Backflash. Part 16

"The young one. Been hit high on the chest, right side, lying in the living room behind the sofa. Looked dead. I found the other two first, one in a bedroom, shot in the back of the head, one in the kitchen, shot in the chest. One shot each."

"Economical."

"I was keepin down, movin slow." Wycza shook his head, remembering. "All of a sudden, this son of a b.i.t.c.h in the living room rolls over, he's got a.22 in his hand. You know as well as I do, you can't hit your own pocket with one of those."

"They're not for work," Parker agreed. "For noise, and for show."

"So he shot at me, hit the ceiling or some f.u.c.king thing, and I put him down."

"Okay."

"The thing is," Wycza said, "he startled me, so I come upright, and I did him, and I'm standin there, and all at once I realize, I got windows on three sides of me. You know that living room, it's all across the front."

"But n.o.body killed you," Parker said.

"h.e.l.l of a way to find out," Wycza said. "So where's the guy from the pickup? Those three in the cottage didn't shoot each other, and the pickup's still there, but n.o.body's shooting at me. Is he hurt? Or is he just waiting? Did somebody maybe put a bullet into the pickup guy?"

"Not with a.22," Parker said.

"The one in the kitchen," Wycza said, "carried a.45 auto, been fired once tonight."

"That's different," Parker said.

"So I figure," Wycza said, "long as n.o.body's shooting at me anyway, why not just waltz around, have a look?"

"I watched you," Parker told him.

"You weren't the only one, I'm pretty sure," Wycza said. "So you saw me stop at the bedroom window."

"You were interested in that screen."

"Three fresh holes in it, two pus.h.i.+ng in, one pus.h.i.+ng out. The way it looks to me," Wycza said, "those three were scattered in the house for the ambush. Our pickup guy came over, shot the one in the bedroom. The other one ran over through the kitchen, got to the doorway, saw the pickup guy in the window, took a shot at him, the pickup guy shot him back. Or the other way around. Anyway, the biker dead, the pickup guy wounded. Some blood drops on the wall, like it sprayed when he was. .h.i.t."

"But he went on after the third one."

"Well, he had to," Wycza said. "In a hurry, hurt, got him in the living room through the side window there, another hole in the screen. But he didn't feel healthy enough to go in and finish the job. Went to hide, hope to feel better, wait for us. But from what I could see, it's only the one guy."

Parker turned and looked back toward the cottages. "So he's there, probably in the cottage between ours and his truck-"

"That's where I'd put him," Wycza agreed. "Where he can watch, but where he can also feel like he's got a way out if he needs it."

"And he's wounded, or maybe he's dead now," Parker said. "Wounded bad, or just sc.r.a.ped."

"He didn't take a shot at me," Wycza pointed out.

"Waiting for the money," Parker said. "If he's alive, that's what he's doing."

Wycza nodded. "That's what I'd do, I was him. And alive."

"If we burn him out," Parker said, "the flames'll bring every volunteer fireman in a hundred miles. If we just go in to get him, he's got too many chances to get us first."

"f.u.c.k him, leave him there," Wycza said.

"I can't do that," Parker said. "Come on, let's go talk to Lou."

4.

Before they reached the main road, they saw headlights turn in, then go black. "The money's here," Wycza said.

They continued on, and found the van stopped behind the Hyundai, its sliding side door open, spilling light onto the road. Mike Carlow, without his chauffeur's cap and coat, stood beside the van listening to Lou Sternberg explain the situation, while Noelle sat in the van doorway, feet flat on the ground as she leaned against the side wall to her right. She was still in her invalid filmy white, and she looked like a ghost.

"Here they are now," Sternberg said.

Wycza said, "Noelle? You okay?"

"Not yet," she told him, "but I will be."

"She got dried out," Carlow explained. "What's the situation back there?"

"Three dead bikers," Parker said. "The one that got them's holed up in another cabin, waiting for the money. He's wounded, we don't know how bad."

Sternberg said, "They fought each other even before they got the goods?"

"No, it's somebody else. No idea who."

Carlow said, "He gunned down three bikers by himself, and now he's in there waiting to take us down?"

