Devil's Bridge (28 page)

“Mike? Mike?” Mercer said. “Are you still there?”

“Hanging by a thread.”

“That’s great news, Mike. Now, turn it over to us.”

I resumed my conversation with Paddy Duffy.

“Hold off,” I said to Mercer. And then to my prisoner, “How many people are in the lighthouse with Emmet Renner?”

“Two. Was just me and another guy, and then the girl.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Not so’s I can tell. Emmet’s waiting for the cops to show up,” Duffy said. “He’s got a beef to settle. I wouldn’t give a nickel for her chances after that.”

“About the same as yours,” I said. “Guns?”

“You got mine.”

“The other guy?”

“There’s a few guns inside.”

“The woman,” I said, “did you have her on Liberty Island?”

Duffy cocked his head and looked at me. “Not saying.”

“You don’t have to. Cormac Lonigan already gave you up.”

“Cormac had nothing to do with this,” Duffy said.

“You’re all singing the same song,” I said. “I guess Ms. Cooper just kidnapped herself.”

“You’re wasting your energy on me.”

“Do you know Cormac?”

“Yeah. You could say that,” Duffy said.

“Come all the way from the other side to hook up with a Renner, did you?” I said. “Westies redux.”

“I just work with him. Simple as that.” Duffy picked up his head to look at me.

“Don’t even think about spitting,” I said. “It’s already been done.”

I put the sock in Duffy’s mouth, stepped up, and slammed the lid of the bench.

I picked up my phone. “Got all that, Mercer?”

“Yes, sir, Detective Chapman. There should be a sniper team in place shortly. Let’s ride this one out,” Mercer said. “Duffy says Coop’s okay.”

“You can’t do it with guns.”

“What’s that about?”

“You can’t pick Emmet Renner off with a gun, okay? We’ve got to see Coop first.”

“I understand that part of it. But the choice of weapons isn’t up to you.”

I had the phone in one hand and was swapping positions of Paddy Duffy’s gun and my own. I knew my weapon and how it handled. I wanted his for backup, but my own in first place.

“Mike?”

“Almost there,” I said.

“You believe because your father shot Charlie Renner all those many years ago that we shouldn’t take this maniac out with a gun? Is that your thinking? That it will change the past?”

“I want to see Coop.” Because if Renner had done anything to hurt her, a bullet to the head would be too easy a death for him.

“So do we all,” Mercer said. “So do we all. What’s next?”

I was as ready as I could get to take on Emmet Renner. As soon as Scully made the public announcement of Coop’s kidnapping and the rescue teams were fully staged, there would be choppers flying overhead—police and press—and anything that could float on the river hovering around this desolate point.

“I have one idea, Mercer. A hostage exchange,” I said. “If I screw it up, then Renner’s all yours.”

“Let me in on the—”

I wasn’t looking for approval. Nobody was in a position to do better than I was.

I ended the call and climbed onto the giant boulder of Ceder Point. I stayed low and began to circle the rocks on Jeffrey’s Hook.

When I passed Cormac Lonigan this time, the swirling current of the river had brought the water well over his knees. I avoided looking at his face. I assumed panic had set in long before now.

I paused when I reached the foundation of the northern tower of the bridge. I had a clear view of the lighthouse, stuck out alone in the Hudson on the very tip of Jeffrey’s Hook.

Still no sound from within it. No movement.

I ran to the rear of the bridge foundation and then moved into the space between the towers, staying tight against the twenty-foot-high concrete wall supporting the south tower. The long shadows cast by the bridge lighting on the beams and cables made walking on the rough surface trickier than I had thought it would be. This was as close as I could get to the lighthouse without being seen.

The lantern room on top of the stubby red structure still seemed to be unoccupied. The lighthouse door at its base, the one from which Paddy Duffy had exited, faced the river. There was no way for me to see it from my position.

I thought Emmet Renner would grow impatient when Duffy failed to return. I held as still as I could for several more minutes.

And then there was the sound of footsteps. A hefty man emerged from the lighthouse. I hadn’t been able to see the door open, but he was walking around the building, his hand on the wrought iron railing that enclosed it.

“Duff?” He called out with his hand cupped over his mouth. “Duff, c’mon back.”

I had been prepared by the lieutenant’s statement to me about Emmet Renner’s plastic surgery. I wouldn’t make him, in all likelihood, when we came face-to-face. But this man was no more than my age—probably in his late thirties—while Emmet was over fifty by now.

