Cop Town (45 page)

“Kate!” Maggie screamed, running toward the building on the right.

She knew Kate would follow. Maggie jumped over Jake Coffee’s body. She didn’t stop once they were inside. She ran through the first open doorway she could find. The room was compact, obviously a front office. Filing cabinets were laid on their sides. Paper littered the floor.

Maggie hurtled through the room, Kate close on her heels. She ran through another open doorway. They were in the main part of the office building. The space was as large as an aircraft hangar. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high. The back wall was fifty feet away. The width of the room was twice that. Rusted metal trestles crisscrossed the air. Hundreds of desks were stacked two and three deep in the middle of the floor. Broken chairs and metal bookshelves lined the walls.

Maggie pulled Kate behind an overturned desk. They pressed their backs against the top. They said nothing for the first twenty seconds.
They were breathing too hard. Maggie’s heart was flipping in her chest. Her head was ringing. Her jaw still felt loose where Terry had punched her in the face.

She looked down. Kate was holding her hand. Her radio was on. Gunfire from outside echoed through the speaker. Men were yelling at dispatch for help. The helicopter pilot was screaming about taking a hit. Maggie reached behind Kate’s back and turned off the transmitter.

“Jake Coffee is dead,” Kate mumbled. “He’s dead. Terry’s dead. Anthony’s dead. Chic’s dead.”

“It wasn’t Jimmy,” Maggie told her. She had never been more certain of anything in her life. “It wasn’t him.”

Kate nodded. “I know.”

Maggie squeezed her hand. There was a lull in the trains. The helicopter’s chopping blades started to recede. Shots were still being fired at the front of the building.

They couldn’t hide here, not least of all because the men outside might need their help. Maggie looked around the room, desperate for a way out. There were massive windows along the walls. The sun splashed like water across the hardwood floors. The glass panes were broken. The metal frames were cut into squares that were too narrow for escape. And any one of them would offer a clear view for the Shooter if he decided to take out the two cops cowering behind an overturned desk. Their position in the vast, open space was almost worse than the street.

“Over there.” Kate pointed to the back of the room.

Maggie saw another stack of desks in the far right corner. There was a door beside them. Metal. No window. Rusted red hinges. Maggie had never been this far into the buildings. She didn’t know where the doorway would lead, or if someone was waiting for them on the other side.

Kate startled like a cat. She crouched down lower. Her hand covered her head. “Did you hear that?” She was panting again. “I heard something. From the other office. From the front of the room.”

Maggie reached for her revolver and found her empty holster. She had to use Kate’s gun again. She’d been issued a replacement yesterday.
Cleaning oil covered the grip. The weapon had never been fired. Was the pin properly aligned? Were the sights true? Would the firing mechanism jam?

There was no easy way to find out.

Maggie tightened her hand around the revolver. She cocked the hammer. Her heart was beating so hard that she felt it inside her tongue. She had to make herself move. Quickly, she turned around and peered over the desk. She checked the doorway at the front of the room.

Empty.

Or maybe not.

There was a shadow across the open doorway. The bright sunlight from the front office windows made the lines crisp. Was the shadow from a filing cabinet? A chair? Another overturned desk? Maggie stared at the shaded area so long that her vision blurred. She blinked her eyes to clear them.

The shadow moved.

Someone was on the other side of the door. He had his back to the wall. And then he didn’t. His shadow spread up the opposite wall as he pressed his shoulder to the doorjamb. There was something in his hand. Something long and skinny that looked a lot like a gun.

Maggie stood up before her shaking legs made her slump down. Her heart beat up her neck and into her skull. Every instinct was telling her to hide, but she couldn’t give in to emotion right now.

She walked quickly and quietly across the room. If the Shooter was behind the doorjamb, her only advantage was to be to his left rather than straight in front of him. She silently begged Kate to keep her head down, just as she silently begged whatever god was listening to not let either of them get shot in the face.

Maggie heard her shoe squeak against a wooden floorboard.

She stopped. How had she been able to hear that?

The trains weren’t running. The floor had stopped vibrating. Someone had halted the rail traffic. The lack of rumble was almost deafening.

