Shiver

by Michael Prescott

  Now.

  He whipped his hands out from behind his back. The handcuff on his right wrist was still locked, the chain and the left cuff swinging with it. The deputy beside him barely had time to pivot in his seat before Rood smashed the empty handcuff into his face. The man’s nose burst like a snail. Rood grabbed at the gun in his holster, but the deputy jerked away, shouting to his partners, his own hand on the gun butt. The two men up front were turning, drawing their revolvers.

  Rood wrapped his arms around the deputy and twisted the man roughly in front of his own body to shield himself. For a second time he swatted the cop hard in the face with the steel manacle. The deputy groaned and released his grip on the gun. Rood jerked it free.

  The driver squeezed off a round, firing through the prisoner screen. The bullet impacted on the back of the seat inches from Rood’s head. Rood lurched sideways, cocked the deputy’s revolver, and jammed the muzzle up against the wire screen. He fired four times. The windshield was sprayed with red.

  The deputy sharing the backseat with him moaned softly as Rood put the gun to his head and squeezed the trigger.

  Then it was done. All three of them were dead.

  Panting hard. Rood grabbed for a door handle, found none. The rear doors of the car could be opened only from the outside. He smashed the side window with the butt of the revolver, then reached through and fumbled the door open.

  Swiftly he climbed out of the cruiser. The street was still empty. Someone might be watching from a window, but even so, it would take the cops awhile to piece together what had happened. Quite possibly nobody in the neighborhood had heard anything more than the repeated backfiring of a balky car; the cruiser’s rolled-up windows would have muffled the gunshots.

  Rood slipped behind the wheel, shoving the driver onto the lap of the dead man in the passenger seat. He laid his foot on the gas pedal, and the cruiser rocketed forward.

  He heard himself laughing as he wiped blood off the windshield with the sleeve of his shirt.

  It occurred to him that he could do whatever he liked now. He could switch cars and drive to the Mexican border. Once on the other side, he could create a new identity for himself and start a new life. In time he could resume killing. There were many attractive young women in Mexico.

  On the other hand, if he went through with the plan he had in mind, there would be no possibility of escape. He was certain to die.

  But the bitch would die first.

  Which mattered more to him? Ending her life—or preserving his own?

  He considered the question carefully, and then, with full understanding of the consequences, he made his choice.

  Parking at a curb, Rood unlocked the other handcuff, then ran to a pay phone, feeling terribly conspicuous in his blue overalls and prison grays. He leafed hurriedly through the directory hanging by the wire cord from the sheet-metal shelf. It took him less than thirty seconds to find the listing in the White Pages.

  He smiled as he remembered driving the bitch down Santa Monica Boulevard in the stolen Dodge he’d passed off as an unmarked police car. As the towers of Century City glided by, she remarked, “I work there.” He asked what sort of work she did. “I write informational booklets for an actuarial firm,” she answered, then added helpfully, “Iver and Barnes.”

  He studied the company’s address and memorized it.

  A block away he pulled into an alley. He dumped the deputies’ bodies on the pavement, then opened the trunk of the car. Inside, among the blankets and spare coats, he found a shotgun.

  He hefted the gun. It was a Remington 870, a 12-gauge pump-action job fitted with a shoulder sling and pistol grip instead of a full buttstock. The magazine held five shells. Rood searched the interior of the trunk till he found two boxes of additional shells, twenty-five in each. The shells, he was pleased to see, were three-inch Magnums loaded with 00 buckshot. Powerful artillery, perfect for hunting deer or other large game.

  He shrugged on a long raincoat from the trunk, stuffed the boxes of ammo in the deep pockets, and carried the shotgun with him as he slid back into the driver’s seat. He sped off, heading toward Century City and the offices of Iver & Barnes.

  Along the way he stopped at an art store in Hollywood. He pumped the Remington’s action and released a spray of buckshot, laughing as the clerk and his customers dived to the floor. They gave him no trouble as he searched the shop and took a box of modeling clay.

