Storm Front Read online

  There was one room on the first floor and one on the second that seemed to have more than their share of heat. Mike continued to stare until he was reasonably confident in his assessment.

  Mike showed the scene to Petkowski who concurred. Mike then called Hughes on the radio. “My bet is that the bad guys are on the first floor and the hostage in the room on the second.”

  “Sounds as good as anything,” Hughes said. “I’d just love to be able to verify that scenario before we go charging in.”

  Mike swallowed. Going charging in was something he was not looking forward to. Somehow they had to get closer to the house without being detected. Hopefully, they could use the foul weather to their advantage. There was no reason to fear that Tower and Raines had anything like the technology the cops had.

  “Oh, fuck,” snarled one of the other cops.

  “What?” asked both Mike and Petkowski.

  “You heard the radio?”

  They had not. They’d kept the homeowner’s radio on as background and told the officer nearest it to monitor the local news for any developments regarding the weather.

  The cop shook his head in disbelief. “Some asshole newscaster just announced to the world that the police have two serial killers trapped in a house on Beckett Street in Sheridan.”

  Mike groaned. Maybe, just maybe, the two killers weren’t listening to the radio. It wasn’t likely they’d be that lucky. They now had to assume that Tower and Raines knew they were out there and would use every means at their disposal to keep the cops away. Charging the house against the murderers’ considerable firepower was no longer an option. They had to come up with a better, sneakier way.

  * * *

  I will never, ever, complain about anything, Maddy Kovacs thought. Her back ached from either sitting on the floor or on strange furniture, and her stomach was in a turmoil from the cold Mexican food combined with a Whopper. She hoped she wouldn’t have diarrhea. She thought that if she did, she’d use up all the additional toilet paper that had just been delivered.

  She stood and tried to stretch. She belched and that relieved some of the stress on her stomach. No, she would never complain again. Just like major disasters help put values and problems in a true perspective, so too had the events of the preceding day and night helped her sort out her personal values.

  First, she now had a firm grip on what she wanted her future to be. Any doubts about teaching as a career were gone. Despite all her complaints and groans, she was glad she was in Patton Elementary and able to help when trouble found them. The kids needed her and she needed them. It sounded schmaltzy, but it was the truth. She would teach until she retired, or they carried her out.

  Gone too were any doubts she’d had about Mike Stuart. More than anything, she wanted them to be together and, if right now wasn’t an option, then real soon would have to do. Mike had said he loved her and now she realized that she loved him as well. Hell, she wasn’t some dewy-eyed kid going around proudly but idiotically proclaiming her latest boyfriend as her soul-mate or her life’s companion. No, she was a mature and educated woman who now had a very clear outlook on life.

  Sure, she and Mike had differences, but who didn’t? Maddy wore her Catholicism sincerely, but lightly, and she thought Mike was Episcopalian, if anything. She thought hardly anybody was Episcopalian anymore, and, like many American Catholics, she wasn’t all that concerned about announcements from the Vatican. She would decide how many children they would have and when, along with Mike, she added hastily. Maddy hated the thought of abortion, but would not hesitate to have one if her life was in danger, or if the child was going to be terribly handicapped. She didn’t see any problems with Mike on either issue.

  As to money, heck, they both had good jobs and didn’t piss away what they earned.

  Maddy worked on stretching some more, and reluctant muscles creaked and began to function. She belched again and grinned at her crudeness. She walked quietly into the kitchen, trying not to disturb those who were sleeping. There was a pot of hot coffee on the stove. Electricity might be out, but the old range in the kitchen cooked with gas. Thank you, God!

  She poured herself a cup and took a sip of the black stuff. She shuddered as the caffeine attacked her dormant system and slapped around some nerve endings. Maybe, just maybe, she and the others would be out of Patton Elementary and back to their real homes by tonight. The weather said the storm was going to break up and maybe they could soon send home the kids still in their care. That would be real nice for all concerned.

  Maddy sensed that she had an unwashed odor about her and was glad that the cold kept it down. Of course, they were all a little ripe, especially some of the kids who weren’t all that up on personal hygiene in the first place. God, she would kill for a warm shower. She’d already changed into the clothing she’d brought in her backpack. Maybe Mike would be her white knight on a charging snowmobile and take both of them home. Fat chance.

  “Hi.”

  Maddy turned and saw two high school girls standing in the doorway and smiling shyly. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Actually, we thought we could help you. I’m Tessa and this is Lori and we heard that your boyfriend is that real nice cop who helped us yesterday morning.”

  Maddy laughed. “If his name is Mike Stuart, you’re right. So what can we do for each other?”

  “Seriously,” Tessa said. “We are bored out of our minds. We’ve been to the library and we were weeks ahead in our homework when the power went and, besides, it’s full of kids making out and smoking pot. We just thought we could be useful.”

  “Our parents know we’re safe,” said Lori.

  Maddy made a mental note to have the library checked. What was that overweight cop doing besides sitting in the office? “Either of you ever babysat?” They both had. “Well, you are hired.”

