Comeback

6

Thorsen's lunge drove both Parker and himself back through the doorway into the dayroom, bouncing off the floor while the bullet hit the doorframe behind them. As they untangled themselves, there were sudden shouts from the hall, and a quick flurry of gunfire, almost immediately stopped.

Parker got to his feet as the uniforms in the hall rushed forward in a body, meaning Liss had made it to the stairwell. But how much farther could he go?

Parker turned and held out his hand to help Thorsen back to his feet. He said, "I owe you one."

Thorsen looked slightly ruffled, but then he shook himself and became completely neat again. He said, "That was Liss, wasn't it?"

"It was."

"Looks like he knows you're behind him."

"Looks that way."

"And doesn't like it."

"I didn't think he would," Parker said, and started out of the room.

Thorsen, not moving, said, "Let the police run him down. Shouldn't take more than five minutes."

Over his shoulder, Parker said, "Carmody," and walked away down the now-deserted hall. Big eyes in shocked faces looked out from corners of cover at the nurse's station along the way.

Carmody's room was on the other side, just before the nurse's station. Parker went to that doorway and looked in, and it was a mess. Carmody had been shot in the head, and was lying back on the pillow, three eyes staring upward. The two cops who'd been in here with him, mostly to keep watch on Ralph Quindero, had been shot any which way, just to take them out of play, and were alive, but both lying like flung dolls on the floor, being worked over by nurses.

For Liss, Carmody was the only person except the rest of the crew who could positively say he'd been one of the heisters. It didn't matter if Carmody had given statements to the law, just so he wouldn't be around later to make the positive ID. Liss could afford a lawyer who'd fend off all that crap, dependent on there being no live Tom Carmody to stand up in court and point and say, "That's him there."

And what Liss was counting on right now, in the hospital, was too much confusion and nobody who'd ever seen him before. A guy in a police uniform, moving fast, shooting people, who came in and went out. There might be some potential IDs of Liss, but once again, not enough for a conviction. Not if he got away clean and hired his lawyer and established his alibi in some place like San Diego, or one of the Portlands.

"Gangway! Gangway!"

Parker stepped back, and white-coated people hurried by, pushing two gurneys into the room. Working delicately but hurriedly, moving fragile creatures who could break at any second, they put the two wounded cops on the gurneys.

Parker looked down the hall. Some of the cops had followed Liss into the stairwell, while others milled around down there, barking into walkie-talkies. Some had come the other way down the hall and were just now piling into an elevator. To go which way, up or down? Liss wouldn't be as easy to catch as these people thought.

Thorsen had also looked into Carmody's room, and now he came over to Parker to say, "You can hold your questions."

'There's nothing for me here," Parker agreed. He was thinking, there was nothing for him around Thorsen any more, either. Get rid of him—maybe take him out of the action and borrow that little automatic of his—and then go find Mackey and Brenda. Liss was attracting too much attention right now, Parker didn't need to be around him.

Particularly since he was supposed to be the Liss expert, the insurance guy tracking him down. Calavecci had immediately gone running off to lead the search for Liss, but sooner or later he'd be back, and he'd be full of questions, and he'd probably even want to call Jack Orr's head office at Midwest Insurance, a company that so far as Parker knew didn't exist.

Down the hall, the plainclothesman called Macready came out of the stairwell and walked this way. Thorsen said, "Get him?"

"Not yet," Macready said.

Parker said, "You lost him."

"We know he's in the building," Macready said. "He isn't going anywhere." Frowning at Parker, he said, "He does seem to have a special interest in you, though, doesn't he?"

"We're interested in each other," Parker said. "He knows I don't mean him well."

An elevator door opened and cops came out. They looked both purposeful and confused, and they milled with the gurneys coming out of Carmody's room. Macready went over to talk to these new cops, and Parker said, "Time to get out of their way."

"As a matter of fact," Thorsen said, "I was just thinking the same. Come to the hotel."

Parker looked at him. "What hotel?"

"Archibald and the Crusade," Thorsen explained. "We're all supposed to leave town today, go back to Memphis, but it looks like at least some of us will be staying on. You and I can go there, phone Broad Street from time to time, find out what's going on."

A peaceful place. A good place to hole up until tonight; if nothing else happened, Parker could go back to that motel at eleven o'clock, see if Brenda'd been reading her compact lately. "Good idea," he said. "Thanks for the invite."