The bottom drawer on the right-hand side was slightly ajar. I stooped and pulled out an impressive ring of keys, each one numbered and color coded with small plastic edges indicating the floor and wing of each. Why would someone leave an entire set of master keys in an unlocked drawer in the basement? I quickly flipped through the sequential numbers to Anna’s supposed room, each key clicking like an abacus. Key number 216 was missing. I entertained a dark series of thoughts as ice water flooded my bowels, and I turned the keys to the 100 series and found that key 132 was also gone.
The initial response must have been that my left hand pulled the fore grip back, moving the action bar and bolt assembly of the Remington Model 870 back into a cocked position. This same hand must have then come forward as I dropped the keys and slammed a plastic shell with slightly imperfect and deformed buckshot into the action and locked it for fire. Then my right forefinger must have punched the safety through the mechanism, because it did not fire as I lurched forward, pushed the desk back, and ran into the darkness.
I must have chosen the far passageway because it would give me a clear shot from the stairwell to the end of the corridor. I know it took no longer than a few seconds for me to make it down the hall, through the door, and up the stairs, but in the adrenalin-induced state it had all shifted into a hazed torpor. All I remember was yanking the door open to the first floor with the shotgun ready.
My father had trained me; he was a precise and persistent shooting instructor who started teaching me when I was five. Most people are self-taught; they don’t shoot enough to acquire skill or even become used to handling guns. They stand wrong, hold their heads wrong, and even close one eye when they sight, thus cutting down vision and handicapping themselves in their ability to judge distance.
Thirty-five yards.
I clicked the safety off. “Sheriff’s Department. Freeze!”
Only his head turned to me; his hands remained on the knob. He smiled with horrible teeth, and drew his shoulder back.
I knew that I would make the shot, just as I was sure that there was a. 38 caliber revolver waiting on the other side of that door that was being held in a two-handed, standing position by a steady hand with a set of beautifully manicured nails. At thirty-five yards the 12-gauge would more than hurt him, but at eight feet the. 38 would kill him. It wasn’t that I minded Leo dead all that much, but I didn’t want Cady to do it.
As his shoulder came forward so did mine, and I fired.
Contrary to popular belief, even the most powerful of modern loads and weapons only cause the target to slump and fall; Leo’s attempt to push the door open was converted into an assisted collapse into the doorjamb where his knees buckled for a moment. He straightened as he turned to glare at me.
“Sheriff’s Department, don’t move!”
He did, of course, and transferred his weight into a galloping retreat down the corridor. One foot slightly dragged behind the other in his attempt to get away. I pushed off and started to pursue him. He was moving fast, especially for a man with a couple of extra ounces of lead in him. There were fire exits at the end of the hallways at Durant Memorial, but he turned the corner leading to the front entrance and disappeared in the direction of the desk and Ruby.
I am not the fastest man in Absaroka County; I knew I wasn’t even the fastest man in the hospital right now, but I was going to have to do. I tried to make the corner at the entryway and bounced off the far wall in time to see the pneumatic doors at the front of the hospital slowly close. Ruby was standing at the reception desk waving me on as I approached. “Go! Go!”
I slammed through the two sets of doors and onto the sidewalk. Surely they had heard the shotgun up on the second floor; I was going to need backup. He had changed direction and was running the length of the hospital toward the snow-covered golf course and the town park that were located beyond the drifts that had been plowed against the parking lot’s chain-link fence.
Sixty yards, and I was keeping pace.
The air was cold, and each step felt as if I were pushing a car. I cursed my laziness at not running for the last few weeks but watched with satisfaction as Leo slipped on the man-size mountains of plowed snow and crashed into the fence. I started to bring the shotgun up but, incredibly, his hands clutched the twisted top of the railing, and he threw himself over and into the darkness beyond; I was convinced he wasn’t human.
I knew I had to gain all the momentum I could between here and there, so I lengthened my stride and pushed the car harder. The frozen crust held just long enough for me to use it as a ramp. I calculated my options, threw the Remington over the fence, and hit the top rail at about my hips. The continued momentum carried me over head first, flipping me and depositing me flat on my back onto the cushioning snow below. I forced the air into my lungs, lurched up into a sitting position, and searched for the shotgun; I couldn’t find it. I looked up to see Leo Gaskell making time as I scrambled onto my knees and looked for any disturbance in the snow that might indicate where my only weapon might be.
Nothing.
It was a dreadful decision, but the only one that made sense if I was going to catch him. I rolled to one side, pushed off with my back leg, and started after him unarmed. I could still see him in the distance as the moon struggled through the cloud cover and the branches of the huge conifers that surrounded the ninth green and the Clear Creek reservoir where an awful lot of golfers lost their balls. The snow was almost to our knees, but his long legs made progress like some crazy posthole tamper.
Methamphetamines, had to be.
There was a gradual decline, which led to a flat and a few deciduous trees before you got to what looked like a break in the fence and the creek beyond. He just didn’t seem to be slowing, whereas my second and third wind seemed to be going the way of the first. My lungs felt like they were going to explode, but I could hear something coming up on my left. It was Saizarbitoria, and he passed me. His knees pumped above the snow like Leo’s, and I could see the Baretta 9mm in his left hand and the bare soles of his feet flashing back at me as he pulled away. It didn’t take long for him to get far ahead of me but, after a few more strides, I discovered that I could keep pace by running in Sancho’s naked footprints. His stride was only a little shorter than mine, and I gained speed going down the hill. Just as he got to the flat area, Leo disappeared through the sagging part of the fence.
In the spears of moonlight, I could see where the bank dropped off down to another level area where the wind had pushed the snow pack from the reflective surface of the ice on Clear Creek. I saw Saizarbitoria charge through the fence, through the trees, and he too was gone.
By the time I got to the flat, lumbered through the fence, and bounced off one of the trees, I could see them struggling at the creek bank. The elongated, stalklike shadow of Leo Gaskell struck Saizarbitoria with a hammering, roundhouse blow, and I watched as my deputy slumped, and Leo lifted him to slug him again.
Up until this moment my size and weight had worked against me but, with only thirty feet to go, I put everything I had into Leo. He was just turning as I hit him with all the accumulated speed of the last five minutes; we carried Saizarbitoria with us as we went. I felt the breath go out of Leo as we flew over and out onto the middle of the creek. The three of us landed with a shuddering thud as the surface of the ice indented with a resonating sound that carried vibrations across the surface, through Leo Gaskell, Sancho, and into me. Almost immediately, the ice shattered and dropped us into the freezing water that traveled swiftly beneath the surface. Sancho wasn’t moving, and I could feel he was under us and was dropping faster as the edge of the ice crumbled from underneath.