The problem was that Stevie also had to almost crawl away. He was losing blood and trying to think of where he could go.
One of the back doors of the Escort had been open, the lock broken. Should have been easy. But Stevie had no screw driver, no knife. Nothing he could use to steal a car.
He had gotten out of the car, looked back at the doorway where he had left the two men. He half hoped they had recovered enough to come after him instead of crawling away. Stevie had taken the gun from the one he had hit first. He wiped his fingerprints from the weapon and threw it over a brick wall a few feet away. He knew how to use his hands. He knew he had more trouble using his mind.
The second car he tried, a 1992 white Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, almost renewed his faith in God. The window pushed down with pressure until he was able, just barely, to reach back and open the door. He slid into the driver's seat and tried to figure out what to do.
He opened the glove compartment searching for a tool he could use. Nothing, but there was a dark leather coin holder. He opened it. A key, a plastic Oldsmobile key.
The car turned over almost immediately and Stevie was on his way. To where? The Jockey. He wasn't sure he could trust Jake Laudano. What they had was more like an occasional business pairing than a friendship, the slow powerful big guy and the nervous little man. Neither man was quick of wit or ambitious.
Not much choice, Stevie thought. Either the Jockey or a hospital, if I can even make it to the Jockey's.
No, there was no "if" he decided as he drove. He would make it.
The next forty minutes were lost. When he woke up, the dull sunlight was coming through a window and he was lying on a lumpy sofa too small for him.
He sat up slowly. His leg was bandaged. The throbbing was tolerable. Determination was strong. He was in a small studio apartment, sofa against one wall, a Murphy bed across the room tilted back up into the wall.
The door to the apartment suddenly opened. Stevie tried to get to his feet, but his leg sat him down again.
The Jockey came in with a paper bag in one hand.
"Brought you some coffee," he said. "And a couple doughnuts."
"Thanks," said Stevie, looking inside the bag Jake handed him and taking out the coffee.
He felt queasy. The coffee and doughnuts might help. He didn't know, didn't care. He was hungry. He picked up a doughnut and laughed.
"What's funny?" asked Jake.
"Yesterday was my birthday," said Stevie.
"No shit," said the Jockey. "Happy birthday."
Anders Kindem, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, retained only a trace of a Norwegian accent.
Mac had read about him in a New York Times article. Kindem had, supposedly, definitively confirmed that whoever William Shakespeare was, he was certainly not Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, or John Grisham.
Kindem, blonde straight hair, slightly gawky, with a constant smile, wasn't yet forty. He was addicted to coffee, which he drank from an oversized white mug covered with the word "words" in various colors. A tepid cup of hazelnut, which he had brewed from the tall green jar of whole beans he kept next to the grinder and coffeemaker in his office, stood next to one of four computer screens.
Kindem had two of the computers on a desk. Two others were on another desk facing the first two computers. The professor sat on a swivel chair between the four computers.
Mac sat watching him swivel, turn, move from computer to computer, looking more like a musician at an elaborate keyboard than a scientist.
Further detracting from Kindem's image as a scientist were his new-looking jeans and a green sweat shirt with rolled up sleeves. Across the front of the sweat shirt in white letters were the words YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK.
Music had been playing when Mac had entered Kindem's lab, carrying a briefcase containing the disks of Louisa Cormier's novels.
Kindem had turned down the volume and said, "Detective Taylor, I deduce."
Mac shook his hand.
"Music bother you? Helps me move, think," said Kindem.
"Bach," said Mac. "Synthesizer."
"Switched-On Bach," Kindem confirmed.
Mac looked around the room. The computer setup used half the room. The other half contained a desk with still another computer on it and three chairs facing the computer screen. Framed degrees and awards hung on the walls.
Kindem followed the detective's eyes and said, "I hold small seminars, discussions really, with the graduate students I advise."
He nodded at the three chairs.
"Very small seminars. And the adornments on the wall? What can I say? I'm ambitious and possess a small streak of academic vanity. The disks?"
Mac found a spot at the end of one of the desks holding two computers. He opened his briefcase, took out the disks, each in a marked sleeve, and handed them to Kindem.
"You'll want to read them," Mac said. "You can give me a call when you know something."
Mac handed Kindem a card. Kindem had placed the disks between two of the computers. "Don't have to read them," Kindem said. "Don't want to read them, certainly not on a computer screen. I spend enough time reading things on screens. When I read a book, I want it in my hands and on a page."
Mac agreed, but said nothing.
Kindem was smiling.
"I can tell you some things quickly," he said. "If your questions are simple. If you want a full analysis, give me a day. I'll have one of my grad students prepare and print out or E-mail you a report."
"Sounds fine," said Mac.
"Okay," said Kindem loading each disk into a tower between two computers.
Each of the six disks went in with a whir and a click.
"So," he said. "What am I looking for?"
"I want to know if the same person wrote all these books," said Mac.
"And?" asked Kindem.
"Whatever else you can tell me about the author," said Mac.
Kindem went to work displaying his keyboard virtuosity, turning up the volume of the CD he was playing, looking even more like a musician playing along with the music.
"Words, easy," said Kindem as he punched instructions moving from one computer to the next. "But don't tell my department chair. He thinks its hard. He pretends to understand it. I never call him on his encyclopedic misinformation. Words, easy. Music is harder. Give me two pieces of music and I can program them, feed them into the computer, and tell you if the same person wrote them. Did you know Mozart stole from Bach?"
"No," said Mac.
"Because he didn't," said Kindem. "I proved it for a supposed scholar who had worked the academic scam for a full professorship in Leipzig."
He went on for about ten minutes, talking constantly, drinking coffee, and then turned from one computer to another.
"Exclamation marks," he said. "Good place to start. I don't like them, don't use them in my articles. Almost no exclamation marks in scientific and academic writing. Shows a lack of confidence in one's words. Same is true of fiction. Author is afraid to let the words carry the impact so they want to give those words a boost. Punctuation, vocabulary, word repetition, how often adverbs, adjectives are used. Like fingerprints."
Mac nodded.
"First three books," said Kindem. "Overloaded with exclamation marks. Over two hundred and fifty of them in each book. Then, in every book after that, the exclamation marks disappear. The author has seen the light or…"
"We have a different author," said Mac.
"You've got it," said Kindem. "But there's a lot more. In the first three books, the word 'said' appears on an average of thirty times per book. I'll check, but the writer seems to be avoiding the word 'said,' almost certainly looking for other ways to ascribe dialogue. So, instead of 'she said,' the author writes, 'she exclaimed' or 'she gasped.' The later books average two hundred eighty-six uses of the word 'said.' Growing confidence? Not that extreme, not that soon. You want more?"