“Go slow,” I said, “and don’t try to warn him.”
She did as she’d been told, getting out of the car at a nice, even pace while I mirrored her movements, pulling my head and shoulders out of the car and then standing up straight as she did the same on her side.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Nice and slow.”
We each walked forward to the front of the car and then passed before the headlights to stand next to each other in between the beams.
“You should be aware,” Elsa said, loud enough for my ears alone to hear, “that I will kill you if I get the chance. You have meddled far too many times for me to let you see another sunrise.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I replied, just as quietly.
Standing there, I tried a little experiment, moving my wrist just a little so I was pointing the paralyzer in Hennigar’s direction and then engaging the trigger even though I had no idea what the range was on the beam it projected.
Hoping that both Hennigar and Sherise were frozen in place, I called out loudly, “Here she is. Now, let Sherise go.”
Hennigar’s glasses rhythmically caught the light three times as he shook his head.
Damn! I thought as I disengaged the paralyzer. I was going to have to get closer.
“Send her forward,” Hennigar said. “By herself. When she’s halfway here, I let this one go.”
“No good,” I said. “They both go together, or I come with Elsa.” Quietly to Elsa, I added, “Start walking.”
She did as I told her, and I kept the pace with her. We only got three steps before Hennigar shouted, “Stop!” and pulled his gun into full view, the muzzle touching the side of Sherise’s head.
“Do it,” I said, and I froze in place as though it was me who’d been hit with the paralyzer.
Elsa followed suit and quietly said, “Do as he says. You and your lady might just live.”
“I thought you were planning on killing me.”
“Only if I get the chance.”
Before Hennigar could issue his orders again, though, he turned his head suddenly, looking over his left shoulder. At this distance, it was hard to see his expression, but he seemed surprised at best, maybe even fearful.
A few seconds later, I saw what had caught him off guard—a set of headlights appeared as a car came to a skidding halt a few feet away from Hennigar’s vehicle.
Carmelita, I thought at first, a feeling of triumph rising in me. But then I realized it had to be someone else. If it had been Carmelita roaring up to the scene like a hero on horseback, she would have been driving Guillermo’s pick-up truck. The vehicle at the other end of the tunnel was definitely not the old Patterson but rather a low-slung car that sounded like it had a big, powerful engine.
The car rocked to a stop, but before it had fully settled in place, the driver’s door opened and a man got out. He wore a black trench coat and a black fedora. I didn’t recognize him.
“Who the hell is that?” Elsa snapped.
I didn’t answer, my focus on Hennigar’s gun.
The man in the hat shouted something that was lost to me in the echoes of the tunnel and then immediately pulled a gun from inside his coat. Hennigar whipped around, taking his gun away from Sherise’s head as he turned toward the new threat, pointing it at the darkly dressed man.
At the same time, I reached behind myself with my left hand and pulled the gun from my waistband. I brought it around at the same time I raised my right hand, the paralyzer still in my grip. Holding both weapons, I took aim at Hennigar while I shouted, “Sherise! Run!”
The man in the hat fired before Sherise could react and also before Hennigar could finish rotating in his assailant’s direction. I saw Sherise sprayed with blood, a pink rain bursting from Hennigar’s neck as he got off his own shot. It went wild, hitting the tunnel’s roof, and then he and Sherise both went down.
“Sherise!” I shouted as the gunshots echoed off the tunnel walls. At the same time, I saw Elsa turn and start running back toward my car.
The man in the hat turned his gun toward me at the same time as I shifted my aim in his direction. We both fired.
In the same second that my gun’s deafening report filled my consciousness, I felt the concussion of the other man’s bullet hitting me in the chest, the force knocking me backwards. Before the top of the tunnel took up my whole field of vision, I thought I saw the man in the hat crumple beside his car, but it might just as easily have been something I imagined.
I hit the asphalt hard, banging the back of my head and feeling like I’d just taken a cannonball to the chest. Breathing was suddenly impossible, and I was certain I was going to die. The bullet had somehow ripped holes in both of my lungs.
Lying there, not able to even gasp, I raised my hands so I could see them. In my confusion and fear, it seemed to be the only way I could tell if I still held my gun.
I didn’t.
A second later, I felt a jolt as air rushed into my lungs again.
Not dying, I thought. Shot. Wind knocked out of me. Not dying, though.
I lay there for a moment, breathing but still hesitant to move because I knew it was going to hurt like hell.
It turned out I was right, but the need to arm myself again outranked the pain.
I wanted to scream as I half sat up, one hand instinctively going to the spot in the middle of my chest where someone was currently shoving a lit torch into my flesh—a torch barbed with acid-dipped razor blades. Pulling my hand away, I saw plenty of blood, but it didn’t seem to be gushing out.
“Sherise,” I whispered, and the effort it took to push that little bit of air through my lungs made me wince.
My ears were still ringing from the gun’s report, but I wasn’t deaf.
I heard footsteps. A woman’s heels. Elsa.
Turning my head toward my car, I saw Elsa approaching from around the back. She wasn’t looking at me, though. Her eyes were on the ground, and when I looked down, I saw the paralyzer lying halfway between us. I also saw my gun a foot away from me.
