Stadic said, ''Go on back up there and watch in case she moves,'' then turned the phone off and started running. If he could get her. If he could get the phone away from Davenport. Christ, if LaChaise had Davenport's old lady, they could be there all day. He was still alive, if he could get the girl.
Stadic rounded the end of the concourse and saw people milling around. One of them yelled, ''Sandra Darling. Sandra Darling, where are you?''
Who was that? That couldn't be Davenport…
He dodged left, went down the stairs to the first tier. He was halfway around.
He went down three rows and started running sideways. He was on the thirty-yard line, the twenty, the ten, but still a way to go.
A uniformed cop came out of one of the staircases, saw him and yelled, ''Andy
Stadic. Stadic. Stop there, Andy.''
They had him.
No doubt. But he kept going, he was almost to the woman: he could do that, anyway. He could say that he didn't hear, that he was about to arrest her. He had the. 380 in his pocket, if he could drop it, if they found her with the gun
…
Sandy heard the cops shouting, heard somebody banging toward the seats. She peeked: the man in the photos was a hundred feet away, running right toward her.
He knew where she was. She began to crawl down the space between the seats, got to the stairs, scrambled up them, hands and feet churning.
''Sandy Darling, stop,'' Stadic screamed. He brought the shotgun up, centered it on the back of her head and jerked the trigger. The shot boomed inside the stadium and he saw her go down. Had she gone down before the shot? Had he hit her?
Somebody shouted and he turned, dizzy, and a cop fired a pistol and a chair splintered behind him.
Then he saw the woman, scrambling, disappearing into a stairwell. He ran that way, and somebody fired another shot at him, but Stadic had lost it.
The woman, he thought. If he could just get the woman. He forgot about the phone: he thought about the small figure disappearing into the stairwell.
There was his problem. The woman.
DAVENPORT APPEARED, LARGE, HAIR STANDING OUT from his head as though somebody had deliberately mussed it, his long black coat dangling down his legs. He was a quarter of the way around the stadium, a pistol in his hand. ''Stadic, goddamnit
…''
But Andy Stadic, too many days with no sleep, one inch from having pulled it off-Stadic was locked into a loop. Find the woman. He jerked the shotgun toward
Davenport and pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, four, and thenthe gun was empty. Lucas dropped and the shotgun blasts rattled harmlessly off the seats twenty yards away. Not even close. The cops farther up the dome fired three more shots, missing.
Stadic ignored them, dropped the shotgun, drew his pistol, a Glock nine-millimeter, and ran up the stairs, into the stairwell, going after the woman.
And he found blood.
A SMEAR ON THE CONCRETE, THEN A DRIBBLE. HE'D HIT her with his quick shot. He followed the blood around the corner and up. She'd moved to the next tier.
Somebody was screaming at him: ''Stadic. Stadic…''
Not Davenport, one of the other cops.
He was so close.
SANDY WAS HURT. SHE DIDN'T KNOW WHETHER SHE'D been hit with shotgun pellets, or pieces of the plastic chairs, but she was bleeding from the right hip, thigh and calf, and maybe from her back. Her back hurt, anyway, a scratching pain, like a cut.
She emerged on the second level, saw a TV booth to her left. Try to hide. She ran to the booth. The door was locked. She went back down the stairs, thinking she might hide in the seats again-and noticed that the booth window was open.
She stood on the back of a seat, and pulled herself in.
Not a broadcast booth, but a camera position. Empty, except for a heavy camera stand. No playoff games this year. She crouched below the window and listened to the cops yelling out in the stadium.
THE THOUGHTS WERE MAKING A LITTLE TUNE IN Stadic's head: get the woman, fuckin'
Davenport; get the woman soon as you can…
He ran up the stairs, paused, looked for blood. Heard thecops calling behind him: ''Where'd he go? Get out in the goddamn concourse… I think he went up.''
More blood. Yes. Going up.
He followed, poked his head out of the stairwell, and a cop at the far end shouted, ''There he is. He's up on top.''
LUCAS RAN UP A STAIRWELL, PAUSED AT THE TOP, AND peeked. Stadic was in the next well, with a pistol. Lucas poked his head around the corner and yelled, ''Andy.
Give it up, man.''
''Fuck you, Davenport.'' Stadic swiveled and fired. ''You caused this shit.''
Somebody shouted, ''He's gone, he went back down.''
STADIC JUMPED BACK INTO THE STAIRWELL, PAUSED A second, then came back out: and caught him. Lucas, hearing the other cops yelling, had come out of his stairwell and was headed down the aisle toward him. Stadic had his gun up: Lucas's gun was out to his side, as he balanced himself trying to run down the too-narrow row of seats. Stadic fired and Davenport flipped over, went down between the chairs.
WHEN SANDY HEARD LUCAS SHOUT, SHE STUCK HER head up and peeked. Stadic was twenty feet away, Davenport beyond him: she recognized him from TV, the funny shock when you realized that the TV image actually represented a person. Then
Stadic fired and Davenport flipped over the chairs, going down.
Sandy looked wildly around the booth, saw the TV stand. The camera mounting-head was fixed to the end of a steel cylinder, which disappeared into a heavy steel base, fixed with two collars held by wing nuts. She loosened the wing nuts and pulled the cylinder out of the base. The cylinder wasa chromed-steel pipe four feet long, an inch and a half in diameter. She grabbed it like a baseball bat, hefted it.
STADIC FROZE AFTER FIRING AT DAVENPORT: STUNNED. He'd just killed a cop, for
Christ's sake. He stood for a second, looking at his pistol. Maybe he could tell them Davenport was the one, that Davenport had set him up.
Glassy-eyed, he turned back to the trail the woman had left. Blood trail…
LUCAS'S HEAD CRACKED ONE OF THE BLUE PLASTIC chairs as he went over the side.
The bullet had missed-he didn't have time to think about it, but he was whole, dizzy, disoriented, struggling to get up…
THE BLOOD TRAIL RAN TOWARD A DOOR ON A TV booth, then away from the door and up toward the window.
''ANDY, ANDY…'' THE UNIFORMED COPS, STILL HALF A stadium away, were firing at him. Stadic looked up at the window, climbed on the chair back, pulled himself up. A bullet clipped his coat, another the back of his neck, and he fell.
''Andy…''
That was Davenport? He popped up, gun in hand, and saw Lucas again, fired quickly, saw Lucas duck, go down.
He looked up. Christ, the window was right there. Blood on his hand, on his neck, blood on everything, slippery…
He went straight up, leaping, caught the window and hauled himself up, heard the cops yelling, ''Andy, Andy, Andy,'' a regular football cheer, doing the wave for
Andy Stadic.
He hauled himself up, hands slippery with blood…
Sandy was there, looking down at him.
• • •
SANDY HEARD HIM SCRABBLING AT THE BOOTH, SAW HIS hand catch the edge, saw him fall. There were more shots, and then he was up again, bullet-headed, like a gorilla, like King Kong, climbing up the outside of the booth.
Back home, Sandy had always been the one who split wood for the wood stove. She liked doing it, feeling the muscles work.
Now here was this blood-covered man coming to kill her. A man she didn't know, with a gun, crawling up the wall…
She swung the steel cylinder with everything she had: for Elmore, for the times
Martin and LaChaise had knocked her down, for the fear during the ledge walk, for all the blood. She swung the pipe like a wood-splitting maul.