Comeback

5

Stop? Get out of the car? Go after Liss right now?

No. Too complicated to strip away Thorsen. At this point, Thorsen was Parker's only way to find out what the law knew and what they were doing and whether or not anybody was close to Mackey and Brenda. There was time to reach out for Liss, if the law didn't scoop him up first. Carmody might know just the one thing that would lead Parker to Liss after this was all over. In the meantime, if Liss was killing time and nothing else, strolling around in the sunlight with his cop imitation, that meant he was just as far away as Parker from the duffel bags full of money. Liss could wait.

There was excitement at the hospital. Television news vans, sprouting antennas like the whiskers on a witch's chin, lined both sides of the curved entrance road. Police vehicles took up the rest of the space in front, and cops were a heavy presence both inside and outside the main entrance. Thorsen left the Chevy in the very full visitors' parking lot, then talked himself and Parker into the main hospital building past any number of cops with questions, some of them local and some of them state. Everybody had to walkie-talkie to somebody else to get approval to let Thorsen through, but nobody questioned it when Thorsen vouched for Parker: Jack Orr, the insurance investigator.

In addition to Carmody, in a private room on four, there was also the kid from the gas station, Bill Trowbridge, in his own room on three. Trowbridge, having answered every question the cops could think of to ask, was now doing press and TV interviews and grinning like a goof at his mother, seated on an uncomfortable nearby chair, being firmly kept out of camera range. Among the reasons he gave for climbing the bins in the storage room and ripping his way through the roof, he did not mention his need to pee.

The hall leading from the elevator to Carmody was also full of cops. One of them, that Thorsen seemed to have met before, was a plain-clothesman named Macready, who gave Parker a hello and a handshake at Thorsen's introduction, then said, "Lew's on his way here with Quindero. He wants everybody else to wait."

Thorsen said, "Not here yet?"

"The Quindero family's lobbed a lawyer in," Macready said. "It's delaying things a— Oh, here they are."

Out of an elevator and down the hall came a group of four, led by a big self-satisfied man who'd have to be Calavecci. Behind him came a skinny young scared guy with hands cuffed behind his back, and flanked by two serious-looking uniforms, each of them holding one of the cuffed guy's elbows. Parker looked at him past Calavecci and thought the young guy was probably one of the people from that car in the stadium parking lot.

But Calavecci was the point here. He said a smooth word to Thorsen, then was introduced to Jack Orr, insurance investigator. He shook hands too hard, grinned, and said, "So you've been chasing our boys longer'n we have."

"Just one," Parker said. "George Liss."

"A real piece of work," Calavecci said, with a pleased shake of the head. "I'm looking forward to a discussion with him. What a rap sheet."

"Yeah?"

"Got a record in the top ten," Calavecci said. "With a bullet. Why don't you and Dwayne wait in the dayroom over there, they got coffee and stuff for the nurses. We'll just have a little conversation, Ralph and me, with his pal Tom."

Parker saw that Ralph Quindero was trying not to cry. When he got in front of Carmody, he'd quit trying. They'd have a nice little tearfest in there, with Calavecci lapping it up, like a cat.

The dayroom was too bright, with fluorescents. A few nurses, trying to be cool but sneaking looks at the strangers, were clustered over coffee at a table in the corner. Thorsen and Parker got coffee of their own, both passing up the powdered near-milk, and carried the cardboard cups to another of the green Formica tables. They sat there in silence, waiting, the taste and smell of the coffee both a little obnoxious, and then Thorsen said, "This fella Liss."

"Yeah?"

"Does he work with a regular bunch? Same people all the time?"

"No," Parker said. "He isn't in a crew. He's too untrustworthy. He's just as likely to turn on his partners."

"Maybe he did this time," Thorsen said. "Maybe he's all any of us is looking for, at this point."

"Anything is possible," Parker agreed.

A few minutes later, Calavecci came in, got his own cup of coffee, and joined them at the table.

He seemed very content, as though he'd just had a good meal. "They're forgiving each other in there now," he said.

"That's nice," Thorsen said. He remained very flat and still when talking to Calavecci.

"I believe they're about to start praying for Mary's immortal soul," Calavecci went on, "so I left them in there with the guards. I'll go back in a few minutes." He gave Parker a measuring look. "You root around in the garbage a lot," he suggested.

"That's where the people are," Parker told him.

'You been chasing Liss a long time?"

"Eight months. He was part of a bank thing in Iowa City, took a hostage, killed her."

"What does the insurance company care?"

"They need Liss," Parker said, improvising from what he knew of previous situations, from the other side, "to prove the bank guards weren't incompetent. If they can prove the guards did what they were supposed to do, the company's liability goes way down."

Smiling pleasantly, Calavecci said, "And screw the survivors, right?"

Parker smiled back at him, just as pleasant and just as false. "That's the job," he said, and three shots sounded, flat and small but not far away. They could have been the sounds of somebody hitting a floor with a baseball bat, but they were not.

All three at the table knew it, and jumped to their feet. They were all moving toward the door before the first yells sounded outside. Calavecci went through the doorway, then Thorsen. Parker lagged, because he thought he knew what this was. He thought it wasn't a coincidence he'd seen George Liss walking toward the hospital.

Yes. The hall was full of armed men and women in blue, all facing the same way, frozen. Parker came through the doorway behind Thorsen and looked down the hall and Liss was backing away down there, waving the pistol he must have taken from the missing cop. He was still in the uniform, but what was protecting him now was Ralph Quindero. He backed away down the hall with Quindero in front of him, Liss's left arm tight around Quindero's waist, Quindero the shield, helplessly facing all those helpless armed people as he and Liss backed steadily away. There was a stairwell door back there, at the far end.

Liss, looking at everything, suddenly saw Parker, and laughed with surprise. "Well, look at you!" he cried, and fired at Parker's head.