  He returned to the car and drove west, gripping the wheel with one hand, while with the other he wrested a hunk of clay from the package and shaped it with his quick, dexterous fingers. There was no time to put in detail or to get the proportions exactly right. Still, the object in his hand took form. Four stumps for legs, twin bulges for wings, a tapering projection for a head.

  The clay was moist and soft; air would not harden it for hours, long after the bitch was dead. That was all right. The figure would stiffen as she did, the clay becoming rigid while rigor mortis crept through her body on a tray in the morgue.

  Grinning, Rood placed the statue in his pocket. A last gift for his love.

  At ten-forty-five by the cruiser’s dashboard clock, he turned onto the Avenue of the Stars and parked in a red zone directly outside the office building.

  He took a deep breath and smiled. He knew he would die soon, but he was unafraid. He would play his last and greatest game, win against all odds, then perish in a firestorm of glory.

  “And so,” he whispered, “let the game begin.”

  Next he was running up the concrete staircase, taking the steps two at a time, then streaking across the wide concourse to the lobby doors. He threw open the doors and entered shooting. Two men in business suits went down in a duet of moans. The security guard at the desk danced. In the bank adjacent to the lobby somebody was screaming.

  Rood scanned the lighted directory. The offices of Iver & Barnes were on the eighth floor. He leaned his fist on the elevator call button till he heard the chime. The double doors parted, and a small crowd of people stood there staring at him with sheep’s eyes. He waved the shotgun at them, and they scattered, bleating in terror.

  Boarding the elevator, he pressed the button marked 8. As he ascended, he was singing softly to himself. The song was “Desperado.”

  He had power. He was in control.

  On the eighth floor the doors slid apart. He strode down the gray-carpeted corridor under tubes of fluorescent light, loading more shells into the magazine to replace those he’d expended in the lobby. The reception area of Iver & Barnes Consultants, Inc., was framed behind a wall of glass. Rood pushed open the door and pointed the shotgun directly at the woman behind the curved mahogany desk.

  “Wendy Alden,” he said quietly. “She in today?”

  The woman’s eyes were wide and unblinking. A voice buzzed from the receiver of the telephone clutched forgotten in her hand. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Communications.”

  “Where is that?”

  She pointed feebly at a rear doorway. “End of the hall. On the left.”

  “Thank you very much,” Rood said politely as he pulled the trigger once.

  He left the reception area and entered the suite of offices, marching swiftly down the hall.

  * * *

  Wendy was at her desk working on a booklet for a chain of convenience stores when her telephone rang.

  “Communications.”

  “Wendy”—the voice was Delgado’s—“there may be a problem.”

  Cold. She was cold.

  “Problem?” she echoed blankly.

  “I’m at the courthouse. Rood hasn’t shown up for the hearing. The jail can’t establish contact with the deputies assigned to him. It’s possible he got away somehow.”

  The chair under her was suddenly unsteady. She leaned her free hand on the desk to keep from falling.

  “Wendy? Do you hear me?”

  From down the hall, a sharp crack.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she
whispered.

  Another echoing report. Another.

  Then ... screams.

  “He’s here,” she breathed into the receiver. “He’s here, oh, my God, he’s here!”

  * * *

  Rood strode briskly down the corridor, firing into rooms at random. He hosed an empty office and blew out the ceiling-to-floor windows in a tinkling rain of glass. In the office next door he found an executive in a three-piece suit screaming hysterically into the telephone; a cloud of buckshot cut him in half.

  His glasses, secured by only one stem, kept threatening to ski off his nose. Impatiently he knocked them back with a swipe of his knuckles. He fished more shells out of his pocket and thumbed them into the magazine, his movements precise, controlled, efficient. He felt he could do anything. He was flying.

  From behind him came the report of a handgun.

  He spun, sinking to a half-crouch. At the other end of the hall, near the doorway to the reception area, a security guard stood with legs splayed in the classic firing stance, a .38 revolver in both hands.

