The captain looked at him curiously; five seconds later, Dispatch came back, a different voice. “Lucas, Sandy Darling just called. She’s left the phone off the hook, she says they’re there . . .”
“On Eleventh Avenue?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah . . . how’d you know?”
Then the other dispatcher: “Lucas, he’s got a 1994 Lincoln . . .”
“A brown one,” Lucas said.
“Yes.”
“All right,” Lucas said, and he felt the rush, the lift that came at the end of a hunt. “I want to do this right. They’re at Harp’s apartment on Eleventh, it’s a two-story, they’re up above a laundromat. There’s a front stairs and a garage on the side. I want somebody down there now, and we’ll need an ERU team . . .”
Behind him, the patrol captain broke for his car. He shouted back, “I’ll get some guys moving.”
AGAIN, STADIC HEARD the sudden rush on the radio. And the phrase, “Down on Eleventh.”
He knew immediately what it was. He grabbed his phone, punched in Harp’s number. Busy. Christ. He couldn’t allow a siege: there’d be survivors.
The apartment would be surrounded, there’d be helicopters overhead . . . when it came to outright suicide, LaChaise and the other crazy fucker might change their minds. And once they were out, and behind bars, they’d deal him.
The fear clawed at him, propelled him out of the car door. He ran up the side street past the garage, around the corner, kicked in the glass on the bottom floor door and ran up the stairs. At the top, facing the pile of cardboard boxes, he screamed: “LaChaise, they know you’re here. They’re coming now. Right now. You’ve got less than a minute. They’ve got Harp’s car, they’ve got Harp’s car. You hear me? Harp’s car, they got it.”
And he ran back down, seeing in his mind’s eye a cop car pulling up from across the street, leveling a shotgun at him, the questions . . .
The street was empty. Hell, the radio traffic hadn’t started more than a minute ago. He ran back around the corner, jumped in his car, started it and rolled away.
And as he went, he noticed the utter silence of the night, the quiet in the snow. Every siren in town had been killed. But every cop car in town was rolling toward him.
He punched the car down the street, one block, two, and stopped: when the first cars came in, he wanted to be with them.
The first car came in as he thought, gliding in silence toward the laundromat on the corner.
26
LACHAISE RAN TOWARD the back door, saw Sandy in the kitchen, grabbed her, and she screamed, “Let me get my coat, my coat . . .”
LaChaise ran back to the front room, grabbed his own coat and Sandy’s. Martin had his bow in his hand, six arrows in the bow-quiver, a fistful more in the other hand, his coat gaping open. He hobbled after them as LaChaise hit the stairs and Sandy followed, pulling on the coat.
When Martin reached the bottom of the stairs, the garage door was halfway up. He heard LaChaise scream, “Aw, shit . . .” and LaChaise’s rifle came up and began the stroboscopic flash and stutter, and then LaChaise, with Sandy a foot behind, was out in the snow.
Martin was ten feet behind. He looked left: a cop car, windows shattered, sideways in the street. LaChaise was already running to the right.
“This way, this way . . .” LaChaise was screaming at him. Martin caught up and they turned the corner and Martin said, “Give me the rifle.”
“What?” LaChaise’s face was white, antic, the skin stretched around his eyes. Sandy was running away from them, down the street. Let her go.
“I won’t make it. I can’t move, my leg’s fucked, I pulled something loose again,” Martin said. He fumbled at his waistband. “Take my pistol,” he said, handing it to LaChaise. “You got yours. That’ll be enough. Grab a car, get moving . . .”
“Christ,” LaChaise said. He tossed Martin the rifle, fumbled two spare magazines out of his pocket, passed them over, then caught Martin around the neck in a bear hug, held him for a half-second, said, “I’m going for Davenport’s woman. I’ll probably be seeing you in a while,” then turned and ran after Sandy.
Martin went back to the corner and peeked. Fifty yards down the street, a cop was behind a car door, looking at him. He fired a burst, then pulled back and hobbled away, across the street, a thin trickle of pink in the snow where he passed.
He could hear the sirens now, coming in from everywhere.
