As suddenly as it began, the din of the automatic weapon stopped, the only sound the blare of the security system. Decker didn’t dare shoot at where the muzzle flashes had been. The gunman would likely have shifted position and be waiting to aim at the flash from Decker’s pistol if he returned fire.
Immediately Decker became aware of movement in the closet. Beth’s naked figure darted from a shadowy corner. She knew the house. She knew about the door to the laundry room. As she twisted the knob and pushed at the door, the submachine gun roared, its bullets chasing her. Decker thought he heard her moan. There was so much noise, he couldn’t tell, but as she vanished into the darkness of the laundry room, she clutched her right shoulder. Decker’s urge was to rush to her, but he didn’t dare give in to that suicidal impulse. The gunman was counting on him to lose control, to show himself. Instead, Decker pressed himself closer to the small dresser, ready with his pistol, hoping that the gunman himself would lose patience.
Please, Decker thought. Dear God, please. Don’t let Beth be hurt.
He strained to watch the entrance to the bedroom. He wished that he could hear if the gunman was moving around out there, but his ears rang even more painfully. That could work the other way around, he realized. Since his hearing was compromised, whoever was trying to kill him probably wouldn’t be hearing well, either. There might be a way to turn their mutual affliction to his advantage. Next to the dresser that shielded him was a waist-high metal stepladder that he used for reaching items on the top shelf. It was about the width of a man’s shoulders. Grabbing a shirt that he had left on the dresser, Decker draped it over the low stepladder. In the darkness, the silhouette looked like someone crouching. He pushed the stepladder ahead of him, praying that the gunman’s hearing was indeed compromised, that the wail of the security system would keep him from hearing the scraping sounds the stepladder made on the floor. With force, he shoved the stepladder from the closet, sending it skittering upright across the bedroom, toward where he had last seen the gunman.
An explosion of gunfire tore the shirt apart, knocking the ladder over. Simultaneously Decker fired several times at the muzzle flashes in the hallway. The flashes jerked toward the tile floor, illuminating a man who was bent over in pain, his submachine gun blasting holes in the tile floor. As the man fell, the roaring flashes stopped.
Afraid that his own flashes would have made him a target, Decker rolled. He came to a crouch on the opposite side of the closet’s entrance, fired again toward the man he had just hit, then toward each of the men he had previously shot, and quickly retreated into the darkness of the laundry room.
Beth. He had to find Beth. He had to make sure Beth wasn’t injured. He had to keep her from running again and revealing herself until he knew for certain there was no one else in the house. In the laundry room, the sweet smell of detergent emphasized the bitterness of cordite. Sensing movement between the hot water tank and the water softener, he inched toward it and found Beth, only to be startled by a fiery blast from a shotgun as the closed door to the laundry room blew inward, stunning him with its concussion. He and Beth dropped to the floor.
His night vision already impaired by the close flash from the shotgun, Decker was further blinded by a second flash, another shotgun blast. The bulky shadow of a man charged inside, firing a third time as Decker aimed high, shooting upward from where he lay on his stomach.
Hot liquid streamed over Decker. Blood? But the liquid wasn’t just hot; it was almost scalding. And it didn’t just stream; it cascaded. The water tank must have been hit, Decker thought in desperation, straining to ignore his pain from the high temperature of the liquid sloshing over him while he concentrated on the darkness across from him, where seconds earlier muzzle flashes had revealed the man with the shotgun. He felt Beth’s panicked breathing next to him. He smelled blood, its coppery odor unmistakable. A strong odor. But not just from the direction of the man with the shotgun. It also seemed to come from next to him. The terrible thought kept insisting: Had Beth been hit?
As his night vision improved after the assault of the muzzle flashes, he detected the murky outline of a body on the floor at the entrance to the laundry room. Beth trembled beside him. Feeling the spasms of her terror, Decker calculated how many times he had fired and struggled against a terror of his own when he realized that he had only one round left.
