It was extremely late when they arrived in Houston. Even the airport was deserted. They shared a cab into the city, and Stonecoat's place being closer, he said good night to her on the street. She had taken custody of all the information and photos they'd brought back with them. Tomorrow, they would share it all with Lawrence, who would in turn provide Bryce with the information.
Lucas waved the cab off and strolled for his door, swinging his small bag. He placed the key into a locked gate that surrounded the building, stepped through, and found himself caught off guard when someone in the shadows between the building and the gate grabbed him about the neck, toying with a huge knife at his Adam's apple, using it to make like a violin, the knife the bow, playing it back and forth, creating little rivulets of blood and telling him to shut up and listen. Lucas dropped the bag to free both hands, but he was in a helpless situation. He dared not attempt a fight.
“You get yourself free of this case you're pursuing, son, or you and your girlfriend are dead. You understand that, kimosabe?”
“I-I-I…” He couldn't nod for fear the razor-sharp knife would cut a major artery, and he couldn't find the words in his suddenly parched throat. He imagined what the world would be like tomorrow without him in it.
“That's what we think, son, exactly. Now, you just come to your fucking senses, boy.”
Lucas felt a double-fisted hammer-blow to the base of his skull just as the knife was lifted away from his throat. His last thoughts were twofold: The attack on him was the work of two assailants, and Meredyth was in danger as well. But Stonecoat was in a black world now, the dirty cement his pillow. Through a fog, he thought he heard one of his assailants say, “We should just kill the bastard here and now.”
The words filtered through Lucas's fog in broken slow motion.
“No, not-now-and-not-here.”
A sudden, teeth-jarring kick struck Lucas in the side.
“Why're-we-screwing-with-him?”
The other man answered, “That's-'enough. We-do- it-the-way-we' re-told.”
Another vicious kick, same exact spot. “Damn. It's- a' ways-hell-Sanger's-way, isn't-it?”
“Orders-is-orders.”
“Our-lives-on-the-line.”
“Damn it. Part-ner, we're-all-in-this-t'gether.”
“Bas-tard!”
Stonecoat felt a third sharp pain in his ribs where one of the apes again savagely kicked out at him. Fighting it every step of the way, Lucas then went into complete unconsciousness.
Blood seeped into the pavement where he lay from the open wounds on his neck, wounds that were cautionary and formed a pair of miniature but painful rents like railroad lines along the throat, parallel to one another.
A passerby on the street saw the assailants leaving through the front gates, looking as if they lived there. The passerby, walking his dog, saw next that someone lay between the building and the lock gate, realizing only now that he was witness to what appeared a horrible, gruesome murder. His first impulse was to turn and step quickly the way he'd come, to hide himself and his dog away, not because he feared the fleeing pair of killers, but because he didn't want to get involved. A thing like this, he reasoned, could take years to resolve, and the authorities could make his life hell. He'd seen it happen before. He'd seen it happen in the movies and on Court TV.
Lucas awoke with a terrible headache, scratched about to locate his bag, wondered how long he'd been lying here, and tried desperately to focus his eyes. Eyeballing the bag, he focused on it until it came into clear view. He wondered now just how many people-neighbors-had walked by, offering no help. He was angry to've been caught so totally off guard. He hadn't imagined they'd come after him this way, and certainly not this soon. Whoever they were, they seemed clued into his and Dr. Sanger's movements.
He tried to assess who in the city knew of his returning from Oregon tonight; who knew where he lived; who knew how to get through the damned gate, and that he'd be stepping through it at just that moment?
Maybe it was just retaliation between cops.
Maybe it had been Fred Amelford and Jim Pardee. In Texas, every cop liked to think he was a Texas Ranger-a judge, jury, and executioner all in one.
They were smart cops. They had asked around, gotten the answers they wanted, learned that the guy out at Mootry's the other night had to be Lucas Stonecoat. Hell, even Phil Lawrence might have supplied them with the information. Pissed off at him for stepping in where he wasn't wanted, sure. When the guy with the knife said to butt out of the case, he was talking as one cop to another. Maybe it wasn't the crossbow mob at all. He rifled his memory for every word the knife wielder had said in his ear as he played the blade across his now burning, still bleeding throat. Not much there: “You get yourself free of this case, son, or you and your girlfriend are dead.”
Damned nasty enough threat, he thought. But cops who've felt wronged had been known to use strong language. The other guy wanted to do him in, but the more controlled guy, the one who held the knife and kept calling him son, had balked at actually sticking Lucas with the pitchfork he was waving about.
Fred Amelford was a lanky giant, a senior detective at the Twenty-second Precinct, and the apelike arms that'd draped over Lucas could've been his. The phantom in the dark had called his accomplice by the term partner, or had Lucas heard it wrong, had he said Pardee? And there was another word they used that sounded like a name, Sanger. But that must've been the daze talking.
Pardee and Amelford. Fill in the blanks, he told himself now. Most likely a strong dose of warning to butt out of the Mootry investigation, to stay off their turf. He had imagined they would be pissed, but he hadn't bargained on this pissed.
He had managed to pull to his knees and pull his bag to him, holding it now like a shield against the pain and humiliation they had visited upon him tonight. He prayed they had not gone from here to Meredyth's place, but he rather doubted this.
He had to get to his feet, get his door opened, find the elevator and his apartment, telephone to be certain she was all right.
It seemed simple enough, but it took him fifteen minutes to manage what was normally done in an easy three. Once inside the hallway, he'd collapsed again. Whoever hit him had used a military blow, the kind that could stop a Mack truck. He managed to get to the elevator but couldn't focus on the buttons. He played with them for quite some time before he found his floor.
