But one had come in.
And now two were running through.
Dana kept her feet, and the grass – for all its surface treachery – muffled her steps, so that she was nearly upon the fleeing figure in jeans, brown jacket and cap, before her approach was audible.
The killer whirled and saw her.
Suddenly, from beyond the graveyard walls there came the rise and fall of the prison siren.
‘Oh, Christ,’ panted Neilson, stumbling over a gravestone and nearly going down. They had left the fallen Eberhardt surrounded by the stunned figures of his recent fellow-prisoners and the guards who had poured out of the prison.
‘Which way did they go?’ Stryker gasped, aware even as he spoke of the old-time Western connotations of his question. Was there nothing left anyone could say that didn’t mean something else? If Neilson said ‘Thataway’ he’d put him on report.
‘Over there,’ Neilson said. ‘Beyond that black thing.’
The black thing was an expensive Victorian-style marble mausoleum, endowed by a family long-since without progeny, and therefore sealed. On the other side of it was a small grove of trees and bushes, untended and wild, purposely left to serve as a screen to separate the graveyard from the industrial site beyond. In between the graveyard and the soup factory there ran a small stream that flowed into the Grantham River further downtown. It was the same tributary, in fact, that ran behind the hostel on French Street, five miles away.
For most of the year it was merely a muddy trickle, but now, in the spring, it was deeper, faster, and slightly cleaner. In fact, the rain before dawn had already begun to raise its level as it drained from the surrounding hills.
Dana saw the running figure ahead of her dodge between the trees and slip through a gap in the broken fence that edged the stream. Her own clothing was already torn in a dozen places, and she had fallen twice. Blood ran down from one knee, and her hair was in her eyes, but she kept going.
She would not be afraid, like Santosa.
She would not let herself be afraid, ever again.
She, too, slipped through the gap, and found herself on a sloping bank of almost perfectly smooth mud that ran down to a silvery snake of water below. The only marks in the mud were those of running feet. And she knew who they belonged to. Kicking off her treacherous shoes, she started to slither after, being careful to take note of the path of the stream, the possible directions which her quarry might take, the depth of the water, and other details, for her report later.
She would not be sloppy, like Yentall, or secretive, like Hawthorne.
Ahead of her, staggering through the fast-running water, was the brown figure, now muddy and dishevelled. Glancing back, Rivera’s mad eyes widened as they perceived Dana, still there, still coming.
Dana entered the water, which came to mid-thigh, and began to run as best she could, the water dragging at her, willing her to go down into its icy rush. Fortunately the bottom of the stream had been scoured of its winter rubbish by the increased flood from previous spring rains, but there were still obstacles hidden beneath the surface. One of them caught at Rivera, who went down in a splash and flurry of water. Dana gained ten feet before the killer was up again. Dana kept on.
She would not be forgiving, like Randolph.
Behind her, had she glanced back, she would have seen Stryker and Neilson standing by the broken fence, staring after her as she made her dogged way after the fleeing killer.
‘She’s not armed,’ Stryker said.
‘She’s crazy,’ Neilson said, and was suddenly afraid, terribly afraid that something would happen to Dana. He hadn’t known anything could hurt him so deeply, so terribly, as that thought. They started after her, slipping and sliding, their greater weight causing them to sink more deeply into the mud, to founder and stagger, as in a nightmare where every step weighs a thousand tons and there is not breath enough nor time enough to evade disaster.
Neilson, younger and fitter, soon pulled ahead. Stryker, off-balance with his injured arm, and weakened, came on doggedly behind him. At least they both had guns. But to draw them now, to try and run with them at the ready, was to risk losing their balance and having both their guns and themselves rendered useless by the mud.
So they moved on and waited for their chance.
All they had to do was to get close enough – and make sure Dana wasn’t in the line of fire.
