Blood Hunt

“Seven! Respond!” Doris barked. “What’s your status! ”

With every area agency hearing this, answering could bring not just Duncan but deputies and who knew else.

“Seven, what’s your twenty!”

A new voice came on…deep, rasping. “He’s in the alley between Pine and Oak.” Lane, disguising her voice. Had to be. But what the hell was she up to?

“Identify yourself,” Doris came back

“I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. Your world at least, Inspector,” Lane called in her normal voice, off the radio, and moved away at an easy jog.

A jog! A pace that let him keep up. She had to be leading him into a trap. Trying to think where and what kind, he followed…keeping close to the post office wall, then staggering hunched past the post office loading dock and employee parking lot into cover of the florist’s dumpster.

Automatically he also noted the roar of pipes coming south on Kansas…passing…slowing for the turn onto 282. Accompanied by another vehicle that sounded like a truck. Idiots, racing tonight just because the street had no traffic!

Not that he was any smarter, he reflected as he edged around the dumpster…following a stone cold killer into an unknown trap with no effective weapon.

A car engine roared behind him and headlights lit him up…swinging as the vehicle fishtailed into the alley. A glance backward caught a flashing light bar. Duncan…who must have floored it all the way down from the Kansas entrance of the sale barn lot.

The patrol car braked just short of hitting Garreth and Duncan jumped out. “Mikaelian, what the hell — ”

Garreth waved him back. “Stop! Get back in the car!”

Duncan ran into the headlight beams. “Jesus, man! You’re covered in blood and — ”

Garreth backed away. “Damn it…get the fuck out of here!”

“I am become Death!” Lane rasped from down the alley. A bowstring thrummed.

Duncan went down, screaming, an arrow through his thigh.

Reflex drove Garreth toward Duncan, pulling off his tie to use as a tourniquet. Only crossing the beam of one headlight did he realize he was making himself a target. Though the distance between him and Duncan had to mean Duncan was the intentional target. Still, he killed the headlight above Duncan by smashing it with his elbow before dropping to his knees beside Duncan.

Whether or not that reduced their visibility, Lane did not shoot again. She just called back in the rasping voice, “See if you can sniff me out. The end is nigh.”

Duncan jerked the tie away from Garreth. “Leave me!” he gasped. “Get that son of a bitch!”

For several seconds Garreth wondered if he could stand again, his legs felt so weak. But the thought of Lane escaping forced him onto his feet and after her.

Behind him and on the radio, Duncan shouted, “Officer down,” and the location.

Crossing Oak into the next alley the meaning of Lane’s words struck Garreth…explaining the game she had been playing and why she shot Duncan. She mean to kill him at the sale barn, but thanks to Scott’s interruption, she changed plans to look for another victim to witness the fact that a psycho was shooting police officers in Baumen. Which signaled the game was over. Her next shot would be for the kill.

Only where did she lie in wait for him? Not behind a corner of the Lutheran and Methodist churches on the back side of the block, but maybe she planned to jump out at him from the rear door of Toews Hardware or Hartzfeldt Liquor? Yes, opening those doors would set off alarms, but who was there to respond? Or she might fire down on him from a roof.

He flattened against the wall of the hardware store where he was behind the door if it opened and looked up to check the roof line. The certainty was that she had a plan. He needed one, too. He needed a plan and he needed a weapon other than his gun — shaky as he felt, he could never make that head shot — and he needed them fast, before anyone else became involved and endangered. Radio traffic had Duncan reporting a wounded Mikaelian and Doris reassuring Duncan Fire Rescue was on its way. Garreth heard the siren coming up Oak. A deputy radioed he was close to the north and on his way in, too.

Staring across the alley at the churches, one possibility for a weapon occurred to Garreth. But he needed to make Lane follow him for a change…and manage to stay ahead of her. So where was she?

She said, sniff her out. He stepped away from the wall and followed the faint but still detectable odor of paint. Past the hardware store, past the liquor store…to the Driscoll Theater’s fire exit. She had gone in there… through a closed door. He would have to pass through, too.

Garreth gritted his teeth.

Wrench!

The pain of passage turned to a screaming anguish in his shoulder that burned through his chest and down his arm. He stumbled through the vestibule between the exit and curtained archway into the theater proper and dropped to hands and knees, half from pain, half to use the seats for cover until he could move more steadily. Reaching his weapon meant passing through two more doors. Could he manage that?

Come on, man! Don’t be a wimp!

Gritting his teeth, he pulled his feet under him and braced to run up the near aisle through the William Tell Sitting Duck Shooting Gallery. The creaks and moans of the old building hid any footsteps or breathing, but…she waited somewhere in the twilight of his night sight with a final arrow ready for him.

A bowstring thrummed. Above him. Balcony!

Garreth dived up the aisle. The arrow sliced into the carpeting behind him.

“That’s the trouble with a bow, Lane,” he called. “There’s no silencer on it. Catch me if you can.”

He ran for the lobby and the front door, heart thundering in terror. He wore a target on his back and Lane had all the advantages: a weapon, expertise with it, and no injuries.

Wrench!

He lurched forward across the sidewalk, fighting a scream, fighting to stay on his feet. Don’t fall, damn you; don’t fall or you’re dead!

He staggered across the tracks onto the far side of the street.

The bowstring sang its deadly song behind him. Fire burned across his right ribs.

Garreth stumbled. He struggled half a dozen steps on feet and his uninjured hand but managed to avoid a complete fall, then he was up again, moving as fast as he could. Only to slip twice more on the increasingly slick street, once scraping his palms as he came skidding down on them and a knee. Nerves sent muscles over his ribs and in his shoulder into spasm. He gasped in anguish…kept moving, not daring to slow down, not daring to look back.

Castle Drugs loomed before him. He hit the door — wrench — and landed heavily on the floor inside. His head spun and he felt sweat running down his face. On elbows and knees, to avoid leaving any bloody hand prints, he crawled to the counters along the left wall and down behind them to the display case where he saw Rosie Wiest working two weeks ago.

Inside the display case sat a heavenly host of ceramic angels and cherubs and a row of boxes holding rosaries.

Garreth pushed a handle on the sliding door behind the case using his knuckles to avoid leaving fingerprints. Unlocked. He slid the glass open and pulled out a box. Though Lane must be seconds behind him, he moved other boxes to hide the gap before crawling around the end of the display case into the nearest aisle. Giving thanks the shelves still ran parallel to the front of the store and provided the intruder concealment he warned Mrs. Wiest about. Listening for any sound up front, he removed the rosary from its box and hid the box behind bottles of mouthwash on the bottom shelf, then he pushed to his feet and opened his jacket to examine the wound in his side. The pointed end of the arrow protruded from his shirt, having passed though his body armor, but despite the pain and warmth of blood spreading down his size, did not feel stuck in him. Maybe just caught his skin?

Footsteps whispered up front.

Garreth’s heart lurched. He peered around the shelf. Lane stood just inside the front door, an arrow ready in her bow, her head tilted, listening. Garreth forced himself to breathe slowly and softly.

“Hello, Inspector,” Lane said. “I smell you. I smell your fear. Are you badly hurt? I warned you how a diet of