Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

back of his neck. He didn’t need telling what the worse things were but the voice told him anyway. “A five-year-old? Lots worse. And plenty of people willing to pay to do it.”

McNulty wanted to shout down the phone but that would only make it worse for Tilly. His blood boiled but he kept his anger in check. He could let it out later but not until he got Tilly back. It took a lot of effort to sound calm as he spoke. “Go on.”

The voice was back on track. “No cops.”

McNulty thought about downtown Waltham. “There are cops everywhere.”

“Not where we’re going.”

McNulty considered that but didn’t try and guess. He’d be told soon enough. Waltham PD would be knee-deep-in-shit busy along the parade route and at the scene of the explosion. Off duty officers would have been called in. Neighboring forces would have offered backup. The focus would be Banks Square and Waltham High School. They may have even canceled the protection detail surrounding Judge Reynolds. Everyone looking one way. Nobody looking over their shoulder where this had all begun. McNulty knew what the kidnapper was going to say even before he said it.

“Both bags. One in each hand. At the movie courtroom. In an hour.”

There were a few more instructions then the kidnapper hung up. McNulty looked up to the sky and let out a lung-emptying sigh. His hands were shaking, not from fear but from anger. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to greet his sister. Susan had aged ten years since he’d last seen her. He supposed that’s how parents of kidnapped children always looked. Gaunt, haunted, with dark-ringed staring eyes. When he folded her in his arms she was shaking more than he was.

“It’s gonna be all right.”

It was one of those empty promises that people make in the movies and that McNulty always tried to get Larry to cut out of his scripts. A cliché that was only a cliché because people actually said it to calm other people down. If you said it with enough authority it sometimes worked. It didn’t work now.

“Like breaking Mr. Cruckshank’s nose made everything all right?”

There was no defence to that, so he went on the attack. “Oh, I’m going to do so much more than break this guy’s nose.”

Susan almost collapsed in McNulty’s arms. “Tilly?”

McNulty kept her upright and began to guide her up the driveway to the house. “I heard her.” Then he lied because that’s the other thing you do to keep a parent’s spirits up. “She’s okay.”

He walked her through the side door and sat her at the kitchen table. He did what the English always do in a situation like this, he put the kettle on to distract Susan from her daughter’s plight. Distraction.

He put the kettle down. Ever since this started, everything had been a distraction of one kind or another. Like a magician making you look at one hand while performing the trick with the other. Like John Wayne punching from one angle so it looked real from another.

McNulty thought about the movie set. This time, he wasn’t going to get away with hiding in the back room with a camera crew. The same applied to having the cops hiding around the corner with a SWAT team. This would have to be a Vince McNulty show, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little help. “How big is Chester Brook Orphanage?”

Susan looked baffled. “Big enough to let you have a movie set and not miss the space.”

McNulty turned the kettle off and took out his phone. There was only one person he knew with more knowledge about the layout of Chester Brook Orphanage than his sister—the man who had brought her to America. Harlan DeVries. It was time to make some calls.

FIFTY-THREE

He left the car in the Aston Martin parking lot and crossed the street, a lone figure approaching the fake courthouse in the evening sun. The magic hour, the time of day when the light has a golden glow that turns sunsets into paintings. It wasn’t dusk yet but the sun was dipping toward the banks of cloud massing on the horizon. The clouds were torn by atmospherics and touched with fire from the dying sun. He stood in the middle of the street with a heavy bag in each hand and thought that F.K. would love to be filming this.

The crime scene tape fluttered in a gentle breeze, which would get stronger with the approaching weather front. The main door to the west wing of the orphanage where the gunman had burst in were closed and sealed. The side door into the hallway was open and inviting, ready for him to walk through and exchange a million dollars for Tilly Carter. He stood in the doorway and hesitated.

This is a very bad idea, he thought.

He didn’t pause for long. When the only choices left are bad choices you just have to make the most of the one you choose. He nudged the door wider with one of the bags and stepped into the hallway. Carrying two bags meant he couldn’t even take a fire extinguisher to a gunfight. That’s why the gunman had insisted. That’s why this was a very bad idea.

He walked along the hallway toward the lobby and the courtroom. Shafts of sunlight angled down from the tall windows and turned the lobby into a blazing furnace of color. It was the epitome of that walking-into-the-light moment. The makeup chair still lay on its side between the double doors. He took a deep breath and walked to the door. There was no attempt to be quiet. His footsteps echoed through the silence. He shifted his weight and flexed his arms. The bags were heavy. He didn’t want his arms becoming stiff for when he’d need to move fast.

Another pause. Another nudge of the door with the sports bag. Then he stepped into the killing ground and let the choices take care