He stepped over the threshold, turning and spinning amid the mess and debris, feeling lost, panicked, and afraid.
The ceiling shook, and he looked up, the thought not immediately registering that it was his apartment. Someone was in his apartment. Someone on the move. Someone with footsteps too heavy to be a five-foot, hundred-pound old woman. He followed the sound across the ceiling, stepped out onto the landing, and leaned over the railing. The man on the second-floor landing walked purposefully away from Sloane’s apartment. He wore navy-blue coveralls with an oblong patch on the back.
Pacific Bell. The telephone company.
“Hey! You!”
The man stopped, turned, his movements robotic. The gun materialized as if from thin air, surreal and foreign. Sloane froze as the gun swiveled across the man’s body, and it registered that he was taking aim. Then instinct and training kicked in. He ducked beneath the landing, pressing his back against the wall, listening to the man’s movements on the landing above him. There were staircases at each end of the building; the man could get to his van from either. Sloane heard him moving toward the staircase at the front of the building and slid down the landing toward the staircase at the back. He looked over his shoulder and watched the man quickly descend the first flight of stairs, grip the railing, and propel himself around the corner. Except that he didn’t continue down the stairs. He wasn’t going to the van. He was coming down the landing.
Sloane turned and hurried down the stairs, jumping the final four steps. His right ankle buckled on impact and he felt it roll, the searing pain instantaneous. He pulled himself to his feet. The landing above him shook. He swallowed the pain and hobbled through the darkened carport and the corridor that led to the back of the building.
He felt the wind and moisture of the fog blowing in off the ocean as he stepped from the back of the building. He paused and turned to look back down the corridor. The man’s silhouette appeared as if at the other end of a tunnel. Then the shakes near Sloane’s head exploded in splinters of wood that hit his face like a dozen needles. Sloane plunged into the fog and the darkness, his ankle turning on the uneven ground and ice plants, each step bringing pain. He changed direction frequently, crouching low, searching for a place to hide, finding none.
He kept moving away from the back of the building until his foot slipped and he fell to one knee. Somewhere beneath a thick layer of fog he heard the roar of the ocean breaking against rocks and felt the wind and spray on his face.
The ice plants had come to an abrupt end.
24
HE HURLED HIS body through the front door, shouting at her.
“Get down!”
Alex had been standing near the table, the bottle of wine in one hand, the corkscrew in the cork, when the plate-glass window exploded, the wine bottle shattered, and the potted orchids began flying like targets rung in a shooting gallery. The room swirled—glass and wood chunks caught in a tornado, books being blown off shelves, the wood paneling exploding with holes, rock dust spewing from the fireplace. They’d brought one hell of a lot of firepower, and they seemed determined not to go home with an unspent shell casing.
Jenkins slithered across the floor and pressed his back against the toppled table. Bullets chipped at it like a ticker tape gone haywire. Alex had her back pressed up against the wood, her white shirt a deep red, almost purple color, but the fact that she had managed to upend the table and pull a 9mm Glock from her briefcase was a pretty good indication that it was wine and not blood.
“Are you all right?” he shouted.
It was like yelling into the teeth of a storm.
“Can we get out the back?” She was as poised as she had been in the garden with a blade at her throat.
“They want us to go out the back. That’s why they’re hitting us from the front.”
“Any locals likely to call it in?” she shouted back.
“With the wind blowing in off the sound, no one’s close enough to hear it.”
“Any idea who’s out there?”
“I’m no rocket scientist, but I’d guess the same guys who killed Joe.”
“So they want the file?” She nodded across the room, where she had moved the file to the chair near the fireplace.
“Again, no Stanford degree, but that would be my guess. Give me some cover?”
“What for?”
He nodded to the file.
“Leave it.”
He shook his head. “Not this time, Alex.” He got to his feet, crouching behind the table.
“Shit!” Alex got to one knee, realizing he was going with or without her. She got into a position to shoot. “My call,” she said. Then, when the barrage paused: “Go!”
He broke for the chair as she rose up and squeezed off three shots, left to right, where the window had once been. It held them off for a second or two; then came another fury of bullets. The La-Z-Boy would provide Jenkins with little cover. From a prone position on the floor, file in hand, he looked back over his shoulder at her, waited until she rose up again, and dashed back across the floor as she fired three more well-placed shots.
“I am seriously low on bullets.” She pressed her back against the wood as the barrage started again. “What the hell is it?”
“If we make it out of here, I’ll tell you over dinner and another bottle of cabernet.”
“Can’t drink it,” she said. “The sulfates give me a headache.”
“Hope I have the chance to remember that. We’ll drink good Scotch, in honor of your father.”
“You buying?” Alex asked.
“Unless you tell me chivalry died during the last thirty years.” He nodded to the door to the hallway. “My guns are in the bedroom.”
She shook her head. “You can’t get to it. It’s too far, and I don’t have enough bullets to cover you. Better to stay down.”
