The gunman started to pull on the trigger. "I guess here's where we see if blood is really thicker than water," he said.
Chapter 14
Sergeant Dan Kolawski did not understand. "Twenty-three years on the job, I'm going to be fired over a freaking clerical error?"
"No," he was told by the lieutenant. "I didn't say you're going to be fired. I just said you might be fired."
"Over a freaking clerical error? Is this the way Newark's finest are being treated these days? Wait until the goddamn union hears about this."
Kolawski's voice rattled the windows of the police precinct building. Heads turned. The sergeant's face was turning crimson.
The lieutenant laid a fatherly arm about Kolawski's trembling shoulders and led him to the men's room. "Look, Dan," the lieutenant said once they were inside and safe from eavesdroppers. "You've had the request since yesterday. Why didn't you send the file the way you were supposed to?"
"Because it was unauthorized. There was no backup requisition form for the file. See?" He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket and shook it in the air. His voice shook too.
"See? There's nothing on here to say who authorized it. "
"I know that," said the lieutenant. "You know that. But I just got chewed out by the captain, who got chewed out by the mayor. I even got the impression that the mayor himself was chewed out by somebody over this."
"Over a freaking ballistics report? Over a freaking Jane Doe killing?"
"Calm down, Dan, will you? I don't understand it and you don't understand it. Let's just get it done and get on with our lives."
"All right, I'll send it. But this smells."
"Right," the lieutenant said. "But let it smell someplace else. Send the damn thing."
Sergeant Kolawski went to the records bureau, filled out a form, and a clerk in khaki uniform gave him a preprinted form, headed "JANE DOE #1708."
Kolawski saw the form was wrinkled and swore under his breath. He knew from past experience that wrinkled sheets had a tendency to jam in the fax machine, which is what they called the device used to transmit photocopies of documents over the telephone.
Kolawski made a Xerox copy of the file, returned the original to Records, and took the copy to the fax machine.
The machine was a desktop model. It was attached to a telephone used exclusively-except for an occasional personal call by a cop to his bookie-for fax transmission between police departments all over the country. It was also hooked up to the FBI, and dealing with the FBI was a large-size headache because they wanted everything just so and they wanted it yesterday.
But this one was even more of a problem than the FBI usually was. Maybe the CIA was behind this strange ballistics requisition, Kolawski thought. But there was nothing on the form to say who was going to receive the document. Just a phone number and, by God, that was against regulations and the reason Kolawski had not sent the report in the first place.
Kolawski dialed the 800 area-code number. The line rang once and a dry voice said, "Proceed."
"I must have the wrong number," Kolawski mumbled, knowing that no government agency would answer an official phone without some kind of identification.
"Stay on the line and identify yourself," the dry voice demanded.
"Just who do you think you're talking to?" Kolawski said. "This is police business."
"And you're late," the dry voice said. "You have the report?"
"Yes. "
"Transmit immediately," the voice said.
"Keep your shirt on," Kolawski said. He decided he had the right number after all. He fed the report into a revolving tube like an old-fashioned wax recording cylinder, then pressed a button. He replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle as if he were hanging up.
The cylinder revolved with the report wrapped around it. In some way that he did not understand but took for granted, the report was duplicated and the image broken down and transmitted via phone lines to a similar machine which would then generate a high-quality duplicate of the original.
When the cylinder stopped revolving, Kolawski picked up the phone and said, "Did you get it?"
"Affirmative: Good-bye."
"Hey. Wait a second."
"I don't have a second," the dry voice said and the phone went dead.
"Freaking CIA spooks," Kolawski said. "They're ruining the world, those bastards."
In Folcroft Sanitarium, Dr. Harold W. Smith took the fax copy to his desk and laid it next to three similar documents. They were also ballistics reports but they were printed on FBI stationery. They listed their subjects' names as Drake Mangan, Agatha Ballard, and Lyle Lavallette.
The reports were alike in several particulars. Mangan and his mistress had been killed and Lavallette wounded by .22-caliber bullets, an unusual caliber for murder victims. Except in mob hits. On mob hits, because they were almost always done at close range by someone friendly with the victim, the .22 with its low muzzle velocity was preferred.
Smith skimmed the text of the reports. He understood enough about ballistics to figure them out. Every gun barrel was grooved in a distinctive way to put spin on a fired bullet. This added force and stability to the projectile, which otherwise would tumble erratically when it emerged from a gun barrel. But a consequence was that, like fingerprints, each gun barrel was distinctive and every bullet it fired bore the marks of its travels.
Smith had played a hunch when he ordered the ballistics reports. There was no reason to think that there was any connection between the murder of an anonymous woman at Remo Williams' forgotten grave and the sudden wave of violence directed at Detroit's automakers, but the synchronicity of the events demanded an investigation.
He had gotten the FBI reports immediately; the Newark report had been delayed through clerical incompetence. But now Smith had them all on his desk, side by side, and he began to wish he hadn't because now his worst nightmares were coming true.
For the ballistics report told him, certainly and absolutely, that the unknown woman in Newark had been killed by the same gun that had killed Drake Mangan, his mistress, Agatha Ballard, and that had injured Lyle Lavallette.
The same gun. The same gunman. Smith shook his head. Whatever was happening in Detroit, it had all begun at the grave of Remo Williams.
But what did it all mean? Maybe Remo himself would know when he arrived.
The telephone rang and Smith, already on edge, was startled. Then he saw it was not a CURE line but one used for Folcroft's routine business and he relaxed slightly. "Dr. Smith?" a voice said.
"Yes."
"This is the limo company. You asked us to pick up a patient at the airport. A Remo Cochran?"
"Yes," said Smith sharply, squeezing the receiver involuntarily.
"We didn't connect with him."
"Then look harder," Smith said.
"No. He's not there. Our driver says he wasn't on the plane in the first place."
"Wasn't on the plane . . ." Smith said hollowly. Even though the dying sun flooded through the big windows of his office overlooking Long Island Sound, it seemed to Smith as if the room had suddenly darkened.
"You're certain?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Was he delayed? Should we wait for the next flight or what?"
"Yes. Wait. Contact me if he arrives. No. Contact me if he doesn't. Call me as soon as anything happens. Or doesn't happen. Is that clear?"
"The next flight isn't for four hours. This is going to cost. "
"I know," Smith said. "I know this will cost. I know more than anyone," he said as he hung up the telephone.
Chapter 15
"What did you say to me?" the gunman asked coldly.
He lowered his Beretta Olympic rifle-rig carefully. He knew that if he fired, he could kill Hubert Millis in the building across the highway with one shot, but he also knew that the frightening man with the thick wrists and the dead-looking eyes could kill him just as easily.