Hostage For A Hood (23 page)

Bart no longer worried about being quiet. He rushed across the room and grabbed the heavy wardrobe, dragging it to the door. He spoke as he moved.

"Get at the window," he told Joyce. "I'm going to hold them as long as I can. Get at the window and get ready to jump. Hang by your hands and bend your legs a little as you drop."

She stood staring at him, and he had to yell at her again. She nodded dumbly, and at that moment there was a shattering crash as Mitty threw himself against the locked door.

"Bart," she said, "Oh Bart! I can't. I ... "

Then the sound of the siren reached their ears, coming up from the street below them.

Bart fell to the floor, yelling for Joyce to lie down as he did so. A second later a stream of bullets splintered through the panels of the door, followed by the confused noise of footsteps as those outside started for the staircase.

There was a dead silence then for a full minute.

The staccato bark of the riot gun reached his ears as Bart knelt, a couple of feet from Santino's body, holding Joyce in his arms as sobs wracked her slender body.

* * * *

Coincidence had State Trooper Domonitti on routine patrol just north of Brewster when the message came over the intercom. He was driving the interceptor, a Ford with a souped-up Merc engine and rear end, and he was accompanied by a fellow officer, which was unusual, since he nearly always drove alone. The message itself was relayed from the Hawthorn Barracks and was rather vague. Merely a standby order at an address up in Cameron Corners; they were to see that no one left the house until the arrival of the Brookside police.

Domonitti used a heavy foot on the throttle. It wasn't, however, until he hit the business district of Cameron Corners that he found it necessary to use his siren in order to get through the midday shopping traffic. There wasn't much traffic, but Domonitti was in a hurry and he didn't want to slow down until he reached his destination. He was still worrying about his momentary lapse in the matter of that missing girl, and he was anxious to make a good showing.

Domonitti had no reason to connect the message with that lapse—no reason at all until he pulled into the driveway and leaped to the ground after hearing the shots coming from the house, and then ran toward the front porch and saw the door open and the face of the one-armed man he had questioned at the road block a week previously. He recognized the face without difficulty. The only thing was that now the man no longer had a single arm. He had two arms, and in them was cradled a submachine gun.

It was Mitty who, inadvertently, saved Domonitti's life. Mitty was directly behind Cribbins, and he was carrying the suitcase with the money in it.

Cribbins, seeing the state police car and the troopers, was raising the gun. His finger was pressing the trigger when Mitty crashed into him. It spoiled Cribbins's aim and gave Trooper Domonitti the fraction of a second he needed to lift his service revolver and fire. Domonitti aimed by sheer instinct and he was lucky. The first two shots took Cribbins in the chest and he stumbled, falling to one knee and dropping the machine gun.

The trooper who had been accompanying Domonitti was already out of the police car and had taken the riot gun from behind the rear seat. The sight of the machine gun was all he needed. As Mitty swerved to avoid Cribbins's fallen body, Luder and Paula rushed out of the door behind him. Luder had a .45 in his hand and Mitty was reaching for the gun he had shoved down into the band of his trousers.

The trooper released a burst of fire from the riot gun.

Of the three of them, Paula, Mitty and Luder, Mitty was the lucky one. He was stumbling over Cribbins, so the stream of lead missed him. Luder took a single bullet in the face and was dead before his body hit the ground. Paula was hit three times and although she was seriously wounded, she'd live.

The suitcase containing the money slipped from Mitty's hand as he fell and broke open as it rolled down the porch steps and struck the gravel driveway.

The quarter-million dollars taken from the armored car made a rather impressive sight lying there in the midday sun.

It was well after three o'clock now, and they'd been sitting there, at trooper headquarters in Hawthorne, for the better part of an hour. Lieutenant Parks finally stood up and reached for his hat.

"Well," he said. "I guess that's that. It's a lucky thing I called the state troopers. I'd never have made it in time."

He turned to where Bart sat, his arm around Joyce.

"And neither would they," he said, "if you hadn't followed your hunch and broken into that house. But I guess everything is all right now. There'll probably be some kind of a reward for cleaning up the Rumplemyer job. You should certainly be in on it." He smiled. "You'll be able to get that new car for your husband—and then some, Mrs. Sherwood," he said.

Joyce looked up at him, her face still pale but her eyes sparkling.

"We're going to get Flick back first," she said. "If it takes every cent we have, we're going to find him."

Bart's arm tightened around his wife. "Finding a missing dog should be simple," he said. "Simple—compared to finding a missing wife."

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