  * * *

  “Chief Bench, where are you when I need you?” Mayor Carter snapped into his phone. A few moments later, his chief of police was in his office. Bench’s eyes were red, and his face was pale, almost gray. He looked nauseous, which went well with the likelihood that he had a hangover. Otherwise, he seemed fairly lucid, although he stank of booze and old sweat. Carter shook his head. The man was a pig. He would have to go before the spectacle he’d made of himself rubbed off on the office of the mayor.

  “Chief, I want you to fire Sergeant Stuart.”

  “What?”

  “Damn it, Bench, you heard me.”

  Bench snickered, then tried to flick some dirt off his shirt. He stopped when he realized it was a stain. “Well, do you have a reason for wanting to can him, or is it because he pisses you off? Y’know, we do have a few little rules around here involving the termination of public employees. The last time I checked, he got an outstanding personnel evaluation from DiMona, which was signed off by both you and me, which also means it’s gonna be difficult to make a case to throw him out. He’s not a part of the union, but we do have written procedures regarding stuff like canning his ass without just cause, so you’ve got to give me a good reason before I can even start.”

  “Well, didn’t he let that reporter in?”

  “No, the doors were open and she walked in.”

  “Damn it, you know what I mean. Someone told her to come here and spy on us. Was that Stuart?”

  “Uh-uh. I really think that someone else did it. Maybe DiMona called her. He hates my guts, and he’s not that fond of you, either.”

  “But Stuart is DiMona’s boy.”

  “Still can’t just fire him.”

  “Then suspend him.” Carter was getting frustrated and suspected that Bench was enjoying his discomfiture.

  “Can’t do that either, and even if we could, we shouldn’t because we don’t have any extra cops around here. But why are you so gung ho on getting rid of him? Don’t bullshit me. The reporter thing doesn’t cut it.”

  “He punched me and made me give him the list of defective buildings I’d put up.”
r />   Bench laughed. “That’s priceless, although it does explain why you look like shit.”

  Carter was desperate. “I just want all this to go away. You know the FBI’s after me, don’t you?”

  Bench laughed again and stood up. Then he glared at Carter with a semblance of dignity he hadn’t shown in years. “Of course. I’m one of the guys who tipped them off, you dumb arrogant fucker. I’ve been telling them all about the way you’ve screwed the city, and I’m getting immunity in return. Now that all my shortcomings are going to be on the eleven o’clock news, I’m going to retire and save the city the aggravation of sacking me. Have a nice day, Mayor.” He turned and walked out of the office. He slammed the door behind him.

  Bench grinned as he walked down the hall to his office. It wouldn’t be his for much longer, but that was okay. He heard a sharp thudding sound and turned back to the mayor’s office.

  * * *

  Traci Lawford lived by the heat vent in her second-floor bedroom that had become a prison. It was both a source of warmth and knowledge. Sometimes Tower and Raines moved off and she couldn’t hear them very well, but, more often than not, they came through loud and clear.

  They were arguing again and she didn’t know whether that was good or bad. The snow hadn’t let up, which should have meant she was safe. The snow was her friend. She needed a friend.

  The argument between her two tormentors directly concerned her. They’d picked up something on the radio about her, and they were considering leaving now and not waiting for the weather to break. However, they didn’t know where the cops were. Logic said they were in the closest houses, but no one was visible. Traci had gone to a window and tried to signal, but got no response. She could scarcely see the nearest houses. They were little more than shapes in the snow, which meant no one could see her either. She wanted to scream. If the police were out there, why didn’t they come?

  Media exposure had been one of her fears and it had come true. Someone, someone on her list of so-called friends, had contacted the media without a thought to her safety. She gritted her teeth. If she ever got out of this, she’d kill whoever it was.

  The absurdity of the situation struck her and she almost smiled. If she ever got out of this, she’d thank God, not go looking for revenge. Her survival was paramount. What happened in the next few minutes, up to a couple of hours, would determine whether she ever saw her husband again, or celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday.

  Now they were talking about using her as a hostage when they left and killing her when they got clear because then she would be just so much additional weight on the snowmobile. They wouldn’t even just throw her off because she knew too much. No, they’d decided that they would shoot her in the back of the head. She was terrified and wanted to break down, but willed herself not to. She had to stay focused.

  Traci accepted as fact that they were planning to kill her. She did not accept as fact that she had to go quietly or easily. They had shamed her, hurt her, and humiliated her, but they had not destroyed her. For some reason she recalled a line from the movie Independence Day. She would not go easily into the night if she could possibly help it.

  Traci stood up and walked nervously to the window. It was time.

  * * *

  Mike squinted through the night vision scope. He thought he had seen motion at the second-floor window, and had mentioned it to the other cops.

  “Thank God you said that,” said Officer Charley Donlan. “I thought I was going nuts. For an instant I thought I saw a naked woman up there, but then the snow got in the way.”

  Mike wondered why Donlan hadn’t mentioned it in the first place. Was he afraid the others would laugh at him? If it was a woman, naked or not, it had to be Traci Lawford. At least they knew where she was. His hunch that she was on the second floor was correct. Now all they had to do was take advantage of that small fact.

  “How do I look?” asked Petkowski from behind him. Mike was startled by the apparition in white, then grinned.

  “You look like a Russian soldier at Stalingrad.”

