Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [85]
The pilot swung the helicopter down by the rocks and spoke through a megaphone mounted above the light: “Miss Gennaro, we cannot attempt evacuation. The walls are too close and there’s no purchase.”
Angie nodded and waved tiredly, her body white in the harsh spotlight, strings of her long black hair clamped to her cheeks.
“Directly behind those rocks,” the pilot called over the megaphone, “is a trail. Follow it down and keep turning left. You’ll end up on Ricciuti Drive. There’ll be someone there to meet you.”
Angie gave him a thumbs-up and sat down on the rocks, inhaled deeply, and placed the doll on her lap.
She shrank to nothing but a pale dot in a wall of black as the helicopter banked once again and shot up over the quarry walls, and the land raced far too quickly underneath as we dipped over the old railway route and then headed west for the ski slopes in the Blue Hills.
“The hell was she looking for down there?” The cop beside me lowered his rifle.
“The girl,” I said.
“Hell,” the cop said, “we’re going back in with divers.”
“At night?” I said.
The cop looked through his visor at me. “Probably,” he said, with a bit of hesitation. “Definitely in the morning.”
“I think she was hoping to find her before it got to that point,” I said.
The cop shrugged. “Man, if Amanda McCready’s in that quarry, only God decides whether we find her corpse or not.”
19
We landed on the bunny slope of the Blue Hills Reservation, dropped down neatly between the ski lift lines, and watched as the second helicopter did the same, settled gently about twenty yards away.
Several police cars and ambulances, two MDC ranger cars, and a few trooper units greeted us.
Broussard jumped out of the second helicopter and raced toward the first police car, pulled the uniformed cop from the driver’s seat.
I jogged over as he started the engine. “Where’s Poole?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “He wasn’t where we left him. He wasn’t anywhere on the trail. I think he either tried to make it back down on his own or came up to the top when he heard the shots.”
Major Dempsey came rushing across the grass toward us. “Broussard, what the hell happened up there?”
“Long story, Major.”
I climbed in beside Broussard.
“Where’s the child?”
“There was no kid up there,” Broussard said. “It was a setup.”
Dempsey leaned in the window. “I heard the girl’s doll was floating in the water.”
Broussard looked at me, eyes wild.
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t see her body, though.”
Broussard dropped the shift into DRIVE. “Got to find Poole, sir.”
“Sergeant Raftopoulos called in two minutes ago. He’s on Pritchett Street. Says we got some DOAs.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
Dempsey leaned back from the window. “I have a ranger unit going over to Ricciuti Drive to get your partner, Mr. Kenzie.”
“Thanks.”
“Who fired all the ordnance up there?”
“Don’t know, sir. They pinned my ass down, though.”
The sudden whine of a turbine screeched into the field, and Dempsey had to shout to be heard.
“They can’t get out!” Dempsey yelled. “They’re locked in! There’s no way out!”
“Yes, sir.”
“No sign of the girl?” Dempsey seemed to think that if he asked the question enough, sooner or later he’d get the answer he was hoping for.
Broussard shook his head. “Look, sir, with all due respect, Sergeant Raftopoulos had some sort of heart attack on the trail. I want to get to him.”
“Go.” Dempsey stepped aside and waved several cars into line behind us as Broussard punched the gas and drove down the slope, pinned the wheel at a line of trees and spun onto a dirt path, swung left a few seconds later, and sped down a crater-ravaged trail toward the expressway off-ramp that would lead around a rotary and onto Pritchett Street.
Two more dusty paths and we broke onto Quarry Street and raced down the southern side of the hills, with red and blue lights bouncing and swerving behind us in the rearview mirror.
Broussard didn’t slow as he shot through