And then, as Will watched them, they began to move. They crossed the street, the man reaching beneath his jacket as he went, and Will saw the gun appear in his hand.
He ran. He had his own.38 with him, and he drew it. The couple was halfway across the street when something in the manner of the stranger’s approach drew the man’s attention. He registered the approaching threat, and turned to face it. The woman continued moving, her attention fixed only on the apartment building before her and the girl who was hiding within, but the man stared straight at Parker, and the policeman felt a slow tightening in his gut, as though someone had just pumped cold water into his system and it was responding with the urge to void itself. Even at this distance, he could tell that the man’s eyes were not right. They were at once too dark, like twin voids in the pallor of the gunman’s face, and yet too small, chips of black glass in a borrowed skin pulled too tightly over a larger skull.
Then the woman looked around, only now becoming aware that her partner was no longer beside her. She opened her mouth to say something, and Parker saw the panic on her face.
The truck hit the gunman hard from behind, briefly pitching him forward and upward, his feet leaving the ground before he was dragged beneath the front wheels as the driver braked, his body disintegrating beneath the massive weight of the truck, his life ending in a smear of red and black. The force of the impact knocked him out of his shoes. They lay nearby, one upside down, the other on its side. A tendril of blood seeped out toward the shoes from the broken form under the truck, as though the body were trying to reconstitute itself, to build itself once again from the feet up. Somebody screamed.
By the time Will reached the body, the woman had disappeared. He glanced under the truck. The man’s head was gone, crushed by the left-front wheel of the truck. Will showed his shield, and told an ashen-faced man standing nearby to call in the accident. The driver climbed down from his cab and tried to grab hold of Will, but he slipped by him and was only barely aware of the driver falling to the ground behind him. He ran to Caroline’s building, but the front door was still locked. He inserted the key and opened the door by touch, his attention fixed on the street, not the keyhole. As the key turned he slipped inside and closed the door hard behind him. When he got to the apartment, he stood to one side, breathing hard, and knocked once.
“Caroline?” he called.
There was no reply for a moment, then, softly, “Yes.”
“You okay, honey?”
“I think so.”
“Open up.”
His eyes searched the shadows. He thought that he could sm R a he couldell a strange perfume on the air. It was sharp and metallic. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was the smell of the dead man’s blood. He looked down and saw that it was on his shoes.
She opened the door. He stepped inside. When he tried to reach for her, she moved away.
“I saw them,” she said. “I saw them coming for me.”
“I know,” he said. “I saw them too.”
“The one who got hit…”
“He’s dead.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“I’m telling you, he’s dead. His skull was crushed.”
She was leaning against the wall now. He gripped her shoulders.
“Look at me,” he said. She did as he asked, and he saw hidden knowledge in her eyes.
“He’s dead,” he said, for the third time.
She let out a deep breath. Her eyes flicked toward the window.
“Okay,” she said, and he knew that she did not believe him, although he could not understand why. “What about the woman?”
“Gone.”
“She’ll come back.”
“We’ll move you.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“This place was supposed to be safe.”
“I was wrong.”
“You didn’t believe me.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t. I do now. I don’t know how they found you, but I was wrong. Look, did you make any calls? Did you tell anyone-a friend, a relative-where you were?”
Her eyes turned back to him. She looked tired. Not frightened or angry, just weary.
“Who would I call?” she asked. “I have no one. There’s only you.”
And with nowhere else to turn, Will called Jimmy Gallagher, so that while the cops gathered statements, Jimmy was moving Caroline to a motel in Queens, but not before driving around for hours, trying to shake off anyone who might be following them. When he had her safely checked in, he stayed with her in her room until, at last, she fell asleep, then he watched TV until morning came.
While he did so, Will was lying to the cops on the scene. He told the officers that he’d be R ae’den uptown visiting a friend, and had seen a man crossing the street with a gun in his hand. He had challenged him, and the man had been turning in response, his gun raised, when the truck hit him. None of the other witnesses seemed to recall the woman who had been with him; in fact, the other witnesses couldn’t even remember seeing the man cross the street. It was as though, for them, he had materialized in that spot. Even the driver of the truck said that one second the street in front of him was empty, and the next there was a man being pulled under the wheels of his vehicle. The driver was in shock, although there was no question of any blame accruing to him; the lights had been in his favor, and he had been well within the speed limit.
Once he had made his statement, Will waited for a time in a coffee shop, watching the front of the now-empty apartment house and the bustle at the spot of the man’s death, hoping to see again the woman with the washed-out face and the dark eyes, but she did not come. If she was mourning the loss of her partner, she was doing so elsewhere. Finally, he gave up and joined Jimmy and Caroline at the motel, and while Caroline slept, he told Jimmy everything.