Drenched by the painfully hot water, he pressed a finger to Beth’s lips, silently urging her to be quiet. Then he squirmed across the laundry room’s wet floor toward the entrance. Moonlight through the hallway’s skylight helped him to see the shotgun that had fallen beside the corpse.
Or at least Decker hoped it was a corpse. Prepared to fire his last bullet, he checked for a pulse. Finding none, he relaxed only slightly as he searched beneath the corpse’s windbreaker, his left hand touching a revolver. Immediately he shoved the shotgun into the laundry room, returned to Beth in the darkness, felt for and raised the trapdoor to the crawl space that led under the house, and guided Beth toward it. Most homes in Santa Fe were built on concrete slabs and didn’t have basements; a few, like Decker’s, had a four-foot-high service tunnel under the floor.
Rigid, Beth resisted descending the wooden stairs. An odor of dust rose from the gloom. Then she seemed to accept the crawl space as a sanctuary, trembling, hurriedly descending, hot water pouring down with her. Decker squeezed her right arm in what he hoped she accepted as a gesture of reassurance, then closed the hatch.
The blare from the security system continued to unnerve him as he crept toward the darkness of the far corner, positioning himself beside the furnace. From there, he had a line of fire toward each entrance to the laundry room. He had the gunman’s revolver in his left hand, his own pistol in his right, and, as a last resort, the gunman’s shotgun, which he had pulled next to him, hoping that the gunman had not used all its ammunition.
But something else unnerved him, giving him a terrible sense of urgency. He knew that patience was the key to survival. If he tried to investigate the house, he might show himself to anyone who was hiding out there. The prudent thing to do was to stay in place and let someone else show himself. But Decker couldn’t restrain his need to hurry things. He imagined Beth’s growing sense of claustrophobia as she hunkered naked in the musty darkness of the crawl space. He imagined her increasing pain. When he had touched her right arm to try to give her reassurance, his fingers had come away smeared with a liquid that was thicker than water. The liquid was warm and smelled of blood. Beth had been hit.
I need to get her to a doctor, Decker thought. I can’t wait any longer. He crept from behind the furnace, approached the entrance to the hallway, prepared to rush out, to aim one way and then the other; instead, he froze as a flashlight beam settled on the corpse before him.
He pressed himself against the inside wall. Sweat mixed with the water that slicked him as he concentrated on that exit from the laundry room, then glanced nervously across to the door that led into the closet. Why would they use a flashlight? It didn’t make sense to reveal themselves. The flashlight must be a trick, he thought, an attempt to distract me while someone comes from the opposite direction, from the darkness of the closet.
Surprising him, the flashlight moved away, heading back toward the front door. That didn’t make sense, either. Unless ... Did he dare trust what he was thinking? A neighbor might have decided that the muffled staccato blasts he was hearing definitely didn’t come from firecrackers. The neighbor might have called 911. The flashlight might belong to a policeman. That was how a lone policeman would behave—as soon as he saw the body, not knowing what he was involved in, possibly a gunfight, he would retreat and radio for help.
Decker’s already sickeningly rapid heartbeat pounded even faster. Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have dared to take the risk of revealing his position. But Beth had been shot. God alone knew how serious the wound was. If he hesitated any longer, she might bleed to death in the crawl space. He had to do something.<
br />
“Wait!” Decker shouted. “I’m in the laundry room! I need help!”
The flashlight beam stopped going away, glared back along the hallway, and focused on the entrance to the laundry room. Decker immediately realized the further risk he had taken. His ears were ringing so painfully that he couldn’t tell if anyone shouted back to him. If he didn’t answer or if what he shouted didn’t logically connect with what the policeman shouted (assuming this in fact was a policeman), he would make the policeman suspicious.
“I live here!” Decker shouted. “Some men broke in! I don’t know who you are! I’m afraid to come out!”
The flashlight beam shifted position, as if whoever held it was finding cover in a doorway.
