A Fine Specimen (24 page)

Coming into the station house, Ratso had seen Eugenio
Carlucci, aka Ginny the Gun, one of Lopez’s men. One of Lopez’s
nastier
men. Ginny was known for blowing out kneecaps if you looked at him sideways.

Ginny had recognized him. Those black eyes as flat and cruel
as a shark’s had narrowed, focused in on Ratso. Lopez would spring Ginny in a
couple of hours then Lopez would know he was with the cops. A minute later,
Lopez would already be making his plans to get rid of him. Lopez was a fast
mover. He would figure something out. Undoubtedly he had someone on his payroll
in the BPD. Unless Ratso could get away—
now
—he was a walking dead man.

Dripping with sweat, Ratso looked around, conscious of each
second passing. The officer who had taken his prints had disappeared and, for
the moment, no one seemed to be paying him any attention even though the squad
room was packed. Ratso flexed his hands. Whatever he was going to do, he
couldn’t do it in handcuffs.

“Hey!” he called out when the officer reappeared without his
prints.

The officer looked over at him, frowning. “Yeah?”

“Fucking hurts.” Ratso held out his handcuffed hands. “Come
on, gimme a break.”

The officer looked him over, then pulled out a key and
unlocked the cuffs. Ratso rubbed his sore wrists. He still didn’t know what he
was going to do but at least he wasn’t in handcuffs anymore.

“Okay,” the officer said, attaching the handcuffs to his
belt. “You just sit still until the lieutenant comes out. He’s been waiting to
talk to you for a long time.”

The lieutenant. Christ.

Ratso looked around desperately. There had to be something
he could do.
Think!

He had the use of his hands and his legs. And his head,
which had never failed him before. He knew his looks fooled a lot of people,
but he was smart. The only really dumb thing he’d ever done in his life was to
keep Angelo Lopez’s accounts. He hadn’t drawn a carefree breath since.

Ratso took in everything while making sure he wasn’t making
eye contact with the cop across the desk. The cop wasn’t paying him any
attention anyway. It looked like there was a little party going on two desks
down, between him and freedom. The uniforms were clustered around a pretty
blonde girl. The girl clearly wasn’t a cop. She was too young, for one thing,
and looked way too innocent. So if she wasn’t a cop, who was she?

Whoever she was, the cops cared about her, that was for
sure. They were laughing and smiling and pumping her hand.

A vague idea started taking shape in Ratso’s mind. But he’d
need someone new to the cop shop, someone clueless…

Shifting in his seat as if he were uncomfortable, Ratso
moved his chair around so he could study the uniforms. Maybe a female cop. A
woman might be weaker…

He looked at the two female cops and changed his mind.

He switched his attention to the youngest-looking cop.
Roscoe, someone called him. Barely old enough to grow a beard, rosy-cheeked, he
was laughing raucously at something someone had said, oblivious to his
surroundings. Clueless.

Perfect.

The party was breaking up and the young blonde girl started
gathering her things. She turned full-face toward Ratso and he blinked at how
pretty she was. Never mind, he told himself. Didn’t make any difference what
she looked like. Pretty girls bought it every day. Besides, who knew? She might
even live.

Ratso was plotting trajectories and moves when the door to
Lieutenant Cruz’s office started opening. Panic skittered up his spine. Once
Alex Cruz was in the room, Ratso knew he wouldn’t be able to get away with
anything. It was now or never.

“Feel sick,” he mumbled.

The cop who had taken his prints looked up at him with a
frown. Ratso knew he was pasty white and he could feel the sweat rolling down
the sides of his face. It was terror, not nausea, but the cop wouldn’t know
that.

“Gotta go to the bathroom.” His voice came out thin and shaky.
“Gotta barf.”

The cop looked him up and down and made a big song and dance
about getting up. “Okay,” he said, giving Ratso a shove toward the corridor. “Let’s
go.”

“Thanks.” Ratso kept his voice low and his eyes to the
ground, the very picture of submission. Lieutenant Cruz’s door was wide open
now. Ratso knew he had only seconds to make his move.

He shuffled forward down the aisle between the desks, toward
the corridor, keeping his head tucked low, eyes darting constantly, aware of
the pig behind him with every fiber of his being.

They were approaching the little cop party.

