Charles focussed on the opening in the roof. So the heavy material blocking half the door had never been an impediment. Mallory had been right. All this time, anyone who wanted Andrew could have gotten at him by simply opening the door inward.
Andrew was climbing down the rungs of an interior ladder, disappearing through the square of light and below the level of the roof, wearing nothing, only carrying a cellular phone.
Charles was thinking of the cellular phone he had left behind on the coffee table by the sleeping Riker. How foolish. That was the one thing he should have brought with him. Well, at least Andrew was moving slowly. Charles’s own roof had more floors. He would have to hurry.
When Charles emerged on the ground floor, he ran across the street to the fire exit Mallory had diagrammed on her bulletin board. He looked around in all directions. Andrew had not yet emerged.
He began to turn around at the sound of a squeaking wheel, but he was not fast enough. He felt the blow to the back of his head, and he was falling to the sidewalk as Andrew exited by the fire door, setting off the alarm.
Riker awakened under the cover of a toasty quilt. He looked to the clock on the end table by the couch. He was slow to register the fact that he had overslept-and there was no one watching over Andrew Bliss. He sat bolt upright.
“Charles?”
He knew there wouldn’t be a response. The apartment had an empty feel to it. He was alone.
Now he saw the sheet of paper on the coffee table. It was Charles’s note to say he had taken the tour of duty on the roof. But the rifle was still under the couch, and the cellular phone was lying on the table.
Charles would never make it as a cop.
Riker threw off the quilt, smashed the phone into his pocket and looked for his shoes. When his laces were tied, he put on some speed, gathering up his gun and the rifle and heading out the door.
The alarm for the department store continued to scream and wail. Cars drove by, drivers hazarding a quick look at the trio on the sidewalk and then driving on.
“Is he all right?” Quinn raised his voice to be heard above the alarm.
He knelt down beside Mallory as she ran her fingers over the back of Charles’s skull. Next she rolled the large man’s unconscious body onto his back and gently pulled back one eyelid. She moved her hand to create extremes of shadows and light. Satisfied with the reaction time of his pupils, she nodded. “He’ll be okay. It’s just a scalp wound. I’m guessing she came up behind him and hit him with a bottle.”
“You don’t know that Sabra did this.”
“I know Andrew didn’t do it. He couldn’t beat up a bouquet of flowers-not in the shape he’s in.”
She pulled out the antenna of her new cellular phone and punched in the number for Riker’s. “Riker? It’s Mallory… Yeah, I’m here now… How far away are you?… Fine.” Closing the antenna, she turned back to Quinn. “I want you to stay with Charles until Riker shows up.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going hunting for Sabra. His wound is fresh, so she can’t be far away.”
“If you take her in, you know what will happen to her. She’ll be a circus freak for the media. Just let her be. I promise you I’ll find her again, and I’ll find another hospital. She’s weak and sick, she can’t do any real damage.”
“She did Charles in rather nicely, didn’t she? I think you know exactly what she’s capable of.”
“You don’t know what she’s been through. You can’t. Aubry’s skull was split up the back. Her brains were falling out through the bone fragments. I watched Sabra trying to force the tissue back into Aubry’s skull. And then the back of it fell off, and it was all in her hands, a piece of the skull, the blood and the brains. She was trying to fix the skull when I pulled her away. She was trying to fix her dead child.”
“That’s why it took you so long to call it in. You took her to a safe, quiet place and then you went back.”
“Yes, you were right about everything.”
“You believe she killed Starr and Koozeman. And you gave her Andrew. You told her about that pathetic little rooftop confession-all the sins he ever committed before the age of twelve. But all that Sabra knows is that he confessed. Am I right? For all I know, Andrew is already dead. Now I’m going to get Sabra, and you’re not going to stop me.”
He pushed her into the doorway and blocked her escape with outstretched arms, palms pressed to the stone wall on either side of her. He was surprised to see the gun in her hand. It just appeared. He never saw her pull it from the holster, and now it was leveled at his heart.
“Get out of my way, Quinn.”
“No, you won’t fire that. The game field is all different now. Different rules and weapons. I’m unarmed, and you’re a police officer. I know you a little better now. You do have rules, Mallory, and I don’t think you’ll break them. You wouldn’t maim me with a sword when I was helpless, and you won’t shoot me now.”
Mallory shot him.
He was so startled by the explosion of sound and the sight of the blood, he never felt the butt end of the gun as she pistol-whipped him and sent him to the ground.
A naked man can walk unmolested down any street in New York City. It is a place where people rely on peripheral vision for the imminent dangers of day-to-day living. If no figure rushes at them in peripheral, then no one else exists. There should be no eye contact with lunatics; they all agree on this. When the eye of the New Yorker does fall upon an unfortunate whose mind is absent without leave, said New Yorker’s eye, in the interest of preserving the life of the body, will often fail to inform the brain so long as the lunatic remains on some outer periphery. Eye contact might draw the crazy closer. Eye contact, they tell their young, is to be avoided.
And so it was that Andrew crossed all the traffic lanes of wide streets without incident or interference. No homeward-bound commuter, no hack-bound cabdriver ever thought of pulling over to alert the authorities. So Andrew continued to walk north, wearing only a broken smile that tipped up on one side of his mouth and down on the other.
Two men, standing on a street corner, were speaking in heated, rapid Spanish. He passed by them without causing a lull in their conversation. Near Seventieth Street, he walked by a young woman who was debating the affordability of a cheeseburger. After he passed by, she decided, yeah, she might as well spend the money. An old woman carrying a bag of groceries came out of the deli on the corner of Lexington and had to make a detour around Andrew when he paused on the sidewalk. The woman’s mind only registered the darkness. She wanted to be off the street while it was still only a semi-savage hour.
The naked man walked on, stopped by no one, safe in the constant that a cop was never where a cop was needed.
The cellular phone beeped. He raised the antenna. “Hello?”
“Hello, Andrew.”
“Oh, Mallory.” She asked where he was, and he told her.
“Look out for a bag lady, Andrew. I’m on my way.”
Mallory was coming for him. He had not long to make his last act of atonement. He should hurry.
He crossed the street.
Charles heard the beeping noise and opened his eyes to focus on the burning ember of a cigarette dangling from the side of Riker’s mouth. The spinning cherry light of a police car was illuminating his immediate surroundings in revolving bright red flashes. It was clear that he was not in his own bed, but spread out on the concrete. Riker’s worried face was relaxing to a broad smile of relief.