Storm Front Read online

  Mike felt his spirits sink. “Who was the contractor?”

  “How the hell would I know? I just said I wasn’t here then. Officer, I’ve got dead and injured to care for and there’s no time to play like this is a quiz show.”

  Mike persisted. “Look, you had to have seen the records. Tell me one thing—was it Carter-Sheridan Construction or something like that?”

  Holcomb looked surprised. “Yeah, I think it was something like that. Why?”

  Mike felt sick to his stomach. He saw that the store was crawling with people digging for victims and that others were trying to shore up the rest of the roof. The situation was terrible, but as under control as it was going to get. He had to get back to the station and make a call to DiMona. He needed that list yesterday.

  * * *

  Traci crawled towards the bedroom closet. Raines and Tower had raped her again and had gone downstairs. They’d seemed distracted while they assaulted her, treating her as if she almost wasn’t there. Before, they’d talked to her and tried to get a rise out of her while they assaulted and humiliated her. This time she was little more than a piece of meat. She realized that their callous behavior indicated that they’d written her off.

  But it was still snowing and that was good. Unless they decided to change their plans, she thought. She crawled to the walk-in closet and looked around. There was no clothing, just as there were no sheets or blankets on the bed. The two animals had taken everything she might find useful.

  Traci reached under a shelf and groped. Her hand found something solid and she sighed. Thank God that her husband was an electronics gizmo freak who always bought fresh toys and relegated the old ones to the closet.

  What she had in her hand was a laptop computer that he’d replaced only a few months ago with a newer version. She’d scolded him for wasting money when the old one was still perfectly good. Now, she thought that he’d made a wonderful investment. If she recalled correctly, this one had a wireless modem that connected directly to the internet. She had no idea how this occurred, she only hoped it still worked.

  However, there was no cord, so she didn’t have a way to plug it into the wall. She prayed that the battery still had some life. Judging from the dust on it, the computer had been in the closet since it had been replaced. She turned it on and was relieved and startled when it beeped. Had they heard it? She adjusted the sound so no chirpy voices might tell all that she had mail or whatever.

  She dialed and went online. Fast, she thought, she had to be fast. She had no idea how much life was left in the batteries, and her captors could come back to torment her some more at any time.

  Traci composed a short e-mail message: “Help me. 2 killers in house. Send cops. Phone line cut. Will kill me.” She ended it with her name and street address, 561 Beckett, and then sent it to everyone in her e-mail address book. Then she sent it a second time. And a third. Finally, she sensed the laptop’s battery weakening. She exited and turned it off.

  Please God, she thought, please. She crawled over to the vent.

  * * *

  Mike quickly realized he’d been nuts to think he could get the list of questionable buildings from DiMona at six in the morning. First off, the lieutenant hadn’t answered his phone. Maybe he was taking a shit or maybe he was playing blackjack. Maybe he was through with Mike calling him.

  Nor would he have been able to get DiMona’s FBI contact to send the list because his contact wasn’t even in his office yet. Hell, if the agent was local, he might not be able to make it in to work in the first place. He might be as snowbound as everyone else.

  That left Plan B, Mike thought and smiled grimly. Plan B might cost him his career, but he had to know which buildings were in jeopardy. He opened Mayor Carter’s office door and closed it behind him. The mayor looked exhausted. Mike felt no sympathy for him.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

  Mike stood over Carter. “I want to know what buildings Carter-Sheridan constructed.”

  Carter looked startled. “What?”

  “Mayor Carter, don’t fuck with me,” Mike said with a cold fury. “You’re being investigated by the FBI for putting up shitty buildings, and one of them just fell down. People are dead and a lot more hurt and I need to know about the others so we can evacuate them.”

  Carter paled, then recovered his poise. He rose and glared back at Mike. “First, Sergeant Stuart, I am your boss, not the other way around. Second, my attorney told me to say nothing about Carter-Sheridan Construction. However, for your benefit I will say I don’t know anything about poorly constructed buildings. It’s a damn shame a roof collapsed, but I think a lot of other roofs covered with heavy snow are going to fail with or without any assistance from Carter-Sheridan Construction. Now, get the hell out of here and start writing your resignation.”

