Chapter Thirty-Four
He could not kick in the door, despite several attempts. He briefly wondered how soldiers in war did it and made it look easy. He made it down the stairs and walked around to the back of the house. His head had cleared by the time he found the backdoor open and went inside. The container of food was still on a small coffee table but there was no sign of Elena. He ran into the other rooms and the only sign of her was a pile of her clothes in a bathroom. He ran to the Town Car and went after the MG, racing toward Glebe Road and the route back to the District. The Town Car was fast and had a big engine; despite its styling, the MG had only a 1500 cc, 72 horsepower engine and could not keep up with modern vehicles, even small ones. The MG tended to sound faster than it really was, although under ideal conditions it would top ninety miles per hour.
These were not ideal conditions. Wilson Boulevard to Key Bridge had a stop light on every corner and at this hour they were timed outbound to help the Georgetown crowd get home. The road went past the Arlington County Courthouse, where dozens of police cars were coming and going. Rosslyn, the high-rise district across the Potomac from Georgetown, was built along old Colonial and Indian trails that followed no discernible pattern and crossed at odd angles and became one-way in-or-outbound in what for first-timers seemed willy-nilly. Only someone who travelled the area every day for years could make it down Wilson Boulevard, through Rosslyn, and into Georgetown at a high rate of speed. Everyone else would be satisfied remain among the not-lost.
Father Darius had studied the area and thought he had a good route that would get him into the city even with someone pursuing him. He had to make a choice whether to race through the area and risk being pulled over for running the lights or go with traffic and hope he made it. His decision was made for him when he saw two police cars near a red light. He stopped and waited for it to turn red and he felt the MG swaying from Elena’s attempts to break out of the trunk. He had not had time to drug her into unconsciousness after he tied her hands and feet with duct tape and jammed a sock into her mouth to keep her quiet. The sock was held in place by a strip of tape and he idly wondered if she would smother or managed to scrape the tape off to cry out. Either event would be a disaster, in his mind. He could not worry about that now.
He hit nearly every red light on Wilson Boulevard and thought the game was up when a half-dozen Arlington sheriff’s deputies walked up to the car at a light near the courthouse and began asking questions about it, admiring the paint and wire wheels. One of them remarked, “A car like that was in the news.” The light turned green and he waved and said goodbye. He glanced in his rearview mirror to see if they were following him but they returned to what they were doing and walked away. It would be ten minutes before one of deputies remembered the details of the search for a red MGA and another thirty minutes before the sighting was reported on the police radio system which, even after 9/11, was not automatically connected to other departments in the Washington area. By that time, the MG was headed down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Dave was not far behind and knew Arlington well enough to take parallel streets when he could. These streets were part of a confusing, ancient grid that no sober urban planner would consider, but such planning was not part of Colonial Arlington and the streets ended or looped in other directions, but they got Dave past many of the lights on Wilson Boulevard. He was roaring north on Oak Street having looped left from what had been 16th Road when he saw the MG pulling away from the light. Father Darius could either go left on North Lynn Street to Key Bridge and Georgetown, or turn right into a warren of streets that would eventually take him to the Roosevelt Bridge and Constitution Avenue. Dave did not know how much Father Darius knew about the streets of Arlington but he guessed he would head for Georgetown because it was the easier route. He got stuck behind a delivery truck that blocked two lanes on North Lynn and pounded his horn while the driver gave him the finger and opened the back to make a delivery. By the time he got around the truck the MG was across the bridge and making a right turn onto M Street. Traffic, for once, was light and he knew the little car would make good time past the shops and clubs.
The western end of Pennsylvania Avenue begins at M Street and angles south and east past George Washington University, the White House, where it is blocked for security and where it doglegs, and then down to the U.S. Capitol. The section between the White House and the Capitol has been called America’s Main Street and is on display every four years when the just-sworn-in President rides or strolls down the new pavement, waving to the crowds. On most days and nights the avenue is just another city street with cars and trucks moving or stopped at lights.
On this night the traffic was light but the D.C. and U.S. Park police were out in their usual force, watching for trouble. The D.C. Police Department’s newer cars had low level red LCD lights that blinked constantly. The idea was to help citizens who were looking for a police car to find one. The red MG pulled up next to such a police car at 12th Street. Father Darius was breathing hard and trying not to act in a suspicious manner. The officer at the wheel, a duty sergeant, was having an argument with his wife, who was berating him on his cell phone. The sergeant was only dimly away of the other vehicles at the light and was trying to calm her down and so he failed to notice the small red car, which slowly pulled away when the light turned green. The sergeant did, however, notice the Town Car that sped past him and up to the bumper of the smaller car, honking his horn. The MG pulled away and the two cars more or less stayed within an acceptable speed, so the sergeant decided that whatever was going on probably involved two friends who had been clubbing and were horsing around on their way home. On most nights he would have pulled them over and administered a breath test, but tonight he was fending off an accusation that he had slept with a neighbor, which was true. So he let the two cars go.
Dave stayed on the MG’s bumper and panicked himself when he tried to come up with a plan for when the driver of the car stopped, however long that might take. Would he fight him man to man? What if the man attacked him with the knife? He tried to remember what he had been told about knife fighting. He should wrap his coat around his arm to protect it. That much he remembered. He did not have a knife of his own, so he was at a severe disadvantage there. He called Sid in his panic and told him what was happening.
“I’m calling the cops. You can’t handle this on your own,” Sid said in a soothing voice, hoping to calm Dave down.
“No! Don’t. We can’t trust them.” To Sid, Dave sounded hysterical.
“How do you plan to handle this?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“The guy you’re chasing is nuts, you know that. He’s killed people. He’ll kill you if he gets a chance. You’re lucky he hasn’t killed you already.”
