They took off in the Jeep, weaving in and out of heavy traffic. “Tell me what happened at the ground-breaking,” Frankie said.
He described the confrontation, then ran through a short version of Pryce’s story.
“We had it right except for the most important thing—the kid in the photograph,” he concluded. “I’m convinced Red approached Garrett and demanded money for the photo of Carter. Garrett sent Dominique to scare them out of town. When they died, Garrett must have felt safe.
“Now here’s a piece of the puzzle I witnessed without realizing it. At the funeral home, Augie must have told Garrett about the manuscript. I walked in as he was showing Garrett the photo of himself as a kid talking to Grant. Garrett had kept the secret buried all this time, but now he knew a journalist was digging into the story and that he’d be exposed as an informant right along with Carter. The world would know he played a part in his brother’s murder. He’d be held in contempt or, even worse, pitied, something his ego couldn’t tolerate.”
Frankie shook her head. “The guilt must have eaten him up. Damn it,” she shouted. She slammed on the brakes, and hit the horn.
The old pickup in front of them had skidded to a stop to avoid running a yellow light. Tires behind them screeched. Billy looked back to see a Mazda inches from their bumper.
Frankie smacked the steering wheel. “We’re stuck. This is a long light.”
He pointed at the library’s large parking lot on the right. “Take it easy, we’re almost there.”
Half a block up stood the ultramodern, glass-and-steel library. Fronting the library was a plaza with five monolithic pillars, twelve feet tall, each with words and symbols etched in their sides, meant to represent printing rollers. Two laid on the ground. Three stood on end.
Frankie blew out a breath. “Dominique said she’d be waiting in the ladies’ room just inside the door. I’ll go in after her. You switch to the backseat. When we come out, I’ll put her in the back where you can keep an eye on her while I drive. She’s so nervous, she might try to jump out at a light.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He nodded at the library. “Look at that third pillar. There’s a woman standing near it—black dress, same colored bandanna as the one she had on in the bus station. That’s Dominique.”
Frankie craned her neck. “And the short guy walking across the plaza with the box—that’s her friend. She’s lost her mind. Why go outside when she’s terrified Garrett will find her?”
“I guarantee the bodyguards scared her friend into flushing her out in the open. Look at that.”
He pointed at a black Cadillac coming from the opposite direction. It slowed and turned into the long driveway that fronted the library. “That’s Garrett. Get us out of here,” he shouted.
Frankie racked the transmission into reverse. The Jeep’s rear bumper slammed into the Mazda so hard it made enough room to clear the pickup in front. She stomped on the gas and powered into the outer lane, right into the path of a lumbering UPS truck. The truck crumpled Billy’s door inward, the impact shoving the Jeep into the side of the pickup. The Mazda driver began honking furiously.
Frankie looked at him, wide eyed. “What now?”
“Leave it. We’re outta here.”
She flung open the door and hit the pavement running. With his door crushed, he had to scramble behind her over the center console. They dodged traffic, both running flat out across the library parking lot packed with cars.
He could see the black Cadillac rolling up the drive, but SUVs and vans in the parking lot blocked his view of Dominique. Running hard, he passed Frankie and drew away, catching a glimpse of Dominique standing in front of one of the pillars. The short guy was handing a box to her, but her attention was on the Cadillac. It turned for her, and accelerated.
“Run,” Billy shouted at Dominique. “Get inside!”
The guy took off for the parking lot. Dominique froze. She started across the driveway, but then saw that the Caddy was coming too fast. She reversed and stumbled, the box clutched to her chest making her clumsy. She ran back across the plaza full of people toward the library.
“No, no, no,” Frankie screamed from behind Billy.
The Caddy driver jerked the wheel to change course. Parents grabbed their kids and scrambled out of the way. The car jumped the curb and headed for Dominique, the engine roaring as it struck her. The force threw her onto the hood, carrying her along, the knives flying out of the box like pickup sticks. Directly ahead of the Caddy stood the third stone pillar. The driver braked, tires squealed. A second before the Caddy struck the pillar, Dominique slid down the hood toward the front. The massive bumper smashed the stone with a sickening thud, Dominique in between.
The plaza went still as if it were drawing a breath, then the screams began. People picked up their kids and ran. One man ran toward the car and Dominique, phone already in hand, but Billy knew there was no hope in that.
