Takeover - Lisa Black [4]
“You say that like it’s my fault.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you still have three sets of clothing to examine, from yesterday’s suicides and that crib death. And we’ve got the National Transportation Safety Board coming in to see the harnesses from that helicopter crash last week. Not to mention that everyone is going to be late because traffic is backed up now that the freakin’ secretary of state is going to grace Cleveland with her presence.” But he said all this absently, without any real concern. Their field of work was, by definition, reactive. Without a way to investigate crimes before they occurred, they were always behind. As long as Theresa kept sufficiently current with the caseload so that Leo didn’t have to do any of it, all was right in his world.
Now he wrinkled his nose at a heart-attack victim who had lain in her own kitchen for several days before being found, and he opened his mouth to go on.
“Theresa!” Don Delgado, moving with uncharacteristic haste, pushed aside a gurney to approach them in the badly lit hallway. As the occupied gurney was stopped, none too gently, by the tiled wall, the young DNA analyst grasped both her shoulders, and she knew that something was very, very wrong. “Theresa. There’s a problem.”
Her throat tightened. “Rachael,” she rasped out.
“No.” His shiny olive skin had paled, which did nothing to reassure her. “Your dead guy from this morning—”
“Him.” She jerked her head to the gurney that rested against her hip.
“Yeah. He worked for a bank downtown. Two guys just tried to rob it. Security tried to contain them, and they grabbed a bunch of people in the lobby as hostages. CPD has the place locked down, but at the moment it’s a standoff.”
Okay, she thought. Why is that so—
“It’s Paul, Theresa. He’s in there with them. He’s one of the hostages.”
CHAPTER 2
8:14 A.M.
“There’s nothing you can do, honey,” Frank told her over the phone. “Just don’t panic. He’ll be okay. No one’s dead yet.”
Yet? “What happened?” she asked for the third time, her Nextel crammed to her ear. She barely felt the hard folding seat of the old teaching amphitheater underneath her, or Don’s arm around her shoulders. Her brain had disconnected from her body, and her body, with animal instinct, knew that survival lay in staying calm and quiet. Hysteria would attract disaster, like lightning to a metal pole.
Her brain, meanwhile, worked to keep up. “What happened?”
“We had a takeover about ten minutes ago. Two guys rolled up in front of the bank and went in, armed with some heavy guns. They grabbed some Fed workers before security could do anything, but one guard who’s either stupid or crazy ran outside and removed their car. So they stayed put, with the guns and the hostages. Paul had gone to the Fed to talk to the coworkers and the boss about Ludlow. I had roused a neighbor to get the scoop on our little family, so he went on without me. No one is hurt, Tess. You getting me?”
Something smelled bad, she thought. Literally. A pathologist must have opened up the first victim in the autopsy room next door, and for once her stomach rebelled at the odor. “How do you know Paul’s there? Maybe he’s not there.”
“Fed security has cameras in the lobby, and I spoke to the guy who took the car—Paul had to show his ID to get through the metal detector. But he’s not hurt, that’s what you have to focus on.”
“Have you called him? Does he answer his—”
“Tess. He’s in plainclothes. If these guys haven’t searched him for the gun and badge, then they probably don’t know he’s a cop, and I don’t want to tip them off by ringing his Nextel. Don’t call him.”
She shivered, and Don’s arm tightened around her. “Okay, yeah…if Ludlow is somehow related to this, then these guys have already murdered today.”
“I know.”
The upset in her stomach melted into a pain, flowing