number of good-looking middle-aged women were showing ingenious displays of skin. Lucas and Andreno began to move with them, clockwise, around the rose garden, like migrating geese. The Rosses were on the far side of the clock, and they kept it that way, although Ross caught Lucas's eye once and shook his head, a shallow, dour smile locked on his face.
The clockwork continued, around and around the rose garden, as slow as a minute hand, people clumping and talking, but always seeming, after a few minutes, to move. More people showed up, and as the crowd got denser, there was more of the high-pitched feminine laughter that seemed to accompany a crowd of tuxedos and party dresses, rich people and wanna-bes preening themselves-Lucas checking the women, anybody close to the height and build of Rinker. There were several of them, but none was her.
At eight-thirty, the party was near its peak, the promenade continuing. At the heart of the clock face, Lucas realized after a while, were the principals of the orchestra: the conductor, the president, a couple of violinists, all with shaggy longish hair and cultivated manners, a kind of gardened drollness that led to heavy lids and rolled eyes.
Then Andreno said, 'I think I'm in love.'
Lucas looked and said, 'Jesus Christ, she's fourteen.'
'But she thinks like forty. You want some purple fish eggs?'
'This party is too good for you.'
'That's possible. Did I ever tell you about the time the Prince of England came here, and I was supposed to be security, and I was wearing this tux, but my Jockey shorts kept riding up in my ass crack and were strangling my balls…'
Lucas listened with mild amusement, and then realized…
'Where's Ross?'
Andreno stopped in midsentence, looked around, and said, 'Three minutes ago, he was under that crab-apple tree.' They both looked toward the top of the garden, the end away from the brick building. There were two men standing under the tree, talking, but neither was Ross. Treena Ross was also gone. 'Maybe in the can.'
'Not unless they're peeing in the bushes,' Lucas said. They were both moving, passed Sally and Mallard. As they went by, Lucas said, 'Ross is gone. You see him?'
They both looked and fell in with Lucas and Andreno, and Sally said, 'Shit. He was right there.' The four of them continued to the top of the garden, to the two men under the crab apple. Lucas asked, 'Have either of you seen John Ross and his wife? It's pretty urgent.'
One of them said, 'Yes, I think they went to look at the orchids in the Climatron. Treena had a flier of some kind, a special orchid display.'
They all looked that way, and saw Treena Ross stepping through the door into the Climatron, with John Ross a step behind. Lucas shouted at them, 'ROSS: WAIT.'
But Ross was gone, the door was closing, and Lucas started running, as hard as he could, down the sidewalk, running hard, Andreno falling behind, Sally a couple of steps behind Andreno, handicapped by heels, Mallard behind that, Sally shouting into a radio, something unintelligible, and then as Lucas came up to the door, he saw three flashes, muzzle flashes, and heard faint screaming and he shouted, 'She got him, she's inside, spread out, block the place…' And he was through the door.
The Climatron was literally a jungle, bamboo and palms and ficuses and probably a fuckin' cockatoo, he thought. Once inside, Treena Ross's screams were shrill and close by, but he couldn't see her. He was on a pebbled sidewalk, and he drew his. 45 and ran down the sidewalk, following a curve around to the right and then back toward the center. As he came around the curve, he saw Treena Ross backed against a low wall of bamboo, a body at her feet, her cream dress blotched with blood.
She saw Lucas coming and screamed, 'She went that way, she went that way, she's in the trees. She's in the trees, she shot John, call an ambulance.'
Andreno was right behind him and had a telephone out and was calling an ambulance, and Lucas said, 'Stay here with Treena,' but Andreno caught his arm and said, 'We gotta get out of here, man, we gotta get outside. She'll kill you in here, you'll never see her, but we can pen her up inside.'
Lucas looked around and then knelt next to John Ross and rolled him. He was dead, three shots to the back of his head at close range, massive exit wounds on his face and forehead. 'Let's go,' he said to Andreno. 'You don't have a gun, get Mrs. Ross out of here.' And he ran back to the door and outside and started shouting, 'Seal the building, seal the building, spread out and seal the building…'
Mallard and Sally and Derik were already moving, Derik going right with Lucas and Mallard and Sally going left, two more tuxedoed men running through the crowd, more guns coming. Rinker had had time to get out if she was set up for a fast escape, Lucas thought, but not a lot more time than that. If she'd slowed down, if she'd frozen…
They ran around the building, past another exit, and Lucas shouted over his shoulder to Derik, 'Block this, block this…' and Derik pulled up and Lucas continued around. There was another exit on the back, and as he came up on it, he saw Sally coming from the other direction.
'What?' he shouted.
'We maybe got her inside, didn't see anybody running.'
'Get more people, get everybody here. Ross is shot, Ross is dead…'
And Sally was on the radio, and everybody Lucas could see was running, and they tightened the choke hold on the Climatron.
And then an agent shouted, 'Window! We've got a broken window.'
Lucas's heart sank, but he ran that way, to the far back side of the dome, where it sat above the landscape, on a concrete retaining wall. Above the concrete wall, one of a band of windows appeared to have been broken out.
'Goddamnit.' Lucas looked around. 'Somebody give me a step.'
One of the agents holstered his gun and made a step with his interlinked fingers, and boosted Lucas up the wall. Lucas did a push-up onto the top, then reached down to the window. A woman-sized hole had been knocked in the glass from the inside. She'd cut herself doing it, he thought. There was a smear of blood on the glass.
'I think she's out,' he shouted down. 'She's bleeding. We need to block this place, just in case she's inside, and then spread out in the park, see if we can push her. She's close… Let's go, let's go…'
Sally had them organized in fifteen seconds, and they began moving in a wide band, behind the Climatron, spreading through the dark, jogging, looking for anything in front of them. Lucas stayed back, looking at the jungle inside the dome. He didn't want to punch out any more glass, and he eventually dropped back down the wall and ran around to the front.
Treena Ross was sitting on the ground, Andreno beside her. 'Stay with her,' Lucas said, and he went inside the dome. The door moved again, behind him, and Derik was there, with his pistol. 'We can't do this, Lucas. We need a team with armor. If she's in here, she'll kill at least one of us, and maybe both of us.'
Lucas thought about it, ten seconds, fifteen seconds. So curious that Rinker'd let herself be trapped in here, if she had… but then, she hadn't expected a massive number of cops.
'Come on,' Lucas said. He started into the dome.
'Goddamnit,' Derik said.
'I gotcha covered,' Lucas said. He hurried down the path, through the jungle-saw a pistol lying on the path near a fake cliff and waterfall, called 'Gun' and went on, trying to get his bearings. He finally clambered through a hump of bamboo toward the back glass, where Rinker had broken out. Derik followed, scuttling this way and that, his weapon pointed in the air, looking for movement in the trees. Lucas squatted next to the broken window, and as Derik came up, he said, 'You don't have a flashlight?'
'I've got one of those things for your car keys… to see the lock.'
'Gimme.'
Lucas shined the tiny light on the window, at the bloodstain, and then handed the light back to Derik and said 'Come on,' and stuck his pistol in his holster.
'What…'
'She's not here. But I want you to pretend that she is. I want you to go out and get Andreno, and tell him to step inside to talk to me, tell him we're hunting her down, that she's maybe cornered in the basement, but get him in here. You stay with Mrs. Ross. Okay?'
