I’m in a corridor that has every fourth light going, which is enough to see by. It winds around to the front entrance where there’s a foyer and two elevators and a flight of stairs. There’s a directory by the lift: it turns out the probation offices are on the ground floor. I’ve left bloody footprints between the door I kicked down and the elevators. I press the elevator button and wait for the doors to open and step inside. I take off my shirt and wrap it over my foot while the elevator goes nowhere. Then I open the doors and step out. I press the button and send the elevator, empty, to the top floor.

I head to the probation office, no blood trail behind me, and use Bracken’s swipe card to gain entry. The alarm keeps beeping, but still hasn’t gone off. I enter a large waiting room with a series of offices scattered around the sides and back. None of the office doors have names on them. There’s a giant reception desk in the middle of the room. I have no idea which office belongs to Bracken. The layout of the floor reminds me of my own office, which makes me think of a simple solution: I go into each office and look for family photos and drawings done by children, with the idea of eliminating the offices that do have them since Bracken doesn’t; but the idea is a bust because there aren’t any pictures anywhere. I guess probation offices aren’t the kind of place where employees want to share their personal lives with the public. It’s the type of place where one day they have a photo of their nine-year-old daughter up on the wall, and the next day they’re taking that photo to Missing Persons. I try to think about what else could make Bracken’s office stand out from any other.

Sixty seconds have passed since I entered the offices. A moment later a high-pitched scream shrieks from every corner of the building. I grab some Blu-Tack from the reception desk and ball it into my ears.

I take out Bracken’s business card and the cell phone. There are three numbers on the card, an office line, his direct line, and his cell phone number. I dial the direct line but can’t hear anything over the alarm. I head from office to office and barely manage to hear a phone ringing in the fourth one I try. There is a narrow angle of sight from the desk, past the reception area to a window leading outside. I glance at the view every few seconds, waiting for when it changes from parking meters and bike stands to patrol cars.

I switch on the computer which offers more light, then I go through the drawers. There are too many files to go through so I pile them onto the desk. The computer loads up and by the time a desktop appears I’m too nervous to hang around. I consider tearing the computer apart and taking the hard drive, but the files are probably on a server somewhere. The alarm is still shrieking and the Blu-Tack in my ears doesn’t seem to be helping.

There’s a gym bag behind the desk. I unzip it and dump the clothes on the floor. I’m packing everything I pulled out of the drawers into the bag when a patrol car pulls up outside.

As I reach the door to the foyer and elevators, the alarm goes quiet. The rest of the lights come on and I duck behind a desk. There are footsteps in the foyer, and voices. I can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but the words I’m looking for stick out from the rest—“blood,” “elevator,” and “top floor.” The police out there know they have a lot of ground to cover, but they’ve noticed that the elevator with blood leading up to it has been sent to the top. A radio squawks, and one of them speaks into it. “Backup.” The word is clear.

Another door opens, and then there are footsteps in the stairwell. Thirty seconds later the elevator doors open and close. The accountant and the monster think things through. We figure there are two cops here already and more coming soon, so I need to act now. We figure one of them is probably at the third or fourth floor now. He’s laboring his way to the top floor while his partner rides up in comfort.

Another patrol car pulls up outside.

I untie the shirt from my foot and pull it back on. I open the door and run into the foyer, the gym bag in one hand, a stapler in the other, ready to hurl it hard in case somebody is still down here—but there’s no one. I turn toward the main door. There are two police constables walking toward it, a man and a woman. They stop dead and stare at me and I do the same, me on one side of the door, them on the other, then they race forward and one of them grabs the door.

chapter forty-six

His head has cleared in the hour or so since he died, and he likes to think that the fuckups in that time were brought about by that experience, likes to think they’re not the kind of mistakes he’d make on any other day.

Getting out of the house was easy. All Schroder had to do was caterpillar his way to the front door, get to his feet, twist his body so he could reach the door handle, and run like hell—or in this case bounce. It took him a couple of tiring minutes to reach a house that had lights on. He used his nose to ring the doorbell. It was a young couple whose kids had gone to bed; they were wrapping presents and had shared half a bottle of wine and seemed to look at Schroder with as much suspicion as anything, but he was thankful they took him in and cut the ties that held his feet. Nat’s cell phone was still in his pocket, and he used it to phone the station, and then he phoned his wife. He told her he was running late, told her it was going to be a long night, told her he was sorry, and didn’t tell her that a short time ago she was technically a widow. She told him she was disappointed but she understood, and he should get home when he could. It was the best-case scenario—and her first Christmas present to him.

By the time the first patrol car arrived, Edward was long gone. The responding officers removed Schroder’s handcuffs.

“So where’s he gone now?” Landry asks. They’re standing in Bracken’s living room, a photographer and a couple of other officers hanging out in the corner. Others are out canvassing the neighborhood, hoping to narrow down Hunter’s destination.

“I don’t know. But Jesus, Bill, everything that’s happened—everything that Hunter did to Bracken, he was right in the end. Bracken was part of the robbery. He had somebody take Hunter’s daughter, and now we’ve got nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Landry says. “We’ve got a couple of names. That gives us a bunch of known accomplices.”

“Yeah, but in time to save Hunter’s daughter?”

“He shouldn’t have killed Bracken. He could have helped us.”

“He says he didn’t do it. Says the woman did it.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not much of an answer, Carl. Sounds more like you want to believe him but don’t.”

“Whether he did it or not, he’s gone somewhere. Something here must have tipped him off.”

“Maybe he found a name or an address.”

“Yeah, and took it with him.”

“Well, if we’re lucky, maybe he’ll succeed. Maybe he’ll get his daughter back and take another couple of bad guys off the street.”

“I don’t see it working out that way,” Schroder says.

“Sure. Would be good, though, right?”

A few more detectives arrive on the scene and join them in searching the house.

“It’s official,” Landry says, finishing up a phone call. “Our two victims today are also Bracken’s cons.”

“Like Kingsly.”

“Yeah. That’s three for three.”

“So Bracken put the crew together,” Schroder says. “I’ll go to his office. Check his files. Maybe it’s even where Hunter is heading.”

“Maybe,” Landry answers, and ten minutes later it turns out he’s right.

chapter forty-seven

“Shit,” the officer says, because the automatic doors are locked and don’t open for him. He fumbles with the keys but I don’t hang around to watch. I limp past the elevators, past the busted door and the footprints of blood toward the back entrance. I burst out behind the building into the alleyway. I reach my car, the shotgun still on the passenger seat. The woman cop is running down the alleyway toward me. I turn the shotgun toward her and she comes to a complete stop. She raises her hands the same way the bank manager did.