Elsa read the scene as quickly as I did and lunged for the paralyzer at the same time as I fumbled for the gun. She was faster, not being burdened by a chunk of lead in her midsection. As she bent to retrieve the paralyzer that had flown out of my hand when I’d been shot, I knew it was her or me. The threat she’d made not two minutes ago still echoed in my mind as I picked up my gun.
And then her expression seemed to change again. For a moment, she didn’t look like the murderous Nazi who I’d been tangling with since first coming to California. Instead, I saw the nice, married German lady I’d encountered on Sunset Boulevard, the one who just wanted to get home to her husband and had no idea how she’d ended up in Hollywood. She smiled pleasantly, the face of a woman I could reason with. And then the smile warped into a sneer as she pointed the paralyzer at me.
I froze in place at the same instant that I squeezed the trigger. At first, I thought I’d failed to get the shot off. That would have meant Elsa walking up and pulling the gun from my hand before saying something sinister and cruel as she put me down like a dog. But then I saw that a little round hole had appeared in the space between her eyes. At the same time, I realized that my ears were ringing again from the explosion that had just happened in the chambers of my gun.
Elsa looked momentarily confused. What thoughts raced through her mind at the moment, I can’t guess at. Maybe she thought she’d been crossed into again. And maybe she really had been. It’s possible she blinked out of existence in this world while her consciousness was somewhere else, maybe sitting on a beach with Cosmo Beadle as they smiled in each other’s faces while figuring how to stab one another in the back.
Whatever inner journey she took in that last second, her body folded in on itself as the bullet in her brain finished its work.
The paralyzer no longer aimed at me, I regained the power of movement and turned my body toward the other end of the tunnel. There were three people on the ground down there, none of them mov
ing.
“Sherise!” I called as loudly as my tortured chest would allow. It did no good. Either my voice was too weak to carry, or she was too gone to hear.
I flashed back to Annabelle’s death, the thought of which gave me a burst of energy that got me only to my knees before I fell over again. Then I started crawling, determined to get to Sherise’s side whether she was dead or alive, even if the effort caused me to bleed to death.
It was maybe half a minute later that I caught something else out of the corner of my eye. A blue light against the dark wall of the tunnel, forming a glowing circle in the air where none should have been.
Carmelita, I thought again. Why she’d opted to arrive via crossover portal rather than in the Patterson was beyond me, but I knew she’d have a good explanation.
And then I watched myself step through the portal.
A different Jed Strait, one who hadn’t been shot, emerged with a gun in his hand and a wary look in his eyes. He saw me immediately and ran over, dropping to his knees next to me.
“Jed!” he said. “What happened?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Divergent?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You keep calling me that, but it’s you who’s divergent. At least from my perspective.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Where’s Elsa?”
I nodded toward the car and he turned in the direction I’d indicated. When he’d crossed the portal, the Winslow had blocked his view of Elsa’s body.
“For crying red tears,” he said. “You shot her?”
“Had to. Her or me.”
“Hmm. You think that’ll hold up in court?”
“If I live long enough.”
He turned his attention to my wound and said, “I’m not a doctor, but…” Then he moved his hand around to my back, probably feeling for more blood. “I don’t feel anything on your back. I’ll bet the bullet lodged in the chest wall. Or got stopped by a rib. Probably hurts like hell.”
Ignoring this, I said, “Go check on Sherise, will you?”
“Sherise?” he asked, alarmed.
I nodded toward the other end of the tunnel.
“Son of a bitch,” he said and left me there, running to the other end of the tunnel. Envious of his ability to move so easily, I turned to watch him bend over Sherise’s prone form. It looked like he was feeling for a pulse, and then he bent to listen for a heartbeat. He took another minute to examine her and then got up, running back to me.
Filled with apprehension as I’d watched his every move, I tried calling out, “How is she?” but I couldn’t get enough volume in my voice to be heard over the sound of his running footsteps.
“She’s going to be all right,” he said. “At least, I’m pretty sure. It looks the bullet just grazed her above the ear. Probably passed out from fear. She hasn’t lost much blood.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, but that’s what it looks like to me. Strong pulse. Strong heartbeat.”
“Did you check the others?”
“Didn’t even think to. You want me to?”
“No,” I said. “Just…help me get down there to her, will you?”
“In a second.”
He left me to examine Elsa, pulling at one of her shoulders to turn her so he could see her face.
“Crack shot,” he said, not sounding pleased. Then he stood up and said, “Well, Hennigar didn’t say how he wanted her. Just that he wanted her. Looks like he’s going to get her dead.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You didn’t think I showed up to save you, did you?” he asked.
“No, I guess not.”
“I should hope not, given the way you left me hogtied with that lamp cord. I’ve got Carmelita back in my world waiting for me right now. She’s opened about thirty portals in the last few minutes, and I’ve been sticking my head into all those worlds trying to find one with you and Elsa here in this tunnel. I wish I’d gotten here a few minutes earlier.”
“Me, too,” I said. “You were going to take her back? Steal her from me?”