Wycza said, "He's ambitious, we know that much."

Sternberg said, "We're here, the money's here. Let him stay and rot, we'll go somewhere else."

Parker said, "I need to know who he is."

"I don't," Sternberg said.

Parker said, "But who is this guy? Where'd he come from? Is he going to be behind me some day?"

"He won't be behind me," Sternberg said. "I'll be home in London."

"What I'm thinking about," Parker said, "is Cathman. I've been waiting for something from him, and I'm wondering is this it."

Wycza said, "Cathman? Parker, from the way you describe that guy Cathman, that isn't him back there."

"No, but he could be from him."

"Parker," Sternberg said, "you understand the situation. You've got a link with this Cathman, the rest of us don't. He may know your name and your phone number, but he doesn't know a d.a.m.n thing about me. You got a guy laying in ambush down in there? Fine, let him lay, I'm going home. We did good work tonight, and I'm ready to see the money, put it in my pocket, call British Air in the morning."

"I've got to go along with Lou," Noelle said. "I'm tired, and I feel like s.h.i.+t, and all I want to do is sleep and eat and drink. I don't want to fight anymore."

"Okay, you're right," Parker said. "Whoever this guy is, he's my problem, not any of yours. Mike, can you get the van around this car or do I need to move it out of the way?"

Carlow said, "You need to move it, if I'm going in. Why am I going in?"

'Just to get away from the road, so no county cop comes along while we're splitting the take."

Carlow laughed and said, "That would be a moment. Yeah, move it over. Noelle, honey, you wanna get in or you wanna get out?"

For answer, she hunkered back and drew her legs up under her. Seated in the van doorway, cross-legged, slumped forward, she looked like an untrustworthy oracle.

Parker jigged the Hyundai forward and back to the side of the road, waited while Carlow drove around him, then got out and walked with the others after the van. They were all stained red when the brake lights came on, and then it was dark again, except for the van's interior light, gleaming on the ghostly Noelle.

Carlow climbed from the driver's seat into the back of the van and slid the box out from the wheelchair. It was crammed full of the white plastic bags, four of them.

"Excuse me, Noelle," Sternberg said, and climbed up past her into the van. The rear seats had been removed in there, to make room for the wheelchair, which was now pushed as far back as possible, leaving a gray-carpeted open area. Carlow and Sternberg and Noelle sat on the carpet in this area, facing in, and began to count the money, while Parker and Wycza stood outside, sometimes watching, sometimes looking and listening up and down the road.

Three hundred nineteen thousand, seven hundred twenty dollars. Parker had had three thousand in expenses, that he took out first. Sternberg did the math on the rest, and said, "That's sixty-three thousand, three hundred forty-four apiece."

"You each take sixty-three," Parker said. "I'll take the change for dealing with the guy back there."

"A bargain," Carlow said.

Noelle had a handbag that would carry her share, and the others used the white plastic bags. In Parker's bag, there was sixty-seven thousand, seven hundred twenty dollars.

The four of them would take the van, leaving the Hyundai, which n.o.body wanted. Wycza said, "Coming out, use the Lexus. The key's in the ashtray."

"I will," Parker agreed. "Lou, I'll take back that other gun now."

"Right." Sternberg handed it to him, and said, "Call me again sometime."

"I will."

Carlow drove, Wycza in the seat beside him, Sternberg and Noelle seated on the floor in back. Only the back-up lights were on as Carlow backed past the Hyundai and out to the main road. Parker stood watching, and saw the van's headlights come on as it swung out and away, to the right.

Darkness again. It would take a few minutes to get his night vision back. He had the Python in his left hip pocket, and held the automatic in his right hand, the bag of money in his left. He walked down the road toward the cottages, and when he could see a little better he chose a spot where there was a thick double-trunked maple just to the right of the road. He went around behind it, put the plastic bag on the ground against its trunk, and brushed some dirt and stones and decayed leaves over it.

As he straightened, headlights came, fast, from the cottages. He stayed behind the tree, and the pickup went by, racing too hard for this road, jouncing all over the place. Whoever was at the wheel was impossible to see, and more than impossible to shoot.