Gunshot.

Maggie ducked, but the sound had come from outside. Two seconds later, the shot was returned.

Maggie came out of her crouch. She looked for the shadow behind the door. He was gone. Or maybe he had fired his gun at someone in the street.

Behind her, Kate gasped.

Maggie swung around. Chip Bixby stood a few feet away from Kate. He had a gun in his hand—a hogleg, an Old West–style six-shooter that could take off a man’s head at twenty paces. The gun was pointed toward the ground. Maggie’s gun was pointed at his chest.

Chip glared at her until she lowered the revolver. He pulled Kate up by the arm and shoved her toward the rear exit. He waved for Maggie to follow. She did as she was told. Maybe Chip knew a back way out. Maybe they could sneak around to the front of the building and take the Shooter by surprise. Or they could go upstairs and give cover to the men in the street. Even now, Maggie could hear the occasional stray gunfire. Rick was out there. He had lost his partner. Maggie wasn’t going to be responsible for him losing his life.

She walked backward toward Chip. Kate had already disappeared behind the rear door. Chip was standing in front of it, his hogleg trained on the only other doorway in the room. His eyes slid back and forth between the open windows and the entrance. Sweat poured down his face. The front of his shirt was stuck to his chest. He waved for her to hurry.

Maggie wanted to run toward the exit, but she forced herself to appear calm. Her revolver was straight out in front of her. She covered the space in front of her. Her eyes narrowed onto the same doorway Chip was drawing down on. She was six feet from the exit when the shadow came back.

This time, the shadow was more than a shadow. The muzzle of a gun stuck around the corner. Even from a distance, Maggie could see the sights sticking up from the tip of the revolver.

And the black-gloved hand that held the weapon.

Chip grabbed her collar and pulled her behind the door. Maggie fell
back against the wall. They were in a stairwell that went straight up the back of the building. The emergency exit. The door to the outside wasn’t just locked, it was chained. She pushed as hard as she could. The chains rattled. A crack of light showed. There was not enough space for them to squeeze through.

“Maggie,” Kate whispered. She was already halfway up the stairs. She stood on the landing. Her nightstick was out. She held it low and angled the way that Maggie had shown her. “This way.”

Chip fired the hogleg. The air rattled with the sound. He ducked behind the door to use it as a shield. “Go!”

Fear took over. Maggie bolted up the stairs. She heard a bullet thunk into the metal door. The Shooter was coming after them. Vomit roiled into her mouth. She fought back the panic even as her brain was yelling at her to slow down, to think, to be logical. The stairwell was poured concrete. The only light came from the open floors at every other landing. Each new landing would represent a different tomb in which to trap them.

“Kate!” Maggie yelled. She was running straight up. She wasn’t stopping.

The hogleg fired again. The boom echoed like cannon fire. The responding pop was a smaller-caliber weapon. Two different sounds. Two different guns.

Maggie rounded the next floor and stopped. She strained to hear something other than the blood rushing through her ears. Kate was still running at least one floor above. There were heavier footsteps on the stairs below her. One set? Two? Three? Everything echoed. Heavy breathing. Scuffing feet. Was it Chip? Was it the Shooter? Was it the mysterious shadow from the doorway?

She crouched with her gun out in front of her. Her finger almost twitched when Chip rounded the corner. He waved for her to keep going. Maggie didn’t hesitate. She ran up the stairs. The pop of the revolver echoed in her ears. A chunk of concrete splintered near her head. There was another pop. The air shimmered. The stairs felt like they were crumbling under her feet.

Maggie took the next flight at a crouch. She stopped on the landing and pressed her back against the wall. Kate’s footsteps had slowed. She was getting tired. Maggie was the opposite. Her heart was hammering. Her guts felt twisted. She couldn’t get her breathing under control. She was going to hyperventilate if she didn’t slow it down.

For just a second, she closed her eyes. She concentrated on controlling the air going into and out of her lungs.

Jake Coffee.

Maggie couldn’t get the man’s face out of her head. The bullet hole that unblinkingly stared back. Rick’s forlorn expression when he told her what had happened.

