FLASH POINT (Thomas Blume Book 6)

  FLASH POINT

  A Thomas Blume Novel

  P.T. READE

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  “What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”

  - Baudelaire

  PROLOGUE

  They say that right before you die, in the last moments of your life, you experience snippets of everything that came before. Flashes of the life you lived. Loved ones, places visited and moments of pure joy. They say that in the final seconds, right before the end, you finally understand. You accept everything that has happened, and all becomes painless and bright.

  They say a lot of things.

  All of it crap.

  That moment, when it hit me, there was no joy. No happiness or precious memories. Just fear and blinding white pain.

  I heaved a piece of concrete from against the gaping hole at the side of the building and flinched as a loose electrical wire sparked overhead.

  At my feet, a watery brown trickle of god-knows-what ran from a cracked pipe near the cell floor and slithered across the dusty tile, making its own path into the dark.

  The past 48 hours had been interesting. And by interesting, I mean I’d been shot at, nearly run over and drugged, but being blown up was a new one for me.

  Forces were at work that I struggled to understand. The pieces fragmented.

  Where was the man I sought? So close, I knew it.

  As I scraped through the rubble and pulled debris aside, I searched all around me for any clue as to where Roland Teach had gone. The entire lower floor of the holding cells had been trashed, and, even more disturbingly, a collection of bodies lay strewn across the floor.

  I passed by one of the cells. Inside, a fat man with an ugly neck tattoo lay slumped against the wall. His head was caved in at the forehead. Across from him, a young black man, skinny, was crumpled into a heap. His head lowered, he looked like he was in prayer, hoping for a salvation that would never come. Outside the cells, I clocked at least two police officers in a similar condition.

  I moved over to the nearest one, his midnight blue uniform almost entirely gray now. Dust swirled ahead of me and water leaked across the floor, seeping from somewhere. I reached down to feel for the man’s pulse. Nothing.

  His partner, ten feet away, had even less chance. He had been thrown clear into the wall by the blast. A ruddy patch of dark spatter against the wall showed where his head had impacted.

  Poor bastards. There was no helping any of them now.

  Somewhere above—or maybe outside—it was hard to tell, shouts started arising as the police station recovered. Emergency response units were inbound; cops would be evacuating the building. I didn’t have much time.

  I raced back to cell 6B, the one that had held the man who had taken everything from me. I almost hoped I had imagined the whole thing. That the concussion from the bomb blast had made me delirious. But no, the entire south facing wall of the station lay crumbling and, at the back of the cell, a gaping hole.

  I coughed. Tasted blood.

  No time to think about that.

  Heaving the remains of the cell door open, I stepped inside again. It was a mess. The ten-by-eight spaces weren’t exactly luxurious at the best of times, but now, it was a disaster. The single bench seat-cum-bed was split down the center, broken pieces scattered around. The metallic toilet and wash basin had been torn clean off the wall and water trickled from raw pipes in the wall.

  The typically sterile, tiled surroundings had been shattered. Broken tiles lay strewn across the floor and lumps of plaster hung from the drywall.

  I pulled a piece of concrete aside and stepped through the hole in the south wall, heading outside. Again, I coughed, ragged. I drew a sleeve to my mouth, trying to cut down on the dust entering my lungs.

  As my feet crunched on the broken concrete and rubble outside, my eyes adjusted to the haze around me. The sun above was a dim bulb, flickering in and out of existence as plumes of debris rained down from above.

  I just need a clue. Some hint of where he went.

  There was no blood spatter outside. Or, if there was, it had been hidden under piles of detritus. Maybe Teach had escaped up, through the station?

  No, there were a hundred cops that way. It would be a dumb move for a smart guy.

  If Teach hadn’t been obliterated in the blast, he’d exited through the wall the same way I had.

  I stumbled over a loose piece of wire. Staggered. My foot caught on something soft.

  A piece of cloth. No, a scrap of clothing.

  I cleared away the smoke and kneeled to inspect. A body.

  For the briefest second fear and anger reared within me. If Teach had died, I would never get any answers. Even worse, he would never be able to answer for his crimes.

  But it wasn’t Teach or a cop. It certainly wasn’t one of the perps from the cells either, judging by the studded leather jacket and boots. The figure was face down on top of the rubble, still and unmoving. Dead, but not from the blast.

  I reached closer, touched the man’s back. My fingers traced two small holes in his jacket and came away bloody. Bullet wounds.

  The body was warm too, recently killed.

  Another shred of fabric caught my eye, not five feet away. A second body. I scrambled over, this one was face-up, but no less dead. A blank expression spread across his face as a pool of drying blood seeped into his beard. I opened the man’s leather waistcoat. The same telltale bullet holes perforated his chest—this time three in total. A tight grouping.

  This body was skinnier than the previous one. His tattooed arms exposed, inked with a skull, a bird of some sort and a line of Latin script.

  Who were these men?

  “Hello?” A voice cried from behind, snapping my attention back. “Anyone down here?” Clear and authoritative. A cop or fireman.