“Don’t have a choice,” he said. “You can’t hold them off forever. They’ll tear this house apart quicker than termites. Besides, if they have that much firepower—”
The flash erupted, followed by a percussive blast that ripped the front door off its hinges and sent it flying across the room, knocking over bookcases. Thick smoke billowed from a canister rolling across the room. Jenkins scurried across the floor and shuffled it back out the gaping hole, burning his hand in the process, then used the cloud of smoke and the maze of books as the cover he needed to get to his bedroom. He flung open the closet door, grabbed the shotgun in the corner, and broke the barrel. One round in one of the barrels. He grabbed for the box of shells on the shelf, but it collapsed in his hand. Empty. He hurled clothes and shoes, looking for errant shells, and found one more. At a momentary lull in the fireworks he heard Alex again return fire—
well-spaced shots to conserve ammunition but continue to give whoever was in the field further pause before rushing the house.
He slid on the floor to his nightstand and retrieved his Smith & Wesson. The clip was empty. He looked for the extra magazines, did not immediately find them, then recalled last seeing them in the trunk of his car, when he’d driven into the woods for some target practice. He found four loose .40-caliber bullets in the back of the nightstand drawer.
That was it.
A blast shattered the window over his bed, and the room quickly filled with the same acrid ammonia smell. He grabbed a shirt from the floor and crawled into the bathroom, holding his breath. He turned on the faucet. It was dry. They had cut off the water. He dipped the cloth in the toilet bowl and held it over his mouth and nose, trying to breathe. His throat was constricting, and his eyes burned as if they were on fire. He crawled back into the living room, ripped the dampened shirt, and handed half to Alex. She tied it over her nose and mouth.
“Any other exits?” she asked.
“You mean like a secret passage under the property?”
“That would be convenient.”
“Sorry.”
“You have any ideas?”
“Try not to breathe.�
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Flames burst in the hallway; the gas had reached the furnace pilot light. They didn’t have much time. Loaded with the old newspapers and books, the cottage would go up like balsa wood. Flames leaped from the bedroom.
He handed her the shotgun. She shoved the Glock in her pants at the small of her back. He loosened the belt on his jeans and shoved the file in the front of his pants, covering it with his shirt. “When we get outside, head to your left. There’s a path through the woods. It leads to a barn. It’s about fifty yards, but the woods and brush are thick and will provide some cover.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Clear us a path.”
“Okay, but tell me how we’re going to get outside if they’re waiting by the back door.”
“We’re not going out the back door.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy.
“You ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Alex?”
“No.”
He leaned his back against the table, pulled out the bullets from his pocket, released the clip on the pistol, and pushed in the .40-caliber slugs. “You’ve never seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? It’s a classic.”
She looked at the spreading flames. “Can we critique my knowledge of movie trivia some other time?”
“There’s a scene where Butch and Sundance are holed up in a barn in South America. They don’t know it, but about ten thousand federales have amassed out front, waiting to kill them.”
“You’re not giving me any comfort.”
“The point is, they go right out the front door because it’s the least likely exit they expect them to take.”
“Do they make it?”
Jenkins slapped the magazine in the handle. “The ending’s not important. I just like the reasoning.”
“Terrific. What are we going to use for cover?”
“Good question—a tree.”
He shoved the .40 into his pants, spit into his hands, and gripped the base of the table. “Move on three.”
“You can’t lift that.”
“Who do you think carried it in—Lou and Arnold? When we reach the window put a blast straight out, dead center. Let it rip. Give ’em something to consider.”
He squatted like a weight lifter in a dead lift. “Three.”
The muscles in his legs pressed his jeans taut, and he grunted like an angry bear. The table slowly rose from the floor, and he plunged forward, bull-rushing the gaping hole in the wall where the window had been. Alex shot a blast from the 12-gauge, turned left, and ran into the woods. Jenkins dropped the table, rolled, raised up with the pistol, and fired two shots at points where he thought the shooters had been before, then followed her into the thick grove of trees. The fifty yards to the barn looked to be a mile . . . 150 feet . . . 120 feet . . . Behind him he heard the rush and howl of the wind. Something buzzed his ear; it wasn’t a mosquito. He caught her at a hundred feet, the two running side by side, hurdling branches, picking up their feet on the uneven ground like soldiers doing an exaggerated march. Damned if they weren’t going to make it—
His foot caught. His body pitched forward. He hit the ground, yelling at her to keep running, rolled to a sitting position, and shot twice in the direction of the caretaker’s shack, though it was too dark to see anyone coming. Scrambling to his knees, he put his hand down to stand and felt the thin, warm coat.
Lou.
The dog’s tongue hung from his mouth in a frothy foam, his face a frozen mask of anguish and pain. His eyes had rolled to their whites, his lips stretched as if baring his teeth. His stomach had bloated to grotesque proportions. Next to him, partially hidden in thistle bushes and blackberry bramble, lay Arnold.
Jenkins crawled to his dogs, cradling their heads to his chest. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”
“Come on. Come on.” Alex stood over him, pulling him. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He looked up from the ground, screaming into the wind. “Goddamn it, Joe! Goddamn them!”
“Come on, Charlie.”
