Death of the Black Widow Read online

  “That one’s got balls,” Red said.

  “Keep moving around, multiple floors like we discussed,” Walter replied. “We don’t want anyone to get a bead on you.”

  At the back of the growing police presence, SWAT arrived.

  A large armored black van.

  The back doors opened, and six officers dressed in full tactical gear jumped out, lining up in a ready stance along the side. A seventh climbed out after them and glanced at the entrance to the club, where the bouncer huddled near the door and various clubgoers were taking cover around the intersection.

  Walter watched Rodriguez cross the barricade and push through the officers. She went straight for the SWAT van. For the seventh officer. Rodriguez gestured back toward Walter several times, but they were too far away for him to make out what she was saying. One by one, the heads started to turn in Walter’s direction as she spoke.

  All these people were from Detroit PD, but Walter didn’t recognize anyone. He’d been out of the game too long. The last one was clearly in charge, though. The boss kept watch on Walter as Rodriguez debriefed, then rounded the vehicles with a swagger—something between urgency, confidence, and caution—and approached with one hand resting on the gun in the hip holster. No indication of worry about getting shot.

  Up close, Walter saw she was maybe fifty, with short-cropped dark hair flaked with bits of gray and a scar above her left temple. She stopped short of Walter and looked back toward Rodriguez. “Did you frisk him? Anyone?”

  When nobody answered, she shoved a foot between Walter’s legs and kicked them apart. “You carrying any weapons?”

  With the sudden shift in weight, Walter nearly fell over. His right thigh cramped under the added strain. Pain sliced up his back again and gripped his spine. He looked over at his cane lying on the ground at his side but didn’t reach for it. From between clenched teeth, he said, “Careful, I’ve got a bum leg.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “No weapon, no.”

  The commander moved on to Walter’s right ankle, then his left. She tugged open Walter’s coat and frowned. “What the hell is this?”

  “A bulletproof vest.”

  The woman slid a finger under one of the metal clasps, pinched the thick material on Walter’s shoulder, and frowned. “From what decade? That thing must weigh fifty pounds.”

  Walter shrugged. “If it ain’t broke…”

  The commander moved on to Walter’s pockets. She took Walter’s burner phone. When she found nothing else, she stepped back. The scar above her temple was marred with several frustrated creases. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  When Walter opened his mouth to answer, another cough came—deep and wet, from his lungs. It felt like shards of glass as he choked it up. He’d managed to turn his head and cough into the crook of his elbow, but when it relented and he pulled away, red spittle dotted his coat sleeve.

  “Je-sus,” the commander muttered. “What’s your name?”

  “O’Brien,” Walter told her. “Walter O’Brien.”

  In the commander’s hand, Walter’s phone began to ring.

  Sealey.

  “Go ahead,” Walter said. “Answer it.”

  The woman eyed him for several seconds, then looked at the phone, studied the screen, and tapped Answer. “This is Commander Rigby with Detroit PD. Who am I speaking to?”

  Walter heard Sealey through his earbud.

  “I’m only going to explain this once, so I need you to pay careful attention, Commander Rigby. I have snipers positioned throughout that intersection, all the surrounding buildings. Some of the best shooters in the world. Think of them as enforcers. As long as you do as you’re told, I won’t ask them to fire a single shot. You don’t, and you’ll witness some of the best marksmanship of your career. Every bullet they place, every life they take, will be on you. You are in control of that. You are in control of only that.”

  Still on the ground, Walter said, “I’m getting up. My knees can’t take this.”

  Rigby shot him an irritated glance. “Stay the hell down! You’re not in charge here.”

  With two fingers, she pointed angrily at a couple of SWAT officers behind the barricade, then at Walter. Both officers raised their weapons, AR-15s by the look of them. They pointed the barrels toward Walter.

  Walter shifted his weight. The cold blacktop bit into his knees. A sharp pain shot up his bad leg and ended somewhere in the middle of his spine. He chewed his lip and did his best to ignore it.

