He shook his head. "The spotlights are on top of the window, pointing inward at the pictures, not toward the street. All that would show out here is the backwash and I doubt that would reach to the cars."
"So if anyone was out here waiting for Aunt Edith—"
"—then the safest location would be the passenger seat of her car. The only light that mattered, the one to the front, was out of commission. The ones to the rear and side wouldn't reach."
Over by the Camaro, Patty shook her head. "She'd never get in the car with someone she didn't know."
The obvious rejoinder seemed to occur to all of us at the same time. Patty bit her lip and looked away.
"Most victims do know their murderers, and we'll presume he had the gun hidden until he used it." Sherlock pointed and beckoned. "Lindsay, you're as close as we'll get to the right size. Come here and give me a hand."
She'd quit leaning against the car a long time ago and her boredom had vanished ditto. At his call, she sprang forward, at first for the passenger side, but when he called again, she doubled about and scrambled to stand beside him at the driver's door of the Toyota. Her expression was confident and expectant, just as mine was when I looked at Sherlock; his big goofy presence was one people instinctively knew they could trust. I shook my head. He'd nabbed another member for his impromptu team.
"You play the role of Edith Hunter," he told her. "When I'm in position, you jump for the door of the gallery. Remember, you're in danger, you're afraid, and the only way you can reach safety is if you beat me to that door and push the button to attract the attention of the people indoors. Get it?"
Lindsay nodded. "Got it."
"Good. Robbie, you seem frozen up on those steps anyways, you play the roles of Trés and the security guard. Sometime after Lindsay starts moving, you make like you're stepping out the door. Get it?"
I grinned. "Yes, boss, I've got it."
"Double good." He stepped around to the passenger side of the Toyota, nearest the gallery, and stood with his back to me and Trés' human zoo. "Go, Lindsay!"
She jumped like a greyhound from the starting gate, scrabbled around the rear of the Toyota, leapt for the stairs. I caught a glimpse of her intense face as her honey-toned hair flew out behind her; her entire heart was in the effort.
Sherlock paused. He went through the motion of opening a car door, then jumped to follow.
I stepped forward. But before my foot touched the first stair, his position closest to the building paid off. In two steps he cut across Lindsay's path, grabbed her around the waist as she tried to twist away, and hauled her back against his body. Her hair whipped forward then flared back onto his scarred neck. He held her helpless with one arm and his face rose to target me.
Time slowed to freeze-frames. It was so real: her twisted astonished face, fingernails clawing his arm, his implacable hooded stare. He didn't blink. His right hand mimed a gun in the classic game of cops and robbers. It aimed right at me. The eyes behind the childish gesture were those of a lethal predator sighting its natural prey.
I froze, too shocked to move, and waited for the bullet.
"Bang." His voice was flat.
In the split second of silence that followed his silly word, I felt Trés' body fall through where I stood and collapse onto the steps. Before I could react, Sherlock's arm and pointing finger swung to my right. I knew it aligned on the door, where the nonexistent security guard had just stepped out and turned his back to lock the gallery. The sound from the silenced gun hadn't been loud enough to attract his attention.
"Bang," Sherlock said again, and the guard dropped without ever seeing what hit him.
Sherlock didn't wait to see him fall. His left hand slipped from Lindsay's waist, spun her about to face him, thrust her toward the red-brick wall of the gallery. His gun hand targeted her.
"Bang. Bang. Bang."
For the second time I witnessed the murder I had not seen. Bullets slammed into the small, shadowy form and drove her against the brick wall. Blood sprayed. Her hair jerked loose and her shoe dropped off. Her fading echoed through me like a dwindling ghost as she collapsed onto her back, legs bent, glassy eyes staring up, and then she was gone and Lindsay stood alone on the unstained sidewalk. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were wide. But still she showed no fear.
"That's how it happened." Her voice was breathless, as if she'd run a mile rather than around one small car. "Isn't it?"
I turned and leaned onto the railing, eyes squeezed tight, trying to keep lunch in its appropriate location. She didn't even know enough to be afraid.
