She frowned. He was tall. Because the shirt was baggy and hung loose around his hips, she could not tell whether he was thin or fat. His hair was covered by a baseball cap.
She went after him, walking fast.
He did not seem to be in a hurry. Judy did not raise the alarm. If she got every agent here chasing some innocent tourist, that might permit the real Granger to get away. But instinct made her quicken her pace. She had to see this man’s face.
He turned the corner of the building. Judy broke into a run.
She heard Charlie’s voice in her earpiece. “Judy? What’s up?”
“Just checking someone out,” she said, panting a little. “Probably a tourist, but get a couple of guys to follow me in case I need backup.”
“You got it.”
She reached the corner and saw the Hawaiian shirt pass through a pair of tall wood doors and disappear into the Capitol Building. It seemed to her that he was walking more briskly. She looked back over her shoulder. Charlie was talking to a couple of youngsters and pointing at her.
On the side street across the garden, Michael jumped out of a parked van and came running toward her. She pointed into the building. “Did you see that guy?” she yelled.
“Yes, that was him!” he called back.
“You stay here,” she shouted. He was a civilian; she did not want him involved. “Keep the hell out of this!” She ran into the Capitol Building.
She found herself in a grand lobby with an elaborate mosaic floor. It was cool and quiet. Ahead of her was a broad carpeted staircase with an ornately carved balustrade. Did he go left or right, up or down? She chose left. The corridor dog-legged right. She raced past an elevator bank and found herself in the rotunda, a circular room with some kind of sculpture in the middle. The room extended up two floors to a richly decorated dome. Here she faced another choice: had he gone straight ahead, turned right toward the Horseshoe, or gone up the stairs on her left? She looked around. A tour group stared fearfully at her gun. She glanced up to the circular gallery at second- floor level and caught a glimpse of a brightly colored shirt.
She bounded up one of the paired grand staircases.
At the top of the stairs she looked across the gallery. On the far side was an open doorway leading to a different world, a modern corridor with strip lighting and a plastic-tiled floor. The Hawaiian shirt was in the corridor.
He was running now.
Judy went after him. As she ran, she spoke into her bra mike, panting. “It’s him, Charlie! What the hell happened to my backup?”
“They lost you, where are you?”
“On the second floor in the office section.”
“Okay.”
The office doors were shut, and there was no one in the corridors: it was Saturday. She followed the shirt around a corner, then another, and a third. She was keeping him in view but not gaining on him.
Coming full circle, he returned to the gallery. She lost sight of him momentarily and guessed he had gone up again.
Breathing hard, she went up another ornate staircase to the third floor.
Helpful signs told her that the senate gallery was to her right, the assembly to her left. She turned left, came to the door of the gallery, and found it locked. No doubt the other would be the same. She returned to the head of the staircase. Where had he gone?
In a corner she noticed a sign that read “North Stair — No Roof Access.” She opened it and found herself in a narrow functional stairwell with plain floor tiles and an iron balustrade. She could hear her quarry clattering down the stairs, but she could not see him.
She hurtled down.
She emerged at ground level in the rotunda. She could not see Granger, but she spotted Michael, looking around distractedly. He caught her eye. “Did you see him?” she called.
“No.”
“Stay back!”
From the rotunda, a marble corridor led to the governor’s quarters. Her view was obscured by a tour party being shown the door to the Horseshoe. Was that a Hawaiian shirt beyond them? She was not sure. She ran after it, along the marble hall, past framed displays featuring each county in the state. To her left, another corridor led to an exit with a plate-glass automatic door. She saw the shirt going out.
She followed. Granger was darting across L Street, dodging perilously through the impatient traffic. Drivers swerved to avoid him and honked indignantly. He jumped on the hood of a yellow coupe, denting it. The driver opened the door and leaped out in a rage, then saw Judy with her gun and hastily got back in his car.
She sprinted across the street, taking the same mad risks with the traffic. She darted in front of a bus that pulled up with a screech of brakes, ran across the hood of the same yellow coupe, and forced a stretch limousine to swerve across three lanes. She was almost at the sidewalk when a motorcycle came speeding up the inside lane straight at her. She stepped back, and he missed her by an inch.
Granger sped along Eleventh Street, then dodged into an entrance. Judy flew after him. He had gone into a parking garage. She turned into the garage, going as fast as she could, and something hit her, a mighty blow in the face.
Pain exploded in her nose and forehead. She was blinded. She fell on her back, hitting the concrete with a crash. She lay still, paralyzed by shock and pain, unable even to think. A few seconds later she felt a strong hand behind her head and heard, as if from a great distance, the voice of Michael saying: “Judy, for God’s sake, are you alive?”
Her head began to clear, and her vision came back. Michael’s face swam into focus.
“Speak to me, say something!” Michael said.
She opened her mouth. “It hurts,” she mumbled.
“Thank God!” He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his khakis and wiped her mouth with surprising gentleness. “Your nose is bleeding.”
She sat upright. “What happened?”
“I saw you turning inside, going like greased lightning, then the next minute you were flat on the ground. I think he was waiting for you and hit you as you came around the corner. If I get my hands on him …”
Judy realized she had dropped her weapon. “My gun …”
He looked around, picked it up, and handed it to her.
“Help me up.”
He pulled her to her feet.
Her face hurt like hell, but she could see clearly and her legs felt steady. She tried to think straight.
There was an elevator, but he could not have had time to take it. He must have gone up the ramp. She knew this garage — she parked here herself when she came to see Honeymoon — and she recalled that it spanned the width of the block, with entrances on Tenth and Eleventh Streets. Maybe Granger knew that, too, and was already getting away by the Tenth Street door.
There was nothing to do but follow.
“I’m going after him,” she said.
She ran up the ramp. Michael followed. She let him. She had twice ordered him to stay back, and she could not spare the breath to tell him again.
They reached the first parking level. Judy’s head started throbbing, and her legs suddenly felt weak. She knew she could not go much farther. They started across the floor.
Suddenly a black car shot out of its parking slot straight at them.
Judy leaped sideways, fell to the ground, and rolled, frantically fast, until she was underneath a parked car.
She saw the wheels of the black car as it turned with a squeal of tires and accelerated down the ramp like a
