Family Ties (John Taylor #5) - Chapter 10

Taylor forced the bike he and Whitaker were on around a tight turn, leaning the bike almost too much as he tried to keep from bleeding too much speed as they ran from the cyber cafe. His hopes that the siren he’d heard was just a different officer pulling some motorist over were soon dashed as they flashed past a cross street. Taylor caught sight of a different police car whose lights flashed on as soon as they’d crossed its view.

Glancing at the side mirror, Taylor saw the police car run through a traffic light and turn to follow them. He was making enough turns that the car he passed was the only one he could see at the moment, but Taylor was nearly certain it wasn’t the only one chasing them. That patrol car had jumped off the mark way too quickly. The officer he knocked down must have called it out on the radio, and the cars in the area had been converging on them. Even if this was the only one behind them, it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

What Taylor needed was a way to lose pursuit, preferably before a police helicopter showed up and made that a lot harder. Taylor turned hard onto one of the main artery streets that lead to the heart of the city. Even an hour after rush hour had ended, the street was still packed with cars, buses, and trucks delivering the people and goods that made a major metropolitan center work.

Taylor hoped that the denser packed streets would give the smaller, more maneuverable motorcycle an edge over the police cruisers since there were enough vehicles on the road that even if citizens wanted to give way to the police, they couldn’t.

For that to work, though, they had to survive the trip. Whitaker gripped Taylor hard around the middle as the bike dipped dangerously to one side so they could dodge in between a taxi and a large box van. Roaring down the lane line in between rows, a helpful citizen decided to pull into the space between lanes to help the police, blocking it off.

Taylor managed to whip around the rear of the blocking car and slid onto the next lane divider at the last second, nearly missing scraping along the side of the car, which would have been bad for both the bike and Whitaker and Taylor.

The move had cost them speed, which Taylor had been building up as he saw the light ahead turn yellow. By the time he got to the line, it had already circled through to red, and cross-traffic had started. Taylor didn’t have time to wait for the way to clear, however.

Although the traffic had slowed the chasing police, which had now become three cruisers instead of one, it hadn’t stopped them. They were making progress towards them. There was a chance they’d reach Taylor and Whitaker before the light turned, or that one of the citizens around them would again try to take a hand at helping the authorities. Either way, the decision was already made for Taylor.

He didn’t even slow down as he plowed into traffic, barely missing a BMW. Behind him, Whitaker screamed, and horns blared, but dumb luck saw them through. The bike exploded through a gap in the traffic, soaring down a now much less dense roadway.

Their luck didn’t hold. A police car jumped the thin concrete medium and turned to block the lane. Taylor applied the brake and turned hard before opening the throttle back up, tires smoking as he fishtailed, the rear of the bike throwing a bloom of white smoke onto the police car, temporarily blinding the officers. 

The tires bit into the road, and the bike took off once more, now heading down a car lined side street. Taylor wasn’t a hundred percent sure where they were, but he thought he remembered something from a map he’d been looking at the night before. Looking at the improving quality of the street as they drove down, it suggested that Taylor was correct about where they were driving, which was fortunate as the cruiser they’d avoided was now in close pursuit.

Rounding a slight curve, Taylor saw what he was looking for, a dignified grey stone wall covered in vines with an opening from the road they were on for the bike to pass through. Taylor blew through to the street that ran parallel to the brick wall, a small bus with a bright blue and gold paint scheme on it blaring its horn as Taylor forced it to swerve to avoid hitting him.

The surroundings opened up as they passed the walls curved archway. The narrow streets and tall buildings were replaced by lush green open spaces scattered with the odd gothic architecture. Students walking with backpacks and books stopped to gawk as Taylor ignored the t-intersection and hopped the curb, tearing chunks of grass out as he accelerated across the open lawn.

In his mind, Taylor could see the circular loop that ran around the outside of the campus. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the police cruiser slow before turning left, attempting to trace their cross-campus journey by going around the loop and catching up to them.

“This place doesn’t have a lot of street exists. They’re going to radio ahead and have them blocked off,” Whitaker warned, leaning closer and yelling to be heard.

