“Or no time at all,” Walter replied. He frowned, struggling to recall, then shook his head. “The light was just like this. Gray, diffuse, no distinct shadows.”
“That’s all day, every day in San Francisco,” Nina said.
“That bus runs until 10 pm,” Bell said. “We may be in for a long—”
Walter cut him off as the sign at the next street came into focus.
“Parkdale!” he practically shouted. “There! Turn left! The address is north of here. Hurry!”
Nina rolled her eyes at him in the rearview mirror.
“One-way street, Walter. Have to take the next one and circle back.”
His knuckles ached from clenching. It was all he could do not to bang his head on Nina’s headrest.
“What a... uniquely aggravating city.”
“Compared to say, Boston, for example?” Nina smirked and let out a short, sarcastic laugh. “I’ve never been lost in my life, but I got lost in Boston. I’d rather drive in Hong Kong.”
Walter ignored her minor barb at his own beloved city and stared up Parkdale, looking for the bus as they passed through the intersection. He didn’t see it, but that gave him no relief. Was he too late? Had the shooting already occurred? Surely there would be police. Or had he not looked far enough. Was the tragedy hidden behind a bend in the street?
Nina turned at the next corner, Flint Street, and bounced and jolted through a minefield of potholes between looming warehouses. That at least seemed right. It had been a warehouse in the vision. Three or four stories high. And now they were surrounded by them.
“Address?” asked Bell.
Walter consulted the page he had torn out of the yellow pages.
“1315 Parkdale,” he replied
Bell looked out the window.
“Eleven hundreds,” he said. “Two more blocks.”
“Could you not possibly go faster?” Walter pleaded.
“Nitida’s a good little bug.” Nina patted the Beetle’s tan dashboard. “But these streets are like Swiss cheese, and she’s no hot rod.”
“Cotinis nitida?” Walter asked, momentarily distracted by the familiar Latin name.
“I named her after the Common June Bug,” Nina replied. “Naturally.”
At last they traversed the thirteen-hundred block and Nina turned left onto Bentwood, then left again onto Parkdale. Walter desperately scanned the length of the street, searching for the dive bar he had seen in his violent vision. The east side of the street was a cliff of monolithic old industrial buildings, strata of bricks and dust-covered windows layered five stories high.
The shooter could be in any one of them, but which one?
The west side of the street was all businesses. One-and two-story storefronts and Quonset hut garages. Auto repair, metal work, tool-and-die. A big truck was being loaded with palettes full of roofing tile, but he didn’t see the bar. Where was the goddamn bar?
There!
As Nina edged around the big truck, the sign appeared from behind its bulk. Walter yelped and stabbed his finger at it.
“There it is!” he cried. “The bar! Eddie’s All-Nighter! Stop the car. Stop the car!”
“There’s no parking,” Nina said. “It’s all loading zones. I’ll have to go down a little.”
Walter could feel his head getting hot, sweat under his collar. He was going to explode.
“But...” he stuttered. “But...”
“Relax, Walter,” Bell said, looking through the back window and all around. “The bus isn’t here. There are no signs that anything has happened yet. We still have time.”
Walter forced himself to let out a long slow breath. Bell was right. They’d made it.
They had beat the killer to the site.
“Fine, fine,” he said. “But please be as quick as possible.”
“Here,” she said, indicating a small empty parking spot between two trucks. “But it’s tight, even for Nitida.”
She tossed her long hair out of her eyes and looked over her right shoulder, backing the little car carefully into the slot. She had to cut in and back up again several times to work her way into the snug space. She was infuriatingly cautious, precise, and concerned about getting the car parallel to the curb.
“Look,” Walter said, ready to smash the tiny rear window and jump out. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Would you just let me out?”
He looked back at the bar, then did a double take as he saw a flash of white through the back window.
A bus.
It was jouncing down Parkdale at the back of a line of traffic, only a block north of the truck. A block away from Eddie’s. A block away from a massacre.
Walter spun, shoving at Bell’s seat.
“Out!” he cried. “Get out NOW! The bus! It’s coming! It’s here!”
“Walter!” Bell shot him a glare as Walter’s shoves bumped him forward in his seat. “Keep your shirt on!”
Walter leaned forward and hissed in Bell’s ear, pointing back through the rear window.
“Look!”
Bell looked back up the street and his glare disappeared. Suddenly he was clawing at his seat belt and pushing at his door. It flew open while the car was still rolling backward, and Bell was nearly knocked off his feet as he stepped out and the open door backed into his shin.
He hopped out, cursing, and turned to fumble with the seat release. Walter threw himself forward then squeezed out, breathlessly stuck for what felt like an endless moment until he popped out into Bell’s arms.
Bell helped him steady himself.
Nina looked at them from the Beetle, still half-in, half-out of the space.
“What about the car?” she called. “I can’t just leave her like this.”
“You’re welcome to finish parking, and then stay in the car where it’s safe,” Bell replied, taunting her. “Leave the dirty work to the menfolk.”
“Not on your life, Neanderthal,” she snapped, throwing open the driver’s side door. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything!”
Walter paid no attention. He was already running down the street. The bus was almost to the big truck now.
He could hear the clack of Nina’s heels join the heavier thud of Bell’s shoes as they followed close behind him down the sidewalk.
He looked up at the warehouses across the street as he ran, trying to figure out which was the one the killer would be shooting from. It had been clear in the vision, but he had only seen it from the inside. He had no idea what it looked like from the outside.
Walter tried to think. Tried to see it again. Had it been directly across from Eddie’s All-Nighter? A little north? A little south?
Then he saw it. A dark square in the grid of dusty windows, three stories up. A missing pane. No gun was visible, but he was afraid that it was there, and that the killer was there behind it. Watching and waiting like a hawk in a tree, ready to strike at the hapless rabbits below.
He dropped his gaze to the bottom of the building and was confronted by a wall of blank brick. No doors.
They must all be in the parking lot in the back. They’d have to run all the way around the block. And by then, he was certain, they would be too late.
No, wait!
A narrow service alley, too small for cars, ran between the killer’s warehouse and the one to the south. Walter tore across the street, heedless of traffic and the cacophony of horns from the vehicles that slammed on their brakes and swerved to avoid him.
“This way!” he cried.
Bell and Nina dodged cars and ran after him. Nina was cursing.
“Walter, keep it down, will you?” Bell shouted. “The killer will hear you!”
“You think he hasn’t seen us already?” He gestured to the one missing window pane high above them, sucking in a gasping breath. When was the last time he had run for any reason? High school? Grammar school? “Maybe seeing us will shock him and...”
There was a flat crack, followed by an echoing bang, like a twig snap followed by a firecracker. Walter looked around as he reached the sidewalk and saw the bus swerving in the street, the pale and frightened driver wrestling with the wheel. The back end of the vehicle grazed the roofing tile truck and rocked them both.