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Ryan was anxious to get to Denise’s. Careful, but in a hurry, waiting for traffic lights to change, going through an amber-turning-red in the middle of Rochester and finally coming to the street that climbed the rise to the apartment buildings, looking for a light in Denise’s window as he turned into the parking area in the middle of the complex. Ryan got out and angled through the rows of parked cars toward the entrance. It was here, coming to open pavement, he sensed something wrong, something different. If there had been only one apartment building here he might not have noticed the light out in the vestibule. But he looked around at the other entrances, five of them in the U-shaped complex, and there was a light in every entrance but this one.
Ryan had stopped before he saw the glass door swing into the darkness of the vestibule and the figure appear-somebody coming out, pointing at him, pointing something-and he was moving, ru
Son of a bitch, something had spooked him. Raymond came out to the pavement and paused, listening, before he crossed to the first row of cars. He’d fired three rounds, louder than hell in the closed-in area between the buildings. Now the only thing Raymond could hear, standing between two cars, was his own slow breathing, in and out of his nose. Some lights were going on in the building opposite him. Probably in all the buildings. He wondered if Ryan was going to run over to one of those lit-up entrances and start pushing buzzers. Raymond hoped he would. Get him in there banging at the inside door, screaming for help, and shoot him through the glass.
Raymond moved out into the open toward the next row of cars and that flushed him, hearing his quick ru
He needed the Weatherby pump gun. He also needed to get the Hertz car the hell out of here, before the flashing lights appeared, or he might never get back to it. He’d be giving Ryan an extra half-minute start, but that was all right, he’d be in the open for a time, anyway, if he was ru
Raymond got on him in less than a half minute, more like twenty seconds, flying out of there in the Hertz car with the lights off, down the little street and squealing the tires in a hard left onto the main road and across the railroad tracks, heading for the streetlights and neon signs a block away, and there he was on the left-hand side, going past Morley’s Drugs. Raymond swung the Hertz car into a filling station that was closed for the night, switched the motor off, and got out with the Weatherby pump gun.
He kept to the right side of the street, hurrying to catch even with Ryan, seeing him now and again past the cars parked on the street. Ryan was moving at a fast walk, looking back over his shoulder, a dark figure over there, in and out of the glow of streetlights and illuminated signs. Raymond didn’t see any people on the street except for some way down, a block away, and a few cars going by. He had the pump gun out in plain sight, not caring if anybody saw him with it. What were they going to do, take it away from him? Near the middle of the block, approaching the center of town, Raymond was ready to make his move.
He waited for a car to come along going south, the direction he was headed, stepped out in the street, and ran along with the car maybe fifteen or twenty yards, using it for cover, then let the car go on and started across the street, timing it just right and seeing the dumb look of surprise on Ryan’s face-Raymond standing out there with a big goddamn Weatherby raised at him. Ryan was moving as Raymond fired. Then Raymond was moving, pumping the shotgun, throwing himself across the hood of a parked car. He fired again and blew the plate-glass window out of a place called Bright Ideas as Ryan kept going.
Within a block and a half, ru
The wail of the police car lifted Ryan and he stopped to listen-Christ, saved-he could see it swerving after Raymond, ru
Yeah?
Bullshit, the police car was still going, the nice sound trailing after it, stretching thin and not doing him one bit of good, what those guys were paid to do, for Christ’s sake-and Ryan was moving again, ru
You’re doing it all wrong, Ryan told himself, much too late. From the begi
Cutting across the front lawn of the corner house, he wanted to get behind something, but was afraid to stop, so he kept ru