A branch snapped. A chunk of wood ripped from the trunk inches from his head. Alex cried out and dropped like a bag of flour. Jenkins shook the memory, grabbed the shotgun, and shot the final blast at an approaching shadow. Then he scrambled to his feet, threw Alex over his shoulder, and started for the barn, carrying her like a fifty-pound sack of dog food. Thirty feet . . . He waited to get hit in the back . . . His legs churned. Twenty feet . . . He braced for the bullet . . . ten feet . . . He pulled open the barn door and ducked inside, chunks of wood flying as he did. He lowered Alex behind bales of hay, catching his breath. The chickens clucked and flew about in a blur of feathers. The Arabians thumped at their stall doors, shaking their heads in wild snorts.
Jenkins examined her shirt. The splattered wine stains made it difficult to determine where she had been hit, but he saw the rip in the cloth by her right arm.
“Can you grip my waist?”
“What?”
“Can you hold on to me?”
“I think so. Why?”
He tried to smile. “I don’t imagine you ever saw John Wayne in True Grit?”
“No, but tell me it ended better for him than Butch and Sundance.”
He grabbed a rope from a hook on a post, fashioned a loop through the slipknot, and opened a stall door. The white Arabian whinnied and reared, wild-eyed. Jenkins slipped the rope over its nose and around its neck, then managed to slip a halter over the horse’s head. He threw the lead over its neck and clipped it to the other side to make reins. It would have to do.
Alex got to her feet, holding her arm. Jenkins led the horse from the stall, letting it prance, turning it in tight circles to calm it. He stepped onto a stump and swung his leg over the animal’s back. Confused and agitated, it kicked and shook its head, but he squeezed with all the strength in his legs and continued to jerk it in a tight circle while ducking beneath the overhead support beams.
“Step up,” he said.
Alex stepped up onto the stump, and he pulled her up behind him.
“So what happened?” she asked.
“What?”
“In True Grit—what happened?”
“Just keep your head down and hold on.”
“I knew I wasn’t going to like this.”
He put the rope in his teeth, grabbed the Smith & Wesson with his right hand and the Glock in his left, and kicked the horse hard toward the barn door.
25
DIRT CASCADED OVER the top of Sloane’s head and trickled down the collar of his shirt. He lowered his chin to his chest and closed his eyes, letting the tiny avalanche pass over him. He clung to the side of the cliff, perhaps twenty-five feet from the top. Above him, the man walked the edge.
The pounding surf had chipped away at the sandstone and rock like the mother of all jackhammers, leaving the upper half hanging out like a bad overbite. It and the thick fog became Sloane’s refuge. Even if the man were to lie on his stomach to look out over the edge, he would not be able to see Sloane. Whoever he was, he’d have to assume that Sloane had taken his chances in the icy waters of the Pacific Ocean or evaded him in the dark. The immediate question was how long the man would wait to be certain. Sloane couldn’t hang on forever. His ankle burned with a cold fire, and the muscles in his legs and arms, no longer as strong or durable as they had been when he climbed regularly, were already beginning to twitch—the first sign of muscle fatigue. Failure imminent. He did his best to shift his weight and alternate his grip to give the muscles respite while trying to maintain three points of contact with the wall. Beads of sweat, mixed with the damp salt air, trickled into his eyes, stinging them.
More dirt fell from above.
And even if his arms and legs held out, there was no guarantee the ledge would. The crevices he gripped had the consistency of chalk. With the ocean’s persistent pounding, the sandstone was known to give way suddenly. Winter storms led to dramatic television footage of entire backyards slipping into t
he Pacific in a matter of seconds.
Sloane counted to himself: keeping track of the minutes, a trick he’d learned to keep his mind focused. When he reached seven minutes he knew it was as long as he could wait and still have enough strength to climb back up. In the dark, with a bad ankle, the wind howling, and his body chilled from the moist cold, the process would be laborious. He had to be certain of each hold before transferring his full weight. The potential consequences of a mistake demanded that he not rush.
He gripped a branch, found a notch for his foot, tested it, and stepped out. The notch gave way—his right foot dangling. He kicked at the wall until feeling another toehold, then took a moment. His chest beat furiously against his rib cage. Below him the rhythmic hush of the ocean inhaled and exhaled with each powerful surge, like a dying man sucking on a respirator.
Sloane shifted his weight, found another hold, and stepped up. His ankle pulsed, but he willed himself to ignore it, concentrating, like a chess player, on two and three moves ahead. Going back was not an option.
After twenty minutes he had reached the edge. If he was wrong and the man remained, he was dead. He paused and reached up, expecting a pair of shoes to step on his fingers and send him falling backward into the foam and fog. When they didn’t, he lifted his head over the side and pulled himself over the edge, keeping low to the ground. He searched the shadows and wind-blown fog for anything out of place. Seeing nothing, he rose to his feet and limped back to the building and through the corridor, emerging in the carport with a view of the gravel parking lot.
The van was gone.
His thoughts turned to Melda.
Why wasn’t she in her apartment? If she had come home from bingo to find her apartment destroyed, she would have gone only to one person. Sloane.
And that was where the man had been.
He leaned on the metal railing, using it like a cane to pull himself up the staircase, and hobbled down the landing. The door to his apartment remained open.
The Jury Master Page 12