"I imagine so." Sherlock paused. "Robber mine?"
I fought back and the nausea lost. When I opened my eyes, Sherlock stood watching me from the pristine sidewalk. The cobra stare was gone. Instead he looked as if he'd seen his worst nightmare.
The cold sliced from my guts to my chest and groin. It was a worse mistake even than showing Patty my lockpicking skills. I'd shown Sherlock the weakness that lay beneath my determination. I'd given him the reason to kick me off the team.
In desperation — I had to distract him, had to cover up — I blurted out what I'd intended to say in private, away from Patty and Lindsay. "It could have been one of the family. It could have been Father."
His chin lowered. The worry in his eyes faded to thought.
In the stunned silence, Lindsay said, "What?"
I ignored her and pushed on, aiming my words at Sherlock as if they could penetrate his thoughts as his pretend bullets had penetrated me. My voice sounded harsh. "You said it yourself. It was dark. Trés couldn't see who shot them. Only Aunt Edith, who sat with the killer inside the car and argued with him, would have known who it was. And she's the one who was finished off."
"I don't believe it," Lindsay said.
"He's an old man." Patty still stood on the passenger side of the Camaro, leaning against it. Her face was white and her voice as angry as mine. "He walks with a cane. He can't run and jump that way."
Sherlock turned back to face me, awaiting my riposte. From his expression, I knew he was listening. I didn't bother to hope he'd forget what he'd seen. But perhaps I could convince him to discount it.
"William isn't."
Patty rolled her eyes. "Is he your bogey man? You accuse him of everything."
"Besides, Dad wouldn't shoot his own son," Lindsay said.
"It could be any other member of this family, as well." I looked at Sherlock and again aimed my words at him. "Besides, sometimes things happen in combat that you don't intend."
"We both know that to be true," Sherlock said. "But the shooter stood closer to the gallery than the parked car and the light would be brighter. He couldn't be certain Trés hadn't recognized him, even from a dim outline."
That was true. "But it would explain why Trés wasn't finished off."
"So would the possibility the shooter didn't want to go out and buy more ammunition." He shook his head. "It's not a really viable theory, Robbie. I think there are stronger ones out there. We just gotta find them."
For a moment longer I stared at him. His expression was neutral and the moment was over: if he was going to recommend my removal from a combat position, he wasn't going to whip out his cell phone then and there. I slumped against the railing then pushed myself erect. "Right." I didn't need to look down to know my hands were shaking, as usual, so I ignored the regs and stuffed them in my pockets.
"Why didn't she scream?" Lindsay lounged against the mock shutter beside the plate glass window. Over her shoulder, one of the human zoo's inhabitants snickered, an old woman with a sly face and wispy hair. She looked like a second-rate char and for an insane second I hoped Trés had seen her in the local pub and not in Linda's kitchen.
"I wondered that, too." Patty shoved her drooping hair behind her ears.
I looked at Sherlock. He looked at me, then popped his eyebrows. Needless to say, we hadn't.
"Would they have heard it inside?" Lindsay asked.
"Probably," Sherlock said. "And I can't imagine why she didn't scream on instinct, in any case. Somebody grabs you, that's the sort of thing that just kind of pops out, right?" He looked at me, his eyebrows twin question marks.
I shrugged. "I don't know."
We stood in silence. The ambient background noises intruded on our pause and the world seemed to expand. For the first time since leaving the cool showroom, I remembered there was a city around us, more than this one intense bit of sidewalk.
I shrank from all of it. Peace and quiet would help me recover. There had been too much tension in my day already, even if it was only the early afternoon, and the adrenaline flooding my system kept me queasy. The brew at lunch hadn't helped and I must have been crazier than usual to drink it.
"All right, Robbie my Robber?"
Even at that moment the stupid nickname made me grin. "You still want to swing by my condo?"
"Got to." Sherlock popped the Camaro's locks with the remote. "You don't think Bonnie's going to hoof it all over town looking for that Suburban, do you? We need your computer, unless we're going to buy one on our way back to the house, and I'm personally not splurging. As it is, she's gonna have to make do with AOL instead of DSL, as that's the only Internet access we can get on short notice, and you know her opinion on that. Besides, you need at least a spare mag, and Bonnie flew civilian so she doesn't have a weapon at all. So grab a few extras while we're there, okay?"
