Witness to Death Read online

  As he ran, Callahan expected a gunshot, something to go off, someone to come after him, but it didn’t happen. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Christine standing over the crumpled bodies of the cops. She was hunched over, hugging her ribs. An instant later she straightened and then took off as well, disappearing among the panicking crowd.

  Facing forward again, he locked eyes with the bomber. John looked terrified. He was just standing there, leaning against the truck.

  Another ten seconds, he thought. I’ll be there in ten, John. Just hold on.

  The crowd didn’t move, and one guy slammed his shoulder into Callahan. He bounced into another guy, but—despite the searing pain—didn’t go down. The second guy grabbed him by the shoulders, but Callahan twisted out of his grip and kept running. A woman screamed for the police.

  Good Samaratins in New York.

  Traffic was stopped in both directions. Every move Callahan made raised the possibility of even higher casualties.

  Callahan sprinted. He hit the corner and stopped. John turned toward the water for an instant, as if looking for something, and then back to Callahan. Except for red cheeks, his face was pale. He frowned and his eyes were wide and watery. Callahan could see the timer counting down.

  At that moment, a woman in a yellow ski jacket realized what was happening and started to scream. A man with an umbrella turned in their direction. He yelled for the police.

  Callahan was three steps away from John.

  He stopped running and looked at the vest. There was what looked to be rectangular boxes lined around his stomach. Inside the boxes appeared to be gray colored clay. C4. It wasn’t C4, however. When Callahan touched it, it didn’t feel like modeling clay. More like a hard plastic. Callahan didn’t know what it was. Something new. They’d have to go to someone like Ameritech to get it. Wires protruded from the explosive, leading up to the digital timer on his chest.

  Three minutes to go.

  “There’s a pressure switch, right?” Callahan asked.

  “That’s what they told me,” John said. “Something like that.”

  Callahan leaned in closer looking at the wires. If he pulled one, would the timer stop? It might, but what about the pressure switch? It wasn’t worth the risk. One wrong move and the bomb would explode. Callahan tried to clear his mind.

  “When they put the vest on you, did you see the inside?”

  John nodded.

  “Were there wires on the inside too?”

  “I’m sorry Frank. I just didn’t want her to die. If someone was going to do it . . . she’s been through so much. I wanted her to see that I was brave too. That I was strong.”

  “Were there wires on the inside?”

  John closed his eyes for a second. When they opened, he said, “Yes, they went up to the pressure switch.”

  Callahan looked out toward the water. There was at least one hundred feet of room between the Intrepid and anything neighboring it. Behind him people were rushing around shouting, screaming. He heard the word “Police” over and over again.

  No one approached them.

  “We’ll take it off and throw it in the river. The river should muffle the blast. No one will get hurt.”

  Callahan leaned in and reached for the zipper of the vest. John grabbed his hand, stopping him.

  “What if we don’t move it quick enough?”

  “We have to try. What else can we do?”

  But John wasn’t listening anymore. He was looking over Callahan’s shoulder. His face had gone from wide eyes and open mouth to stiff. His lips were closed. His breathing regulated.

  “You sure the river will muffle the blast?”

  Callahan thought for a moment. The vest was weighted. It would sink.

  “Yeah. Now let’s get it off you.”

  The timer ticked to under a minute. Fifty five seconds.

  John looked at Callahan and said, “Tell her I loved her.”

  Callahan whirled to try and grab John by the shoulder, but he was already out of reach. Callahan looked to where John was running and saw what had caught John’s eye. Three blocks away, between the waves of people, he could see Tony Verderese was pulling Michelle from the backseat.

  And from the position of his body, it looked like he had a gun in her back.

  The ground was lined with bricks barely swept of snow. In the distance, John could see one of the ferries that led to Ellis Island pulling out. Normally there were vendors lined along the walk, but in the cold, the area was empty.

  John could see a group of people—two men and a woman—leaning against the fence near the Hudson River. It struck him that this was near where it started.

  Along the Hudson.

  If he’d just gone out and gotten wasted like a normal guy, none of this would have happened.

  Or, at the very least, it wouldn’t have happened to him.

  John pumped his arms as he ran.

  The timer on his chest beeped.

  He could see Hannah, but not the image that haunted his dreams. It was Hannah laughing by the corner of the pool, jumping up and down. Her laugh was musical, an uncontrolled giggle that had a tempo. He hadn’t thought of it in years, but his mom always talked about it. That’s what she remembered about Hannah.

  Her laugh.