Jake’s girlfriend would get the news. His baby brother, his mother and father, his whole family would hear about what had been done to him. Executed in the street. His pants pulled down.

Maggie opened her eyes.

Why were Jake’s pants pulled down?

The hogleg went off. The revolver returned fire. They were close. Too close.

Maggie ran up another flight of stairs. She stopped again, straining to make out sounds. There was a slow shuffling from above. Why was Kate going up at all? Had she panicked, or had Chip told her to keep going to the roof? They were three against one with two guns. Why run up the stairs when they could stake out a better tactical position on any one of the floors? Chip had run the SWAT team before he walked away. He taught tactical support at the academy. He knew the procedures better than all of them put together.

Maggie felt her lips part.

Chip knew their routines. He knew all of their codes.

He had been an Army Ranger in the jungles of Gaudalcanal.

He didn’t take a breath without assessing the tactical advantages.

And he hadn’t been right since Edward Spivey walked. Everybody knew Chip was screwing a prostitute when his partner was murdered. The guilt was a heavy burden, but Spivey’s acquittal had nearly broken him. Over the last few months, Chip had been showing up at the house
unannounced, dragging Jimmy out of bed, sometimes calling Terry to come over, so he could rehash the good old days he’d had with Duke Abbott.

Every cop loved telling stories, but Chip somehow managed to make them sound like checklists. He had the annoying habit of listing things out. Steps he and Duke took to isolate the aggressor. Options they had explored when choosing their weapons. Chip talked about their targets like they were his prey. The deranged husband who took his wife hostage. The bank robber who hunkered down in the back of a Cadillac. The teenager who got high on PCP and chased after his mother with a hatchet.

They were all crazy, Chip claimed. But that was okay. He was crazy, too.

Crazy like a fox.

The hogleg fired, just like it did every time Maggie stopped. Just like it had downstairs when Maggie had tried to break the chains on the locked exit door.

Chip had been first on the scene. All the information about what happened to Jake Coffee would have flowed from his mouth. He had told Terry that the Shooter was in the other building, that the shots had come from the third floor. Meanwhile, Chip had staked out a spot across from the action.

There was no other way to explain his sudden appearance downstairs. Maggie and Kate had come through the front door. The exit was barred, the windows too narrow for escape. The shadow they had seen in the doorway was probably cast by a cop who’d been trying to help. The hogleg had likely stopped him cold, just like the rifle shot had stopped Terry. Maggie could practically see it in her mind’s eye: Chip leaning out the first-floor window, aiming down on Terry out in the street.

But why shoot Terry? Maggie didn’t have to consider the question for long. In all of Chip’s stories, he was the one who always took the shot. He wouldn’t let Terry get the kill. They were both the same kind of man, but only one of them could be in charge.

The hogleg fired.

Maggie didn’t startle this time. Instead, she gripped her revolver with both hands and pointed it down the stairs.

Chip had lured Jake Coffee to the rail yard, and now he was trying to get Kate and Maggie up to the roof.

The hogleg fired again. Then the revolver. Or maybe it wasn’t a revolver. Maybe it was a .25 caliber Saturday night special.

Maggie heard Kate’s footsteps again. She looked up. The light was sharp. Kate was almost to the top. Slowly, Maggie climbed to the next landing. Sunlight. The roof door. She couldn’t go down. The only option was up.

She took the last flight of stairs full on. Maggie wasn’t stupid enough to think that Chip wanted her on that roof. She would be collateral. It was Kate he was after. Like all the other victims, Kate fit the kill criteria; everything about her said she didn’t belong. She was a woman. She was independent. She was a Jew.

Maggie’s only chance to save them both was to get a tactical advantage. The stairwell was a deathtrap. She needed to be waiting for Chip the minute he came through the roof door. The afternoon sun would blind him. Her gun would do the rest.

She looked up. She could almost touch it. Blue sky. The flat white asphalt of the roof. She raced toward the open door at the top of the stairs.

And then an arm snared around her neck. Maggie fell back. The warm muzzle of the hogleg pressed against her temple.

Chip said, “Drop the gun.”

Maggie hesitated.

“Do it.”

She threw the revolver as hard as she could out the door.