Inside I could hear Bergman talking. It sounded like half of a phone conversation.
“Where the hell are you? You said you’d be here an hour ago,” he said. He also sounded agitated, and seemed to be moving around. When he spoke again, his voice faded off toward the back of the apartment. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just . . . no, you listen to me. Just get here! Now!”
That was it. I could feel the collective pulse of the group start to go up, as the sergeant gave a visual countdown on his fingers—three, two, one. The two cops at the front pulled back with the ram and swung it at Bergman’s steel front door. It sent a resounding boom up and down the stairwell. Any cover we had now was blown.
“Units C and D, standby,” the sergeant radioed. “He may try to make a run for it.”
It took two more fast swings before the door finally tore away from the frame and blew open. My vision tunneled straight ahead as the sergeant corkscrewed his arm, ushering the team inside, double time.
“Go, go, go, go, go!”
CHAPTER
94
VALENTE AND I DIDN’T WAIT FOR CLEARANCE. WE FOLLOWED RIGHT IN BEHIND the breach team. Normally, investigative
staff is meant to hold their position until we get an all clear, but neither of us were feeling that patient right now.
The apartment door opened into a wide-open loft space that looked pristine to the point of sterility. Bergman didn’t seem to have any stuff at all. There was a set of white modular furniture on a huge gray rug, like an island in the middle of the room, with a single tall rubber tree that reached up to the exposed I-beams in the ceiling. A stainless-steel kitchen off to the side looked like it had never been used.
There was no sign of Bergman anywhere in the front. The team quickly moved through, leapfrogging each other across the loft, and then down a long hallway toward the back of the building.
“MPD! Joshua Bergman?” I shouted. “Stay right where you are! Don’t move!”
At the very end of the hall there was an open door, with light streaming in through several iron-framed floor-to-ceiling windows. As soon as the first officer got there, I heard Bergman start to yell.
“Get away from me! Stay back!”
“Sir, put down the gun!” one of the officers shouted. “Keep your hands where we can see them and get down on the floor!”
“Go to hell!”
When I came into the room, Bergman was sitting up, cross-legged on a king-size platform bed. He had his back against the painted concrete block wall, with a white iPhone in one hand and a small Smith & Wesson revolver in the other. It could have easily been the same .32 he’d used to kill all those boys, as well as Sheila Bishop.
“Bergman, put the gun down!” I told him. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh yeah? I don’t?” He was clearly agitated, but also relatively focused. He looked me right in the eye when he said it.
“Just try to calm down,” I told him. “Let’s go one thing at a time.”
I lowered my own gun and took a step toward him, but only until he pressed the Smith & Wesson up to his chin.
“You think I’m kidding around here?” he said.
“Josh—don’t,” I said. “Please.”
“Too late,” he said. He held the phone up to his ear and spoke a single word to whoever was there. “Good-bye,” he said.
Then he pulled the trigger on that Smith & Wesson and blew himself away.
Whatever horrible things Bergman might have done to other people, it was god-awful to see him go out like that. This was an act of pure, irrational desperation. Maybe even insanity.
Not to mention a truly stomach-churning mess.
Everyone started moving at once. There was no question of survival, but Bergman’s death had to be confirmed. The sergeant went straight to the body and felt for a pulse on the wrist, while Valente called it in.
“One round fired, subject is down. Self-inflicted GSW,” he said. When the sergeant shook his head, Valente added, “No signs of life.”