The running figures ahead of them rounded a curve and were out of sight for a few minutes. When they themselves rounded the same curve, the riverlet stretched ahead of them, seemingly empty, the banks on either side sloping down, with fences above and the roar of traffic beyond them.
There was no sign of either Dana or Rivera.
‘What the hell?’ Stryker shouted as he caught up with Neilson. The purling gurgle of the water swirled around their legs. ‘Where are they?’
Neilson, stunned, looked right, left, back, forth, even up – then gave a shout. ‘There!’
And Stryker saw them.
Two figures, coated from head to foot in grey, gleaming mud, were struggling in the shadow of an old concrete bridge that crossed the river, about twenty yards ahead.
And it was impossible to tell which was which.
Above them passed trucks and cars in the morning rush-hour, oblivious of the struggle that was going on beneath their very wheels.
Dana was strong, stronger than she had ever known she could be, as strong as Merrilee Trask.
But she would not be brutal, like Trask.
She had thrown herself headlong at Rivera as they reached the bridge, and they had gone down together. The mud here was softer, slimier, and they had rolled together in its gummy grasp, one struggling for a hold, the other for freedom. Dana grabbed and clutched, losing her grip and regaining it, only to lose it again and again.
She must not let her prey slip away, like Stryker and Tos.
Her hands gripped slimy clothing, only to have it squidge and squirt from her grasp. She cursed and was cursed in turn, and still the struggle went on. They moved ahead, fell back, turned, floundered, turned again.
Beneath her hands Rivera’s sinewy muscles were like snakes beneath the cloth, writhing and shifting. Suddenly Dana lost her balance, and went down under the water, thrashing and struggling. Immediately, quick as snakes striking, strong hands held her down, but she, too, was coated with the mud and slipped free, bursting up from beneath the water with a shout and grabbing what she could.
It was a leg.
Now Rivera was down, but beside the moving water, not in it, twisting and squirming in the mud which made terrible, hungry sucking noises as it tried to swallow them. It stank with an ancient stench of dead things and sewage and time, and in places it was so soft, so willing to take them in, that it was almost like quicksand, eager to accommodate itself to their every movement. Year in, year out, this small stream had flowed quietly, untouched, unnoticed, silently accepting the bits of detritus thrown into it and swept down to it. It was a lonely stretch of water, without a name that anyone could remember. But it was not alone now.
Now it had prey.
Now it could feed.
Dana could feel herself sinking down into the thick, heavy mud, and was suddenly afraid that it would close over her, over them both, and no-one would ever know they were down there, in the dark, caught alive in the wet and the dark.
‘No!’ she screamed, and wrenched herself away from its slimy grasp, dragging Rivera with her, away from the terrible gleaming trap of the silvery-grey mud of the bank and into the firmer, cleaner centre of the stream.
Rivera, apparently more afraid of her than of the mud, tried to regain the bank, but Dana held on. It was like trying to contain the mud itself, for they were totally coated now. It was in their hair, in their ears, in their noses and mouths, it had penetrated their clothing and flowed around their b
odies like grey grease. Because of its treacherous lubrication, any hold was momentary, and every moment of triumph a fleeting one.
Stryker and Neilson, coming toward them, heard the gasps and grunts and screams of rage. They drew their guns but were afraid to fire. They shouted as they drew closer, but the struggle was primal and desperate, and they were unheard.
Stryker gripped his gun, ready to fire.
Neilson, slightly ahead of him, tried to run but the water dragged at his legs and thighs, held him back. As he drew closer he reached out to grab the pair and try to break them apart.
But, with one final and encompassing swirl of mud and water, Dana at last got her arms fast around her captive. She didn’t know then, she was never to know, whether she had truly won or whether her opponent had simply given in, weak, weary, sick of trying. She only knew it was over.
She saw Stryker and Neilson then, and grinned at them, her teeth white and feral in the black mask of mud. ‘Mirandise!’ she commanded.
