“10-4. We’ll advise when we reach Belmont,” came the reply.
The reason for borrowing Maxine’s van, instead of grabbing our far more ostentatious emergency-services truck, was that my plan-such as it was-called for surprise and an overwhelming show of force. The anonymity of her vehicle, along with its darkly tinted windows, allowed for both.
“We’re coming up Belmont now,” came from the speaker under the dash.
I keyed the mike. “10-4. Come partway up the driveway and wait at the curve where you’re still out of sight of the ER door. When I give the signal, approach at normal speed, and try to place the subject between the van and the building’s north brick wall-that’s the best backstop we’ve got. No rifles, okay? Handguns and shotguns only. I don’t want any bullets reaching New Hampshire.”
“You got it,” Marshall Smith’s voice answered, taking advantage of the restricted frequency to both relax on radio protocol and cut the tension a bit.
We sat there a few minutes more, feeling the weight of each second. My brain was working in overdrive, sorting through every scenario I could imagine. I knew from experience almost anything could happen, from Nguyen suddenly rumbling to his exposed position and grabbing Elizabeth as a hostage, to a carful of his buddies arriving to pick him up.
Finally, almost mercifully, we saw the glass doors of the emergency room slide open.
“Get ready,” I said on the radio.
A man, his face slightly turned away, stepped out onto the ambulance loading dock and paused there, apparently surveying the distant rooftops to the east. He was wearing a white shirt and no cap.
“Damn,” Sammie murmured, her gun already resting in her lap.
Slowly, as if stringing us along, the man removed a rolled-up bundle from under his arm and shook it out, revealing a bright-red windbreaker, which he slipped on. As his hands came through the sleeves, I could see the flash of a bandage on one of them. He pulled a blue cap from one of his pockets, adjusted it neatly on his head, and began walking toward the wheelchair ramp leading off the dock.
“Here he comes, off the loading dock. Go at a normal speed and pinch him off. Good luck.”
Almost immediately, we both became aware of movement behind us. Maxine’s van slid silently around the curve of the driveway, entered the small parking lot, and headed straight at Nguyen Van Hai. Sammie pulled the latch back on her door and opened it just a crack.
Nguyen, now crossing the lot, looked up without much curiosity as the dark van gradually approached, running perpendicular to the row of parked cars. Then he slowed, noticing it was not pulling into one of the open slots. From a distance, I could see his expression change-from passivity, to surprise, to downright alarm. He stopped dead in his tracks and quickly glanced around.
“Come on, come on,” Sammie muttered under her breath.
Suddenly, the van twisted to the right, presenting a broadside to the man almost right next to it, and simultaneously all doors to the vehicle flew open. The van hadn’t rolled to a complete stop before three heavily armed men came flying out of it, screaming orders at the top of their lungs. Dressed in black body armor stenciled in gray letters spelling Police, they circled Nguyen like nightmarish Dobermans, two of them with their legs planted and their pistols drawn in the classic shooter’s stance, the third with his hands free to move in with terrifying speed and take the man down as fast and as hard as he could. In less than five seconds it was over. Nguyen Van Hai lay flat on his face, his wrists handcuffed behind his back.
“Clear,” Marshall Smith said into his portable radio, “clear and secure.”
Sammie and I got out of our car and walked over to the group. The officer with the handcuffs was carefully searching the suspect. Looking around, I saw a few faces appear at the nearby windows. Behind us, a patrol unit appeared from its hiding place down the street.
“Nice job, folks-picture perfect,” I said as I reached them. “Marshall, why don’t you and Pierre put him in the unit and escort him back to quarters. I’ll be right there.”
I jumped up onto the loading dock and headed into the ER. Elizabeth Pace was standing in the middle of the hall, looking anxious. “Is everyone all right?”
“Everyone’s fine. I just wanted to thank you and find out how you were.”
She gave me a lopsided smile and took my hand in hers, her eyes still glued to the scene outside. I turned slightly and watched with her as the take-down team pulled Nguyen to his feet and piled him into the back of the waiting patrol car. “It was so fast, after all that waiting. What did he do?”
“We have to determine that legally, but it isn’t nice. I can tell you that much.”
She shook her head slightly. “Thirty years working in Boston, I never saw anything like that. So much for country living.”
The police department’s interrogation room, complete with the obligatory one-way mirror mounted into the wall, was as miniaturized as the rest of the department, compared to a big-city force. The room itself was six feet by eight, and the observation cubicle was too narrow to hold a chair. The whole thing was tucked into a corner of the detective squad room.
I stood next to Tony Brandt, staring through the smoke-colored glass, watching Willy Kunkle trying to extract some information from our guest. So far, it had been an exercise in futility. Nguyen Van Hai hadn’t said a single word since uttering yes to whether he understood his rights.
“Does he speak English?” Tony asked.
“He spoke it fine to the doctor. I called and asked. We’re trying to locate a translator, but I doubt it’ll make any difference.”
“But he is the man we’re after, right?”
“Circumstantially, he is. If we’re lucky, we’ll have the preliminary blood analysis back by tomorrow or the next day. If that works out, then DNA will put his blood and Benny’s in the same place at the same time.”
“Maybe the same time,” Tony amended.
“That’s up to the lawyers. According to J.P., it’s a fact-the coagulation rates were the same on both samples.”
“You search his house yet?”
“I just came from there. J.P. and his crew are still at it, but I don’t expect much-mattresses on the floor, piles of clothing, smell of food and unwashed bodies. They were having a hard time telling this guy’s junk from everyone else’s.”
“Any help from the other residents?”
“Minimal.”
“I got a call from the governor this morning. Since the media’s been speculating about organized Asian crime, he was wondering if we might need some help. I lied. I told him we were right on top of things.”
I laughed softly. Twenty-four hours earlier, I thought, and we would’ve been handing Nguyen Van Hai over to the feds-with Tony’s blessing. I slid out of the narrow cubicle to appear at the door to the interrogation room. Willy glanced over his shoulder and gave me a grim smile. “He’s all yours.”
I took my time getting comfortable in the molded plastic chair, placing it just so at the small table between us. I finally sat back, crossed my legs, and put my hands in my lap-the perfect image, I hoped, of imperturbable permanence. “We were wondering if you’d like to have an interpreter.”
Nguyen just looked at me.
“We know you speak English. You were speaking it to the doctor not twenty minutes ago. But we thought we’d make it as convenient as possible. Would you like us to call you a lawyer?”
He remained silent, his eyes watching me closely, utterly without expression.
“I hope you understand that you’re not here just for an interview. We know what you’ve done. We know you tortured Benny Travers, we know you and your two buddies chased him down after he tried to escape, and forced him off the road and killed him. We know one of you shot at him during that chase, and who was driving the car. We even know the gun was a Glock. This is not a situation where we’re hoping you’ll slip up and say something incriminating.”