Nathan tried to look impassive, but something in his expression made Steadman laugh. The cop inserted an old-fashioned iron key into the keyhole, and turned the lock with a solid klunk. The three-inch-thick oak door swung open noiselessly, and Steadman stepped aside.
The interior of the cell was three times the size of his room at the JDC, and lit only by a single light bulb dangling near the ten-foot-high ceiling. Besides the rough red sandstone walls and concrete floor, the only objects in the cell were an ancient canvas-on-wood Army cot and a kind of toilet that Nathan had never seen before. The bowl looked like all toilets, but there was a box of some sort over top of it.
"Here's your suite for the night, Mr. Bailey," Steadman said with a grin.
Nathan tried to straighten his shoulders and enter his cell with dignity, but couldn't quite pull it off. Behind the brave mask lurked terrified eyes.
"Lean against the wall," Steadman ordered.
Still without a word, Nathan complied, pressing the side of his face against the cold red bricks. Steadman kicked the boy's feet back and to the side to form a human tripod. From there, he released Nathan's handcuffs.
"Pleasant dreams," Steadman said as he closed the door behind him. "Don't let the bedbugs bite!" He laughed loud and long on that one. As the heavy deadbolt slid into its keeper, the klunk reverberated through the dank cell.
So this is it, Nathan thought. Ended just like it began, in a cage for trying to protect yourself A wave of tears approached from behind his eyes, but he willed them away. You'll have fifty or sixty years to cry. No sense wasting any now.
Jesus, it was cold in there. He carefully grabbed a corner of the wool Army blanket from the cot and shook it open, checking for bugs. There were none. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders, he sat on the edge of the cot, which promptly collapsed under his eighty-three pounds. One of the wooden legs had been booby-trapped to look whole. The impact with the concrete floor shook his various injuries to life.
This time, he couldn't stop the tears. Dickheads.
Chapter 27
Sergeant Watts finished his report on Nathan's capture at 4:30, Li and slid the papers into an interoffice envelope addressed to Sheriff Murphy, who had leveraged his political connections to talk himself into a fancy corner office with a fireplace up in the County Administration Building.
The more Watts thought about the irony of his luck, the more he grumped about the day ahead. He and his boys had made the collar that the big-city guys couldn't make, but by the time the press arrived to give him credit, he'd be off duty, and the sheriff would hog it all. Shift change was only ninety minutes away. He wondered if there wasn't some way he'd be able to pull double duty, and give himself an opportunity to witness the bedlam that would be descending on their little community very soon.
The sound of the lobby door opening startled him. Visitors were rare at this hour. In this case, it was another cop, wearing a uniform Watts didn't recognize.
"Good morning," Pointer said cheerily. "I understand there was some excitement here last night."
Watts smiled proudly, despite the inexplicable bad feeling he had about this guy. "Yessir, we got the bad guy. How can I help you?"
"My name's Robertson," Pointer lied. "I'm with the Braddock County PD. The Bailey kid's from my beat. Just here to help out, maybe take him back to Virginia after extradition." He glanced around the lobby. "Looks like a pretty slow night."
Something in the way Robertson made the comment made Watts feel defensive. "Oh, I don't know," he said. "It's always exciting to fix a job that somebody else botched up." Why the hell would somebody wear gloves on a night like this? he thought, noticing the visitor's leather-clad hands.
Pointer laughed. "Well, you got me there, pal. Meant no harm, actually. Place just seems empty."
Watts shrugged and looked down at his papers. "Except for me and the kid, it is empty." Even as he said the words, he sensed that he had done a bad thing. Problem was, Watts had worked behind a desk for too long to react quickly enough to his senses.
By the time he saw the stranger's arm swing up to shoulder height, the bullet was already on its way.
What was that?!
Nathan was startled from near-sleep by a strange noise -p h u t-like the sound of a distant air rifle, followed by the loud clatter of falling furniture, and then silence. No one was picking up anything that had fallen. Wasn't that strange?
He couldn't put it all together, yet he knew that anything out of the ordinary in a jail was bad news. Shedding his blanket, Nathan moved to the small window high in the door to see what he could observe. Even straining on tiptoes to get any view at all, his field of vision was limited to the empty cell across the hall.
Something definitely was going on. He could hear odd movement out front, a moaning sound.
Phut.
There it was again! Only this time, it didn't sound so much like an air rifle; it was more resonant thin that. Nathan swore he'd heard that sound before, or something like it, in a movie or on TV.
When it came to him, his blood turned to ice. He had to breathe deeply and rapidly to keep from passing out. This couldn't be happening to him. The nightmare just wouldn't end.
Pointer had snapped the first shot off a little too quickly, sending the round an inch high and a half-inch to the left, squarely into the cop's breastbone. It was a kill-shot, sure enough, but it was a messy one. If he'd taken just an instant more, the Hydra-shock round would have blasted the man's heart into a hundred shreds, bringing instant death and very little mess. As it was, the bullet flattened to the size of a quarter on impact, then tumbled randomly through the cop's chest cavity, turning his thoracic organs to Jell-O. As the cop lay on the floor with his legs intertwined with the swivels of his chair, blood pumped like a garden hose from his chest wound, and pink sputum foamed from his nose and mouth.
Considering himself an artist in his craft, Pointer detested messy work. He cursed himself under his breath as he strode casually to the sputtering man's side. As long as the heart continued to pump, the gore would continue to spread. Pointer's task was to pull the plug.
The look in the dying man's eyes showed more resignation than fear as Pointer's second shot, this one carefully placed at point-blank range, reduced Watts's front teeth to dust and continued on to bore through his soft palate, into his brain stem, where every command to every body system ceased instantly.
The giant keys to the detention cells sat heaped on the desk, in clear view, in front of three security rcamera monitors. Pointer smiled and shook his head.
These hayseeds have no idea what security means, he thought. Glancing around to make sure no one was near, he watched himself on the TV monitor as he leaned over Watts's body and hoisted the keys with a finger, taking care to leave no footprints in the blood.
Another two minutes, and he'd be done.
The sound of approaching footsteps confirmed Nathan's worst fears. His breathing came in quick gulps, like a panting dog's, and he was feeling light-headed. Why are they doing this to me? His mind raced frantically, but there were no answers.
This wasn't Ricky, and it wasn't Uncle Mark. Whoever this guy was, he was no drunk; he was a killer with a silencer on his gun, and he wanted Nathan dead badly enough that he was willing to kill a cop to do it.
What did I do?
There was no time for thought, only for action. He had to be ready for a fight, no matter how unlikely it was that he'd win. He needed a weapon. If only one of the bricks would come free…