In addition to Carmody, in a private room on four, there was also the kid from the gas station, Bill Trowbridge, in his own room on three. Trowbridge, having answered every question the cops could think of to ask, was now doing press and TV interviews and grinning like a goof at his mother, seated on an uncomfortable nearby chair, being firmly kept out of camera range. Among the reasons he gave for climbing the bins in the storage room and ripping his way through the roof, he did not mention his need to pee.
The hall leading from the elevator to Carmody was also full of cops. One of them, that Thorsen seemed to have met before, was a plain-clothesman named Macready, who gave Parker a hello and a handshake at Thorsen's introduction, then said, "Lew's on his way here with Quindero. He wants everybody else to wait."
Thorsen said, "Not here yet?"
"The Quindero family's lobbed a lawyer in," Macready said. "It's delaying things a— Oh, here they are."
Out of an elevator and down the hall came a group of four, led by a big self-satisfied man who'd have to be Calavecci. Behind him came a skinny young scared guy with hands cuffed behind his back, and flanked by two serious-looking uniforms, each of them holding one of the cuffed guy's elbows. Parker looked at him past Calavecci and thought the young guy was probably one of the people from that car in the stadium parking lot.
But Calavecci was the point here. He said a smooth word to Thorsen, then was introduced to Jack Orr, insurance investigator. He shook hands too hard, grinned, and said, "So you've been chasing our boys longer'n we have."
"Just one," Parker said. "George Liss."
"A real piece of work," Calavecci said, with a pleased shake of the head. "I'm looking forward to a discussion with him. What a rap sheet."
"Yeah?"
"Got a record in the top ten," Calavecci said. "With a bullet. Why don't you and Dwayne wait in the dayroom over there, they got coffee and stuff for the nurses. We'll just have a little conversation, Ralph and me, with his pal Tom."
Parker saw that Ralph Quindero was trying not to cry. When he got in front of Carmody, he'd quit trying. They'd have a nice little tearfest in there, with Calavecci lapping it up, like a cat.
The dayroom was too bright, with fluorescents. A few nurses, trying to be cool but sneaking looks at the strangers, were clustered over coffee at a table in the corner. Thorsen and Parker got coffee of their own, both passing up the powdered near-milk, and carried the cardboard cups to another of the green Formica tables. They sat there in silence, waiting, the taste and smell of the coffee both a little obnoxious, and then Thorsen said, "This fella Liss."
"Yeah?"
"Does he work with a regular bunch? Same people all the time?"
"No," Parker said. "He isn't in a crew. He's too untrustworthy. He's just as likely to turn on his partners."
"Maybe he did this time," Thorsen said. "Maybe he's all any of us is looking for, at this point."
"Anything is possible," Parker agreed.
A few minutes later, Calavecci came in, got his own cup of coffee, and joined them at the table.
He seemed very content, as though he'd just had a good meal. "They're forgiving each other in there now," he said.
"That's nice," Thorsen said. He remained very flat and still when talking to Calavecci.
"I believe they're about to start praying for Mary's immortal soul," Calavecci went on, "so I left them in there with the guards. I'll go back in a few minutes." He gave Parker a measuring look. "You root around in the garbage a lot," he suggested.
"That's where the people are," Parker told him.
'You been chasing Liss a long time?"
"Eight months. He was part of a bank thing in Iowa City, took a hostage, killed her."
"What does the insurance company care?"
"They need Liss," Parker said, improvising from what he knew of previous situations, from the other side, "to prove the bank guards weren't incompetent. If they can prove the guards did what they were supposed to do, the company's liability goes way down."
Smiling pleasantly, Calavecci said, "And screw the survivors, right?"
Parker smiled back at him, just as pleasant and just as false. "That's the job," he said, and three shots sounded, flat and small but not far away. They could have been the sounds of somebody hitting a floor with a baseball bat, but they were not.
All three at the table knew it, and jumped to their feet. They were all moving toward the door before the first yells sounded outside. Calavecci went through the doorway, then Thorsen. Parker lagged, because he thought he knew what this was. He thought it wasn't a coincidence he'd seen George Liss walking toward the hospital.
Yes. The hall was full of armed men and women in blue, all facing the same way, frozen. Parker came through the doorway behind Thorsen and looked down the hall and Liss was backing away down there, waving the pistol he must have taken from the missing cop. He was still in the uniform, but what was protecting him now was Ralph Quindero. He backed away down the hall with Quindero in front of him, Liss's left arm tight around Quindero's waist, Quindero the shield, helplessly facing all those helpless armed people as he and Liss backed steadily away. There was a stairwell door back there, at the far end.
Liss, looking at everything, suddenly saw Parker, and laughed with surprise. "Well, look at you!" he cried, and fired at Parker's head.
6
Thorsen's lunge drove both Parker and himself back through the doorway into the dayroom, bouncing off the floor while the bullet hit the doorframe behind them. As they untangled themselves, there were sudden shouts from the hall, and a quick flurry of gunfire, almost immediately stopped.
Parker got to his feet as the uniforms in the hall rushed forward in a body, meaning Liss had made it to the stairwell. But how much farther could he go?
Parker turned and held out his hand to help Thorsen back to his feet. He said, "I owe you one."
Thorsen looked slightly ruffled, but then he shook himself and became completely neat again. He said, "That was Liss, wasn't it?"
"It was."
"Looks like he knows you're behind him."
"Looks that way."
"And doesn't like it."
"I didn't think he would," Parker said, and started out of the room.
Thorsen, not moving, said, "Let the police run him down. Shouldn't take more than five minutes."
Over his shoulder, Parker said, "Carmody," and walked away down the now-deserted hall. Big eyes in shocked faces looked out from corners of cover at the nurse's station along the way.
Carmody's room was on the other side, just before the nurse's station. Parker went to that doorway and looked in, and it was a mess. Carmody had been shot in the head, and was lying back on the pillow, three eyes staring upward. The two cops who'd been in here with him, mostly to keep watch on Ralph Quindero, had been shot any which way, just to take them out of play, and were alive, but both lying like flung dolls on the floor, being worked over by nurses.
For Liss, Carmody was the only person except the rest of the crew who could positively say he'd been one of the heisters. It didn't matter if Carmody had given statements to the law, just so he wouldn't be around later to make the positive ID. Liss could afford a lawyer who'd fend off all that crap, dependent on there being no live Tom Carmody to stand up in court and point and say, "That's him there."
And what Liss was counting on right now, in the hospital, was too much confusion and nobody who'd ever seen him before. A guy in a police uniform, moving fast, shooting people, who came in and went out. There might be some potential IDs of Liss, but once again, not enough for a conviction. Not if he got away clean and hired his lawyer and established his alibi in some place like San Diego, or one of the Portlands.