  John was closing ground now. Michelle’s was screaming. Verderese’s mouth was moving too, but John couldn’t hear the sound. The way his eyes widened, John thought, it was as if Tony just realized what was about to happen.

  He could see Ashley wearing a black dress. It was when they went on vacation to Boston. They decided to go out for a fancy dinner. John wore a charcoal colored suit. The only suit he owned. When they got to the restaurant, they were told they needed to wait. They stood at the bar. Ashley got an apple martini. And she spilled it on John’s white shirt. He sat through the entire dinner with a wet green stain on the shirt. But on their way out, Ashley wrapped her arms around him in front of the stain. She covered him up.

  John was less than a block away now. Tony had pushed Michelle away from him, and John could see the gun. Tony raised it at John.

  John saw his classroom. Saw his kids raising their hands. Asking questions. Figuring out why it was okay for Johnny to die in The Outsiders. Why he had to die. He saw Shanene cry when Ponyboy read Johnny’s note.

  It wasn’t far now. Two steps. Tony was still yelling.

  John could hear the water slapping at the walls. Calling to him. He didn’t feel anything in his gut now. He could only feel the impact of his feet on the ground. The wind pulling at his hair like Michelle’s hands.

  Michelle was on her knees, out of the way.

  Tony may have been pulling the trigger.

  But it was too later.

  John dove forward and hit Tony in the stomach with his shoulder. As his face pressed into the flesh of Tony’s neck, he smelled thick cologne trying to mask the stale smell of sweat.

  He felt momentum take hold of him, as Tony lost his balance, feet lifting off the ground.

  Michelle screamed. He hoped it was Michelle. Maybe it was someone else.

  Both men tumbled backwards and over the rail. John saw the water rushing at him.

  He heard the timer beep.

  Goodbye Michelle.

  The water hit his face, cold and sharp, like the knife Christine had jammed in his shoulder. He held tight to Tony.

  The timer beeped again.

  The world went white.

  The world went silent.

  It hadn’t snowed in New Jersey since that Saturday.

  It had actually gotten warm, climbing into the fifties.

  Peter Callahan spent two and a half weeks in the hospital. The injuries to his ribs had caused internal bleeding. He was taped up, just like when he was a kid. They did other things to stop the bleeding, but didn’t tell him what. He didn’t ask.

  The weather didn’t hold when he got out.

  Peter Callahan hated DC in the winter. Everything felt half-assed.
None of the fountains ran. The reflecting pool was empty. And the wind whipped off the Potomac snapping the flags surrounding the Washington Monument straight out, as if they’d just been ironed. No one else was around, as the sun had set hours ago.

  That’s why he wanted to meet Duffy here. With the wind and the different raised monuments in the way, the chances of them being bugged successfully were slim.

  Callahan stalked past the Monument toward the World War II Memorial. In the distance, he saw the Lincoln Monument, lights illuminating the President in his seat. An airplane angled across the sky on its approach. As he looked, the wind was so strong it made him squint and gasp.

  He stepped into the memorial and studied the pillars—one for each state. Callahan headed toward the New Jersey pillar. Right where he’d met Weller for the first time.

  Duffy came from across the monument, hands jammed in her pockets.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked when she was in earshot.

  “Getting better.”

  “When are you going to come in and officially debrief?”

  “What are you talking about?” Callahan spread his hands.

  “You broke a direct order from me to stay out of it. You’ve been AWOL for three weeks. We need to get the official story down. You need to come to headquarters.”

  Callahan nodded. So this was how it was going to go.

  “Why didn’t the team you promised show up?”

  Duffy’s face and ears were red from the wind. Her hair was tucked under a thick, fur hat. “We couldn’t get someone there in time. We tried. But no one would believe me.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Callahan said. “I don’t think it’s what happened. You had the picture of the bomb I gave you from Sandler. There was enough proof. You had my word. That should have been enough.”

  Duffy didn’t speak.

  “I think you were a part of this.”

  Duffy laughed and took her hands out of her pockets. They were empty.

  Callahan shook his head. “When no one showed up at the tunnel, I got suspicious. Then, no one came to see me in the hospital. No one came to tell me to keep quiet.”

  Duffy didn’t say anything.

  “When I got out, I went up to Sandler’s hangar. It had been burnt to the ground. No one was there. There wasn’t even a sign of anyone being there. Not even the fire department. If you had sent men there, someone would have responded. You would have gotten the fire trucks up there to try and save some evidence.”

  Duffy’s mouth dropped open, but she quickly shut it.

  “Weller found out, didn’t he? He discovered you were a part of it. I mean, he was working the Sandler case with me. I was feeding him all sorts of information. Anything I got from my contact.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Duffy said.

