the building, a treeless lawn, and a high chain-link fence like the one at the east end of town. He kept going. He turned the next corner. There was a big Dumpster placed close to the wall. He looked at it closely. There was a padlock on it, so he couldn’t even open it to see whether it would be a good place to hide.
From here he could see the parking lot. With difficulty, he picked out Scully’s red Blazer in the third line of cars, but he couldn’t see Mary. He scanned the lot for Stillman. He didn’t see him at first, but then he detected a shadowy shape drifting from car to car, hunched low to peer in the windows.
Walker took a step toward the lot, then stopped and looked at the position of the Dumpster. Quickly, he put his hands on the lid, pushed down, and raised himself to the top. He brought his feet up and knelt there for a moment, then carefully placed his feet near the rim so his weight wouldn’t cause the lid to bend and make a booming noise. He stood, shakily, and looked through the small window.
He was disappointed. There was a big room that looked like the inside of just about any other business. It wasn’t so different from the open bay on the seventh floor of the McClaren Building. There were desks with computer terminals, filing cabinets along the walls, and bulletin boards with maps and papers pinned to them. The night shift was in: a few people were at desks working, a few walking around carrying papers or coffee cups. Then he began to notice small, unexpected things.
He craned his neck to see the map above the desk closest to him. It was Florida. At the far end of the room was a big console that had a lot of electronic equipment on it, small modules with dials and speakers. There was a woman wearing earphones sitting in front of it, fiddling with some knobs.
Walker put his hands on the wall of the building and leaned closer so he could look down at the woman sitting at the desk to the left, below the window. She was staring at a computer screen, typing. Walker kept his face to the right side of the window and tried to see her screen, but he could not. He leaned farther, saw her open the top drawer of her desk, take out a piece of chewing gum, and start to unwrap it. Inside the drawer, beside the gum, was a pistol.
His eye caught movement to his right and he instinctively ducked close to the wall, prepared to jump. Then he picked a shape out of the shadows and recognized Mary, making her way toward him, and in a moment he could make out the bigger shape of Stillman, hurrying along behind.
“This isn’t a good place to be,” he whispered. “This is it—the place where they run everything. It’s like a command center.”
“Maybe that’s good,” Mary replied. “Maybe they won’t look here while we call.”
“Call?”
Stillman held up his hand and Walker could see a small black object in it. “I found one that was open. No guns, no keys, but there was a cell phone in it.”
“What are you waiting for?” said Walker.
“I didn’t come back here to ask what you wanted on your pizza,” said Stillman. “I wanted to get out of sight.” He stepped around the corner into the shelter of the building and in a moment Walker could hear the beeps as he began to punch numbers on the phone. Walker felt his heart beating faster. The waiting seemed impossible to bear.
Stillman said, “This is an emergency. I’d like to be connected with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, the FBI. The closest one to Coulter, New Hampshire.” He paused. “Okay, just give me the number and I’ll dial it.”
Walker’s eyes moved to the window as he tried to calm his nerves. The woman across the room looked different this time. She had the earphones clamped on her head, and she was moving the dials on her console with intense concentration. Walker heard the beep as Stillman terminated his connection.
The woman was standing now. She half-lifted the earphones from her ears as she raised her head and called out. Two men and another woman left their desks and hurried to lean over the console.
Walker said, “I don’t like—”
“Sshh!” Stillman was dialing again.
“This is an emergency. My name is Max Stillman. I’m in the town of Coulter—”
The woman at the console flipped a switch. Stillman stopped talking and flinched. Even from atop the Dumpster, Walker could hear the whistling, crackling noise coming from the cell phone.
“They’re jamming your call,” said Walker. “Turn it off.”
The noise stopped, but Walker could see that the people inside the building were suddenly animated. The woman at the console was saying something. Others were gathering near her. Walker watched in horror as the lady just to the left of the window opened the desk drawer and took out the gun. It looked huge in her small, manicured hand. Three men came in from another room carrying shotguns, on their way to the door.
“They know we’re here!” he said, and jumped from the Dumpster.
They ran along the side of the building, with Stillman in the lead. At the corner he did not stop with his customary caution to look, just kept running for the line of parked cars. He moved between two of them in the first row, then to the next row, and the third, with Mary behind him and Walker last. When Stillman was beyond the third row, he turned up the aisle and dashed toward the Blazer.
Walker heard a metal door swing open and bang against a wall. There was a sound Walker had not heard since he was fourteen, but it was so distinctive that he identified it instantly: the click as the shotgun foregrip was pushed forward an inch, followed by the quick
The roar tore the air, and the rear window of the car beside him was swept away, blown backward in a shower of shattered glass. There was another roar, and the car ahead of him shuddered and listed a bit to the side as its left front tire was ripped apart and the car dropped to its rim.
Stillman plucked the keys out of Mary’s hand, pushed her into the back seat, and climbed in behind the wheel. As he started the car, Walker flopped inside beside Mary and slammed the door.
The car’s tires squealed and Stillman backed through a gap in the next row to put more cars between him and the men in front of the building, then stomped on the accelerator and sped across the lot to the street. There was another loud report, but Walker could not detect any damage to the windows.
“You can sit up now,” Stillman said, then made the first turn to the right.
“Do you think you got through to them?” asked Mary.
“The FBI?” said Stillman. “They picked up the phone, but I didn’t get to tell them what was on my mind. I think that was our chance to yell for help, and nobody heard us.”
41
Stillman drove up New Hampshire Street, keeping the Blazer at a speed that would not attract attention. “In some circumstances, I might consider driving one of these things down the bank of a stream somewhere and hoping the water’s not deep enough to swamp it. But the reason they built a mill and a bridge along this stretch is that this is the narrows. The river is deeper and faster by the town, and the banks are steep.”
“I have another idea,” said Walker. “It’s not a great one.”
“Tell us, and we’ll insult it ourselves,” said Mary.
“When we first saw the police station, there were sixteen cars in the lot, remember?”
“Sure,” said Stillman.
“Well, there don’t seem to be anything like that number on the streets tonight.”
Stillman’s expression seemed to intensify. He turned at the next corner and turned again to go east. “You’re absolutely right. There are definitely going to be a few in the lot. At least one might have the keys in it. If not, I can probably—”
Mary said doubtfully, “You want to go to the police station to steal a police car? Why is that better than this thing?”
Stillman spoke quietly, as though trying not to alarm her. “Because this one has been seen, and we’re going to have to try to run the bridge.”
Stillman accelerated as he went up each block, then slowed at each corner to look both ways before he accelerated again. Suddenly, he swerved to the right. Ahead of them was a police car, parked a yard from the curb on the right. A policeman was out of it at the front door of one of the houses. The door opened and he stepped
