45 Shades Drawn (2)

An hour later, as the arrest team waited for Shifu's return at the Vince Lombardi Service Area, Victoria sat in her living room, her eyes closed and a hand over her forehead. She felt miserable. She had a headache and a fever, but she didn't think it was the flu or a cold.

The damp, chilly weather had probably aggravated her arthritis, and fever was usually the first symptom. She'd already called her doctor and made an appointment to have her SED rate taken to check for signs of infection in her bloodstream. It would confirm what she already suspected.

She opened her eyes and stared blankly at the unlit Christmas tree, the coloured balls and tinsel shining dully in the grey morning light. She didn't want to be sick for Christmas. The kids always got so excited, even now that they were older. It was the one holiday she loved most.

She got up and went to the window. Looking through the curtain, she saw Liu Shifu outside, hunched over the open trunk of the Calais. He was doing something in the trunk, but she couldn't see what because the tree was blocking her view. She wondered why he'd decided to come back home. He had left the house early that morning, and normally he would have been gone for at least a few more hours.

Liu Shifu had called her a little while ago from the Grand Union on the other side of town to ask her if she wanted to go out for breakfast. He'd said he was picking up a few things that Neo had wanted, pasta and cookies. She'd told him how awful she felt and that she'd called the doctor, so he offered to make breakfast for them at home instead.

He'd hung up before she could object.

When Shifu cooked, he cooked for an army. The clean-up after he was through was hardly worth the effort. Hanging up the phone, she'd changed her mind and decided to go out to breakfast despite her fever. She could go straight to the doctor's office from there. The thought of dealing with Liu Shifu's mess in the kitchen made her weary. Sometimes it was just easier to go along with what he wanted than to argue with him.

She parted the curtain for a better view but saw only the top of her husband's head behind the open trunk. Whatever he was doing, he was awfully busy doing it. She sighed and closed her eyes. Whatever it was, she wasn't going to ask. She was in no mood for a fight.

While Victoria watched her husband from her living-room window, Detectives Thomas Trainor and Denny Cortez of the New Jersey State Police were also watching him. They had been assigned to monitor the Shifu residence in Dumont that morning. At 9:20,

Detective Cortez had driven their unmarked car past the house at 169 Sunset Street. Sitting in the passenger seat, Detective Trainor saw no sign of Shifu or the red Oldsmobile Calais at that time. Cruising the neighborhood and staying out of sight so as not to be obvious, they returned twenty-five minutes later and could now see Shifu standing in the driveway, leaning over the open trunk of the red Oldsmobile he'd been driving that morning. Not wanting to be spotted by Shifu, they circled the block and parked far enough up the street from the cedar shake split-level so as not to be seen. Trainor radioed the arrest team at the Vince Lombardi Service Area to report that Shifu was back home, doing something they could not identify in the trunk of the red car.

…..

The Shark was parked at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, a mile north of the Lombardi Service Area. Dominick Edge was standing outside at a pay phone, the receiver clamped on his shoulder so he could keep his hands warm in his pockets. He was talking to Deputy Chief Buccino, who was still at the service area. "So where the hell is he, Bobby."

"We don't know yet, Dom. I'm waiting to hear."

Buccino was in charge of the arrest, and he was the one calling the shots. Dominick had worked with him before, and he knew that Bobby Buccino was the kind of no-nonsense field commander who led from the front lines. With twenty-five years in law enforcement under his belt, he was no one's jolly uncle at times like this. The deputy chiefs goal for the day was clear: Arrest the suspect and make sure no one gets hurt.

"Where's Paul?" Dominick asked.

''He's on the road, waiting to hear. Just like the rest of us."

"You think Liu Shifu knows?"

"I don't know." Buccino's voice was terse. If he was frustrated, he wasn't showing it.

Dominick was trying not to be frustrated. He kept telling himself that this really wasn't a problem, that they'd catch up with Shifu later on, no problem.

Still, he was worried. Shifu was improvising, and that could mean trouble. Sure, they already had a mountain of evidence to use against him: the Nagra tapes of him eluding to killing with cyanide; his intentions to kill the pointer, Zhang Xiaohua; his admission that he had frozen one of his victims and kept him on ice for more than two years as an experiment; his plan to set up an illegal arms sale with ''Tim."

They also had the .22-caliber pistol fitted with a silencer that Shifu had sold to Dominick. They had plenty of evidence to nail this guy, so it really didn't matter whether or not they caught him red-handed with a "poisoned" egg sandwich.

So what if they didn't get the big finale the way they'd planned it. That didn't matter. What was really bothering Dominick was the fact that Shifu was out there improvising. There was no telling what he was up to now.

"Why don't I call him up." Dominick suggested. "I'll find out what went wrong and try to set it up again for tomorrow—"

"Do you really think he'll go for the rich kid thing again. How will you explain it to him? Logically how long could you keep this kid hanging. It doesn't make sense."

"Yeah…. You're probably right." Dominick stuck his free hand under his armpit. He was freezing out there in the cold.

Then something suddenly occurred to him. He remembered Shifu talking about the nest egg he had stashed overseas. Probably in Switzerland. What if he really was on to them. He could hop on a plane and flee to Switzerland and live happy as a clam off his nest egg.

"'Bobby, have you checked the airports—"

"Hang on a minute, Dom."

Dominick heard other voices on the other end of the line, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. All he could hear was Buccino's voice giving orders. He was telling them to go, go, the arrest was on.

"Bobby! Bobby, what happened.^"

''Shifu's at home. Trainor and Cortez just spotted him. They just called it in. We're gonna take him down there."

"What about the van? Does he have the blue van with him.?"

"I don't think so. I gotta go now, Dom."

"Okay, I'll meet you at the house—"

"No," Buccino ordered. "You go back to the courthouse in Hackensack and wait for us."

"But, I can—"

"No," Buccino barked. "I don't want you at Shifu's house. You're not supposed to know where he lives. If he spots you there, he'll know something's up, and I don't want a shoot-out in the middle of the street. You stay away."

Bobby Buccino hung up, and Dominick was left listening to the dial tone. He knew Buccino was right, he should stay away, but he couldn't help feeling left out. After all the time he'd put into this thing, he was going to miss the arrest. It wasn't that he wasn't going to "get the collar."

That was television bullshit. This was a shared operation, and that had been understood from the very beginning. The glory belonged to everyone. What he regretted was that he wasn't going to see the look on Liu Shifu's face when he found out that "Dominick Edge" was really a cop. Dominick knew it was going to be a priceless moment, but unfortunately he was going to have to find out about it second-hand.

As he walked back to the Shark and blew into his cold fingers, he could see the flashing dome lights on the highway in the distance as the arrest team sped off toward Dumont. He got into the car, started the engine, and just sat there for a moment, thinking, wondering where Liu Shifu had the blue van stashed, wondering why he hadn't come back, wondering what the hell he was up to.

As he put the car into reverse and backed out of the space, he realized that all that didn't really matter because in a half hour they'd have him in handcuffs. He still wished he could see Liu Shifu's face when they took him down, though, even if it was from the back of the crowd. He could stay out of sight. No one would ever know he was there. It would be a shame to miss the arrest after all he'd gone through with this investigation. A damn shame.....