Stryker, shivering in the wet, began. ‘Michael Rivera, I warn you that—’
‘No!’ Dana shouted. ‘No! Do it right!’
There would be no more mistakes.
Bending down, she forced the face of her prisoner into the water and rubbed it, then pulled off the tightly fitting cap. Long streamers of dark, shiny hair tumbled out. The face washed clean by the water was blank, mad-eyed, and female.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Stryker said, and could not speak again.
It was Neilson who finally did it.
‘Carla Rivera, I must warn you that . . .’
TWENTY-NINE
Dana stood, a slight and mud-caked figure, as they took Carla Rivera away. She went peaceably enough – her self- imposed ‘mission’ was finished, after all.
‘I told you that policemen’s wives can hate the Department worst of all,’ Dana told Stryker.
‘But she was a cop,’ Neilson protested. He’d just come back from putting out an APB for Mike Rivera. Divorced or not, he thought he’d probably want to look after his wife.
‘I know. Which made her a very dangerous proposition,’ Dana said. ‘She was trained to kill, and knew all the ways to avoid getting caught. We have always had a problem with returning soldiers, for the same reasons. Thank God most of them know the difference – whatever the difference is.’
‘Why couldn’t she just have shot Eberhardt and be done with it?’ Neilson grumbled. ‘She would have been doing us all a favour. He was a repellent little bastard – God knows what he would have done if he’d been left to run the streets. Instead she takes out decent cops.’
‘Shooting Eberhardt was just as wrong as shooting our men,’ Stryker said. ‘Our job is catching criminals – not making judgements, Harvey. She was as wrong to judge Eberhardt as she was to judge the officers she killed.’
‘Just bag ’em and tag ’em, hey, Lieutenant?’ Neilson said, sarcastically. ‘And the rest is up to the courts? Jesus – don’t you get sick of that same old song?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Stryker said, evenly. He knew it sounded pious. He also knew it to be, for all sensible and practical purposes, the only way to run the railway. Harvey knew it, too. When Harvey called him ‘Lieutenant’ it was just anger talking. Harvey’s anger was one they all felt and would feel forever. They all took the same risks, and they all felt the same frustration when the bad guys got away through the courts. Sometimes the good guys got away, too. ‘We’re just the garbage men, Harvey. We pick up the trash. Somebody else has to sort it out – we haven’t got the time.’
‘And where it goes, nobody knows,’ Dana said. ‘Until it’s too late, of course.’
Stryker turned on her with a sudden anger of his own. ‘When did you know it was a woman?’ he demanded.
Neilson answered for her. ‘She knew last night. At the hospital she said something about catching “her”. I thought she was just tired but . . .’
‘When we were chasing her, some of her hair escaped from under the cap,’ Dana explained. ‘But that wasn’t it, really, because lots of men have long hair. It was her neck. With a long, slender neck like that, chances were it was a woman. And then I remembered what you said – about them both being police officers, and then divorcing after the boy was murdered. Well, if Rivera could seek revenge, why couldn’t Mrs Rivera seek it, too?’
‘You never said anything – all night, when we were looking for Rivera, you never said a goddamn thing about it,’ Stryker said. ‘We might have picked her up last night.’
‘Oh, yeah – and Eberhardt might still be alive,’ Neilson said. ‘Isn’t that a shame?’
‘She should have said something,’ Stryker said, stubbornly.
Dana nodded. ‘Yes, I should have. I’m sorry.’ She looked down at the puddle her dripping clothes had created. ‘I could have been wrong. You got everything else right – what did it matter if it was the husband or the wife? The theory was right either way. If we went after one, we’d miss the other – and vice versa. And I wasn’t all that certain, anyway. I’d never seen Michael Rivera – he could have had a long, slender neck. I thought I’d just wait and see. If we’d found Rivera first, and it wasn’t him, then he might have been able to tell us where she was. When I saw her in the graveyard, actually standing up, I could see right away she was much smaller than five ten. You said Michael Rivera was five ten. I knew it was the wife. So – I went after her.’
