Sigma Curse - 04 (17 page)

No. She needed to accost Rickenbacker, and accuse her, and if Rickenbacker tried to dismiss her, she’d get a confession from her one way or another.

When she set her mind on a course of action, Harmony was apt to follow it through without balking. She waited till Rickenbacker reached the Camaro and opened the door. Then Harmony opened the door of her own car and stepped out swiftly and made her way at a loping crouch down the pavement, back toward the Camaro.

She dodged a man strolling by with his hands in his pockets, who eyed her in confusion, and saw the Camaro ten yards ahead, Rickenbacker’s face through the windshield.

As she closed the gap, Harmony’s conscious mind registered something her primal, animal brain had already warned her of.

She kept going for a few paces more, until she was mere feet from the Camaro.

Stared through the windshield.

Her right hand dipped inside her jacket and came out in one fluid movement, holding her Glock.

She opened her mouth instinctively to yell the practiced word:
Police
.

But the door of the Camaro was hurled open and there was movement in the V formed between it and the body of the car and Harmony dove to the pavement, the Glock going off as she did so, not in an uncontrolled way but without the precise aim she would normally have taken before a shot.

The Glock’s blast crashed against the walls of the narrow street.

And, above the open door of the Camaro, white light flashed brilliantly, once, twice.

Harmony hit the pavement hard and rolled, the world spinning over and over crazily, and all she could think of was that she needed to keep herself aligned with the Camaro so that she could take proper aim and hit her mark, because there was no cover on the pavement at such close quarters, nowhere to hide...

The flash of light came again, piercing tough the deafening roar of the other gun.

Something punched Harmony, hard, in the top of her shoulder.

The force of the blow would have knocked her off her feet if she hadn’t already been lying prone. For a long moment she literally couldn’t breathe, as if she’d been plunged into water at subzero temperature.

The light flashed again, and as well as a second blow, this one down her back between her shoulderblades, she felt a pain so immense, so terrible, like some beast from hell raking its hot claws into her, that she was able to marvel at it in a detached way.

Another, equally detached part of her brain said to her: You’ve been shot.

You’re going to die.

Somehow, Harmony managed to clench her teeth, though it was if some outside agency was forcing her jaws closed, not her conscious will. She bit down, hard.

And pulled the trigger of the Glock.

The recoil snapped the gun almost free from her grasp. She saw, through a descending haze of pain and gray, the four wheels of the Camaro at eye level.

They were plump and round. Intact.

She’d failed to hit any of them.

The wheels span, blue rubbersmoke hissing up from where they howled against the tarmac.

Then the Camaro was gone.

Harmony felt her vision narrowing, like a telescope’s focusing ring was being gradually twisted.

She thought of her father.

She thought of Joe Venn.

And her hand, the one which she realized had now relinquished its hold on her Glock, slipped downward, across the hard surface of the pavement, though a slick of something coppery she knew had come from her body but the word for which she couldn’t quite recall.

Her hand felt under her, inside her jacket where its open lapels were crushed against the pavement.

Just a few seconds
, she pleaded with whatever God was about to take her into his embrace.
A few seconds more.

Her vision snapped off into nothingness.

V
enn was in the Jeep, about to start up the engine, when the call came.

He’d spent the afternoon in the Division office with Fil Vidal, working Fil’s database. Together they’d cross-references until he could barely look at the monitor any longer, running the algorithms Fil had developed himself to search for common features linking the victims and the killer, given the limited information they had about her.

Nothing.

Venn knuckled his brow in frustration. “Dammit. We’re missing something. There’s a link there. Right in front of our noses.”

Fil, who Venn had come to realize was one of the most placid-tempered people he’d ever met, nodded. “Yes. I agree. I sense it, too.” He looked up at Venn, who was peering over his shoulder at the screen. “We’ll find it. Tonight, or tomorrow.”

“But we need it yesterday.”

Venn looked at his watch. Five after eight. He could either continue pounding the keyboard, getting more and more frustrated. Or he could call it a night, try and get some sleep, make a fresh start in the morning. And hope his brain did a little work on the problem during the night.

