Placing a tree bole between me and the gunman, I glanced up at the nearby ice stadium roof. St Pete Times Forum was a huge oblong building, with glass-fronted galleries on the two sides that I could see. The roof was a shallow arch, and could be negotiated by a nimble person, but it didn’t appear to have a walkway or any visible service ducts where a shooter could be positioned. At each corner of the building, forming support bulwarks for the galleries, were squat square towers with flat roofs bordered by low walls. My gaze fell directly on the one nearest to me.
From the corner of this tower came a flash and almost instantaneously a chunk of the tree I was hiding behind was blasted into splinters. The crack of a high-velocity round came to my ears in the next instant. The precise moment I’d seen the flash I’d moved, and the bullet that struck bark from the tree missed me, but I wasn’t sure that I’d avoid a second round. The shooter was armed with a sniper rifle, and from this distance it could put a bullet directly through a tree trunk as flimsy as this one.
Dodging to my left, I immediately reversed direction and went right, throwing myself through bushes towards the slope leading down to the channel. I heard two reports of the rifle, but thankfully no rounds ripped through my body. I scrambled over the embankment, went down on my belly and placed the swell in the ground between us. He couldn’t see me now, but I couldn’t see him either.
My mind was racing with what had just happened. The police suspected my involvement in a crime I was innocent of, but now that the officers sent to bring me in were dead, no one would believe that. The man with the sniper rifle had seen to that. It also explained why he hadn’t shot to kill. He hadn’t missed me by accident but by design. I was being set up.
Someone must have heard the shots – in fact I could hear alarmed voices calling out from the nearby hotel – and the police would be coming any minute. The sensible thing to do would be to wait for the responding emergency vehicles, put down my gun and throw myself on the mercy of the justice system. But I was under no illusions; there was no way I was going to hang around, not when all they’d see was a cop killer. I’d be face down in the dirt, my hands cuffed and surrounded by armed men itching to blow me away long before I could argue my innocence.
There was only one way out of this that I could see.
I had to take down the shooter.
The shoreline was made up of stones and gravel, but gave way within a few yards to tufts of grass. If I stood up, or even crouched, I’d be an easy target. The trees and shrubbery in the park didn’t offer much cover from the shooter with his high vantage either, so all I could do was belly-crawl along the shore, my knees and elbows propelling me along. I considered crawling into the channel and swimming, but decided against it. I needed my weapon dry.
Fifty yards on, I quickly raised my eyes over the embankment and saw that the shooter would have to lean out from the tower to get me now that I’d compromised his position. I didn’t think he’d do that. I quickly raced up the embankment and into a small copse of trees. Crouching there, I pulled out my gun.
If I used it now, tests would show that the gun had been fired, I’d have gunshot residue on my skin and clothing: it would mean more questions if the police took me down, it would compound my guilt as a cop-killer. But I wasn’t going to go against a man with a sniper rifle with only my bare hands.
Distantly I heard the first wail of sirens. The police were on their way. My window of opportunity had just been slammed in my face.
Got to move, I told myself. I have to take down this man or I’ll never get the chance again.
Running as quickly as possible, I charged across the park towards the road that separated me from the stadium. When no bullets came my way I realised that the shooter had probably abandoned his position and was making his getaway. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who could hear the approaching sirens.
My car and that of the dead detectives were way off on my left, but apart from them there were no other vehicles on the road. The ice stadium was a huge edifice looming over me. I was in the open, but no bullets were fired at me. Whoever was trying to set me up had many options for escape. If the stadium had been filled with Tampa Bay Lightning fans the shooter could simply melt amongst the crowds, but this was a day when the hockey team weren’t playing. At most, the only people around would be a skeleton crew of staff. But that meant that the gunman could slip out unnoticed by any number of exits from the public areas or via service doors round the back.
I looked for a getaway vehicle.
There was nothing unusual among the few cars I’d noted in the car park – and anyway, it was too exposed to be the parking location of choice for a fleeing murderer. More likely the killer had left his getaway car round the back among the staff’s vehicles. I started to angle that way, hoping to cut him off. I’d only got a few paces when I heard the roar of an engine. Reversing direction, I sprinted back towards the front of the building. I couldn’t see anything moving on the road that ran parallel with the stadium, and there was nothing in the public car park. Coming to a standstill I listened, trying to pinpoint the noise. Beyond the stadium’s official parking lot was a second open space, which I guessed was used for overspill parking on busy match days. There was still nothing moving. But then I saw a dark blue Ford erupt like a cork from a bottle from a ramp in the second lot. The ramp must have exited from a vehicle park underground, or maybe it was from a loading dock where deliveries were made to the stadium. It didn’t really matter, not when the car was over a hundred yards distant and speeding away from me.
Futile as it seemed, I ran after it. It would have been a waste of ammunition to fire, so I concentrated on getting as good a look as possible at the car and its driver. The Ford sped off the lot, took a left on the service road, then a right on to Jefferson Street. Then it was gone.
Immediately I ran back the way I’d come, heading for my Audi. Converging sirens were very loud now and I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. As I ran I recited over and over again the Ford’s registration number like it was a mantra. And I lodged in my mind the one glance I’d got at the shooter’s face. There was something uncannily familiar about that glimpse, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Hurling myself into my car, I started it, jammed it into gear and peeled away from the small parking bay. I headed for the ice stadium and swung into the service road towards Jefferson Street. In my mirrors I saw the flashing gumball lights of squad cars screeching to a halt where my car had just been. Then one of the cop cars revved wildly and came after me.
