Dragon Tears

Cop instinct is less instinct than a sharply honed talent for observation and the good sense to correctly interpret whatever is observed. With Connie it was more a subconscious awareness than a calculated monitoring of everyone who crossed her line of sight.

The suspect stood just inside the door, near the cash register, waiting while the hostess seated a young couple at a table near one of the big front windows.

He appeared ordinary at first glance, even harmless. But on closer inspection, Connie could identify the incongruities that had caused her subconscious to recommend a closer look at the man. No signs of tension were visible in his rather bland face, and his posture was relaxed — but his hands were fisted tightly at his sides, as if he could barely control an urgent need to strike at someone. His vague smile reinforced the air of absentmindedness that clung to him — but the smile kept coming and going, flickering uncertainly, a subtle testament to inner turmoil. His sportcoat was buttoned, which was odd because he wasn’t wearing a tie and because the day was warm. More important, the coat did not hang properly; its outer and inner pockets seemed filled with something heavy that pulled it out of shape, and it bulged over his belt buckle — as if concealing a handgun jammed under the waistband of his pants.

Of course, cop instinct wasn’t always reliable. The coat might just be old and out of shape. The guy might actually be the absent-minded professor he appeared to be; in which case his coat might be stuffed with nothing more sinister than a pipe, tobacco pouch, slide rule, calculator, lecture notes, and all sorts of items he had slipped into his pockets without quite realizing it.

Harry, whose voice had trailed off in mid-sentence, slowly put down his chicken sandwich. He was intently focused on the man in the misshapen coat.

Connie had picked up a few shoestring french fries. She dropped them onto the plate instead of eating them, and she wiped her greasy fingers on her napkin, all the while trying to watch the new customer without obviously staring at him.

The hostess, a petite blonde in her twenties, returned to the reception area after seating the couple by the window, and the man in the Ultrasuede coat smiled. She spoke to him, he replied, and the blonde laughed politely as if what he’d said was mildly amusing.

When the customer said something more and the hostess laughed again, Connie relaxed slightly. She reached for a couple of fries.

The newcomer seized the hostess by her belt, jerked her toward him, and grabbed a handful of her blouse. His assault was so sudden and unexpected, his moves so cat-quick, that he had lifted her off the floor before she began to scream. As if she weighed nothing, he threw her at nearby diners.

“Oh, shit.” Connie pushed back from the table and came to her feet, reaching under her jacket and behind to the revolver that was holstered in the small of her back.

Harry rose, too, his own revolver in hand. “Police!”

His warning was drowned out by the sickening crash of the young blonde slamming into a table, which tipped sideways. The diners toppled out of their chairs, and glasses shattered. All over the restaurant people looked up from their food, startled by the uproar.

The stranger’s flamboyance and savagery might just mean he was on drugs — or he might also be genuinely psychotic.

Connie took no chances, dropping into a crouch as she brought her gun up. “Police!”

Either the guy had heard Harry’s first warning or he had seen them out of the corner of his eye, because he was already scuttling toward the back of the restaurant, between the tables.

He had a handgun of his own — maybe a Browning 9mm, judging by the sound and by the glimpse she got. He was using it, too, firing at random, each shot thunderous in the confines of the restaurant.

Beside Connie, a painted terra-cotta pot exploded. Chips of glazed clay showered onto her. The dracaena margenata in the pot toppled over, raking her with long narrow leaves, and she crouched even lower, trying to use a nearby table as a shield.

She wanted in the worst way to get a shot at the bastard, but the risk of hitting one of the other customers was too great. When she looked across the restaurant at child’s level, thinking maybe she could pulverize one of the creep’s knees with a well-placed round, she could see him scrambling across the room. The trouble was, between her and him, a scattering of panicked, wide-eyed people had taken refuge under their tables.

“Shit.” She pursued the geek while trying to make as small a target of herself as possible, aware that Harry was going after him from another direction.

People were screaming because they were scared, or had been shot and were in pain. The crazy bastard’s gun boomed too often. Either he could change clips with superhuman speed or he had another pistol.

One of the big windows took a direct hit and came down in a jinglejangle clangor. A waterfall of glass splashed across the cold Santa Fe tile floor.

As Connie crept from table to table, her shoes picked up mashed french fries, ketchup, mustard, bits of oozing cacti, and crunching-tinkling pieces of glass. And as she passed the wounded, they cried out or pawed at her, desperate for help.

She hated to ignore them, but she had to shake them off, keep moving, try to get a shot at the walking phlegm in the Ultrasuede coat. What meager first-aid she might be able to provide wasn’t going to help them. She couldn’t do anything about the terror and pain the sonofabitch had already wrought, but she might be able to stop him from doing more damage if she stayed on his ass.

She raised her head, risking a bullet in the brain, and saw the scumbag was all the way at the back of the restaurant, standing at a swinging door that had a glass porthole in the center. Grinning, he squeezed off rounds at anything that caught his attention, apparently equally pleased to hit a potted plant or a human being. He was still unnervingly ordinary in appearance, round-faced and bland, with a weak chin and soft mouth. Even his grin failed to make him look like a madman; it was more the broad and affable smile of someone who had just seen a clown take a pratfall. But there was no doubt he was crazy-dangerous, because he shot a big saguaro cactus, then a guy in a checkered shirt, then the saguaro again, and he did have two guns, one in each hand.

Welcome to the 1990s.

Connie rose from shelter far enough to line up a shot.

Harry was equally quick to take advantage of the lunatic’s sudden obsession with the saguaro. He came to his feet in another part of the restaurant and fired. Connie fired twice. Chunks of wood exploded from the door frame beside the psycho’s head, and the glass blew out of the porthole; they had bracketed him by inches with their first shots.

The geek vanished through the swinging door, which took both Harry’s and Connie’s next rounds and kept swinging. Judging by the size of the bullet holes, the door was hollow-core, so the slugs might have gone through and nailed the sonofabitch on the other side.

Connie ran toward the kitchen, slipping a little on the food-strewn floor. She doubted they were going to be lucky enough to find the creep wounded and squirming like a half-crushed cockroach on the other side of that door. More likely, he was waiting for them. But she couldn’t rein herself in. He might even step through the door from the kitchen and cut her down as she approached. But her juices were up; she was jazzed. When her juices were up, she couldn’t help but do everything full-bore, and it didn’t even matter that her juices were up most of the time.

God, she loved this job.

4

Harry hated this cowboy stuff.

When you were a cop, you knew violence might come down sooner or later. You might suddenly find yourself up to your neck in wolves a lot nastier than any Red Riding Hood ever had to deal with. But even if it was part of the job, you didn’t enjoy it.

Well, maybe you did if you were Connie Gulliver.

As Harry rushed the kitchen door, going in low and fast with his revolver ready, he heard her behind him,