Taylor nodded in response so she would know he heard her but didn’t slow down or turn towards the area where one of the exits would be. In fact, Taylor did the opposite and turned slightly in the opposite direction, back into more of the campus, circling around one of the school buildings while dodging a group of kids spread out on the lawn, sending them scattering. Around the building, Taylor saw what he wanted, a large parking garage in between three of the buildings.

Pulling into it, Taylor drove into an open spot and hopped off.

“What are we doing?”

“Just follow me,” Taylor said, pulling off his helmet and the jacket.

Whitaker followed suit, confused, her head on a swivel looking for the police. As they passed a large trash bin, Taylor took her helmet and jacket and threw them and his into it.

“What …?”

Taylor grabbed her hand and pulled her through one of the garage's exits into a small area in between one of the buildings and the side of the garage. Whitaker looked alarmed as he pulled out his weapon, fired twice into the air, and holstered it.

“Run,” he said, grabbing her hand and yanking her after him.

They rounded the side of the building back into an open area of lawn, where a dozen or so students had stopped and looked in the direction of the garage at the sound of gunshots.

“Run. They’re shooting people. Run,” Taylor shouted, as they ran away from the garage.

This was the one flaw in his plan, he didn’t speak enough German to pull this off in their language. He’d gambled on the fact that students at a university in the heart of Berlin would speak English.

Thankfully, his gamble paid off as the students began to run in panic, several girls screaming in alarm as their dash turned into a small mob running for their lives. Several of the students, afraid for their safety, had gotten up from where they’d been sitting, abandoning everything they’d been holding.

“Run. Shooters. Run,” Taylor kept yelling to keep the crowd panicking.

Coming up to where one group had abandoned their items, Taylor reached down and scooped up two backpacks before turning and heading towards the building they’d been running parallel to. As soon as he pushed through the door, he slowed to a brisk walk, and handed one of the backpacks to Whitaker, swinging the other over his own shoulder.

“What are we doing?” Whitaker whispered to him as they passed students, most of who were looking out the windows at the scattering people.

“Getting us a way out.”

“How, they’re already setting up a perimeter.”

Taylor pulled her down a side hall and out through another exit, walking quickly away from the scene he’d created. The further they got the fewer kids they saw running around until it was mostly students milling about and trying to figure out what all the noise across campus was about.

“They were setting up a perimeter to block off the street exits from the school. They probably already have those covered by now. By the time we could have walked to one of the side pedestrian gates, someone would have gotten the idea to cover those as well. Now they’re going to start having students running up to the police on the perimeter with stories of an active shooter on the loose. Knowing witness statements and the game of telephone that happens, they’re probably hearing stories about students shot, lying dead on the quad. The beat cops who were chasing us are going to have to do a one-eighty on their procedures, twisting themselves in knots. Someone’s calling HRT right now and everyone on the perimeter is switching to containing rather than catching two people on a bike. As word spreads, more kids will start making tracks to get off campus, and the perimeter is still soft. Eventually, a sergeant or lieutenant will show up and remember the pedestrian gates, but that will be ten minutes from now. These things always turn into a cluster fuck.”

They didn’t break stride as Taylor explained it all, crossing over the circular drive that bordered the campus and closing in on a gate in the side of one of the walls. As Taylor predicted, there were a bunch of kids walking through the gate, casting worried glances over their shoulder. Taylor didn’t need to know German to get the gist of what they were talking about.

They did see a patrol car in the middle of the street, but it was a block away from them. There was no way the single officer could pick out two people from the throng of students leaving, and rubberneckers showing up to find out what all the commotion was about.

“You have us all figured out, don’t you?” Whitaker said.

“Sure, but not because you’re cops. The reaction would have been different if it had been army units, but just as predictable. Everyone has their procedures to follow, and those procedures are never very good at adapting to rapidly changing situations. Police forces have a lot less training than the military, relying mostly on 'on the job' training, which leaves for a lot of weak points if you know where to look.”

“Of course, now we don’t have wheels.”

“True. We need a place to hole up for a while, and it needs to be away from here. They’ll start their search from the last place they saw us, so we just need to stay ahead of them.”

Taylor led them several more blocks away from the campus until he saw another parking garage, this one next to an office building. Walking into it, he started staring hard at the cars until he found the one he wanted. Most of the cars he’d passed were newer luxury models, just what you would expect from people working in a fancy office in the middle of a major city. The car he stopped at was fifteen years old at best, with a paint job that had seen better days. Places like this needed working stiffs, too, as janitors and service laborers. He felt a pang of guilt as he smashed the driver's rear side window in and reached around to unlock the driver's side door.

