فصل 37

CHAPTER 37

The lobby was full of policemen. It was 6:30 P.M. and the police at the outside guard posts had just been relieved at their regular two-hour interval. The men coming into the lobby from the raw evening warmed their hands at several electric heaters. Some of them had money down on the Memphis State basketball game in progress and were anxious to know how it was going.

Sergeant Tate would not allow a radio to be played aloud in the lobby, but one officer had a Walkman plugged in his ear. He reported the score often, but not often enough to suit the bettors.

In all there were fifteen armed policemen in the lobby plus two Corrections officers set to relieve Pembry and Boyle at 7:00 P.M. Sergeant Tate himself was looking forward to going off duty with the eleven-to-seven shift.

All posts reported quiet. None of the nut calls threatening Lecter had come to anything.

At 6:45, Tate heard the elevator start up. He saw the bronze arrow above the door begin to crawl around the dial. It stopped at five.

Tate looked around the lobby. “Did Sweeney go up for the tray?”

“Naw, I’m here, Sarge. You mind calling, see if they’re through? I need to get going.” Sergeant Tate dialed three digits and listened. “Phone’s busy,” he said. “Go ahead up and see.” He turned back to the log he was completing for the eleven-to-seven shift.

Patrolman Sweeney pushed the elevator button. It didn’t come.

“Had to have lamb chops tonight, rare,” Sweeney said. “What you reckon he’ll want for breakfast, some fucking thing from the zoo? And who’ll have to catch it for him? Sweeney.” The bronze arrow above the door stayed on five.

Sweeney waited another minute. “What is this shit?” he said.

The .38 boomed somewhere above them, the reports echoing down the stone stairs, two fast shots and then a third.

Sergeant Tate, on his feet at the third one, microphone in his hand. “CP, shots fired upstairs at the tower. Outside posts look sharp. We’re going up.” Yelling, milling in the lobby.

Tate saw the bronze arrow of the elevator moving then. It was already down to four. Tate roared over the racket, “Hold it! Guard mount double up at your outside posts, first squad stays with me. Berry and Howard cover that fucking elevator if it comes—” The needle stopped at three.

“First squad, here we go. Don’t pass a door without checking it. Bobby, outside—get a shotgun and the vests and bring ‘em up.” Tate’s mind was racing on the first flight of stairs. Caution fought with the terrible need to help the officers upstairs. God don’t let him be out. Nobody wearing vests, shit. Fucking Corrections screws.

The offices on two, three and four were supposed to be empty and locked. You could get from the tower to the main building on those floors, if you went through the offices. You couldn’t on five.

Tate had been to the excellent Tennessee SWAT school and he knew how to do it. He went first and took the young ones in hand. Fast and careful they took the stairs, covering each other from landing to landing.

“You turn your back on a door before you check it, I’ll ream your ass.” The doors off the second-floor landing were dark and locked.

Up to three now, the little corridor dim. One rectangle of light on the floor from the open elevator car. Tate moved down the wall opposite the open elevator, no mirrors in the car to help him. With two pounds’ pressure on a nine-pound trigger, he looked inside the car. Empty.

Tate yelled up the stairs, “Boyle! Pembry! Shit.” He posted a man on three and moved up.

Four was flooded with the music of the piano coming from above. The door into the offices opened at a push. Beyond the offices, the beam of the long flashlight shined on a door open wide into the great dark building beyond.

“Boyle! Pembry!” He left two on the landing. “Cover the door. Vests are coming. Don’t show your ass in that doorway.” Tate climbed the stone stairs into the music. At the top of the tower now, the fifth-floor landing, light dim in the short corridor. Bright light through the frosted glass that said SHELBY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Tate moved low beneath the door glass to the side opposite the hinges. He nodded to Jacobs on the other side, turned the knob and shoved hard, the door swinging all the way back hard enough for the glass to shatter, Tate inside fast and out of the doorframe, covering the room over the wide sights of his revolver.

Tate had seen many things. He had seen accidents beyond reckoning, fights, murders. He had seen six dead policemen in his time. But he thought that what lay at his feet was the worst thing he had ever seen happen to an officer. The meat above the uniform collar no longer resembled a face. The front and top of the head were a slick of blood peaked with torn flesh and a single eye was stuck beside the nostrils, the sockets full of blood.

Jacobs passed Tate, slipping on the bloody floor as he went in to the cell. He bent over Boyle, still handcuffed to the table leg. Boyle, partly eviscerated, his face hacked to pieces, seemed to have exploded blood in the cell, the walls and the stripped cot covered with gouts and splashes.