  They were sweeping the building—an evacuation. I reached into my pocket and freed my cell phone. Through the dust and muck, I snapped a few grainy images of the bodies. I zoomed in closer on the arms of the second victim. The ink seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Hey, you!”

  I turned to find a pair of uniformed officers wading through the chaos with flashlights dancing ahead. They saw me, plain clothes, dark t-shirt and jeans and did what any cop would do.

  Guns came up.

  “Sir, I need you to put your hands—”

  “Relax fellas; I’m NYPD. Or I used to be. Long story. Look, I’m working with Detective Sanchez.”

  “Sir, I won’t ask again. Please raise your hands and—”

  “Look, here,” I replied, slowly and deliberately tugging the NYPD visitors pass free from beneath my dusty shirt. “I’m working with Rey, um, detective Sanchez.”

  One of the flashlights danced across my blue and white pass, now crumpled and covered in grime. They didn’t fully trust me. I wouldn’t have either.

  On a good day, I was a six-foot ex-cop, with blue eyes and a strong face—or so people told me. Today was not a good day. Today, I was a broken man, bleeding, covered in dust and stumbling through a ruined police station. A gray ghost in purgatory. Maybe this was my sentence. To keep making the same mistakes.

  A section of wall collapsed nearby with a crash, startling us all. In the end, questions could wait. They holstered the weapons and moved forward.

  “Are you injured?” the younger cop asked.

  “We need to leave, now,” his partner chimed in.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s go.” I gestured past the cell wall and to the street beyond, only vaguely visible through the dust and the smoke.

  The two officers stepped forwa
rd, edging me ahead cautiously and we negotiated our way through the rubble. The dust was thick, giving us only a few feet of visibility.

  “I can’t believe it,” one said, shaking his head as he surveyed the destruction. “No one escaped the blast. Everyone down here is dead.”

  “Come on, we have to go,” I said, keeping the forward momentum.

  We took a few more steps, coughing and crunching across the rubble was we went, before a wan light overhead, suggested we were probably outside.

  The second blast came out of nowhere and caught us all off-guard.

  A thunderous explosion erupted from behind. A split second of panic filled my mind before a sledgehammer of heat and pain slammed into my back.

  I lost all sense of up or down and felt weightless, before another impact—the ground—embraced me.

  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I knew it was a smaller explosion—perhaps a propane tank or some kind of fuel storage had finally ruptured and gone up, but it didn’t matter. My head pounded, body ached, lungs burned—drowning on dry land.

  My vision dimmed at the edges and I started to slip.

  No, focus. Get up, start moving.

  The last words of the officer echoed in my memory.

  No one escaped the blast, the officer had said.

  As my senses slipped like a dark tide into the ocean, one thought blazed crystal clear, burning away the haze.

  The officer was wrong. One man had escaped. A man who I had been chasing for over a year.

  The man who killed my family.

  ONE

  My head pounds, thoughts won’t fully form. Somewhere at the back of my mind, a siren wails, a call to leave this place. Feet are weighted-down, stumbling through the concrete. Dragged down by the weight of my past, the choices I made. The death that always follows me.

  I breathe, and my throat tightens, smoke and fumes constricting my chest. The clouds of debris swirl and eddy, mocking me, blocking my vision. I cough and my stomach threatens to empty onto the curb. My pant legs are white, covered in dust. My body aches, though I can’t remember why.

  I stagger forward. Can’t remember what I’m doing here.

  Came for Someone. A killer. Maybe me.

  No. Sarah wouldn’t like that. I’m a family man, an ex-cop. A good one.

  Sarah.

  Thoughts of my family surface through the fog and I feel the happiness welling within me. Sarah, my wife with her sun-kissed hair waving in the breeze, she glances over a shoulder and smiles at me. I die every time I see that smile. My son, Tommy, runs through the clouds, calling to me. Begging me to come and play.

  Somewhere just out of sight, their figures appear on the clouds. Silhouettes are floating, just out of reach. I stumble again and a pain in my side blooms. Push it down ignore it. Only Sarah and Tommy matter.

  I cough again. This time I taste something metallic in my mouth. Blood.

  The shadows move again, dancing and twirling between gray swells and pillows of black. Red and blue lights up the air. Somewhere to my right, a muted scream pierces the background rumble. Distant.

  I ignore it. Push on.

  My left leg fails and my knee hits the ground. Barbs of pain fire up my leg. I wince, take a breath. Cough again. More movement ahead, so close now.

  “Sarah …”

  I climb back to my feet. My body doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s like my time renting it has expired, and soon I will have to return it to the real owner.

  A crunching underfoot. Glass. Rubble. Bones.

  The shadows in front grow stronger. My wife and son.

  “Tommy!”

  A colossal bang thumps the air somewhere behind me. There are no landmarks. Nothing to see. I’m stumbling through some level of hell, running on instinct only.

  Pain sears through my ribs. Cold and sharp. My vision darkens. Edges turn to black. My legs refuse to cooperate and I stumble to my knee again.

  “No.”

  “Hello?” a voice calls out from the clouds.

  “Sarah,” I croak.

  “Hello?” the voice calls again. Closer now. So close. “Anyone there?”