The pickup lunged by. Parker stepped out into the roadway and listened, and there was a sudden shriek of brakes when the driver came across the Hyundai.

No crash, though; he managed to get around it. Then silence.

Parker put the Python in his right hand, and walked on toward the cottages.

5.

Now there were lights in two cottages, including the one where Parker and Wycza had decided the unknown shooter must be holed up. Parker was certain there was n.o.body left alive back here, but he was cautious anyway. He took the same route as last time, around to the right, beyond the reach of the glowing windows. Around the last cottage, then hunkered low to go past the s.p.a.ce between cottages, where the pickup used to be parked. And then, silently but swiftly, across the screened-in porch to the cottage that was now lit up.

When Parker had checked out all the cottages, back when they'd first moved in here, this back door had not been locked, and it still wasn't. He stepped through into the kitchen, and it was dark, the lit rooms farther away, living room and bath.

Parker listened. Nothing. He crossed the kitchen to the hall doorway, and stopped. Nothing. He went into the hall and looked through the bathroom doorway at a mess. Half a roll of paper towels on the sink, b.l.o.o.d.y individual paper towels in the sink and the bathtub and on the floor. Blood smears on the sink.

The dark bedrooms he pa.s.sed were empty, and showed no signs of use. In the living room, a floor lamp at one end of the sofa was lit, s.h.i.+ning down on a dark stain on the flower-pattern slipcover. Parker crossed to look at the stain, and it was blood, some dry, some still sticky. It made an irregular pattern, just at the end of the sofa.

Wounded. Wycza had been right about that, about the blood spatters on the outside wall next door. Head-shot, it looked like, except the guy was too active for that. He'd managed, after he'd been shot, to go on and kill the third biker.

But he hadn't had the strength to switch the lights off. He had to know Parker and the others had gone away with the place dark, and would know something was wrong if they came back and it was all lit up. But he hadn't had the strength to do anything about it. He'd come over here to collapse, to try to get his strength back.

So it wasn't that he'd let Wycza live, in order to wait for the rest to show up with the money. He had pa.s.sed out over here, he'd never seen Wycza at all.

And then came to. Patched himself one way and another, and took off, knowing the ambush was ruined, the money wouldn't be coming here.

Where would he go now? Who the h.e.l.l was he?

Maybe Cathman had some answers.

6.

It was a long night, and getting longer. Parker had walked out the dirt road to get the plastic bag of money and bring it back here and now it was inside the window well of the right rear door of the Lexus. The automatic he'd taken from the guard on the s.h.i.+p had been flung out over the slope into the river. The two simple incendiaries had been set, one in each lit cottage. There would be no surfaces for the technicians to scan for fingerprints. There'd be plenty left here, though, to give the law things to think about.

If he'd done the fuses right, the two fires should start three hours from now, after seven in the morning; daylight, so they could burn longer before being noticed. Yawning, forcing himself to stay awake, Parker got behind the wheel of the Lexus and steered it out to the main road, intending to head north, to deal with Cathman, one way or another. But when he saw the Hyundai, he stopped.

He rubbed his eyes, and the grizzle on his face. Wycza had been wrong, dammit. He had the big man's flaw of every once in a while feeling sorry for the weak.

Greg Hanzen knew their faces, he knew a link to Parker through Pete Rudd, he could describe the getaway from the s.h.i.+p. He could let the law know for sure that the money had not come off with the heisters. And his car was here, next to a scene of a lot of trouble that had to be connected with the robbery, and no way for Parker to get rid of it.

Cathman was to the north, Albany, an hour away. Hanzen was half an hour to the south, at his landing. Or, if he was conscious by now, maybe he'd made his way to a hospital somewhere, a river rat with a broken jaw on a night when a major robbery takes place on the river. Would the cops ask him questions?

I've got to look, Parker told himself. If he's there, that's that. If he's gone, I don't pursue it, I let it play out as it plays.

He turned right and drove south. Ten minutes later, he saw the first lights he'd seen, a 24-hour gas station and convenience store. He filled the tank and bought a coffee and a glazed sugar doughnut, and drove on south, finis.h.i.+ng the coffee just before the turnoff in to Hanzen's landing.