Guilty Minds

His weapon was a semiautomatic pistol as well. It was matte black and looked like a Glock, too. He was a young guy, in his twenties, with a military haircut, high and tight. He was holding his pistol two-handed, his grip and stance expert. But he looked tense. He was blinking rapidly.

I didn’t like that. A tense guy with a gun could easily do stupid stuff.

“Put the gun down,” he said. His voice was high and strained.

“You first,” I said.

I was cursing myself for doing this without backup, a team, without at least one other guy. That had been both sloppy and arrogant. Or maybe I was simply being driven by my anger, which made me careless. Because I’d just walked right into a trap.

He blinked some more. “I mean it.” There was a slight quaver in his voice. “Put the gun down.”

“Or what?” I said.

I heard a door behind me open, and in my peripheral vision I could make out a human shape. I shifted my eyes to the right, keeping the pistol trained on the tense guy.

Without turning my head I couldn’t see the new guy clearly, but I could make out enough to know he had a gun pointed at me, too.

“Drop the gun,” the second guy said in a deep voice. He didn’t sound nervous.

I calculated my odds. They weren’t favorable. But it was the first guy, the anxious guy, that worried me. He was likely to have an itchy trigger finger. He looked like he wanted to shoot someone. That someone being me.

I didn’t really have a choice, or at least not one that would end with me alive. I lowered Curtis Schmidt’s Glock and then dropped it onto the floor, where it clattered loudly.

The two men moved in toward me, weapons still pointed, their movements coordinated. I turned to my right, finally able to look at the second guy. I recognized him as Vogel’s driver. A man of multiple talents. He was pointing a semiautomatic at me, too, a Glock 26. I wondered where all the Glocks were coming from, whether there’d been a big sale, and then I remembered that Glocks were the Metropolitan Police Department’s weapon of choice. Their service weapon was the Glock 17, probably the most popular law-enforcement pistol in the world. Off-duty, MPD cops were allowed to carry a Glock 26, the so-called baby Glock.

This guy looked around ten years older than the first guy, a little beefier, with black hair that was short but not military-short. He pointed a finger at the nervous guy and said, “Cover me.” Then he slid his pistol into a holster on his right hip.

Coming closer to me he pulled out of his back pocket some long pieces of white plastic. Flex-cuffs. Disposable restraints. They were planning to cuff me, not kill me. Unless I struggled with the second guy. Then the itchy-trigger-finger guy would get to pull the trigger.

Therefore struggling was probably not a good idea.

“Front or back?” I said to the driver.

“Huh?”

“You want my hands in front or behind?”

“Behind. Let’s make this easy.”

“That’s my plan,” I said.

The driver came closer still and said, “Back up a couple of steps.”

I did, and then he reached down and picked up the Glock. Then he set it down on a corner of the metal desk.

“Turn around.”

I did.

I put my hands behind my back, wrists together.

“Palms outward.”

I turned my hands. I felt him bind my wrists with a flex-cuff, then cinch it tight. I was a bit surprised they were using ordinary zip ties and not the law-enforcement grade ones. YouTube was full of videos showing how to get out of zip-tie restraints.

Then he pointed to a metal chair nearby and said, “Sit, please.”

It was the sort of chair that was made out of aluminum and manufactured by the hundreds of thousands during World War II for navy warships. Rustproof, nonmagnetic, lightweight, and made to survive torpedo blasts. Now you see them in prisons and in chic restaurants.

I sat in the chair, my hands sticking out through the open back. He pulled out some more zip ties and looped each ankle to a chair leg. I think he even zip-tied my wrist restraints to eye-bolts under the seat. So much for YouTube videos. Getting out of this situation would take some time.

“All right,” the guy said. “No trouble.”

“I get it.”

“Okay.” He signaled to the first guy, who slowly lowered his weapon.

“Wait here.”

He left the room. I looked at the first guy, who’d stayed behind. He was still holding his weapon, but down at his side. He glowered at me as if I were a stray dog that might be rabid, and he kept his distance. He didn’t want to get close.

About a minute later a tall, bald guy with a shaved head and cauliflower ears limped into the room.

I smiled when I realized who it was.

Curtis Schmidt was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt. On his left knee was a complicated-looking orthopedic brace with buckles and hinges and Velcro straps. He had a gun holstered on his hip. His deep-set eyes glittered when he saw me.

I’m fairly sure he smiled, too.

He approached, limping, both fists balled.

“You’re not seriously going to hit a guy who’s tied up, are you?” I said.

He took a few steps closer.