hearse parked on its other side. A casket with blinding brass handles rested on a rig while a clergyman sat impassively on a front chair, flanked by four women, their sobs puncturing the silence. SOP, so far.
David took a position behind and slightly above, having calculated the best vantage point for his purpose, leaning against a tree, his foot on a neighboring stump. He perused the scene ahead, gaze askance-he had forgotten his sunglasses-avoiding the glare from the casket handles and trimmings. At first, he thought little of a linear flash of light registering in his periphery, coming at him from halfway up the mountainside on the left like mirror signals he had seen in cowboy movies. But, weighing its location in dense underbrush, he had to confront the glare head-on, and he saw that it had changed shape-to a smaller, sharper ball of fire. David pushed off the stump, dropped to the ground and rolled behind the tree. He ended up on his back, as if for a judo stomach throw-only this time, he waved a Minx semiautomatic. Jesus Christ Almighty! A rifle! The specter of a bloody bullet wound similar to the one on the body now being prepared for interment tore through his mind. He listened for a shot. There was none. He got up and peered around the tree. The reflection had vanished. That was a rifle, goddamn it! The intended victim disappeared. So it disappeared.
All ahead remained serene, as serene as David was alert for flight, not away but toward the mountainside. He backed up and, intending to twirl around, clutched his knee and hopped twice on his good leg. Reconsidering, he hobbled toward the parking lot, knowing that whoever yielded the weapon, reached his nest from a road on the other side of the mountain, the same one the hearse had traveled.
David slid into his car, lifting his sore left leg with his hands. He sped off and, reaching a clump of trees at the turn to the far road, heard the poorly muffled roar of a two-stroke engine. Two strokes? He rounded the curve in time to observe a red motorcycle appear out of a swale, two hundred yards ahead. Just before a Sunoco Station, it left the road and knifed into the woods, up a trail David had often walked in earlier times. For a moment, he thought of taking the dirt road beyond the station. It was a road which led to High Rock Mountain at least a mile up its side, but he knew the parallel trail veered off halfway up and guessed the cycle had already reached that point.
Instead, David stopped at the foot of the trail, got out of the car and looked over its roof into a narrow bend, empty but for thinning fumes. When he could no longer hear the cycle, he sat in the car and puzzled over what he had just beheld. Is that our man in the first place? On a motorcycle? It looked like a Honda or a Suzuki. Or even a Harley-Davidson. Who can tell at that distance? And another thought tumbled from the depths of his brain like a coin in a pay phone. When the cycle turned into the trail, the driver's face might have looked flat. Might have.
David's watch registered noon and he couldn't recall ever imbibing at that hour, save for celebration toasts, but as he tooled along the backroads toward 10 Oak Lane, he savored the drink he would have. That could have been curtains, back there. At home, he changed into blazer and slacks and, in the kitchen, covered a glassful of ice with Canadian Club, leaving out the water. The liquor was gone before the ice began to melt. So was the pain in his knee. David fixed a ham and cheese and reviewed the images from Cannon Hollow. That rifle was aimed at me. If it was a rifle. But, what else would reflect up in those woods, a bird? So Buster's still trying, eh? Well, score another for the good guys.
He had no proof but instinct led him to believe it was Bernie who aimed the gun at him, and Spritz who had arranged the recycling center hoax the night before. Instinct plus a flat face and a distinctively paced falsetto voice. Once again, David made a decision not to inform Kathy-or any of the police-about his latest escapade. He told himself he couldn't run to them with a blow-by-blow account of every daily-or as it seemed, hourly-event. Alone, rather, he would face what came his way, analyze as he saw fit, and react accordingly. Keep the competitive fire a black belt is used to: just two on the mat, then hold, throw or pin. Body drops, single wings, shoulder wheels, sweeping throws.
Washing down the last of the sandwich with a swig of milk, he remained seated at the kitchen table to mull over his options. But first, a final clarification of his role as distinguished from the cops'. Nick and his pretense of noninvolvement, of hands-off. Come on, give me a break! Has anyone else been threatened? Under the gun? Maybe. But no one else is sharing. So I draw on the cops for logistic support only. Not backup. Not moral. It's the killer and me. Finis. That's my option.
