They all stopped dead. Leach was at least six-three and two-fifty. He filled half the alley’s width. An effective barrier. He was scowling hard but not speaking. He was dressed in jeans and boots and jacket.
Kim said, “What do you want, Leach?”
Leach moved his right arm and brought a shotgun out from behind his leg. Not the Browning A-5 his brother had used in Eno’s diner. It was a Remington SP-10 instead. He pointed it directly at Gaspar. Kim slowed down into extreme high-alert mode. She saw every detail. She heard individual motes of dust jousting in the wind. She smelled garlic and pumpkin and rotten eggs and cat urine.
Leach took six deliberate steps forward, never dropping the shotgun’s barrel a fraction. His eyes were on Gaspar. When he was close enough to be heard, he said, “You killed my brother, and I can’t let that go.”
Gaspar maintained eye contact, and pushed Sylvia out of the way. Kim reached out and pulled her close. But clear of her own right hand. Sylvia was shaking. It felt real enough.
Gaspar said, “You don’t really believe I killed your brother, and no one else will, either.”
Leach advanced, gritty steps loud on the asphalt. He said, “You should have opened that car door before Jim ever got there, asshole. You saw Bernie inside. He could have been alive. You might have saved him. You’re an FBI agent. You should have checked him out.”
That’s crazy, was Kim’s immediate thought. She understood what Roscoe had been trying to tell her. Archie Leach was armed, dangerous, and out of his mind. Kim thought: I could die today. Right here in this alley, among dog shit and weeds and rotting garbage.
What was Leach waiting for?
Then she heard footsteps behind her.
She glanced back.
Michael Hale was there.
Hale had come out of Wallace’s back door into the alley. He was approaching with no hesitation. Could Leach not see him?
Hale walked right up to them and grabbed Sylvia’s arm.
And Kim knew.
The grab, the gloved hand, the silence.
She’d seen that choreography before.
Hale had made the same moves the night he took Sylvia from Margrave jail.
Hale turned back, pulling Sylvia with him.
Gaspar never took his eyes off Leach. He called out, “Hale? Cooper will kill you, too. You know that, right? He’s killing everyone.”
Hale kept walking. Sylvia was stumbling alongside him.
Gaspar called, man to man, “Hale? It’s not too late. You can still save yourself.”
Hale stopped and turned. Classic moves Kim had practiced a thousand times. So had Gaspar. They were all FBI. They’d all had identical training. All three knew precisely what Hale was about to do.
What happened next unfolded in Kim’s line of vision like stop-motion animation of an elaborate dance. A race in agonizing slow motion.
Kim shouted a warning to her partner. Gaspar snatched a quick look back. Kim reached smoothly into her holster as she’d practiced ten thousand times.
Muscle memory.
Gaspar was a fraction of a second behind her.
Kim took cover.
Hale fired first.
Four rapid shots, three deliberately high, one not.
Gaspar went down and rolled behind a dumpster.
Hale put Sylvia in the line of fire before Kim could get off a shot.
Archie Leach’s focus on Gaspar made him miss Hale’s moves. Gaspar’s focus on Archie made him pull the trigger on his Glock. A double tap. Two hits in Leach’s right shoulder. The big Remington whipped sideways and upward as Archie fell. The gun fired uselessly into the air. Kim looked back; Hale and Sylvia had disappeared.
Archie went down. Blood bloomed on his shoulder. On the ground, determined, hurting, slowed, he aimed the shotgun to fire again.
Gaspar put three bullets in his neck.
The shotgun clattered on the asphalt. Leach’s giant body went slack. Collapsed. Blood spurted from neck holes. Mouth moved like a fish. No sound. Eyes showed awareness. Became glassy. Pupil reaction stopped while blood bubbled softly a moment more. Then a stopped heart stopped the bubbles.
Severed wind pipe, Kim thought. Severed jugular. Severed spine at the cervical vertebra. She ran across the alley to find Gaspar laying flat with his eyes closed. Blood was seeping through his shirt on his right side.
Distant sirens approached.
Someone had called 911.
“Carlos?” Kim said. “Are you OK?”
Gaspar looked up. He winced. He said, “We’ve got to go. If we stay here, there will be more red tape than either of us will ever survive. Help me up.”
Kim helped him stand. He leaned heavily on her shoulder and several times she thought he might fall, but they made it back to the Crown Vic. He laid out on the back seat. She put some distance between them and Archie Leach’s corpse, and then she stopped in a deserted Crystal City parking lot.
She reached back and found the phantom cell in his pocket.
She dialed.
Only one choice.