“Black and whites are beginning to return from their assigned patrols—” the captain started but Hardwick interrupted him.
“And not one has located our victim? Shouldn’t we have them start another search?” Hardwick asked, concern lacing his tone. He stared up at the map they’d placed in the dispatch office, noting all of the marks that dotted the paper. There were so many that he knew doing a re-search would be futile. The captain verbalized his thoughts aloud.
“There’s no time. We’ve only got thirty minutes—”
“Twenty-six minutes, to be precise,” Wilson interjected. “Sorry.” He added quickly before they could chastise him.
The front desk phone rang, interrupting the captain’s retort. He reached over and snatched up the receiver before the front desk sergeant could.
“Go!” He snapped at the caller. He sighed heavily after replacing the receiver and his brow etched with deep concern as he turned back to his detectives, “The last of the patrols are headed back now. I’ve instructed all officers to reassemble for a final—and hopefully speedy—evaluation on what we may have overlooked.”
“I don’t get it,” Cortez snapped. “We’ve covered every possible avenue. Dotted all our Is and crossed all our Ts, but we’ve still managed to screw up somewhere. Could he be playing us?”
“You mean did he feed us false information to get back at Hardwick?” Wilson asked. This time, despite the looks of disgruntlement, Wilson didn’t apologize. Instead, he raised his chin a notch, “Don’t tell me I’m the only one thinking it. Hardwick has been riding this guy since the Madison abduction, and Price made it clear that he didn’t like you none,” he concluded, turning to face his partner.
“I thought we already clarified that the information was legit. We all agreed it was legit, despite his animosity toward me. What I think, Wilson, is that you’re overlooking the fact that he wanted us to find this one; he didn’t want to have to move on to a fourth victim. Because he knows that the more times he’s forced to abduct someone, the greater the chances he’ll screw up and get caught, and the last thing this guy wants is to get caught. So, no, I don’t think he fed us misinformation; I think one of our patrols screwed up.”
“Shit,” the captain muttered. “That’s a monumental assumption, Hardwick.”
“Maybe,” Hardwick defended, “but it’s also the most logical one.”
The captain sighed heavily, “Well, if that’s the case, let’s see if we have time to find out which patrol it was, and pray we have time to right the wrong. Let’s go.”
The four men filed from the captain’s office and entered the conference room where, once again, every member of the APD’s Zone 5 converged. They stopped milling about, murmuring to one another when they saw their superiors enter. Each one quickly took a seat and waited for the captain to take his place at the podium.
“We have twenty minutes to find this girl,” he said without preamble, “yet each member of my department has returned empty handed. Not a damned clue as to where she is. That means that we either overlooked a place, or failed to check them all. Now, which is it and what can we do to rectify it?”
The members of the force started discussions among themselves, and with each passing minute, the knit in the captain’s brow deepened. When the clock ticked down to nearly ten minutes remaining, he knew that their chance of saving this next victim was nearly nonexistent. He wanted to cry out of sheer frustration.
And then two of his patrolmen stood.
“Sir,” one called out, “we think we know where she could be.”
“Well, damn it, speak up!” the captain shouted.
“Tell me in the car,” Hardwick amended, jumping from the stage and running toward the two patrolmen. “With me!” he yelled, as he sprinted past.
They ran to the parking structure and nearly pulled the doors off the hinges of Hardwick’s Crown Victoria in their haste to hit the road.
At the entrance of the parking garage, Hardwick snapped, “Where are we headed?”
“Bank of America Plaza,” one of the officer’s responded.
Hardwick’s brow knitted, but he didn’t question their response. He slammed his foot down on the accelerator at the same time that he flicked on his lights and sirens. Then picked up the radio and called it in, “Bank of America Plaza. Dispatch an ambulance and the hazmat unit too. Don’t wait. We don’t want a repeat of last time,” he concluded and then turned his attention back to the officers. “Johnson. Peters. Why there?” Hardwick waited for their response, as they raced toward their destination, but neither officer seemed inclined to share. “Why there?” he repeated with more force. The two officers glanced at each other and then at the floorboard.
“There’s a room we didn’t check,” Johnson responded quietly, his tone full of shame and remorse.
“Why not? What in heaven’s name would possess you to ignore your orders…”
“There was a maintenance vehicle parked in front of it,” Peters snapped in their defense, as if that justified everything.
