“But Rowland didn’t do anything to him.”
“Rowland hired him to do the job in the restaurant. He did it, so Rowland was a satisfied customer. How is he supposed to know that Rowland wasn’t the one who told me how to get in touch with the people in Cincinnati? He can’t know, but now he doesn’t have to wonder.”
Millikan shook his head. “Maybe we should exchange our tickets and go to Louisville while we can still get a look at the scene.”
“Too late,” said Prescott. “No point in going where he was this morning. We’ve got to go to the place where he’ll be tonight.”
When the plane arrived in St. Louis, the sun was already low. Prescott and Millikan had barely spoken to each other. Prescott had spent much of the time on the airplane telephone trying to call Hobart, then Jean, then Hobart again. Millikan had, at first, not been able to reach anyone in the St. Louis police department who knew him. He had not convinced anyone else that he was expert enough to be able to predict that a killer could be expected at Nolan’s Paddock Club. Finally, he had managed to get a captain on the phone who seemed to have some sympathy for his reasoning, but the captain had not been willing to describe to Millikan what, precisely, he was going to do.
The two men strode along the boarding tunnel. Millikan said, “I told the captain the flight number and arrival time, so there will probably be somebody here to get a copy of the picture for the plainclothes guys.”
As they emerged from the tunnel into the waiting area, he pulled Prescott to the side to let the other travelers pass, while he turned his head in every direction, searching for a uniform.
“It doesn’t look like they’re eagerly waiting for us,” said Prescott, and began to walk quickly up the concourse.
Millikan had to trot to catch up. He said, “They could have asked the Buffalo police to fax the picture to them. They might already have it, and be at the bar looking for him.”
“We’ll find out,” said Prescott.
Their pace took them quickly down to the car-rental counter. Prescott had called to reserve a car, so it took only a few minutes before they were on the road. Prescott drove with a quiet determination, always pushing slightly faster than the traffic, weaving in and out when he had to.
When they pulled into sight of the building, all traces of daylight were gone, and the big green sign that said NOLAN’S PADDOCK CLUB was a bright splash of electric color against a black sky. The huge parking lot was already lined with cars, pickup trucks, and utility vehicles. “Is it always this busy?” asked Millikan.
“It’s filling up a little early,” said Prescott. “Let’s hope all the extra cars belong to your undercover cops.”
He pulled into the lot and found a space in nearly the last row of cars facing the side of the building in a dimly lighted sector two hundred feet away. Both men got out. Prescott took another look around the lot, then handed Millikan a few copies of the picture and took a few for himself. He leaned into the car as though he’d forgotten something, but Millikan could see he was collecting the parts of a gun from several places in his suitcase, and assembling it.
Millikan scanned the lot as he spoke. “How do you want to do this?”
Prescott said, “Split up. You go in, stay close to the bar and away from the stage, where you can watch the front door. I’ll try to get in another way and circulate. If you spot a cop, make sure he gets the picture.”
“Right.” Millikan turned and set off for the front door. This was a moment when he had unexpected thoughts. He had a vivid memory of leaving the police force so many years ago. His strongest sensa-tion had been relief: he was never again going to have to walk through the door of an unfamiliar building feeling the weight of a loaded pistol on his body, looking for a face. The memory brought with it a judgment he could only identify as a disappointment in himself. He had struggled all that way—through college, graduate school, the job as a professor —only to be jerked right back in a day. He felt that he should have known he would be doing this again. He should never have let himself imagine it was behind him, or that it ever could be.
As he walked, he was almost unconsciously remembering tactics, preparing himself. If undercover cops were here, he would have to rely on them to spot him and find a way to identify themselves to him. If they were any good at all, he would not be able to pick them out. He had to concentrate on seeing the killer, identifying him first from his picture, and getting around behind him. He knew that tonight was a perfect occasion for one of his nightmares from the old days to come to pass: that he would be in a closed space, squeezed in a crowd of a couple of hundred people, and the killer would open fire.
Millikan acknowledged the thought and set it aside—still there, but not something he could devote any of his consciousness to right now. He had to go in there, quickly scan all the faces that he could see, and then move into a dim spot where he could watch for the right one.
The music grew louder as Millikan stepped toward the building. There was a glow in the doorway, a reddish tint to the shapes he could see, as though the place he was about to enter were on fire. Three big men in jeans, T- shirts, and work boots were walking toward the door from his right. He judged that they had been working at some kind of construction site until dark, and that it must be at least thirty miles away if they had just arrived. He made sure he reached the threshold after they did and edged in behind them, using their bulk as a way to shield himself from view for a few seconds while his eyes ranged the faces of the crowd ahead, searching for the one right configuration of features.
Prescott studied the small, unmarked metal door at the side of the building. It was the one where he had seen Jeanie and Hobart watching him depart one afternoon three months ago. It was closed, and he was sure it was supposed to be rigged not to open from the outside. Its purpose was as a fire exit, not an entrance. But Prescott had learned early in life that a great many of the things that were supposed to operate under strict rules did not. When Jean and Hobart had come out that day, no alarm had sounded.
He went to the door, tested the thumb latch, and tugged the handle. He remembered the kitchen door at the rear of the restaurant in Louisville. This one reminded him of it. He was not absolutely certain that the two were identical, but they were at least similar. In Louisville, the killer had gone back there and found the door propped open. He had slipped inside and killed the cook. But the part of that night that mattered to Prescott right now was not what the killer had done. It was what he had been expecting to do. The killer had locked and chained the front door of the restaurant, and only then had gone to the rear of the building. Even if he had come up the alley earlier and seen that the door was propped open, he could not have known that it would stay open. He had been certain —not guessed, but known—that if he had come back and found it locked, he would be able to open it.
Prescott turned his head to survey the parking lot. He could see no shape of a head in any of the cars or trucks on this side of the building, and for the moment, there was no sign of a man on foot. He knelt by the door, extracted the pick and tension wrench he carried in his wallet, and worked on the lock. It took only a moment to line up the pins along the cylinder, but he did not open the door. He stood, leaned casually against the wall as he returned the pick and tension wrench to his wallet, shifted the pistol in his belt at the small of his back to make it easier to reach, and surveyed the parking lot again.
Prescott moved his right hand to his back, opened the door with his left, and stepped inside. The concrete hallway was unoccupied. The music was louder, the thumping bass beat that some of the girls liked to dance to because it kept them on rhythm when the lounge was full and the crowd was noisy. He took his first steps along the hallway. To his right was the door to the dancers’ dressing room. His face was familiar at Nolan’s. If he stepped in and the killer was not there, he could apologize drunkenly that he had been looking for Jeanie while he backed out. If the killer was there, Prescott’s sudden appearance might be enough of an edge. He put his left hand on the knob, held the gun under his coat, and pushed.
The door opened a couple of inches and he heard a woman’s voice. “So he moves out, and what does he take with him?”
Another woman’s voice said, “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. The dog. The very same dog that he’s been whining and complaining about for three months. Supposedly the reason he was leaving in the first place.”
Prescott closed the door quietly and went on. He had no idea who the woman was, but he recognized that the voice had no tension in it. She was talking to one of the other dancers. There was no chance that if the killer had chosen to hide in there, one of them would not have noticed him.
He stopped at the entrance to the stage. He would have liked to try to check the crowd from behind the black curtain, but he knew it was too risky. The dancers sometimes did it, but that was the reason he knew it was difficult to do without being seen. The girls knew that it didn’t matter if the customers saw the quick sparkle of a