  The guard fired again, the bullet kicking up a spray of splinters from the doorframe near Rood’s head. Coolly Rood stared down the Remington’s twenty-inch barrel, fixing the guard in the front and rear beads. One shot, and the guard’s shirt bloomed red. An abdominal wound, messy but not fatal. Before Rood could fire again, the guard took cover in an office, shooting wildly, bullets flying in all directions. Finally his revolver clicked, empty.

  Rood sprinted for the office while the guard, kneeling as if in prayer, his pants soaked scarlet, frantically swung open the cylinder and dumped the empty cartridge cases, then reached into the ammo pouch of his gun belt. He was trying to reload with shaking hands when Rood finished him with a shot to the head.

  Easy.

  Turning from the office doorway where the guard lay motionless in a burgundy pool. Rood jogged down the hall toward the door marked COMMUNICATIONS.

  * * *

  Delgado’s voice was still buzzing on the line, but Wendy barely heard him. She dropped the phone and left her cubicle at a run.

  The other writers were looking around in confusion. She had to get them out of the office. The only exit that didn’t lead to the hall was the door to the stairwell.

  “Everybody!” Her scream cut through the babble of voices. “The stairs. Take the stairs!”

  She hustled them toward the red Exit sign. The gunshots were closer now.

  “What’s going on out there?” Monica was asking. Her black bangs flapped wildly. “Why are they screaming?”

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” Kirsten shouted. “The Gryphon?”

  Wendy nodded once and heard Monica moan.

  They reached the stairwell and streamed through the doorway as Wendy hurried them along. Kirsten was last in line. She looked at Wendy, standing outside the door, making no move to follow.

  “Come on!” Kirsten shouted.

  Wendy shook her head. “It’s me he’s after. If I go with you, I’ll get you all killed. And ...” Another gunshot racketed down the hall. “And enough people have died for me already.”

  “Wendy—”

  “Go!”

  Kirsten went. The door banged shut behind her.

  Then Wendy was alone in the room under the grid of fluorescent panels, with the deep, guttural coughs of gunfire closing in on her like the throaty growls of a hungry animal.

  She ran toward the cubicles, thinking vaguely that she could hide in that maze of compartments, knowing her plan was hopeless, and then Franklin Rood rushed in through the open door, and his gaze swept the room and came to rest on her.

  For a moment they both stood paralyzed, facing each other across a distance of thirty feet. Then Rood made a sound that might have been laughter.

  “Got something for you, Wendy! Got a present for you!”

  The shotgun bucked in his hands. She dived to the carpet, and the spray of shot whipped past her, cutting the windows at her back into a litter of jigsaw pieces. She snap-rolled behind the row of cubicles. Half-stumbling, half-crawling, she tried to outpace the hail of buckshot punching holes in the compartments’ thin particleboard walls. The hinged units swayed and fell like card houses. Computers exploded in showers of pinwheeling sparks.

  The gunfire grew louder, nearer. Rood was circling around to the rear of the cubicles, chasing her down. At any second he would turn the corner and have her in his sights.

  She reached a narrow aisle between two rows of partitions and cut through it to the front of the room. The doorway to the hall was unguarded for the moment. She ran for it, gasping.

  Then she was racing down the corridor toward the reception area a million miles away. She wouldn’t make it. Couldn’t. Once Rood realized she’d eluded him, he would be after her again. He needed only one clear shot.

  A blurred shape came up fast and nearly tripped her. She looked down and saw the body of a security guard sprawled in an office doorway. A revolver lay beside him, its cylinder open, a scatter of .38 cartridges near his outstretched fingers.

  She stooped, grabbed the revolver and a handful of cartridges, and then gunfire boomed behind her.

  She vaulted the guard’s body and landed on one knee inside the office. She twisted to her feet and looked around. The office was small and empty save for a dead man in a business suit slumped over his desk, facedown on a blotter soaking up Rorschach patterns of blood. She recognized him—he was named Brady, and he’d had something to do with client relations—but she had no time to think about that now.

  There was no way out other than the door to the hall. She would have to make her stand here. At least she had a gun, but, oh, God, such a little gun, no match for that cannon of Rood’s. She looked at the cartridges in her hand. Three. That was all she’d had time to snatch. She tamped the rounds into the chambers, leaving three of the charge holes empty, and snapped the cylinder shut.