  Mike snorted, then punched Carter in the middle of the chest, sitting him back down in the chair and gasping for breath. “I didn’t think this would be easy,” Mike said, “but I don’t care. Now, give me that list, and if you don’t have one, make one. And don’t tell me you don’t remember at least most of them. You know about the Feds, so you know what buildings they’re looking at.”

  Carter tried to rise again, but Mike again hit him in the chest. The mayor gasped and sat down again. “How many more times do you want me to hit you?” Mike snarled. He reached over and grabbed Carter by the tie and dragged him across the desk. As he fell across it and onto the floor, Mike punched him in the kidney, then pushed his face into the side of his desk.

  “Notice how I haven’t hit you in the face? That’s so there’ll be no evidence of this. I’m a cop and we can do things like that real well. We can go on all day if you’d like.”

  Someone was knocking on the mayor’s door. “Stay out,” Mike commanded, then turned on the mayor who was writhing on the floor. Blood was pouring freely from his nose.

  “The list,” Mike snarled and made like he was going to hit him again.

  They mayor said he’d had enough and said so in a voice that was little more than a squeal. Mike handed him a pad and paper. In moments he was done. “That’s all I can remember,” Carter said weakly and now in total subservience. “If I think of others, I’ll let you know.”

  Mike took the list and made a copy on Carter’s Xerox machine. He glanced at it before putting it in his pocket. He returned the original to Carter. It didn’t seem logical that the mayor would have them all committed to memory. However, he now had phone calls to make and people to send out into the windy cold and the still falling snow. He opened the door and saw Chief Bench standing in the hallway. He was nowhere near as drunk as he had been, although his eyes were far from clear.

  “Wha’s wrong with him?” Bench asked, looking beyond Mike and into the room at a disheveled and bleeding Carter.

  Mike recalled Petkowski and the abusive husband. “He’s got the flu and then he fell.”

  “Bullshit,” glared Bench.

  Mike was about to respond when the 911 supervisor, Thea Hamilton, pushed her sizeable body between them. “Cut the crap. Chief, either be useful or go back to your office, we’ve got a real problem on our hands.”

  * * *

  Wally Wellman looked at the latest satellite picture. It actually showed features of the earth to the south of them that had earlier been obscured by the storm. He waved the picture in triumph and grinned wearily. “It’s going to end, folks.”

  “Can’t be,” said his young anchorman, Mort Cristman. “We’ve got thirty-nine days more to go and we’ve got to build a boat. Or maybe a really large snowmobile that can hold all the animals two by two. Preferably one with a hot tub in it.”

  “And you’d really put two of everything in it?” Wally asked.

  Mort grinned. “Nah, I’d stuff it with chicks and beer. Seriously, are you serious? Is this thing really going to stop sometime this century?”

  Wally looked at the weather map. Now the end of the storm was as sharply defined as the fron
t that had been hanging around for an almost twenty-four-hour period that seemed like a decade. Could it have been that little time? It felt as if he’d been in the studio for an eternity. The front itself was finally moving east and into warmer air where it would become the heavy rain that had been predicted.

  “It won’t turn itself off like a switch, but it will begin to slow down and stop completely in a couple of hours. Sorry, but it won’t turn off as quickly and dramatically as it turned on, so we’re still in it for a while.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, for starters, young guys like you can go out and shovel. I’d really like my car cleaned off.” He laughed when Mort and a couple of staffers gave him the finger.

  * * *

  Wilson Craft was dead. One minute he was trying to breathe, and the next he wasn’t. His eyes were suddenly wide open in shock as he couldn’t get air into his lungs, but they quickly closed and seemed to glaze over. The doctor tried CPR even though he feared it might further complicate Wilson’s injuries, but nothing worked. Maddy wept softly and wondered if it had been a blessing. The hell it was, she decided. Everyone wanted to live and Wilson had fought hard to stave off death. Damn. A simple fall off a ladder should not have been fatal, but it was.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said as he covered Craft’s body with his own jacket. “We’ll get him out of sight so the kids don’t panic.”

