropped the gun. It’s my fault.

  She was trembling as a paramedic examined her, checking her vital signs, talking to her.

  “You’re going to be all right. Help is here.”

  The sirens wouldn’t stop. More police cars and ambulances arrived, emergency lights splashing from the lot over the scene.

  Everything was hazy in the aftermath.

  All four men were dead.

  Sheets were draped over their bodies and the area was cleared, protected; officers moved the survivors to the far end of the center. As they began interviewing each of them, some nodded toward Lisa.

  Her heart was racing.

  Officer Anita Rowan of the Ramapo Police Department had taken Lisa aside. Rowan had short hair; tiny earrings pierced her lobes. Lisa noticed her polished nails as she wrote in her notebook.

  “Now, Lisa, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

  Lisa recounted everything that she saw. Rowan had a nice tan and a white-toothed smile and touched Lisa’s shoulder when she repeated parts of Lisa’s account for accuracy. Her utility belt gave little leathery squeaks when she left Lisa to talk to a group of grim-faced men in plainclothes. From where Lisa was, she could see them in the killing zone. They produced their own clipboards and notebooks, writing down what other uniformed officers reported.

  A couple of the plainclothesmen eyed Lisa.

  Then the investigators tugged on rubber gloves and slipped on shoe covers and visited the dead as if each were an exhibit on a macabre tour. They raised each sheet, examined each body, took notes and pictures, made sketches and checked identification.

  The investigators consulted other investigators and two of them approached Lisa. The first was a few inches over six feet, about forty-five, with thinning hair. A dark mustache accentuated his poker face.

  “Lisa Palmer?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Percy Quinn, Ramapo P.D.” Quinn’s face creased with concern as he took stock of the blood flecks on Lisa’s temple, nose, cheeks and chin.

  “You want someone to wipe that off her?” Rowan asked.

  “That’s evidence,” Quinn said. “I want a picture first.”

  Quinn summoned a crime scene tech who took several frames, then got a paramedic to use a medical wipe and swab. The tech preserved the material as evidence. Quinn and the others signed the information.

  “Are you okay, Miss Palmer?” Quinn said afterward.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You witnessed the shootings?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Lisa, we’re going to need your help, but given what’s happened, this crime goes beyond our jurisdiction.”

  She didn’t understand.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “We appreciate that,” Quinn said. “But we won’t be done for some time yet. We’re preserving the scene. What we’d like to do is move you into a separate office area here while we wait for the primary investigators.”

  “I just want to go home to my children.”

  “We understand, but we really need you to cooperate with us. It’s important that you help us. Will you do that for us, Lisa?”

  She thought of the man on the floor beside her, how he’d died trying to help.

  She nodded and they led her down a hall in the administrative part of the complex to an office. The sign on the wall said, Mac Foyt, Manager. The room was large with blue deep-pile carpet. Photos of cars, trucks and pretty scenes of seasons along the Hudson covered most of the walls. The desk had framed pictures of a boy in a baseball uniform, a man and woman smiling at Niagara Falls.

  Mac and Mrs. Foyt?

  Rowan’s utility belt squeaked as she set a sweating bottle of water on the desk before Lisa. Sirens continued wailing outside.

  “Is there anything else I can get you, Lisa?”

  “Can I call home?”

  Rowan was sympathetic. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “The situation is too serious. I can contact anyone on your behalf.”

  Lisa’s stomach lurched and her head throbbed.

  “Lisa?”

  As Lisa cupped her hands to her face, she felt the coolness of the medical wipe that removed his blood and brain matter. That’s when she realized some of it was still on the backs of her hands.

  “I just stopped to go to the bathroom and buy a snack.”

  Lisa released a long anguished sob.

  Rowan held her to keep her from coming apart.

  3

  New York City

  Frank Morrow picked up his line at his desk at the FBI’s New York headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.

  He had refused to go to his doctor’s office in Greenwich Village today, insisting his specialist deliver the news by phone. After weeks of tests, scans and second opinions, Morrow had braced for this call.

  “Frank, it’s Art.”

  “Should I enhance my pension plan or review my will?”

  “I wish I had better news. It’s worse than we’d feared.”

  “Is it treatable?”

  “Chemo is a long-shot option. You’d have to stop working, and the odds chemo will have any impact are two to three percent, at best.”

  “Is there any other option?”

  “No.”

  “So I’m terminal?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Frank, we can’t be sure.”

  “How long, Art?”

  “A year, maybe sixteen months.”

  Morrow’s knuckles whitened as he squeezed his phone.

  Silence fell between him and Art Stein, a Johns Hopkins grad who’d interned at Sloan-Kettering. Stein had an excellent bedside manner that he’d taken courtside over the last few months, after agreeing to give Morrow most of his updates during Knicks games at the Garden.

