Chill of Night

1

Things are never as they seem.

The area was supposed to be clear, marked off with yellow NYPD crime scene tape, but Beam caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the parked cars and moved toward it.

One step, that was all he’d taken, and the figure hiding behind the parked Mercedes was off and running toward the garage exit. Beam could see by the way he moved that he was young, teens or twenties. Beam had just turned fifty-three. Convert that difference in years to distance, and there was a lot of it to make up. Still, Beam was on the run and gradually gaining.

The victim’s body had been removed, and the crime scene unit and other detectives had left. It was part of Beam’s method to hang around alone at a murder scene and take in what he could in the immense silence and stillness that followed violent death. Now and then, he discovered something.

He’d sure as hell made a discovery this time-probably the shooter.

His feet pounding the concrete floor, Beam yelled, “Halt! Police!”

That seemed to speed up the guy, a skinny kid dressed in jeans, a dark watch cap, and a black jacket, flailing his arms, and with long legs that could eat up the ground. He was making for the vast rectangle of light that was the exit from the garage to freedom, where he’d be lost in the crowded New York streets. Beam couldn’t risk taking a shot at him and would soon be outdistanced. The probable killer of the garage attendant, and he was getting away.

Can’t let that happen!

Beam had seconds to act or he’d lose the angle, and his bullet might ricochet out onto the sidewalk.

“Halt or I’ll shoot!”

Should it be a warning shot at the concrete ceiling? Or should he try to bring down the fleeing man before it was too late? One of those split second decisions you read and hear about in the media.

“Stop, damn it!”

The suspect lifted his knees higher, trying to draw more speed from his adrenaline-jacked body.

Beam stopped, spread his feet wide, and raised the revolver and held it before him in his right hand, bracing with his left.

Decision time.

But not for Beam.

The fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.

He shot Beam.

It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.

Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.

Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.

He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.

Then weakness came with the pain.

Then darkness.

Beam thought, Lani…