  “Nah, I thought I looked like a management trainee for the KKK.”

  Petkowski was wearing a couple of white sheets that had been pinned and roughly sewn together. A pillowcase hid his head. He carried an M4, the carbine variant of the military’s M16 that was also covered by white bedding. Out in the snow, he would be damn near invisible to the unaided eye.

  “You sure you want to do this, buddy?” Mike asked.

  “Hell yes,” Petkowski answered with a trace of indignation. “Now give me a kiss goodbye, sailor.”

  Instead Mike patted him on the head and wished him good luck. All the kidding in the world couldn’t hide the fact that Petkowski was going to crawl through the deep snow to the Lawford house. Fortunately, they didn’t think that Tower and Raines had anything in the way of night vision or thermal imaging gear. If they did, Petkowski was screwed.

  After he got to the house, they didn’t have a real plan. It would depend on where the bad guys actually were and what they might do. One of Hughes’ cops was going to attempt the same thing, but from the other side of the house.

  It was nuts, Mike thought, but did they really have any other choices?

  Petkowski opened a door that was out of view from the Lawford house and dropped down into the snow. Within seconds it was as if he no longer existed. Night vision didn’t help. Infrared, however, picked up the traces of his body heat and registered him as moving with exquisite slowness towards the foreboding dwelling.

  * * *

  Maddy Kovacs was confident that the worst of their ordeal was over. Now all they had to do was wait to be rescued and taken home. Well, maybe rescued was too strong a term. It was not as if their lives were in danger. They were dry and safe in a school, not bobbing around in the ocean on a lifeboat. Nor were they endangered by fire. In fact, a little warm fire might be a welcome diversion.

  Wilson Craft’s death had been a tragic accident, nothing more. Perhaps all they’d been was terribly inconvenienced, although the late Wilson Craft might feel otherwise.

  Maddy wondered if she had a home to go to. Her condo was well built, she thought, and it did have a steeply pitched roof that should have shed a lot of the snow, but you never knew. Neither of her roommates had made it home yet, and calls to neighbors about her property had gone unanswered.

  “Just where the hell is everybody,” she muttered to herself and drew surprised stares from a couple of sleepy children and grins from Tessa and Lori. The two girls had been surprisingly helpful. They were able to communicate with the children at a different level than she could. No matter how friendly a teacher might be, she was still a teacher, an authority figure.

  At least she had no pets to worry about. Not even a goldfish. Several teachers were concerned about cats and dogs, although they all admitted that the animals would be more uncomfortable than in any real danger. They’d all been left with water and food as on any other day, so the real worry was where a dog might go to poop and pee, and if it got bored, what would it chew on. Cats used litter boxes, of course, and were above getting bored. If cleaning up dog shit from the family room carpet was the worst that happened, they would have fared well.

  She left the classroom and walked down an empty hallway. It was good to be alone, if only for a few moments. Life in Patton Elementary in many ways did resemble being on a crowded lifeboat. She opened the door to the gym and stepped in. Wilson Craft, the maintenance man, had fallen and died on that floor and there was no longer any trace of either him or the frantic efforts to save him. It was as if he’d never existed. There must be a lesson in that, she thought, and maybe someday I’ll figure out what it is.

  Maddy shivered. It was colder than expected in the gym. Of course, with no heat there was no reason for it to be warm. But she didn’t expect it to be quite as cold as it was.

  She felt a drop of moisture on her cheek. Snow. She looked up and saw a patch of light through the roof and wisps of snow
filtering down. There was a hole in the roof, and, as she stared in disbelief, it seemed to widen.

  “Oh God,” she said and walked carefully from the gym as if the sounds of her steps would disturb anything. When she got to the hallway she called out for Donna Harris, who came up quickly, recognizing the urgency in Maddy’s voice.

  “What’s up?”

  Maddy swallowed hard. “The roof. I think it’s beginning to collapse.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Stan Petkowski crawled slowly through the snow. Each motion was choreographed by him to make as little of his body as possible visible to anyone in the house. In effect, he was swimming, leaning forward and dragging himself with his arms while his feet tried to find the ground beneath him. When he stopped, which he did only when he needed to catch his breath, the snow came up to the middle of his chest. He thought about going into the snow and burrowing like a rabbit in a cartoon, but this was real, not a damned cartoon.

  Still, he was not a fool. He did not believe for an instant that he would be totally undetected. For one thing, his crawling left a trail. When the snow finally stopped, anyone in the house would be able to follow that trail and see where it ended and his priceless body began. He would be an unmissable target. Stan hoped the snow kept up for at least a little while after he reached the house and blurred evidence of his passing. Also, as he crawled, he got wet, and the sheets that covered him were becoming translucent as they dampened, reducing their effect as camouflage.

  Oh well, he thought, who ever said this would be easy? He paused behind a massive lump on the Lawfords’ front lawn. It was a large ornamental shrub that had been turned into a snow mountain. It hid him from anyone in the house and gave him a chance to rest. He burrowed into it and tried to warm up. At least he was out of the wind and the snow no longer fell directly on him. It was almost an igloo and igloos kept Eskimos warm, didn’t they? So why was he still cold?