Lucas and Daniel both winced. “Is he going to lose . . . ?”
“We’re evaluating that. I don’t know. He’d still be functional, even with one, but there’s some plumbing in there . . . . Do you know if he has kids?”
“Yeah, three or four,” said Daniel.
“Good,” said the surgeon. She looked tired as she dumped her mask and gloves in the discard bin. “I better go talk to the family.”
She was headed toward the family waiting area when the automatic doors swung open. The mayor and one of his aides came through, followed by the FBI’s agent in charge.
“We gotta do something for the TV,” the mayor snapped.
“I think we need more investigation . . .” the AIC said urgently.
“Bullshit, we got Davenport and a half-dozen cops saw the girl and we’ve got her statement and his body. There’s no question . . . .”
“There’s always a question,” said the AIC.
“There’s a videotape,” said Daniel.
“Aw, Jesus,” said the AIC. He turned to a hospital wall and leaned his head against it.
“We could deal,” the mayor said to Daniel. “He was one of the administration’s point men on crime. I don’t know what we could get, but it’d be a lot. More urban renewal; new sewage treatment; our own air force; you name it.”
Daniel shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?” the AIC asked heatedly. “Why the fuck not? We stood down in that surveillance post after the fuckup with Bill Hood and we cut a deal. Remember what you said? You said, ‘You always deal. Always.’ ”
“There’s a corollary to that rule,” Daniel said.
“What’s that?”
“You always deal, except sometimes,” Daniel said. He looked at the mayor. “This is one of those times.”
The mayor nodded. “First, it just wouldn’t be right.”
“And second, we’d get caught,” said Daniel. “You want to tell the TV, or you want me to?”
“You do it; I’m going to call somebody in the White House,” the mayor said. “It’s going to be bad, but there are levels of badness. Maybe I can cut a deal to make it less bad . . . .”
The AIC argued that the mayor should talk to the president before any announcement; the aide suggested that they had nothing to lose. Daniel pointed out that the discussion they were having could already bring big political trouble: they were talking about a conspiracy to cover up a crime. The politicians began backing away. The AIC still wanted to talk. As tempers got hotter, the night seemed to close in on Lucas, until he felt he might suffocate.
“I’m going,” he told Daniel. “You don’t need me and I need to sit down somewhere.”
“All right,” Daniel nodded. “But if you can’t help thinking about it, think about Shadow Love.”
Sloan was coming in as Lucas left.
“You okay?” Sloan asked.
“Yeah,” Lucas said wearily. “Considering.”
“How’s Wilson?”
“Dead. They’re selling off his heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and probably his dick . . . .”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Sloan blurted, appalled.
“Belloo’s gonna make it. Might lose one of his balls.”
“Jesus . . .” Sloan ran a hand through his hair. “You stop to see Lily?”
“No . . .”
“Look, man . . .” Sloan started.
He hesitated, and Lucas said, “What?”
“Do you feel bad about her now? With her husband here and all?”
Lucas thought about it for a second before he shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Good,” said Sloan. “ ’Cause you shouldn’t.”
“Got my goddamn car shot up,” Lucas said. “My fuckin’ insurance agent is gonna jump out a window when he hears about it.”
“I got no sympathy for you,” Sloan said. “You’re the luckiest motherfucker on the face of the earth. Cothron said you walked right into the Crows’ guns, like Jesus walking across the water, and never anything happened.”
“I can’t remember too well,” Lucas said. “It’s just all fucked up in my head.”
“Yeah. Well, take it easy.”
“Sure.” Lucas nodded and limped away down the hall.
The Porsche had three bullet holes in it, each in a separate piece of sheet metal. Lucas shook his head and climbed in.
The night was not quite cold. He ran down through the Loop, in sync with traffic lights, and made it out to the interstate without stopping. He was flying on automatic: east across the river, off at the Cretin Avenue exit, south down Cretin, right to Mississippi River Boulevard, south to home.
Jennifer was waiting.
