Laila: In all seriousness, come over when you can. It’s time we talked this out.
He was reading the message a second time, his head down, his face lit up by the phone’s screen, when the two cars came screeching to a halt.
“Police! Get the fuck down on the ground now!”
Wilde tensed and debated his next move. He could make a run for it. He would likely get away too, but they’d charge him with running from the police and resisting arrest, even if he was innocent. He’d have to go into hiding right when the search for Peter Bennett was revving up.
Wilde didn’t want that.
“NOW, ASSHOLE!”
Four men — two in uniform, two plainclothes — pointed their guns straight at him.
They all wore ski masks.
This was not good.
“NOW!”
Three ran toward him, one kept a gun trained on him. With his hand still on his phone, Wilde slowly lowered himself to the ground, not so much to surrender peacefully as to give himself time to turn off the phone’s volume with his thumb and then hit call. There was no opportunity to scroll through and get the right number. Laila’s number had been the last one on his screen. The call would go to her.
The three men continued their bull rush.
“I’m not resisting,” Wilde said, trying like hell to hit the right buttons on his phone. “I’m surrendering—”
The three men didn’t care. They crashed into Wilde hard, knocking him onto the asphalt. They flipped him over onto his stomach. One jumped up and smashed a knee into his kidney, shocking the liver and internal organs. The other two grabbed Wilde’s arms and pulled them too hard behind his back. Wilde felt the rip in his shoulder cuffs, but it didn’t register much through the waves of pain still emanating from the kidney blow. The men twisted his wrist and knocked the phone from his hand. They cuffed him, pressing down on the bracelets so that they cut off circulation.
One of the uniformed cops — it was hard to make out a badge number or anything else in the dim light — stomped on the phone, then stomped again. The phone shattered.
On his stomach, his face being pushed into hard asphalt, Wilde was able to make out that the first car, the one closest to him, had all the earmarks of an unmarked police car — a Ford Crown Vic with municipal plates, a cluster of antennas, tinted windows, out-of-place lights on the mirrors, and grill that hid their flashers. The second vehicle was a regulation police squad car. Painted on the side, Wilde could now make out two words:
Hartford Police.
Henry McAndrews’s old force. Oh, Wilde thought, this was definitely not good.
The cop who had kneed him lowered his lips to Wilde’s ear. “You know why we’re here?”
“To serve and protect?”
The punch to the back of Wilde’s skull stunned him, made him see stars.
“Guess again, cop killer.”
They jammed a black bag over Wilde’s head, bathing him in dark, and pushed him into the backseat, being sure to bang his head on the way in. One of the men said, “Drive,” and they were gone.
“I’d like to know what I’m being charged with,” Wilde said.
Silence.
“I’d also like to call my attorney,” Wilde said.
“Later.”
“I don’t want to be questioned until I speak to my attorney.”
More silence.
Wilde tried again. “I said, I don’t—”
Someone silenced him with a hard punch deep in the stomach. Wilde doubled over, retching, the air gone from his lungs. If you’ve ever had the wind knocked out of you, you know what an awful feeling it is, as though you’re suffocating and dying and there is nothing to be done about it. Wilde had enough experience to know that this feeling would pass, that it was caused by nothing more than a diaphragm spasm, that his best bet was to sit up and breathe slowly.
It took thirty seconds, maybe a minute, but he rode it out.
Wilde wanted to ask where they were headed, but the blow to his solar plexus still stung. Did it matter? If they were taking him to Hartford, it would be an uncomfortable two-plus hours. His handcuffs were still on. There was one cop in the back with him, another in the driver’s seat obviously. Could be a third. No way to tell with the bag over his head. He weighed his options and saw none. Any move he would make would be foolhardy. Even if he could incapacitate the guy in the back — through the blindfold and cuffs — the back door wouldn’t open from the inside.
There was just no way.
Ten minutes later, the car pulled to a stop. Not Hartford, Wilde knew. Not Connecticut. The car door opened. Strong hands reached in, grabbed him, and dragged him out. Wilde considered going weightless, flopping to the ground, but he figured that would only earn him a kick in the ribs. He stayed upright and kept pace, letting the men lead him.
Even with the bag over his head, his deep inhalation detected pine and lavender. Wilde listened. No traffic sounds. No street bustle or voices or mechanical whirs. Under his feet was dirt and the occasional root. There was no way to know a hundred percent, but Wilde felt pretty certain he was somewhere quiet and rural, probably in or near woods.
Not good.
They hauled him up three stairs — he dragged his feet, testing the surface, realizing it was made of wood — and then he heard the creak of a screen door. There was the smallest tinge of mildew in the air. This wasn’t a police station. A cabin, maybe, somewhere remote. A hand on either shoulder pushed him onto a hard chair. No one spoke. He could hear the men moving around, whispering. Wilde waited, trying to keep his breathing even. The black bag was still on his head, making it impossible to see or identify his assailants.
The whispering stopped. Wilde braced himself.
“They call you Wilde,” a gruff voice said. “Is that correct?”
He saw no reason not to reply. “Yes.”
“Okay, good,” the gruff voice said. “I’m going to skip good cop, Wilde, and move right to bad cop. There are four of us. You know that. We just want justice for our friend. That’s all. If we get that, it’s all good. But if we don’t, you, Wilde, end up dying a very long and painful death and we bury you where no one will ever find you. Am I making myself clear?”
Wilde said nothing.
That was when he felt something cold and metallic rest against his neck. There was a moment’s hesitation and then a zapping sound. An electric current surged into him. His eyes bulged. His body lurched. His legs straightened. The pain was all-consuming, a living breathing thing that shut down everything except your desire to make the pain stop.
“Am I making myself clear?” the gruff voice said again.
“Yes,” Wilde managed to say.
And then he felt the cold metal rest against his neck again.
“Good, glad we see eye to eye. This is a cattle prod, by the way. Right now, I have it set on low. That’s going to change. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who Henry McAndrews is?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know him?”
“I read about his murder in the paper.”
Silence. Wilde closed his eyes and bit down, waiting for the high-voltage jolt. But of course, they knew that he would be. They wouldn’t want that. They wanted to mess around with his head.
“We know you were at his house, Wilde. You came in through the sliding glass door. You messed around with his computer. He had a sophisticated CCTV system. We know it all.”
“If you know it all,” Wilde said, “then you know I didn’t kill him.”
“Just the opposite,” the gruff voice said. “We know you did it. We want to know why.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Without warning, the cattle prod zapped him again. Wilde felt every muscle involuntarily stiffen. He slid off the seat to the ground, flopping like a fish on a dock.