The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross 9)

He laughed. “Because I got greedy. I went for a bigger piece of the pie. Thought I had my partners by the short hairs. They didn’t see it that way.”

“How did you have them by the short hairs?”

“I told my partners that I had copies of records—who had been paid what. A couple years’ worth of records.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you?” I asked.

Coulter hesitated. Why was that? Either he did or he didn’t.

“I might,” he finally said. “They sure think I do. So now they’re going to put me down. They were coming for me today. . . . I’m not supposed to leave this house alive.”

I was trying to listen for other voices or sounds in the house while he kept talking. I didn’t hear any. Was anybody else still alive in there? What had Coulter done to his family? How desperate was he?

I looked at Ned Mahoney and shrugged my shoulders. I really wasn’t sure whether Coulter was telling the truth or if he was just a street cop who’d gone loco. Mahoney looked skeptical too. He had a don’t ask me look on his face. I had to go somewhere else for guidance.

“So what do we do now?” I asked Coulter.

He sniffed out a laugh. “I was hoping you’d have an idea. You’re supposed to be the hotshot, right?”

That’s what everybody keeps saying.

Chapter 8

THE SITUATION IN BALTIMORE didn’t get any better during the next several hours. If anything, it got worse. It was impossible to keep the neighbors from wandering out on their porches to watch the standoff in progress. Then the Baltimore PD began to evacuate the Coulters’ neighbors, many of whom were also the Coulters’ friends. A temporary shelter had been set up at the nearby Garrett Heights elementary school. It reminded everyone that there were probably children trapped inside Detective Coulter’s house. His family. Jesus!

I looked around and shook my head in dismay as I saw an awful lot of Baltimore police, including SWAT, and also the Hostage Rescue Team from Quantico. A swarm of crazy-eyed spectators was pushing and shoving outside the barricades, some of them rooting for cops to be shot—any cop would do.

I stood up and cautiously made my way over to a group of officers waiting behind an emergency rescue van. I didn’t need to be told that they didn’t appreciate interference from the Feds. I hadn’t either when I was on the D.C. police force. I addressed Captain Stockton James Sheehan, whom I’d spoken to briefly when I arrived. “What do you think? Where do we go with this?”

“Has he agreed to let anybody out?” Sheehan asked. “That’s the first question.”

I shook my head. “He won’t even talk about his family. Won’t confirm or deny that they’re in the house.”

Sheehan asked, “Well, what is he talking about?”

I shared some of what I’d been told by Coulter but not everything. How could I? I left out that he’d sworn Baltimore cops were involved in a large-scale drug scheme—and, more devastating, that he had records that would incriminate them.

Stockton Sheehan listened and then he offered, “Either he lets go of some of the hostages or we have to go in and get him. He’s not going to gun down his own family.”

“He says he will. That’s the threat.”

Sheehan shook his head. “I’m willing to take the risk. We go in when it gets dark. You know this should be our call.”

I nodded without agreeing or disagreeing, then I walked away from the others. It looked as if we might have another half hour of light. I didn’t like to think

about what would happen once darkness came.

I called Coulter again. He picked up right away.

“I have an idea,” I told him. “I think it’s your best shot.” I didn’t tell Coulter, but I also thought it was his only shot.

“So tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

I told Dennis Coulter my plan. . . .

Ten minutes later, Captain Sheehan was shouting in my face that I was “worse than any motherfucking FBI asshole” he had ever dealt with. I guess I was a fast learner. Maybe I didn’t even need the orientation classes I was missing at Quantico. Not if I was already the “king of the FBI assholes.” Which was one way of saying that the Baltimore police didn’t approve of my plan to defuse the situation with Detective Coulter.

Even Mahoney had doubts. “I guess you’re not real big on social and political correctness,” he commented when I told him Captain Sheehan’s reaction.