I squint in the sunlight. I had been particularly careful driving, watching the rearview mirror for other cars.
‘No.’
‘He’s looking at us,’ she says.
‘I don’t think so. He’s looking at the cemetery,’ I tell her. ‘A tourist, probably trying to find Lindbergh’s grave,’ I say.
‘Listen. I can’t talk to you now.’
‘Later?’
‘Perhaps. But I do have to go now.’
‘Tell me where I can find you.’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Maybe doesn’t cut it,’ I say.
She looks at me, reading my mind. The road back to Hana is narrow and slow. I could follow her and she knows it.
‘Tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. Here,’ she says.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
Like some pesty insect, it settles first on her right temple, a tiny red prism of light, a dot no bigger than the point of a pen, dancing like reflections through the facets of a crystal. She stoops to pick up the paint box, and the light disappears, only to find its way into her hairline as she straightens up.
It takes an instant before the image registers. Like a cigar with hot embers at the tip, but different, a beam of light, one moment it’s there, the next it’s gone, red glowing like some diffused demonic gaze.
With all the force my body can muster from a standing start, I shove Kathy Merlow. I send her sprawling onto the grass and land on top of her.
The crack of the speeding bullet snaps the sound barrier overhead and passes into the brush beyond. Silenced. Guided to a near miss by the deadly accuracy of its laserscope.
‘What! Are you crazy?’ She’s pushing me off, clawing at my face like I’m some sexual predator.
‘Get up.’ I grab her by the arm.
‘Get away from me!’ She’s pushing at me, trying to dust off her clothes with one hand.
I’m on one knee, crouched. She’s on her feet, standing upright. And it hits me — she doesn’t realize a shot has been taken.
I’ve got a grip on her arm like a vise. She will be black and blue if she lives. I’m pushing her along ahead of me, moving laterally toward granite headstones and the church.
‘Let — let — ’ She repeats this three or four times. ‘Let me go,’ she says. Waving arms and flailing hands trying to shake free. ‘Are you crazy?’
Another crack through the air, no more than an inch from my chest, and something buries itself in the grass near her left foot. With this, her eyes go wide, twin saucers. For a single beat she’s frozen in place. A few tentative steps, then she breaks into full flight. Sandals flying from her feet, she leaves me kneeling on the grass.
In two seconds I overtake her. We are now running, stride for stride. From the corner of my eye I can see the guy setting up over the windowframe of his car door for another shot. Behind the banyan tree, Lindbergh’s grave between us, I can hear the guy swear, fifty yards away, a list of expletives to make a sailor blush. Movement in my peripheral vision as he raises the muzzle of the gun and starts to move parallel to our flight. He’s crouching behind a low stone wall, looking for one more opening.
A flash. Something nicks my cheek. Sparks off stone as he squeezes off several rounds, the gunman spraying and praying. They ricochet off tombstones like pinballs in a machine.
Off the grass, Kathy Merlow is hopping gingerly, barefooted, over the sharp lava pebbles on the path. We run through a fusillade of bullets, targets in a penny arcade, until finally we are covered by the shrubbery surrounding the church.
Behind the building we stop. She is down on one knee, wincing, picking a rock from the bottom of her bare foot.
‘Are you okay?’
She nods. Winded but not wounded.
‘Where’s your car?’
But before she can answer I put a finger to my lips. The crunch of gravel, footsteps at the front of the church. The slide and click of precision metal. Our man is reloaded. The wonders of modern methodical murder.
She points away from the back of the church to a fence overgrown with vegetation, a small gate leading away. She moves toward it, then looks for me to follow.
I shake my head, then point emphatically for her to go.
She waves me on.
I shake my head one more time.
Left with no choice, she disappears through the jungle of vines that cover the gate. I see it open. Her form disappears and the gate closes. I will draw cover. One woman is already dead because I pursued my questions.
I am alone now at the back of the church, my only companion a weathered wooden door. I suspect that this leads to the sacristy, the area behind the small wooden altar inside.
More footsteps. This time they come from the area around the side of the church. He is working his way through the graveyard toward where I am crouched.
I try the door. The knob turns, but I look at the rusty hinges and think twice about noise.
An engine starts in the distance. Kathy Merlow has reached her car. The footfalls on the gravel turn to a run. By my estimation he is no more than a dozen feet from the back corner of the church, coming fast. No time to think. Running, I reach for the door, and suddenly I’m inside, enveloped by the cool shadows of the church, the door closed behind me. I move quickly to a position behind the wooden altar, lost in its shadows.
Outside I can hear a vehicle moving on gravel, toward the church. More epithets from the man with the gun as he races for the gate in the fence.
I grab the only object in reach, a candle and its holder on a shelf behind the altar, and fling it hard against the interior wall of the church. It clunks, heavy metal on wood, and lands on the floor.
The footfalls outside suddenly stop. The sound of wheels as they veer in gravel, turning away from the church. The acceleration of the engine, and Kathy Merlow’s car is gone, the growl of its engine receding down some unseen road.
Hesitation. The noise from inside the church has cost the killer his quarry. And now he looks for other game.
On the door, behind me, there is a hook for a lock, halfway up.
Quickly I move, in a whisper of sound I slip the hook through the eye in the door, and before I can move back to the altar someone grips the knob from the outside and jerks. The door rattles in its frame but does not open. I am pressed against the wall next to it, the hook jiggling in the eye. I stop breathing. Another tug. Several seconds pass. I can visualize an ear to the wood of the door, an eye to the keyhole, then finally, after several seconds, receding footfalls.
As quickly as they started, they stop. Maybe he walked onto grass, I think, somewhere in the graveyard along the side of the church. Dead silence.
I am braced against the wall by the door, standing upright. I don’t know if it is the shadow of a tree limb on the window, but something moves.
Without a sound, I am back behind the altar, on hands and knees, the cold sweat of fear seeping through my shirt.
Through a crack in one of the boards I can see a form as it approaches the glass, backlit by the bright afternoon sun. One hand cupped to the window, shading, to peer inside. Hair that bristles in the sunlight, close-cropped, the face of the courier who delivered the deadly bomb to Marcie Reed.
I pull away from the crack in the boards and press my back to the altar. I am stone-still. Seconds pass without a sound, my breathing almost stopped, my head pounding from lack of oxygen, rivulets of sweat making their way down the sides of my face drip onto the floor. Time passes, an eternity. I lose track, unwilling to move for fear of casting a shadow on a distant wall.
My eye back to the crack in the boards. The figure at the window is gone.
I wait, look at my watch. Several minutes pass. I’m afraid to move. I listen for the sound of his car, tires grinding gravel. But there is nothing.
I could go the way of Kathy Merlow, the gate through the overgrown fence behind the church. But my car is in the lot out front. Then it settles on me. He’s waiting. If he’s followed me, he knows my car. Sooner or later…