I slid to a stop in the center of the street in a widespread stance, raised the. 45, and yelled. “Sheriff! Freeze!”
He didn’t, and I had to decide if a hunch was worth shooting a man, finally deciding that it wasn’t. He was still in reverse, but he wasn’t going that fast, and I figured, what’s the worst that could happen? I jumped up on the back bumper and grabbed the luggage rack as the air left my body on impact. My left hand held the black bar, and I listened as the bracings buckled into the sheet metal of the roof. My feet slipped from the bumper as he accelerated, and I scrambled to get a tiny purchase, trying to not think about what the hell I was doing.
I wasn’t going to last long like this, so I raised the butt of the Colt and swung it down on one of the back windows; the glass spider-webbed out to the framework. I could feel the luggage rack starting to go as he hit the brakes at Race and made a right onto Logan Circle. A Japanese compact barely missed us as we made the turn and cut across four lanes.
I brought the butt of the. 45 down on the window again, and this time the glass blew into the interior along with my arm, and I was able to leverage myself up to the armpit into the vehicle.
I pressed my face against the cold metal of the window divider and could feel the glass cutting along my jaw line. “Peace officer! Stop this vehicle now!”
I could see him sawing at the wheel and could feel the pressure of my grip starting to slide me toward the edge of the bumper as he continued to veer around Logan Circle and the Swan Memorial Fountain.
He swerved back toward the outside, deciding to test the waters on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, but a utility company van cut him off. I took advantage of the slowing velocity to reestablish my grip on the doorway just as the luggage rack pulled completely off the vehicle.
My feet slid on the bumper as I slipped sideways, and I felt my boot hit the surface of the road and pogo with a large hop as I threw my other arm into the back window and scrambled for a grip.
I was to the point of dropping the. 45 when my other hand grabbed hold of some small leverage, and it was only when the door I was hanging from made a small jump with a chunklike sound that I realized that it was the interior door handle.
The door swung wide with the momentum of the vehicle, and I was no longer attached. I rolled my back, my head cracked against the concrete sidewalk, and my legs went over my shoulders. I tucked my arms into my chest along with the semiautomatic and hoped that wherever I was rolling nobody would run over me.
I didn’t move at first, just watched the black Expedition continue the wrong way down 18th and disappear as I listened to sirens approach like hounds to the hunt.
I tried to focus, but my vision was blurred. My head hurt, and I closed my eyes. I could hear people, so that was a good sign. I opened my eyes and looked up at a gigantic individual with a tricornered hat looking down on me. It was only when I saw it was a statue and that the title on the base had way too many consonants that I collapsed against the cement and tried to breathe.
“Sir?” I felt somebody gently pull at my right shoulder in an attempt to turn me over. “Sir, are you alive?”
I rolled onto my back and watched as whomever it was backed away when they saw the big Colt in my hand. “It’s all right…” I coughed and cleared my throat, my voice sounding like somebody else’s. “I’m a peace officer.” The face returned, and I looked at his uniform. “You a cop?”
He shook his head. “I’m the bellman. I been here since the hotel opened, and that was the most dramatic entrance to the Four Seasons I ever seen.” I laughed weakly and felt a pull at my abdomen, curled in a little, and returned to my side where it felt better. He kept his hand on my shoulder and talked to me in a soft voice. “Don’t you worry, there’s help comin’, you jus’ lie there.”
I stared at the traffic and took shallow breaths, absorbing some of the cool from the sidewalk. I felt a little dizzy for a moment, but it passed with the adrenaline discharge, and I stared past the traffic at the fountain at the center of Logan Circle with the swans blowing jets of water thirty feet into the air.
And there it was, the Indian I was meant to go back to.
11
“So, you got the license plate number of the truck that hit you?” She sat on the back of the chair with her feet on the seat, the kind of posture that made teachers yell.
It was a cop convention at HUP. They had tried to take me to Hahneman, which was only four blocks from the Four Seasons, but I had told them I’d throw myself from the ambulance if they didn’t take me to the same hospital as Cady. After careful consideration and in light of recent events, they took me at my word.
“Like I told the fuzz, city plates, 90375.” The stitches at my jawline pulled when I talked. Dr. Rissman was looking at my ear, but he didn’t say anything so he must have figured that was old news. I guessed he had come down to take a look at me out of curiosity and that you could pretty much jump in anytime if you were a neurosurgeon.
Vic turned to look at the two detectives as Katz flipped his small notebook closed. “Stolen from the city lot two nights ago.”
Gowder looked at Vic, she looked at Katz, and I could tell that they had all three known each other for quite some time. Michael was leaning against a wall, and they had posted a patrolman outside the curtain.
Gowder stepped forward and held up a standard wants-and-warrants vita with a two-by-two photo of William White Eyes. He was slightly heavier, wore no glasses, and the hair was loose. “That’s him.”
Katz walked over beside Vic and adjusted his glasses, the red dots jockeying for a good seat on his nose. He was a handsome devil, and I could see Lena making the reach. “Released a week ago. After you mentioned him last night, we did a quick look-see. Any idea why he was following you?”
“We cowboys have that problem with Indians, even white ones.” Katz gave me a look. “Any word on Shankar DuVall?”
The two detectives turned and looked at Michael, who grinned. “Looks like he was the one that you ran into the other night. Turns out Fraser and the others couldn’t retrieve the gun, and he wasn’t carrying, so they had to let him go.”
“What about his connections with Toy Diaz?”
“We got a hit on an abandoned car in Atlantic City, but no Diaz.”
“I think I may have met Toy Diaz last night.” They all looked at me as Gowder continued to wait on the phone for the current address of one William White Eyes.
Katz cleared his throat. “Where?”
“At the shooting range; he was with Osgood. At least I think it was him, short guy, Latino, very precise, eyes like a snake?”
The detective nodded his head slowly. “That sounds like him.”
Gowder flipped his cell phone closed. “We’ve got an address.”
Vic sipped her coffee. “Asa, why would William White Eyes want to hurt Walt? If he’s the one that knocked on the Franklin Institute door, sent Devon to flight school, and wrote the note? We should focus on Toy Diaz.”
“Believe me, we are, but maybe the sheriff here was getting too close for comfort.”
“He could have run over him twice…” I shook my head and raised a single sprained finger. “Excuse me, once.”
Katz glanced back at me. “I think White Eyes did a pretty good job on him.”
“But he didn’t kill him.” She hadn’t said anything about the note I’d given her, and I thought maybe I wouldn’t say anything about it just yet. I reached for the fresh shirt that Vic had brought me from Cady’s. She said that she had met her mother there and that Lena was taking care of Dog.
Gowder was watching me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
He shook his head. “Oh no, you’re under house arrest until we get William White Eyes.”
I looked at the two of them. “So, the partnership is over?”
Gowder smiled as they left. “Looks that way.”