I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (45 page)

“Block Madison,” Owen ordered the off-duty patrolmen. Grabbing one of them by his sleeve, Owen ran down the center line the half-block to the front of the museum.

“Inside,” he shouted. “Everyone off the street and away from the windows!”

The guests stood still initially, staring at him and looking around for the source of the sirens. Owen slammed his hands onto a black tuxedo jacket and shoved the man and everyone in front of him toward the interior courtyard.

Women were screaming. Several lost their footing and fell out of their high heels as the rush Owen triggered swelled into a stampede. Owen dragged one fallen woman behind him while pushing and herding them all under the cover of the museum’s entryway.

An unmarked police vehicle turned south on Madison, jumped the curb and screeched to a stop on the sidewalk. The uniformed driver opened his door and crouched behind it, gun drawn, looking up at the windows above them. Owen recognized the passenger, a captain from the 19th Precinct.

The captain turned his eyes upward toward a police helicopter that appeared, hovering high above the street then walked quickly and confidently to put his arm around Owen’s shoulder.

“What have we got, Cullen?”

“Sniper, Cap,” Owen yelled into his ear. “Getting ready to attack the event. We need to set a perimeter and lock down every building along the west side.”

He pointed at each of six different buildings. “We need to go through them floor by floor.”

*****

“Goddamnit!” Miller shouted. The second the snipers reported it, he knew.
Cullen
. They didn’t need to mention “red hair.”

Miller threw his cell phone at the wall, exploding it into fragments. After the outburst, he inhaled deeply, held his breath, then exhaled and looked for the phone to get out the sim card.

“It’s a setback,” he told Jeffers over the phone, “not a catastrophe.” His sniper team was all secure and accounted-for. But Spencer would likely get out through the chaos. “If they catch Spencer, we’ll deal with it.”

“How?” Jeffers voice came off breathy and strained.

“Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it,” Miller told him coolly. “I didn’t bring that nut job into this, you did,” he reminded. Triage didn’t leave room for diplomacy.

“And what about Cullen?” Jeffers demanded.

“He’s got no evidence. Cullen has told his Spencer story all over town. He just made a few thousand NYPD cops deploy on his say-so. He’s already on suspension. They don’t catch Spencer, would you want to be Cullen? He’s still the loser who left his partner to get killed.”

Jeffers weighed the consequences. His own phone calls had opened the doors to NSA’s vault. If they got to North Bergen, it could lead back to APA. “Cullen leads back to everything!” he said.

Miller looked out to Nussbaum and the techs. They knew. The live scene was splashed across the projection wall.

“It’s under control,” Miller answered hurriedly. “I’m cleaning house now. Cullen leads them here, there won’t be anything here to find. This is going away.”

He hung up and shouted orders. “Listen, we’re shutting this down.”

He grabbed a garbage can and ran toward them. “Cell phones and hard drives. Get them out. Now!”

All four of them stared, frozen in place.

“This place is compromised. I need cell phones; I need the laptops. You hear me?! Now!” He snatched Stephen’s phone, cracked it open, pulled the sim card and dropped the phone into the can. “Laptops and phones. Do it!”

Nussbaum shut the laptop and leaned his weight onto the clamshell. “There’s business plans, applications in development. No. You don’t get the laptop. I didn’t sign on for that. Fuck that.”

“You got that shit backed up somewhere,” Miller yelled, spitting his words into Stephen’s face. “Don’t play innocent.

“What? You think all this is kosher? There are enough felonies here to put you away for life. Right this minute, I’m the best friend you have.”

Their faces paled.
Life in prison
got their attention.

“Wait outside for me,” he ordered them. “No going back to the hotel. I’ll buy you new clothes.” He fanned money at each of them, counting out thousands into their hands until they acquiesced.

Miller was already grabbing wads of paper towels and beginning to wipe down the desktops as they shrank toward the exit. All except Dale.

“I need to go back to my room,” he complained. “My meds are there. Even if I replaced them, my names are on the prescriptions.”

“We’ll sort that out. Go!

Miller ran to the sink and reached out every cleaner there, gallons of it, then ran sprints across the inside bullpen, along the sink counter, and all through the inner workspace until these were empty.

It was ridiculously inadequate. Nowhere near enough to spoil DNA and cover fingerprints.