Her car was in the driveway, a light was on in a window of the house. He pulled into the drive and jabbed the transmitter for the garage door opener. As he waited for the door to open, she came to the window and looked out. She had the baby on her arm.
“I freaked out,” she said simply.
“I’m all right,” he said. He was limping from the lost heel.
“How about the other guys?”
“One dead. One pretty busted up. The Crows are dead.”
“So it’s over.”
“Not quite. Shadow Love got away.”
They were staring at each other across the narrow space of the kitchen, Jennifer unconsciously bouncing the baby on her arm.
“We’ve got to talk. I can’t just walk away from you. I thought I could, but I can’t,” she said.
“Man, Jen, I’m fuckin’ crazy right now. I don’t know what’s going on . . . .” He looked around wildly, the peaceful neighborhood hovering around them like a joke. “Come on,” he said. “Come on and talk . . . .”
Shadow Love had heard about the shootout on his radio, and now he waited in a thicket just over the lip of the slope that went down to the river. He’d planned to take Davenport when he got out of the car, but he hadn’t counted on the automatic garage door opener. The door rolled up with Davenport still in the car, waiting. Shadow Love crouched, considered a dash across the street, but Davenport’s house was set too far back from the road. He’d never make it.
When the door went down, Shadow Love walked fifty feet down the street, into the shadow of a spreading oak, and hurried across the street, through a corner of another yard and into the dark space beside Davenport’s garage. Front doors were usually stout. Back doors, on garages, usually were not, since they didn’t lead directly into the house. Shadow Love slipped around the garage to the back door and tested the knob. Locked.
The door had two panes of inset glass. Shadow Love peeled off his jacket, wrapped a sleeve around the middle joints of his fingers and pressed on the glass, hard, harder, until it cracked. There was almost no noise, but he paused, counted to three, then put more pressure along the crack. Another crack radiated out from the pressure point, then another. Two small pieces of glass fell almost noiselessly into the garage. Shadow Love stopped and checked the night around him: nothing moving, no sense of anything. Still using the jacket as padding, he pushed his little finger through the hole and carefully pulled two of the larger shards of glass from the door. In another minute, he had a hole large enough to reach through. He turned the lock knob and eased the door open.
The garage was not quite pitch dark: some light filtered in from the neighbor’s house in back, enough that he could see large shapes, such as the car. With his left hand on the Porsche’s warm hood, he moved carefully toward the door that led into the house. His right hand was wrapped around the pistol grip of the M-15. Once he was lined up on it, he would blow the knob off the door, and he’d be inside in a matter of a second or two . . . .
He never saw the shovel hanging from a nail on the garage wall. His sleeve hooked the blade and the shovel came down like a thunderclap, hammering into a garbage can, rattling off the car and onto the floor.
“What?” said Jennifer, starting at the noise.
Lucas knew. “Shadow Lo
ve,” he whispered.
CHAPTER
29
“The basement,” Lucas snapped.
He grabbed Jennifer by the shoulder and threw her toward the stairs as he drew his gun. She wrapped her arms around Sarah and went down, taking three steps at a time and leaping the last four, staggering as she hit the bottom.
In the garage, Shadow Love, stunned by the thunderclap of the falling shovel, brought the M-15 to his hip and fired three shots at the door’s knob plate. One shot missed and blew through the door, into the kitchen cabinets and stove. The other two hit the knob plate, battering the door open. Half blinded by the flash from the weapon, his brain unconsciously registering the stink of the gunpowder, Shadow Love took two steps toward the door, then dropped to his face as three answering shots punched through the opening into the garage.
Lucas took the stairs a half-second behind Jennifer, but stopped three steps from the bottom. Jennifer was flattened against the wall, her arms wrapped around the baby, holding its head to her shoulder. Her face was distorted, as though she wanted to cry out but couldn’t: it was a face from a macabre fun-house mirror. Lucas would remember it for the rest of his life, a split-second tableau of total terror. As the first of Shadow Love’s shots smashed through the door, Sarah began to scream and Jennifer clutched her tighter, shrinking against the wall.