  Over her shoulder, Callahan saw movement. He tensed a bit.

  “Once Omar disappeared, you went to see Weller, right? You thought he was on to you and had arrested Omar on the docks, but didn’t tell you. So, you confronted him, and when he wouldn’t tell you where Omar was, you killed him. Even made it look like he flipped in case someone caught on to you.”

  Callahan forced himself to relax and leaned against the monument wall. Smiled.

  “This is all bullshit. Who told you this?” Duffy asked.

  “I thought of it all myself. I even think there’s more to it than that. Your rep is that you’re a hardass. And yet, you were really nice to me that day. You were barely shocked I was alive.”

  Duffy took a step back. Over her shoulder, Callahan could see someone walking toward them. He couldn’t make out who it was in the dark. It didn’t matter, he only had one more thing to figure out.

  “How much did they offer you?” Callahan asked.

  Duffy gritted her teeth and Callahan thought she might attack him.

  “It wasn’t only that,” Duffy said her voice tight. He’d finally gotten to her, found the piece that would get her to talk. “It was Ameritech. They were screwing us around. They were selling weapons to terrorists. That picture wasn’t faked. And I’ve seen more than the photo you showed me. I have a higher clearance than you. I know more. Ameritech was helping us and screwing us. They had to go.”

  “And Sandler’s way was the only way?”

  “It was going to show everyone. No one was listening to our info. It had to be bigger than that. People had to die so the big guys over there”—she nodded toward the Capitol—”would learn.”

  “Tell me how you figured it out. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Duffy didn’t say anything.

  “You knew I was getting closer to Sandler, somehow. You were the one who gave me up.”

  Duffy looked at something and stood up a bit straighter.

  “You want to know how?” she asked. “I hacked her upload. She had information for you, uploaded it to the server. I checked it and changed it to the message you saw.”

  “How’d you know?”

  Duffy shook her head.

  “I’m in charge.”

  Duffy turned around, as if she was going to run. She stopped when she saw Hank Manfra standing behind her. He was wearing a dark blue FBI jacket. Slowly, Duffy turned back toward Callahan, a smile crossing her face.

  “I guess you got me,” she said. “We’re all going to be worse off because of that.”

  Three other agents emerged from the shadows carrying hand guns. Duffy watched them, and raised her hands. Manfra started to read her rights while hand cuffing her. Duffy didn’t struggle. Two agents escorted her back toward the road.

  “Thank you,” Manfra said.

  Callahan nodded. “I think I’m supposed to be thanking you.”

  “You gave us the head’s up.”

  Behind Manfra, one of the other agents was peeling something off the wall of the monument. Probably a piece of surveillance equipment they’d placed there after Callahan had contacted the feds.

  “I used to be in the CIA. I know all the tricks and I have a lot of connections Duffy didn’t know about. Hell, once they heard I wasn’t dead, the Agency even wanted me back,” Callahan said.

  “You going to go back?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Too much baggage.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I have some things to take care of,” he said.

  Manfra nodded. “After you called and told us about the meeting a few of our agents raided the office. We found some good stuff. Wonder who’ll be the new boss?”

  Callahan held up his hand. “Think of it as a new start. A clean slate.”

  “And what’s next for you?”

  Callahan shrugged. “I have a lot to make up for.”

  “Saving the New York City’s not enough, huh?”

  “You know the job. There’s always something new to worry about”

  “How are your friends?” he asked.

  Callahan didn’t answer

  “We haven’t found Christine yet,” Manfra said. “No sign.”

  “Keep looking. Last I saw, she had beaten up some cops and ran off. She’s dangerous.”

  Manfra nodded again. Callahan reached out his hand and shook Manfra’s.

  “Good luck,” Manfra said.

  He turned without saying goodbye and walked back toward the Washington Monument.

  Out on the street, traffic rolled along, slowly. A few men stood on the corner smoking cigars.

  He hailed a cab.

  Once he got in, he told the cabbie to get him to Dulles.

  Callahan leaned his head against the window of the cab, closed his eyes and tried to nap.

  Michelle stayed in the hospital for two weeks. She wasn’t released until after her father’s funeral.

  And Ashley’s.

  And John’s.

  Callahan had missed them all too. He wanted to make sure Michelle had someone by her side.

  Now he stood in the Sandler kitchen—the one she’d inherited—waiting for he
r soup to cook. Outside, the sun began to set, the sky turning from orange to deep blue. A few kids bounced a basketball past the house and down the street..