Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

“I meant the second baby,” he said.

“There was a second one?”

He smiled again.

Two in one day, she thought. Not such a tough guy. She drew a deep breath and stood up. “Wanna go back for more?”

“Like you do,” he said.

They walked back toward the fallen buildings. The volunteers, cops, and firefighters were swarming over the debris now, searching for survivors or more of the dead. At least half a dozen dogs and their handlers were roaming the wreckage.

“Let’s pace ourselves this time,” Quinn said, seeing that there were signs of order and progress. “It’s almost twilight.”

Pearl was so tired she simply grunted her agreement.

Quinn knew that even if he tried he couldn’t stop her. Not anymore than she could stop him.

“The Gremlin, you think?” she asked.

“Probably. The little bastard might very well be part of the crowd, standing at the edges, watching and enjoying. And learning.”

“Infuriating,” Pearl said.

Quinn was silent for a few seconds, then stopped and stood still.

Pearl looked up at him.

Quinn said, “I smell gas.”

46

Quinn and Pearl stood still, working the calculus of death. If the buildings had been brought down with bombs, there might still be a few of them around, timed to kill rescuers as well as trapped victims.

Quinn clutched Pearl’s arm and turned her around. They passed a few rescuers going the other direction, toward the collapsed building.

One of them was a cop, covered with grit and what looked like dried blood.

Quinn blocked him, standing squarely in front of him and clutching both his shoulders. “Gas!” He shook the man. “We’ve gotta turn these people around!”

He simply stared at Quinn.

Seeing that the man was in deep shock, Quinn tried to turn him around, but he pulled away and resumed his shuffling walk toward the two buildings that had been reduced to ruins. Half pulling Pearl with him, Quinn started walking faster toward the NYPD sawhorses and yellow tape, and the seemingly impossible geometry of dozens of hastily parked vehicles.

“Gas!” Quinn shouted again, waving his free arm. “The gas lines are broken! We gotta get outta here!”

A few people heard him, then stood still and listened to see what he was yelling about.

When they finally figured it out, they began walking away from the collapsed buildings.

The smell of the gas was stronger now. And constant. More and more people left the scene of the bombing. Some began to jog. Any second another, even worse, explosion might occur.

Almost everyone, rubber-necker or rescuer, was moving away. Several NYPD cops were yelling as Quinn had, and waving their arms, trying to hurry people along. This wasn’t simply someone who’d left the stove on without the pilot light. Cars within the crazy mosaic of parked vehicles tried to cut in on each other, fighting for distance. Metal screeched. Fenders crunched. A uniform was trying without success to recover some order in what had become a panic. He was knocked down by what looked like a football player dressed like a banker, then got up and ran after the man. One engine after another was starting up. People shouted. Starters ground. Horns honked.

“Every time an engine starts, there’s a spark,” Quinn told Pearl.

“Thanks for that information,” she said.

The word spread quickly, and the word was gas. Everyone outside a vehicle was running now, picking up speed. Within seconds traffic jammed up and cars were being abandoned. Pearl stopped fighting Quinn and ran alongside him.

The screaming began.

Close behind them, the morning burst into flames.

Blocks away and upwind, the Gremlin sat at a rooftop restaurant window table and watched what was happening. He had a throwaway cell phone and was describing the scene to Minnie Miner, who sounded genuinely aghast.

The Gremlin knew he’d been on the phone long enough for GPS to pose a threat. He said good-bye to Minnie.

She said, “No, please! Tell me why you did this! Why in God’s name did you do this? Please!”

He turned off the phone, then under cover of the tablecloth, used his butter knife to pry it apart. The cheap plastic case snapped open easily. With powerful hands, he broke the pieces into smaller pieces. He put the broken phone in his sport-coat pocket. When he got a chance he would fold a newspaper around the phone and drop it into a trash receptacle. Why not today’s paper? He’d used the tablecloth so his fingerprints weren’t on flat surfaces of the broken phone. All the dishes and flatware he’d used had already been picked up and transported from his table to the kitchen. He wasn’t leaving any accidental clues.

Diners without window seats were drifting across the restaurant now to stand at the wide windows and gawk at the dark smoke rising from the city. He hoped Minnie’s minions would get a lot of good video out of this. Maybe they’d use that asinine artist’s rendering of him to show along with the video. It was an unflattering likeness, but that was the one thing he liked about it. It didn’t resemble him at all.

He cautioned himself. Overconfidence could lead to minor missteps while he was focusing on avoiding major mistakes.

Though everything had gone as planned, he still had the broken cell phone in his pocket. For all the talking or listening it could do, it might as well have been a stupid drawing of a cell phone. But it could become evidence. It might be a good idea to buy yesterday’s newspaper and turn the phone to trash as soon as possible. There were probably thousands of discarded copies of the Times on streets and in trash receptacles around the city, waiting to be picked up. In a few days they would be unfindable in a landfill.

And in a few days he should be able to view up close the wreckage his bombs had created.

There should be enough of the buildings left standing that they would provide almost an X-ray view. People’s homes, people’s lives, how people lived, how they died, all would be naked for observation and calculation. The guts of the bombed buildings, their lines of water, gas, electricity, would be visible. Secrets would be exposed.

How things worked.

This was very much like reverse engineering. Everything was a learning experience.

He decided to skip a second espresso and let someone else watch the city deal with its wounds.

That was what someone who cared might do.

Later he stopped at a park. There seemed to be no one else around, so he stood for a while and tossed the pieces of the shattered cell phone one by one into a lake, pretending he was feeding the ducks. Though there were no ducks.

Next time, he told himself, bring some bread crumbs.

Or some ducks, if any of them are dumb enough to eat plastic.

He laughed at his own humor.

There was, if one looked in the right places, some amusement in life.

47

Quinn looked up from what he was reading at his desk and saw Renz stomping into the offices of Q&A with a folded morning Times tucked under his arm. He drew the paper out as if removing a sword from its scabbard and slammed it down on Quinn’s desk.

“See a fly?” Quinn asked.

“I see a goddamned hurricane!” Renz said. “It looks like a gigantic Minnie Miner.”

Quinn leaned back in his swivel chair. “She hasn’t blown up any buildings.”

“She’s about to blow up One Police Plaza—with me in it.”

“You’re making a strategic mistake, Harley.”

“Which is?”

“Instead if concentrating on apprehending the Gremlin, you’re concentrating on covering your ass.”

Renz propped his fists on his hips and walked in a tight circle. “I oughta fire you.”