“Workroom,” Lucas shouted, flattening himself against the stairwell wall, his gun hand extended up the stairs. “Get under the workbench.”
Shadow Love’s next two shots blew open the door from the garage, the slugs ricocheting through the kitchen. The door was at an angle to the stairway. Lucas fired three shots through the opening, hoping to catch Shadow Love coming in. There was a clatter in the garage, then a whip-quick series of flashes with the crack of the rifle. Lucas slid to the bottom of the stairs as the vinyl flooring came apart at the top of the stairs, the slugs slamming into the slanting head-wall over the steps. Shooting from the garage, with the rifle, Shadow Love had the advantage: he could fire down with a good idea of where his shots were going, but Lucas couldn’t see to shoot up. Shadow Love knew that. The garbage can rattled and Lucas risked a quick step up and put two more shots through the wall where the can was. Shadow Love opened up again. This time, the shots were angled down into the stairwell. Though they were still overhead, Lucas was forced out of the stairwell and into the workroom, with the door left open.
Shadow Love controlled the stairs.
The garage stank of burnt gunpowder, auto exhaust and gasoline from the lawn mower. Shadow Love, panting, squatted by the step into the house and tried to figure the shots he’d taken. Eight or nine, total: better count it as nine. The gun was loaded with a thirty-shot banana clip, and he had one more clip in his jacket. He might need everything he had—they might not be enough—if Davenport barricaded himself in the basement.
The black spot was there, and he could feel the anger cooking in his heart. There was a very good chance that Davenport would kill him. The cop was on his home ground; he was well trained; and Shadow Love felt his luck had broken when he’d failed with the New York woman.
Still he had to try. The black spot grew, calling him in, and the anger rode into his veins like fire.
Jennifer was huddled under the workbench, wrapped protectively around Sarah, who was screaming beyond comfort.
“What are we doing?” she cried. “What are we doing?”
“The St. Paul cops should be coming in. We’ve only got to hold out a few minutes,” Lucas said. “He’ll have to make a move or get out. You stay put.”
Lucas scrambled crabwise across the basement to his gun safe and spun the combination dial. He missed the second number, cursed and started over.
Upstairs, Shadow Love was torn between attack and retreat. He wouldn’t stay free on the streets for long. He had no place to hide, his picture was everywhere. If he was careful, very careful, he might grab a car somewhere and make it out into the countryside. But with Clay’s killing, the hunt would be remorseless. He would never have another chance at Davenport. Never have another chance to avenge his fathers. On the other hand, the hunter cop was armed and waiting in a house he knew intimately. An attack straight down the stairs would be suicide.
He held his breath, listening. No sirens. With the cool nights of October, windows were closed and furnaces were running; the firefight would not be particularly audible. On the other hand, Mississippi River Boulevard was a favorite jogging route. He’d be lucky if a passerby hadn’t already heard the gunfire. Somehow, he had to pry Davenport out of the basement, and quickly . . . .
Squatting just outside the garage door, the M-15 pointed diagonally through the door at the stairwell, he noticed a telephone on the wall.
Shit. An extension in the basement?
Shadow Love crouched in a sprinter’s position, listened for a second, then sprang through the open door into the kitchen, rolling when he hit the floor, coming up with the gun pointed at the stairwell. Nothing. He was inside.
With the gun leveled at the stairway door, he took a step backward, picked up the phone with his free hand. Just a dial tone. Okay. He let the phone dangle off the hook and eased back to the doorway, silent in his sneakers.
He needed a way to blow them out. Chancing a look down the stairwell, he stepped forward, feeling the vinyl kitchen floor creak below his weight. The floor. The floor would never stop a slug from an M-15 . . . .
Moving in a gunman’s crouch, he crossed quickly in front of the open stairway door into the living room, listened again, then took a half-dozen strides farther into the house. A picture window looked out toward the street. Nobody. Shadow Love pointed the rifle at the floor and pulled the trigger a half-dozen times.