  “You don’t want to test us,” Sealey said.

  Red fired.

  The bullet struck the pavement a few inches from Rigby’s left shoe. She barely flinched.

  Red fired a second time. This shot hit the barrel of one of the AR-15s. The rifle twisted from the man’s grip with a sharp clang! and jerked to the side.

  Walter hadn’t seen Red shoot in a while. It was a thing of beauty.

  “You’ve got a job to do, Commander Rigby, and that job isn’t to harass the man in front of you. Your job is to contain this. Nobody moves, nobody leaves without my permission. Nobody exits that club. My enforcers are in place to ensure you do that job properly. If everyone does as they’re told, everyone walks away from this. You don’t bring in air support. You don’t make any move against my people. You do, and bad things will happen.”

  “What do you want?”

  “That’s simple. There’s a woman inside that club. She’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. We want her. She surrenders, and nobody else has to get hurt.”

  “I’m not allowing anyone to get hurt,” Rigby replied. “And I’m certainly not going to turn someone over to whoever you are.”

  “This isn’t a negotiation, Commander. Earlier tonight, we placed a bomb inside that club. How many people do you think are still in there? In one hour, if she isn’t in our custody, it will detonate. One or many is the only choice I’m going to give you tonight. We get her, or they all die. Fifty-nine minutes. Hold on to that phone. You’ll receive additional instructions shortly.”

  Sealey hung up.

  Over Walter’s comm, Red said, “You forgot to ask for a hundred million dollars in unmarked bills and a jet to Tahiti.”

  Rigby stared at the phone in her hand, then at Walter. Without a word, she dropped it in her pocket, took out her own, and quickly dialed a number as she crossed back over toward the SWAT van, ignoring Walter and the multiple weapons pointed at both of them.

  Walter ignored all the guns, too. He reached for his cane and used it to get back to his feet. The officers holding the AR-15s tensed but did nothing as he stepped over to the abandoned patrol car and settled into Rodriguez’s spot in the passenger seat. “Much better.” He was facing the police barricade on Woodward and the entrance to the club was on his right.

  At the SWAT van, Rigby spoke to her team. Three of the patrol officers had joined them. They were too far off for Walter to read the insignias on their uniforms, but they were most likely the ranking officers. He’d lost track of Rodriguez.

  “You ever see a female SWAT leader?” Red asked.

  “Times they are a-changin’, boys,” Sealey replied.

  Walter knew both Red and Sealey had all these people in their rifle sights and would take them out if things went sideways. They wouldn’t risk the woman getting away because of bureaucratic bullshit. Between the SWAT team and the patrol officers, Walter counted twenty-six law enforcement, four EMTs, and at least thirty civilians scattered about, probably more. The first news truck was working its way closer, two wheels on the sidewalk to round the standstill traffic. The last thing they wanted to do was take out innocents, but they would if they had to.

  Rigby stomped back over a moment later, her haggard face wrapped in a scowl. “Who is this woman you’re after?”

  Before Walter could answer, a deep-throated engine growled from the opposite end of the intersection. A large dump truck lumbered through the wooden police barricades, cracking them like toothpicks, and rounded the front of the club. There was a snowplow attached to the front and DETROIT PUBLIC WORKS stamped across the doors in faded green letters. Salt sprayed out the back of the truck, coating the blacktop, sidewalks, and whatever else was in its path. Everyone watched in confusion as the plow caught the corner of a patrol car and effortlessly pushed it aside, kept going. The heavy vehicle then rumbled around the front of the club, turned, and vanished down the opposite side of the building across Park, leaving thick clouds of black smoke in the air and salt on everything else.

  Rigby took several steps forward, her mouth hanging open. “What the hell?”

  About damn time, Walter thought.

  In his earbud, Red said, “Now we’ve got a party.”

  Chapter

  8

  “You’re doing another shot, or I’m playing the song again. That’s the rule.”

