Trapped

TWENTY-EIGHT

Timing was everything.

If he had only been assigned this case a day earlier, David Tennon could have avoided this whole thing today. A lot of deaths, a lot of paperwork.

But he had been police long enough to know he shouldn't dwell on such things. And it was over now, a sudden and abrupt end all out of his control.

He was one of the first units to arrive as he heard the dispatch over the scanner, just as dawn was breaking across Chicago. He threw the light on his unmarked cruiser and sped through the city, tearing into the NTX parking garage with an ambulance, a fire truck, and a cavalry of blue-and-whites.

He was introduced to Marianne Marshall shortly after a uniform had wrapped a blanket around her and sat her on the back of an ambulance.

Tennon took out his pad and pen and approached slowly as an EMT tended to her. Years of studying the battle-fatigued gazes of victims taught him how to tread lightly, how much space to give, how much time to allot for questions.

Marianne was slow to come out of shock. But he saw the signs. She was strong. She was going to fine.

Tennon had to swallow his own feelings as he learned shortly into the interview that his old friend Danny Esposito was dead.

One day sooner, he thought again. One damn day.

The trick was not to dwell.

If Marianne was going to be fine, she didn't know it then. As the shock lifted, so too did her high. It felt like hitting a wall, a sudden disappointment so crushing and total it sobered up her new lease on life and put her right back into a trance.

When she really thought about it, she knew that it was her mind that had gotten to her. Her mind that told her how fleeting hope always was, how reality didn't care and always crept back in, unforgiving yet sensible. A near-death experience was not a new beginning, just the illusion of one. She knew this from experience. Life would go on the same.

For a few seconds Marianne had tried hard to hold onto that hope, but the wisps of it were too tenuous to grasp. She was far too rational to believe in it, far too jaded.

She sat in the back of the ambulance as radios squawked and police lights swirled silently around her like a dream. A crowd of onlookers stood out in the cold atop the exit ramp, blocked by police barricades and uniformed officers.

The fire was out on the two cars, wisps of residual smoke rising from the remains. The Nova was raised by a winch and towed away.

Marianne sipped numbly at some bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. The EMT worked behind her in the ambulance as she answered Detective Tennon's questions.

"Can I go home?" she asked.

"We'll take you to the hospital first," he said, "then run you by the station. Routine. It won't take long."

"How are you feeling?" the EMT asked her.

The look Marianne gave him was her answer.

"Maybe you'd rather stay with a friend?" Tennon said. "A relative for a couple of days? It helps. Is there someone we can contact for you?"

For all the terror and numbness of the night, that familiar feeling of profound loneliness washed over her and held its grip hard. "No," she said. "There's no one."

"Dave?"

Tennon turned. Two uniforms stood on each side of a handcuffed man in a dark overcoat.

"We caught him in front of a jewelry store in the mall," one said.

"Marianne," Tennon said, "is this the other person you were talking about?"

Marianne turned quickly. It was impossible that John could have let himself get caught. She looked at the dour-faced man in cuffs and almost smiled.

"Awful early to be opening up your store, isn't it, Mr. Kappelmann?"

Nathan Kappelmann scowled. "It's my store, I'm paying for it. I can come and go as I please."

"Marianne?" Tennon said.

"No, it's not him."

Tennon nodded to the uniforms who whisked Kappelmann away.

"Wait a minute!" Kappelmann yelled. "Marianne! Tell these gorillas who I am, will you please? Get these handcuffs off of me!"

Marianne told Tennon, "I barely saw him. I don't think I'd know him again if I saw him on the street."

She heard a meow and looked down to discover Felix. He did a figure eight around her legs and meowed some more. She reached down and picked him up.

"Marianne?" Tennon said.

She looked his way.

"Let's go now."

She stood up from the ambulance with Felix and he led her away gently to his unmarked Crown Vic.