The Nassau crew already had surveillance set up around Gladstone’s four-acre property. There were no signs of activity there, and no one had gone in or out. Calls to the inside of his house were picked up by the answering machine. Gladstone had a wife named Erica and two co-ed daughters, I learned, but they hadn’t yet been located.
Tom Riley, the Nassau Special Ops lieutenant, tossed digital photos of the front and back of Gladstone’s house onto the hood of my Chevy. The place was a gorgeous sprawling Tudor with a covered patio and a swimming pool in back. The landscaping was immaculate—Japanese maples, chrysanthemums, ornamental grasses. Definitely not the kind of house one usually associated with homicidal maniacs.
Studying the layout, we talked strategy about how to enter. There would be no attempt to negotiate. We’d gotten the arrest warrant, and we were going in. But considering the firepower Gladstone had, plus the fact that he’d already iced one cop and put another into a coma, no precaution was overlooked.
We decided that a breach team would storm the front door while snipers covered the narrow facing windows. If Gladstone showed his face in one, he’d be going down.
Since this was my case, I claimed the honor of following right behind the breach team to search the second floor.
“That door looks pretty solid,” I said. “What are you going to use? A battering ram?”
A young, muscular NYPD ESU sergeant held up a sawed-off shotgun and racked its slide.
“Brought my skeleton key,” he said, smiling around a chaw of tobacco. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself. I was glad he was on my side.
As the team geared up to start moving, I reached into my jacket and dropped another photograph onto the hood of the car. It was a picture of Tonya Griffith, the young woman transit cop Gladstone had murdered.
“Just a little reminder of why we all got out of bed this morning, gentlemen,” I said. “Let’s ring this scumbag’s bell.”
Gladstone’s house was three blocks away, on a wooded street called Lattingtown Ridge Court. Our vehicles pulled out of the parking lot and cruised there, lights and sirens off.
As we arrived, I gave the green light over the radio. Two Emergency Service diesel trucks suddenly swerved into the driveway and across the lawn. A half-dozen tactical cops spilled out from behind them. Within seconds, I heard two crisp explosions—the front door hinges being shotgunned off.
As the cops shouldered the door aside and piled through it, yelling and tossing flashbangs, I flung open my car door and rushed in with them. I took the stairs two by two, with my Glock drawn and my heart pulsing like a strobe light.
“Police!” I screamed, kicking open the first closed door I encountered. It was a bathroom. There was nothing inside. Nobody. Curtain rings jingled as I ripped down the shower curtain. Just a shower caddy filled with shampoo bottles.
Damn! I thought, rushing back out into the hall, swinging my pistol from side to side.
Where was Gladstone?
Chapter 56
THE FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHS of well-dressed, smiling people that lined the hallway rattled as I stormed along it.
“Police!” I yelled again. “We’re all over you, Gladstone. This is the police!”
At the far end was another door, this one slightly ajar. I tightened my grip on the Glock’s trigger and rammed the door with my shoulder.
It opened into a large, tray-ceilinged master bedroom suite. I cleared the corners first, scanned the bed, and . . .
My face jerked away in shock, as if I’d been punched. My gun almost slipped from my fingers before I managed to shove it back into its holster. Then I covered my nose and mouth with a hand as the vile coppery scent of blood and death washed over me.
We were too late.
This guy, I thought.
“Oh, my God,” a woman breathed from the hall behind me. It was Beth Peters, frozen with shock.
This guy.
I stepped out into the hall and got out my radio.
“Up here,” I said weakly. “Second floor.”
“Do you have him?” McGinnis yelled.
“No,” I said. “Not him.”