Whoever owned this car wasn’t the kind of person who’d easily replace it. He knew he was making someone's life hard, but there weren’t a lot of options. To his surprise, Whitaker didn’t say anything, just getting in when he opened her door. He took his gloves off and had the car hot-wired in two minutes. Putting his gloves back on, he drove out of the garage and headed for the outskirts of town in under five minutes.

“We need to look at that video.”

“Look in the backpacks.”

Whitaker pulled the one Taylor had dropped on the back seat next to the one she’d been carrying and opened them. She just smirked at him when she pulled a laptop out of one of them.

“Because students are likely to have a tablet or laptop on them, right?”

“Yep. Of course, they’ll have passwords.”

“I should be able to get around that.” She set the laptop down and stared at Taylor.

“What?” He asked after a few minutes, her unwavering gaze unsettling him.

“I just forgot what it was like, working with you.”

While Taylor drove, Whitaker opened the laptop briefly and then closed it, putting it back in the bag. She spent the rest of the trip digging through a stranger's backpack, looking through all of the papers, folders, and books.

Once the quality of the area dropped significantly and they were several miles away from downtown, Taylor found the most run-down motel he could imagine. It was the kind of place most people would drive past, no matter how tired they were. It exactly what Taylor was looking for. Instead of parking in the parking lot, he drove past it by several blocks, and stopped, pulling up to the side.

Putting the car in park, he got out, collected the backpack that Whitaker wasn’t holding, and started walking away from the car. After a second, Whitaker ran to catch up to him as they walked back to the motel.

“Leaving it running so someone steals it?”

“Yep. In this kind of area it will be gone in an hour. They’ll take it on a joy ride or keep it for a while. Either way, when the police do find it, and tie it back to a business near the campus, they won’t be able to use it to trace our movements.”

“We’re going to have to find a new ride, you realize that.”

“I do, but we can’t drive around in a car with a broken window. Any cop with half a brain will run the tags and see it is reported stolen. We’ll deal with that tomorrow. Tonight, we need to figure out what our next move is.”

Taylor went in to rent a room while Whitaker waited around the corner, deciding that the two of them together were more likely to make people remember seeing their pictures on TV, than just one of them. They could have probably not even bothered, considering how uninterested the clerk behind the desk was. He took Taylor’s money, not questioning one night being paid for in cash, and never even looked up from whatever magazine he was reading. The kind of place it was, though, that was probably a feature since most of the rooms would have been rented by the hour and not for a whole night.

Once inside, Whitaker pulled out the college students' laptop and continued rummaging through their bags while Taylor dropped the other one by the door. They’d have to toss these in a random dumpster, but he didn’t want to leave them out where someone might find them and give it to a cop who’d put two and two together.

Taylor sat on the bed and watched Whitaker as she seemed more interested in the kids' other possessions than the laptop. After half an hour she dropped the bag and powered up the computer. On the password screen, she typed something in. Taylor held his breath for the second it took to see if it worked, letting it out once the desktop appeared. Considering their faces would be even more all over the news now that they led police on a chase that ended in shots fired on a college campus, they needed to avoid extraneous trips out in public as much as possible.

“Impressive.”

“It was his girlfriend’s name,” Whitaker said. “She was all over his day planner.”

“So, let's see what we have.”

Whitaker inserted the flash drive and brought up the video of that night. It was a large file, covering a several hour period, forcing Whitaker to scrub through the video looking at the time stamp. The empty area in front of the apartment door flickering slightly, since other than the breeze, nothing moved or changed for almost an hour of video. They knew roughly when the murder happened, so they were watching the time stamp in the corner count up when Taylor reached out and squeezed Whitaker's shoulder.

“Stop. Back it up.”

“What?”

“I saw someone.” 

Whitaker rewound the video, stopping when she reached the moment when a person finally entered into the shot, looking up at the camera as they opened up the front door. Looking up at them was Graf, cell phone at his ear. It was smack dab in the middle of the time of death and less than ten minutes before the video of Whitaker coming back to the apartment.

