20

The Hour of the Golem

(Sunday: 8:17 P.M.)

At first, Bigthorn didn’t pick up his phone when it buzzed; he couldn’t hear it over the bedlam which had broken loose in the meeting hall.

Bob Morse had already destroyed his gavel trying to restore order. The fourth time he had slammed it down on the table, the head had splintered off from the stem. Nonplussed, the chairman had resorted to yelling for quiet but was unable to get anyone to listen to him. Supporters of the independence movement, who had stood and cheered when Neil Schorr had made his pronouncement, had found their foes in the colonists who perceived a threat to the status quo, if not their own jobs with the Corporation. Both sides were now engaged in shouting-matches in the aisles and across the pews, the fact that they were at a formal public hearing all but forgotten.

Meanwhile, at the front of the room, Rebecca Hotchner had left her own seat and was now locked in an angry personal confrontation with Neil Schorr. Bigthorn couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the amount of finger-pointing by both of the colony’s leaders, he could surmise the gist of the dispute. The other three selectmen had left the table and had taken sides with their supporters on the floor.

Democracy in Clarke County looked as if it was about to degenerate into a barroom brawl. Bigthorn, still leaning against the wall, had never seen such bloody-minded bickering since the time the Lukachukai town council had been unable to agree on whether to conduct business in the Navajo tongue or in English. He was wondering if he was going to have to haul out his Taser to break things up, when he suddenly realized that the phone on his belt was buzzing.

Irritated, he pulled the phone off his belt and held it to his ear. “Station Twelve,” he said. “Don’t worry, Wade, it only sounds like they’re going to …”

John, get over to Town Hall quick! Hoffman’s voice was barely audible. There’s been a shooting, I … someone’s in … gunfire, man down in … Station Ten not responding, there’s …

“On my way!” he snapped.

He whirled around to dash for the door. One of the Ark farmers was coming the opposite way down the aisle. The two men collided and the phone was knocked out of Bigthorn’s hand; it hit the floor and skittered under a pew.

Bigthorn started to grab for it. No time! Instead, he launched himself towards the door. Someone picked up the phone and tried to give it back to him, but he was already across the room, shoving people out of the way. Two women were arguing in front of the door; he elbowed one of them aside and knocked the other to the floor, then jumped over her to make it out the door. She was screaming at him when he leaped off the meeting hall’s front porch and hit the pavement running.

Hoffman had just made it down from the bell tower; he was waiting uncertainly in the square, rifle ready in his hands. “Take the door and cover me!” Bigthorn yelled as he sprinted towards the town hall, tugging his Taser from his holster. “Call for backup!”

They were halfway across the square when they heard full-auto gunfire from inside Town Hall.

“Rollie, get down!”

Sharon LeFevre grabbed her Crowdmaster rifle and threw herself into a crouch behind the front counter. Raising the rifle into firing position over the top of the counter, she aimed at the locked glass doors. “Cover the—!”

A fusillade of bullets ripped through the doors, shattering the thick lunar glass as if a grenade had been thrown at it. The police station had not been designed to withstand an armed assault; the steel-jacketed bullets punched through the counter as if it were cardboard. Roland Binder, who had been sitting at his computer terminal, was only halfway out of his chair when he saw Sharon fall back from the counter; her body disappeared behind a desk.

As he fumbled for his Taser, his hand fell against the pile of diskettes he had been reading. They tumbled off his desk and scattered across the floor as he stared down at LeFevre’s bloodsoaked uniform.

“Sharon?” he whispered through numbed lips. He was frozen in place, stunned by the suddenness of the violence. Behind him, he heard Macy Westmoreland scream from the holding cell where she had been sleeping. Her voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of a long tunnel. Rollie’s eyes were fixed on the bullet-riddled corpse half-hidden behind the desk. “Sharon, I don’t … I don’t know how to do this, I …”

There was a crunch as a foot stepped on broken glass beyond the counter. Binder looked up to see a man in a maintenance uniform, a submachine gun nestled in his hands, stepping through the door. The muzzle was pointed straight at him.

“Please …” Binder began.

The Skorpion in the Golem’s hands rattled again, and as Rollie Binder was hurled backwards by the impact of the bullets, Macy screamed again.

Stepping behind the counter, the Golem swept his gun in an arc from one side of the room to the other. He wheeled around once to check the door, then he turned back to stare through the bars of the holding cell at Macy. “Where are they?” he asked.