With a swift look over his shoulder, he saw Cruz still in
his office, talking to a big guy with graying red hair. In a minute he’d be in
the squad room.

Now!

Lightning-fast, Ratso’s right hand snaked out and snatched
Roscoe’s Glock from its holster while wrapping his left arm around the pretty blonde
girl’s neck. He dug the barrel of the gun into her right temple.

“Nobody move!” he shouted. “Or she gets one right through
the head!”

At first Alex couldn’t make any sense of what was happening.
All he could see was a thick wall of blue backs. All of his officers were
shouting “
Freeze
!” over and over, their voices raised over the sound of
a hysterical man screaming. His officers had their weapons out.

He pulled his own gun from his shoulder holster. Some dumb
fuck was actually trying to shoot his way out of the cop shop. Alex smiled
slowly.

No way. Not while he was here.

Alex inched forward, sideways so as to present as small a
target as possible, gun held in both hands and pointed at the ceiling.

“Put your guns down! Down! Or I’ll shoot! I swear I’ll
shoot!” a man was screaming. “You’ll be cleaning her up with a spoon!”

The officers dropped their arms and guns clattered to the
floor. Several moved to the side—and Alex got a clear view of what was
happening.

His blood froze in his veins. The nausea of panic came at
him with a sickening rush.

Somehow Ratso had acquired a gun and he was holding it to
Caitlin’s head. And he was choking her. Even from ten feet away, Alex could
hear Caitlin wheezing, trying to bring air into her agonized lungs.

Ratso was dragging her, almost a dead weight, toward the
door. Caitlin clutched his arm, trying to pull it away from her throat.

Caitlin saw Alex and her eyes widened in recognition. She
gazed entreatingly at him, eyes huge in a pale, shocked face, fingers
scratching at the wiry arm locked around her throat, cutting off the windpipe.

Ratso was beyond feeling scratches. Sweat was pouring down
his face as he moved backward, dragging Caitlin. He screamed at the officers
over and over again. “Don’t move! Don’t nobody move or I’ll shoot. I swear I’ll
shoot! Blow her brains out all over the wall!”

Alex finally broke out of his paralysis. As a rookie cop,
he’d faced down a three-hundred-pound biker high on angel dust. Three hundred
pounds of violent craziness, wielding a knife. The biker had ended up facedown
on the ground, cuffed. Alex hadn’t broken a sweat.

He thought his childhood had inured him to fear. When you’ve
faced death and degradation in your own family, what could scare you?

He feared nobody and nothing. He’d thought.

Right now he was so terrified he couldn’t breathe. Watching
Ratso screw the muzzle into Caitlin’s temple made him shake with terror. The gun’s
safety was off. Ratso was sweating so hard it looked like he’d just come out of
a shower. His hands were slippery with sweat. Alex’s heart gave a huge thump of
terror when he saw Ratso tighten his grip on the weapon, finger in the trigger
guard.

The gun had a four-pound pull, about the strength it would
take to pull the tab on a can of beer. Nothing. A slip of his finger and the
bullet would travel at twelve-hundred feet per second straight through
Caitlin’s head, exiting in a spatter of bone and brain and blood so intense it
would send up a pink mist, and Caitlin would be gone, forever.

Ratso wanted her alive as a hostage, but he was scared and
he wasn’t an operator. He’d always been a petty criminal at best. Right now the
chances were very good that he’d shoot Caitlin by mistake. He’d never make it
downstairs dragging her with him. He was growing more agitated and sweaty by
the second.

The instant he shot Caitlin, he’d be taken down by at least
twelve shots. Suicide by cop.

And Caitlin would be wiped off the face of the earth, as if
she’d never existed. She’d crumple to the ground like a broken doll, bloody and
torn. All that loveliness and light, the beauty and the good humor, the
affection and softness…all of that gone, snuffed out like a candle.

Alex had seen a lot as a cop. He knew exactly what the
bullet would do, exactly what Caitlin’s lifeless body would look like.

Like heartbreak.

While Ratso and the officers screamed at each other, a
blinding truth exploded in Alex’s chest, complete and whole. He didn’t have to
think it through, it just was, a central fact of his life, as much a part of
him as his hands and feet. As incontrovertible as the fact that he breathed and
moved. That the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

He loved Caitlin Summers.