  Walter turned on his barstool to face Herb Nadler and felt the room tilt slightly to the left. When his vision caught up with the movement, he found three Nadlers standing next to him, holding shot glasses. He focused on the one in the middle. “I can’t do another shot. I gotta work tomorrow.”

  The words came out as I candzo nudder zot, but Nadler understood. These were the words of his people. He rolled his eyes, held up the shot glass, and yelled at the crowd, “O’Brien won’t do another! Billy, drop the quarter—this one is all on him!”

  From the jukebox in the corner of Mig’s Tavern, Billy Preston shouted something back, then turned to the jukebox, half the beer in his mug sloshing down over his hand and onto the floor. A moment later, the opening beat of “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor clapped through the bar’s speakers for the eighth time amid a flurry of boos and shouts.

  Walter rested h
is elbows on the bar and buried his face in his hands.

  Mig’s had been a cop bar for forty-three years. On any given night, it was filled with Detroit’s finest from the four surrounding precincts. This Wednesday night was no different. The beer was cheap, the watered-down liquor cheaper, and the company a mix of uniforms and officers in street clothes. Nadler had taken Walter here the first night they’d met, and it was only fitting they spend their last night as partners here, too.

  Nadler smacked him on the back. “You, my friend, may have to work tomorrow, but not in uniform. And as your soon-to-be former partner, it’s on me to send you off to your first day on the job as a detective for Detroit PD properly.”

  Nadler then drank both shots and slammed the glasses down on the bar top.

  Walter raised his index finger and signaled the bartender. “Water, kind sir. Just water.”

  The man smirked, filled a glass from the tap, and slid it in front of Walter, who drank it down in a single gulp.

  Nadler frowned. “Seriously?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Six years together, and you’re going to let it end like this? Just walk off into the sunset? Let me see the shield again.”

  Walter sighed and pulled the gold badge from his back pocket. “The sun set like four hours ago.”

  Nadler whistled and scooped it up. “It’s so shiny.”

  Before Walter could get his badge back, Nadler took several steps away from the bar and held it over his head. “Billy, shut that thing up!”

  The jukebox screeched and went quiet.

  “I need everyone’s attention!” Nadler shouted. “Eyes front. This is some important shit I am about to bestow on all of you!”

  “Herb’s using big words, cut him off!” someone shouted from the back.

  Nadler cleared his throat. “For six torturous years, I have been tasked with babysitting Officer Walter O’Brien. During that time, he has written more than twelve hundred tickets, arrested six hundred twenty-three upstanding fellow members of our fine community, received three citations, two accelerated promotions, and been shot at twice. He’s drawn his weapon fourteen times and saved my skin at least once. I taught him everything I know, and luckily, he had the common sense to ignore all that and learn from others so he could get out of uniform and move up the ranks. I’ve got twenty-two years in blue, and I’m pretty sure the powers that be have no intention of changing that.”

  “Didn’t he lose one, too, Herb?” Billy Preston shouted from the back.

  “Ah, yes.” Nadler nodded. “The girl who got away. The tiny little thing who beat the hell out of our boy on his first night out of the gate and ran off on him. At least she taught him how to take a punch. The point is, our boy got back up, dusted off, and kept on going. Not easy to do in this line of work, and he did it like a pro. For six years, he’s been nothing but a pro.” Nadler raised the gold shield high above his head. “I could have not asked for a better partner, I’m gonna miss him, but I wish him nothing but the best as he moves on to the next chapter of his life. If you got ’em, raise ’em up, folks. Join me in toasting the latest addition to the Homicide Division of Detroit’s finest!”

  “You don’t have a beer, Herb!” someone pointed out.

  “I don’t have a beer,” Nadler repeated, glancing at his empty hand. He quickly grabbed a random glass from the table next to him and held it up.

  The bartender had slipped a Coors draft in front of Walter, and he raised it along with everyone else, mouthed the words thank you to Nadler, and drank it down.

