The horn filled the night with its brassy music. I felt as if I were standing on top of it, it was that loud.
Off in the distance a light flashed. It flicked on and off twice. I said, “Uh-huh,” and waited. He was gambling, hoping he could find his way without tipping his hand. You lose, I thought. His flashlight came on again, swung in a quick semicircle, dropped briefly down the slope, and off again. I now knew that the road was about fifteen feet above me, that the ground was steeper than I’d thought, and he was forty to sixty yards away, moving along to my right. He wouldn’t dare use the light again, I thought, but almost at once he gave it another tiny flick, as if he’d seen something he couldn’t quite believe the first time. Yes, he had caught a piece of the car in that swing past it: he saw it now, and if he raised the beam by a few degrees, he’d see me too, standing by the trees waiting. If he moved the light at all, I’d go for him right from here. Knock him down and he’s done for…give him a flesh wound, a broken arm, a ventilated liver. On the firing range I’d been a killer— shooting from the hip, in a stance, close up or distant, it didn’t matter. I could empty a gun in three seconds and fill the red with holes. It’s an instinct some cops have and sometimes it saves your life.
I should’ve taken him then, but the light was gone now and it didn’t come back. Minutes passed and I battled my impatience. Think of the hundred and one stakeouts in a long career: waiting in a blowing snow for fifteen hours and not being bothered by it. I had learned how to wait: I’d learned the virtue of patience—and had unlearned it all in minutes. I saw the bookman’s face pass before me in the dark.
Rigby.
Who else fit the Grayson pattern all up and down the line?
Who did Grayson count on? Who would be this destroyed by a misspelled word? Who would take that failure so personally and torture himself and take up the sword against those who’d tarnish Grayson’s memory?
Who had the skills and the single-mindedness to spend the rest of his days trying to finish Grayson’s book?
He had the greatest hands, Moon had said. He had the finest eye.
Rigby.
That’s what happens when you make gods out of men, I thought.
And now he was here. I felt my hand tremble slightly, uncharacteristically. Chalk it up to the dark: I still couldn’t see him and I strained against the night, trying not to make that big fatal mistake. We were a few feet apart, microorganisms, deadly enemies who would kill each other if we happened to bump while floating through the soupy ether that made up our world.
There wasn’t a sound. The blaring horn had ceased to exist. It can happen that way when it’s constant, no matter how loud it gets.
I was betting my life on a shot in the dark.
Be right with your own god, I thought, and I opened fire.
In the half-second before the gun went off I had a flash of crushing doubt. Too late, I wanted to call it back. Instead I pumped off another one, took his return fire, and the slope erupted in a god-awful battle in the dark. I went down—didn’t remember falling, didn’t know if I’d been shot or had slipped on the wet slope. Something hard had hit my head. I rolled over on my back, only then realizing that my gun was gone and he was still on his feet. There was light now, bobbing above me. I saw his shoes, heard the snap of the gun as the pin fell on an empty chamber, saw the log he’d hit me with clutched in his other hand. He dropped the gun and got up the knife. I tried to roll to my feet but couldn’t quite make it. Got to one knee and fell over, like a woozy fighter down for a nine count. He loomed over me, then something came out of the dark and hit him.
Trish.
It wasn’t much of a fight. The light dropped in the grass and they struggled above it. He knifed her hard in the belly. She grabbed herself, spun away, and, incredibly, spun around and came at him again. He knifed her in the side and this time she went down.
She had bought me a long count, fifteen seconds.
I was up on one knee with the gun in my hand, and I blew his heart out.
58
I carried her to the car and put her down on the seat.
Don’t die, I thought. Please don’t die.
I worked her clothes off…
Gently.
Everything was blood-soaked. The frontal wound was the scary one. The knife had gone in to the hilt, just at the
