I nodded.
“Joke was on you guys. I heard the accident over the bug I planted. I found the hole in the guard rail, checked you both out, propped your head, and called the cops on the roadside phone. Frank was dead when I got to you, Joe. It was an accident, just like the state troopers said.”
“I don’t believe it.”
This time he laughed outright. “You’re a credit to my imagination. imagina Surely you’ve noticed that the bad guys I warned you about have mysteriously disappeared.”
I didn’t answer. The anger at having been manipulated to that extent-and at that emotional level-was strangling me. I dropped my eyes to the gun in my hand, so long ago the symbol of a young cop’s belief that he could thwart the evils of the world through its use. I hated that remembrance and had worked hard to bury it.
“I made them up. I was the one who gassed your apartment. I thought the extra pressure might help. Do you remember the torn scotch tape you found across your door-the one that made you crawl all over your apartment sweating bullets?”
“Yes.”
“I did that. Too good to resist; I couldn’t believe you’d set yourself up so well. And the bug in the phone? Remember that?”
I let him talk. In the back of my mind, I was hoping he might screw up, even in the last minute of the last hour; that he might somehow expose a small gap through which I or someone else might quickly fit and thus let me off the hook.
“When you picked that phone up and a strange voice said your name and then broke the connection, that started you wondering, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So you looked at the phone and realized that it had been placed wrong end around on the cradle. You wondered why, you opened the phone, and out fell the bug. It was a dud, by the way. I never owned the other half of it-the receiving end-but it did its job anyway. All for building up pressure.”
“And Frank’s death wasn’t a part of that?”
“Pure serendipity. How was I going to guarantee having an eighteen-wheeler in the right place at the right time in the middle of a snowstorm? And why would I? You guys were hot on the track of Cioffi and this miserable bastard.” He nodded at Teicher, who looked like he was trying to disappear into his overstuffed seat cushion. “I wasn’t about to get in your way, despite your best efforts.”
He paused for a moment. “You almost got me on the way to Gorham, though. Your pal Kunkle switched cars at the last minute; I’d planted a radio in his. Still, it worked out.”
I thought of Kunkle’s shattered arm. “How? We didn’t see any cars.”
“I followed you with my lights off. I latched onto your taillights and hoped to hell you wouldn’t lead me straight into a ditch. I’ll credit you that much-that was one time in my life I thought I might lose the game… almost lost control.”
“Like when you beat up Susan Lucey?”
His face lost its almost meditative look. “You’re a lousy conversationalist, you know that? Besides, it’s a little late to be probing the dark recesses of my soul.” He looked at his watch again. “In fact, I’d say time’s up.”
The crossbow moved slightly in his hand.
I too knew time was up. Now-finally-I was in a position to stop him before he did any more damage. Sore damatill I hesitated. “You killed the man who murdered your daughter. What does this guy matter? He was going to marry her, for Christ’s sake.”
Stark half smiled, “Jesus-what a thought. No, I like things the way they are. I kill him, you kill me-maybe. That’s neat and tidy; and if you’re not fast enough, I live to play a different kind of game for a while.”
“I will shoot.”
“As soon as you published my identity, I was dead anyway-I have ‘friends’ in high places.”
“I could shoot you now, save Teicher, and ruin it for you.”
He smiled. “I don’t think so.”
So that was that. No gray areas. Just yes or no. The years I’d spent struggling for alternate choices were useless to me now. I was back to where I’d started as a rookie cop, back to when my thinking shared the same narrow ledge as Stark’s. My gun felt huge and awkward-a bloody steel monument to stupidity. I barely felt its recoil when I fired.
The arrow flew as my bullet hit him high in the chest and I heard Teicher scream from the chair. Stark slammed against the doorframe and momentarily stood there, motionless, his eyes locked onto mine; then they closed, his body relaxed, and he slid to the floor.
Keeping my gun on him, I knelt by his side and felt for a pulse. There was none. I could hear noises outside: slamming car doors, the sound of broken glass. I walked over to Teicher, who was now whimpering. The arrow had gone through his right thigh and had pinned him to the chair.
“My God. It hurts, it hurts. Jesus, it hurts.”
I laid my hand on his shoulder. My brain was almost totally numb. “Be grateful. It’s a sign you’re alive.”
He stopped for a second and looked at me.
“Sorry. I’ll get some help for you.”
I left him to let the others in, but I paused at the hallway door and looked at Stark again, curled up like a sleeping child on the floor. Fate or divine guidance or whatever had put my bullet in his heart. He had the contented look of a man who’d lived a clean and simple life and who’d left with his affairs fully in order, with no doubts and no regrets.
I envied him all of that.