Artist (24 page)

“No.”

“If he’s still got it, we don’t want him in that club. Back off and give him some room. We’ll try and get him if he comes out the back.”

Watt went into the club in a running limp, his left ankle on fire. He’d jammed it under the seat somehow. He could feel it swelling already, knew he had to keep moving before he was completely crippled. He fought against the people coming out, drawn by the news of the collisions. The din inside the cub was deafening as the band cranked out a cover. Across the room, Watt saw an oval window in a swinging door. It had to be a kitchen or maybe some kind of prep room. He headed that way, pushing dancers aside, hoping for a rear exit. A few of the dancers protested, most ignored him.

Once through the door, he found himself in a long room, fluorescent lights overhead, a polished steel table running almost the whole length. Watt struggled toward the rear, now dragging his ankle. It felt like shards of bone were grinding in the joint. His shoe was getting tight, the pain and swelling working it’s way into his calf.  The room took a jog to the right after the table, and there it was, a red exit light hanging over a door with an emergency exit bar waist high. He almost sobbed with relief. Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of here.

DeSalvo, radio in one hand, revolver held low in t
he other, scanned the club. If Watt was in here, he wasn’t drawing any attention. The band rocked on, working their way through a medley of 60’s hits. The dance floor was packed with gyrating bodies. Couples lined the bar three deep in places, a lucky few planted in their seats. DeSalvo grabbed a waitress coming by with a tray of empty glasses, flashed his badge.

“Is there a back door?” He had to shout to make himself heard. The waitress looked at the badge, nodded, pointed past the dance floor where DeSalvo could see a set of swinging doors vaguely outlined in the wall. Might as well try there, he thought. If Watt was in here he would be impossible to find right now. The fire alarm went off.

Tires squealing, Dupond and Cassie turned left off Downman, shot down a block, hooked right. The street ended in a dead end. The neighborhood was lower middle class, the driveways held older cars. Toys littered every other lawn and pickups parked along the streets, the beds carrying toolboxes and cargo rails.

“Sal,” Dupond said into the radio. He’d lost contact a minute earlier. Ahead he could see the brighter lights of the club and the neon sign of
the gas station next door. If Watt managed to get back here, he would have to make his way through backyards, or stay in the shadows of the houses. His best bet was to try to get a vehicle somehow.

“I want the neighborhood sealed off.” He was back speaking to the
dispatcher. “Get me some units. Stop every vehicle moving out of Downman Road or away from it on Hayne. I want units up and down Downman, and more a block over from….” he suddenly couldn’t think of the street they were on. It came to him again and he cautioned himself to slow down and think. “Alabama, two units on Alabama and two on Downman itself, working the houses.” The handheld crackled in his hand.

“He’s out the back already.” DeSalvo’s voice came through now. The alarm just went off. He went through a back door. There’s an employee parking lot back here.”

“Hold your spot,” said Dupond. “We’re coming.”

The parking lot behind the bar was wide, spreading out thirty yards left and right, and shallow, with enough room for two lines of cars. The first line ran across the back of the building, with a narrow lane between those cars and another line that paralleled a three-foot wooden fence. A gas station boxed in one end, a driveway allowed access from the front on the other. Cassie followed the street until she was four houses down, killing the lights as they coasted to a stop. Dupond went out immediately, crouched down beside the front fender and closed his eyes, trying to get them adjusted to the dark after the glare of the headlights.  Cassie followed a few seconds later, moving up into a driveway where she ducked behind a Volkswagen. Spots danced in front of her eyes.

Watt pushed through the door, immediately setting off the alarm. A narrow concrete parking lot, broken and uneven, ran the length of the building. He quickly assessed the situation. Left meant taking the long driveway back up front. He thought about it, thinking they couldn’t have had enough time to send someone in and keep someone outside. He went right, opting for going over the fence and taking his chances in the neighborhood. He could see the roofline of the houses over the fence. He might be able to make his way out, find a car. Limping, he reached the corner of the lot, braced his back up against the back wall of the service station. It was going to take both hands to pull himself over. The gun went into his waistband. Watt managed pull himself up, his waist even with the fence, flopped the top half of his body over. His weight carried him the rest of the way and when he hit the ground, his left foot landed hard enough to make him see stars. The leg was almost useless now. He heard yelling, ignored it, and half crawled, half scuttled toward the houses. More yelling. This time he heard his name.

Dupond opened his eyes in time to see a figure coming over the fence, dropping hard to the ground. Between himself and the fence were four yards, cars in driveways, a boat. The driveway of the farthest house, the one closest to the fence, was on his left. A porch light burned over the front door, enough to cast most of the driveway in shadow. His weapon already up, he hesitated. Odds were good it was Watt. Who else would be running out the back? But, it was a crowded bar, the fire alarm was blaring, a drunken kid maybe taking another way out? He yelled watt’s name.

Cassie had fewer qualms but her angle was even worse. A miss would send a bullet through the wooden fence and into the parking lot. Cursing, she took off down the sidewalk, heard Dupond coming right behind her. The figure, whoever it was, moved off to her left, disappearing behind the boat. Dupond peeled off into the street, giving himself room. Cassie continued forward, stopped momentarily behind the boat, and pushed forward. Dupond was now behind her and to the right, yelling again. She couldn’t understand him, reached the driveway of the last house and turned up.

DeSalvo finally managed to fight his way through the panicked crowd. The alarm was still going off, grating on his nerves. He went through the back door in a crouch, scanned left, then right. Nothing. He could hear Dupond yelling on the other side of the fence though, and headed directly across the narrow lot, jamming himself between the cars, his back to the fence. Dupond yelled again, trying to get Cassie to back up or something. DeSalvo was blind. He tried Dupond on the handheld but he was either too busy to answer or he’d left it behind. The detective climbed on the hood of a Ford Pinto in the corner of the lot, finally got a good look over the fence. Watt was dragging himself across the driveway, heading to a side door in the house directly behind the lot. DeSalvo could see a square frame of light in the door, curtains framing the square, two bicycles next to the door.