“Someone better start explaining or I’m going to beat you both to a pulp,” Hardwick snarled.
Peters sat up a bit straighter and explained what happened, “We were on patrol, doing as we’d been told,” he defended. “When we reached the lower level of the Plaza’s parking structure, we saw a maintenance car parked in front of that particular closet. Since the maintenance worker had already been in there, we reasoned that there was no way the victim could be in there. After all, wouldn’t the guy have called the police if he’d found her?”
“So if you’re so certain you made the right call, why are we headed there now?”
Again, both heads bent and then Johnson spoke up, “Because no one else seemed to have overlooked one of the closets in their grid.”
“If they had, we wouldn’t have needed to speak out about the one we overlooked, because we would have been more certain that we were right,” Peters snapped belligerent.
“If she dies, I’ll see that you are both kicked off the force,” Hardwick retorted, and then started swearing up a blue streak when he saw the time. One minute remained.
He spun the car’s wheel sharply, skidding along the pavement, and nearly collided with the side of the BoA Plaza building as he worked to right his trajectory. The car bounced sharply as they hit the first speed bump; but Hardwick wasn’t slowing any more than was necessary to prevent his crashing into a concrete barrier.
“Damn it all to hell and back,” he yelled as the seconds ticked down far quicker than his decent, “why did this garage have to have so many levels?”
With three levels to go, the radio squawked, “Detective Hardwick, we have a call to dispatch.”
Hardwick yelled loudly in anger, but ignored the dispatcher, willing his car to move faster. He rounded the corner of the lower level and slammed on the brakes, sending his car skidding dangerously along the oily surface. Moments later, it rammed into the concrete barrier, jarring the men inside, but none wasted a moment releasing their seatbelts and jumping from the vehicle.
“Be alive. Be alive,” Hardwick chanted to himself as he ran across the short expanse. In the back of his agonized mind, it registered that the utility vehicle that caused the officers to forgo their search remained parked where they’d spotted it earlier in the day. That meant that the APD would most likely be searching the area for another body, but he couldn’t dwell on that right now.
He reached the door and yanked it open expecting acrid gas to assault him, but there wasn’t any this time. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
“How long before the ambulance arrives?” It was a rhetorical question, because none of them really knew when to anticipate the arrival, and since neither officer knew, neither answered. Hardwick sized up the interior of the closet quickly and then his gaze fell on the woman in the chair. Her skin was already bloating, and she was barely breathing. He knew instinctively that Price had injected her with some form of toxin. If that observation was accurate, he knew there wasn’t anything he could do for her, and neither would the paramedics be able to, if they weren’t carrying anti-venom; and the right anti-venom at that. Still, he wasn’t one to quit that easily.
Within a split second of making that observation, he spotted the half-full medical bag hanging above her head, and then the IV catheter protruding from her arm. He took a step, and quickly, carefully, pulled the needle out and then pulled a switchblade from his pocket.
“Grab the AED1 from my trunk,” he called and began cutting the ties that bound the victim’s hands, feet, and waist. When he finished, she fell forward into his embrace, completely limp—and lifeless—he observed in frustrated anger.
He lifted her and moved her from the closet, laying her down on the concrete flooring with care. He was pleased to see that the two officers had not only retrieved the AED with haste, but had proceeded to prep and charge it. He breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t waste even more precious time; especially since she’d completely stopped breathing at this point. There was no way he could be certain that shocking her heart muscle would even help, but he felt powerless and needed to do something. If the paramedics were there, they’d have attached the paddles to Hardwick’s chest and turned up the power all the way as retribution for his stupidity, for they knew, even if Hardwick didn’t, that if he started the blood flow through her veins again, the venom would begin circulating much faster. Yes, she was officially deceased, but the less venom circulating, the less damage to vital organs—potentially.
Hardwick opened the victim’s shirt and placed the paddles according to the instructions. He heard tires screeching and looked up, hoping that it would be the paramedics. It wasn’t. The van that rounded the bend was from Channel 5, and before it came to a full stop, Cassandra Bouchard leapt out, followed rapidly behind by her cameraman, who worked to get his camera rolling.
“Keep them away, or I’ll kill ’em,” he snarled at the officers, who quickly stood to form a two-man human barrier.
“You found the latest victim, but is she alive?” Cassandra called out as soon as she was certain they were live on air.
AED: Automated External Defibrillator↩