Page 66 of Delusional

I DIDN’T LIKE being forced into action I hadn’t prepared for. That’s how things went bad. But I couldn’t let this moron asphyxiate himself.

As I pulled the loose shackle from the lock and reached down to pull the door up, I felt the handle ripped from my hands as the door was pushed up from the inside. The smoke immediately stung my eyes.

I tried to scramble out of the way, but a giant body landed right on top of me. It was definitely Leonard Barr. He was strong. And he was pissed off.

I squirmed out from underneath the guy, then used an old wrestling move to try and get on his back. His arms were the size of my legs. I felt like I was trying to get a handle on a bull at a rodeo.

Once I was on his back, I wasn’t sure what I should do. Maggie was holstering her pistol to come over and help when Barr rose to his feet with me still hanging on. He slammed me backward into the concrete wall of the storage building. It felt like he’d rattled my teeth out of my gums. Then he reached behind with his left hand and grabbed me, tossing me inside the storage unit and into a stack of boxes in the corner.

Next, Barr picked up a two-by-four that had been lying on the ground and held it like he was about to spear me in the head with the blunt end. I was in a weird position and couldn’t reach my pistol. Maggie was my only hope.

As soon as that thought flashed through my mind, Maggie came through. She barreled into Barr’s side, hitting him low in the ribs. The two-by-four dropped to the floor and Barr crashed to the ground. Before he could get back on his feet again, Maggie delivered a perfect round kick to his head.

Barr was stunned but struggled to his feet. This time Maggie had the two-by-four in her hands and swung like a major-league hitter. She caught him halfway between his knee and hip, a classic defensive-tactics strike we all learned at our respective law-enforcement academies. It shut down some important nerves but didn’t really cause any damage.

Barr staggered and collapsed directly onto his small bed.

Maggie looked over at me and said, “You okay?”

All I could do was nod. I looked at the big man on his little bed and felt confident the fight was over.

CHAPTER 81

I MANAGED TO stagger to my feet in time to help Maggie handcuff Leonard Barr. As we pushed his wrists together behind his back, I got Maggie’s attention and held up his left hand for a moment. He was missing his middle and index finger. The same injury sustained by whoever had broken into the Office of Technology and Innovation.

It was one of the first signs we were really on the right track.

We helped Barr to his feet. He groaned a little but seem to be mostly unharmed. He looked down at Maggie, who was at least a foot shorter than him, and grunted, “You did pretty good. I’m impressed.” That was all he said.

There were Swisher Sweets cigar butts littering the bare concrete floor. The butts with little white plastic tips added to the general odor of the storage unit. The still-smoldering fire this jerk-off had set hadn’t helped the odor at all. Maggie found a towel to thrash it a few times and put it fully out.

We were standing together in front of the open storage unit when a dark-blue Cadillac SUV rolled up to the gate. A tall man in his fifties, with hair dyed unnaturally black, popped out of the SUV and came toward us.

When the man was about thirty feet away, I called out, “Please stop there, sir.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Police business, sir.”

“I could figure that out myself. I’m Pry’s stepfather, Vic Watson.”

Maggie mumbled, “So that’s who he must’ve been calling while we waited out here.”

The stepfather took in the scene, letting his eyes linger on the wisps of remaining smoke coming from the open storage unit. “Why are you harassing Pry?”

I said, “We’re not harassing him, we’re arresting him.”

“On what charge?” Watson’s volume was rising, and I could hear the outrage in his voice.

“Assault on a police officer to start.” Barr started to squirm to get away. I used the oldest tactic there was. I grabbed his hand and cranked it into an awkward angle while I held his elbow. The pain made him stand up on his tiptoes and drop any ideas he had about escaping.

The stepfather looked at the storage unit and said, “It looks like you tried to burn him out of there.”

“He did that himself.”

“Sure he did. If I was to listen to the cops, I’d think Pry was the source of virtually all crime in the greater New York City area.”

“Sounds like bad parenting to me.”