I asked her, “You okay, Mrs. Runyon?”
“Yes.” Low voice, as stunned as her eyes.
“He didn’t hurt you?”
“No.”
“How long has he been here?”
“More than an hour... just before he made me call you. He forced his way in—”
“Shut up,” Cahill said. His gaze, when he shifted it to me, showed more heat. “Don’t talk to her, goddamn it. You talk to me.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“That’s what you think. You carrying heat?”
“No.”
“Show me.”
I opened my jacket, fanned it up and out, and did a slow turn. “Satisfied?”
“Go stand next to the kid.”
I went over beside Matt. His hands were fisted at his sides, locked down rigid; when I glanced at him I could see his neck cords bulging, the pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat, the faint forward straining of his body. Like a pit bull at the end of a leash, I thought. Release him and he’d try to tear Cahill apart.
I said to Cahill, “What’s this all about?”
“You know what it’s about. You fuckers sicced the cops on me, you and Runyon. Richie told me that.”
“Richie?”
“My fuggin’ brother-in-law. He turned my own sister against me. A few bucks and a set of wheels, that’s all I wanted; but no, Richie drags out his piece” — he waggled the Saturday night special — “and sticks it in my face. Would of shot me, too, if I hadn’t taken it away from him. Fixed his wagon for him, the bastard.”
“What’d you do to him?”
“Busted his head,” Cahill said. “Gave Marj a jolt too. That’s what she gets for marrying Richie. A spic — what’s she want to marry a fuggin’ spic for anyway?”
His smooth red face turned brooding and petulant; you could see his emotions running naked there. He’d backed himself into a corner, not for the first time in his miserable life, but he didn’t see it that way. It was always somebody else’s fault — in this case, the Runyons’, mine, his sister’s, his brother-in-law’s. Angry, persecuted, trapped, and not very bright, with no place to run and no place to hide, taking out his frustrations on the people he blamed for his trouble.
But that still didn’t explain why he’d come here. This was a bigger risk than anything else he might have done—
Runyon, I thought, that’s why. He’s after Runyon.
And Nedra. Even now, on the run, he can’t let go of his fixation for her.
“Here’s the way it stacks up,” he said. “You give me what I want and I walk out of here and nobody gets hurt.”
“I can’t give you what you want. None of us can.”
“No? I’m talking about Runyon.”
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“I told him we don’t know where Vic is,” Kay Runyon said. “I told him and Matt told him, but he won’t believe us.”
“It’s the truth, Cahill. They don’t know and I don’t know either.”
“You got to have some idea.”
“No. If I had, don’t you think I’d have been out working on it instead of sitting around my office this morning?”
He shook his head stubbornly; he had one thought in there and by God nothing and nobody was going to drive it out. “You people put me on the run — okay, that’s over and done with. But I ain’t going anywhere until I find out what he did to Nedra.”
I asked Kay Runyon, “Did you show him the note your husband left you?”
“Yes.”
“That note don’t mean shit,” Cahill said.
“It means he’s not coming back. It means he may already have done away with himself. What good is it going to do you to hang around here waiting?”
“I ain’t gonna hang around here long. Neither are you. You don’t know where Runyon is, all right, then you go find him and bring him here.”
“Jesus Christ, how am I going to do that? I just told you, he may already be dead—”
“He’s not dead. I don’t buy that.”
“I’ve been hunting him ever since he left last night. So have the police. Nobody has any idea where he is. How the hell can I find him if I don’t know where to look?”
“I don’t care how you do it, just do it.”
It was like trying to talk to a wall. I felt bitterly helpless. I couldn’t walk out of here and leave the woman and her son at Cahill’s mercy, not unless I was prepared to go straight to the police and put their lives in further jeopardy by turning this into a SWAT-team fiasco; and I couldn’t stay here because there was no way to negotiate with a monomaniacal simpleton, and no way I could see to disarm him by myself.
One more try: “It’s Nedra you really want, Cahill, we both know that.”
“I want to know what he did to her. She better be alive.”
“I think she is. I’ve got an appointment with somebody later this afternoon, a friend of Nedra’s who might know where to find her.”
“Who? What friend?”
“I won’t tell you that. But I’ll take you with me when I see her — just the two of us. That’s my condition: Leave Mrs. Runyon and her son here and I’ll take you to the friend.”
“Bullshit,” Cahill said.
“What’s bullshit?”
“There’s no friend.”
“There’s a friend. I swear it.”
“Then go get her and bring her here.”
“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”
“Find out what the friend knows, come back and tell me.”
“And then what?”
“I go find Nedra myself.”
And if she’s dead and you still believe Runyon did it, I thought, and Runyon still hasn’t been found, you come back here and throw down on these poor people again. No way. You don’t get Annette Olroyd and you don’t get whatever those postcards of hers reveal.
Cahill said impatiently, “How about it, slick?”
It’s got to be the cops, I thought. Walk out, call Branislaus, tell him the way it’s shaped up in here. He’ll take over, do what has to be done.
And if this airhead shoots Kay or Matt before the negotiators can talk him out? I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.
But there’s no other way...
One other way: Leave, drive off, park somewhere out of sight, take the gun from the car and come back and try to get in quietly through the backyard and kitchen door, try to surprise him and pop him before he has a chance to use his weapon.
Sure, sure, big clumsy guy like me, make noise when I breathe — I couldn’t sneak up on a brass band. Bigger chance of the Runyons getting hurt that way than with trained hostage negotiators handling it. I’m no hero, for Christ’s sake, especially not with other people’s lives at stake.
“Come on, slick,” Cahill said, “make up your fuggin’ mind.” Angry now, letting the doors to the furnace blow open. He moved a pace to his right, took the Saturday night special away from Kay Runyon’s head so he could jam it in my direction for emphasis. His eyes had fire in them now — the meltdown glare, bright and crackling and all for me.
And that was good because he didn’t see Matt move. He didn’t but I did — a slow, sideways shifting that brought the boy up next to a spindly table with an orange pottery vase on it. There were maybe fifteen feet separating him and Cahill.
I knew instantly what was in the kid’s mind and I wanted to yell at him not to do it; reach over and grab him and haul him down before he acted. But any sudden cry or activity on my part would probably trigger Cahill. Nothing for me to do but keep Cahill’s attention centered on me and then attack when Matt attacked.