It was then that his palm hit her square in the nose, popping the carti
lage. A burst of pain seared her face and took her breath away. A key! He'd had a key or pick hidden in that little crevice of skin under
the bandage. Her partner reached out fast but Weir rose even faster and elbowed him in the throat. The man went down, gasping and clutching his neck, coughing and struggling for air. Weir clamped a hand on Welles's pistol and tried to pull it from her holster. She struggled to control it with both hands, using every ounce of strength. She tried to scream but the blood from her broken nose flowed down her throat and she began to choke.
Still gripping her gun, the prisoner reached down with his left hand and in what seemed like seconds unshackled his legs. Then with both hands he began in earnest to get the Glock away from her.
"Help me!" she cried, coughing blood. "Somebody, help!"
Weir managed to pull the weapon out of her holster but Welles, think
ing of her children, kept a vise grip on his wrist. The muzzle swung around the empty corridor, past Hank, on his hands and knees, retching and struggling for breath.
"Help! Officer down! Help!" Welles cried.
There was motion from the end of the corridor as a door opened and
someone came running. But the hallway seemed to be ten miles long and Weir was getting a better grip on the pistol. They rolled to the floor, his desperate eyes inches from hers, the muzzle of the gun turning slowly toward her. It ended up between them. Gasping, he tried to get his index finger to the trigger.
"No, please, no, no," she whimpered. The prisoner smiled cruelly as she stared at the black eye of the weapon, inches from her face, expecting it to fire at any instant.
Seeing her children, seeing the girl's father, her own mother....
No fucking way, Welles thought, furious. She planted her foot against the wall and shoved hard. Weir went over backward and she fell on top of him.
The pistol went off with a stunning explosion, the huge kick of recoil jarring her wrist, the sound deafening her.
Blood spattered the wall.
No, no, no!
Please let Hank be okay! she prayed.
But Welles saw her partner struggling to his feet. He was unhurt. Then she realized that she wasn't fighting for the weapon. It was in her hand alone; Weir no longer had a grip on it. Quivering, she leaped to her feet and backed away from him.
Oh, my God...
The bullet had struck the prisoner directly in the side of the head, leaving a horrible wound. On the wall behind him was a spatter of blood, brain matter and bone. Weir lay on his back, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling. Blood was flowing down his temple to the floor.
Shaking, Welles wailed, "Fuck me, look what I did! Oh, fuck! Help him, somebody!"
As a dozen other officers converged on the scene, she turned to look at the guards but then saw them freeze and drop into defensive crouches.
Welles gasped. Was there some other perp behind her? She spun around and saw that the corridor was empty. She turned back to see the other officers were still crouching, holding up their hands in alarm. Shouting. Ears deafened from the shot, she couldn't understand what they were saying.
Finally she heard, "Jesus, your weapon, Linda! Holster it! Watch where
you're pointing it!"
She realized in her panic that she'd been waving the Glock around
toward the ceiling, toward the floor, toward them-like a child with a toy gun. She barked a manic laugh at her carelessness. As she holstered the pistol she felt something hard on her belt and pulled it off. She examined the splinter of bloody bone from Weir's skull. "Oh," she said, dropped it and laughed like her daughter during a tickle-fest. She spit on her hand then began wiping her palm on her pants. The scrubbing grew more and more frantic until the laughter suddenly stopped and she dropped to her knees, consumed with wrenching sobs.
Chapter Thirty-six
"You should've seen it, Mum. I think I wowed 'em."
Kara sat on the edge of the chair, cradling the tepid Starbucks cup in her hands, the warmth from the cardboard perfectly matching the temperature of human skin-the temperature of her mother's skin, for instance, still pink, still glowing.
"I had the whole stage to myself for forty-five minutes. How 'bout that?" "You... ?"
This word was not part of an imaginary dialogue. The woman was awake and had asked the question in a firm voice.
You.
Though Kara had no idea what her mother meant.
It might mean: What was it you just said?
Or: Who are you? Why are you coming into my room and sitting down here as if we know each other? Or: I heard the word "you" once but I don't know what it means and I'm too embarrassed to ask. It's important, I know, but I can't remember. You, you, you... Then her mother looked out the window, at the clinging ivy, and said,
"Everything turned out fine. We got through it just fine." Kara knew it would only be frustrating to try to carry on a conversation
with her when she was in this state of mind. None of her sentences would
be related to any other. Sometimes she'd even forget her train of thought within a sentence and her voice would fade to a confused silence.
So Kara herself now just rambled on, talking about the Metarrwrphoses show she'd just done. And then, even more excitedly, she told her mother about helping the police catch a killer.
For a moment her mother's eyebrow arched in recognition and Kara's heart began to pound. She leaned forward.
"I found the tin. I never thought I'd see it again."
Head back in the pillow.
Kara's hands clenched into knotted fists. Her breath came fast. "It's me, Mum! Me! The Royal Kid. Can't you see me?"
"You?"
Goddamnit! Kara raged silently to the demon who'd possessed the poor
woman and mumed her soul. Leave her alone! Give her back to me! "Hi there." A woman's voice from the doorway startled Kara, who subtly lifted several tears off her cheek, as smoothly as executing a French drop, before she turned around.
"Hey," she said to Amelia Sachs. "You tracked me down."