Dave was surprised at how calm Sid sounded and wondered if he was drunk. “He has Elena. If I can get her away from him then we can let the cops take care of the rest.”
To Sid it sounded like a plan a ten year old would come up. “Where are you now?”
“We’re coming up to Constitution. Wait, he’s heading up Louisiana to Union Station. I think I know where he’s going. He’s taking her to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. That’s where he killed a priest. I’ll call you back.” Dave ended the call so he could concentrate on following the red MG.
Captain O’Neil had been enduring another tail-chewing session at headquarters on Indiana Avenue, this one attended by not only the chief and her minions, but also the F.B.I. and some suits from Homeland Security, who wanted to know more about the monitoring operation at the farm. O’Neil had seen the signs during the meeting; the glances, the feigned interest in his future, the soft way in which the chief addressed him. It all added up to one thing: he was going to be thrown under the bus. He guessed that the only question to be answered was whether he would be charged with a crime. He sat in his big car and lit a cigar, something strictly forbidden in the new, non-smoking world. The department had decreed that normal pe
ople, meaning those who did not smoke, should not ever be subjected to the offensive aromas left by those who do. There would be no smoking in department vehicles, offices, or other facilities and property. To hell with them, he thought, as the smoke filled the car. He was stopped at the light at 3rd and Constitution, working up a grand sense of outrage, when the red MG sped by with a Town Car hot on its tale. There, at the wheel, sat Dave Haggard, talking on his cell phone. It took O’Neil less than a second to assess the situation.
He turned left on Constitution and saw that the two cars were heading for Union Station, but the red car turned onto North Capitol Street and made the light at the Main Post Office with Dave in the Town Car right behind him, on his bumper. A D.C. cop at the wheel of a patrol car was hassling a prostitute and was telling her to move along when he saw the two cars speed by. He turned on his lights and siren and went after them, thinking they were a couple of drunks.
O’Neil turned on his own flashing lights and siren and pulled up next to the patrol officer and tried to wave him off, but the officer, who was black, felt he was being disrespected and gave O’Neil the finger. O’Neil tried to pull ahead of the patrol car but a Metro bus was blocking the lane, so he settled for fourth place in the caravan that was moving north.
Father Darius had come to the conclusion that the drama he had been sent to perform was in its final moments and that he no longer had anything to lose, so he began to run the red lights, swerving to avoid cars that were proceeding across his direction, sending Dave in his big sedan careening around busses and cars that were proceeding on green lights at the cross streets. The patrolman and O’Neil were blaring sirens and emergency lights as onlookers wondered what was going on.
Elena had managed to scrape off the tape that held the sock in her mouth and was screaming for him to stop the car. She was also chewing the tape that bound her wrists. Father Darius began to pray out loud to drown out the screams coming from the back.
Dave was sandwiched between the red MG and two D.C. police cars, one of which he recognized as O’Neil’s. He assumed that Sid had called O’Neil and he vowed to punch Sid in the nose when he had a chance.
By the time the caravan had reached New York Avenue they were travelling at close to sixty miles per hour, a speed that would doom them all if maintained through the lights up ahead. North Capitol crossed under New York, so that was not a problem, but the letter streets had lights. They caught the light at P Street and got past Florida Avenue but there was a small backup at the red light at R Street. Father Darius swung the small car to the left, where the turn lane was clear, and squeaked between a bus and an SUV to cross the intersection. Dave swung to the right and sped through the clear right turn lane but sideswiped a carpet company van that was slow to move through the intersection, wiping off the driver’s side mirror and caving in a section of Sid’s door. The driver of the van, an illegal Nicaraguan, sped away, hoping that no one got his plate number.
The patrolman was on his radio asking for backup and O’Neil was on his cancelling the backup, saying he was a Captain and had the situation under control. He switched to another frequency and alerted his available units to meet him at the Shrine. Just past Prospect Hill Cemetery, in front of the row houses that lined North Capitol, a man heading to work at the Government Printing Office pulled away from the curb and into the path of the MG, which swerved to the center lane. Dave, following close behind, slammed into the man’s Toyota Corolla, glancing off the driver’s side, sending the smaller car up and over the curb and through a chain link fence that enclosed his small front yard. The man suffered a broken shoulder but was otherwise unhurt. Sid’s Town Car suffered another blow to its perfection, this time a deep, open gash along the right front fender and both doors. But the car kept moving at a high rate of speed.
The next major intersection was Michigan Avenue and a right turn to the Shrine. The four cars wove through the light traffic and the MG skidded into the left turn lane of traffic moving in the opposite direction but missed two cars that swerved away in a chorus of squealing tires and shouting drivers. Other drivers were honking their horns as the four cars sped by.
Dave kept his eye on the car in front of him and assumed that Elena was in the trunk and that thought kept him from ramming the MG. He knew that O’Neil was behind him and didn’t know what the cop had in mind once the caravan came to a stop, which he believed was soon. The Shrine was just up ahead on the left, its blue dome glowing in the light that shone upon it. Father Darius made a sharp, high-speed turn into the circular drive that wound around to the front of the structure. He caught site of a handicap ramp along the curb and pressed the accelerator to jump the MG into a landscaped area next to the stairs that led into the upper church. The MG came to a stop against a tree and some bushes that were bare of leaves. Dave lost control of the Town Car and skidded over the curb in front of the stairs, blowing out two tires. Father Darius jumped out and pulled Elena from the trunk before Dave, O’Neil, or the patrolman could reach him. He appeared very calm. She was screaming. He held the butterfly knife to her throat. “She must be free to return to her heavenly home,” he said, smiling. “I am a priest and I have come to this holy place to perform a holy act. You will not stop me.”