The Caddy’s back door sprang open. Garrett emerged. He fell to his knees, struggled up, and limped toward the library entrance, picking up speed until he disappeared through the automatic door. Billy swerved to follow Garrett just as the front passenger door opened. One of the bodyguards tumbled out, covered in air-bag dust, to lie facedown on the concrete.
“Get Garrett,” Frankie shouted, coming up fast behind him.
Now the driver’s door opened. The second bodyguard lurched toward the back of the car, his hand to a nose that had been bloodied by the air bag. Billy wanted to go after Garrett, but he couldn’t leave Frankie to handle both men.
“Police,” he yelled. They split, and he took the driver, who was still on his feet.
“Hands on your head,” he yelled. “On the ground, on the ground.”
The man collapsed to his knees beside the rear wheel, blood dripping from his chin, his eyes unfocused. Billy holstered his gun, pushed him on his belly and cuffed him, watching Frankie as she approached the second bodyguard. The guy had come to and was pushing himself off the ground. Billy saw a flash of metal in his right hand. Frankie saw it too and stepped in fast, clubbing him on the neck with the butt of her gun. He hit the concrete, dead weight. She kicked his gun, sent it skittering across the concrete, and cuffed his limp arms. When she backed away, her eyes were glittering, her teeth gritted.
They turned to stare at Dominique, pinned between the hood and the pillar. She was upended, her legs splayed, the trunk of her body trapped between the Caddy and stone. One arm could be seen dangling below the bumper. A stream of blood pooled beneath the Caddy’s front tire. The green watchband circled her wrist.
Frankie looked back at him, cocked her head toward the library. “I’ve got this. Go.”
He took off across the plaza. Garrett’s dash into the library had amazed him, desperation making the man agile and even more dangerous. He could be hiding anywhere in the library, in the stacks or even holding a hostage. Billy’s edge was that Garrett had no idea he was coming right behind him.
The automatic door slid open. He drew his weapon and pressed along the foyer wall. Scanning the open atrium, he saw a group of people who were staring at the top of the escalators that ran to the library’s second-floor mezzanine.
He stepped into the atrium, barrel pointed skyward. “Police,” he said, just loud enough for the bystanders to hear.
They turned. He put his finger to his lips. “Where’s the man who ran in?”
A woman pointed to the escalator. “He just went up.”
“Is he armed?”
“He might be,” the man closest to him said. “He wrestled with a security guard at the top.”
A woman’s scream rang out from somewhere on the mezzanine. The people in the atrium scattered as Billy bounded up the escalator steps, crouching as he reached the top. He scanned the space then quickly took cover behind a book cart.
Except for a few people peeking out from among the stacks, the mezzanine appeared to be empty. Directly across from the escalator, a woman stood up from behind the information desk, her hands pressed to her mouth. On the floor in front of the desk, a uniformed guard lay sprawled with one knee rising up.
Billy waved to get the woman’s attention. “Police. Where did the man go?” he whispered.
She pointed toward a metal door on the back wall twenty feet behind her.
He moved to kneel beside the guard, a man in his sixties. Blood leaked from a gash in his scalp. Billy looked up at the woman behind the desk.
“Where does that door lead?”
“It’s the old wing—a hallway with a meeting room and two storage rooms. It ends in a balcony. No one works back there.”
He was familiar with the balcony she was talking about. He could see the back of the library from the barge.
“Call 911,” he said. “Tell dispatch there are additional injuries at the scene.”
The guard opened his eyes and looked around. “Where’s that old fucker?”
“Down the hall,” Billy said.
“He got my gun, a .357.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Empty chamber, and one bullet. I’m not here to shoot up the place.” The guard was shaken, groggy.
“Are you sure about the bullets?” he asked.
The guard nodded.
He squeezed the man’s arm and ran to the metal door through which Garrett had just disappeared. Garrett would never allow himself to be locked up for murder. Billy wanted to catch the son of a bitch, but if the guard was right, going after Garrett meant risking one shot in order to take him alive.
He cracked open the door to peer around the frame. The hall ran straight back about seventy-five feet, with tall windows on the left and three doors on the right. At the end of the hall, an exterior door was just swinging shut, which meant Garrett was now standing outside, two stories up on a balcony about six feet wide with a waist-high railing. Below him was a steep, grassy slope held in place by a fifteen-foot-high retaining wall. At the base of the wall ran the train tracks, then the road, then the river.