‘If you think back, we also told you Mike Rivera could disguise himself,’ Neilson said, angrily. ‘He’s quite capable of making himself look small. You could have been killed, dammit! If it had been Mike you were chasing, you could be dead, you damn fool! He’s a judo black belt, for crying out loud! He carries a commando knife down the back of his damn neck! You could have been hurt, you could have been killed . . .’ The thoughts were piling in on him, the horror of it clear in his face.
Dana looked at him and at Stryker. Both were watching her. The enormity of the risk she had taken suddenly caught up with her. She had tried to do their job, tried to be a real cop – and she wasn’t. She had been lucky. Very, very lucky. They realised it – and now she did, too.
She began to shake. She had been so certain it was Carla, and she had been right, she had been right. But she could have been wrong. She had been carried away, wanting to impress them, wanting to impress herself. And now the shaking was worse. She couldn’t stop shaking . . .
‘Oh, Harvey . . .’ She ran to him.
Startled, he put his arms around her, and patted her rather awkwardly. Laugh this one off, Neilson, a voice in his head said. Pretend this doesn’t matter. Pretend this one is tough and can’t be hurt. But he couldn’t, because he knew it wasn’t true. She was depending on him for something – he hoped to God he could figure out what it was and how to give it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to yell. You’re all tired out, aren’t you? Poor kid – come on. I’ll take you home. I’ll look after you. It’s all right. Really. It’s all right.’
Stryker stared after them, and would have laughed if he could have found the strength. Harvey Neilson? Looking after someone else? Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
Now they were getting into the car. Neilson was backing off and taking her to her hotel without even asking permission to leave the scene. Stryker started forward to remind Neilson that he was still on duty, then paused. What the hell, he decided. Let it go. Harvey had enough problems ahead of him without a petty hassle about duty.
And the job was done, wasn’t it?
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Lieutenant Stryker?’ It was one of the local precinct men. ‘I got a phone patch for you here – guy says it’s urgent.’
He managed to drag himself over to the patrol car and sank down, shivering, on to the seat. He picked up the receiver. ‘Stryker.’
Pinsky’s voice came out of the speaker. It was thin and desperate. �
�Jesus, Jack, you got to get over here to the hospital. It’s Tos.’
Stryker felt his heart turn over. ‘Is he worse?’
Pinsky’s voice was frantic. ‘Hell, no – he’s demanding his pants. He wants to go home, and they won’t let him. He’s threatening to call a lawyer. He’s making an awful lot of noise – I haven’t had a wink of sleep all night. You’d better get over here, right away.’
THIRTY
Stryker watched the plane touch down, and again flexed his arm cautiously. First day out of the sling, and it felt very strange and vulnerable. As long as she didn’t expect him to carry her suitcases, he thought he could get away with it until they went to bed and she saw the bandage over the wound.
Last thing he wanted was a scene at the airport.
Around him swirled the same transitory life that had been there just a week before. People saying hello, people saying goodbye, people running to catch a flight, people coming back laden with luggage. There was a smell of onions and hamburgers from a near-by snack bar, and somewhere a child was crying. Flecked through the crowds were the uniforms of the various airlines, official and impressive against the bright colours of the travellers and tourists. Ticket machines, teletypes, and typewriters clattered around him, and there was the whisper and shuffle of a thousand footsteps.
Everybody was busy except himself.
The Narcotics Division was following up the ‘red socks’ scam, and were certain to make a big haul of pushers and suppliers. ‘Brother’ Feeney hadn’t talked yet. But he would, he would.
The Justice Department was closing in on the Abiding Light Association, and cutting off its tentacles one by one. There was talk of a Senate sub-committee, indictments, scandal. The papers and television hadn’t gotten a real hold on it yet. But they would, they would.
At the moment they were full of Carla Rivera.
The search for the cop-killer was over.
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