Tough Justice: Countdown (Part 5 of 8)
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Janie Crouch
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Chapter One
Eight seconds wasn’t a very long time unless you were riding a damn bull.
“Step back, everybody,” Nick told the team. There was no point in endangering more people than necessary. And he had no idea how the bomb squad leader was doing anything, much less trying to diffuse a bomb, with those flashing strobe lights. They were going off at the rate of three or four per second.
Like the damn paparazzi.
The entire point for Selfie Guy, Nick was sure. Benjamin Johnson would probably never take another selfie for as long as he lived.
Which would be about three more seconds.
But instead of the earsplitting explosion they’d expected, it was the leader of the bomb squad—the man who had ordered everyone out and risked his own life—who spoke.
“Clear!”
Nobody moved for just a second, unable to believe they’d gotten so damn lucky.
“That’s right, you heard me, you bastards. Clear!” the man yelled again. “Now someone please write an epic poem about how fucking awesome I am.”
The bomb squad came out from behind the truck, hooting and hollering. Hugging and high-fiving each other. Evidently none of them thought the team leader would be successful either.
Lara caught Nick’s eye, shaking her head at the same time. They’d gotten a break. For what seemed like the first time they’d gotten a break in this damn case.
“Hey, nobody go in there,” Nick called out in case the squad decided to go carry their boss out on their shoulders or something and ruin the crime scene. He grabbed one of the men. “What’s your team leader’s first name? The guy in there that I was talking to earlier?”
“Chandler.”
Lieutenant Davis walked out of the warehouse, his team slapping him on the shoulder, a few bowing in reverence. He made his way directly to Nick and Lara.
It was only close up that they could see the pallor of his face and sweat dripping down his temples. Chandler Davis had been well aware of how close to death he’d been.
“Close one there, Lieutenant.” Nick gave him a respectful dip of the head. “Thank you.”
Davis gave a brief nod.
Lara slapped him on his well-padded shoulder that still wouldn’t have saved his life if that bomb had gone off. “Came down to between cutting either the red or blue wire, right?”
Davis chuckled, rolling his eyes. “As always. Lucky guess on my part. Had a fifty-fifty chance.”
Nick was sure luck had very little to do with what Davis had just pulled off.
“Keep your guys back and let us take over from here, Chandler,” Nick said to Davis. “We want to preserve the scene as best we can.”
Davis nodded and headed over to his team.
Lara gestured to some paramedics. “You guys come with us.”
They rushed inside the building to Benjamin Johnson. He was conscious, but barely.
“Please,” he moaned. “Please turn them off.”
The flashing lights. Nick didn’t blame him. But they couldn’t turn them off until the forensics team did their work.
“We’ve got an ambulance outside,” Lara told him. “Let’s get you into that.”
She cut through the zip ties that held the man’s arms, wrists, legs and chest to the chair. Dried blood matted his skin and clothing from where Johnson had struggled against his bonds. When he was free, she and Nick helped him stand.
He almost instantly collapsed.
“Whoa there,” Nick said, taking most of Johnson’s weight. The smell of body odor and urine overwhelmed both him and Lara. But nothing much could be done about it. It was difficult to tell how harmed Johnson had been by the bomber. But at least he seemed somewhat coherent. Not brain damaged. Able to answer questions.
Hopefully able to identify the man who had done this to him.
The paramedics moved over with the gurney. They took Johnson from Lara and Nick and helped him onto it, one of them taking vitals the whole time.
“Is he going to be okay?” Lara asked.
“The doctors will have to say for sure, but it looks to me like he will be.” The young woman nodded. “His blood pressure is extremely high, which is probably to be expected. He looks to be dehydrated. But nothing life-threatening.”
“When do you think he’ll be ready for questioning?” Nick asked.
“He’s stable now,” the woman said. “But we’ve got to get him to the hospital. Doctors are the only ones who can clear him for questioning.”
Nothing they didn’t already know, but it was still hard not to begin questioning Benjamin right away. Nick didn’t want to get all melodramatic, but Johnson was their only hope.
And looking at him right now on the gurney—breathing oxygen through the mask, eyes tightly shut—he didn’t seem fit to answer his own name, much less questions about the appearance of the man who took him.
But then Johnson opened his eyes and reached over past the paramedic to grab Lara’s arm, pulling her toward him with surprising strength. He waved her closer to him with his other hand.
“Careful, Lara,” Nick muttered, hand on his sidearm.
“What’s he going to do? I’m pretty sure I can take him on his best day. I definitely can with him like this.”
Nick refrained from rolling his eyes—barely—as Lara leaned in closer. The woman desperately needed to learn that just because she could do something, didn’t mean that she should.
“What?” she asked Benjamin.
Nick could see she felt bad for what Johnson had been through. Looking at the man twitching every few seconds, pale and sweating, you’d have to be inhuman not to feel a little bad for the guy.
But it only took a few seconds of remembering him taking selfies in front of scenes were dozens of people had died, posting them publicly on social media sites with the express purpose of having the loved ones of victims view them...
Sympathy died a pretty quick death.
“I saw him.” Benjamin’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “The guy who took me. I can identify him. That bastard’s face has been the only thing I’ve kept in my mind for two days. He said he wanted his face to be the last thing I saw before I died.”
Lara’s eyes flew to Nick’s. Another break. One they desperately needed.
“Okay, we’ll meet you in the hospital,” Lara said, reaching out to touch the man then stopping as if she wasn’t sure how to show solidarity. “We can have a sketch artist meet with you.”
Johnson nodded, rubbing his eyes and covering most of his face with his hand. The paramedics wheeled him out.
“This is it, Nick. Finally, a break. The bomber thought Johnson would die here.”
“Rightfully so, since he was within a couple of seconds of that happening.”