LUCAS AND AN out-of-uniform patrol cop named Bunne rode toward Eleventh in Lucas’s Explorer. Bunne wore a baseball jacket, the first thing he’d seen when he’d run out of a locker room before heading down to the hospital on foot. They were six blocks from Harp’s: one minute. A half-minute after they left the hospital, they got the choked call on the radios, almost unintelligible over the panicked, harsh, into-the-mike breathing, “We got fire, we’re shot, we’re taking fire, Dick’s shot, for Christ’s sake, get help.”
“Goddamn,” Bunne said. Lucas had been following the patrol captain. Now he put the Explorer on the wrong side of the slippery street and they roared along, side by side, sirens everywhere. At the same time, he was shouting, “Where’d they go, you dumb shit?”
The cop came back, as though he’d heard, “They’re on Eleventh, they’re on Eleventh heading toward the Metrodome, they’re on foot.”
“Ten seconds,” Lucas said.
Bunne drew his pistol and braced himself, white-faced, but at the same time showing Lucas a shaky grin: “This stuff scares the shit out of me,” he said.
Lucas, focused on the driving, said, “The snow isn’t that bad, it’s the fuckin’ night that’s killing us.”
“Nah, it’s the fuckin’ snow,” Bunne said.
A red car, a small Ford, pulled out of a side street and Lucas nearly hit it. The Ford jumped a curve and piled up on a street sign, and they went by, the ultra-pale face of a redheaded kid peering at them through the glass. “Law-suit,” Bunne said, and they went around the corner, on the outside, and then they were on Eleventh on top of Harp’s place, the patrol captain fifteen yards behind them. A squad was parked sideways in the intersection. A cop ran toward them, as Lucas and the patrol captain, in the other car, slid to a stop. The cop was pointing back past them: “They’re on foot,” he hollered. “We gotta get a perimeter up. They’re not more’n a minute ahead. You must’ve come right past them . . .”
Lucas got out of the car and another plainclothes guy, Stadic, joined them, carrying a shotgun. Lucas got his own shotgun out of the car and tossed it to Bunne and said, “Let’s go.”
The three of them started off, and then another cop ran up behind, carrying another shotgun, and the four of them went off into the snow. The last cop, in uniform, said, “Charlie said they crossed the street . . .”
Lucas led the way, said, “Don’t bunch,” and the others self-consciously spread out. Lucas said, “Everybody got a vest?” Stadic and the uniform cop said yes; Bunne shook his head, he was bareheaded, barehanded, and wearing penny loafers. “Go back and get a vest,” Lucas said.
“Fuck that, I’m coming,” Bunne said. Lucas opened his mouth to object, but Bunne pointed at the ground ahead of them: “Look at that. Blood trail.”
They all stopped and Stadic said, “He’s right,” and they all looked down the street toward a row of old brown brick apartment houses. “This is them,” Bunne said, pointing at the fresh tracks in the snow. “See the different sizes of holes . . . that’s the woman, this one guy is dragging his leg, that’s the blood trail.”
“Can’t see shit; it’ll be light in an hour,” the uniform cop said, looking around. He was nervous, nibbling at his brushy black mustache. “Got snow on my glasses . . .”
They pushed into the snow, past the apartment houses and small businesses, a Dairy Queen, a jumble of parking lots and fences, the occasional hedge, Dumpsters behind buildings, all good cover: following the blood which appeared as ragged, occasional sprinkles in the snow, black in the dim light. As they moved up under
a streetlight, Lucas said into his handset, “We’re tracking them . . .” and gave the position.
No way they could get out of the neighborhood, he thought, but there was an excellent possibility that they’d take a house somewhere, and they’d have a siege. “Better get a hostage team down here,” he said. “They could hole up . . .”
At that minute there was a sharp slap and Bunne said, “Oh, Christ,” and fell down. Lucas screamed “Shooter,” and they scattered. But they could see nothing, and hear nothing but sirens, the traffic on the highway and the peculiar hushed purring of the snow.
The uniform was screaming, “Where is he? Which way, which way?”
Lucas put the radio back up and shouted, “Man down, get a goddamn ambulance up here.” He scrabbled crabwise to Bunne and asked, “How bad?” while Stadic was shouting, “Over to your left . . .”
