“It’s up to you,” he said. “I don’t care if she lives or dies.”
I finally spoke back to Garza. “That much I already knew.”
Chapter 132
I WENT COLD INSIDE, staring into Garza’s dark, thoroughly crazy eyes. Maureen O’Mara was kneeling on her seat, staring at Garza in horror, as if she didn’t know who he was, either.
Sweat beaded on my upper lip as panic drove shrieking passengers to push past the cops and clear the rear half of the cabin.
In front of me, the remaining first-class passengers hunched forward, covering their heads as sharpshooters formed a wall behind me, using the seat backs as gun rests.
Garza’s back was to the cockpit. He couldn’t move forward or back, but he could endanger everyone on the aircraft.
And he could kill the flight attendant on his way down.
Garza tightened his painful grip on the attendant’s hair. A drop of blood at the girl’s neck fell, spotting the collar of her starched white blouse. She whimpered, stretched up onto her toes.
I read her name stamped into the gold wings pinned to her vest. “It’s going to be okay, Krista,” I said, making eye contact, watching the tears slide out of her eyes.
“Let her go, Dennis. No one is putting away their guns,” I said in a steady voice. “And you’re not going to kill anyone. We’re all getting out of here alive.”
Just then, the cockpit door opened behind Garza with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. A young flight officer stepped into the cabin, a baton cocked like a baseball bat over his shoulder.
Garza turned his head, only slightly loosening his hold on the flight attendant. She wriggled and tried to wrench herself free.
The split second I needed was there, in the grip of my hand. I aimed and squeezed the Taser gun trigger, sending fifty thousand volts into Garza’s shoulder. It was enough juice to stun a rhino.
Garza choked out a scream and dropped to the cabin floor, curling into a fetal position. I stood over him, Taser pointed at his head as Jacobi cuffed him.
“You’re under arrest for reckless endangerment,” I said as Garza groaned and writhed at my feet. “You have the right to remain silent, you son of a bitch. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” And it most certainly will be.
Chapter 133
IT WAS AFTER 9:00 P.M. when Jacobi and I brought Dennis Garza and Maureen O’Mara into the squad room, both of them in handcuffs.
“How the mighty have fallen,” cracked Jacobi.
I was bone tired, scraping the bottom of my energy reserves, but elation kept me going. Dennis Garza was in custody, charged with reckless endangerment, possession of a deadly weapon, obstruction, and suspicion of murder.
He wasn’t killing people at Municipal Hospital.
And he wasn’t sunning himself on a beach in Rio.
O’Mara had been charged as an accessory after the fact, but we were bluffing and she knew it.
We had no evidence whatsoever that O’Mara had witnessed a crime or had even seen the blood in Garza’s house.
Twenty minutes after we brought them in, O’Mara was calmly reading a book in her cell, keeping her mouth shut, waiting for one of her law partners to bail her out of jail.
But we weren’t finished with her yet.
I still felt a little shaky and weak in the knees. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands and face in the old porcelain sink. Ran my damp hands through my hair.
I remembered the last time I’d eaten, the granola bar I’d bolted down after Noddie Wilkins called to tell me that Jamie Sweet had died.
All of that seemed like a week ago.
I rejoined Jacobi in my office and had just ordered a meatball pizza, extra large, when Sonja Engstrom returned my call.