I let him walk to both sides of the lighthouse and call out for his compatriot. There was no noise except for the waves stirred up by current, lapping against the rocks.

The man was farther away from me now, seeming to be calling Duffy’s name a bit more frantically.

I yelled back at him from my position in the shadows behind the bridge tower foundation.

“There’s been an accident,” I said. “Duff’s not coming back.”

The man started and flattened his back against the lighthouse wall.

Then a glimmer of light as the door of the building opened and closed again. It must have been Emmet Renner who threw his voice out into the dark. “You’re early, Chapman,” he said. “I was expecting you’d come looking for her tonight, but you’re early.”

I could barely stand still once I saw part of the silhouette of Emmet Renner on the edge of the lighthouse walkway. I suppose a sniper in the right position on the water could have picked him off, but half his body—and maybe the hand holding a gun—was inside, where I expected Coop to be.

He was totally out of range of the Emergency Services team positioned somewhere above me on the steel girders.

“I’ve waited a lifetime for the chance to do this, Chapman.”

“Take your best shot, Renner,” I said. “I’ll step out to meet you if you let Alex Cooper walk out that door.”

“She can’t walk right now, I’m afraid.”

“It’s about me,” I said. “Not her.”

“Seems like I’ve got both of you, Chapman.”

“Not likely. Not likely at all.”

“Then I’ll take the bird I’ve got in my hand,” he said, stepping inside the door.

“Renner!” I screamed as loud as I could. Again, “Renner!”

He waited a minute or two before coming back outside. Still, his second hadn’t budged from his place on the side of the lighthouse.

“I can get you back to Arizona, Renner. No questions asked. One-way ticket.” I was talking too fast and I knew it. “You’ve picked the wrong lure.”

“I don’t know much about fishing, Chapman, but looks to me like I picked exactly the bait I needed,” he said. “And I can pretty much write my own ticket where I’m going next.”

“Give her to me and I can make the deal.”

“I give her to you and you won’t live long enough to do that. That’s the easy part,” Renner said. “Step out from behind that fortress and I’ll show you I haven’t lost my touch.”

“So far your only crime is breaking and entering. Liberty Island,” I said. If he released Coop alive and well, then I didn’t give a damn about the kidnapping charge. “And the lighthouse.”

“Don’t slight me on the kidnapping, Chapman. We Renners pride ourselves on the big snatch.”

“How about Duffy?” I said. “I’ll give you Duffy back.”

“Duffy’s nothing to me.”

“A friend of the family.”

“He’s not blood, Chapman,” Renner said. “And this is all about blood.”

I didn’t expect any less from Emmet Renner. But his accomplice, the guy plastered against the side of the lighthouse, took his cue from what he assumed was Paddy Duffy’s fate and Renner’s icy remark. He bolted.

The man vaulted over the railing and started to run, headed for the bushes of Bennett Park for cover, and then most certainly beyond.

Emmet Renner was stuck in place, unable to shoot the man in the back for fear, I’m sure, that he would expose himself to police fire. I didn’t think he’d believe I’d gotten to Jeffrey’s Hook by myself.

The runaway wasn’t my concern. He would undoubtedly plow straight into a squad of gathering police officers as he tried to make a timely escape from an ungrateful employer, and that left at least one less gun in Coop’s little world.

I needed to keep Emmet Renner out of the lighthouse. I needed to keep him from harming Coop—from killing her—now that I was here to witness exactly that.

“Renner! Two men down.”

“Come out where I can see you, Chapman,” he said, turning back—it appeared to me—to enter the lighthouse door.

The silhouette reemerged, and this time he was dragging a bundle across the threshold.

I did a double take. The bundle was a human being, bound and gagged, and being dragged by her long blond hair onto the walkway around the lighthouse.

Now was the time for a sniper to take a shot. All my inhibitions about another shooting vanished in a flash. But the only angle at which Renner would have been vulnerable was from the river, and there was no one in place to shoot.

I pulled out my phone with my left hand, my right hand still holding my gun. I hit redial and when Mercer answered I told him to do whatever he had to—whatever the men could—to save Coop’s life. I couldn’t even see Emmet Renner as he moved away with Coop.

“Renner!” I yelled again. “The devil’s bridge.”

He stopped moving. The half silhouette reappeared in my sight line. I could see him bend his neck back and look up at the span of the George Washington. I was grateful to have his attention.

“Not that one,” I said. “Not the one up above us. I’ve got a better deal for you.”

“Fairy tales now, Chapman?” he said, with a laugh that sounded diabolical. “I haven’t heard about the devil’s bridge since my mother died.”

