Comeback

11

The police were stretched thin, having so many places to search, so many routes to guard, so many barricades to man, so many possibilities to think about. That was why they were doing one-man patrols in what they considered the safest places, and how it was that Liss found a cop all alone in his patrol car, half asleep, parked next to a ramp for a narrow rusty iron bridge over old freight yards. There were a few bars and diners in this neighborhood, a few junkyards and machine shops and auto-repair places, but no homes, and no commercial places open at this hour. Liss circled around into the grassy steep slope above the freight yards, where an old chain-link fence was half broken-down, bent out of the way, rusted and useless. Along there, he found a two-foot length of the metal pipe that had originally been part of the frame of the fence, and held it close along his right leg as he came loping down the empty street toward the patrol car, clutching his upper right arm with his left hand as though he'd been wounded and yelling, "Help! Help!"

The cop, startled out of a moony doze, saw this wounded man running forward, scrambled rapidly and awkwardly out to the pavement, and took the metal pipe directly across the face. He fell backward, half in and half against his car, dazed but trying to reach his holstered pistol, and Liss slammed the open door into him, pinning him there while he swung the pipe three more times at that head.

When Liss pulled the door open, the cop slid to the ground. Liss quickly stripped the uniform off him, not wanting blood on it, and stuffed the body into the trunk, noting the shotguns on racks in there, the first-aid equipment, even a small red-handled ax. Couldn't be better.

The uniform fit fairly well; good enough. Sitting behind the wheel, engine and heater on, uniform cap on his head, police radio giving him the ebb and flow of movement through the night, Liss waited. No rush any more.

* * *

He'd had to rush earlier, hurrying out of the old man's house across from the stadium when Brenda showed up in the station wagon. As they'd loaded the duffel bags over there, Liss had looked around frantically for a car to steal, but there wasn't time, and in any case, with so little traffic at this hour, how could he follow them in a car without being spotted?

So he'd had to do it a different way. It was hard, there were times he thought he was going to fail, but he kept going. Out of necessity, he trailed them on foot.

What made it a little easier, they were driving slowly, carefully, obeying the law, calling no attention to themselves, stopping at every stop sign, waiting at every traffic light. They parked at the curb for quite a while when the construction trailer blew up and the streets filled with fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and all the rest of it, and he could take a breather then, hidden beside an exterior staircase to an old tenement building.

After that, when they moved he ran; when they stopped he walked. Sometimes their lights were just faint red dots far away, and once when they made a turn he thought he'd lost them completely. But he managed to keep up, and to see what their idea was at the gas station, and he admired the move. Indoors, safe, warm. They wouldn't leave till morning, and by then he'd be ready.

In the meantime, he dozed in the warm comfort of the police car, the crackly snarl of the radio's infrequent reports keeping him from the mistake of a deeper sleep, and at first light he got out of the car, stretched, went down the slope to relieve himself, got back into the police car, and drove over to the gas station to get rid of Parker and Mackey and Brenda and get, at last, the goddam money.

Would they be awake or asleep? It was still very early. They wouldn't expect trouble after so many peaceful hours hidden away. They didn't know anyone had any idea they were here. And what would they see when he first showed himself to them? A cop.

He parked at the gas pumps, like a regular customer, and walked toward the station building, getting the cop's handgun out of its holster. Advertising posters and grease-pencil announcements obscured much of the office windows, but as he came nearer he saw there was somebody in there, seated at the desk. Parker? Staring at him?

Did they still have the shotguns?

Liss was deciding to shoot through the plate glass, get it over with, when movement suddenly made him look up. There was something on the roof! Nothing but a silhouette against the gray morning sky, looming over him, a black figure like something out of horror stories, waving its arms and yelling. Without any thought at all, in quick panic, Liss raised the pistol and squeezed off a wild shot.

And then all hell broke loose.