  Twenty minutes later, he was on the sidewalk walking back to his apartment on Benton. Nadler and some of the others had tried to put him in a cab, but it wasn’t far and he wanted to walk, give his head a chance to clear and savor the moment. The August air was warm and still slightly humid from the earlier drizzle. It had rained just enough to wash some of the city’s stink away. He glanced up at the clock on the side of Hartington Savings and Loan and realized it was eight minutes until midnight.

  Six years from rookie to homicide detective was no easy feat. He’d worked his butt off to make it happen, and he’d be one of the youngest in the department. He knew that meant an uphill battle in his future, but it wouldn’t be his first, and at that particular moment there was very little he felt he couldn’t take on.

  Except the damn sidewalk, which kept shifting under his feet, while the buildings swayed gently with the wind. And why was everyone else suddenly walking so fast?

  Or was he just walking slow?

  Maybe he’d drunk a little more than he should have.

  That might be it.

  A bus stop shelter came up on the right side of the sidewalk, and Walter half fell, half settled down onto the bench.

  An elderly woman was sitting on the far end. She gave him an odd glance, then turned back to the paperback in her hand. Different Seasons by Stephen King.

  “I’m a homicide detective,” Walter told her, not exactly sure why, but the words felt good rolling off his tongue.

  She marked her place in the book with her thumb and looked back over at him. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I decide to kill someone.”

  “I’m a homicide detective at twenty-eight years old.”

  “Good for you.”

  “What do you do?”

  She stared at him for another second, looked him up and down, then returned to the book as she spoke. “I sit in this shelter every couple of nights and wait for Giovanni’s to close, and sometimes they give me a bite to eat. Whatever they got left over. That’s what I do. How about you leave me alone so I can get back to that?”

  Walter noticed her clothing for the first time. The holes in her sweater. The worn shoes that looked two sizes too big. On the sidewalk across from them stood a shopping cart loaded with various odds and ends, bottles and cans, all loosely covered with a tattered blue blanket.

  “You’re a detective now, at twenty-eight,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m fifty-six. What do you think you’ll be at fifty-six? Ain’t none of us really know till we get there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Walter heard himself say, knowing it was the wrong thing to say but too late to take it back.

  She huffed but didn’t reply. She returned to her book, shaking her head.

  The bus stop shelter faced Giovanni’s from across the sidewalk.

  Nearly every table was full, even though the Italian restaurant would be closing soon. A completely different world not more than ten feet away, with dozens of laughing and smiling faces inside—mostly couples, a mix of young and old, tiny islands of red-and-white-checkered tables filled with wine, pasta, and pizza.

  When Walter’s eyes landed on her through the glass in that crowded dining room, a voice in the back of his mind immediately whispered that it couldn’t possibly be her. Not now. Not after six years. But even as this thought attempted to take hold, another voice told him it was.

  It was her.

  Amy Archer.

  The girl who got away.

  Chapter

  9

  Amy Archer.

  She was sitting with a man at a small table on the far left side of the dining room, tucked up in the corner. The man’s back was to the picture window, and she faced him, a glass of wine in her hand and a smile on her face. She wore a red dress, and her chestnut hair was feathered back to one side, clipped in place above diamond earrings. Only a hint of makeup.

  Walter vividly recalled his fingers in her hair, tucking loose strands behind her ear.

  The touch of her skin against his palm.

  And those eyes.

  There was no mistaking her eyes.

  Even from this distance, from the shelter across the sidewalk outside, he knew those eyes. The deep grayness of them. They pulled at him, and he was nearly to his feet before he even realized that he had started to stand.

  It couldn’t be her, though, could it? All these years later?

  It’s her. You know it is.

  He forced himself to settle back down on the bench. The man across from her must have said something funny—the girl leaned forward over the table and laughed, then rocked back in her seat, somehow managing not to spill the wine.