For the first time since Charlie Bugles was brutalized eight days before, David felt free to maneuver, to call his own shots. Who needs approval-tacit or otherwise-for every single move? He considered his being singled out by the killer justification enough to 'go it alone,' irrespective of a criminal investigative unit, or even of amateur sleuthing. If there's a lunatic out there, and he's messing with you, then you do what you have to do.
Victor Spritz, Bernie Bugles and Alton Foster rattled around in his head. Other loose things, too: Sparky and his findings at the Tanarkle crime scene, Sparky and further information on the Japanese dagger, Sparky and the handwriting expert. Flowers for Robert. And, what came of those meetings among the medical staff, the Board of Trustees and the nurses' union?
David left the kitchen and headed for his computer chair off the living room, the spot he cherished for definitive moments, for clarification when he was bemused. On the way, he went to the window to pull open the drapes, walking over a heat register in the floor. He heard the furnace kick in from the basement, smelled the rush of hot air which slapped his leg, and noticed the drapes stir. As he rotated in his chair, he understood why his senses were so on the qui vive-aroused as an equivalent contrast to what he believed was another sense: thought. In other less trying times, he had poked fun at himself over a secret deduction: you know when you're thinking, because you sense it. Therefore, it is a sense. And the other senses, when stimulated, would often combine as a flashpoint for annoyance, just as now. For he had more clear thinking to do. Thus, he sat for a minute, straining to brush aside all distractions and to focus on the loose ends at hand.
David disposed of several easily: he identified the hospital meetings as out of his control, irrelevant to the tasks ahead, and not worthy of further thought; he phoned to have flowers sent to Robert; and he had no choice but to await the outcome of the APB's on Spritz and Bernie. That left Sparky and Foster. He would check with the criminalist before awaiting the forced entry at Foster's at five-thirty. That meant contacting Musco Diller.
Musco Diller, a cabby who worked Hollings' seamy North Square District, was an old friend and world-class safecracker. David had used his services as a 'freelance lock-picker,' in such cases as 647 Vagrancy and 10–65 Missing Person. Never in 187 Murder, but he thought the cabby wouldn't mind. David, himself, could slip a credit card past a door latch with the best of them, but in many cases, that skill was too rudimentary.
Musco had once done time for a string of second story capers and, now having gone straight, was part owner of the most popular cab company in the city. He had also spent time on the streets, done in by muscatel, his favorite. Hence, the sobriquet.
David called the Red Checker Cab Company and, through its dispatcher, reached Musco Diller. They agreed to meet in the auxiliary doctors' parking lot at five-twenty-five.
Next, David phoned Sparky to inquire about his findings from the Tanarkle death scene and received a 'Not ready, yet' response. He asked about Sparky's friend, the handwriting expert, and was told she'd be out of town for the rest of the month. Lunch? The criminalist would skip it today. He was behind in his work.
David said a quiet good-bye, but he was tempted to hurl the phone across the room; he recognized cock- and-bull answers when he heard them. It's obvious: Nick got to him. Certainly not Kathy. If the assumption is correct, then the goings-on of Chief Detective Medicore are getting stranger and stranger.
It didn't take long for David to begin rummaging through his desk drawers and closet shelves, muttering, 'Okay then, I do my own forensics and I say nothing to Kathy-and that does it, pure and simple. Plus, I put Sparky's handwriting expert on hold. Or maybe get my own. Be independent but, at all costs, be civil. I don't need anyone torpedoing my licensure.' He searched for gadgets and other equipment he had accumulated over the years, and gathered them on the living room sofa. Some had been given to him as gifts.
Stripped of police support, he had to institute drastic change. A given was that he could match anyone with his size and agility. Ditto, with firepower. But, not with the element of surprise. The killer has me there. It was like football's offensive and defensive lines on a rainy, slippery day: defense doesn't know the play in advance. It can only guess. Advantage: offense.
To counterbalance the killer's advantage of surprise, David decided he would surround himself with investigative and defensive tools he might or might not use. He opened Friday and added an autofocus camera with telescopic lens, an ordinary Polaroid, a pair of 7/30 Beecher Mirage binoculars, a postage stamp-sized NT-1 Scoopman digital tape recorder, a flashlight, surgical gloves, plastic sheets, various micro bugs and extra cartridges for his Blackhawk.44 Magnum.
In the course of his readings, he had come upon numerous articles dealing with 'concealment capability for tight situations.' Thus, behind Friday's retractable panel he stuffed a compact SIG-Sauer P226 pistol and a Gunsite