Billy made a split-second decision. He pushed through the door and sprinted toward the first meeting room on the right. Ten feet into the hall he saw a flash of sunlight as the balcony door swung open. Garrett limped inside, the guard’s gun tucked in his waistband. Momentum carried him three steps before he saw Billy coming.
“Drop it,” Billy shouted, pointing his SIG at Garrett. Garrett’s eyes flared with recognition.
He could shoot Garrett, but under these circumstances, he’d have a hard time proving it wasn’t a revenge kill. It was a gamble, but he raced the last few steps to the meeting room doorway. As he cleared the opening, he heard the click of the .357’s empty chamber. He hit the floor and rolled. A second later a slug caromed off the door frame, exploding the wood into splinters. He came up on the far side of a conference table, his weapon trained on the opening. If Garrett came through that door, he was a dead man. Billy waited, breathing hard in the silence. He heard footsteps going back down the hall. Then the exterior door slammed shut. Garrett was on the balcony again.
Billy raced for the exterior door, factoring in the possibility that the guard had been confused about the number of bullets loaded. He’d have to sucker Garrett into taking another shot to find out. He stopped at the door, brought up his knee, placed his foot on the door’s panic bar, and shoved as hard as he could. The door crashed into the outside wall. He crouched, his SIG before him, and peered around the frame.
Garrett was in the corner, wild eyed, standing with his back against the railing. His face was bleached white, and he was mumbling, the muzzle of the .357 pressed to his temple.
“I’m sorry, Robert, sorry, Robert, sorry, Robert.” Garrett closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Click. He pulled again. Another dry click. Garrett looked at Billy with huge, empty eyes.
Billy rose from his stance. “Drop the gun. Let’s do this right.”
Garrett came suddenly to life. He hurled the gun at Billy and heaved his body on top of the railing. Billy was on Garrett fast, grabbing for a handhold, but Garrett twisted and smashed an elbow into his jaw. Billy’s head snapped back and he stumbled, his grip on Garrett broken. Garrett launched himself over the rail. Billy dove for the rail in time to see him roll down the slope and then pitch airborne over the edge of the retaining wall. Garrett landed on his back, angled across the first set of tracks, his head resting against a rail. One hand rose and dropped. Then he lay, inert.
He stared down at Garrett. Sirens yowled from three directions, cruisers and first responders making the scene. Red and Little Man. Augie and Dominique and Pryce—all victims of Garrett’s pride. Let the ditch doctors scrape the bastard off the tracks, he thought. I’m done.
He’d pulled out his mobile to alert dispatch of Garrett’s location when another sound came to him, a single horn blast. He knew instantly what it meant. Living on the barge, he’d learned to count down the seconds before a train’s dual engines powered past. The engineer wouldn’t see Garrett in time to stop.
He stared down the slope, knowing that if he jumped he could wind up in the same shape as Garrett. The horn blew louder. He owed the son of a bitch nothing, certainly not his life. At the street corner, the crossing gates came alive, bells sounding and lights flashing.
No one would blame him for not risking it. But if he didn’t move now, right now, Garrett would die. He saw Augie’s face before him, the warrior’s face in the painting behind the catcher’s mask. Augie’s eyes smiled at him.
He knew what he had to do. “This one’s for you, buddy.”
He swung over the railing, lowered himself to hang from the bottom edge of the balcony, and let go. The impact with the slope knocked him breathless. He skidded out of control, the grassy slope slicker than he’d imagined. Sliding down toward the edge of the retaining wall, he grabbed a handful of brush at the last moment. The brush tore away but slowed his drop. He hit the gravel bed below, somehow staying on his feet.
The bells rang. The horn blew nonstop. Garrett, who was lying twenty feet away, raised his head to see the black locomotive bearing down. His head fell back.
The engineer must have finally spotted Garrett, because the wheels locked in a high-pitched scream, sparks flying off the rails. Billy raced for the tracks, planning to grab Garrett’s belt and haul him to safety.
The locomotive pounded down on him as he reached the rocky strip of ballast. He strained forward. Seconds left. Almost there. Then Garrett kicked out, connecting with Billy’s shin. The ballast shifted, and his feet slid out from under him. He went down hard on a creosote tie, his face even with Garrett’s, staring straight into the man’s eyes.
“You can go to hell,” Garrett whispered.
The wheels hit with a furnace blast of hot metal and sound. Billy smelled grease and fire and the blood of damnation.
He rolled away.