"You know, it's been peaceful since the backup arrived in town." I hadn't meant to sound so petulant, but I wanted to return to Cambridge, find a quiet spot, and crawl into it, not hike around the city on errands. "What makes you think it won't stay that way?"
He didn't answer as he fastened his seatbelt and started the engine. "Humor me, okay? I'm starting to get a real bad feeling about this one."
That was not good news and the bottom dropped from my already uncomfortable stomach. The prickings of Sherlock's thumbs were legendary, horrifying, and never ever wrong. If he wasn't feeling good about this situation, then it was time for the remainder of us to start worrying, too. Especially me.
"How about our tail?" I asked. "Is he still back there?"
He checked the rearview mirror. "Yeah."
"So he saw our little performance and knows we're onto him."
"Yeah."
"Do we care?"
He huffed and swung into traffic. "I ain't gonna lose any sleep over it."
"Is it good news that he's still following us?" Patricia asked.
"Yes," Lindsay said before I could get my mouth open. "If he's following us, then he's not trying to finish off Trés."
"Or hunting Caren," I said. "Or anyone else."
"Do you think that might be the police tailing us?" Patricia said. "Particularly you, Charles." Her voice had that too-sweet note and I sat on my hands rather than smack her.
Sherlock huffed again. "So why don't we just pull him over and ask him?"
With that oh-so-comforting thought, I leaned back and tried those stupid deep breathing exercises again. I didn't really expect them to work. But if Sherlock was unhappy, it was best to be as prepared as possible. At least he warned me.
Sherlock drove steadily to make life simpler for our tail. He pulled up in the visitors' parking lot outside my waterfront high-rise condo, rather than the owners' garage.
"You three go on in." His eyes never left the rearview mirror. "I'll stay out here this time and keep an eye on our friend. No, don't look at him, Patricia, unless you want him to know he's been made."
The condominium building was twelve stories and open to the bay, with stairwells and landings for each main entry outdoors, protected only by cast-iron coverings. The elevators were inside. My condo was on the second floor, so we took the stairs. I used my keys to open, just because it was quicker and wouldn't aggravate Patricia further: two deadbolts and the lock on the doorknob, even though they were useless to stop a determined thief and I knew from experience it took less than two minutes to pick open all three.
Once inside, I killed the burglar alarm that rang at the security service's headquarters, or at least I started to punch in the code on the pad just inside the front door. Then I realized the little "armed" light wasn't blinking. It was already off and I knew I had set it before leaving last time.
I shot out an arm and stopped Patricia and Lindsay before they got through the door. Damn it, I'd left the 9mm with Caren and hadn't thought to borrow Sherlock's Colt .45. I had no weapon at all and there was a small arsenal inside the condo. Anyone already inside had one hell of a jump on me. And I had civilians to protect.
"What?" Patricia's voice rose about an octave in the middle of the word.
"Go back to the car. Now." Any danger would be inside. Although our potentially troublesome tail had followed us across town, Sherlock was out there and would take care of the civilians if it killed him.
I sidled inside, back to the wall, and eased the door closed behind me. Through the pulse pounding in my ears, I tried to listen. But nothing short of the neighbor's stereo could penetrate that internal jungle drumbeat. In front of me, the drawers in the hall table yawned open. All the little odds and ends in there were shuffled, but at least weren't on the floor. My pulse slowed, quieted. This seemed another deliberate search, not a ravishing of my personal space; a hunt, not a rape. And for some reason I couldn't pinpoint — perhaps the stuff's settled appearance — it seemed stale, done a day or more ago and abandoned.
I played it safe, though, and followed our urban assault training, keeping close to the wall when I rounded into the living room and ducking down below waist height so if anyone shot for the center of mass, he'd miss high. No ammunition flew my way, so I breathed a tad easier.
