Envy the Night

gun in one swift, easy motion . . . he’d been around.

“He told me the guy’s name was Vaughn,” Nora said.

“What?”

“Dave O’Connor, right? That’s what he told us his name was. This guy, he said the person driving the Lexus was named Vaughn.”

“You see a driver’s license, any sort of ID?”

She shook her head, and he saw a spark of irritation in her eyes. Maybe at him for asking, maybe at herself for not getting it.

“Anything in the car?” Frank asked, but the sirens were in the parking lot outside, and Nora walked away from him, toward the door. The guy on the floor was starting to come back, rolling his right foot a little, eyes still closed, left side of his face pressed to the cold stone.

The cop came in with Nora, and Frank was surprised to see it was just one guy. About forty, ruddy faced, thick fingers. He was speaking into the microphone near his collarbone as he entered, reporting his position and situation, casting a scowl at the sight of the body on the floor. When he was done talking into his radio, he withdrew a plastic bag from his hip pocket and reached out to Frank.

“Gimme the gun.” His badge said MOWERY.

Frank dropped the gun in the bag, and Mowery sealed the plastic lock and jammed the gun, bag and all, into his belt. He nodded at the man at his feet.

“His gun.”

“That’s right.”

“You took it from him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“After he pulled it.”

“Yeah.”

Mowery studied Frank as if he weren’t sure he believed it. “What’d you hit him with?”

“Hands, at first. Then a wrench.”

“That seemed like a wise idea to you? Swinging on a man with a gun?”

“It worked.”

“Hmm.” Mowery squatted beside the tall man, whose eyes had fluttered open, leaving him staring blearily across the floor. “Looks like he’s ’bout ready to rejoin the world. Best that he do that with his hands cuffed, don’t you think?”

“Nobody else coming?” Frank said.

Mowery gave him a sour look. “We got a lot of county and few cars to cover it right now, son. You really think I need to bring all of them off the roads, help me deal with this? Seems to me it isn’t that difficult a situation.”

Should’ve been here five minutes ago, Frank thought. Like to see you come across that room when he showed the gun.

Mowery got the cuffs off his belt and fastened the man’s hands behind his back. The prisoner was fully conscious by the time the second cuff snapped shut, twisting his head to try to look back at Mowery. The movement didn’t work so well; he made a soft grunt that seemed driven more by nausea than pain and laid his cheek back on the concrete.

“I hit him pretty well,” Frank said. “Might have a concussion. Maybe need an ambulance.”

“He isn’t gonna die in my car before he gets to a hospital.” Mowery leaned over and flicked the man’s cheek. “You with us, asshole? Want to walk out to the car with me, get that headache checked?”

The guy grunted again, and Mowery wrapped one hand over the handcuffs and the other in the guy’s shirt, then hauled him upright with a jerk.

“You can stand,” he said, as the man’s legs started to buckle. “Stand up, damn it!”

Excellent procedure, Frank thought. Way to be concerned with the potential medical condition. Should be filming this for a police academy.

“All right,” Mowery said when his prisoner held his own footing. “Let me get him in the car, get him down to the hospital. Don’t want the son of a bitch dying on us, do we? I finish with him, three of us are gonna talk.”

The tall man’s movements seemed steady enough heading across the room to the door, shuffling along without comment, casting one long, hard stare at Nora as he passed her. She gazed right back at him and flicked her middle finger up. Mowery, walking behind his prisoner, reached out and grabbed a handful of the guy’s short hair and twisted his head away from Nora.

“You don’t look at the lady, shithead. You don’t even look.”

They stepped out the door. Frank and Nora walked that far and then stopped, standing just inside as Mowery guided the tall man toward the police cruiser parked about twenty feet away, a Lincoln County Sheriff logo on the front door. Mowery opened the back door of the car, put his hand on the back of his prisoner’s head, and started to shove him into the seat. He was facing the inside of the car, and when a man rose from behind the trunk, on the opposite side, Mowery never saw him. Had no idea trouble was at hand until Nora shouted, and Frank went through the door and started toward them as the new man, wearing a camouflage jacket and black boots, hit Mowery in the side of the head with a handgun. Mowery fell into his prisoner, the two of them tumbling into the backseat in a crush of bodies, and then the gun swung down again and Mowery’s nose shattered and blood sprayed the inside of the window.

Frank had taken a few steps toward them when the new man whirled and lifted his gun, and just as he’d been so certain before that there wouldn’t be any shots if he kept moving, this time he knew there would. He lifted his hands and backpedaled, and for a moment he was sure the crazy bastard was going to fire anyhow. Then Mowery, sliding down out of the car to the ground, reached out and got his fingers in his attacker’s shirt, and that was enough to draw another whip of the gun. It was two seconds of distraction, but it got Frank back inside.

He grabbed Nora around the waist and pulled her into the body shop and swung the door shut behind them with his free hand. Nora’s feet tangled with his, and she started to fall. He let her go, turned away as she hit the floor hard on her ass, reached for the dead-bolt lock and turned it. He banged his hand over the light switch and dropped to the floor, and then it was just the two of them inside the dark room and Mowery outside with his prisoner and a man with a gun.

9

__________

They’d been closed for the day. That was the first thought Nora had, lying on the cold concrete floor with paint chips under her palms and dust in her mouth. She’d locked the door and hung the CLOSED sign, ready to drive home and take a shower. Should be curled up on the couch now with a pillow under her head and a warm sunset filling the living room. Instead she was here with a wounded cop and two gunmen outside and an oddly capable stranger crouched beside her.

“He might’ve have killed him,” she said, pushing upright. “Do you think he could have—”

“Get the phone,” Frank said. “Call 911.”

He disappeared then, slithering off into the darkness almost noiselessly, toward the row of toolboxes on the far wall. His motion was enough to propel her own, and she started for the office on her hands and knees, went about ten feet before she felt foolish and stood up. If they were going to start shooting through the walls, they’d have done it.

The thought had hardly left her mind when the gunshots started. Four in succession, muffled by the walls of the building but somehow seeming the loudest sounds she’d ever heard. She was back on the floor before the final shot was fired, pressed down into the dust and grime. In her mind, holes opened in the walls and bullets tore through and sought her in the darkness and found her in an explosion of black pain. But the shots had been directed somewhere else; there was no sound against or inside the building. The cop, then. Mowery.

“They killed him,” she said, and Frank’s answer was immediate.