“I’ve built one just for you, Renner. Just for you.”

“I’m to send Alex Cooper across it and get what in return? What are you offering me?” he said. “What could you possibly have that I want?”

“I’ve got your blood, Renner.”

“My what? You’ve got my what?”

I could see boats passing in the water behind the lighthouse, but I didn’t spot the NYPD cruiser.

“Not exactly the first living soul to cross over, but your blood nonetheless.”

“What have you done now, Chapman?”

I had upped the ante and Renner had raised his voice.

“I’ve got your sister’s kid, Renner.”

“No, you don’t. You’re bluffing me now.”

“I’ve got Cormac Lonigan.”

It might be bad blood, but they were all Renners.

He was coming around the building, almost into a position opposite me.

“Cormac’s home now. I’m sure he’s home.”

He was losing it a bit; I could hear that in his voice. He wasn’t wrapped that tight thirty years back, and he had undoubtedly unraveled even more.

“You dragged him into this, Renner,” I said. I left out the part about how he had been responsible for his brother’s death all those years ago. “Shauna’s kid.”

His roar into the night air was a partial release of his rage.

“Don’t do to Shauna what you did to your old man,” I said. “I’ll give you the kid.”

“Where is he?” Renner asked. “Where’s Shauna’s boy?”

“You let Alex Cooper go and I’ll give you Shauna’s son.”

“You’d really kill another Renner kid, Chapman?” he asked, rocking against the wrought iron railing. “What have you done with Cormac? What have you done with her boy? If you kill him—”

“It’s only you who can kill him,” I said. “You’ve got someone I love, and I’ve got Renner blood to trade for her.”

“Where’s Cormac?” he shouted at me, rattling the old railing as he pulled on it. “Where in God’s name is he?”

“Not far at all,” I said. “He’s on the rocks, Renner. The kid’s on Execution Rock.”

“Is he alive?” Emmet Renner asked.

He had taken a few steps back and seemed to be bending over Coop’s body. I couldn’t see her at all. I couldn’t tell whether she was able to move.

“For now, yeah. Maybe in an hour or so he starts hallucinating,” I said. “You know how that goes. But he’s alive now.”

I needed to get Renner out in the open. I needed to move closer and draw him toward me so that whoever was backing me up had a chance to act while I distracted him with his nephew’s plight.

“It was your game, the rock,” I said. “I figure you know what kind of torture it is.”

“You got cops helping you with this?” Renner asked.

“Flying solo. I came here by boat, alone with Cormac.”

“Where the fuck is he?” Renner asked, taking a step in my direction.

“Probably on the very same rock you used, when you used to play in this park.”

I thought I could hear his feet shuffling on the walkway, but I didn’t know whether he was moving closer to me or farther away, back to Coop.

“I watched you from the heights above Ceder Point, back before—” I caught myself just as I was about to insert Charlie Renner’s name in the conversation. “Back when I was seven or eight.”

It was one of the most memorable ways that Emmet Renner and his pals bullied the younger kids, his brother, Charlie, and Charlie’s friends, on Execution Rock.

We played in Bennett Park then—all of us little warriors who tracked the bluestone and granite foundation of Fort Washington’s ruins. We watched the grown men who staged reenactments of battles on important dates throughout the year. We built our own fortifications on the heights above the Hudson, using tree trunks and branches that had been damaged in lightning storms.

Now I kept backing off, deeper into the shadows and closer to the boat.

There was an old story about the British colonials who controlled New York and Long Island before the American Revolution. I didn’t learn it in school. I heard it first from Renner’s gang.

When rebels had become unruly and were sentenced to die, the authorities would often chain them to rocks in the river. It was a slow death and a torturous one, as they drowned with the rising water of the incoming tide.

I reached Cormac Lonigan. The water was at his waist. His lips were deep blue and he was shivering uncontrollably.

I’d seen his uncle Emmet play this game with unwitting kids—always the weaker ones, the younger ones. I’d never seen him kill anyone this way, but I was certain he had done just that.

The water had risen on the boulder, too, as well as on Cormac Lonigan’s body. I waded into it and felt the sting of the cold on my skin.

I reached my arm out toward his face. His head smacked against the rock as he recoiled instinctively.

I took a step closer and reached out again. This time I grabbed on to my handkerchief and sock and pulled them out of his mouth.

The noise that came out of Cormac Lonigan sounded like the cry of a wounded animal. The words he tried to say were
help me,
but it was a great primal scream that shattered the silence of the landscape around me.