'Tm a cop. That's what we do." She walked into the room, holding two
Starbucks cups. She glanced at the container in Kara's hand. "Sorry. Redundant present." Kara thumped the carton she was holding. Almost out. She took the second cup gratefully. "Caffeine'll never go to waste around me." She started sipping. "Thanks. You guys have fun?" "Sure did. That woman's a scream. Jaynene. Thorn's in love with her.
And she actually made Lincoln laugh."
"She has that effect on people," Kara said. "A way good soul."
Amelia said, "Balzac dragged you away pretty fast at the end of the show.
I just wanted to come by and thank you again. And to say that you should send us a bill for your time." "I never thought about it. You introduced me to Cuban coffee. That's
payment enough." "No, invoice us something. Send it to me and I'll make sure it goes to the
city." "Playing G-woman," Kara said. "It'll be a story I'll tell my grandkids.... Hey, I'm free for the rest of the night-Mr. Balzac's off with his friend. I was going to see some people down in SoHo. You want to come?"
"Sure," the policewoman said. 'We could-" She looked up, over Kara's
shoulder. "Hello." Kara glanced behind her and saw her mother, looking with curiosity at the policewoman, and sized up the gaze. "She's not really with us right now."
"It was during the summer," the elderly woman said. "June, I'm pretty
sure." She closed her eyes and lay back.
"Is she okay?"
"Just a temporary thing. She'll come back soon. Her mind's a little funny
sometimes." Kara stroked the old woman's arm then asked Sachs, "Your parents?" "It'll sound familiar, I've got a feeling. Father's dead. My mother lives near me in Brooklyn. Little too close for comfort. But we've come to an... understanding." Kara knew that understandings between mother and daughter were as complex as international treaties and she didn't ask Amelia to elaborate, not now. There'd be time for that in the future. A piercing beep filled the room and both women reached for the pagers on their belts. Amelia won. "I shut my cell off when I got here. There was a sign in the lobby that said I couldn't use it. You mind?" She nodded toward the telephone on the table.
"No, go ahead."
She picked up the phone and dialed and Kara rose to straighten the blankets on her mother's bed. "Remember that bed-and-breakfast we stayed at in Warwick, Mum? Near the castle?"
Do you remember? Tell me you remember!
Amelia's voice: "Rhyme? Me."
Kara's unilateral conversation was interrupted a few seconds later, though, when she heard the officer's voice ask a sharp, 'What? When?" Turning to the policewoman, Kara frowned. Amelia was looking at her, shaking her head. 'Tll get right down there.... I'm with her now. I'll tell her." She hung up.
'What's the matter?" Kara asked.
"Looks like I can't join you guys after all. We must've missed a lock pick
or key. Weir got out of his cuffs at detention and went for somebody's gun. He was killed." "Oh, my God."
Amelia walked to the doorway. "I've got to run the scene down there." She paused and glanced at Kara. "You know, I was worried about keeping him under guard during the trial. That man was just too slippery. But I guess sometimes there is justice. Oh, that bill? Whatever you were going to charge, double it."
"Constable's got some information," the man's voice came crisply through the phone.
"He's been playing detective, has he?" Charles Grady asked the lawyer wryly.
Wryly-but not sarcastically. The prosecutor had nothing against Joseph Roth, who-though he represented scum-was a defense lawyer who managed to step around the slime trail left by his clients and who treated D.A:s and cops with honesty and respect. Grady reciprocated.
"Yeah, he has. Made some calls up to Canton Falls and put the fear of God into a couple of the Patriot Assembly folks. They checked things out. Looks like some of the former members've gone rogue:'
'Who is it? Barnes? Stemple?"
'We didn't go into it in depth. All I know is he's pretty upset. He kept saying, 'Judas, Judas, Judas: Over and over."
Grady couldn't stir up much sympathy. You lie down with dogs.... He
said to the lawyer, "He knows I'm not letting him off scot-free."
"He understands that, Charles."
"You know Weir's dead?"
"Yep.... I've got to tell you Andrew was happy to hear it. I really believe he didn't have anything to do with trying to hurt you, Charles." Grady didn't have any use for opinions from defense counsel, even
forthright ones like Roth. He asked, "And he's got solid information?"
"He does, yes."
Grady believed him. Roth was a man you simply could not fool; if he thought Constable was going to dime out some of his people then it was going to happen. How successful the resulting case would be was a different matter, of course. But if Constable gave relatively hard information and if the troopers did a halfway decent job with their investigation and arrest he was confident he could put the perps away. Grady would also make sure that Lincoln Rhyme oversaw the forensics.
Grady had mixed feelings about Weir's death. While he'd publicly ex
press his concern at the man's shooting and promise to look into it officially, he was privately delighted that the fucker'd been disposed of. He was still shocked and infuriated that a killer had walked right into the apartment where his wife and daughter lived, willing to murder them too.
Grady looked at the glass of wine he so dearly wanted a sip of, but realized that a consequence of this phone call was that it precluded alcohol for the time being. The Constable case was so important that he needed all his wits about him.
"He wants to meet you face-to-face," Roth said.
The wine was a Grgich Hills Cabernet Sauvignon. A 1997, no less. Great vineyard, great year.
Roth continued, "How soon can you get down to detention?"
"A half hour. I'll leave now."
Grady hung up and announced to his wife, "The good news is no trial." Luis, the still-eyed bodyguard, said, 'Tll go with you."
After Weir's death Lon Sellitto had cut back the protection team to one officer.
"No, you stay here with my family, Luis. I'd feel better."