“I’m heading home, Fil,” he said. “Don’t be up too late on this, will you?” He knew Fil had a wife and two small kids.

“I won’t. Night, boss.”

In the parking lot, Venn took a quick look round as he walked to the Jeep, felt a slight tension in his chest and his shoulders. It was here, in this very lot, that the woman named Gudrun Schroeder had jumped him last October. If Beth hadn’t intervened, by shooting the woman in the head, Venn would be dead now. He still couldn’t take the walk to his car without feeling a little on edge.

It wasn’t PTSD, not even close. But he got a sense of what that must feel like, the anticipatory anxiety, the flashbacks. Beth herself suffered from the disorder, and although she’d made huge progress in the past few months are now only rarely experienced the sudden intrusion of vivid imagery that was one of the hallmarks of the condition, she told Venn she doubted if she’d ever be free from it.

They’d become closer because of what they’d been through together. It was a cliché, but Venn believed it to be true.

Beth wasn’t coming round tonight. She was pulling a duty shift at the hospital. Venn had no particular reason to head straight home, other than that he needed to get some rest. He considered taking a ride out to the park in Brooklyn once more, walking through the scene again, but on his own this time. But he decided against it.

As his hand reached for the ignition, his cell phone rang.

The caller ID said it was Harmony. He punched the key.

“Yeah, Harm.”

For a moment he thought they’d been cut off. There was silence on the line.

No. Not silence, a peculiar, high-pitched whistling noise. Bad network coverage, maybe.

“Hello?” he said.

The rasp came, loud and harsh.

“Harmony?”

Then there was no mistaking it. It was a voice, struggling to make itself heard and emerging as a hoarse whisper.

“Venn...”

He sat bolt upright in his seat. “Harm, is that you? What’s happened?” A half-cough, half-wheeze answered him.

“Harm, listen to me,” he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Where are you? Can you tell me?” There was a prolonged pause. Again Venn checked to see if the connection had been lost. It hadn’t.

Then, a single word, distorted but distinct.
“... Shot...”

Ah, God.

“Harm,” he hissed. “Stay on the line. I’m going to try and triangulate this call with dispatch.”

A sawing noise, a horrible ragged gasping, burst out of the phone.
“... Already...”

She fell silent.

“Harmony,” Venn yelled.

No reply.

What did she mean,
already
? That she was already dead? Or that she’d already called in?

Venn flung the door open and leaped out and ran across the parking lot back to the building. He cleared the stairs three at a time and raced into the office.

Fil looked up in surprise, still at his computer. “What’s –”

“Harmony,” Venn shouted. “I think she’s been shot. I’m holding the line, but she’s not responding. Call 911 and call dispatch. See if anything’s been called in.”

Fil grabbed the phone on his desk and hit the keys. Venn paced furiously, his own phone jammed to his ear.

“Talk to me,” he muttered.

Was that breathing he could hear at the other end? Or just the sigh of distant traffic?

He moved over to Fil, who was talking with the dispatch operator. After a moment Fil said, “Passing you over to Lieutenant Venn.”

Venn took the phone and held it to his other ear. “Venn here.”

“We got a call put through seven minutes ago,” she said. “A woman. Couldn’t make out what she was saying, but she sounded hurt. She was calling on a cell, and they’ve pinpointed her location. Ambulance is on its way.”

“Her name’s Harmony Jones,” said Venn. “She’s a cop. What’s the location?”

The woman rattled off an address, a street off East 22
^nd
near Gramercy Park.

“Ambulance is on its way already,” she said.

Venn dropped the phone and was out the door in a few seconds. On the way down the stairs, he said into his cell: “You hear any of that, Harm? An ambulance is coming. I’m on my way, too. Hang in there.”

*

V
enn drove like a maniac, running red lights and leaving a cacophony of squealing brakes and angry horns behind him, vaulting curb corners, sending pedestrians scurrying for cover. He took a wrong turn down a one-way street and caused an oncoming car to veer so sharply it hit a row of trashcans, sending them flying like skittles.