DeSalvo screamed Watt’s name, at the same time pulling his service weapon over the top of the fence. He yelled again and Watt turned. At the same instant, movement to his left pulled his attention away, Cassie coming up the driveway, Dupond still out in the street, still moving north, trying to get an angle. Back to Watt, who half-turned in the delay, threw up his arm and squeezed off a shot at Desalvo. The detective fired back but the blast from Watt made him flinch and the shot went wide to the right, DeSalvo’s feet went out from under him, and he crashed onto the top of the Pinto, losing his weapon. When he rolled off, the ground broke his fall and his left collarbone.

Cassie caught the whole thing in slow motion, Watt moving across the driveway, his face half illuminated with the light from the door. She was still moving up the driveway, weapon held at her side. Dupond, she knew, was further back, in the street off to her left. Someone shouted from the fence, Watt turned, fired, and the long split of flame blinded Cassie enough to make her hesitate. Whoever it was behind the fence fired back. Cassie dropped to the hard pavement of the driveway. Watt made it into the house.

Andrea Bosh was no fool. When she heard the shots outside, she knew immediately what they were. Raised in a housing project in New Jersey, Bosh followed her common law husband down to New Orleans when he got the opportunity to work the deco on a boat servicing the oilrigs in the gulf. Steady work, a good paycheck and the chance for a new start seemed like a good thing. So did the chance to get away from the bad memories of New York and the gangs.

At the first shot, she raised her head. When the second went off right outside her door, she dropped the plate she was drying, ran into the back room where her three-year old lie sleeping. Bosh ran her hands over the girl frantica
lly, checking for blood. The thought of a stray bullet taking her child away was one of her greatest fears. She heard the side door open. The door always squeaked, a noise as familiar to her as breathing. Her husband had been promising to oil it for months now. As quietly as possible, she scooped the girl up, still bundled in the blanket, and jammed herself into the narrow closet In the dark, began to pray. Kara, three years old and worn out from a day at the pool, never made a sound.

Bosh sat in the darkness listening. The intruder slammed the door closed. The floors in the house were wooden. She kept them clean and polished covered for the most part with throw rugs in high traffic areas. Footsteps passed through the kitchen, went silent, picked up again in the living room out front. He, she assumed it was a he, crossed the living room to the front. A minute passed. Now the hall, where she heard the door to her bedroom open, a few seconds later footsteps in the hall. Light blazed under the closet door. She waited, not breathing. The footsteps went back down the hall.

“I’ll decide when we go in,” said Dupond. He was facing off with Reed, jaw set. The DA sensed an opportunity for the big show, the forceful application of force, as he called it. It would look good in the newspapers. Immediately after Watt went inside, Dupond called Cassie back, surrounded the house with a ring of officers. The houses immediately adjacent, both sides and to the rear were evacuated. Uniformed officers occupied the backyards behind. Across the street, the neighbors were still being hustled out by uniformed patrolmen.

“He’s in there and we know he’s hurt,” said Dupond. “We don’t know who else is in there. The neighbor’s say there a family, a husband and wife, and a little girl. The husband works offshore according to the woman next door and she hasn’t seen him in a few days. So, it’s probably the woman and the little girl.”

“We can’t screw around with this guy,” said Reed. “You’ve done a good job here but we need to end it. I say we go in.”

“First of all,” Dupond shot back, “There’s no ‘we’ here. There’s me. We’ll have the phone number in a few minutes and we’ll try and talk him out. But I want to know who’s in there before we break down the door.”

Reed relented. If there was a woman and a little girl in there, it wouldn’t look good to get them hurt. Or worse. “Okay, we’ll do it your way for a while. If you can talk him out, fine. I’m telling you though, I’ve got the State Police crawling up my ass. They’ve footed the bill for all the extra manpower and they’re going to want to get their piece of the glory. I can hold them off for a bit, maybe a few hours. Don’t take all night.”

Reed left, working his way through the surrounding officers, shaking hands, always the politician. Cassie, who spent most of her time hanging around in the background while Reed was there, came over with coffee in Styrofoam cups.

“I should have shot him before he got in the house,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t shoot if you’re not sure. You did right. I guess I should congratulate you.”

“For what?” Cassie said.

“For nailing the guy. If it hadn’t been for you, we might not have tripped to the whole thing. You did well for a first timer. Really well.”

  The coffee was bitter and strong. Cassie took a sip, made a face, and tossed the rest on the ground. They were outside, standing on the carport across the street from the Bosh house. Dupond waved a away a mosquito. With no movement from the house, everyone had gotten lazy. Uniforms walked back and forth, with no effort to stay under cover.

“
I didn’t see it going this way though,” Cassie said.

  Before Dupond could answer, a uniformed patrol officer came out the house. The living room was functioning as a makeshift headquarters. “They’ve got the phone number. Brandt’s not here yet, though.”

Gil Brandt was the department psychologist, called in when needed. Dupond used him once on a domestic call, a father barricaded in his house with his wife and kids and a twelve-gauge shotgun.

“I’ll talk to him now,” Dupond said. He stopped, turned back to Cassie. “You know what? You talk to him.”

“Me? Why?” In all the time she’d spent on the case, Cassie never considered actually sitting down and talking with the murderer. Finding him, yes. Killing him, yes. Talking to him? Now that Dupond had fronted the idea, it had a certain appeal. Could she talk him out? More to the point, did she really want to?