thought, I'm shot. Jesus, I'm shot.
She didn't remember hearing a shot, but she remembered falling down, and then seeing Davenport…
A stop sign came up and she stepped on the brakes a little too firmly, and the dead man beside her slumped forward into the footwell. Another wave of nausea. She realized that even if she wanted to go to Johnson's, she wouldn't make it.
Had to find a place. Had to think…
LUCAS RAN UNTIL the van turned out of sight, then ran some more, pulling his phone from his pocket as he ran, called Sally to tell her about the van, but Sally didn't answer the phone, and he ran some more and called Mallard, who did answer, and told him about the van and he heard the choppers lifting higher and then one moved over him and hit him with the spotlight, and he waved it off and it held him for another ten seconds as he waved frantically, and then it drifted away…
Nothing was working. He never saw the van after it turned, and finally a cop car caught up with him and he flagged it down and the cop had no idea that anything was going on, but got on his radio, and nobody he called knew what was going on, but Lucas got a lift back to the shopping center, where an ambulance was screaming out of sight and Sally, covered with blood, said, 'The guy in the garage was shot in the ear and was squirting blood and I, and I, and I…'
'Okay, okay,' Lucas said. 'She's in a Dodge van, a dark van, maybe dark blue…'
Mallard came up and said, 'A woman in a van… There's a woman in a van at a bar who said her husband was shot.'
'Let's go,' Lucas said. 'That's her…'
And they went roaring off in two more cop cars, a night for roaring off, Lucas thought, and on the way, Sally said, 'You hit Rinker hard. I saw her go down and there's blood all over the place, she's gonna bleed to death if she doesn't get to a hospital.'
'What color was the blood?'
'What?'
'What color was the blood? Dark or bright red, or was there any green stuff in it?'
'Just… purple. Why?'
'Real bright red is lungs, but I don't think I hit her that high. Green is guts. If it's nothing but purple, it may just be meat. If it's just meat, she could stay out. If I hit her anyplace in the body cavity, though, she'll need a hospital. I'm shooting Speer Lawman JHPs.'
At the bar, the mother had collapsed, and the young girl seemed to be drifting toward a trance state.
Lucas said, 'We gotta get these people to a hospital,' and the bartender said, 'Ambulance on the way,' and Sally told the woman, 'Your husband's not dead. He's on the way to the hospital, but he's not hurt bad, he was only shot in the ear, and he's gonna be okay.'
The woman shook her head and curled into a tighter ball.
Lucas stepped away and looked down the street and said, 'We're losing her. We had her. We're losing her right now.'
25
MALLARD PULLED TOGETHER ALL THE local police forces and had them do a grid search, starting around the shopping center, checking parked cars, any car that looked unusual or out-of-the-way; looking for blood.
The ID came back on the Benz, and they went for Honus Johnson's house, and pounced on it with a full entry crew, but there was nobody home-nobody alive. They eventually found Johnson in the freezer and the California car in the garage, and they got Rinker's clothes and her guns, but no money, no passport, no paper.
Mallard, frenzied, crazy, said, 'I'm not sure where we're at. It all comes down to how hard you hit her.'
'I can't tell you that,' Lucas said. 'I knocked her down and she got right back up. I might have hit her in her left leg, because she was dragging a leg, but I'm not sure.'
'Lot of blood,' Sally said again. 'Lot of blood.'
THEY WENT AFTER Treena Ross, but when Rinker shouted 'Cops!' she hadn't immediately dumped the phone. She'd used it to call her attorney, and her attorney had come down to the hospital, where Mallard's agents had picked her up. When Mallard, Lucas, and Sally showed up at the hospital, the attorney said to Mallard, 'Is it true that you were eavesdropping on conversations between my client and myself?'
They had been, of course. They'd stayed on the phone from the time Rinker's call came in through the call to the attorney. Mallard had nodded and said, 'Yes.'
'That's a violation of-'
'Bullshit. I have a law degree, sir, and it wasn't a violation of anything. If your client doesn't wish to tell us what really happened inside that dome tonight, we'll see that's she's charged with premeditated murder and we'll recommend that the state seek the death penalty. So what do you want to do?'
'Charge her,' the attorney said, 'or we walk now. Either way, she says nothing.'
'Then we'll charge her.'
'That's certainly your privilege.'
They smiled at each other, nodded, and Mallard said, 'I'll go make the call.'
LATER THAT NIGHT, he said to Lucas, 'I don't think we'll get Treena. We were focused on Rinker and we didn't process her right. We didn't keep her under control.'
'What happened?'
'Well, we got the phone, and she says the phone was her husband's, she was carrying it because he was wearing a tux and didn't have a place for it. And we took tape samples from her hands and arms looking for nitrites, and didn't find any. I think she used a plastic bag or a piece of cloth to cover her hand and sleeve when she fired the gun. She was wandering around in the hospital before we put a hold on her; she was in the ladies' room, and she might have flushed it. She had nitrites on her face, but she says that Rinker fired the pistol right past her, so they would be there. Smeared prints on the gun grip, clear ones on the barrel, and at least one of the good ones belongs to Rinker.'
'Well-thought-out.'
'For a long time,' Mallard agreed. 'For weeks. And they pulled it off. If we take her to trial, they'll have Rinker's gun, they'll have Rinker's blood on the glass, they'll have our whole investigation and chase with Rinker, and Ross'll say the phone calls went to her husband. All we've got is that last phone call, and Rinker called her, unfortunately, and I listened to the tape. All double-talk. I mean, it sounds good to me, but it won't be enough. It especially won't be enough when they get Ross's character into it, and they show that the third wife was killed in an unsolved hit- and-run.'
Lucas was convinced. 'So Treena's out of it.'
He nodded. 'Yes. And she knows it.'
'If she had any little thing about Rinker, maybe we could deal with her… especially since we're not going to get her anyway.'
Mallard shook his head. 'She's not gonna deal. The whole thing was… I feel like a moron. That's what I feel like, Lucas. As soon as we clean up here, I'm going to Malone's funeral, and then I'm going home for a while, and just sit and think.'
'What about Rinker?'
'Fuck her. I hope she dies of blood poisoning.'
RINKER GOT ON I -44 and headed southwest, drove for fifteen minutes before the pain dragged her off the highway. Feeling faint, she took an exit at random, spotted a hotel, turned into its parking lot, and parked the truck. She pressed the dead man into the footwell, found an Army blanket behind the seat, and threw it over him. Then, moving ever so slowly, she did a survey of her assets.
She had money, ID, two passports, both good, a black wig, and a hole in her butt that continued to bleed. She also had a small toolbox, a battered leather briefcase, and a brown sack with a grease spot that might have contained a lunch. She had a day-old newspaper.