There was still the option of pulling over and explaining to the cops what had really happened. Anyone could see that Castle and Soames had been shot from a distance by a high-velocity rifle and that I was armed only with a nine mm handgun that hadn’t been fired. But they’d only assume that I had an accomplice who’d taken the shots; I must have led the officers to this trap otherwise how would the shooter know where we were? I’d probably spend days in a cell awaiting arraignment for murder while the real killer went about his business unhindered. It didn’t escape me that he was setting me up to take the fall for all his crimes and I wondered what the hell he was planning next.
Giving up wasn’t an option. The way I saw it, the only way I was going to prove my innocence was to throw the gunman at their feet. Preferably alive so that he could confess, but in the present circumstances it was more likely he’d be dead. The killer was planning – or had already executed – something big. And it was down to me to stop him.
Chapter 4
Tampa Police Department HQ was situated at the junction of Franklin and Madison, little more than two minutes away. Luckily for me all the responding squad cars must have been out cruising round downtown when the call had gone in about the shooting in the Channelside district. The sirens sounded as though they were all responding via Franklin, the way I’d come in. I had a free run all the way up Jefferson and under the Crosstown Expressway before anyone was astute enough to set up roadblocks. Didn’t mean I was free, it just gave me a wider area to move in before the cordon tightened round me.
The pursuing squad car was growing larger in my mirrors and the cop on board would be coordinating other units to block me somewhere ahead. I shot through intersection after intersection, then past the impressive George E. Edgecomb Courthouse, and another squad car idling at the corner of Zack Street while it waited for the lights to change. As I zipped by, I saw the blue lights come on and it pulled out in pursuit, falling in behind the other cruiser.
There was a major junction ahead, and I went through it laying my hand hard on the horn. Only fortune saw me through the junction safely, but all round me I saw vehicles screeching to a halt, some fishtailing in the road. The cop car behind me slammed into the back end of a pick-up truck, spinning out both vehicles.
I hoped everyone was OK: I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but neither could I go back and offer assistance. I pressed the throttle harder and kept going, taking Orange Avenue north, knowing that Interstate-4 was somewhere ahead. If I could get beyond it my options for escape would become much greater.
The cop car that had been near the courthouse took up the chase and it cut down my lead every second. Until now I hadn’t been pushing the Audi for fear a pedestrian might step out in front of me, but now there was nothing for it: I tromped the gas pedal.
There was no way I could get into a duel with the pursuing cop car so I relied instead on speed, pushing the Audi under the interstate, and taking a quick left on to surface streets of a residential neighbourhood I didn’t know. The cop car was still behind me, but a series of turns left him confused at the direction I’d taken. Conscious now that there could be kids playing in the streets, I slowed down to a more sensible speed and continued to traverse the neighbourhoods, heading north-west through Riverside Heights and out towards the suburbs of the city.
I had a place on the Gulf Coast up near Mexico Beach but I couldn’t go there. That would be the first place the cops would think to look. My best friend and the man I
officially
worked for, Jared Rington, had an office in the downtown district and a condominium in a wooded area outside Temple Terrace. Rink would help hide me, but I couldn’t go to either of his registered properties because they would be points two and three on the cops’ radar. At this moment it was dangerous even to make contact with Rink by the usual avenues; his phones would be checked for any calls from me and they’d try and press him for my whereabouts. Rink wouldn’t tell them, and they might charge him with harbouring a felon. Something like that wouldn’t help his private investigations business.
We had other ways of making contact, set up for dealing with situations just like this one.
Priority was to ditch the Audi: an APB would have gone out and police cruisers from the outlying districts would now be searching for it. Under bogus details, I’d rented a covered garage a couple miles north of here. I drove there watching for a tail, and pulled in unobserved. From a hidden safe in the floor, I took out spare ammo, fake documents and a change of clothing; exchanging my shirt and trousers for the more anonymous baseball cap, hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Finished, I pulled down the shutters and snapped a lock in place, heading out in a Taurus I’d previously parked in the garage, searching for a public telephone booth.
Back in the day, Rink and I worked for a joint task force that pulled from various UN Special Forces teams. We utilised a network of safe numbers to communicate between team members and our controllers. I used one of those numbers now to send a coded message to my friend’s pager and I only had to wait a few minutes before Rink got back to me. In the meantime, our call would be shunted between satellites halfway round the world: untraceable.
‘Tell me that you weren’t involved, Joe.’
‘Whatever you’re being told; it wasn’t me.’
‘I knew that,’ Rink said. He had wanted to hear it from my lips.
‘The police have already been at the office asking about me?’
‘I gave them a bum steer, but they’re not idiots. They’ll be back soon enough.’
‘Did they give a reason why they were looking for me?’
‘They wouldn’t say, but I’ve heard word on the streets. It seems someone has fingered you for a murder in Ybor a couple days ago.’ Rink held his breath for a moment. ‘Someone took a punk hostage, beat the living shit outa him to teach him a lesson.’
‘Can see how they drew the conclusion,’ I admitted.
‘Didn’t end there, though, Joe. Whoever this guy was, he killed the guy’s daughter right in front of his eyes.’
A sliver of ice wormed its way through my guts. ‘And the cops think that was
me
?’
‘They don’t know you the way I do.’ Rink was apologising for having raised the question earlier. ‘Apparently the punk survived long enough to describe his attacker. He even told the cops his attacker’s name.’