She collapsed against the far wall of the cell. In less than a few seconds any hope that she was safe here had vanished. Macy had been waiting for one of Tony Salvatore’s killers to find her. Well, here he was. Not just any torpedo either. The Golem himself.

“Henry,” she stammered. “What … I don’t know what …”

“The records you took from his safe,” he said. His voice was without color or inflection. He could have been asking a long-distance phone operator for a number in Duluth. “The diskettes, Macy. Where are they?”

“I … the diskettes, I don’t …”

The Skorpion’s stubby snout moved a half-inch more towards her; it was all the incentive she needed to begin thinking again. “Over there!” she shouted, pointing at Binder’s desk. “They’re on the desk, Henry, all of them. They’re …”

A fatalistic urge overtook her. She giggled hysterically, letting her back slide down the wall until her bottom hit the floor next to the cold metal bed frame. Gazing at the Golem’s hard face, she thought she saw a flicker of emotion: confusion, hopeless anger. It made her laugh aloud.

“Too bad, so sad,” she murmured. “They’ve been sent away. Everything …” She raised her right hand, snapped her fingers. “Poof! Gone. Copied and sent to the FBI. I watched him do it.”

She giggled again, feeling warmth surge through her chilled veins. “There you go. Hey, you snooze, you lose …”

The Golem looked at the desk, then down at the little pile of diskettes scattered across the floor. She watched as his right foot gently sifted through them. “By the way,” she added, realizing that nothing she said now would make any difference, “tell Tony that he was always a lousy lay …”

“Where’s Seven?” he asked.

His glacial voice brought her back to the here-and-now of her situation. The laughter choked in her throat. Macy looked through the bars of her cell at the Golem. “Whu … what?” she breathed.

“There’s six diskettes here,” he said with surreal calm, looking up at her again. “You took seven from his bedroom safe. Where’s the seventh diskette, Macy?”

His eyes. So dead, like those of a fish she had once seen, washing up on the banks of the Charles River when she was a little girl, walking with her mother in that little riverside park … she couldn’t remember the name of the park. In Boston. On a Sunday afternoon. A fine spring afternoon. She had seen a dead fish and wanted to pick it up and take it home to put in their tropical tank so it would come back to life.

Against her will, she began to weep again. “Please, Henry,” she sobbed as her resolve faded, her muscles collapsed. “I … I … don’t kill me, don’t … I dunno, I didn’t look at them, I don’t know where, just please don’t shoot me, please don’t …”

Macy heard the soft sound of the Skorpion being lowered on its strap, rubbing against his clothes. She looked up and saw him lowering the gun, letting it hang from his shoulder, and for a few seconds she thought that the Golem was going to let her go. She let out her breath; it seemed as if her lungs were deflating, and for a brief instant there was hope.

Then he bent over, reaching under his right trouser leg, and pulled out an automatic. Straightening, he shifted his body sideways and gently slid the chamber back. She heard the sharp cha-clik! of the round sliding home.

“Goodbye,” he said. Same featureless voice, like ice water trickling down a glass pane. Then he raised the gun and carefully aimed directly at her face, until she could see straight down the black hole of the silencer. Macy closed her eyes.

“Golem!” someone shouted.…

A muffled gunshot thudded from the office.

Bigthorn fell back into the doorway of the adjacent coffee room as the bullet splintered plaster from the corridor wall opposite his position. From behind him, outside the front door of the building, he heard Wade Hoffman yell his name. The sheriff stretched out his arm to wave his deputy back. The shot had been in his general direction, but not close enough to indicate that the Golem knew exactly where he was hidden. That would change soon enough, though.

“It’s me, Ostrow,” he called out. “I’ve come to take you down. You can make this easy, or …”

Another shot. This time it ricocheted off the wall near the doorway where he was hiding. If he had been using a submachine gun before, when he killed Parker—and, Bigthorn presumed, LeFevre and Binder—he had since switched to an automatic pistol. Okay, so the Golem wasn’t about to throw down his gun and surrender. Bigthorn hadn’t really thought he would.

“Have it your way, asshole,” he said, keeping his eye on the shattered door. “Just remember what I told you. If you harm the girl, you’re going to die.”

And if you don’t harm her, he added silently, you’re going to die. I’ve had it with you, you son-of-a-bitch.

There was a long moment of silence. Then, from within the office, he heard the Golem’s leaden voice. “How are you going to kill me?”

His calm was ethereal; Bigthorn had heard vending machines speak with more emotion. “With a Taser?” Ostrow asked. “You’re not fooling me.”

