LITMIR.BIZ

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lurched forward, tires squealing.

      A light went on in the apartment on Jack’s left, and then a woman’s head poked out the door. She looked at him with terror in her eyes.

      “Call 911,” he said. “Now.”

      Her head snapped back and the door slammed shut, and he could hear the dead bolt click as he finally reached the parking lot. He hoped the woman would do as he asked, but from the way Roy looked, she didn’t have to rush. Jack could see the unnatural attitude of the body, the crooked way Roy’s head lay.

      Cursing his luck, he made his way over, and as he moved next to Roy he saw the dark pool of blood blossom around the motionless arms and chest. A man’s life seeping into the filthy asphalt.

      Then he saw a movement. One he hadn’t expected. Roy’s head tilted to the left, and Jack saw his eyes open, then close. Jack bent his good leg, holding on to the cane with all his might as he eased down to his knees. It hurt like hell, but Roy was alive. Trying to say something.

      “Protect her…” he said, his voice as whispery as a ghost. “Get the money. Don’t…” He stopped, frozen in a seizure, then relaxing nearer to death. “The cops…Don’t…”

      The last word was drowned in a sickening gurgle, and Roy was gone. Jack put his hand to Roy’s neck, checking the jugular for a pulse. Nothing. Stone-cold nothing.

      Jack looked back at the apartment building. Several lights were on now, although no one had come outside. They all stayed behind their plywood doors, as if that could keep them safe. He heard a distant siren, which, he supposed, was all he had a right to expect.

      If he hadn’t been caught so off guard, he never would have let Roy leave his kid behind. He’d never have let Roy leave at all, at least not until he understood what was going on. But he had been caught, and he had taken the kid and let the father go. So while everyone else in the building stayed inside, peeking through parted curtains, he was left with a kid, a body and one hell of a question. Why had the cops gunned down Roy Chandler in cold blood?

      It took him a couple of awkward minutes to stand again. By that time, a patrol car, familiar blue, arrived. The car stopped a couple of hundred feet away, so the cops wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. The doors opened and Jack recognized Bill Haggart immediately, just from the way the man stood.

      Haggart was an old-timer who’d never managed to pass the sergeant’s exam. He’d gotten Jack out of a scrape or two through the years, and while Jack didn’t consider him the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he was a good cop who understood the street.

      “Bored, were you?” Haggart said as he gave Roy’s body a once-over.

      “Yeah,” Jack said, wishing like hell he could sit down. “Finished all my crossword puzzles.”

      Jack didn’t know the driver of the patrol car well. Fetzer was his name. Paul Fetzer. Young guy, Nordic-looking with his white-blond hair and pale skin. Jack had heard he was a hot dog, looking to get into homicide, but just like everyone else, he needed to do his time. Putting him with Haggart was probably good for both of them.

      “What happened?” Paul asked, moving next to Haggart. “You know him?”

      “He lives in the building,” Jack said. “I’ve seen him around.”

      “You see who did this?” Haggart asked, his voice dramatically sharper now that Paul was listening.

      Jack decided right then that he wasn’t going to tell them about the unmarked car. He wasn’t sure why, just a feeling. He’d learned to listen to his gut reactions. At least most of the time. The bullet in his hip was a good reminder of what happened when he didn’t. “I saw a car. It was too dark to make out anything much. It was a sedan, late model. They used a silencer. I heard two shots.”

      “They?” Paul repeated. “There was more than one?”

      Jack nodded. “Driver and passenger. Both males. I couldn’t see if they were Caucasians. The light hit the car wrong, and all I got were shadows. I couldn’t run after them to get the license plate.”

      “Pardon me for being blunt,” Haggart said, “but you look like shit.”

      “Thanks.”

      “I mean it. The ambulance should be here any second. Maybe you should let the paramedics take a look at you.”

      “I’m fine. You might as well call them off. Get someone from the medical examiner’s office down here.”

      “Did you touch anything?” Paul asked as he moved closer to Roy and crouched down. He pulled out his flashlight, and focused the beam on Roy’s chest. It looked to Jack like it had been a large-caliber weapon. There was a hell of a lot of damage.

      “I touched his neck for a pulse,” Jack said. “That’s it.”

      “How’d you happen to see this?” Haggart asked.

      “Insomnia,” Jack answered, not lying exactly. Just not telling the whole story.

      “Out for a walk at this time of night?”

      He shook his head. “I heard something. I came outside, saw the car, heard the shots. By the time I made it down the stairs, Roy here was dead and the car was long gone.”

      “Roy what?”

      “Chandler. I think he lived on the second floor. Around back.”

      The ambulance came screaming into the parking lot, but the driver cut the siren immediately, filling the night with an echo of sadness. Jack shifted a bit, which was a mistake. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath.

      Haggart moved closer to him, probably worried that he was goning to fall on his face. “Why don’t you go on up,” he said, his voice concerned. “We can take care of things down here. We know where to find you tomorrow.”

      Jack didn’t take long to decide. He needed to sit down. Take a pill. Make sure the kid upstairs hadn’t fallen off the couch. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be around.”

      A female paramedic Jack didn’t know circled the police car and knelt beside Roy. She put her kit next to her knee and gestured to Paul to back off. The young cop did as she asked, but he didn’t seem real happy to be brushed aside.

      Jack didn’t give a damn. He had his own problems. He nodded to Haggart, then started the long voyage home. Walking across the parking lot was hard enough. The stairs were going to be murder.

      THE KID WAS STILL SLEEPING when he got back. After three pain pills and about half an hour of sitting still on the lounger, Jack was able to stand again. He crossed to the girl, noticing for the first time that she had a doll clutched in her right hand. It wasn’t a very nice doll. The hair was all ratty, with big holes in the scalp where the strands had been tied. One eye was open, the other closed in a perpetual wink. There was a stain on the doll’s cheek that looked like blue ink.

      What a damn mess. He didn’t like dirty cops, and he didn’t like cryptic deathbed messages, and he didn’t like the fact that the sun was going to rise any minute and he hadn’t slept. The kid was going to wake up eventually, and she’d want to know where her parents were, and she’d cry and carry on and…oh, hell. Jack made it back to the lounger and sank gratefully onto the cushion. The smart thing to do was call family services as soon as possible. Go to the captain and tell him what he heard and what he saw. End this thing before it went any further.

      Even if there was a crime to be solved, he wasn’t the man to solve it. Not anymore. Not with this body. All he was good for was watching daytime television.

      HE WOKE UP to a pair of blue eyes. Big round blue eyes, inches from his face. The kid was up and she’d climbed onto his lap, somehow avoiding his bad hip. One inch to the right, and he’d have been one sorry ex-cop.

      “Where’s my daddy?”

      The girl had her doll under one arm and her quilt under the other. She looked

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