Chapter 5
“Yes!” Patten made a fist. “That’s the news I wanna hear! What about the troopers?”
“They’re establishing a perimeter and calling up the UEX guys.” The officer skidded to a stop in front of Patten and handed him the parka she was carrying. “Thought you’d want your gear, sir.”
“Excellent! Good job, kid!” He pulled a hat out of one sleeve and shrugged on the coat. “Let’s go, boys and girls. You wanna be in on it, don’tcha?”
“UEX?” Knox asked.
Russ was already heading for the door. “Unexploded ordnance.”
Clare jogged to catch up to him. “You think this might be it?”
“The staties do, and that’s good enough for me.
” He caught the door swinging shut behind Patten and held it wide.
Clare stepped out of the way of their own three young officers.
“Patten’s right; we’re the only ones who’ve heard the threats.
At this point, I’m just grateful somebody’s taking them seriously. ”
They crossed to the parking lot together.
A dull-colored unmarked was pulling out—Patten, he assumed—and the three young officers were scrambling into Terrance’s truck.
“Looks like it’s you and me, darlin’—” His stride broke and he almost stumbled.
“You and me and Yíxīn Zhào?” The attorney was standing next to her car, waving excitedly at them. “What the hell?”
“It’s her case, too, Russ. More than yours, really. Hadley and I thought she deserved to be in on it. And she wants to help.”
“Oh, great. Perfect if I need to make an emergency deposition.”
Clare elbowed him. “Be nice.” She raised her voice. “Right on time!”
“What’s happening? I was about to come in, and then everyone ran outside like an American fire drill.”
“Hop in my car.” Clare opened the driver’s side door before Russ could reach it. “Russ’ll fill you in on the way.”
Miraculously, they didn’t crash en route, although there were a few times when Russ had to close his eyes as Clare aggressively wove through heavy traffic on the interstate.
At the Colonie Center Russ could see two Albany PD vehicles parked in the emergency lane by the nearest entrance, and two more farther down at the next bank of doors.
Just how he’d have done it; turn out in force, but quietly enough so as not to scare the civilians.
Uniforms were allowing people to exit, but refusing anyone trying to come in.
“Now what?” Clare stopped a few feet away from the entrance. Shoppers were milling around, puzzled, annoyed, some hurrying away to their cars and others loudly complaining.
“Let’s ask him.” Russ worked his way through the clusters of shoppers until he was in front of the nearest officer.
“Sorry sir no entrance we don’t have any further information.” The officer took a breath to repeat his message to the people next to Russ.
“I’m Chief Van Alstyne of the MKPD,” he lied. “We’re with Commander Patten.”
“Uh … all of you?” The officer peered at Clare and Yíxīn, clearly trying to connect him to the priest in a clerical collar and the Asian woman who looked like a college student.
“Uh … lemme check.” He pulled his shoulder radio and addressed C and C, still spreading one hand to gesture people away from the doors.
When he clicked off, he nodded to Russ. “Go right ahead, sir. They’re using the mall operations office; you can see it on the directory inside.
” He waved them past, still eyeballing the two women.
“Sorry folks no entrance we don’t have any further—” The door shutting behind them cut off his spiel.
“I know the place he’s talking about.” Yíxīn gestured him away from the large, backlit Colonie Center directory.
“You’ve been to the operations office before?”
“No, but I’ve been to the mall lots of times. I’m from New Jersey, it’s what we do.”
Clare laughed. “Lead the way, Rudolph.”
The main shopping strip was mobbed; folks with frazzled, anxious expressions, far too many of them loaded up with carrier bags that could conceal anything. He leaned toward Clare. “The bags.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” She nodded, and he followed her gaze to see a dozen brightly decorated trees around a tiny chalet.
Parents and children gathered behind a velvet rope, waiting for the jolly old elf to come back from break.
It should have been charming, but all Russ could see was the potential body count.
Yíxīn led them into a hallway squeezed between a kids’ clothing store and a makeup place. At the end was a door that would have blended into the wall except for its sign: MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY OFFICES.
They entered into a scene of quiet chaos. Three civilians were going over a series of blueprints with a couple of bomb disposal guys; past them, mall security huddled around a table with several other cops. “Vince Patten?” Russ asked.
One of the ordnance officers pointed to an open door. “Security office.”
They found Vince inside, hovering over Kevin, who was seated in front of a bank of video screens.
Other chairs were taken up by security and Albany police, everyone glued to the images from the multitude of cameras streaming throughout the huge complex.
Terrance stood next to one of Patten’s men, balancing a laptop and scrolling through the faces of suspects from the ViCAP database.