He loved her with all his heart. He had been only half a
man, only half alive before she had come into his life. She had given him
happiness and hope and the promise of love. If Ratso put a bullet through
Caitlin’s brain, he would be putting a bullet through Alex’s heart at the same
time.

All that bullshit about not wanting a committed relationship
was just that—bullshit. He’d spent the most miserable night of his life last
night, in bed with Caitlin but not touching her. The anonymous, emotionless sex
this morning—the kind of sex he’d had all his life—had nearly ripped his heart
out. He had touched her as little as possible because the temptation to simply
grab her, hold her tight, never let go, ask her to stay with him forever, had
been so strong he’d had to grit his teeth to resist it. He’d been so terrified.
Terrified of watching her go, terrified of asking her to stay.

More bullshit. That wasn’t terrifying.
This
was
terrifying, watching a man crazed with fear hold a gun to Caitlin’s head. Every
cell in his body was locked down in dread and horror, making his fear of
commitment of a few hours ago seem ridiculous.

The pistol slipped in Ratso’s sweaty grip and he tightened
his fingers. At the same time he tightened his arm around Caitlin’s neck. She
struggled for air, lips already blue.

“Easy, Ratso,” Alex murmured, moving unobtrusively forward.
“You’re choking her. She won’t do you any good dead.”

“Back off, Cruz!” Ratso shifted his grip and dug the rim of
the barrel harder into Caitlin’s temple. “All of you back off! I want a car
with a full tank of gas waiting for me downstairs. If I so much as sniff
another car trailing me, I’ll shoot her in the head and dump her by the
roadside. Is that clear?” He dug harder with the gun and Caitlin’s mouth opened
in agony. Her eyes were starting a slow roll to the back of her head. Ratso’s
chokehold would kill her before they made it downstairs. “Is that clear?” He
trembled and sweated. “
Huh
?” he screamed. “
Is that clear
?”

Alex didn’t dare look away from him to see what his men were
doing. He stared into Ratso’s eyes, gauging. The instant he thought Ratso was
going to shoot or that Caitlin was suffocating, he’d take the shot. A small
hope was better than none.

“You won’t get far, Ratso.” Alex knew his voice was calm and
his face expressionless. Only
he
knew his heart was pounding. Only he
knew how sick he was with fear. “And now we’ll have to add assault and
kidnapping to the charges.”

“I won’t be around!” Ratso gave off a hysterical,
high-pitched giggle. “You won’t get me and Lopez won’t get me. I’ll disappear
off the face of the earth. I should have done it days ago!”

“Ratso, listen to me.” Alex took a chance and stepped
forward casually. “You can’t—”

“Get back!” Ratso screamed, scrambling backward, pulling
Caitlin with him. She was paper-white, feet scrabbling for purchase on the
linoleum floor.

Then time slowed down and events unfurled in a deadly, slow-motion
dance. Alex knew there were people shouting but he heard nothing, saw nothing.

The only thing he saw was Caitlin’s foot catching on a chair
leg, her slow fall, Ratso’s grimace as he felt her weight sag in his arms,
Caitlin’s leg caught between his, Ratso’s slow-motion fall to the floor…

A gunshot sounded and time sped up again.

Alex felt the blood drain from his body and wondered dimly
how he could still be standing when his heart had stopped.

The officers moved in a disciplined rush, weapons whisked
from the floor and ready. They surrounded the area where Ratso and Caitlin had
gone down. Alex couldn’t see anything except their backs and for a moment he
was glad. For one more second, he would allow himself the thought of Caitlin
alive. Alive, and not bloody and still on the squad-room floor. One more second
and—

The officers parted and, like a miracle, he saw Caitlin
rise, torn, bloody, unspeakably beautiful.

With a cry she ran toward him and he caught her, crushing
her fiercely to him, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would pound its
way out of his chest.

“Alex!” Caitlin was crying, her arms wound tightly around
his neck. She was trembling and sobbing. He didn’t even feel the tears coursing
down his own cheeks until he noticed that he was wetting her hair. His weapon
clattered to the floor and he didn’t know if his legs could bear their combined
weight.

“Hey, boss.” Kathy put a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her
eyes were full of compassion. “Why don’t the two of you go into your office for
a while?” She threw a contemptuous glance behind her. “Let us clean up the
garbage.”