  It seemed like the logical, sensible thing to do; only she didn’t want to be logical and sensible. Maddy wanted to cry, but held it back. Once she started it would be a long time before she stopped. There’d be time for that later. She still had scores of kids to take care of.

  Maddy and a couple of others helped the doctor drag Wilson’s body into a walk-in storage closet where they laid him on the floor. “Hope we remember he’s there,” said Frieda. “It’d be a helluva note if we didn’t find him before fall.”

  The inanity of it sent them into nervous, exhausted laughter. It felt good. The world would not end. The radio was saying that the storm would end in a few hours, so all they had to do was hang on.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mike and Patti Hughes listened intently to the recorded call to 911. It had come in long distance, from Boston.

  “Jesus,” muttered Patti as she listened again. “An e-mailed distress call.” She looked at Mike, uncertain. “A hoax?”

  “Maybe, but we can’t take a chance.” He checked the city map. 561 Beckett was about a mile away. The records said it was occupied and owned by Thomas and Traci Lawford. The Lawfords had made no contacts with the police since moving in, so they knew nothing more about them other than that they paid their taxes. They were just ordinary invisible people and now they were hurting.

  “If the two she’s talking about are Tower and Raines, and that seems obvious, we’re going to need a lot of outside firepower and help,” Patti said.

  “Which we’re not going to get,” Mike added. “We’re on our own. Again.”

  A more detailed map was pulled out, along with some overhead photos taken as part of an aerial survey a couple of years ago. Google Earth was used as well. The Lawford residence sat in the middle of a large lot. There were houses on all sides, but nothing close.

  Mike tried to recall if he’d ever driven through the neighborhood and thought he had, although nothing rang a bell. The relative isolation of the house created a problem, but the falling snow would help screen their movements. With luck, they could get cops inside a couple of the neighboring houses and set up for whatever might occur. The bad news was that, like the move on the motel, they would only have a handful of officers available. There’d be no help from other departments, the county sheriff, state police, or the FBI. Once again they’d have to do it with the tools and weapons at hand.

  Perhaps that’s better, Mike thought. If they showed up at the Lawfords’ front door with a ton of firepower, Tower and Raines might open up with the automatic weapons they’d stolen. No, maybe it’d be better to do it on a small scale.

  I’m kidding myself, he thought. Tower and Raines know we’re after them and will be ready. We’re screwed. But maybe they didn’t know about the e-mail? Knowing that the police were looking for them and knowing the police had found them were two different things.

  “I’ve gotten a couple of more phone calls about the e-mail,” Thea Hamilton said. “She must’ve sent it out to everyone she knew. I’ve also checked with the phone company and the phone line is out. Or cut.”

  Mike thought furiously. “How much time before the snow breaks?”

  “A couple of hours,” said Patti. “And that’s when Tower and Raines will kill her and make their break. So that means we really do have no choice but to make do with the resources at hand.” She grinned wanly. “What we lack in manpower, we may be able to make up for in technology. Thanks to all that Federal money, the department’s got some nice bells and whistles for us to play with.”

  “You really think it’ll make up the difference?” Petkowski asked.

  “No,” she said. “But what are our choices? We just can’t leave her there, can we? Not that I care, but where’s the chief?”

  Thea laughed harshly. “Back in his office with the door closed. Same thing with the mayor. Will somebody tell me just what the hell’s going on around here?”

  * * *

  Mort Cristman yawned hugely. “Hey, Wally, is this really the worst disaster ever to hit this area?”

  “Might be,” Wally said as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “At least it’s one of the worst natural disasters. Some man-made tragedies have been real beauts. I vaguely recall reading about a cruise ship burning and sinking on one of the Great Lakes, and, of course, there’ve been tornados. About a century and a half ago, there was a truly hellacious forest fire in Michigan that killed a bunch, but that’s about it for so-called natural disasters. It’ll all depend on the final body count.”

