called Desperado or something like that. Desperado had about jumped onto the table apparently, and when Johnny saw him, he was pushing off it and away from the shooters—still in the booth, but now where the other guy had been sitting. Desperado's mouth and eyes were as wide as any Johnny had seen, and he'd been trying to say something but couldn't get anything out except stammering sounds.
Johnny wiped the sweat out of his eyes, and peered around the edge of the bar.
One of the strangers was down. Looked as though he'd crashed against an empty table flipped facedown onto the floor. The guy from the phone booth was down too. Lots of glistening red—on him, around him, seeping out of him. The standing shooter was aiming a wicked-looking gun at him and seemed ready to pull the trigger again. Johnny didn't want to see it and pulled his head back. When the expected roar didn't come, he looked again. The gunman had turned and was now facing Desperado, his big gun pointed at the man. Without turning his eyes away, he jabbed an index finger at Cheryl, who was—God bless her—still sitting on the stool where she'd
planted her butt two hours before. Like pushing a button, the shooter's finger quieted her screaming, screaming Johnny hadn't realized she was doing until she stopped. He must have thought the sound was ringing in his ears from the gunshots. The shooter held his finger on her a few seconds longer, a warning not to start up again, Johnny thought. Then the shooter pointed at the two guys who'd been swigging watered-down Coors since opening time. They hadn't been screaming, just sort of gaping at the scene. The finger got their hands in the air as if they were being robbed. Maybe they were.
Then the man pointed at Johnny, right at him, peering around the bar, and Johnny thought maybe his bladder leaked a little. Just a little.
The shooter reached around to the small of his back and produced a chrome O. He threw it across the room at Desperado. It hit the table, slid off, bounced against the booth padding, and clattered to the floor. Johnny could see better now—two Os connected by a short chain: handcuffs.
The shooter nodded at Desperado. 'Nice and easy,' he said. 'Put them on and—'
A blaze of sunlight exploded behind the shooter, and Johnny realized the front door had burst open. A silhouette quavered between the radiance and the shooter, who was turning, yelling, 'What the—?'
The door swung shut again, cutting off the blinding light. A tall, muscular man—Buddy Holly glasses with dark polarized lenses, light jacket, gloves, mussed-up hair—was two strides from the shooter. His fist came around and crashed into the shooter's head. From Johnny's vantage point, the head appeared to crumple under the blow like a melon. The body collapsed in a heap. The new killer's fist dripped with blood. Something stringy, clumpy, dangled from his knuckles. Johnny realized that what he thought was a glove was hard and black, with spikes, some sort of newfangled brass knuckles or—yes, now that he thought about it—a gauntlet. A knight's gauntlet, only black.
Cheryl was screaming again, whooping like a car alarm. Didn't seem to bother the newcomer, though. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a pistol with a long barrel. A red light shot out of it. Laser sighting—Johnny had seen it in a dozen movies. The man extended the gun toward Desperado. A red bead of light appeared on the man's forehead, followed immediately by a black hole and the sudden appearance of spattered brains and skull fragments on the wall behind him.
Johnny had no time to turn away. His bladder emptied. He dropped his head, gulping in breaths that seemed to lack the oxygen his lungs required. He heard sirens approaching. Someone must have heard the shots. Over time—he didn't know how long—his breathing relaxed. When he looked up again, the killer was gone. And so was the body of the guy he'd seen get shot in the head.
twelve
Julia dashed through the automatic sliding doors of Erlanger Hospital's emergency entrance, half expecting to see Donnelley, Vero, and a group of hit men stretched out unconscious and bleeding on identical gurneys in the hall. Instead, unfamiliar faces, miserably attached to a variety of injured and ill bodies, turned toward her from rows of plastic chairs. Keypad locks prevented her from getting to the treatment rooms. She stepped up to the nurses' station.
'I'm looking for a man—Goody . . . Goodwin Donnelley. He would have come in within the past ten minutes or so. Injured, probably a gunshot wound, shotgun maybe . . . a car crash . . . I don't know!'
The nurse, a stern-looking blonde who apparently saw no use for cosmetics, stared at her impassively. 'Are you family?' she asked.
'No . . . I . . .' She showed the woman her law enforcement credentials.
After examining the ID for several moments, the nurse spoke slowly, as though dealing with a deranged person. 'Ma'am,' she said, 'no one with injuries like that has come in, but I can—'
'He said
That was what he meant, wasn't it? Over a year ago, she had spent a pleasant afternoon with Goody and his family in his backyard. After charbroiled burgers and dogs, the boys had run off with friends, and she, Goody, and Jodi had sat around the picnic table sipping Chianti and chatting. Somehow they'd gotten on the topic of TV medical dramas. Jodi had said that one in particular boasted the cutest doctors, to which Julia had replied that none of the current offerings could match Vince Edwards playing Dr. Ben Casey. She'd had the biggest crush on him, watching reruns as a kid. Despite Goody's and Jodi's lists of other candidates for TV's hunkiest docs, she hadn't budged. Ben Casey represented the perfect physician.
So when Goody had said that he needed to contact 'Casey,' she'd understood that to mean he needed a doctor. And when he'd said that Casey was at 'Earl's place,' certainly he'd meant Erlanger, Chattanooga's biggest hospital. At the time, she'd been positive that she had decoded his cryptogram. Could she have misunderstood?
Divulging his whereabouts with what seemed an easily deciphered code over an unsecured line told her his injuries were serious. He'd want the kind of immediate attention only emergency rooms offered. That such places were usually bright and busy was also an asset, though she doubted that killers who attempted assassinations in hotel restaurants and on crowded highways would think twice about blasting their way through an ER.
It dawned on her that he hadn't gone directly to the hospital; he had waited for her to find him. When she hadn't shown, he'd called to give her directions. He had wanted her with him enough to delay treatment and to risk exposure. He had wanted protection. Was he waiting outside for her, maybe passed out in a car? She started for the parking lot. A local cop in uniform passed her and keyed in the code that opened the doors into the treatment area. She followed him in, found a floor nurse, and asked about Goody.
'An ambulance is bringing in a gunshot victim now,' the nurse explained. 'They called it in a few minutes ago. Should be here in about two minutes.'
'An ambulance?' She was having trouble thinking.
'Wait here,' the nurse said sternly and darted away. Almost immediately she started talking again, but not to Julia.
'Dr. Parker. You got my page,' she said to a man coming down the hall.
Everything about the man commanded attention. An unbuttoned white smock blew back under his arms, revealing immaculately tailored clothes: a gray dress shirt with subtle black and purple pinstripes and pleated slacks the color of ancient tombstones. Dishwater blond hair, trendily coiffed long on top and short on the sides, swept back from a broad forehead. Bushy eyebrows rode a strong crest above squinting gray eyes. His nose, straight but with a faint left-ward bend at the tip, fit his face well. His stride was long, his gait confident.
The nurse reached him and turned to escort him toward a door next to one of the treatment rooms, apprising him of the situation as they walked. The pace of her speech had accelerated dramatically. 'The trauma team's tied up in 1 with a boy who fell off his bike and suffered deep head lacerations and a concussion. Dr. Bridges is in 3 with a knife wound—'
'Somebody finally stabbed Dr. Bridges?' asked the man called Dr. Parker. His voice was deep but somehow soft, as if he'd considered each word and deemed it too important to rush or abuse. In such solemn surroundings, it took Julia a few seconds to realize that the physician was joking, despite the gravity in his tone and the scowl on his face.
The nurse giggled dutifully, then continued: 'I
'The GSW is to the head, neck, chest, and abdomen,' the nurse explained. 'ETA any second. He's been
