I picked up my phone. “Got all that, Mercer?”
“Yes, sir, Detective Chapman. There should be a sniper team in place shortly. Let’s ride this one out,” Mercer said. “Duffy says Coop’s okay.”
“You can’t do it with guns.”
“What’s that about?”
“You can’t pick Emmet Renner off with a gun, okay? We’ve got to see Coop first.”
“I understand that part of it. But the choice of weapons isn’t up to you.”
I had the phone in one hand and was swapping positions of Paddy Duffy’s gun and my own. I knew my weapon and how it handled. I wanted his for backup, but my own in first place.
“Mike?”
“Almost there,” I said.
“You believe because your father shot Charlie Renner all those many years ago that we shouldn’t take this maniac out with a gun? Is that your thinking? That it will change the past?”
“I want to see Coop.” Because if Renner had done anything to hurt her, a bullet to the head would be too easy a death for him.
“So do we all,” Mercer said. “So do we all. What’s next?”
I was as ready as I could get to take on Emmet Renner. As soon as Scully made the public announcement of Coop’s kidnapping and the rescue teams were fully staged, there would be choppers flying overhead-police and press-and anything that could float on the river hovering around this desolate point.
“I have one idea, Mercer. A hostage exchange,” I said. “If I screw it up, then Renner’s all yours.”
“Let me in on the-”
I wasn’t looking for approval. Nobody was in a position to do better than I was.
I ended the call and climbed onto the giant boulder of Ceder Point. I stayed low and began to circle the rocks on Jeffrey’s Hook.
When I passed Cormac Lonigan this time, the swirling current of the river had brought the water well over his knees. I avoided looking at his face. I assumed panic had set in long before now.
I paused when I reached the foundation of the northern tower of the bridge. I had a clear view of the lighthouse, stuck out alone in the Hudson on the very tip of Jeffrey’s Hook.
Still no sound from within it. No movement.
I ran to the rear of the bridge foundation and then moved into the space between the towers, staying tight against the twenty-foot-high concrete wall supporting the south tower. The long shadows cast by the bridge lighting on the beams and cables made walking on the rough surface trickier than I had thought it would be. This was as close as I could get to the lighthouse without being seen.
The lantern room on top of the stubby red structure still seemed to be unoccupied. The lighthouse door at its base, the one from which Paddy Duffy had exited, faced the river. There was no way for me to see it from my position.
I thought Emmet Renner would grow impatient when Duffy failed to return. I held as still as I could for several more minutes.
And then there was the sound of footsteps. A hefty man emerged from the lighthouse. I hadn’t been able to see the door open, but he was walking around the building, his hand on the wrought iron railing that enclosed it.
“Duff?” He called out with his hand cupped over his mouth. “Duff, c’mon back.”
I had been prepared by the lieutenant’s statement to me about Emmet Renner’s plastic surgery. I wouldn’t make him, in all likelihood, when we came face-to-face. But this man was no more than my age-probably in his late thirties-while Emmet was over fifty by now.
I let him walk to both sides of the lighthouse and call out for his compatriot. There was no noise except for the waves stirred up by current, lapping against the rocks.
The man was farther away from me now, seeming to be calling Duffy’s name a bit more frantically.
I yelled back at him from my position in the shadows behind the bridge tower foundation.
“There’s been an accident,” I said. “Duff’s not coming back.”
The man started and flattened his back against the lighthouse wall.
Then a glimmer of light as the door of the building opened and closed again. It must have been Emmet Renner who threw his voice out into the dark. “You’re early, Chapman,” he said. “I was expecting you’d come looking for her tonight, but you’re early.”
FIFTY-ONE
I could barely stand still once I saw part of the silhouette of Emmet Renner on the edge of the lighthouse walkway. I suppose a sniper in the right position on the water could have picked him off, but half his body-and maybe the hand holding a gun-was inside, where I expected Coop to be.
He was totally out of range of the Emergency Services team positioned somewhere above me on the steel girders.
“I’ve waited a lifetime for the chance to do this, Chapman.”
“Take your best shot, Renner,” I said. “I’ll step out to meet you if you let Alex Cooper walk out that door.”
“She can’t walk right now, I’m afraid.”
“It’s about me,” I said. “Not her.”
“Seems like I’ve got both of you, Chapman.”
“Not likely. Not likely at all.”
“Then I’ll take the bird I’ve got in my hand,” he said, stepping inside the door.
“Renner!” I screamed as loud as I could. Again, “Renner!”
He waited a minute or two before coming back outside. Still, his second hadn’t budged from his place on the side of the lighthouse.
“I can get you back to Arizona, Renner. No questions asked. One-way ticket.” I was talking too fast and I knew it. “You’ve picked the wrong lure.”
“I don’t know much about fishing, Chapman, but looks to me like I picked exactly the bait I needed,” he said. “And I can pretty much write my own ticket where I’m going next.”
“Give her to me and I can make the deal.”
“I give her to you and you won’t live long enough to do that. That’s the easy part,” Renner said. “Step out from behind that fortress and I’ll show you I haven’t lost my touch.”
“So far your only crime is breaking and entering. Liberty Island,” I said. If he released Coop alive and well, then I didn’t give a damn about the kidnapping charge. “And the lighthouse.”
“Don’t slight me on the kidnapping, Chapman. We Renners pride ourselves on the big snatch.”
“How about Duffy?” I said. “I’ll give you Duffy back.”
“Duffy’s nothing to me.”
“A friend of the family.”
“He’s not blood, Chapman,” Renner said. “And this is all about blood.”
I didn’t expect any less from Emmet Renner. But his accomplice, the guy plastered against the side of the lighthouse, took his cue from what he assumed was Paddy Duffy’s fate and Renner’s icy remark. He bolted.
The man vaulted over the railing and started to run, headed for the bushes of Bennett Park for cover, and then most certainly beyond.
Emmet Renner was stuck in place, unable to shoot the man in the back for fear, I’m sure, that he would expose himself to police fire. I didn’t think he’d believe I’d gotten to Jeffrey’s Hook by myself.
The runaway wasn’t my concern. He would undoubtedly plow straight into a squad of gathering police officers as he tried to make a timely escape from an ungrateful employer, and that left at least one less gun in Coop’s little world.
I needed to keep Emmet Renner out of the lighthouse. I needed to keep him from harming Coop-from killing her-now that I was here to witness exactly that.
“Renner! Two men down.”
“Come out where I can see you, Chapman,” he said, turning back-it appeared to me-to enter the lighthouse door.
The silhouette reemerged, and this time he was dragging a bundle across the threshold.
I did a double take. The bundle was a human being, bound and gagged, and being dragged by her long blond hair onto the walkway around the lighthouse.
Now was the time for a sniper to take a shot. All my inhibitions about another shooting vanished in a flash. But the only angle at which Renner would have been vulnerable was from the river, and there was no one in place to shoot.