Bunne said, “Man, hurts . . . Can’t breathe . . .”
Lucas unzipped the baseball jacket coat and found a torrent of blood pouring from a chest wound, and more, sticky and red, in the back. The hole in the coat looked more like a cut than a bullet puncture. Lucas pressed his palm against the chest wound and looked back in the street, and saw it lying against a car. A fuckin’ arrow? No sound, no muzzle flash . . .
“He’s shooting a bow,” Lucas shouted at the others. “He’s shooting a bow, you won’t hear it, watch it, he’s shooting a bow, stay out of the streetlights.”
One of the cops yelled, “What the fuck is this? What the fuck is this?”
An ambulance turned the corner, the lights blood-red, and Lucas waved at it. When it came in, he said to the EMT, “Hit by an arrow, he’s bleedin’ bad,” and left her to it, running after the other two men.
He found them zigzagging up the street, still following the blood. “Ten feet at a time,” the uniform said. The uniform was sweating with fear and was wet with melting snow. His eyes were too big behind his moisture-dappled spectacles, his breathing labored, but he was functioning. He ran left, and dropped, pointing his shotgun down the blood trail. Stadic went right, dropped. Lucas followed up the middle, dodged and dropped. Stadic went past, and then the uniform cop.
On a patch of loose snow, Lucas saw that they were only following one track.
“What happened to the other two tracks?” he shouted.
“I don’t know. They must’ve turned off back in the street,” Stadic shouted back, as the uniform cop leapfrogged past him. Stadic scrambled to his feet, and as he did, he grunted and dropped, and Lucas saw an aluminum arrow sticking out of his chest and just a flicker of movement up the trail. He fired three shots, saw another flicker, and fired two more, the last two low, and then the uniform cop fired a quick shot with his twelve-gauge.
“How bad?” Lucas shouted at Stadic.
“Nothing. Hit the backing plate in the vest,” Stadic said, getting to his feet. “He’s a good fuckin’ shot.” He broke the arrow off and they moved forward again, found a puddle of blood, and some blood spatter. “You hit him,” the uniform cop said.
“Maybe you,” Lucas said.
“Naw, I couldn’t see bullshit, was just shooting ’cause I was scared.” He looked around and said, “Maybe we ought to wait until daylight. He can’t be far. He ain’t going anywhere, he was already bleeding before you hit him.”
“I want him,” Lucas said. He put the handset to his face and told the dispatcher that the three had broken up, two apparently together, the third hurt bad. He gave the location and said, “We’re following up.”
“There are people coming straight into that block,” the dispatcher said. “You’re heading right into them. We’ve got guys with armor coming up, so take it easy . . .”
WHEN THEY SPLIT up, Sandy had run on ahead. LaChaise trailing her by fifty feet, with Martin hobbling behind. They ran a block, LaChaise catching Sandy, then a red Ford stopped at an intersection ahead of them. Sirens were coming from all directions: the Ford wasn’t moving. Without breaking stride, LaChaise swerved behind it, jerked open the passenger-side door, and pointed his pistol at the driver: “Freeze, motherfucker.”
The driver instinctively stepped on the brake, and LaChaise was inside, his gun in the redheaded kid’s face. Sandy, when she saw LaChaise turn toward the car, dropped back a few steps. When he jerked open the car door, she turned and ran the other way. When LaChaise turned back, she was gone in the snow.
“Fuck it, fuck it . . .” LaChaise pointed his pistol at the redheaded driver: “Take off. Slow. Go, go . . .”
He slid to his knees in the passenger-side foot well, his head below the level of the dash, the pistol pointed at the kid’s chest. They went a block, then the driver said, “No,” and swerved, and they hit something, and LaChaise yelled, “Motherfucker,” and the driver put his hands up to ward off the bullet.
But LaChaise levered himself up, and the kid babbled, “They almost hit us . . .” and LaChaise saw the two cars—a cop car and a four-by-four—disappearing down the street.
“Go,” he said to the kid. “That way. Down toward the dome.”
SANDY FOUND AN alley and stuck with it, loping along behind the apartment buildings. LaChaise had told her, teasing, that if she turned herself into the wrong cop, she was dead. True enough: she had his picture, but not his name.
