She killed the engine, switched off the dome lights, opened her door, and slid out to the pavement. Catherine held her sidearm with her right hand and dialed her cell phone with her left. After a half ring, the operator answered, “Emergency.”
“This is Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes of the Portland Police. I’m under fire from a person with a rifle in the parking lot of the Sky Inn on South Milton Street in Flagstaff. The sniper is on the west side of the hotel, firing from a distance.”
There was another loud bang as a shot punched into her car’s trunk, and then the report of the rifle. She said, “I would say from the sound that he’s about two hundred yards west of the hotel. He’s probably up high.”
“We’re dispatching units to your location now. Have you been hit?”
“No. I’m staying low in the parking lot, and I’m about to move to a spot where I don’t think he’ll be able to see me. Remind the officers not to overlook the possibility that the shooter might be a woman.” She closed her cell phone and put it into her pocket, then dashed across the open aisle. There was the sound of a bullet burying itself in the asphalt behind her, and then the report as she reached a tall truck in the next row of vehicles. She ran around to the front of it, where the height of the cab would hide her from sight.
Calvin Dunn’s black car accelerated out of the delivery entrance of the parking lot on the other side of the hotel, sped two blocks up South Milton, and pulled to the curb. In a heartbeat Calvin Dunn was out and running. He ducked between two buildings and trotted up the alley behind the row of stores. He wasn’t sure exactly where the shooter was, because the shots had come from a distance and the reports had echoed among the buildings, but he had seen Catherine Hobbes’s car, and he could make an educated guess. He just had to make it to the right spot without tripping over the sniper.
As he trotted, he kept his body in the deepest shadows close to the back walls of the buildings, where the light from cars and streetlamps could not reach him. When Calvin Dunn approached the end of a large store with a loading dock, he judged that he must be near the shooter. The buildings along here were the right height, and the ones on the next block didn’t have a clear line of sight to the hotel. He slowed to a walk and began to hunt with his ears.
He kept moving steadily in the shadows toward the area where he knew the shooter would be, keeping his head up and his eyes scanning for human silhouettes or movements. He knew that this time he might be looking for the much smaller, slimmer shape of a girl. Beyond that, the size and sex didn’t matter. A person with a gun was mostly gun.
There: he had seen a change in the borders of a shadow high on the fire escape of a four-story building directly ahead. What had looked like a part of the black iron railing moved, and the bigger shadow behind it shifted. There was the sharp bang of the rifle’s report, and in the muzzle flash a man with a rifle appeared and disappeared again.
Calvin Dunn advanced another twelve feet closer while the man was staring through the scope to see if he had hit his target, and another ten while he was flipping the bolt up and pulling it back to eject the spent brass, pushing it forward to seat the next round, and down to lock it again.
By the time the hot brass casing flew from the rifle and went spinning down to the pavement thirty feet below, Calvin Dunn was close enough to have reached out and caught it. He stared upward to find the ladder suspended below the fire escape. It was on a weighted cable that made it rise above the reach of a burglar when nobody was on it, but Calvin Dunn could see how the shooter had gotten up.
Dunn took off his sport coat, wrapped his gun in it, and set the bundle in a doorway. Then he climbed to the top of a dumpster, took the bar that was meant to slide across the lid of the dumpster to lock it, stuck it between the bottom two rungs of the ladder, waited for the next shot, and pulled it down. He began to climb carefully and silently toward the man.
Calvin Dunn could see him on the third-floor landing of the fire escape, staring through his telescopic sight at the distant hotel parking lot. As Dunn climbed, the man fired again. Dunn knew from experience that the noise of the rifle would cause a ringing that would deafen the shooter for a second or two while he was fighting the barrel down after the kick, and then he would make noise working the bolt. Dunn used the time to climb closer.
The shooter prepared himself again, holding one of the vertical supports of the railing with his left hand to form a solid rest for the rifle’s foregrip. Calvin Dunn was almost there. He climbed slowly and steadily, watched the man take careful aim. He heard him blow the air out of his lungs, then squeeze off a round. The shooter cycled the bolt and ejected the brass, but Dunn could tell from the sound that the gun must be out of ammunition. The shooter fiddled with the magazine release, removed it from the underside of the rifle, reached into his jacket for more ammunition, and heard Calvin Dunn’s feet on the steel steps of the fire escape.
The shooter was seated with his legs in front of him and his knees bent, so getting up in time was impossible. He pushed a couple of rounds into the magazine and clicked it into place, then twisted his torso to bring the long gun around, but Calvin Dunn was already there. Dunn gave a quick tug on the barrel to stimulate the man’s reflex to yank it back toward himself, and then pushed it up violently so the butt plate pounded into the man’s face.
The voice that grunted “Uh!” sounded young. It was a kid, and his left hand went to his injured face. Dunn snatched the rifle out of the boy’s right hand, swung it around, and worked the bolt to bring the first round into the chamber.
Dunn stood with his back against the wall of the building as he stared down at the young face, now streaked with blood from the nose and mouth. “Listen carefully. I’m going to give you one opportunity to tell me exactly where Tanya Starling is at this moment. Do not waste your one chance.”
The reply was surprising, even to Calvin Dunn. The boy opened his bloody mouth, revealing that a couple of front teeth were gone. He took a deep breath, and let out a bellow. “Tanya!” The yell was a louder sound than he would have thought the boy could make, a howl like an animal. “I’m caught! Get away!”
Dunn pulled the trigger, the rifle kicked, and the bullet tore through the boy’s chest. Dunn leaned over the boy and noted the location of the hole. He was dead.
Dunn left the rifle on the fire escape beside the body and climbed down the fire escape stairs until he came to the ladder. He stopped there to wait for the police car he could see at the entrance of the alley to drive all the way to the end.
32
Catherine Hobbes sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair at the side of the interrogation room while Lieutenant Hartnell sat down at the table to question Calvin Dunn. As she looked at Calvin Dunn, she understood why Joe Pitt had warned her. The face below his graying hair was smooth and almost unlined, devoid of emotion. The pale eyes revealed no concern, or even much indication of an interior life. They were merely watchful.
As soon as she had heard the name of the man who had killed the sniper, she had asked to be in the room while he was interrogated. Lieutenant Hartnell had said, “You’re welcome to watch the video monitor, or even have a copy of the tape afterward.” But she had said, “I want him to see me.” Then she had told Hartnell what Joe Pitt had told her about Calvin Dunn.
While Hartnell prepared to begin, Catherine watched Calvin Dunn. He took note of each of the people in the room and looked up at the video camera suspended from the ceiling, but nothing he saw surprised him. He turned his attention to Hartnell, and Catherine could see that it made Hartnell uncomfortable.
Hartnell said, “Your name, please.”
“Calvin Dunn.”
“I’m Lieutenant Hartnell, Flagstaff Police Department. I would like to ask you a few questions about what happened tonight. I want you to know that you have the right to refuse to answer them. What you say could be used against you in court. You also have the right to have an attorney present while we talk to you. If you cannot afford an attorney, we will get you one before we proceed. Do you understand your rights?”
Calvin Dunn never took his eyes from Hartnell as he listened to the recitation. “Yes,” said Calvin Dunn. “I think that for the moment I won’t need an attorney, thank you.”
Hartnell did not like the exaggerated politeness. “I assume that you’re saying that because you think that you won’t be charged with anything?”