  To have any hope of fighting back, she would have to ambush Rood somehow. She looked around and saw nowhere to hide except the obvious places. Inside the closet. Behind the desk. She looked up at the fluorescent lights, the checkerboard of acoustic ceiling panels.

  Then she knew what she had to do.

  Jamming the revolver into the waistband of her skirt, she climbed onto the desk.

  * * *

  Rood stopped a few yards from the office doorway. The bitch had a gun; he’d seen her grab it. He had to be cautious, very cautious. It would hardly be fair if he lost the game now.

  He fed more shells into the magazine, worked the slide handle once, then crept toward the open door. Hugged the doorframe. Listened. Heard nothing, nothing anywhere, except some anonymous victim’s distant, dying moans.

  With a high, warbling yell he pivoted into the doorway, straddling the dead guard, and opened fire.

  The office window vanished in a haze of sparkling dust. A geyser of glass and mineral water erupted from what had been a water cooler. Rood blasted the desk, hoping the bitch was concealed behind it. The dead man was thrown upright as if shocked awake. His swivel chair spun gaily, and his necktie flapped like a dog’s lolling tongue.

  Rood fired till the gun was empty, then stepped back and reloaded. Warily he entered the office, turning in a full circle. He saw a closet door and punched a gaping hole in it with another burst of buckshot. Then he kicked in the door and peered inside. The bitch wasn’t there.

  Behind the desk, then. That was where she’d hidden.

  He circled the desk, booting the swivel chair out of his way.

  She wasn’t there either.

  But it didn’t make sense. He’d seen her take cover in this room, and he hadn’t seen her leave. She had to be here someplace, dammit, simply had to be.

  * * *

  It had taken Wendy only a few seconds to push one of the large two-by-three ceiling panels out of its frame, then grab hold of the wooden beam behind it and hoist herself off the desk. There was a bad moment when she was sure she couldn’t do it, couldn’t
pull her body all the way up. Then a fresh jolt of adrenaline recharged her muscles. Grunting with strain, she hauled herself onto the beam and lay flat on her stomach. She slid the panel back into place, leaving a narrow aperture to see through.

  Seconds later Rood was demolishing the room. Glass and noise everywhere. She tugged the gun free of her waistband and held it in two shaking hands, the hammer cocked, muzzle pointing through the slot. She wanted to fire, but she didn’t trust her aim; she had to wait till he was closer.

  Finally he seemed satisfied that he’d killed her. He looked first in the closet, then behind the desk. He shook his head slowly.

  As she watched, he moved to the front of the desk, still glancing around, his head tilted quizzically.

  He was almost directly beneath her. She would never have a better opportunity.

  Do it, she ordered.

  She took a breath, gritted her teeth, and squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  The gun hadn’t fired.

  An empty chamber—oh, Jesus—she’d hit one of the empty chambers.

  * * *

  Rood heard the faint metallic click and whirled. He stared up at the gap between two of the ceiling panels and saw the gun barrel poking out, the suggestion of a pale face behind it.

  She was above him, the bitch, the fucking bitch.

  He raised the shotgun.

  * * *

  Wendy saw the shotgun come up fast. She pumped the trigger a second time.

  Click.

  Come on, come on.

  She had time for one more try.

  Her index finger flexed once.

  The shock of recoil nearly threw her off the beam. The gunshot rang in her ears like an explosion. Rood staggered, blood blossoming on his chest.

  She fired again. Another bullet slammed into Rood’s chest and sent him reeling back. He collapsed on the floor, the shotgun flying from his grasp to boomerang into a corner, and then he just lay there, his glasses canted at a ridiculous angle, groaning and rolling his head from side to side like a child in the throes of a nightmare.

  His raincoat fell open. Tucked in an inside pocket was a small clay gryphon.

  * * *

  Rood lay on his back, breathing hard. He tried to rise, couldn’t. The bitch had won this game, God damn her, and now there was nothing in his private universe but pain, and he found he didn’t like pain very much when it was his own.