"Gone-fan out after him-all directions! John, come with me-call up some more cars, will you?"
Palliser ran to keep up with him as he started down toward San Pedro. "I don't see how you make this out-all of a sudden-"
"He wouldn't have expected all this," said Mendoza.
"He didn't know we were out hunting too. His first night's target practice with the arsenal-yes-but maybe getting his fire returned has shaken him a little. Damn, I'm out of condition. Wait a minute. Listen."
There were distant sirens; Palliser couldn't hear anything else. Then from the corner of San Pedro down there a squad car came bucketing around the corner fast, and its headlights caught a man running diagonally across the street. Just one flash, and he was gone; he'd been nearly at the opposite curb; but they both saw the guns, one dangling from each hand. The squad car braked loudly, and Mendoza fired across its hood. "Searchlight, for God's sake!" he snapped.
The light came on, swung to point where they'd seen him. Two men scrambled out of the car. A bullet came out of the dark and hit the top of the light, and they heard a man running.
"One of you follow me-the other call in a Code Nine," said Mendoza, and plunged across the street. Another shot plucked at Palliser's sleeve as he ran beside him.
"He's heading back-to his hole," panted Mendoza. "Bet you-" But these damn dark streets, and they were only guessing he was ahead of them…
Then they saw him, for just another half second. There was a street light at the corner, and they saw him-a darting thin figure in clothes that flapped loose about him-turn left there, running awkwardly in great strides. They came round the corner after him, and skidded to a haIt.
"Where the hell did he go?" gasped the uniformed man. This silent empty street was fairly well lighted; along here all the buildings were dark, but they could see the full block ahead, and no living thing moved on it.
"Damn!" said Mendoza. "into one of these buildings. The nearest one, for choice. I want men-a lot of men-we're going through every building on this block-"
A squad car screeched to a stop beside them, with one man in it. "O.K.," said Mendoza tautly. "You call up reinforcements-tell them where we are. You two go round to the side of this place-and be damn careful, no flashlights! John, let's see what we've got here." He moved to the front of the corner building. "I think this has got to be it, we weren't thirty feet behind him-he didn't go far past the corner. What in God's name is this place?"
It was an old building; and they saw now, in the yellow light from the old-fashioned street lamps, that this whole block of buildings was waiting for demolition. In the last few years a good many of these shabby old streets had come in for renovation; the city was building itself new city and county buildings, and big companies were buying up this valuable downtown land to knock down the derelict old buildings, put up shiny new skyscrapers.
A start had been made on demolishing the buildings near this corner. A great pile of knocked-apart lumber and twisted metal lay in a heap alongside the corner building, which had two wings enclosing a square open entrance. For a second that looked vaguely familiar to Palliser, but he couldn't place it. A department store of some kind? But no sign of display windows. The whole place looked ready to fall down, and up there past the wings it was dark as the mouth of hell. But Mendoza was walking up toward where the door would be, quite cool, gun in hand.
"He'll be lying quiet," he muttered, "hoping we won't realize this is where he's got to be."
There had been a door, probably; it was missing now, they found by feeling along a rough stucco wall. They went in shoulder to shoulder-into whatever it was, and Palliser thought, an extra-wide doorway.
Bare wooden floor. Mendoza wasn't trying to be quiet. He took a few steps straight ahead and, holding his flashlight at arm's length away from his body, switched it on briefly.
"Christ!" said Palliser involuntarily.
It sprang at them out of the darkness, terrifying, incredible-a dark-skinned giant in a great feather head-dress and long glittering cloak, double life size.
He heard Mendoza take a breath, and then laugh. "Wall mural," he said. "Polynesian god of some sort?" His voice echoed oddly. "Where are we, anyway, John?"
Palliser held his own flashlight out and pointed it to their right. A long wide corridor, thick with dust. There was a door, closed, at the far end: they could just make out, painted on it, the mute legend GENT ME.
Nothing stirred: no gun spoke out of the darkness. Mendoza turned his flashlight ahead, lower. There was a wooden counter there, like a bar; fittings of some kind had been removed from it. The light flashed around nervously, here and there, and a pair of giant hula dancers seemed to undulate at them from another wall.
"I think-" said Mendoza, and at that moment the light showed them a face. A face not fifteen feet away-a face of nightmare. The man was pressed against the wall there, rigid, looking toward them. Not a big man: a thin man in ragged clothes too big for him, nondescript clothes. His face was a mask of blind hate and rage and terror: and splashed across it was the mark-the red scar mark of death, that in the end had triggered death.
For an instant they all stood there motionless; then the Slasher made one quick, convulsive movement and vanished out of the circle of light. Mendoza plunged after him, the flashlight sweeping a wide arc.
Black as the Earl of Hell's weskit, thought Palliser ridiculously, hurrying after him. His grandmother used to say that. Black as…
But the flashlight showed a rectangular blackness-and another-and then they were through the nearest one, and he understood where they were.
This was a derelict movie theater. That had been the candy and popcorn stand out there. All the fittings taken out-carpets and curtains-probably the plumbing-and, here, the seats.
It was a vast, black, empty great place, with the floor sloping sharply away under his feet. The two flashlights found the man again, running diagonally across the uneven floor, stumbling, turning up toward the archway that had once led to the last left aisle. Mendoza fired at him and evidently missed.
Then the quarry was out of the light, and the roar of Mendoza's gun was echoed by anther-a bullet slammed past Palliser's shoulder, close. He fired blindly.
They were running, up the slanting floor now, and Mendoza fired again. Dimly Palliser was aware of sirens somewhere in the distance, and loud excited voices nearer…
He rammed into a wall, and swore. He had missed the archway-he groped for it and came out into unexpected light.
They had parked two squad cars directly in front, and headed their searchlights up here. It wasn't very bright, but you could see in here now. Palliser saw.
The man who liked to kill was standing against the wall there twenty feet away, his terrible face contorted. He still had both his guns. Mendoza was facing him, ten feet down from Palliser.
Men were coming, pouring into the lobby excitedly.
The man fired, and missed, and raised the other gun. Then a shot spat at him from another direction, and he fell back against the wall and slid down it slowly, and sprawled full length.
"Thanks very much, Bert," said Mendoza. "That was my last slug. I never claimed to be a marksman."
Dwyer walked up to the body and looked down at it, gun still in hand. "You can say I told you so if you want," he said. "You and your hunches!"
NINETEEN