  I hear movement, the scuffing of feet. The cry of another siren and the squawk of radio. My mind fights the sensations away. I want nothing more than to be with my family.

  A body emerges from the smoke, but it is not my wife, not my son. A fireman in bright reflective equipment steps towards me. “Sir, are you hurt?”

  I try to call out, but the shadows have gone. My brain catches up, and tears build in my eyes.

  I cough again, and I feel a strong arm around my chest lifting me up.

  “Don’t worry sir; we’ll have you out of here in no time.”

  “But I. My leg—”

  “Please sir, just keep walking. Hold on to me, and we’ll have you checked out in just a moment.”

  “No, I mean my—” But the words won’t come. The fog in my brain is clearing, and reality overwhelms my mind.

  “Just keep moving, everything will be fine.” The fireman says. “Everything will be fine.”

  But I know better. As my senses slide back into place, my memories surface and realization dawns on me. Nothing will be fine.

  TWO

  For a short time, the gleaming new police station at the corner of Hudson and Ninth Avenue was the crown jewel of the NYPD. A shimmering example of efficiency, integrity and modern policing. Everything the city planners had dreamed of.

  While the intimidating brownstone monolith at One Police Plaza, ten blocks away, was technically the home of the NYPD in Manhattan, the brand-new Tenth Precinct station house had become the flagship operation for the mayor’s office. An example to show visiting dignitaries and politicians just how far New York had come since the crime-ridden days of the 1970’s.

  The stunning new, multi-million-dollar construction, featured a large glass and steel façade, with a sweeping, sculptured lobby entrance that made it look like part-airport terminal, part-modern art gallery. All the exterior windows had been designed to maximize light within the building and the entire brickwork exterior had been painted in a breezy off-white, accented by deep grays near the edges and around the entrance. Classy and modern, but still conservative enough that you wouldn’t think of the place as a joke.

  Inside, similar consideration had gone into the layout. Gone were the ramshackle desks, peeling paintwork and dog-eared posters hanging on every wall. Now it was all clean white walls and somber steel chairs, frosted glass dividers, and high-tech computer equipment. Markings painted on the floor directed cops, perps and visitors alike and everything was clean—something I’d never seen once in any other NYPD station. Even the smell—that unique mix of human body odor and stale coffee, had gone. Everything was new, efficient and designed for one purpose; to usher in a new chapter for the NYPD.

  Of course, that was before the bomb tore a hole right through the city’s newest station house, also taking out half of the building next door. Now the site was barely recognizable. A crumbling mess spewing smoke and dust into the sky, it was surrounded by flashing lights and banshee sirens of the emergency services.

  Like ants deserting a ruined nest, the trail of cops and city officials led across the street, down the sidewalk, and disappeared into the altogether different building. One I knew all-too-well.

  Out from the shadow of the ruined police precinct, I glanced over a shoulder and took in the building from a distance. The smoke and dust were starting to dissipate, and the scale of the destruction was finally becoming clear.

  The explosion hit the new station house hard, but like some odd mirror effect, the opposite side of the building seemed almost untouched.

  The Eastern face, next to the alleyway where I had emerged from the holding cells, had taken the brunt of the blast. The post office bordering the other side of the alley had cratered into pieces. The bomb, assuming it was a bomb and not some random gas explosion, had detonated somewhere between the two buildings and torn upw
ards, ripping off walls and fixtures, spilling the innards of both buildings into the road. The tang of burnt plastic and singed hair hung heavy in the air.

  Staring at the point of impact, I could almost imagine the explosion, watching a tornado of fire spin skyward from the alleyway and tearing half of the street with it. Now, all was quiet—apart from the sirens of emergency services, closing off the scene.

  Mumbles of conversation brought my thoughts back to the scene ahead. Firefighters were herding dozens of us from the crumbling building and away from the risk of falling masonry.

  This side of the street had some broken windows and plenty of debris, but it had escaped mostly unharmed from the blast, making me think the charge had been focused. Intended to hit a specific point—not just cause as much chaos as possible. In other words, not a terrorist attack.

  Before I could voice my thoughts, the crowd swept me through a dusty glass door into a large reception area.

  From the moment I set foot inside, memories welled within me. The time my partner, Rey Sanchez and I had brought in famed Jersey drug runner Louis ‘Knives’ Santiago, to a spontaneous and appreciative round of applause. The time that I dropped hot coffee all over myself, earning an equal but entirely different burst of applause and simultaneous hoots of derision, and the time Sarah had stopped in to surprise me at work one day.

  The last thought saddened me as I glanced around the old police station interior. My old police station.

  Rey had said this place was closed now, awaiting redevelopment or demolishing in favor of the newer, more efficient glass and steel structure we had just abandoned.

  As I took in the beat cops, detectives and lieutenants clearing off dust sheets and righting chairs, I couldn’t miss the irony. We had ended up back where it all started.

  Clouds of dust filled the air, billowed up on air currents created by the influx of humanity. Officers opened blinds to bring afternoon light back into a reception area tiled with green and white flooring. Near the stairs, the welcome light revealed the old booking desk, with its glass divider.