They could have stopped me, if they’d put their minds to it. After all, there were two of them and only one of me. They had guns; I didn’t. But there’s a certain understanding that’s usually unspoken among cops, a mutual respect, that says when to back off. Howell and Perez knew that Larry Martin was mine. Grudgingly, Howell stepped aside to let me pass, holding out his hand for the key.
“You’ve got five minutes,” he said tersely. “After that we come in with the tear gas.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, giving him the second key.
I made my way through the warehouse and showroom. The place was well lit yet eerily silent except for the soft swish of my shoes on the thick carpeting. Standing outside the door to Richard Damm’s private office, I whipped off my jacket, revealing the empty shoulder holster under my arm. I tried the doorknob. It was still locked.
“Let me in, Larry. It’s Beaumont. Hurry. There’s not much time.”
After what seemed an eternity, the lock clicked. I turned the knob and opened the door a crack. The room was totally dark. I stopped and shut one eye, hoping to help ease the visual transition.
“Turn on the light so you can see I’m unarmed. I just want to talk to you.”
“Come in first. Put your hands up.”
Martin’s voice came from behind the wall next to the door. With my knees shaking, I stepped into the room and stopped. Behind me the door swung shut. I was still holding my breath when the lights came on.
The room was a shambles. The fish tank had been smashed to bits. The carpeting was soaked and littered with shards of glass and pieces of decorative shells and plants that had once decorated the bottom of the tank. All the booze bottles had been shoved off the shelves of the bar and lay in a shattered, soggy heap on the floor. A huge hole had been beaten into the face of Richard Damm’s big screen television set.
“Turn around slowly,” Larry Martin ordered. “Keep your hands up.”
I turned. The first thing I noticed was his face. Three separate lines of stitches fanned the length of his cheek from scalp to chin. He was lucky he hadn’t lost an eye. He was standing there in a big league batter’s stance with an old wooden baseball bat aimed at my head.
My initial reaction was to laugh. When you’re expecting the muzzle of a rifle, a baseball bat is a welcome surprise. My relief was overwhelming. Cindy was nearsighted all right, so much so that the wooden bat must have looked like a gun to her. I canned the laughter, though, because the baseball bat was still a hell of a lot more weapon than I had, and Richard Damm’s shattered haven gave mute testimony to Larry Martin’s ability to use it.
“What do you want?” Larry asked.
“Where’s Richard Damm?” I asked.
“Over there on the couch.”
“Is he all right?”
“Sit up and show him, Dick,” Larry ordered.
I glanced over my shoulder. Richard Damm sat up, his face peeking over the back of the couch. His skin was a pasty, unhealthy shade of gray.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded feebly.
“Can he go?”
“I guess,” Larry said.
With no further prompting, Richard Damm scrambled to his feet and picked his way through the debris.
“Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely to me on his way past. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me. Go out through the garage.”
Richard Damm nodded and left. “Where’s the intercom?” I asked. “Turn it on and tell them he’s coming out.”
“You go first,” Larry Martin said. “It’s over by the couch.”
I led the way. A remote control for the intercom was on the coffee table. I leaned down and picked it up. “You tell them,” Larry commanded.
He didn’t have to say it twice. I sat down and punched the control button. “This is Beaumont,” I announced. “Hostage coming out through the garage door. Acknowledge.”
“We hear you,” Perez answered.
“And I need more time. Make it ten from right now.”
“Ten it is.”
I looked up at Larry Martin. He was standing there staring at me like I had just stepped off another planet.
“A dental pick?” he asked. “You said a dental pick?”
I nodded.
“But where’d it come from? How did it happen?”
“You don’t remember seeing one?”
“No.”
“Tell me again what happened.”
“She screamed once. I heard her and went looking. When she screamed the second time, I was right outside the door.”
“The door to her husband’s office?”
“That’s right. She came running out with him right behind her. I tried to stop him. We struggled there, in the hallway. She tried to go out the other door, the door in the room where I had been working. He broke away from me and went after her again. I got there just in time to see him grab up my kicker and start toward her. That’s when he got me with it. He would have hurt me real good, if she hadn’t hit him.”
“You said she hit him with a vase?”
Martin nodded. “He started to fall. Toward me. We were over in the corner. The kicker fell out of his hand. It almost hit me again, but I ducked out of the way. I caught him before he fell.”
“And you dragged him over to the chair?”
Martin nodded. “By then the blood was running in my eyes. I could barely see.”
I remembered the unblemished whiteness of the carpet in Dr. Nielsen’s hallway. No blood had dripped on that.
“How’d you get outside then?” I asked.
“We went out the back way, through the garage.”
“But I thought LeAnn couldn’t open that door. That’s what she said.”
“She found a key in the drawer by the door. She let us out that way. I wanted to stop and grab my tools, but she said we’d better get out of there before he came to, that we’d come back later and get the tools.”
“How?”
“She kept the key.”
“And did you go back?”
“We couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“She forgot she didn’t have a garage door opener. She said she’d left it in a car she doesn’t have anymore.”
I could relate to that. There’s nothing quite so thoroughly closed as an electronic garage door when you’re in the car and the garage door opener isn’t.
Martin let the tip of the bat drop to the floor, then he sank wearily onto one arm of the couch.
“Larry, if you didn’t kill him, why’d you do this?”
“LeAnn told me he was dead. I figured it happened when she hit him, and that you’d come looking for me. I tried to leave town, but Damm wouldn’t give me my check. I came over here to get it. We got in a beef. Cindy must’ve panicked and called 911.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“When I heard the sirens, I lost it. I figured I was going to jail for murder, either that or they’d shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Beaumont?” Howell’s voice came over the intercom. “Time’s up.”