“I can’t hear you! There was shooting! My eardrums are messed up!” Decker shouted. “If you’re a policeman, slide your badge down the hall so I can see it from this doorway!” Decker waited, glancing nervously from the doorway to the opposite door that led into the closet, apprehensive that he was leaving himself open to an attack. He had to take the chance. Beth, he kept thinking. I have to help Beth.
“Please!” Decker shouted. “If you’re a policeman, slide your badge down!”
Because he couldn’t hear it skittering, he was surprised by the sudden appearance of the badge on the brick floor of the corridor. The badge was stopped by the body of the gunman.
“Okay!” Decker’s throat was sore. He swallowed with difficulty. “I’m sure you’re trying to figure out what happened! You’re as nervous as I am! When I come out, I’ll have my hands up! I’ll show them first!”
He set the handguns onto a laundry counter to his right, where he could scramble back and grab them if he had misjudged the situation. “I’m coming out now! Slowly! I’ll show my hands first!” The moment he stepped free of the doorway, his hands high over his head, the flashlight beam shifted swiftly toward his eyes, nearly blinding him, making him feel more helpless.
It seemed as if time was suspended. The flashlight beam kept glaring at him. The policeman, if that was who this was (and despite the badge on the floor, Decker was suddenly having powerful doubts), didn’t move, just kept studying him.
Or was it a gunman aiming at him?
Decker’s eyes felt stabbed by the flashlight beam fixed on them, and he wanted to lower a hand to shield his vision, but he didn’t dare move, didn’t dare unnerve whoever was studying him. The flashlight beam dropped down to his nakedness, then returned to his eyes.
At once time began again.
The flashlight beam moved, approaching. Decker’s mouth was terribly dry, his vision so impaired that he couldn’t see the looming dark figure, couldn’t see how the man was dressed, couldn’t identify him.
Then the flashlight and the figure were close, but Decker still couldn’t tell who confronted him. His raised hands felt numb. He had the sense that the figure was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear.
Unexpectedly the figure leaned close, and Decker was able to make out dimly what the figure shouted.
“You can't hear?”
The peripheral glow of the flashlight showed that the figure, a stocky Hispanic man, wore a uniform.
“I’m almost deaf!” The din of the alarm and the ringing in his ears were excruciating.
“... are you?”
“What?” Decker’s voice seemed to come from far outside himself.
“Who are you?”
“Stephen Decker! I own this house! Can I put my hands down?”
“Yes. Where are your clothes?”
“I was sleeping when they broke in! I don’t have time to explain! My friend’s in the crawl space!”
“What?” The policeman’s tone expressed less confusion than astonishment.
“The crawl space! I have to get her out of there!” Decker swung toward the laundry room, the flashlight beam swinging with him. His hands trembled as he grabbed the metal ring recessed into the trapdoor. He pulled the hatch fiercely upward and groped down the wooden steps into the darkness, smelling earth and dampness and the disconcerting odor of blood.
“Beth!”
He couldn’t see her.
“Beth!”
From above him, the flashlight beam filled the pit, and he saw Beth huddled there, trembling, in a corner. He rushed to her, almost out of the flashlight’s range but not so far that he didn’t notice how pale her face was. Her right shoulder and breast were smeared with blood.
“Beth!”
He knelt, holding her, ignoring the dirt and cobwebs that clung to him. He felt her sobbing.
“It’s all right. You’re safe.”
If she responded, he didn’t know. He couldn’t hear, and he was too busy guiding her toward the steps from the crawl space and up toward the flashlight, the policeman helping her up, startled by her nakedness. Decker covered her with a dirty shirt from a hamper in the laundry room. She stumbled weakly, and he had to hold her up as they made their way along the corridor toward the front door.
Decker had the sense that the policeman was shouting to him, but he still couldn’t hear. “The alarm pad’s near the front door! Let me turn it off!”
He reached the pad on the wall at the exit from the corridor and briefly wondered why it was illuminated when the electricity was off, then remembered that the alarm system had a battery that supplied backup power. He pressed numbers and felt his shoulders sag in relief when the alarm stopped.
