At the top of the stairs I saw the door for
I immediately smelled blood. I walked toward the desk and window at the far side of the room. There was a pair of fresh blood splashes on the glass, and the desk had been knocked crooked.
Peter was behind the desk, mostly. His arm lay in the far corner, his hand still clutching a nine-millimeter. His head lay a few feet away beside a single spent bullet casing. I wondered if he had managed to hit his target.
I backed out of the room, wrapped my hand in my shirttail, and pulled the door closed, then wiped my fingerprints from the knob. I did the same to the knob on the door to the stairs.
I ran down the stairs, out the door, then hopped into Cynthia’s car. “Any trouble?” I asked her.
“No. You?”
“Oh, yes. Peter Lemly is dead.”
“Oh, shit,” Cynthia said.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Miriam asked.
“Like who? The cops are probably the ones who killed him.”
“An ambulance, of course. What if he’s just badly hurt?”
I turned around and looked in her eyes. “Miriam,” I said. “He’s very, very dead.”
She snapped her mouth shut and stared out the window. Cynthia raced through town and pulled into the county hospital lot. She parked as close to Arlene’s car as possible.
Within five minutes, we were all walking down the hallway toward Frank’s room.
Just outside his door, I saw a tiny, bald black man of about seventy. The top of his head came up to the bullet hole in my shirt, and he wore huge, black-framed rectangular glasses that make his eyes look like apricots. He held a long, black rifle in both hands.
Across the hall, a bird-thin woman of about sixty sat on the same padded bench Cynthia and I had sat on the day before. She held a World War II-era carbine across her lap.
The tiny man thrust out his chin and slid his finger over the trigger. “Stop right there, young man,” he said in a high, nasal voice. “You stop there.”
“Lord in heaven, Roger,” the thin woman said. “Can’t you see that they have Miriam with them?”
He squinted at us through his gigantic goggles, then scowled. Letting people into the room must have felt like a loss of much-loved authority.
I glanced at the far end of the hall. Two hospital security guards leaned against a door. They were watching Roger and us but were obviously unwilling to approach closer.
At that moment, Arlene pushed past the guards, with Rev. Wilson and a doctor close behind. Miriam, Arlene, and the doctor bent their heads together for a conference. The doctor’s voice was low but emphatic. He was unhappy about something, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
Rev. Wilson turned toward me but kept his gaze pointed off to my right. “Emmett was here just a few minutes ago, but he’s gone now.”
“He wouldn’t surrender his weapon,” Roger announced. “Or submit to a search.”
“And he smelled funny,” the bird woman said.
I imagined he would, if he hadn’t had time to wash off Peter’s blood. “What about his brothers?”
“There’s been no sign of them,” Wilson said.
I remembered the spent casing by Peter’s body. I went to the doctor, who was objecting most strenuously to something. “Hey, Doc,” I interrupted. “Have any of the town police been admitted to the emergency room today?”
“I’m a cardiologist.”
“Don’t be annoying, please. If one of them came into the ER, the whole hospital would have heard about it, right?”
The doctor obviously wanted to continue his argument with Miriam, but she was paying attention to me. He sighed. “Right, and no.”
I hoped Peter had missed with his shot. “Thanks. Now run along and get us a wheelchair, would you? We’re taking the mayor out of here.” He blinked at me as he tried to generate a suitably outraged reply.
I heard a low growl behind me.
I turned. Luke Dubois stood by the door we had just come in. Standing next to him was a wolf.
Shit. Too slow. If only I hadn’t stopped for Peter Lemly, I might have gotten them away in time.
“Everyone stand where you are,” Luke said, looking pleased with himself.
The other wolves I had seen in Hammer Boy had been tinged with red or gray fur. The one beside Luke was black, and it was big. I remembered Wiley’s dark mop of hair, and knew this one was him.
“Not protecting your secret anymore, Luke?” I said. “It must hurt to have killed Wilma over something you’re just throwing away now.”
Luke was startled, but he didn’t break down in tears or anything. “I didn’t… I would have never… we don’t
