I got the box out of the back, and walked around the corner of the dry cleaners and set up between a garage and a hedge of a house down the street from Benson's apartment. I could see the door, the parking lot, and just the edge of the street, some two hundred yards away. I waited in the growing darkness, hoping I could see well enough under the streetlights to get a good look at him.
They arrived five or six minutes after I had. As the car pulled up, I slipped the rifle out of the box, braced myself against a corner of the garage, and looked at the car through the scope. Still enough light. Benson got out of the car, wobbled on his bad leg, then leaned back into the car to say something. For a moment, he was unmoving.
I took the moment, and shot him.
LuEllen always claims that you can get away with one or two loud noises: one or two shots, one large mechanical clunk, whatever. The first loud noise will cause people to wonder what it is; if it's not repeated, they'll stop wondering. That's the theory.
I didn't look down toward Benson after I fired. I simply eased back down, slipped the gun in the bookcase box, and backed away from the shooting scene, keeping the garage between myself and whatever was happening in front of Benson's apartment.
At the dry cleaner's, I put the box in the trunk, backed out of the parking lot, and drove away. As I passed the end of Benson's street, I looked down toward his house and saw two people on his lawn, looking down at what was apparently Benson's body, and a third person, a woman, running across the street with a big yellow dog in front of her, on a leash, I thought.
I kept going. Out to the Interstate, back to the motel. I carried the box inside, got the gun out, wiped it down, put it back in the box, carried it back out to the car. As long as I had the gun, I could be in trouble. I drove slowly, carefully, out of Dallas, north, until I was well into the countryside, stopping only once, to buy a cheap shovel. A half-hour north of the city, I turned off on a country road, drove until I found a nice patch of trees, got out of the car, and buried the AK a couple of feet down, kicking some dead leaves over the raw soil. Back on the highway, two or three miles from the gun's grave, I wiped the shovel and tossed it out the window into the roadside ditch.
Shooting somebody from ambush is not exactly the ail-American way of doing things, but I was more intent on survival than etiquette. When I got back toward Dallas, I called the Denton Police Department non-emergency line. A woman answered"Denton Police, can I help you?"and I said, "Hi, this is Jack Hersh from the Morning News. Can you tell me who's handling that shooting a couple of days ago at the Eighty-Eight Motel?"
"I, uh, think that's Sergeant Frederick. He's out right now."
"I'll check back," I said. "What's Sergeant Frederick's first name?"
"Hal."
"Thank you."
Got back to Bobby.
still trouble?
yes. busted curtis meany. say he will chain to many more hackers. never heard of him. you?
no. have they busted anybody we know?
not since ladyfingers.
need home phone number for sergeant hal frederick of denton police department.
wait one.
A moment later, he was back with the unlisted number. Bobby is very deep in the telephone system.
what happens?
working. any more on satellites?
yes. but may miss necessary info. possibly can reconstruct. do you have access to ammath docs?
No.
will try to crack computers from here.
take care. they're watching.
and you take care.
I stopped once more before heading back to the motel. From an outside phone, I called Hal Frederick's number. He answered on the fourth ring, sounding cranky. "Yeah?"
"Sergeant Frederick? I have a tip for you."
"Who is this?" Even crankier.
"A benefactor. You're investigating the shooting at the Eighty-Eight Motel. About two hours ago, there was a shooting in Dallas, a man named Lester Benson. He's been taken to the hospital with a wound in the thigh. If you check, you will find that he has another recent bullet wound in one leg. He was the man who was shot running out of the Eighty-Eight after the murder. If you check his blood DNA against the blood you found in the parking lot, you will find a match."
"Who is this?"
"Remember the name. Lester Benson. He was admitted to the hospital a couple of hours ago. The Dallas police should have the details," I said, and dropped the phone back on the hook.
If that didn't create some serious heat, I'd just pack up and head home.
I had no more ideas.
CHAPTER 25
ST. JOHN CORBEIL
Corbeil smeared his face and his hands, pulled the black hat on his head, and shuffled across the parking lot to the Emergency Room at Health North. Inside, a nurse behind the reception station glanced at him, an old man, maybe blackcertainly black, with the X baseball hat on his headas he looked uncertainly around and then shuffled down toward the patient rooms.
"Excuse me?" she asked. "Are you looking for somebody?"
"Bafroom," Corbeil said. "Men's room."
"Do you have a family member here?"
"My wife. Upstairs. Kicked m' ass out 'fore I could pee." Corbeil had to keep it short: he didn't sound that much like an old black man.
The nurse bought it. "All right, then. Just straight down the hall. On your right." She went back to her paperwork, and Corbeil shuffled down the hall.
Took the elevator, up four floors, turned out in the hallway, and walked down to the right. Room 411. The door was shut, but not locked. He stepped inside. Hart had said there was only one bed.
One bed with a man sleeping. In the ambient light from the window, he could see Benson lying on his back, one leg suspended in a trapeze, a saline drip hooked into his arm. Corbeil reached into his pocket, took out the cigar tube, slipped out the needle inside, jabbed it into the saline bag, and emptied it. Enough sedative to kill an elephant.
Well, he thought, looking down at Benson, he was supposed to be sleeping.
He couldn't hang around. He had a long way to go this night.
Down the elevator, out through the Emergency Room entrance, driving back home. Scrubbing his face with clean-up packs from a barbecue joint, in case he met somebody in his apartment stairwell. But he met no one.
He glanced at his watch: A long way to go. In the bathroom, he washed his face and hands, scrubbed away the last of the Cover Mark. After drying his hands, he got the pistol from the dresserdetoured around the living room on the way out, unwilling to look at the wrecked walland headed for Hart's place. Hart was expecting him. Had to talk about the next move.
Hart was worried. "I don't know if it'll hold," he said. "I don't know if Benson will hold."
"Take it easy," Corbeil said. They were in Hart's study, a converted family room. In some ways, it aped Corbeil's study: a leather chair, but not quite as sleek. Books, but not as many, and with a narrow range: karate, guns, camping, travel.
Corbeil found it irritating. "If he's caught, he knows that we're his only chance. Giving us away won't help him: he'll wind up with a public defender instead of the best defense money can buy."
"I'm not sure he's that smart," Hart said. He dropped into the leather chair, brooding. Corbeil paced in a lazy circle. As he passed Hart, he took the pistol out of his pocket, paused, and, moving unhurriedly so the motion wouldn't catch Hart's eye, put the muzzle next to the other man's temple and pulled the trigger.
Crack!
Hart slumped. Corbeil waited a moment, listeningrealized that if there were anything to hear, he probably wouldn't, being deafened by the shotthen reached for Hart's throat, pressed his fingers just under his jawbone. No pulse. He hadn't expected any. William Hart was thoroughly dead.
All right. Now: one more shot, with Hart's finger in the trigger. the Webster's should do as a backstop. He fired again, into the heavy hardback dictionary. The little.380 slug penetrated to page 480, and stopped. Corbeil picked up one of the two ejected shells, carefully added one loaded shell to the top of the gun's magazine, pressed the shell against Hart's thumb, replaced the magazine, and dropped the gun on the floor next to the chair.