“Shit,” Taylor said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not surprised, but it’s a kick in the nuts to think I was riding around with him for several days and never figured it out.”

“He’s fooled a lot of people. Hell, you said Joe was the one who introduced you. There’s no way you could have known.”

Taylor just gave her a look when she glanced up at him. She wasn’t wrong, but he’d been banking on his ability to read people and go by his gut. The fact that Graf had completely snowed him was going to bother Taylor for some time.

“So we have him. He was at the scene at the time of the murder, before I came back, and omitted it from the official record.”

“It won’t be enough.”

“Why?”

“Because it takes a really overwhelming amount of evidence to convince a department that one of their own is dirty. Like, admitting it on video, bloody knife in hand kind of evidence.”

When Whitaker gave him a look, and Taylor threw up his hands defensively as he said, “I know. It’s hard to see from your side. I know you guys see yourselves as always evidence-driven and fair; but that’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean you’re dirty or anything, just that it’s hard to accept that someone you know is dirty. It’s how Hanssen was able to run free for so many years.”

Bringing up the specter of the FBI’s biggest shame was enough to make Whitaker look away. Robert Hanssen had been an agent inside of the New York office's counterintelligence division. While not quite as big as Aldrich Amies, the CIA agent turned Russian informant, he was a giant black eye on the Bureau.

“It’s not enough.”

“No. We need more. This might get you cleared of killing your aunt at a trial, but the moment we get behind bars, Graf will have us killed. We need to prove he’s dirty beyond the shadow of a doubt, if we’re going to stay out of custody.”

Whitaker slouched and leaned into Taylor, putting her head into his chest.

“Shit,” she said. “How the fuck did I end up here.”

“You were trying to help someone. You couldn’t have known Fredrick was mixed up in something shady. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Whitaker didn’t sound convinced but let it drop. Taylor kept rewinding and watching the ten seconds that Graf was visible. Rewind and play, over and over again. Taylor appreciated that Whitaker let him think and didn’t barrage him with questions. They’d worked together long enough that Whitaker knew when Taylor had caught a hint of something being out of place. Instead of questions, she just patted his shoulder and headed towards the bathroom.

A piece of Taylor’s brain was aware of her as she walked away and closed the door. The sound of the shower started a few moments later. The rest of him was focused on the video in front of him, rewinding and playing, over and over again. He’d noticed something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, like a word on the tip of the tongue that is just out of reach.

Eventually, he paused the image on Graf as he stared up at the camera, talking on the phone, pausing before he walked into Freida’s building. He was still sitting there, staring at the screen when Whitaker came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around her. His focus finally shifted when Whitaker stood behind him, leaning against his back, the familiar way she smelled out of the shower bringing back memories.

“Figure it out yet?”

“No. I don’t even know if it’s important, but it’s all I’ve got right now. If we don’t find something beyond just proof that Graf was at the scene at the time of the murder, we’re stuck.”

“You’ll figure it out, you always do. We should call Joe. He won’t be able to help us, but he can set things up to get us a pass on everything else, if we can prove Graf’s dirty. He’ll need a head start if we don’t want to spend time in prison.”

“Will he try and chase your phone?”

“No. Even if he did, it’s the oldest, crappiest model I could find with the fewest features available. With no GPS chip or Wi-Fi, it’s left to triangulating off the closest tower, which would get them a mile radius or so. I don’t think he’d sell us out, though.”

“Still, it’s a risk. Joe’s a by the book guy and believes in the system. His advice will be to turn ourselves in and trust in the system since we’re innocent. Let’s call him in the morning after we’ve done everything else. We can shut the phone off after then and head out. By the time they get anyone down here, we’ll be gone. If we’re making calls, we should also call Kara.”

“Joe might have someone watching her if he’s actually worried about us. Again, I don’t think so, but if we’re being careful…”

“Her living with a presidential candidate’s daughter, I don’t think he’d take the chance. He may be a true believer, but at his level, he’s also a politician. Still, you’re probably right. We’ll call her in the morning, too.”

“Fine. Why don’t you take a break for a little bit, come back to it with fresh eyes?”

Taylor rubbed his face hard and turned around in the chair.

“Sure, I was starting to go cross-eyed anyways. Did you want to look it over while I take a break?”

“No,” she said, dropping her towel.