“Commander Patten?”
Patten turned around at Russ’s voice. “Russ! Good.” He tugged at the sleeve of the security guard next to Kevin. “Give Mr. Van Alstyne your place; he’s the other eyewitness.” He gestured Russ into the chair.
“Who’s got eyes on Cal March? The Amber Alert?”
One of the Albany officers raised his hand. “Over here, sir. We’re pretty sure this is him.”
“Clare can ID him; she’s spent time with him. Clare?”
She crossed to the officer’s station and examined the image on the screen. “Oh, yeah. That’s him.” She leaned closer. “And that’s Rose in the stroller. What’s he been doing?”
Patten answered her. “Just walking around, apparently. So far he hasn’t done anything suspicious, but he’s been on his phone.”
“Coordinating? Scouting?”
Patten looked a little taken aback at a priest asking tactical questions. “Uh, yeah. That’s what we think.”
“What’s the plan?” Russ glanced toward the rear wall of the office, where Knox and Zhào were staying out of the way by a coffee station.
“We’re getting plainclothes into place; when we grab this guy, we want it fast and clean.
” Patten thumbed toward the open door. “The state unexploded ordnance guys will be checking out any areas the militia might have stashed a bomb. And I want you and Kevin here to tell me if you spot any familiar faces.”
It wasn’t the first time Russ had done the tedious, exacting work of examining security footage.
Back when he’d been an MP, it had been a regular duty shift, and there had been more than one investigation at the MKPD that had called on him to go through an entire movie’s length of recordings.
But God, he had forgotten how exhausting it was, and the fact he was watching live, unable to pause and rewind, made it worse.
He could feel a headache building as the minutes crawled by.
None of the shoppers on his screen looked familiar.
“What about places where there aren’t cameras?” Russ asked. “Dressing rooms and bathrooms?”
“Mall security’s handling that,” Patten said. “They won’t raise an alarm if they close a space down temporarily.”
One of the cops scanning screens touched his headset, then turned toward Patten. “Commander, the plainclothes are in position.”
Patten grunted. “Okay, tell the team they are go for contact.”
Everyone paused to focus on the display showing March, now pushing the stroller past Nordstrom Rack on the upper floor.
As Russ watched, several people ambled out of the store.
On another screen, he could see two pairs take position by the up and down escalators.
A final team emerged from the Spectrum shop and stood in the corridor leading to the mall exit.
The takedown was almost too quick to follow.
The plainclothes from the store moved casually until they were near March, and then, in the blink of an eye, he was surrounded, down on the floor, being cuffed.
One of the officers spun the stroller away, squatted down face-to-face with the baby, and gave a thumbs-up.
“Oh, thank God,” Clare breathed.
The cop with the headset nodded toward Patten. “They say all clear, Commander. Perp is subdued and disarmed, and the kid’s fine.”
The rest of the Albany PD roared their approval.
Patten held his hands up. “That’s good news.
Now let’s make sure we catch the rest of those sonsofbitches.
I want those teams in the maintenance areas now, and I want the plainclothes team patrolling.
They call in anything suspicious, ya got it?
” He beckoned Russ and Kevin. “You two take five, rest your eyes. Visit the little boys’ room. ”
The bathrooms were tucked behind the management office; when Russ emerged, Clare was standing there, two white tablets in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. “Acetaminophen.”
“How did you know?” He swallowed the pills, chasing them with half the water.
“You kept rubbing your eyes.”
He took off his glasses. “It may be time to update my prescription.”
“I think you need to step outside for some fresh air before going back in the hole.”
“It really is a hole, isn’t it? I don’t know how those mall cops stand it.” He followed her across the corridor to another unremarkable door, clearly not meant for the public. Clare shoved it open and stepped through. “Is it going to let us back in?” he asked.
She took the bottle back and screwed the top on. “It is with this stuck in the gap.”
The cold air outside felt wonderful. He took a deep breath and then coughed at the taste of diesel fumes.
“I think it’s a delivery area over here.” Clare gestured toward a cul-de-sac ending in massive industrial doors. “Sorry. I guess they put management in the least scenic part of the mall.”
Russ slung his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “What, you don’t think the sun setting over a parking lot is romantic?”
She laughed, then paused. “It is almost…” She pushed the sleeve of her sweater back to check her watch. “What time is it?”
“Sunset, you mean? I don’t know. Four twenty. Four thirty.”
She drew in a breath. “Russ.”
“What?”
“Tonight’s the first night of Hanukkah. It starts at sunset.”