  Now, to fill the growing quiet, Stein reached for medical jargon, explaining again about cells, hematology and the stages Morrow faced with this rare form of cancer.

  Morrow was no longer listening.

  Maybe it was Morrow’s private philosophy, forged by his line of work, but for him, death was always near. A view made manifest by the fact that the FBI’s New York office was a few blocks from Ground Zero.

  As Stein went on, Morrow looked out at Lower Manhattan’s skyline and was pulled back to that day, thinking how one moment you are living your life, then fate slams into you the way the planes slammed into the towers.

  On that morning, Morrow actually saw the Boeing 767 that was American Airlines flight 11 streak by his twenty-eighth-floor window before it knifed into the North Tower. Within minutes, the New York Division led the investigation. Morrow was immersed in it as the FBI and a spectrum of agencies chased leads, examined the wreck
age and collected evidence at Fresh Kills.

  Everybody had lost someone in the attacks.

  Moments of that morning haunted him.

  “Frank?” Stein repeated. “Frank, are you with me? To answer your question—” I asked a question? “—there won’t be any physical pain. Breathing could cease in your sleep. Frank?”

  Morrow searched for words worth using.

  “I’m lucky, Art.”

  “Lucky?” Stein paused. “Frank, do you want me to put you in touch with a shrink, to talk things over?”

  Morrow found Elizabeth’s and Hailey’s faces in the framed photographs next to his computer monitor. He smiled to himself.

  He was damn lucky. Unlike the people who died in the attacks. To Morrow they were heroes. Especially the jumpers he’d seen.

  They had no choice. They had no time.

  Morrow was lucky because he had time to get ready.

  “Frank? Do you want me to set it up?”

  “No, I don’t think I’ll need that now. I’ll just chew this over for a while, you know?”

  “I understand. Call me anytime. Hey, I got Lakers tickets. Are you in?”

  “I’m in.”

  Morrow hung up.

  Telling Elizabeth and their daughter, Hailey, would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. Elizabeth knew nothing about this. He’d kept it to himself for the last three months. That’s when he started getting a few stomach cramps in his sleep, his skin started itching, his piss and crap turned weird colors and he’d lost a bit of weight. He told her he’d cut out the fries at work and used the stairs more.

  “That’s good.” Elizabeth smiled, but her eyes held a degree of suspicion.

  Of course, he was a bastard for not telling her and she’d have every right to kill him. But she’d lost her mother last year and he was not going to put more worry on her if there was a chance it was nothing.

  All that changed now.

  In the back of his mind, Morrow had figured that his number had come up. Somehow he just knew. He was grateful for the good life he’d had, for the time he had left. What tore him up was that it was going to be hard on Elizabeth and Hailey.

  At least we have time to prepare.

  He’d talk to his boss, get some time off. Maybe drive along the coast with Elizabeth and Hailey, watch the ocean and talk.

  Burial or cremation?

  He didn’t have to decide today.

  One thing was certain: he was not going to curl up. To hell with chemo. As long as he could do the job, he would do the job. He’d seize control of every minute he had left. He was not going to eat his gun, or fall in front of a subway train.

  Frank Morrow would rage against his impending death.

  “Frank—” Agent Rutto rushed by his doorway “—meeting in the boardroom, now!”

  About thirty people had gathered quickly around the room’s huge cherry-wood table, the venetian blinds opened to a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Glenda Stark had called the briefing and, in typical Stark style, cut to the point.

  “Listen up, people. We’ve just received confirmation of four homicides in the robbery of an armored courier, American Centurion, which was servicing ATMs at the Freedom Freeway Service Center at Ramapo.”

  Stark surveyed the room over her bifocals. She had everyone’s attention.

  “Three of the victims were Centurion guards. The fourth—” Stark cleared her throat. “The fourth is Special Agent Gregory Scott Dutton, with our Bridgeport office.”

  Cursing rippled round the room.

  “According to preliminary witness accounts, Ramapo P.D. indicates this was a highly organized hit. Dutton was among the hostages and was going for his weapon when he was killed.”

  Reaction in the room rose. Stark shut it down.

  “This one is ours. ERT is en route. Ramapo, Rockland Sheriff and New York State are on scene. We’re pulling from New Jersey, Hudson Valley and New Rochelle RAs. And Connecticut is sending agents. I want as many of our people to get up there now to interview witnesses. NHQ has been briefed and the director says this is a priority. Agent Morrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the case agent. That’s it. Let’s move, people.”

  4

  New York City

  The man in the town house apartment was going to kill his neighbor.

  The NYPD had sealed his street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near Stuyvesant Town. News crews had gathered at the east and west cordons. Jack Gannon watched from the east end of the block as a hostage negotiator tried talking the man down.

