move, stab him under the arm, make him drop that gun.
'Don't,' said Mac.
'There are a lot of animals out there who don't deserve to live.'
'Maybe,' said Mac, taking a step forward. 'I'm not one of them. I talked to your mother. She wants to hear from you.'
Keith had few options left. He considered them.
'What's your name?' Keith asked.
'Taylor, Mac Taylor.'
Keith looked at Ellen Janecek and tightened his grip on the knife. Before he had lost his leg he could have leapt across the room and gutted her before he was shot. That was before he lost his leg.
'Keith?'
Keith Yunkin nodded and dropped the knife.
The Hat walked under the elevated train tracks, clinging to the duffle bag that he had taken from the office building. He considered the theft of the bag a major triumph. The Hat had stood across the street from the office building, hidden in a doorway, until the cop came out with the kid.
Then he'd raced back into the office building and found the duffle bag in the room behind the one in which he'd found the kid. The bag had been tucked away under a sink. The Hat had grabbed the bag and fled the building.
Then, under the tracks and station above them, he had walked.
Now he stopped, looked around furtively, put the bag on the ground and leaned over to unzip it.
Knives. He could sell them somewhere. Clothes. Maybe they fit. An egg salad sandwich and bottles of water. He sat on a low block of concrete and ate.
The Hat reached into the bag and came up with one of the knives. He opened it easily and as he did the blade ran across his finger. He dropped his sandwich. The cut was deep, very deep, to the bone. The blade of the knife was bloody.
He'd have to find some bandages somewhere. A knife like this one could kill someone without a blink.
He let the knife tumble back into the bag, took out a shirt, wrapped it around his hand and gave serious thought to going to a drug store, but not for Band-Aids, for something much bigger than a Band-Aid. There was a clinic about six blocks away, but it was far and The Hat was bleeding. No, a drug store it would be. Maybe he could trade a knife for bandages.
It had begun as a very good day, The Hat thought. A good deed for a soft-brained boy had brought him a promising bag full of jangling goodies and a sandwich. It could turn into a bad day with a dark ending if the bleeding were not stopped. Oh well. The Hat knew people, lots of street people, who would be glad to buy these very sharp knives. But first, the bleeding had to stop.
Every drawer was occupied by a corpse. Nine of them. Sid Hammerbeck had been busy, nonstop for three days. Now he was home meditating in his state-of-the-art kitchen, amid shining pots, dark cast-iron pans, the smell of fresh vegetables and baking turbot. He took a spray of fresh chervil from a small paper bag in the refrigerator, placed it on a cutting board and expertly cut it into tiny, even pieces.
The timer was on. Sixteen minutes more.
It struck him that his life was one of smells, the smell of the dead, the smell of his own cooking. Sometimes he had guests over for dinner, but not tonight. Tonight he would dine alone. No conversation. No television. No book or newspaper on the table. He would eat slowly, close his eyes to savor the food without having someone across the table look at him as if he were doing something weird. His friends already thought his decision to leave the kitchen of one of the finest Continental restaurants in the city to go into the steel gray of the autopsy room was was weird enough.
Sid had explained that the room where he dissected the dead was cleaner than almost any four-star restaurant in the world. He could see disbelief, even when they said the obligatory and sophisticated 'I know.' Sid didn't explain much or often anymore.
Something itched, not physically, mentally. It was like trying to remember the name of a character in a favorite novel. There were several ways of dealing with it. Go back to the novel and find the name. Use some trick of the memory to locate the source of the itch and scratch it.
The microwave ticked behind him. Sid checked the oven timer. Perfect. Turbot in the oven. Chive and crushed cauliflower in the microwave. An inexpensive California white wine barely chilling in the refrigerator.
What was bothering him?
One of the bodies.
He stood over the sink holding the garlic press in his hand. Patricia Mycrant. It came to him suddenly. Not words, but a faint smell wafting in the alcoholic miasma of the autopsy room and then a vision.
Three minutes to go. He would wait, take the fish from the oven, put the chervil and garlic away, refrigerate the cauliflower and chives and have a late dinner, maybe a very late dinner.
The wine would be too cold. He removed it from the refrigerator and placed it on the counter.
Twenty minutes later he was back among the dead.
Flack knocked at her door.
Less than an hour ago he had been lying on his sofa, shoes off, fully clothed watching a Rockies/ Cubs game. He wasn't much interested in either team, but it was better than no game and it distracted him from the discomfort in his chest. He knew he couldn't concentrate on a movie or a series or read a book. He was hurting. He admitted it to himself, but no one else. He had come back from the trauma and surgery with rehab and rest, but on long days like this one, the aching, particularly in his chest, jarred him into memory.
When his phone rang, he was lying motionlessly, right arm across his eyes. He should get up and eat, maybe take a shower or bath, get some sleep, probably on the floor rather than his bed after taking one of his pain pills. It felt better to be on his back on the floor, though getting up in the morning was a series of challenges and pain.
The phone call had gotten him up and moving. Distraction was almost as good as sleep.
He knocked at the door again.
'Who is there?' came the voice.
'Detective Flack,' he said.
'I'm not prepared for visitors,' she said. 'I've just bathed.'
'Police business,' he said.
Gladys Mycrant opened the door. She was wearing a black silk robe with colorful red and yellow flowers. Her hair was down and she wore makeup. Flack wondered if the makeup might be the tattooed kind.
'Yes?' she said, examining him and making it clear from her look that he came up short in her estimation.
'May I come in?'
'If you must.'
She stepped back, hand holding her robe closed at the breast. He entered and she closed the door.
'When am I getting Patricia's body?' she said. 'I want to give her a decent burial. It's awful to think of her, the way she is, in some cold police mausoleum.
'The medical examiner had to complete another examination and run some tests.'
'Tests?'
She sat in an armchair, legs crossed, bouncing impatiently.
'According to the medical examiner, your daughter's body is slightly yellow.'