Jacobs put his fingers on the neck. “This one’s dead,” he called over the music. “Sarge?” Tate, back at himself, ashamed of a second’s lapse, and he was talking into his radio. “Command post, two officers down. Repeat, two officers down. Prisoner is missing. Lecter is missing. Outside posts watch the windows, subject has stripped the bed, he may be making a rope. Confirm ambulances en route.” “Pembry dead, Sarge?” Jacobs shut the music off.

Tate knelt and as he reached for the neck to feel, the awful thing on the floor groaned and blew a bloody bubble.

“Pembry’s alive.” Tate didn’t want to put his mouth in the bloody mess, knew he would if he had to help Pembry breathe, knew he wouldn’t make one of the patrolmen do it. Better if Pembry died, but he would help him breathe. But there was a heartbeat, he found it, there was breathing. It was ragged and gurgling but it was breathing. The ruin was breathing on its own.

Tate’s radio crackled. A patrol lieutenant set up on the lot outside took command and wanted news. Tate had to talk.

“Come here, Murray,” Tate called to a young patrolman. “Get down here with Pembry and take ahold of him where he can feel your hands on him. Talk to him.” “What’s his name, Sarge?” Murray was green.

“It’s Pembry, now talk to him, God dammit.” Tate on the radio. “Two officers down, Boyle’s dead and Pembry’s bad hurt. Lecter’s missing and armed—he took their guns. Belts and holsters are on the desk.” The lieutenant’s voice was scratchy through the thick walls. “Can you confirm the stairway clear for stretchers?” “Yes sir. Call up to four before they pass. I have men on every landing.” “Roger, Sergeant. Post Eight out here thought he saw some movement behind the windows in the main building on four. We’ve got the exits covered, he’s not getting out. Hold your positions on the landings. SWAT’s rolling. We’re gonna let SWAT flush him out. Confirm.” “I understand. SWAT’s play.”

“What’s he got?”

“Two pistols and a knife, Lieutenant—Jacobs, see if there’s any ammo in the gunbelts.” “Dump pouches,” the patrolman said. “Pembry’s still full, Boyle’s too. Dumb shit didn’t take the extra rounds.” “What are they?”

“Thirty-eight +Ps JHP.”

Tate was back on the radio. “Lieutenant, it looks like he’s got two six-shot .38s. We heard three rounds fired and the dump pouches on the gunbelts are still full, so he may just have nine left. Advise SWAT it’s +Ps jacketed hollowpoints. This guy favors the face.” Plus Ps were hot rounds, but they would not penetrate SWAT’s body armor. A hit in the face would very likely be fatal, a hit on a limb would maim.

“Stretchers coming up, Tate.”

The ambulances were there amazingly fast, but it did not seem fast enough to Tate, listening to the pitiful thing at his feet. Young Murray was trying to hold the groaning, jerking body, trying to talk reassuringly and not look at him, and he was saying, “You’re just fine, Pembry, looking good,” over and over in the same sick tone.

As soon as he saw the ambulance attendants on the landing, Tate yelled, “Corpsman!” as he had in war.

He got Murray by the shoulder and moved him out of the way. The ambulance attendants worked fast, expertly securing the clenched, blood-slick fists under the belt, getting an airway in and peeling a nonstick surgical bandage to get some pressure on the bloody face and head. One of them popped an intravenous plasma pack, but the other, taking blood pressure and pulse, shook his head and said, “Downstairs.” Orders on the radio now. “Tate, I want you to clear the offices in the tower and seal it off. Secure the doors from the main building. Then cover from the landings. I’m sending up vests and shotguns. We’ll get him alive if he wants to come, but we take no special risks to preserve his life. Understand me?” “I got it, Lieutenant.”

“I want SWAT and nobody but SWAT in the main building. Let me have that back.” Tate repeated the order.

Tate was a good sergeant and he showed it now as he and Jacobs shrugged into their heavy armored vests and followed the gurney as the orderlies carried it down the stairs to the ambulance. A second crew followed with Boyle. The men on the landings were angry, seeing the gurneys pass, and Tate had a word of wisdom for them: “Don’t let your temper get your ass shot off.” As the sirens wailed outside, Tate, backed by the veteran Jacobs, carefully cleared the offices and sealed off the tower.

A cool draft blew down the hall on four. Beyond the door, in the vast dark spaces of the main building, the telephones were ringing. In dark offices all over the building, buttons on telephones were winking like fireflies, the bells sounding over and over.

