‘He’s inside,’ she said with a nod toward the door leading into the theatre itself. It was a swing door with no handles on either side. Not as a fire precaution but because a swing door can be opened with a foot, or a shoulder, so you didn’t have to touch a handle that you might suspect with good reason had just been touched by a hand that had just been touching something you didn’t want any contact with at all, not even secondary contact.
‘Turn the movie off and put the lights on in there,’ said the police officer.
‘Without a search warrant I can’t...’ Betty stopped when she saw the look in the woman’s eyes. Behind her were now three uniformed policemen, all with weapons drawn. Betty pressed the intercom in front of her, another relic of the seventies, and said with a sigh, as though this were a daily but regrettable occurrence:
‘Mel, stop the movie and turn the lights on. The police are here.’
Kay pushed open the door into the auditorium with her foot, continuing to hold the pistol with both hands. In the security cam footage Gomez hadn’t looked to be carrying anything, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t armed. From where she was standing at the rear left of the auditorium she had time to register a pale and hairy couple going hard at it on the screen before switching her attention to the isolated silhouettes of men dotted about across the hundred or so mostly empty seats in front of her.
‘Police!’ she shouted as loudly as she could. ‘Everybody stay where you are!’
At that exact moment the movie began to slow down, the slaps and groans of pleasure sank in pitch and intensity, as though the people involved had suddenly lost interest. But, strangely, there was no reaction from the audience. There were no groans of displeasure, no cries of frustration and anger. But in the dark two seconds between the projector being turned off and the overhead lights going on she spotted movement. A rectangle of light slid into the room to the right of the screen. A door opening. A green EMERGENCY EXIT sign above it. Then closing.
Kay responded immediately. She ran down the stairs, with Hanson right behind her. She crossed between the front row and the screen, past a man still struggling to button up his pants, pushed open the emergency exit and tumbled out into daylight.
She caught a glimpse of a back disappearing round the corner of a house. Took up pursuit. Round the corner, into an alley, round another corner, another glimpse of the same disappearing back. Ran. Ran like she used to in the alleyways around their old house in Englewood. Running from all the other kids. Running to school and back. Running like she did that night when she was eleven years old and her father had broken into the house to steal their money, but she’d been quicker, taken her mother’s money from under the bed and jumped out the window, running, her father running after her. Running as fast as she could but still she could feel how, like some lurching zombie, he was gaining on her. And when they came to the dog yard at the back of the Jenkins house he was right behind. She could feel his fingers clutching at the soles of her shoes as she swung up and over the wire-net fence that was luckily only six feet high or she wouldn’t have made it, because as strong as her legs were, her arms were thin and weak. But she did make it, and as she landed on the other side the dog, which looked like a cross between a pit bull and an Alsatian, came charging out of its doghouse, salivating and snarling. It leapt at the intruder with teeth bared. Not at her, who so often called in on her way home from school and gave it something from her lunch box, but at the wire fence and the man on the other side, the one threatening her. She saw her father back off to a safe distance. And through the furious barking of the dog she heard a stream of curses she tried to blank out, because even though she knew he was half crazy from the need for a fix and she hated him, the words were like acid, they burnt through her skin and could not be washed away. There they stood, daughter and father, one on each side of the face, with another man’s dog between them. She was crying. She heard him change his tune and start to beg for money, and when that didn’t work he gave up and started crying. Lights went on in the Jenkins house, and he turned and ran off. The strange thing was that later, when she looked back over her childhood, she couldn’t remember a time when she had ever felt closer to her father than she had that night, when they stood there face-to-face, each with their own despair.
Kay had once again lost sight of the running back ahead of her, but she heard a crack. The sound of a man jumping up at a wooden fence. She cleared the corner, saw sure enough there was a wooden fence surrounding a property and caught a glimpse of a pair of hands as they disappeared over on the other side. She adjusted her stride and jumped. Got hold of the top of the fence with the tips of her fingers and tried to pull herself up but lost her grip and fell back down. As she scrambled to her feet she heard another crack a little way off. Another fence. Swearing. Must be a higher fence. Olav Hanson ran up, his face contorted.
‘He can’t get over the next fence,’ said Kay. ‘If we can get over this, we’ve got him! Give me a leg up.’
‘Easier if I take him,’ said Hanson. He pushed his gun back into the shoulder holster, measured his six foot four up against the fence, gripped the top and tried to jump. He scarcely even left the ground. With a groan of pain he collapsed against the planks.
‘Goddamn knee,’ he hissed between clenched teeth. He sounded so desperate that for an instant Kay almost felt sorry for him. She caught sight of a frail-looking fruit crate next to the wall of the house, tipped out the plant pots inside it then stood it, long side up, against the fence.
‘I’ve got this!’ said Hanson. He pushed Kay aside and stepped up onto the box. It brought him so high Kay realised he could see over the top to the other side. Abruptly the box began to creak and sway.
‘Steady it!’ Hanson shouted to Kay as he pulled out his pistol.
‘OK, but get the hell over!’
‘Keep it steady! He’s got a gun!’
As Kay bent and put her weight against the crate she heard Hanson fire three shots in quick succession.
‘Don’t shoot!’ came a voice from the other side. ‘In the name of God, don’t shoot!’
Kay stood back from the crate and gave it a kick. Over it went, Hanson with it.
‘What the hell?’ he growled as he lay on the ground.
Kay righted the crate and climbed onto it. On the other side was a yard, boxed in on all sides. She gripped the top, swung herself over, and got down on all fours, like a cat. Pulled her gun and shouted ‘Police’ twice, then walked toward the trembling man who lay hunched up against the wooden fence, directly beneath a piece of Black Wolves graffiti. Both arms were up and protecting his head.
‘Police!’ Kay repeated, keeping the gun on him. ‘Show me your hands! Now!’
The man raised his arms above his head as though in prayer, but his head was still turned in toward his body.
‘Let me see your face!’ Kay stopped six feet from the man, far enough away that she’d have time to shoot him if he attacked, close enough to be sure she couldn’t miss.
The man looked up. Tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘Please!’ he sobbed. ‘Have mercy, and the Lord shall have mercy on you!’
Kay stared. She recognised him immediately, even though she’d only seen the face on the TV screen and in pictures. She cursed quietly, pulled out her phone and called the number she’d been given in the police car. The call was picked up at once:
‘Fortune.’
‘Myers here. You still in control at the theatre?’
‘Yep.’
‘OK. Don’t let anyone leave, you hear me?’
‘You didn’t get him?’
‘Oh yeah.’ She drew a breath. ‘But it isn’t him.’
‘Not Gomez?’