It was what separated the Joe Brewers of the Bureau from the Otto Boutines.
So, here he was, the Cowboy still, tracking down the sinister bad guys, just as reckless and careless as the much younger man Joe had first met at the academy so many years ago.
Would he wait for backup? Would he give it the few minutes necessary? Would Otto even wait for Joe to get into place before he did a swan dive through the bay window out front? So far this night, Boutine had gone against all his training, allowing his own to take control of him.
It was up to Joe to back him up any way he could. If Boutine would allow him that privilege.
Mad, crazed Matisak was again enjoying himself; his bloody wound seemed numb now. His facial features were contorted more with hatred for Jessica Coran than with pain.
“ You've been a naughty girl, haven't you, Jessica? It will take more time now. I'll have to sedate you again, tie you by your heels again, tie your hands again… just as you want… to keep me here longer. You would die to catch me… give your life for the cause of stopping me. I am flattered, and I respect you… I do. So much character. I've never killed anyone with so much fight in her. But you leave me little choice but to do it now and be damned with how it looks.”
His hand shot out for her from where he kneeled over her. With the gun in his right hand, he tore at her hair with a bloody left hand, viciously yanking her head forward, into the barrel of the gun, blackening her eye, making her screech.
“ I should blow your fucking brains out now, bitch! Like I did Gamble's.”
Pain was shooting through her. “But you won't.” Her words were breathless.
“ You think you know me?”
“ Enough… enough to know that you want to make me suffer more, and to do that-” She tore out the trach tube at her throat and hurled it across the room. They both heard it shatter into multiple pieces.
He pistol-whipped her across the chin, knocking her back. “I have others.” His assured eyes smiled wickedly at her. He put the gun into his belt and reached for her with more rope, readying to tie her up once again.
With all the strength she could put behind it, she brought up the jagged piece of glass, sinking it deep into his throat, making him scream and pull back. At the same instant the living room window burst into a thousand pieces as Otto Boutine came crashing through.
“ Jess! Jess!” he was shouting as he rolled into a dark corner of the room.
“ He's got a gun!” she shouted in return.
At the same instant both men opened fire, returning several shots apiece, and then silence reigned.
From the comer where she had huddled, she cried out, “Otto! Otto, are you all right?”
There was no answer and the police lights from outside sent a chilling silhouette against the window sash.
“ You friend's dead,” croaked Matisak. “And now it's your turn.” He aimed, said, “Checkmate,” and fired point-blank at her head. She heard the pathetic metal click of an empty chamber.
“ Drop it! Drop it, you bastard, or you're mincemeat!” shouted Joe Brewer, who had slipped into the house from the rear. “I ought to blow you away.”
Other cops swarmed in from all sides now, two in uniform taking Matisak and shoving him hard against a wall, frisking him. His side wound was still pumping blood, and the bullet had likely passed through him without hitting any vital organs. There was a cut to the throat where she had almost gotten at his jugular.
Brewer bent over Jessica, asking if she was all right. “Get me to Otto. Otto!” Her voice was choked with blood seeping into her windpipe.
Brewer helped her to where Otto was sitting upright against a wall as if simply at rest. His eyes shone only dimly in the darkness. He was bleeding from two wounds to the abdomen. He was conscious but weak.
' 'Get her out of here, Joe. Get her to a hospital!'' Boutine began coughing and the hack made him spit up blood. It discolored his lips and his ashen-white skin. His white shirt was soaked slick with his blood.
“ Get an ambulance!” she shouted, snatching at Brewer even as the men with the stretchers were spilling into Gamble's small rat hole. “Hurry! Hurry!”
Brewer began telling the medics what to do. “Take these two. Forget the other two. One is dead and the other one is our prisoner. Now, go! Go!”
Jessica clung to Otto. She was draped in an old blanket that'd belonged to Gamble, but she, like Otto, was losing blood. The tear to her jugular and the cuts at her heels continued to bleed. She felt dizzy, light-headed, and now that she knew that Matisak was in custody, she could finally let down, and the moment she did, she went into a traumatic shock.
The medics rushed to her aid, and Boutine became agitated, yelling for them to do something for her. Brewer told Boutine to shut up and stay calm, that he was losing enough blood to kill two men. More paramedics arrived on the scene, two others taking charge of Otto while the first two worked on stabilizing Jessica.
Otto said several times as if it were a litany, “Take care of Jess… take care of Jess…”
Otto was dead before they laid him onto the stretcher.
Brewer, seeing this, became enraged. He turned to face Matisak. “You butcher! You goddamned butcher! Now you've taken-” He leapt onto Matisak, pummeling him with his fists until several other agents tore him away.
“ Joe, Joe!”
“ Christ's sake!”
“ Cocksucking maniac kills good people, and whataya reckon'11 happen to him? Fed pen for the criminally insane? Bastard oughta fry, but he won't. Oughta die here and now!”
One of the other agents grabbed for Brewer's gun in his shoulder holster just as Brewer's hand wrapped around it.
“ He ain't worth your life now, Brewer… Brewer!”
Brewer eased his grip on the gun, and the other man took it. “Until you cool down.”
“ All right… all right,” he said, pulling away. “I'm all right.”
“ Just the same, I'll hold on to this. You go with the woman. She'll need you when she comes out of it.”
“ Yeah… yeah… I suppose you're right.” He stared evilly across the room at Matisak. “You better hope they fry your ass, Matisak. If they don't, I will.”
Matisak looked pathetic in both size and demeanor now; he didn't look at all special, or even extraordinary in the negative sense, as of a freak in a sideshow. In fact, he looked so extremely ordinary, so close to normal and typical, that normalcy and typical and ordinary took on bizarre new meanings for the men standing in a circle around him. This was the vampire killer that had rocked Chicago and half a dozen midwestem states? He was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, and his facial features might put him behind a desk in a bank or below a hood in a car shop. The only thing that marked him as at all different was a slight hump at the shoulders, almost like a buffalo hump, a thickness about the jowls, some scales and pockmark discolorations over the skin. His hair was thinning and wispy, the receding hairline cutting a jagged edge in his profile. The eyes alone might seem unusual as they glowed a dark blue against the lights that were turned up on the bloody scene that Matisak had created.
In the midst of it lay Gamble's body, a bullet through the temple.
Brewer gathered himself up and shouted to his next in command. “Leonard, three things, okay?”