TWENTY-EIGHT
When Raveneau walked down the street to the house his pulse was loud in his ears. He wanted to be calm, but that was impossible. He stepped on to a flagstone path and followed that to a concrete stoop and a green-painted front door. He knocked. He listened and waited. He knocked again and the door opened but Drury didn’t show himself.
‘Get in here!’
The door closed fast, deadbolt snicking into place as the gun pushed into his neck.
‘On the floor now! Down! Get down on your knees! Lay down!’
Drury made a clumsy search then kicked at Raveneau’s head before ordering him to get up. He walked Raveneau at gunpoint down a hallway. The hostage negotiator had advised talking as soon as he was in the door. So far, Raveneau hadn’t said anything and the gun barrel jabbed at his back again.
‘In there, go in there,’ and Raveneau walked into a bedroom.
‘We’re not doing a trade any more,’ Drury said.
‘Where is she?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘Show me her.’
Raveneau looked up at him both hands gripping a Glock, the veins on the side of his neck bulging.
‘How about I shoot you instead?’
‘Shoot me and a SWAT team will be in the door in seconds after hearing the discharge. They’re out there getting ready right now. You’ve got about thirty seconds to get her outside, so maybe forty-five seconds to live.’
‘You’ve got less.’
Raveneau took a step toward him. ‘OK, you can do that or I can free her, get her out the front door and we can talk. The Feds know you got used. You got set-up. You were framed and you can trade what you know. You can make a deal with the FBI but let me get the hostage out the door. We’re running out of time. Where is she?’
‘Shut up.’
‘You’ve got me, you don’t need her.’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘They want to deal. They’re worried. They’re scared. They’ll listen.’
For a moment he thought Drury was going to pull the trigger, and maybe he was. But he didn’t and motioned with the gun barrel for Raveneau to get up and walk down the hallway.
She was in a tub in the bathroom with duct tape wrapped around her head holding a crushed roll of toilet paper to her forehead. He saw the blood and figured the toilet paper was about a wound. She was light, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Raveneau carried her down the hall. He tore the tape off her ankles and led her to the front door. Drury was two-handing the gun behind him as he opened the door just enough for her to go through. He didn’t doubt Drury would pull the trigger if anything happened, and he didn’t know if the door was going to knock him backwards as a SWAT team charged in, or whether glass was going to shatter somewhere else in the house.
As soon as the opening was big enough she was gone. He heard her running as he locked the door again and Drury stepped back.
‘Down the hall and up the stairs.’
They climbed carpeted stairs to the master bedroom. With the lights off and dusk falling it was nearly dark as Raveneau talked.
‘They need you. You are the key and they don’t want you killed. I can get the FBI on the phone. You’ll have to show them where you dropped the plywood before you picked it up a second time. They don’t care what you got paid. That’s not what they’re after. Get your deal, then trade.’
‘You’re lying.’
But there was no conviction in his voice. He was buying in.
‘They went through your text and email messages.’ Raveneau let that rest a moment in the twilight and then added some bullshit on to it. ‘They ran their algorithm and found the pattern.’
‘I got two thousand dollars.’
‘To drop the plywood and pick it up again?’
After a long pause, Drury said, ‘I’m not going to sit in a prison for life. That’s what they’re telling me I’m going to do. I’m not doing that for two thousand dollars.’
‘You were used.’
‘Yeah, that guy used me.’
‘What guy?’
‘I don’t even know his fucking name.’
‘He offered you the two grand.’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, we’ve got to call. You can dial the number if you don’t trust me. We’ve got to get ahead of the local SWAT guys. They’ll start moving with dark. They’ll only let us sit in here so long. Let’s get the Feds on the line. Let’s get the deal.’
‘Downstairs.’
Drury pushed the gun barrel into his back as they started down. As they reached the bedroom Drury got nervous. He ordered Raveneau down on his belly on the floor again and searched by hand for the phone and gun. The light was gone from the room and Raveneau kept saying, ‘Don’t turn on a light whatever you do.’
Drury shoved Raveneau’s phone at him. ‘Find their number. Show it to me.’
Raveneau did that and with the phone to his ear and the gun in his right, Drury called Coe. Coe played his role perfectly, answered crisply, ‘FBI.’ He spoke loud enough for Raveneau to listen in.
‘We know you were used,’ Coe said. ‘We understand and we want to talk. Hold the phone where I can hear Inspector Raveneau say he’s OK.’
Drury held the phone out for Raveneau and as Drury brought the phone back to his ear Coe said loudly, ‘We’ve got a vehicle in the area. We want to pick you up. Are you willing to do that?’
Drury knew it couldn’t be that easy, but he couldn’t come up with the right questions and Coe kept talking. Maybe Drury didn’t know he’d killed a police officer or maybe he fantasized that could be dealt with. Either way, Raveneau could tell Coe was convincing him from the short answers Drury gave. He got the feeling as Drury hung up that he actually believed it was going to happen just as Coe described it.
It at least started that way. Two Fed sedans and a van came down the street. Three FBI agents came to the door though none were standing in front of it when it opened and their guns were drawn when he did come out. Drury laid down his weapon. He accepted their apologies when they told him the wrist restraints were only temporary. As they loaded Drury into the van, the agent in charge turned to Raveneau to thank him.
‘You can thank me on the way,’ Raveneau answered. ‘I’m coming with you.’