He saw the strobing blue lights of the ambulance up ahead, and flung the Jeep toward them.

A bunch of paramedics were moving fast on the curb, with a ring of uniformed cops hanging back. A couple of cops were already securing the street, shooing people back into their homes, cordoning off both ends.

Venn dumped the Jeep up on the curb and leaped out. A cop tried to get in his way, saying: “Sir, you can’t –” but another called, “That’s Lieutenant Venn,” and the first one stepped aside.

Just as well, or Venn would have gone straight through him.

As Venn reached the knot of paramedics and cops, he saw a gurney being raised on its wheeled frame. A shrouded figure was secured on top.

Harmony. She’s... gone
, his mind whispered at him.

But he saw her face was uncovered, or rather that an oxygen mask hid the lower half. He saw the blood streaked across the pavement.

A paramedic shouldered him out the way. Another said, “Who’re you?”

“Venn,” he said. “I’m her partner.”

“Ride with us,” said the first. “But stay out of our way.”

Venn leaped aboard the ambulance. Two paramedics crowded around her, hooking her up to assorted cardiac monitors and lines.

“What happened?” said Venn, struggling to stay calm.

“Two gunshot wounds,” said one of the guys, without turning his head. “At an angle from in front of her, while she was lying prone. One caught her between the neck and the shoulder, the other’s hit her right lung.”

“Is she –” Venn found he couldn’t finish saying it.

“Gonna make it? I don’t know. Doesn’t look so hot.”

Venn leaned in, grabbing the sides of the ambulance as it started up and surged away. “Harmony,” he said.

One of the paramedics said over his shoulder: “Uh uh. Keep back. There’s no way she can talk to you now.”

Venn considered for a second, then made his decision. “Stop a minute.”

The man glanced at him. “You nuts?”

Without replying, Venn waited till the ambulance slowed, probably at a red light where the cross-traffic hadn’t gotten out of the way yet.

He flung open the rear doors and dropped out, hitting the road surface hard and rolling and coming up and dodging aside as the car behind veered to avoid him.

He reached the sidewalk, unscathed. Without looking behind him he began to make his way back to the street where Harmony had been found.

The cops there were already talking with a handful of people who’d emerged from their apartments. Venn looked for the one who appeared to be in charge, the one who’d recognized him but who Venn didn’t know himself.

“What you got?”

The cop nodded at the sidewalk. “Looks like whoever shot her took off. See the tire marks on the road, and the space is vacant.”

“Shell casings?”

“Yeah. Three of them.” He indicated. “They’re hers, by the look of it.”

Venn stooped to look. The casings were scattered on the sidewalk, near the smear of blood where Harmony had been lying. Without touching them, Venn peered at them in the dim light.

Nine-millimetre Parabellum rounds. Commonly used, and they were almost certainly from Harmony’s Glock. He saw the gun itself a few feet away on the sidewalk.

He took a few steps away and examined the curb and the road near the tire marks. Nothing.

So whoever had shot Harmony either took the casings with them, or they’d landed inside the car in the first place.

Or she’d been shot with a revolver.

“Hey,” called somebody behind Venn, and he turned, as did the cop in charge. Another cop was beckoning from across the street. “We got something here.”

Venn and the cop trotted over. The other patrolman was standing with a young guy in his early twenties, a student maybe. The kid was holding a cell phone.

“Guy heard the shooting and took a video from his window,” said the cop.

Venn grabbed the phone from the young man’s hand and stared at the screen. The picture was shaky and blurred, but became a little steadier as the video progressed. It lasted only ten seconds or so.

The scene showed the stretch of road and sidewalk where Venn had just been standing, though the video had been taken from around thirty yards back. A car roared away from the curb. The camera followed it till it was no longer in view, then swung back to the prone, barely moving shape on the sidewalk.

“I called 911 right away afterward,” said the kid earnestly.

Venn cued up the video again. He froze it, frame by frame. Used his finger and thumb to zoom in.

The car was a Chevy Camaro. The license plate wasn’t clear, but it should be pretty easy to enhance it.