As explosions go, it wasn’t very big, a few grams of plastique, a bomb tech would later estimate. Just enough to fit within the tight confines of the microphone. But enough to remove Cynthia Pelham’s face and everything behind it. I sat in a second-floor room as a paramedic tweezed a small shard of microphone casing from my hand, the only wound sustained in the explosion.
Waltz walked into the room, leaned against the wall. The paramedic closed his bag and left. Waltz’s face was expressionless.
“Where’s Jeremy?” I asked.
“In security headquarters off the lobby, under arrest. He tried to follow us to the second floor. He got looked at real close and didn’t pass inspection.”
“Your brother surrendered peacefully. He wanted to call his lawyer, to have the attorney waiting at the station. I traded him the lawyer call for Folger’s whereabouts. She’s getting picked up now.”
“Lawyer?”
“Solomon Epperman, your brother said. Doesn’t matter. Epperman can’t do diddly for your brother. He’s about to be transported to lock-up.”
“How about Cargyle?”
“Whisked off to Bellevue. He was having some sort of episode, screaming about his father.”
“If Cargyle doesn’t go full tilt down the crazy pipe, I expect he’ll tell amazing tales. Get a good shrink on his case. Male.”
Waltz’s phone rang. His face went dead serious. Relaxed as he talked. Was grinning when he hung up.
“We got Alice. She’s fine. Covered with soot, but she’s kicking and bitching and not a scratch on her.” Waltz looked like he was about to swoon, this time in delight.
“I’m gonna check on Jeremy, Shelly. Tell Alice I’ll see her shortly.”
I got to the front door as my brother was put in the back of a cruiser. He seemed relaxed, resigned to his fate. Once everything got sorted out, my brother would return to the Institute.
Bullard appeared at my side. His hand was out and I took it. “Good job today, Ryder. Good job on the whole freaking everything. Between you and old Cluff, it’s got a happy ending.”
“If I wouldn’t have insisted I knew everything and let Cluff dig,” I admitted, “we’d have been onto Cargyle days ago.”
Bullard could have agreed, but damn if he wasn’t magnanimous. “Maybe. But it wasn’t your call to make, Ryder, it was the Lieutenant’s. I’m heading downtown. Want a ride?”
I accepted and we pulled away with my brother ahead of us by three car lengths, two bull-necked cops in the front of the cruiser, Jeremy in back. The car holding my brother stopped at a light. Jeremy craned his head around, studying the city, knowing he’d never return.
“Pull over by that drugstore a minute?” I asked Bullard.
“No problem. Whatcha need?”
“Gotta buy someone a toothbrush.”
He angled to the curb. I started to hop out, but was distracted by horns behind us, a wall of sound growing louder, followed by a roaring engine, a diesel wound to max rpm’s, red-lined.
“What’s all the racket?” Bullard said. He glanced in his rear-view. Whispered, “Holy shit.”
The roar became a scream of tearing metal and breaking glass. We turned in our seats to see a garbage truck fishtailing wildly, ripping the sides from parked cars like a can opener, pushing vehicles from its path like paper. A smashed motorcycle was snagged on the truck’s bumper, throwing sparks. Black smoke boiled, locomotive style, from the truck’s vertical exhaust.
The garbage hauler tagged our bumper and spun us as it howled past, trash pouring to the street from its open compacter. The hauler rammed the cruiser carrying Jeremy. Metal sheared away as the cruiser swirled, cops tumbling out. The truck stopped in the middle of the street and the door exploded open. A naked man leapt out, bandoliers draping his body, assault rifles in both hands.
He screamed, “Hail Asmodeus!”
And launched a fusillade of bullets in all directions.
Bullard howled, diving behind the cruiser, me scrambling after him. Two crashed vehicles exploded into flames. The dense smoke was acrid and blinding. I heard screams of bystanders as they stumbled over one another to escape. The air stank of garbage and gunpowder.
“Hail Asmodeus,” the man howled again, punctuating his slogan with bursts of fire. Our cruiser’s window dissolved into powdered glass. I stuck one eye above the hood and saw our assailant toss away one of the banana-clipped rifles, grab another. He jumped on the running board of the truck, stuck a foot and hand inside, flooring the accelerator and roaring in a circle as he fired, shoveling aside cars and tearing down light poles. Sparks dripped from broken wires. A store sign across the street crashed to the sidewalk.
The truck turned and started in our direction.
“Let’s book,” Bullard said. We sprinted a dozen feet to low concrete planters, dove for cover. Bullets skittered into the planters, ricochets whined.
Bullard seemed to be talking to himself and I realized he was praying. He sucked down a deep breath, stood, held his weapon in the classic double-hand stance. He narrowed an eye and emptied his clip. The truck veered left and smashed into the drugstore. The engine died. The first three feet of the vehicle’s snout was buried in the store. The naked man was nowhere in sight. Heat ticked from the truck’s engine. Bullard crept to the driver’s side, me a few paces behind.
“The bastard’s down,” Bullard said. “He’s staying down.”
The assailant had tumbled to the street, the upper right quarter of his head still in the truck cab. We stared at the man’s arms and torso, a webwork of bizarre tattoos, as if screaming his madness in ink. An automatic rifle was in his hands. Two more rifles and a shotgun were in the truck cab, plus eight sticks of dynamite.
“So what you think that was all about?” Bullard said.
I ran to the cruiser transporting Jeremy. Empty. His escorts crept from a storefront on the far side of the street, weapons drawn. Bullard waved the guns down. Smoke and sirens overwhelmed the street as emergency vehicles arrived. I ran the avenue, looking down cross streets, alleys. Every street for blocks was crawling with law enforcement.
“Any sign of Ridgecliff?” I asked every cop I saw.
There wasn’t.
I don’t think it was Epperman my brother called.