  “Jeez, how morbid. I hope there isn’t some ghoul out there hoping the body count will make this disaster number one.”

  “I hope not too. Tell me, do you remember where you were when Kennedy was killed?”

  “Sorry, Wally, but I’m too young.”

  “I keep forgetting you’re such a child. How about when the first Gulf War started, or the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center?”

  “Sure. Of course. I was a kid for the Gulf War, but the World Trade Center will stay with me forever.” He shuddered as he recalled the televised horrors. “Some things you never forget, and maybe that’s all to the good. Why?”

  “Nothing, really. I just wonder if we’re all going to remember this blizzard a couple of decades from now. Hell, I wonder if we’ll even remember it a week or two from now? I’ll bet you that, in just a short while, we’ll all be wondering about the NCAA playoffs and the opening of the baseball season. This’ll be nothing more than a bad dream when the snow finally melts. Unless we’ve lost a loved one or our home has been destroyed, it’ll soon be a nuisance and then, after a while, we’ll barely remember this at all.”

  Mort grinned. “If we don’t, I’ll have wasted a whole night with you, sailor boy.”

  * * *

  Eight cops on four snowmobiles moved out from the Sheridan Police Station. Two of the snowmobiles trailed toboggans stacked with equipment. One of the overhead photos of the area they’d found in the City Planning Department’s files had shown them how best to lay out their small manpower resources. Mike, Petkowski, and two other cops would enter a house directly in front of the Lawford residence, while the other four cops, led by Detective Sergeant Patti Hughes, would take over a house to the left.

  They did not have enough manpower to surround the house; instead, they tried to set up an L-shaped ambush that would hopefully cover any directions Raines and Tower might try to use as an escape route. That such an arrangement would reduce the possibility of officers being hit by friendly fire had also entered their minds. The strategy was very similar to what they’d used at the motel
.

  Only one of the two houses they took over had been occupied, and the family hadn’t wanted to leave. Who would blame them? There were three adults and two children. They had a fire in the fireplace and were warm, dry, and comfortable, and here were the cops sending them out into a blizzard. Finally, reason prevailed when they realized they were in danger and the cops promised to put them up at the Sheridan Motor Inn for the duration. The motel’s management said they’d cover any costs. The family swore they would not contact any of the media. They understood it was imperative that the operation be kept secret.

  Mike and Hughes could only hope they would keep their word. He visualized the aggressive blonde reporter who’d been wandering the police station and city hall showing up with a camera and demanding to interview Tower and Raines, and then asking Traci Lawford how she felt about being savaged by two murderers.

  Two other houses flanking the Lawfords’ were quickly checked and found empty. It was highly unlikely anyone would be returning home, although someone’s arrival by snowmobile or cross-country skis was a possibility they could do without. If they had any chance of rescuing Traci Lawford, they had to have a large amount of luck and secrecy.

  Petkowski set out his weapons and electronic toys. Along with sniper rifles and shotguns, the police also had fully automatic M16s. It occurred to them that they had brought more weapons than they had police officers to use them.

  Petkowski and Mike set up portable infra-red and thermal imaging sensors and directed them at the Lawford house. Detective Hughes, in the other side of the L, was doing the same.

  “You gonna be able to see through the snow?” Mike asked her. Their night and thermal equipment was state of the art, but still not perfect. They also both hoped their radios, which were encrypted, could not be picked up by the media or cop wannabes.

  “Not as well as if it wasn’t snowing, but we can’t have everything, now can we?”

  The world is not perfect and life is not fair, Mike thought. And there’s no such thing as a free lunch, he added. The clichés were old and worn, but terribly correct. He squinted through the night-vision scope at the Lawford house. At first he could see nothing—the snow was distorting the view, but then he thought he saw slivers of light and heat coming through otherwise covered windows. But were they unusual? Certainly there was some heat in the house.