“That’s right. Just get out of here.”
“You’re right,” he said, almost cheerfully. “I don’t know what I was thinking. There are better ways to resolve things, right?”
I heard the dead bolt slide back into the door.
“I mean, people have their differences, but the best thing to do is sit down and work them out reasonably.”
The doorknob turned slowly.
“That’s right, Ed. I like your attitude,” I said, bringing up my gun. “I’m glad we could work things out without anyone getting hurt. You still okay, Sam?”
Nothing.
“Sam?”
And she screamed: “Look ou—”
The door burst open. Ed Noble, his nose heavily bandaged, came out like a sprinter out of the blocks at the sound of the starter’s pistol. He was crouched low, gun in hand, head turning my way as he launched out of the room. He rolled his body a quarter turn, heading deliberately for the floor on his right shoulder, gun up, pointed my way.
It looked like a stunt he’d probably seen in a movie. Maybe Liam Neeson or Kiefer Sutherland could pull off a midflight shot and hit the target, but when Noble fired, the bullet went wide, somewhere off to the left, and into a dryer.
The round glass window shattered.
Just because Noble wasn’t the world’s best shot didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Which was why, the second he started coming out the door, I headed for the floor as well. But even though I was armed, I wasn’t going to shoot wildly.
If I was going to shoot, I was going to make it count.
Noble wasn’t happy with just one shot. Once he’d skidded to a stop, he took another, this one a little closer to home. It hit another dryer on the wall behind me, this time only a couple of feet up from the floor.
“Shit!” he said.
Lying on my side, one arm tight against the floor, I extended my arms, both hands on the gun, and prepared to fire.
But Noble scurried, crablike, toward the broad table near the back of the Laundromat where customers folded their clothes.
This was dangerously close to the office door, where, I now noticed, Sam was standing, wide-eyed, one hand over her mouth, watching.
“Get back!” I shouted.
I was getting to my feet, gun in my right hand, thinking back to the days when I was still a cop and wore Kevlar while on duty. I didn’t have any such protection now. Hunched over, I ran to the other side of the room where I’d have a clearer shot at Noble, who was flat on his back now, aiming my way.
Another shot, this one going into the ceiling.
I fired, aiming for body mass. But in the millisecond before I squeezed the trigger, he rolled toward the office. The bullet hit the floor and ricocheted, pinging off an appliance. Any more shots that way might find their way into the adjoining room and hit Sam.
Not even ten seconds had gone by since this had all started.
I was getting to my feet just as Noble was scrambling to his. “Don’t fucking move!” I shouted.
He glanced my way, rose and fired again. I leapt to the right, noticed movement in the open office door.
It all happened very fast.
While Noble was looking in my direction, Sam stepped into the main room, right arm outstretched, like she was getting ready to throw out the first pitch.
But it wasn’t a baseball in her hand. It was the leather satchel full of quarters, the drawstring wound tightly around her wrist.
She swung it with everything she had.
Noble saw it just before it connected, but not in time to do anything about it. The sack of metal caught him squarely on that broken nose, and the yelp of pain was louder than any of the shots that had been fired. He stumbled back two steps.
“Fucking Jesus!” he screamed, putting his free hand over his face. He still had the gun in his right hand, but he’d blinded himself with his left.
I could have shot him — and God knows I wanted to — but instead I ran toward him, flat out, tackling him around the waist, bringing him down onto the floor so hard it knocked the wind out of him.
I went for the gun first, putting both hands on his right wrist and slamming it to the floor once, twice, until the gun slipped from his fingers.
Sam didn’t waste a second in grabbing it.
Noble was struggling for air, bringing up his knees, collapsing in on himself, blood streaming out from below the bandages that spanned his nose.
“Yo... lan... da!” he said between gasps. “She... ordered... it! It’s... all her... fault!”
Sam had Noble’s gun pointed straight at his head. “You motherfucker,” she said.
“Don’t,” I cautioned her. “Don’t shoot him, Sam. Not now. Not for you, and not for Carl.”
She didn’t lower the gun. “I’ve had it. I’ve just had it. I can’t take any more of this.”
“I know, I know. But he’s going down for this. Yolanda, too. Give me the gun, Sam.”
It took about ten seconds for her to hand it over. I tucked it into my jacket pocket.
She raised the bloodied bag of coins. “Could I hit him one more time with this?”
I sighed.
“What the hell?” I said. “Go ahead.”
Sixty-one
As much as Barry Duckworth wanted to go in search of Randall Finley before he did anything else, he had other priorities. When he’d spotted the mayor’s news conference under way in the park, he’d been on the hunt for the professor, Peter Blackmore.
He’d gone to the man’s house, but no one had answered the doorbell. A peek through some windows suggested it wasn’t a case of him refusing to come to the door. Duckworth wondered whether Blackmore, even in the midst of personal tragedy, had decided to head out to the campus. Not to teach, but to confer with his good buddy Clive Duncomb.
He’d have been at the college more than an hour ago if he hadn’t made that impromptu trip to Greenwich to see Trevor.
By now, Blackmore might be back home. Rather than search for the man in person, Duckworth made some calls. To the man’s house, first, where there was no answer, then to the college’s English department. He reached a secretary and asked whether the professor was there.
“I saw him around,” the woman said. “He’s very distraught. I don’t know if you know, but he just lost his wife. I’ve no idea why he came in here today. I think he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He might be in his office right now. Would you like me to put you through?”
Duckworth said the last thing he wanted to do, given the circumstances, was trouble the man.
He pushed his foot down a little harder on the accelerator.
As he was driving onto the Thackeray grounds, he saw a car going the other way with Peter Blackmore behind the wheel. Duckworth hit the brakes, did a fast three-point turn, and sped after the car. He put on the flashing red lights in the grille, whooped the siren for a couple of seconds. Blackmore glanced in his mirror, put on his blinker like a model driver, and pulled over to the shoulder.
Blackmore was powering down his window and craning his neck around as Duckworth came up alongside the car.
“Officer, I’m sure I wasn’t speeding or—”
When he saw that he hadn’t been pulled over by a traffic cop, he said, “Oh.”
“Professor,” Duckworth said, leaning over, resting his arms on the driver’s windowsill. The detective was immediately alarmed by Blackmore’s appearance. His face was bruised and bloody. His knuckles, too. “Professor, what happened to you?”
“Oh,” he said, tentatively touching his face, as though he needed to remind himself that he’d been hurt. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“Who did this to you?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Duckworth stepped back. “Would you please get out of the car, sir?”