There was a pause. “How did you know that?”
“Don’t tell me. Special Agent Elaine Banner.”
“That’s the one. Like I said, a fishing expedition, because we don’t have much on her beyond what you’d expect.”
So Whitford might have gone elsewhere for information on Banner, I thought. Maybe to a similar source in the FBI itself. Maybe even a more obvious source. I asked my acquaintance if he was in front of a computer.
“I’m always in front of a damn computer.”
“Good. I want you to search for anything on Banner.”
“I told you, we don’t have—”
“Not your database. I’m talking about Google.”
There was a short silence punctuated by rapid keystrokes.
“Not much. The Bureau’s website, of course, a few mentions in local news reports. Wait a minute…”
I waited, holding my breath.
“She was interviewed last year by the New York Times. For their Sunday supplement. Part of a big feature on successful women in traditionally male-dominated industries. She was representing law enforcement.”
“Damn it,” I said.
“That a problem?”
“What’s the article look like?” I asked. “Lots of human interest, day-in-the-life stuff? Balancing the demands of work and family, that kind of thing?”
There was a pause as he skimmed the article on the computer screen.
“Sounds about right,” he confirmed.
“Thanks. I owe you a drink next time I’m in Washington,” I said, terminating the call without waiting for him to respond.
I took off at a run, weaving my way through the crowd, heading back to the spot I’d left Banner. She’d gone. The phone was still in my hand. I called her number. Straight to voice mail. Fuck.
I heard a loud crack and ducked instinctively. The hundred or so people nearby did exactly the same thing. The abrupt silence turned to uneasy laughter when a shower of foil confetti to the left of the stage signified the source of the noise: a prematurely activated celebration. As the babble of conversation resumed, the forgotten confetti danced in the floodlights and fell to the ground. I saw puzzle pieces fall into place.
Wardell was going to make a statement all right, and he was going to make sure we were there. For the aftermath, if not the act itself. But the first victim of the night would not be Ed Randall, and neither would the victim be chosen randomly. It was still personal with Wardell. It was always personal.
I knew exactly who he was going to kill.
72
There was a black-and-white outside ready to go. Banner and Edwards climbed in with a Chicago PD sergeant. He punched the lights and they hauled out along one of the cleared routes that had been cordoned off to allow the authorities free movement. Banner hit redial a couple of times on her cell, found Blake’s number busy both times. She thought about leaving a message, decided against it. It wouldn’t be too difficult for him to figure out where she’d gone. He was good at finding people, after all.
Small, intermittent drops of rain spattered on the windshield as they headed south on LaSalle and then east on Jackson, reaching the Art Institute in less than three minutes. Even so, it was like being the last to arrive at the party. There were at least a dozen more police cruisers already there, parked haphazardly across the street in front of the neo-classical facade of the original Art Institute building. The police vehicles intermingled with shiny Bureau sedans and a couple of ambulances. Cops overtook them on foot, running toward the building. Banner opened the passenger door as they slowed to a crawl and jumped out. Her eyes followed the direction of the tide of running uniformed figures and she saw what they were homing in on.
The barricades were already up, a clear space extending a hundred yards out from the twin bronze lions that flanked the entrance. Knots of pedestrians were being shepherded farther away down Adams Street, none of them needing much in the way of encouragement. An ambulance started up and pulled out, its lights and siren kicking in as it passed by. A helicopter hung in the air at rooftop level, its searchlight sweeping back and forth over the second floor of the building. The beam focused primarily on the gallery above the entrance doors: an open space bounded by stone balustrades and divided into bays by three grand arches separated by Corinthian columns.
All eyes were on the gallery. A hundred yards wasn’t a safe distance, of course, Banner thought, not even close to safe. They were relying on the threat of superior firepower: a hundred of their guns to Wardell’s one. Certain death if he started shooting. It was a false sense of security — if he was still up there, he had nothing to lose. Edwards hung back, making sure to keep low and behind the cruiser they’d arrived in. Banner crouched a little and moved across to the nearest uniformed officer, her eyes never wavering from the three arches where the spotlight played. She tapped the cop on the shoulder and held up her ID, which was barely glanced at.
“Special Agent Banner,” she said. “I’m on the Wardell task force.”
The cop nodded. He was a young Hispanic guy, midtwenties. “You came to the right place.”
“Is the building evacuated?”
“Uh-huh. SWAT just entered the building around the back,” he said. “We think he’s up there,” he said unnecessarily, pointing up at the second-floor gallery.
Banner risked a glance behind her, in the direction the ambulance had gone. “Who was the vic?”
The cop shrugged, still not looking at her. His voice was tense, distracted. “White female. Teens, early twenties I guess.”
Banner’s brow furrowed. It sounded like another random target. “Dead?”
Head shake from the cop.
“What?”
The cop turned to look at her for the first time. “She wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyw—”
The unmistakable snap of a bullet breaking the sound barrier stopped him in the middle of the word. The snap heralded an inevitable sequence of signals, unfolding so quickly that they appeared to be simultaneous, but not quite: the louder crack of the rifle, the bright muzzle flare in the darkness behind the balustrade beneath the left-hand arch, and finally the startled yells from the crowd.
Banner had time to wonder who’d been hit, and if it could be her, before she heard the rotors of the helicopter screech as it banked sharply and rose up and back from the facade of the building, recoiling like a dog getting too close to an open fire. As it banked away from the building, she saw a big crack spider-webbing the glass on one side of the cockpit.
Less than two seconds had elapsed since the shot, but it felt like an eternity before the return fire began. Bullets peppered the building’s facade from a dozen different angles and as many calibers. Stone chipped and windows smashed and lights winked out. The onslaught lasted ten or fifteen seconds before enough senior officers yelled it to a halt. Relative silence descended, undercut by the rotors of the retreating helicopter and the wail of far-off sirens.
Banner looked around for Edwards, finally located him about thirty yards away, standing with a group mostly dressed in body armor behind a van emblazoned with the word SWAT. She crouch-walked over, and Edwards nodded in acknowledgment. He was standing next to a tall, athletically built man with graying hair she took to be the SWAT commander. He and the two men around him were gazing intently at a tablet computer, evidently running a live video feed from the team inside the building.
“You think we got him?” Edwards said.
Before Banner could answer, the tall man’s right hand shot up to quiet them, his left pressing the earpiece of his headset deeper in to pick up what was being said more clearly. “Second floor is clear; they’re about to go out on the gallery.”