“Thank God,” he murmured, having to contend now only with the ringing in his ears. He was still holding Beth up. In dismay, he felt her vomit. “She needs an ambulance.”
“Where’s a phone?” the policeman shouted.
“They aren’t working! The power’s off! The phones are down!” Decker’s ears felt less tortured. He was hearing slightly better.
“What happened here?”
Dismayingly, Beth slumped.
Decker held her, lowering her to the brick floor in the vestibule. He felt a cool breeze from the open front door. “Get help! I’ll stay with her!”
“I’ll use the radio in my patrol car!” The policeman rushed from the house.
Glancing in that direction, Decker saw two stationary headlights gleaming beyond the courtyard gate. The policeman disappeared behind them. Then all Decker paid attention to was Beth.
He knelt beside her, stroking her forehead. “Hang on. You’ll be all right. We’re getting an ambulance.”
The next thing he knew, the policeman had returned and was stooping beside him, saying something that Decker couldn’t hear.
“The ambulance will come in no time,” Decker told Beth. Her forehead felt clammy, chilled. “You’re going to be fine.” I need to cover her, Decker was thinking. I need to get her warm. He yanked open a closet behind him, grabbed an overcoat, and spread it over her.
The policeman leaned closer to him, speaking louder. Now Decker could hear. “The front door was open when I arrived! What happened? You said someone broke in?”
“Yes.” Decker kept stroking Beth’s hair, wishing the policeman would leave him alone. “They must have broken in the front as well as the back.”
“They?”
“The man in the hallway. Others.”
“Others?”
“In my bedroom.”
“What?”
“Three. Maybe four. I shot them all.”
“Jesus,” the policeman said.
FIVE
1
A chaos of crisscrossing headlights gleamed in the spacious pebbled driveway outside Decker’s house. Engines rumbled. Radios crackled. The eerily illuminated silhouettes of vehicles seemed everywhere, patrol cars, vans, a huge utility truck from Public Service of New Mexico, an ambulance speeding away.
Naked beneath an overcoat that didn’t cover his bare knees, Decker leaned, shivering, against the stucco wall next to the open courtyard gate, staring frantically toward the receding lights of the ambulance speeding into the night. He ignored the policemen searching the area around the hous
e, their flashlights wavering, while a forensics crew carried their equipment past him.
“I’m sorry,” one of the policemen said, the stocky Hispanic who had been the first to arrive and who had eventually introduced himself as Officer Sanchez. “I know how much you want to go with your friend to the hospital, but we need you here to answer more questions.”
Decker didn’t reply, just kept staring toward the lights of the ambulance, which kept getting smaller in the darkness.
“The ambulance attendants said they thought she’d be okay,” Sanchez continued. “The bullet went through her right arm. It didn’t seem to hit bone. They’ve stopped the bleeding.”
“Shock,” Decker said. “My friend’s in shock.”
The policeman looked uncomfortable, not sure what to say. “That’s right. Shock.”
“And shock can kill.”
The ambulance lights disappeared. As Decker turned, he noticed confused movement between the headlights of a van and the hulking Public Service of New Mexico utility truck. He tensed, seeing two harried civilians caught between policemen, the indistinct group coming swiftly in his direction. Had the police captured someone associated with the attack? Angry, Decker stepped closer to the open gate, ignoring Sanchez, focusing his attention on the figures being brought toward him.
A man and a woman, Decker saw as the nearest headlights starkly revealed their faces, and immediately his anger lessened.
The two policemen flanking them had a look of determination as they reached the gate. “We found them on the road. They claim they’re neighbors.”
“Yes. They live across the street.” The harsh ringing persisted in Decker’s ears, although not as severely. “These people are Mr. and Mrs. Hanson.”
“We heard shots,” Hanson, a short, bearded man, said.
“And your alarm,” Hanson’s gray-haired wife said. She and her husband wore rumpled casual clothes and looked as if they had dressed quickly. “At first, we thought we had to be wrong. There couldn’t be shots at your house. We couldn’t believe it.”
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