And he’d be looking for her. Her best option, she thought, was to find a phone and call Davenport.
Now, if she could find someplace open. But what would be open at seven o’clock on a day like this? The city was a wilderness, the snow pelting down in buckets. She stepped out in the open, then back into the dark as a car roared by, then into the open again to look down the street. There was light on the side of the Metrodome. If she could get in there, there’d be lots of phones. She started that way.
LUCAS, STADIC AND the uniformed cop moved slowly up the blood trail, peering into the dark, starting at every shadow; the uniform fired once into a snowblower as it sat beside a house; Lucas nearly nailed a gate, as it trembled in the blowing snow. They shouted back and forth to reassure each other, and to pressure the bleeding man. Keep him moving; don’t let him think about it.
MARTIN FIGURED HE was dying, but he wasn’t feeling much pain. Nor was he feeling much cold. He was reasonably comfortable, for a man who’d torn open a thigh wound and had taken a gunshot hit in the butt. The butt shot had come in from the side, and nearly knocked him down. But he kept moving, feeling the blood running down his legs. He’d have to stop soon, he thought dreamily. He was running out of blood; that’s probably why he felt so good. The shock was ganging up on him, and pretty soon, things would start shutting down.
One more shot with the bow, then he’d dump it. And when they came in again, for the last time, he’d go to work with the AR-15. His final little surprise, he thought, and grinned to himself.
LUCAS HIT THE ground next to a bridal-wreath hedge. A handful of snow splashed up in his face, and he snorted and tried to see past the corner of the apartment building, thrusting his .45 that way. He could feel Bunne’s blood on the pistol stock, a tacky patina that’d be hard to get off. “Go,” he yelled, and the uniform went past and immediately screamed and went down, and Lucas flopped beside him, thought he saw movement, and fired, and the cop was screaming, “Got me, he got me . . .”
Lucas pulled him back. The arrow was sticking out of the cop’s leg, just above the knee: it had apparently hit the bone square on, and was stuck in it. “Gonna be okay,” Lucas said, and yelled at Stadic, “Stay back, forget it, just hold your ground.” He called for another ambulance on the handset and asked Dispatch, “Where’s the help?”
“They oughta be right ahead of you, they’re all over that block.”
“You can’t see the guy,” Lucas sputtered. “You can’t see him in the snow . . .”
Stadic hunched up beside him. “What do you want to do?”
“Hold it here for a minute. Get the ambulance . . . ?”
The uniformed cop picked up on it. “Where’s the fuckin’ a
mbulance . . .”
An ambulance swung in behind them, and Stadic turned and ran back to wave it down.
“One more push,” Lucas said. He spoke at the downed cop, but he was talking to himself. He got halfway to his knees, then launched into a short dash and dropped behind another hedge. Up ahead, powerful lights were breaking out around the block, and, behind the lights, he sensed moving figures.
“Davenport,” he yelled.
“Where are you?”
“Straight ahead; I think he’s between us . . .”
And somebody else shouted, “We don’t know that’s Davenport, watch it, watch it . . .”
Then Lucas saw Martin. He’d been hunkered into the side of a shabby old apartment, next to a line of garbage cans. He broke across toward the next apartment, and Lucas shouted, “There he is,” and fired two quick shots, missing.
“He’s coming around the apartment, look that way, he’s coming around, watch it . . .”
And one second later, the lightning-stutter of the AR- 15 lit up the back side of the apartment. Lucas half-ran that way, aware of the slipperiness underfoot, the shotgun already at his shoulder, leading the way. The automatic fire stopped before he was halfway there, then started again with a fresh clip. Glass was breaking, more cops were firing. Lucas reached the corner and peeked.
MARTIN WAS FIFTEEN feet away, in an alleyway stairwell. On his right, he was protected by the building. Ahead of him, and to his left, all along the length of a vacant lot, cop cars blocked the route. The cops were returning fire, but they didn’t know he was below the level of the stairwell wall. With the snow, they probably couldn’t see anything but the muzzle flash.
He crouched for a second, then popped up and fired another burst at one of the cars, aiming low, figuring the cops would be behind it.