Chapter 18
Chapter 18
“Is that a helicopter?” Sandy asks, cocking her left ear toward the sky.
“Huh,” Kip says. “I wonder if that’s the VIP.”
Sandy stands, hands on her hips, brow creased. The perimeter around the van has been set, the Los Angeles bomb squad and SWAT teams are en route, and Groebner (alive and well) has been carried down the hill by one of the ambulances to the closest medical center for treatment.
“Tell us again? Exactly what he said.”
Kip takes a deep breath, preparing to relay the phone call for the second time—the first to Zimmerman right when he hung up, and now to Sandy, who Kip can tell is trying as hard as he is to put his finger on the piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit.
Kip starts at the beginning: He called the restaurant over and over and then someone picked up. “Hello?” Kip straightened his spine in the back of the ambulance, slightly caught off guard that someone had actually answered and then equally taken aback at the informality; he expected a Thank you for calling La Fin du Monde, this is so-and-so speaking, how may I help you? He wondered if perhaps he’d been dialing the wrong number.
“Is this…Have I reached La Fin du Monde?”
“Yeah—are you the one who keeps calling here? What do you want?”
Kip hesitated. This was the Michelin-star restaurant people paid thousands of dollars to eat at? He expected a little more…decorum. “Yes, hello, this is Deputy Kip Grayson with the Coastal Bureau police force. We had a report of a gunshot wound in the establishment—can you confirm? And do you need a medevac?”
“Hold on. I’ll get Brick.”
“Who’s Brick—the manager?” Kip asked, but in return there was only silence. The person who answered had already gone. Kip waited what seemed like an interminably long time—so long, he thought he had surely been forgotten; the person who answered had gotten distracted or maybe swept up in the emergency of the gunshot, and Kip was seconds from hanging up and calling for a medevac regardless when another, deeper, accented voice repeated the informal greeting. “Hello?”
“Yes, this is Officer Kip Grayson with the Coastal Bureau police force. With whom am I speaking?”
“I’m the manager here,” the voice said. “Sorry for your wait, dinner service is always quite hectic, and we’re tragically understaffed. How can I help you?”
Kip squinted, staring into the dark forest but not really seeing it. This didn’t sound like a man in the midst of an emergency. “Do you need a medevac?”
“A who?”
“A medevac, ah…emergency services? We received a call about a gunshot wound.”
“Here?” the man said. “At La Fin du Monde?”
Kip blinks. “Yes. Are you saying no one has been injured on the premises?”
“God dammit. I knew those kids were eventually going to get to us.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s one of those TikTok challenges—they call 9-1-1, trying to get police to swarm high-end establishments and ruin the dining experience. Just happened at Matsuhisa in L.A. Called swatting, I think? Surely you see it all the time in your line of work.”
“Right, yes,” Kip said; though he’d never been called to a swatting case, per se, he was all too familiar with false alarms from kids. He made a mental note to look up the Matsuhisa incident later. “Of course.”
“God, remember when crank calls used to be asking a stranger if their refrigerator was running? Anyway, thank you for checking. Is there anything else I can do for you, Officer? We’ve got a major VIP inbound and I need to make sure all my i’s are dotted, you know what I mean?”
Kip hesitated, unsure if he should mention the van, the bomb. He thought back to the videos and couldn’t remember protocol. He was already in hot water and didn’t want to make the wrong call again. He looked around for Sandy and McLeod, but they were still setting up the perimeter. The two EMTs were near, but deep in a conversation about the Oakland A’s pitching lineup, and likely wouldn’t be able to advise regardless. “Did you happen to hear a loud noise thirty minutes ago?”
“A noise?”
“Yes, a loud bang.”
“No, but to be honest, during dinner rush, I can hardly hear myself think.” The man laughed jovially.
Kip frowned. Surely the blast could have been heard at the top of the hill. It couldn’t be more than half a mile to the restaurant. “Who’s the VIP?” he asked, stalling for time.
“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to say,” the man said, and his voice did sound apologetic, deferent. “Main part of the job at a place like this is discretion, you know? That’s what keeps them coming back.”
“Right, right,” Kip said, still unable to spot Sandy in the hazy night. He was going to have to make a call and hope this time it was the right one. “Listen, we’re going to need everyone in the restaurant to shelter in place for the time being.”
“What do you mean—as in, not leave? Is everything OK?”
“Yes, just while we investigate this…swatting incident,” Kip said. He figured there was no need to cause alarm or panic by mentioning the bomb.
“Sure thing, you’re the boss.”
Kip couldn’t help it; his chest swelled.
“We have at least two more hours of dinner service and, like I said, the VIP inbound, so shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll let me know if you need more time than that?”
“Yes,” Kip said, the word imbued with a newfound confidence. “Make sure to stay near the line; answer when we call back.”
“Absolutely. You know, this is a landline, and like I said, it’s a busy night, so let me give you a cell that I’ll keep on me to make sure I answer right away if you need anything else.”
When Kip hung up, he found himself impressed with the professionalism of the establishment, a full 180-degree turn from his first misgivings, and he was reminded how dead wrong first impressions could often be.
Sandy nods thoughtfully now and says: “And you told Zimmerman about the VIP?”
“Yes,” Kip says. “I remember because he said”—Kip puts on an affected gravelly voice to mimic Zimmerman—“ Well, he won’t be getting his two-thousand-dollar meal tonight. When he gets there, turn him away. Good work on the shelter in place . Call me with any other developments .” And Kip puffed up for the second time in as many minutes.
He frowns, realizing in retrospect they had both thought the VIP would be coming in a car—not a helicopter.
Sandy and McLeod and Kip stare at one another in the now-silent night air, the nearby helicopter having reached its destination. “I think this is a develop—” McLeod begins, but his word is cut off by the chirping of the radio on Kip’s shoulder. Kip grabs hold of it with his right hand and presses the button with his thumb.
“This is 92 Grayson. Go ahead.”
“Grayson, this is dispatch, we’ve had another comm from La Fin du Monde, a text message.”
Grayson’s eyes meet Sandy’s and McLeod’s as the dispatch relays the latest 9-1-1 transmission, the words of which cause Kip’s mouth to go dry, his stomach to turn over, and the hairs on the back of his neck to stand straight up. When the radio chirps and falls silent, Kip continues to stare at Sandy and McLeod as if in a trance. Sandy gently takes the cell phone from Kip’s hand, dials a number, and puts it up to Kip’s ear.
He grabs on to it, holding it tight like a ring buoy thrown to him by a lifeguard. When Zimmerman’s gravelly voice says into Kip’s ear, “What’ve you got?” Kip relays the 9-1-1 text message word for word from dispatch.
“Hostage,” Zimmerman repeats, more to himself than Kip. “Explains the van.” He pauses for a beat, thinking, and then says, louder: “I’ll get HRT en route. We need eyes up there—your department got drones, by chance?”
“We do!” Kip says. They’d only ever used them for fun, as they’d never had anything important to surveil, and Kip’s eager to deploy the machines.
“Get ’em airborne and report back. We need as much intel as we can get.”
Kip agrees. He has so many questions. Who’s being held hostage? Who’s holding them hostage? Why are they being held hostage? And why was the manager of the restaurant so calm on the phone? It occurs to him—too late, perhaps—that it likely wasn’t the manager he spoke to.
But it’s Zimmerman who gives voice to a question Kip hasn’t even considered, muttering right before he ends the call: “Who—in tarnation —is Jane Brooks?”