“You saw it in him and you let it happen!” he screamed at himself.

Cullen couldn’t keep it together and now he was forced to scramble for options.

Miller looked for answers in every direction. Then he spotted his answer. Above.

No ladder around. Miller looked at the swivel office chairs. Those wouldn’t work.

He ran inside the windowless space and returned with a solid chair that he lifted on top of what had been Kip’s desk. He ran back again to get the hot bulb from his desk lamp.

With the hot incandescent bulb fizzing inside the moist paper towels, Miller climbed up onto the desk and then stepped carefully up onto the chair. Once he had his balance, he straightened himself to reach the hot bulb up against the sensor on the ceiling and held it there against the wax seal.

Even though he was expecting it, when the fire sprinklers let loose the forceful spray blasted him off the chair. He bounced off the desk and landed on the floor face-up with the wind knocked out of him and a cascade drenching him from above. He picked himself and dizzily zigzagged toward the outside door before remembering to drag the garbage can out with him.

Stephen, Dale, Dilip, and Kip were waiting inside Miller’s sedan. He couldn’t hear them, but the security light threw enough light to show the shapes of their heads through the rear window. It was obvious that they were arguing and agitated.

His head ached. He had to close one eye. Somehow, that allowed him to organize his thoughts. He combed his hand through his wet hair. A clump of loose strands laced his fingers afterward.

He stared at them then forced himself to snap out of it
. I might have a concussion,
he realized, but there was no time available to devote to any concussion.

Adding Owen Cullen to the team was on Jeffers.
It’s on Jeffers to gather resources now
, he decided.

He called Jeffers back. “In two minutes, there’s going to be fire engines all around here,” Miller said. “I have their cell phones and hard drives. We need a safe house until this blows over. I need you to do something. Have a call placed to 293-459-2200. Tell them Miller needs SH and EXX for five.”

“SH and EXX,” Jeffers repeated.

“For five. I’ll be on 95 South,” Miller told him. “Reach me in the car.”

“No loose ends,” Jeffers reminded Miller. “That was your own emphasis. I have adopted it as policy.” Jeffers went silent on the other end of the line for what seemed like minutes as Miller expected to hear sirens at any second. By then, all four techs had turned back, watching while Miller dragged the waterlogged garbage can.

He popped the trunk and splashed laptops and cell phones inside then slammed it closed. The car keys shimmied in his hand as he looked at them. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus.

Miller opened the passenger door where Stephen had his seatbelt on. “You drive,” he ordered Nussbaum. He needed to raise his voice to be heard over the approaching sound of fire trucks. Stephen fumbled nervously, unable to get out of his seatbelt. Miller pressed the release for him and slapped the keys into Stephen’s gut. All three terrified techs in the back seat looked like they were verging on tears.

“Where are we going?” Stephen asked insistently after getting behind the wheel.

“The venue is compromised, obviously” Miller replied succinctly. “We’ll set up at a new location.”

The sirens were getting close. “They’re coming here. The fire sprinklers must have set off a silent alarm. You need to start the car, back up, and drive.”

“I am not signing up for this,” Dilip whined from the middle seat. “I am a software engineer!”

“Don’t be naïve,” Miller growled, glaring back through his one open eye before shouting into Nussbaum’s right ear.

“Start the fucking car! Listen, geeks. Your clean fingernails don’t mean anything. You’re in this and you’ve been well-paid for it.

“Drive,” he ordered Nussbaum. “Go out the parking lot and turn left.”

The fire engines passed them going in the opposite direction. Miller sighed and calmed down to a focused, level pitch. “The freeway entrance will be coming up on the left, three blocks ahead. Get on 95 South. Slow and steady. Don’t speed.”

Miller’s phone buzzed and lit up in the dark car. The new text read:
95 to 78W. 12m. More to follow. SCP. (Secure communication protocols.)

“What’s it say?” Stephen demanded as the three rear passengers strained to see.

“I’m having anxiety,” Dilip insisted. “I don’t belong in this. I have a 1st from IIT Chennai! I am waiting on acceptance for my master’s degree!”

“Shut up!” Miller snarled back at the software engineer. “Just f-ing shut up!”

Stephen was calculating alternatives even as he constantly checked the rearview mirror for the police lights he expected to see behind them at any second. Bishop flew to Thailand. Was that what they really expected them to do?
I can’t just up and disappear
, he told himself. He had two new apps in beta. Could he coordinate everything online?