Once he got to his door, he began having more trouble fitting the key into the lock when a neighbor stepped out to ask if he was all right. The neighbor took him for drunk, came over and sorted out his problem for him and got him through the door and stretched out on the couch. The man was known only by his last name, Fleckner, a thin, raggedy man with beady eyes and the snout of a Manhattan rat, the smell of cheap whiskey lifting off him like heat off a Texas blacktop. In fact, he looked like someone on the run, and each time Lucas had seen him in the past, he'd seemed to skulk down the hallway rather than walk. Still, tonight he was welcome help.
“You okay, pal?” he asked when Lucas was laid out on his bed. “Christ, you're bleeding. I'll get a towel.”
Fleckner was as good as his word, finding a towel and stanching the flesh wounds. “Damn, somebody's took a knife to your throat. We gotta call 911 or an ambulance or something.”
“No, no calls, no doctors, but if you could drag the phone over here, I'd appreciate it.”
Fleckner was standing over Lucas in only his underwear. “Sure… sure, if that's the way you want it, but if you go and bleed to death, it ain't Morris Fleckner's fault.”
'The phone, please.”
Fleckner frowned, chewed his gums a bit, and finally nodded. “It's your funeral.” He mumbled disapproving words under his breath.
Stonecoat thanked his neighbor and told him he'd be fine, and that Fleckner shouldn't bother himself a moment more with him. “Please, just go now. I'm fine, really.”
“You don't want to call the cops ner nothin'?”
“I… I am a cop.”
“Geezus, I didn't know. Damn, you, you sure don't look like no cop I ever saw.” He said it as if, had he known, he might not have offered help to begin with. As if he might be a fugitive whose face had appeared on America's Most Wanted.
“Thanks again,” Lucas called out to the retreating ghostly figure.
Morris Fleckner's only reply was the closing of the door behind him as the ill-looking, hungry-eyed man left.
Lucas quickly telephoned Meredyth, who picked up on the third ring.
“It's me, Lucas,” he muttered.
'This is getting to be a bad habit with you,” she responded. “I thought you said you were bushed. You know, your insomnia shouldn't have to involve me, and another thing-”
“Are you all right?”
“I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be?”
“I had a little visit from the boys working the Mootry case. Least, I think it was them.” He coughed uncontrollably, the pain in his ribs excruciating.
“Oh, no. I hope there wasn't any trouble.”
He managed to get control. “Not too terribly much.”
“But there was some?”
“I just wanted to be sure they… they weren't harassing you tonight, too.”
“Me? Why should they? I didn't break their yellow tape.”
“No, but they mentioned you prominently when they threatened my life.”
“Holy… they threatened your life? Those creeps. Are you hurt?”
“Not too.”
“How about them? Did you hurt them good?”
He would have liked to answer in the affirmative. Instead, he stuck with, “Not too.”
“Aren't you going to give me any of the details? What is it with you and details?”
“Mere… think I'm go… ing… hang up now.”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine. Good”-he held himself together-”night.” He quickly hung up. In a few minutes, he passed out again, thinking, Damn, that SOB hits harder than a tree falling, and my neck's going to be as stiff as a pine tomorrow-if I ever wake up again.
Earlier in the evening, Randy Oglesby had telephoned Dr. Sanger, but he'd gotten no answer. He didn't want to leave a message of such importance as he had on her answering machine, so he cut off before the beep. He tried Stonecoat at home, having gotten his number from the personnel files on the Net. Once again, no answer, and this time no answering machine.
He had made second and third attempts to get in touch, finally assuming that so much work had confronted them in Oregon that they had had to stay over. He wondered if anything of a romantic nature was taking place between them, but rather doubted this since Dr. Sanger was always and forever talking about her beau-her swain, her suitor, her escort, her fiancee, Conrad, ugh! Conrad could, according to Dr. Sanger, become the next Newton or Einstein or Stephen Hawking, he was that brilliant. Bullshit.
But he didn't care tonight one way or the other about Dr. Sanger's boyfriend, because he couldn't believe his own great fortune. Not only had Darlene Muentes been petite, beautiful, and exotic, but she had laughed at all his stories in the right places, had gone somber during all his stories at the right moments, and had thrilled to the adventure of his police detective's life. She was so enthralled that she wanted to see him again. Life was grand as Jim Pardee.
Darlene, to save time, had brought the two goblets and the bill directly to him when they met for lunch. It had been an exquisite lunch meeting. God, he thought now, what a rush!
Randy had praised Darlene for her sense of duty in getting the evidence back into his hands as quickly as she had. She shyly accepted the compliment, eating like a butterfly trying on a horse's appetite. She was so well-mannered and delicate, but she certainly could pack the food away. There was something about that he liked.
He had been pleasantly surprised that she found him good-looking-a real “hunk,” as she'd put it. She had confessed to having never met anyone over the phone before. He told her he had never met anyone in any “blind” way before, but that her voice just rang so pure and clear, like a bell in a wooded glen. She giggled at the image and wondered if he was lying.
She had no idea, not a clue.
It was great. Detective Randy Jim Pardee Oglesby thought now as he made his way to dreamland and found Darlene Muentes waiting there for him. Their next date was for Saturday night. He could hardly wait.
He gave a momentary thought to Dr. Meredyth Sanger, to whom he owed so much for getting him placed in the hierarchy of the support staff at the station. He had secretly admired her all the time they'd been together, but she was way out of his league and much older, which meant about ten years his senior. Still, he knew the odds of his ever interesting her romantically were as astronomical as winning the Texas State Lottery or of the Houston Astros ever again having a pitcher as good as Nolan Ryan, the first man in history to strike out four thousand batters.
Surrounded by this swirl of thought, light and apprehension, Randy Oglesby slept, Judge Mootry's goblets sitting atop his bookcase, the lab results beside the glasses, the bill below this.