'Maybe, maybe not,' Hawes said.
'There are only so many ways to say tonight,' Meyer said.
'He could have said this evening,' Carella said. 'I mean, using your theory. But he wanted to say tonight, so he clipped out every letter he needed to form the word. I don't buy your theory, Meyer.' He moved his chair again. 'That damn thing is still blinking in the park.'
'Okay, don't buy it,' Meyer said. 'I'm just saying this nut may be ready to kill any woman, and not a specific woman called The Lady.'
Carella was pensive.
'If that's the case,' Hawes said, 'we've got nothing to go on. The victim could be any woman in the city. Where do we start?'
'I don't know,' Meyer said. He shrugged and sipped at his coffee. 'I don't know.'
'In the Army,' Carella said slowly, 'we were always warned about…'
Meyer turned to him. 'Huh?' he asked.
'Binoculars,' Carella said. 'Those are binoculars.'
'What do you mean?'
'In the park,' he said. 'The bunking. Somebody's using binoculars.'
'Okay,' Meyer said, shrugging it off. 'But if the victim is any woman, we've got about a chance in five million of stopping—'
'Who'd be training binoculars on the precinct?' Hawes asked slowly.
The men fell suddenly silent.
'Can he see into this room?' Hawes asked.
'Probably,' Carella said. Unconsciously, their voices had dropped to whispers, as if their unseen observer could also hear them.
'Just keep sitting and talking,' Hawes whispered. 'I'll go out and down the back way.'
'I'll go with you,' Carella said.
'No. He may run if he sees too many of us leaving.'
'Do you think—?' Meyer started.
'I don't know,' Hawes said, rising slowly.
'You can save us a lot of time,' Carella whispered. 'Good luck, Cotton.'
Hawes emerged into the alley that ran behind the precinct just outside the detention cells on the ground floor. He slammed the heavy steel door shut behind him, and then started through the alley. Idiotically, his heart was pounding.
Easy does it, he told himself. We've got to play this easy or the bird will fly, and we'll be left with The Lady again, or maybe Anywoman, Anywoman in a city teeming with women of all shapes and sizes. So, easy. Play it easy. Sprinkle the salt on to the bird's tail, and if the bastard tries to run, clobber him or shoot him, but play it easy, slow and easy, play it like a 'Dragnet' cop, with all the tune in the world, about to interrogate the slowest talker in the United States.
He ran to the alley mouth and then cut into the street. The sidewalk was packed with people sucking in fetid air. A stickball game was in progress up the street, and farther down toward the end of the block, a bunch of kids had turned on a fire hydrant and were romping in the released lunge of water, many of them fully clothed. Some of the kids, Hawes noticed, were wearing dungarees and striped tee shirts. He turned right, putting the stickball game and the fire hydrant behind him. What does a good cop do on the hottest day of the year? he wondered. Allow the kids to waste the city's water supply and cause possible danger should the fire department need that hydrant? Or use a Stillson wrench on the hydrant and force the kids back into a sweltering, hot inactivity, an inactivity that causes street gangs and street rumbles and possibly more danger than a fire would cause?
What does the good cop do? Side with the madam of a whorehouse, or side with the good citizen trying to cheat her?
Why should cops have to worry about philosophy, Hawes wondered, worrying about philosophy all the while.
He was running.
He was running, and he was sweating like a basement cold-water pipe—but the park was dead ahead, and the man with the binoculars was in that park somewhere.
'Is he still there?' Meyer asked.
'Yes,' Carella said.
'Jesus, I'm afraid to move. Do you think he tipped to Hawes?'
'I don't think so.'
'One good thing,' Meyer said.
'What's that?'
'With all this action, my sandwich tastes better.'
The man in the park sat cross-legged on the huge rock, the binoculars pointed at the precinct. There were two cops seated at the desk now, eating sandwiches and talking. The big red-headed one had got up a few minutes ago and leisurely walked away from the desk. Perhaps he'd gone for a glass of water, or maybe a cup of coffee? Did they make coffee inside a precinct? Were they allowed to do that? In any case, he had not come out of the building, so he was still inside somewhere.
Maybe he'd been called by the captain or the lieutenant or whoever was his superior. Maybe the captain was all in a dither about the letter and wanted action instead of men sitting around having lunch.
In a way, their having lunch annoyed him. He knew they had to eat, of course—everybody has to eat, even cops—but hadn't they taken his letter seriously? Didn't they know he was going to kill? Wasn't it their job to stop someone from killing? For Christ's sake, hadn't he warned them? Hadn't he given them every possible chance to stop him? So why the hell were they sitting around eating sandwiches and chatting? Was this what the city paid cops for?
Disgustedly, he put down the binoculars.
He wiped sweat from his upper lip. His lip felt funny, swollen. Cursing the heat, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.
'It's gone,' Carella said.
'What! What!'
'The bunking. It's gone.'
'Can Hawes be there already?' Meyer asked.
'No, it's too soon. Maybe the guy's leaving. Goddamnit, why didn't we—'
'There it is! The bunking, Steve. He's still there!'
Carella sighed heavily. His hands were clenched on the desk top. He forced himself to pick up his coffee container and sip at it.
Come on, Cotton, he thought. Move!
He ran along the park's paths, wondering where the man with the binoculars was. People turned to look at him as he hurried by. It was strange to see a man running at any time, but especially strange on a day as hot as this one. Invariably the passers-by looked behind Hawes to see who was chasing him, fully expecting a uniformed cop with a drawn gun in hot pursuit.
A high spot, he figured. If he's able to see the second floor of the precinct, it has to be from a high spot. The brow of a hill, or a big rock, but something high, something close to the street where the park ground slopes up to meet the pavement.
Is he armed?
If he's going to kill someone tonight, he's probably armed right now, too. Unconsciously, Hawes touched his back, hip pocket, felt the reassuring bulge of his .38. Should he take the gun out now? No. Too many people on the paths. A gun might panic them. One of them might think Hawes was on the opposite side of the law and get heroic, try to stop an escaping thief. No. The gun stayed where it was for now.
He began climbing into the bushes, feeling the slope of the ground beneath his feet. Somewhere high, he thought. It has to be high, or the man can't see. The ground was sharply sloping now, gently rolling grass and earth giving way to a steeply pitched outcropping of rock. Is this the rock? Hawes wondered. Is this the right rock? Is my bird up here?
He drew his .38.
He was breathing hard from the climb. Sweat stained his armpits and the back of his shirt. Small pebbles had found their way into his shoes.
He reached the top of the rock. There was no one there.
In the distance, he could see the precinct.
And off to the left, sitting on another high rock, he could see a man crouched over a pair of binoculars.
Hawes's heart unexpectedly lurched into his throat.