  Gannon, a reporter with the World Press Alliance news service, was with Angelo Dixon, a WPA photographer. Dixon had been using the earpiece on his portable scanner to monitor NYPD radio dispatches.

  So far, Gannon knew that the suspect, Sylvester Jerome Nada, was an unemployed carpenter facing eviction, divorce and a mountain of debt. He’d claimed his neighbor, Gustav Trodder, had stolen his antique pistol, which had once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. Nada had taken Trodder hostage with his semiautomatic Smith & Wesson, vowing to “blow his freakin’ head off.”

  Nothing was happening.

  This standoff is going to turn out to be a supreme waste of time.

  Gannon had been here nearly two hours and his gut told him the real story was the tip he’d been working on back in the newsroom.

  It came in last week, a call about an impending threat.

  “It involves an operation, a mission, an attack on America,” the caller had said.

  Gannon often got nut-job calls like that and had first considered this one useless. It was short on details, anything he could use for confirmation.

  But something about the tipster had gnawed at him.

  “This is big! I swear to God, what I’m telling you is true!” the caller had said.

  The guy had a nervous air of authenticity. He was scared. He’d called Gannon several times from public phones, refusing to give his name, occupation, address, anything. But he’d grown comfortable with Gannon and finally agreed to meet at a diner near Times Square.

  “I’ll bring the confirmation you need.”

  But Mr. Anonymous never showed and his calls stopped.

  That was three days ago.

  Gannon had told no one about it, adhering to his rules on tips.

  Never tell an editor what you’ve got until you have it nailed. Editors either forced you to push your source until you lost them, or dismissed your tip outright. And with the way things were going at the WPA these days, he was not going to tell anybody what he had until he had it locked. It was the only way he’d guarantee support from the desk.

  Instinct told him to pursue the tip, to find out what had happened to his source. Gannon secretly worked on it between other assignments. That’s what he’d been doing before he was punted to cover this waste of time.

  Normally, the WPA, a worldwide newswire, wouldn’t staff a story like this; it was too local. But things hadn’t been normal at the WPA since Melody Lyon, the newswire’s most respected news editor, took a one-year leave three months ago to teach English in Africa.

  Lyon was replaced by Dolf Lisker, a man who’d headed the WPA’s business coverage. Lisker had little experience leading news teams. He was a heartless slab of misery who loathed the world and everyone in it. He was obsessed with WPA’s slipping revenues.

  Numbers—good numbers—were Lisker’s friends.

  The WPA was headquartered in Midtown Manhattan where it oversaw bureaus in every major U.S. city and ninety countries, providing a 24/7 flow of fast, accurate information to thousands of newspaper, radio, TV, corporate and online subscribers everywhere.

  Gannon was devoted to the WPA. Its reputation for excellence had resulted in twenty-five Pulitzer Prizes. But Lisker was wary of increasing competition from the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, China’s Xinhua News Agency and Russia’s fast-rising Interfax News
Agency.

  “Each time subscribers take a competitor’s content over WPA content, we bleed,” Lisker wrote in his assume-command memo to the staff. “Treat every news organization as the enemy. Regard exclusives as our oxygen. We need to break stories and offer better ones than our competition. This is how we will fortify our numbers.”

  Rumors flew that Lisker had presented the WPA executive with a “personnel efficiency model”—translation: “editorial cutback plan”—linking story pick-up rates to performance assessments of every WPA reporter.

  The pressure was straining morale.

  Gannon had felt Lisker’s sting a few hours ago. Lisker had walked by the news desk and overheard the call about a hostage taking in the Lower East Side. It had come from a WPA intern posted at the shack in NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza.

  “It’s got something to do with a dispute about an antique flintlock pistol that belonged to Napoleon.” When Lisker heard that, he stopped cold.

  “Napoleon?” Lisker said to the assignment editor on the line with the intern. “That gives this a global hook. We should jump on it.”

  “I’ll send the intern,” the assignment editor said.

  “No.” Lisker looked at Jack. “Send Gannon.”

  Gannon lifted his head from his keyboard. He’d been working on ways to find his anonymous caller. His monitor displayed his notes on his tip.

  “But the intern’s closer,” Gannon said, closing his file.

  Lisker approached, jabbing his finger at him.

  “Listen up, hotshot! You’ve shown us zero since Phoenix, so get your ass down there now and get us a story on Napoleon’s pistol!”

  Gannon grabbed his jacket, phone, notebook and recorder.

  “Jack—” the assignment editor had his hand clasped over a phone “—Angelo Dixon is heading down in his car. He’ll pick you up out front.”

  So now here he was with Dixon, waiting for this thing with Sylvester, Gustav and Napoleon’s pistol to wind down.

  Dixon had one eye clenched behind his digital camera. Gently rolling his long lens, he shot several frames of a disheveled man crouched near a police car and talking to cops.