The word was out that Dr. Lecter was “barricaded” in the building, and radio and television reporters were calling, dialing fast with their modems, trying to get live interviews with the monster. To avoid this, SWAT usually has the telephones shut off, except for one that the negotiator uses. This building was too big, the offices too many.

Tate closed and locked the door on the rooms of blinking telephones. His chest and back were wet and itching under the hardshell vest.

He took his radio off his belt. “CP, this is Tate, the tower’s clear, over.” “Roger, Tate. Captain wants you at the CP.”

“Ten-four. Tower lobby, you there?”

“Here, Sarge.”

“It’s me on the elevator, I’m bringing it down.”

“Gotcha, Sarge.”

Jacobs and Tate were in the elevator riding down to the lobby when a drop of blood fell on Tate’s shoulder. Another hit his shoe.

He looked at the ceiling of the car, touched Jacobs, motioning for silence.

Blood was dripping from the crack around the service hatch in the top of the car. It seemed a long ride down to the lobby. Tate and Jacobs stepped off backwards, guns pointed at the ceiling of the elevator. Tate reached back in and locked the car.

“Shhhh,” Tate said in the lobby. Quietly, “Berry, Howard, he’s on the roof of the elevator. Keep it covered.” Tate went outside. The black SWAT van was on the lot. SWAT always had a variety of elevator keys.

They were set up in moments, two SWAT officers in black body armor and headsets climbing the stairs to the third-floor landing. With Tate in the lobby were two more, their assault rifles pointed at the elevator ceiling.

Like the big ants that fight, Tate thought.

The SWAT commander was talking into his headset. “Okay, Johnny.”

On the third floor, high above the elevator, Officer Johnny Peterson turned his key in the lock and the elevator door slid open. The shaft was dark. Lying on his back in the corridor, he took a stun grenade from his tactical vest and put it on the floor beside him. “Okay, I’ll take a look now.” He took out his mirror with its long handle and stuck it over the edge while his partner shined a powerful flashlight down the shaft.

“I see him. He’s on top of the elevator. I see a weapon beside him. He’s not moving.” The question in Peterson’s earphone, “Can you see his hands?”

“I see one hand, the other one’s under him. He’s got the sheets around him.” “Tell him.”

“PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD AND FREEZE,” Peterson yelled down the shaft. “He didn’t move, Lieutenant.… Right.” “IF YOU DON’T PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD I’LL DROP A STUN GRENADE ON YOU. I’LL GIVE YOU THREE SECONDS,” Peterson called. He took from his vest one of the doorstops every SWAT officer carries. “OKAY, GUYS, WATCH OUT DOWN THERE—HERE COMES THE GRENADE.” He dropped the doorstop over the edge, saw it bounce on the figure. “He didn’t move, Lieutenant.” “Okay, Johnny, we’re gonna push the hatch up with a pole from outside the car. Can you get the drop?” Peterson rolled over. His .45 automatic, cocked and locked, pointed straight down at the figure. “Got the drop,” he said.

Looking down the elevator shaft, Peterson could see the crack of light appear below as the officers in the foyer pushed up on the hatch with a SWAT boathook. The still figure was partly over the hatch and one of the arms moved as the officers pushed from below.

Peterson’s thumb pressed a shade harder on the safety of the Colt. “His arm moved, Lieutenant, but I think it’s just the hatch moving it.” “Roger. Heave.”

The hatch banged backward and lay against the wall of the elevator shaft. It was hard for Peterson to look down into the light. “He hasn’t moved. His hand’s not on the weapon.” The calm voice in his ear, “Okay, Johnny, hold up. We’re coming into the car, so watch with the mirror for movement. Any fire will come from us. Affirm?” “Got it.”

In the lobby, Tate watched them go into the car. A rifleman loaded with armor-piercing aimed his weapon at the ceiling of the elevator. A second officer climbed on a ladder. He was armed with a large automatic pistol with a flashlight clamped beneath it. A mirror and the pistol-light went up through the hatch. Then the officer’s head and shoulders. He handed down a .38 revolver. “He’s dead,” the officer called down.

Tate wondered if the death of Dr. Lecter meant Catherine Martin would die too, all the information lost when the lights went out in that monster mind.

The officers were pulling him down now, the body coming upside down through the elevator hatch, eased down into many arms, an odd deposition in a lighted box. The lobby was filling up, policemen crowding up to see.

A corrections officer pushed forward, looked at the body’s outflung tattooed arms.

“That’s Pembry,” he said.