The first quick, sweeping glance showed my lovely white living room in controlled chaos. The sofa was tumbled, its upholstery removed, and the cover of each cushion was unzipped, all of them piled atop the coffee table. The white swag draperies lay across the overturned sofa, exposing the French doors of one-way glass to the balcony. The old videos formed a careful pyramid on the floor, beside the books. The back was off the television and the shells off the VCR and DVD players.
I crawled through the kitchen, bedroom, bath, and study. It was the same in each room. Anything large enough to serve as a hiding place was stripped down to its component pieces and left that way. But nothing was deliberately damaged, not even the ivy in the bathroom, although a residue of dirt coated the sink from where the plant had been removed from its pot then replaced.
Most importantly, all the weapons were still in the gun case in my study, the ammunition drawer gaping beneath them and the boxes of shells opened on the carpet but not spilled. And the false bottom to that drawer, where I kept my trophies, wasn't closed properly.
It would be a job cleaning up. But it could have been much worse. I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the front door. Patricia and Lindsay hadn't listened to my orders and they crowded together at the far edge of the landing. Patricia clutched her cell phone to her ear.
"Well?" Her voice hadn't dropped.
"That's Sherlock?"
She nodded. Tension radiated from her in a shivery stream and her eyes were white-rimmed like a startled filly's.
"The place has been searched, but there's no one here and I don't think anything's been taken, not even the weapons."
She repeated this into the phone, then listened. "He asks if this is a professional job."
I took the phone. "Yes, boss, it's a professional job, but it's the oddest one I've ever seen. Someone searched every hiding place I have and showed me a few new ones. But nothing's damaged. I mean, he removed the cloth covering from the box springs, but didn't rip it. And the sheets are folded in the corner."
He was quiet for such a long moment, I checked to ensure we were still connected. "Humph," he finally said. "That's a corker, that is." He paused. "You okay?"
"Of course. Why ask?"
"Is there anything there that can
't sit for a day or two?"
"No. He even watered the ivy. After he repotted it."
"Damn." Again he paused. "Well, then, let's let it sit. Grab what we came for and let's get back to your new digs. Caren waits and I want her alone no longer."
"Especially now." I rang off and handed the phone back to Patricia. "Come in, then, but don't touch anything. Keep to the middle of the hallway."
In the bedroom, I pulled the computer's bright red carrying case from the bottom of the closet and handed it to Patricia. "Stuff the Mac in that."
She stared. "The casing is off your laptop."
"And he might have taken each little bit apart, then put it back where it belonged but perhaps didn't screw it down. So be careful." I grabbed a backpack and returned to the study.
Lindsay followed me. I was about to shoo her out when I noticed she stood in the middle of the room and kept her hands by her sides.
"All those yours?" She stared at the gun case.
"Every one of them." The case was unlocked, which was not how I'd left it. I lifted out the Mauser SR-93 rifle of infamous past, a sleek killing machine with an old Russian PSO-1 telescopic sight and a nick atop the stock from a machine-gun round. The bolt ratcheted open smoothly and the firing pin was intact. The M-16A4, clumsy by comparison but handy in a tight spot, hadn't been compromised, either. Baffled, I stared at the case, then around at the room. For an in-depth search of one's home, this was almost respectful.
"What?" Lindsay asked.
"This is just unbelievable. I've never seen nor heard of anything like this."
She shuffled her feet, just as I do when confronted. "I'm sorry, though. Trés once trashed my room and I hated it."
I looked at her. "What did you do in return?"
She shrugged. "Creamed him."
And Trés two years her senior and male to boot. Why wasn't I surprised? "Look, go help Patricia, will you? Make certain she doesn't leave the power cords or something. I don't know how computer literate she is."
"You don't know how computer literate I am, either." But she did leave.
I left the rifles in the relocked case but took my old Gold Cup Match .45, a twin to Sherlock's cannon, in case we needed additional heavy artillery; the "Spandau" Luger P-08 from the First World War, which was simple to operate and could be effectively used by anyone; and, for Bonnie, my Walther PPK, the weapon Ian Fleming preferred for the original James Bond novels.
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