“If I had to. I hope you don’t mind if I abscond with the evidence?”
“She’s all yours,” I said.
“Great.”
He stooped and put his hands under my armpits. “Up you go.”
The pain made my vision go all white for a few seconds. If he hadn’t been holding me, I would have gone down again. Once I was on my feet for a few seconds, though, the intensity of the pain faded, and I could do an approximation of shuffling as long as Divergent Jed kept one arm around me and I draped one of mine over his shoulders. The last few yards, I thought I was going to go down, but he held onto me and finally deposited me next to Sherise.
The whole length of the tunnel, I’d been expecting to get to her as she drew her last breath, maybe with a last sad word for me just as it had been with Annabelle, but I saw as soon as Divergent lowered me to the pavement that Sherise was definitely breathing. In addition to a bullet wound in her hairline, she’d probably also hit her head when she’d gone down, but I told myself he’d been right—she was going to be okay.
“Sherise,” I whispered, my dread replaced by joy at the sight of her chest rising and falling.
“So, this is Hennigar?” Divergent asked.
I turned to see him examining the body nearest Sherise.
“It was,” I said.
“You plug him, or this other starch?”
“The other guy. Check him, too, will you?”
Divergent went to the body beside the other car, which was still running. He bent down and said, “Yeah. Dead. I don’t recognize him, though.”
“Check his wallet?”
He did, standing up as he flipped open the dead man’s wallet. Then he whistled, impressed. “Earl Buckman,” he said. “Chief of Police. Got his shield and everything here.”
“It was self-defense,” I said.
“I’m sure.”
“Might be tough to prove.”
“You know a good lawyer,” Divergent said.
“We’ll see how that goes.”
He surveyed the scene for a moment and then said, “I’d love to stick around and go for help, but I’ve got a body to deliver to Andrik Hennigar. And in my world, he’s still alive.”
“You’d better hope he doesn’t have your Sherise like this one did,” I said.
“He won’t. I sent her to San Francisco this morning before I headed to Jetpack’s. She called me from up there this evening, safe and sound.”
“Smart man,” I said. “Wish I’d been that smart.”
He shrugged. “You’ll get there. I have every confidence in you. No hard feelings me leaving you like this?”
“I deserve it,” I said.
“And so much worse.”
He started walking away. “Hey, Jed?” I called out even though it made the razor blades in my chest feel like they were rotating on a drill motor.
“Yeah?”
“If you’ve really just jumped into that many worlds in the last few minutes, you’re going to be getting hijacked like crazy in the next few days. Did you talk to Guillermo? About making you a shield?”
“I did. He’s working on it. Thanks, Jed.”
He gave me a military salute, which I half-heartedly returned. Then he picked up the pace and trotted back to the Winslow. I watched him bend over Elsa’s body and then grab it under the armpits, dragging her over to the portal where, a few seconds later, they both disappeared. Then the circle closed, and it was just me and Sherise.
I patted her cheek gently and said, “Sherise? Can you hear me?”
There was no response. As I tried again, patting her a little more firmly, I heard a noise from behind me—the click of a car door being unlatched.
I panicked for a moment. My gun was at the other end of the tunnel, on the ground where I’d left it after shooting Elsa. Maybe I could get to Hennigar’s gun, wherever it was.
&nbs
p; But as I turned and saw the car door opening, my sense of alarm evaporated instantly.
Jack Wheatley was getting out of the back of Hennigar’s car. He walked slowly around Hennigar’s body and then came to me.
“Mr. Jed?” he asked.
“Jack,” I said. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, but his eyes were on Sherise, and they were filled with fear.
“She’s all right, Jack. She just hit her head. She’s going to be fine.”
He nodded again, but I wasn’t sure he believed me.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked.
He shook his head, and I figured all I was going to get out of the kid was my name. But then he proved me wrong and said, “I hid. In the back seat. The banging was scary.”
“I know, Jack. It’s all over now.”
He turned to the other two bodies and then looked back at me, a question in his eyes.
“They were bad men,” I said. “But they can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
He nodded again. Then he reached into the jacket of the coat Sherise had bought him, pulling out the portable phone I’d given Sherise at the hotel. “I called the police,” he said.
“That’s good, Jack. Thank you. They should be here any time, then.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because I called them a long time ago. When we first got up here and that man made Miss Sherise get out of the car with him.”
I thought I understood and asked, “What did you tell them?”
“That I was in a car with a bad man and my friend Miss Sherise. That we were by the tunnel near the Observatory. I know that because I came up here before…With my…”
“I know,” I said, recalling that the Observatory had been the setting for Buckman’s gala gubernatorial announcement. The Wheatleys had been here, Jack included. “Did you tell the police your name?” I asked.
He nodded.
“All right. Do me a favor, will you? Call them again? I’ll talk to them this time.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blue circle reappear at the other end of the tunnel.
“On second thought,” I said, “why don’t you get back in the car and shut the door again? Call the police and tell them to send an ambulance up here. And don’t tell them your name this time. Give them mine instead. You understand?”
The Fedora Fandango: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 5) Page 20