Lara nodded and they walked carefully down the questionable stairs of the old warehouse along the Hudson. “The Whisperer didn’t expect Johnson to be able to describe him. And it sounds like a good recollection.”
Witnesses—particularly ones in the middle of a traumatic event—weren’t always the most reliable. Sometimes kidnapping victims were too busy thinking about death and how to survive to really pay attention to the features of their captives. Didn’t sound like that was the case with Johnson.
“I hope so. Cara was pretty shaken over Dan’s murder at the convenience store, but I’m betting she’ll leap at this chance to work with Johnson to catch the perp.”
“With the files Christina was following up with after ruling out the name Michael, I’m going to have her send over anyone with an M name since Dylan McCann is almost positive that was the guy’s name. Maybe we’ll get lucky there.”
“A positive ID beats a sketch artist drawing any day.”
“We’re going to nail this bastard, Nick. I can feel it.”
Nick stepped a little closer, as they walked, happy when she didn’t shift to put distance between them. God, this was when he remembered why he was so damned attracted to Lara. When she was excited to be part of the team and ready to move in for the kill. Her confidence. Her passion. Her zeal. It made her a great agent and made her damn well irresistible to him.
He wished he could make her see it in herself. How great they all were together as a team. Maybe that only applied to them as a working team, nothing personal?
As they got into the car Lara smiled over the roof of it at him. Nick couldn’t help but smile back. The next time he had her in his bed he was going to damn well make sure she didn’t sneak out in the middle of the night.
“Let’s go catch a bad guy.”
* * *
They had to wait more than two hours at the hospital before they could talk to Johnson. He suffered from severe dehydration and disorientation, and would be forced to wear sunglasses for the next few days due to the damage done by the constant strobe lighting.
The first thing that flew through Nick’s mind when he saw Johnson propped in his hospital bed wearing sunglasses was that Johnson now looked like the photos they had of the Whisperer. Lara saw it, too. She had an eyebrow raised as she glanced over at Nick.
He was sure the bomber would just love that. The fact that Johnson was forced to look just like him as he recovered.
Of course, he probably wouldn’t like the fact that Johnson could identify him.
Christina had sent over all the pictures from BrainWave rejects and the hospital had printed them out for them since the doctor said looking at paper would be gentler on Johnson’s damaged eyes than looking at a screen. They would start with the Ms, then move on to everyone if they had to.
Nick hoped it didn’t come to that. Looking at face after face became taxing on someone’s best day. It most definitely wasn’t Johnson’s best.
“How are you feeling?” Lara asked Johnson.
“Like some jackass kept me tied to a chair and had flashes going off at me every half a second,” he sneered. “Took you guys long enough to find me. The doc says I might have permanent damage to my retinas.”
Evidently Johnson had gotten over his thankfulness that he had lived through the ordeal and now was just sullen and pissy.
“I guess the guy who took you thought you liked flashes because of all those damn selfies at the bomb scenes,” Lara shot back.
Nick was tempted to let Lara go off on the guy as much as she obviously wanted to, but they had more important things to do.
“Let’s identify the guy who took you so we can catch him.” Nick touched Lara’s arm to get her to stop. “Do you feel up to looking through some pictures?”
“Yeah. I want to make sure that bastard pays for what he did.”
They showed him the pictures of the rejected BrainWave applicants beginning with Michael names first. Ben didn’t recognize any of them right off the bat so they showed them again more slowly. Both he and Lara were hoping the second time would cause a flair of recognition.
Nothing.
And Johnson was already starting to get agitated from just a dozen pictures. What would looking through nearly 650 do to him? They’d only printed the ones that had something to do with Michael, for all the others Benjamin would have to look at a screen. That would deteriorate the situation even more.
Lara looked over at Nick and whispered, “Let’s show him the Mitchells and Martins, hell, any name that begins with M. Maybe McCann got it wrong.”
Nick nodded. “Okay, then I guess we start at the beginning.”
Her lips pursed. “Let’s hope not.”
When showing Benjamin the pictures on their smartphones was too painful for him with his damaged eyes, they borrowed a laptop from the hospital staff.
They were twelve pictures in of the twenty-one of people whose name started with M when Benjamin stopped them.
“Him. That’s him.” A man, younger than Nick would’ve thought, maybe around twenty years old. Brown hair cut short, eyes too small for his otherwise plain face. Lips pinched in the photo.
“Are you sure?” Lara asked.
“Without a doubt. I am going to be seeing that bastard’s face in my nightmares for a long time.”
Nick caught Lara’s eye and they nodded at each other.
Mitchell Halpert.
Nick immediately brought up his basic information.
“Twenty-one years old. Applied to work at BrainWave two years ago. By their own admission, Halpert seemed to be a genius, but for whatever reason they hadn’t felt like he’d be able to work well with others.”
Lara came over to stand by Nick. “Young, clean-cut, average-looking guy. Not the type you would think would kill over one hundred people. Why is it that the most crazy also look the most normal?”
He nodded. “We’ve got his address. Westchester County. I’m calling the team and having them meet us out there.”
“Get someone to run this past McCann just to cover our bases. We also need to get a protective detail on Benjamin. This Mitchell Halpert guy has to know his plan to kill him didn’t work by now. He might decide to take his revenge or make sure Benjamin’s not around to testify.”
Nick nodded. It definitely wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”
“Let’s get that done then get out there. I want to catch this guy, Nick. Bad. For James. For Victoria.”
“As soon as the warrant comes through, I’ll have the team move in without the local cops so we’re sure not to spook him.”
“Smart.” Lara was already taking out her phone to make her part of the calls. Having both of them able to handle administrative stuff helped. They made a good team.
She punched in a number then waited as she was connected to the people who would get Benjamin’s protective detail started.
“He’s hit us hard,” she said. “It’s time to hit back.”
