But none of that mattered, because he was Death now, with the lug wrench swinging as easily as a shovel in his hand. He would remain Death until Kali was silent and still.
He pressed his palms to the crypt’s moldering door and pushed. The door pushed back with the weight of its years, but it yielded.
Chapter Forty-seven
Running. Linton was back on his feet and he was running. He was running to save the girl who had been his daughter since she was five years old.
She was still his daughter. Even if he and her mother had ever divorced, she would still have been his daughter, because you don’t divorce children. But they weren’t divorced. Frida was his wife until the day she died, and Kali would be his daughter until the day he died. That’s the way being a father worked. He wasn’t perfect but he wanted to be better, and he was her father.
He could see Walt Walker’s white shirt and dark pants moving among the old headstones, and he was gaining on him. Linton was younger, he was stronger, and, this time he would make sure that the bastard never hurt another soul.
To do that, he needed to get to Walt before he got to Kali.
The door opened, grinding against its uneven doorsill. Its ponderous size, its age, the execrable condition of its hinges—all of these things slowed it down and this skewed the situation ever-so-slightly in Faye’s favor.
It was hard to wait, but she was only going to have one swing. After that, she was just a small woman trapped by a physically powerful man in a chamber with no exit.
His face cleared the plane of the door and, as she’d expected, it was turned slightly downward toward the spot where he had left Kali. Then he took one more step forward, and his head fully cleared the door.
During the instant that he stood confused by the empty floor, she stretched her arm out as much as she dared in the small space, giving herself the maximum possible lever arm to swing her pathetic weapon.
Holding her purse with both hands, she stepped into her swing for power, hinging her shoulders toward Walt Walker. The pebble-and-skull-weighted weapon struck him full in the face.
Running. He was running.
Joe found the spot where McDaniel’s heart had been stopped by a lug wrench. He stood there, looking for tracks and listening. Far ahead of him, he heard the sound of footfalls, so he lunged in that direction, stretched his long legs out, and ran hard.
Within minutes, he caught sight of the bald man, who was also running his heart out, but there was no sign of the man who had assaulted Detective McDaniel. Trusting that the bald man knew where he was going, Joe ran, giving over every ounce of his strength to the legs that carried him and to the pumping arms that carried his gait.
The blood spurting out of Walt Walker’s nose suggested that Faye and her pathetic weapon had broken it. His cheekbone was split open. Faye could see that she’d done damage, significant damage, but it wasn’t enough. He was still conscious. He was still vertical. His hands were still operational, ready to grab, crush, and break anything they could reach.
More to the point, one of those hands still held a lug wrench that would be just as deadly as any shovel he had ever swung.
He shook his head to clear it, flinging out droplets of blood. Then he turned his eyes to Faye.
She swung her weapon again, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough this time, either. The impact made him totter, but he stayed on his feet, as she had known he would.
She took a single step back. This wouldn’t save her, but it might give Kali an opening to dart out the door. Another step back put the mausoleum’s cold wall on Faye’s spine, and still he came for her.
One of his big feet moved toward her, then the other began to move, but stopped short. He tipped his head to look at her as if he, like Faye, could not understand why he hadn’t already struck her a killing blow. Then he dropped face-first to the floor, scattering the piles of bones.
Faye backed toward the door, wondering why Kali hadn’t run. Had she been hurt by Walt Walker’s falling body? Faye knew she hadn’t heard the child cry out.
Then there was a flash of green near the floor as Kali yanked Walt’s tie from beneath his shin.
“I knew he’d be harder to trip than you were.” She waved the tie. “This helped a lot.”
Faye had no confidence that Walker would be down for long. She thought seriously about beating him into submission, and perhaps to death, with his own lug wrench, but she wasn’t confident that she had the strength to do it before he grabbed it back and used it on her.
Only one option made sense. She snatched Kali off her feet and ran. She ran out the open crypt door, past rows of old headstones, out the open iron gate, and straight into Joe’s open arms. Behind him stood five officers, guns drawn, and a police dog. Beside him stood Linton.
“Drop your weapon,” said the officer who seemed to be in charge, and that was when Faye turned around and saw Walker loping up behind her. He was bleeding and he was limping, but the lug wrench was in his hand and he was advancing fast.
“I said drop your weapon.”
Walker’s eyes were like gray river stones embedded in cold clay. If he could hear and understand the officer, Faye saw no evidence of it. He was limping from Kali’s attack on his leg and he was bleeding from Faye’s attacks on his face, but he was still coming.
Faye didn’t want Kali to see a man
