When Ingram pulled the warehouse door shut, Barclay kept rolling, but there was a lull. Heat used the interval to assess the room. Eyes were transfixed. Nobody made a sound. Phyllis Yarborough was the only one not staring. Her head was bowed to her lap.
Huddleston’s screams burst into the night, jarring everyone in the conference room. Bodies shifted, leaning in toward the flat-screen. In its own way, this point of view of a desolate industrial zone in the middle of the night, whose solitude was cut by shrieks and cries, seemed more chilling than watching his actual torture. But everyone there had heard about the TENS. And they all knew what was happening to the kid in there. And as bad as it sounded to them, it had to have been hell on earth inside. The uncomfortable minutes they endured as the electrocution continued must have seemed eternal to the howling victim.
In the eerie quiet when it was done, a dog barked in the distance. The door opened, and a sobbing Huddleston, limp and spent, was carried out. They bore him upright by the armpits with his toes dragging the ground behind him. Van Meter broke off from the pack and held a walkie-talkie up to his mouth. His words didn’t pick up, but there was a squelch when he was done. Seconds later another metallic Crown Victoria pulled up.
And Phyllis Yarborough got out.
They had him inside his car by then, Torres even using his gloved hands to buckle the seat belt. He stepped aside to let her stand facing Huddleston, who was beseeching her, “Please, help me, please . . .”
“Do you know who I am?” she said.
He peered at her and became suddenly animated. “Oh, fuck me, oh no . . .”
“Good, you do.” He cried and muttered drooling pleas, and when his words degenerated into quiet sobs, she said, “Take this moment to hell, you filthy son of a bitch.”
She stepped away, and Sergio Torres slammed the car door. They both joined the others on the other side of the car. “Kill him,” said Phyllis Yarborough.
Steljess opened the passenger door and leaned inside. Soon American Idiot came blasting hot from the car speakers. Under the blare of Green Day, the interior was illuminated by a muzzle flash and the glass blew out of the driver’s side window.
The video jostled as the camera moved from its perch on the wall. The next shot was a blur of motion as Barclay slowly backed away from his hideout. His foot must have knocked over a bottle. After the glass tink and roll came a shout from the cops. “Somebody’s there!”
Barclay didn’t hesitate but ran full-bore up the street, the video whooshing and shaking like earthquake footage as he sprinted. In the distance came their voices, blending together: “Street . . .” “Camera!” and “Stop!”
But Alan Barclay didn’t stop. The last of his video was the camera flying onto his passenger seat and rolling onto the floor as rubber squealed and the videographer escaped. He got away that night carrying the deadly secret he would hide until years later when Captain Montrose canvassed the old crime scene and an elderly night watchman at a bakery told him about the man he’d seen running away with the camera.
* * *
The lights came up and Yarborough was glaring at Heat.
“There’s your proof, Deputy Commissioner. Proof that you waited two years for the dust to settle before you got your revenge. Proof that you paid off those cops and then conspired all these years to keep a lid on it. And I’m going to make an educated guess that, along the way, you utilized your job as tech czar to monitor for any signs of discovery. Like Montrose reopening the old case; like me pulling Huddleston’s computer file; like hacking Jameson Rook’s e-mail and sending it to that reporter to get me suspended when I was getting too close. . . . After your boys weren’t up to the job of killing me.” Heat shrugged. “That part I don’t have to prove.