“David…”
But there is no time to debate this anymore. I pick up the mobile phone and call Semsey’s number. He picks up immediately.
“I’m glad you called back, David. You guys okay?”
“We are both fine,” I say. “For now. But I need a way out of here. Some transportation, for starters.”
“Okay, David, sure.” Semsey spoke with the we’re-in-this-together-pal voice. He sounds calmer now, more in control. The five minutes have helped him. “We can try to arrange that.”
“Not try,” I snap.
We have reached the Lamy Outlet Center. Philip veers to the left. We start down toward the parking garage. I grab the car door handle and get ready.
“I want it done. No excuses.”
Philip adds for Semsey’s listening pleasure, “David, put down the gun. He’ll do what you want.”
“I need a helicopter,” I tell Semsey. “Fully fueled.”
Dialogue straight from an old TV show. But Semsey seems okay with it. He plays his role: “That might take a few hours, David.”
“Bullshit. You have a copter in the air. You think I’m stupid?”
“That’s not ours. It’s probably a traffic copter. Or maybe a commuter. You can’t expect us to shut down—”
“You’re lying.”
“Look, let’s stay calm.”
“I want that copter away from us. Now.”
“I have a guy calling the closest airports now, David.”
“And I want my own helicopter. With fuel and a pilot. And the pilot better be unarmed.”
Philip nods up ahead. I’m ready.
“Okay, David, no problem. But you have to give us a little time.”
Philip stops the car. I pull the handle, open the door, roll out. As soon as I hit the pavement, Philip drives off. It all happens in a matter of two, three seconds tops. I crouch down and hide behind a gray Hyundai as I say, “How much time?” to Semsey without missing a beat. “I don’t want to shoot the warden.”
“Nobody wants that.”
“But you’re forcing my hand. This is all bullshit. Maybe I’ll shoot him in the leg. Just so you know I’m serious.”
“No, David, look, we know you’re serious. That’s why we’ve been keeping our distance. Just be reasonable, okay? We can make this work.”
I dart between cars, heading toward the entrance to the mall. No suspicious cars have followed us in. No suspicious people are in the area. “Listen, Semsey, here is exactly what I want.”
I enter the lower lobby of the mall and take the up escalator.
I’m free. For now.
Chapter
14
Max—FBI Special Agent Max Bernstein—paced the warden’s reception area in a fury.
Max was always in constant motion. His mom used to say that he had “ants in his pants.” Teachers complained that he was disruptive because he never stopped squirming in his chair. One teacher, Mrs. Matthis in fourth grade, begged the principal to let her strap him to the back of his chair. Right now, as always when he entered a new space, Max paced the room like a dog getting used to his surroundings. He blinked a lot. His eyes darted everywhere except to the eyes of another human being. He chewed his fingernails. He looked disheveled in his oversized FBI windbreaker. He was short of stature with a thick steel-wool head of hair he could never quite comb into place on the very few times a year he tried. His constant yet inconsistent jittery movements had led to him being good-naturedly dubbed Twitch by his fellow federal officers. Of course, back in the day, when he’d first come out of the closet at a time when no other federal agents were following suit, the ever-creative homophobes had switched the moniker from Twitch to—ha, ha, ha—Bitch.
Feds can be funny.
“He got away,” Detective Semsey, the local cop who had unsuccessfully tried to handle this, told him.
“So we heard,” Max said.
They’d set up home base in Warden Philip Mackenzie’s reception area because the actual office was still a crime scene. A street map of Briggs County was hung on a wall to trace the path of the warden’s car with a yellow highlighter. Old-school idea, Max thought. He liked that. There was a laptop computer providing a feed from the helicopter’s camera. Semsey and his cohorts had watched it all go down. By the time Max and his partner, Special Agent Sarah Jablonski, arrived, it was all over.
There were seven other people in the reception area with Max, but the only one he’d known before five minutes ago was Sarah. Sarah Jablonski had been Max’s partner, his lieutenant, his right hand, his indispensable associate, whatever other term you need to understand that he adored her and needed her, for sixteen years. Sarah was a big redhead, a full six feet tall, broad at the shoulders, and she dwarfed Max, who was more than six inches shorter. Their size difference led to a somewhat comical appearance, something they used to their advantage.
Two of the other men in the room were federal marshals under his command. The other four were with the prison system or local police. Max sat down in front of the computer monitor. His right leg jackhammered in what would probably be diagnosed as restless legs syndrome if Max ever decided to look into it. Everyone in the room watched Max as he replayed the end of the video over and over.
“You got something, Max?” Sarah asked.
He didn’t reply. Sarah didn’t press it. They both understood what that meant.
Still staring at the screen, Max asked, “Who here from the prison is highest ranked?”
“I am,” a meaty man who’d sweated through his short-sleeve dress shirt said. “My name is—”
Max didn’t care about his name or rank. “We are going to need a few things pronto.”
“Like?”
“Like a list of any visitors Burroughs had in recent days.”
“Okay.”
“Any close family or friends. Cellmates he might have talked to or who’ve been released. He’s going to need to reach out to somebody for help. Let’s get eyes on them.”
“On it.”
Max rose from the chair and began pacing again. He gnawed on the nail of his index finger, not gently or casually, but like a Rottweiler breaking in a new toy. The others exchanged glances. Sarah was used to this.
“Is the warden back yet, Sarah?”
“He just arrived, Max.”
“We ready?”
“We ready,” she said.
Still pacing, Max gave a big nod. He stopped in front of the laptop and hit the play button again. On the tape, Warden Philip Mackenzie was stepping out of his car and waving his hands in the air toward the helicopter filming him. Max watched. Then he watched it again. Sarah stood over his shoulder.
“You want me to bring him in now, Max?”
“One more time, Sarah.”
Max started the video from the beginning. Periodically he would leap with the grace of a wounded gazelle from the computer screen to the map, trace the route with his gnawed-on index finger, go back to the computer screen. All the while Max fiddled with the dozen rubber bands—exactly a dozen, never eleven, never thirteen—he kept around his wrist.
“Semsey,” Max barked.
“Right here.”