Shit, but he had a point. The Taser in Bigthorn’s hand was as effective as a child’s squirt gun; it didn’t have nearly the range to take out Ostrow. At least not before the Golem killed him. But he couldn’t let Ostrow intimidate him like that.

“I don’t need a gun,” Bigthorn answered, carefully watching the door. “Guns are for Anglo pussies like you. Fuck, man, I’ll take your bullets and still keep coming to get you.” He waited a moment, then added, “You hear me?”

No reply. Then there was the faint sound of something moving inside the office. Bigthorn carefully centered the Taser on the doorway, holding the plastic gun steady with both hands and narrowing his vision down the sights. The Taser wasn’t made for sharpshooting, but it was the best he had.

No more sounds came from within the office, except for Macy’s distant weeping. Shut up, girl, and let me concentrate. He felt hot sweat rolling down from his armpits. The Golem was stalking him now, moving in on the sound of his voice, being entirely too careful for Bigthorn to get a one-chance drop on him. As risky as it was, he had to draw the Golem out.

“C’mon, you cheap cock-sucking hood,” he taunted. “I thought you were a pro.”

Cruncchh! It was the hard sound of a booted foot stepping on broken glass. A shadow flickered across the floor just inside the office door. “Or can you only take out unarmed women with bombs?” he needled, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “I’m going to …”

The Golem leaped into the doorway, half-seen in the dark hallway. The Skorpion roared as he fired indiscriminately in a wide arc, starting in Bigthorn’s direction. The sheriff ducked, hunched his shoulders between his knees, as bullets cut a swath just above his head, showering him with bits of plaster. He heard sharp, high whines as the rounds passed within inches of his ears. Fuck, fuck, fuck—!

Then the volley moved away as the Golem fired straight down the corridor. At that instant, Bigthorn raised his head, yanked up his weapon, and fired.

His aim was only slightly better than the Golem’s. The two electrified monofilaments from the Taser only grazed Ostrow’s right arm. To have knocked him cold, they would have had to make full contact with his body.

But it was good enough. The 2,000 volt charge kicked the Golem flat on his ass; the Skorpion sailed out of his hands, landing somewhere out of sight as Ostrow fell backwards and sprawled on the broken glass in the doorway. Bigthorn stared at him, thinking for a moment that Ostrow was unconscious.…

Wrong. Ostrow was stunned, but he was still moving, struggling to his knees and searching for the submachine gun. The sheriff threw down the Taser and lunged through the door at the fallen killer.

His body impacted the Golem’s when Ostrow was still on the floor, and for a frenzied moment Bigthorn had the satisfaction of getting his hands around the assassin’s throat, of seeing Ostrow’s face contort in sudden terror. Now! Squeeze until his fucking eyes bleed!

The Golem’s left leg slammed upwards; there was a cold, jarring second of agony as the Golem’s knee rammed straight into his balls. Simultaneously he kicked Bigthorn over him in a savage jujitsu move.

For a moment the sheriff was airborne … then he hit the floor about ten feet away, inside the office behind Ostrow. Breath knocked out of him, his legs feeling paralyzed, he almost succumbed to the temptation to pass out. Goddamn motherfuck, it hurt!

Through narrowed eyes, he saw Rollie Binder lying dead on the floor nearby. He heard scrabbling noises behind him, but forced himself not to look. Bigthorn hobbled to his knees. Don’t give up now, muchacho. His feet found the floor. Get the hell out of here! Blinded by the glare of the lights, patterns of starlight swarming before his eyes, he staggered towards the back door.

There was the thuffft! of a silenced gunshot, from somewhere behind him. He didn’t see where the bullet hit, but since there was no further pain, he figured the Golem must have missed. Bigthorn threw his shoulder against the door, twisted the knob and fell out into the darkness.…

He almost collided with Danny D’Angelo, coming up the back steps, Taser raised high in his right hand. Danny tried to catch him, then he looked over Bigthorn’s shoulder and let go of the sheriff to balance the Taser in both hands. “Danny, don’t—!” Bigthorn gasped.

Another muffled shot. The next bullet blew Danny’s brains out. As the officer toppled backwards, Bigthorn fell down the stairs. He landed on his knees on the pavement next to D’Angelo’s corpse; the pavement tore through his trousers, skinning his knees. Get out, dammit, move …! He struggled to his feet and lurched out into the night, forcing one foot in front of the other. Even after he had reached the deeper shadows, the sheriff kept running.

He didn’t need to look behind to know that he had become the Golem’s newest prey.