Lucas pulled open the safe door as Shadow Love opened fire. The barrage came as a shock. Splinters exploded through the basement and shrapnel from the .223 slugs filled the air like hundreds of tiny bees. Jennifer screamed once and rolled, one arm wrapped over her head, her body covering the crying baby.
“The baby,” she screamed. “The baby,” and she plucked at the baby’s back.
“Over here,” Lucas shouted as the firing stopped. Changing magazines? “Jen, Jen, over here . . .”
Jennifer was partially sheltered by the workbench and sat sobbing, plucking at the baby. Lucas crawled across the floor and pulled her out and she flailed at him, resisting, not understanding.
“Into the safe, into the safe . . .”
Lucas dragged her and the screaming Sarah to the turn-of-the-century safe, threw the guns out on the floor and unceremoniously shoved them both inside.
“The baby,” Jennifer screamed at him. She turned Sarah, and Lucas saw the splinters protruding from the baby’s back.
“Don’t touch them,” he shouted. He and Jennifer were inches from each other, shouting, and Sarah was beyond tears: she’d reached the stage where she could barely breathe, her eyes wide with terror.
“Hold the door open an inch. An inch. An inch. You understand? You’ll be okay,” Lucas shouted. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes . . .” Jennifer nodded, still wrapped around Sarah.
Lucas left them.
He owned twelve guns; he carried four away from the safe, along with three boxes of ammunition. He crawled into the space under the workbench where Jennifer had been. It would give him some protection from direct hits coming through the floor, and he could see the stairs. He first loaded the Browning Citori over and under; he used the twenty-gauge shotgun for hunting. His only shells were number-six shot, but that was fine. At a short distance, they would punch a convincing hole through a man’s head.
Next he loaded the two Gold Cup .45s that he’d used in competition, seven rounds per magazine, one round in each chamber, both weapons cocked and locked. Then the P7, loaded with nine-millimeter rounds, waiting. As he finished loading the P7, he began to wonder if Shadow Love had fled: the firing had been stopped for nearly a minute . . . .
Shadow Love
could hear the woman screaming, could hear Davenport’s voice, but not what he said. Damn walls, it was hard to tell where they were, but he thought to the right, and they sounded somehow distant, toward the far end of the basement. He watched the stairs for a few seconds, then took a fast dozen strides through the house, almost to the end, and once again began to pour gunfire through the floor. This time, though, he fired as he ran back to the basement door, blowing a trail of bullet holes through the carpet . . . .
In the basement, the metal fragments and splinters filled the air, plucking at Lucas’ back and sleeve. He was hit and it hurt, but it felt superficial. He rubbed at his back and left a trail of pain where the slivers stuck through his shirt. If he stayed in the basement, he could be blinded. Shadow Love’s last run had gone the whole length of the basement. Lucas got the Gold Cups ready. If he tried it again . . .
• • •
Shadow Love had been counting on the bullets to ricochet rather than fragment. He imagined the basement as a blizzard of wildly careening slugs. Pleased with the idea of making a trail the length of the house, he waited near the top of the stairs for a rush, waited, waited . . . Nothing. He refigured his ammunition supply. He’d fired at least twenty shots, he decided. He pulled the clip, slapped in the new one and checked the first. Six rounds left. Still plenty for a fight.
He waited another few seconds, then hurried again through the house, picked out a new pattern and raced back toward the stairwell, firing as he went. He was almost at the stairs when the rug suddenly popped up once, then again, not six feet away, and he realized that Davenport was shooting back through the floor, something big, something coming up through the carpet and into the ceiling, close, and Shadow Love dove into the garage . . . .
Lucas watched the firing pattern develop, tried to anticipate where Shadow Love would move and fired back with one of the .45s. He had little hope of hitting him, but he thought it might force Shadow Love to stop firing through the floor.
Shadow Prey Page 32