“I want to get out!” Dilip demanded. He tried to climb over Dale’s lap to get near the door.

Dale shoved him back to the middle and Kip raised his knees instinctively to corral Dilip’s panicked shifting.

“We’re going at sixty miles an hour,” Kip told Dilip. “I’m with you, but you have to chill, dude.”

Miller’s phone buzzed again. This time he made the point to hold it close to his chest, away from probing eyes.
Follow directions to Reservation. Yellow boat hull at top of driveway. Barn 300m in. CCX en route.

Miller read it twice. The inside of his mouth felt suddenly dry. CCX. Collection crew-deceased.

“What’s it say now?” Stephen wanted to know.

“We’re going to a transfer location,” Miller, said, coughing to get the words out. He shifted in his seat to try finding a comfortable position. “Fifteen minutes,” he told them.

They turned off the highway onto the Indian reservation, where the only light came from the car’s headlights and a few dim houses off away down long dirt driveways; no stores, not a single streetlight.

“Turn in here,” Miller told Nussbaum. Twigs crackled under the tires as they turned past the wrecked shell of a fishing boat.

Stephen stopped the car. “What is this place?” he asked Miller.

“How many cameras have seen this car?” Miller countered. “We’re dumping it,” he told them, pointing toward the old barn in the dim distance at the edge of the beams.

“A van is coming,” he added as Stephen continued toward the weathered building. He didn’t say for what.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Dilip whimpered.

“Me too,” Kip agreed.

“Get out and open those doors up,” Miller told Stephen. “They can wait in the car.”
Better in the car.
He looked around him, quickly realizing that they could bolt twenty feet into the black darkness and be gone. Nothing he could do about it.

“I don’t think so,” Stephen said, refusing.

“We don’t have time for this,” Miller hissed. He reached over, turned off the engine, and jerked out the car keys. “Open those doors,” he repeated. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

When he opened the passenger door, Stephen opened the driver’s side door and followed around to the back of the car. Dale also got out.

Kip and Dilip still sat frozen in the backseat.

“Why not use the headlights?” Stephen asked suspiciously.

“Go turn them on.”

Stephen didn’t move. He watched in the darkness as Miller raised the trunk lid. Miller felt along the upper edge inside the trunk’s left side well, patting into the black hole until his hand was around the weapon and the flashlight both.

He brought the flashlight out first, scanning it toward Stephen and Dale. “Come on out,” he told the two techs, shining the flashlight onto them through the rear window. “We need to wipe down this car.”

The flashlight was in Miller’s left hand. Stephen spotted the object gripped in his right. “Stay put,” Stephen told Kip and Dilip in open defiance.

“Why the gun?” Stephen asked quietly. “We’re in this together! Cullen knows you more than he knows any of us.”

Miller began to hyperventilate. He couldn’t help it. He had assigned a thousand kills; this was the first time he’d had to do the shooting on his own. It was intimidating, but undeniably stimulating, too.

“Detective Lieutenant Cullen knows Miller,” he announced. “My name’s not Miller.”

Nussbaum’s reply stunned him. “We know that, Leonard,” Stephen said. “You’re Leonard Korn. Born in Tempe, Arizona. Mesa Community College and BYU. Communications major. 3.44 GPA. Don’t go bragging about being a professional killer. You were the first thing I checked on the system.”

Stephen got in Miller’s face. “I’m a data guy! You think I wouldn’t build an insurance file? What? You think we’re idiots? Your face, your fingerprints, your DNA, a log of everything we know about you, about Jeffers, and about Jonathan Spencer, is sitting on the cloud. Unless I log in to stop it, the file distributes automatically. You’ll be all over the news wires at 8:01 a.m.”

He turned back to the other techs. “Dale, you get back into the car. Leonard, I’ll take back those car keys. Now!”

“Oh my God,” Dilip exclaimed. “I have to pee!”

Stephen’s knees shook. He expected a bullet was about to kill him. In the rearview mirror he could make out Miller’s face lit by the cell phone. Miller was urgently punching his finger at the screen as Stephen sped up the dark driveway. 

Dale pounded on the dashboard as the four of them passed the boat hull and Stephen accelerated toward the freeway. “That was so fucking badass!”