Chapter 29

‘Let’s get outta here.’

‘Give me another second, Rink. I just want to check down here.’

Sirens were filling the air, echoing back and forth from the high-rise block and the smaller apartment complexes across the way. We were risking being caught red-faced — if not red-handed — though it was necessary to check that Markus wasn’t lying out of sight against the lowest point of the building. There was a pebble drainage gully adjacent to the wall, with a slight overhang formed by the first balcony that butted out over it. When we checked I expected to find that when the killer slammed to the ground, the impact had bounced him against the base of the tower and his body would be found there.

It wasn’t.

There was no sign of where the body hit the dirt either. There was no indentation, no sign of blood. I scanned the building overhead. The lights on each landing threw the outer walls into shadow so I could make out no indication of blood. Unfortunately, now that the sounds of conflict had ended, the residents of Hayes Tower had come out on the landings, hailing each other as they tried to determine what had just occurred. A couple of the more courageous tenants were already scouting out the uppermost corner of the building, calling out to anyone in the rooms that might be injured. Thankfully no one looked down at where we lurked at the foot of the tower, but it was only a matter of time. Rink was correct: we had to get out of there, and quick. My only concern was that Markus was still there somewhere, injured but possibly a danger to the unlucky resident who came across him. We should have completed a check of each landing on our way down, cornered and finished the bastard once and for all. The opportunity was missed. Now we had to get away.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

Rink led the way, loping across the fallow ground. He moved with a determined ease that I couldn’t match. The battering I’d taken during the car crash manifested itself in aches and pains throughout my body. I ignored them all and jogged after Rink. He reached the tall mesh fence, pausing while I caught up to him. Maybe he could tell I wasn’t working at one hundred per cent because he cupped his hands to help boost me over. I stepped into his palms and experienced a heady sensation as he heaved me up. I grabbed at the top of the fence, swung over and began scrambling down the other side. Rink swarmed over the obstruction like it was barely there. We ran, using the fence as a guide, avoiding obstacles on the fallow ground that would trip us in the dark. Andrew’s car was parked beyond the adjoining book depository stockyard, half a minute away at most. A quick glance back over my shoulder assured me that any responding police cruisers were at the front of the building, and as yet there were no flashlights seeking us out.

‘Our detective buddies are going to suspect it was us,’ I said between breaths.

Rink didn’t respond. I was stating the obvious.

‘Without a body, there’s no sign of a crime. Maybe it’s a good job the killer escaped, considering the circumstances.’

‘I’m glad.’

I shook my head as I ran, fighting to conceal a smile. The only reason Rink was happy the killer had escaped was that he could have his own shot at him.

I reassessed my earlier concern. The cops didn’t know about our connection to Parnell yet. ‘I don’t think we need worry about Jones and Tyler,’ I puffed. ‘There’s nothing in the apartments that they can use against us. We can always deny being there, and if they find prints or DNA we can claim it was from previous visits. Don’t know what we can do about the blood from where I shot Markus, though.’

‘His blood won’t mean a damn thing if he’s not already on record. By the time they can make a match, the bastard will be dead. That’s if they ever find his body to match it to.’ Rink had reached a connecting fence. This one wasn’t as tall as the one we’d climbed earlier, and he went over it without stopping. I had to grab at the wire, shove it down and then straddle it before dragging myself over. I hadn’t felt as sore for months; not since taking a pounding from a lunatic called Samuel Logan who didn’t share my sensitivity to pain.

‘I hope those idiots got clear before the cops arrived.’ I was referring to Sean Chaney’s heavies. If there were a scale for measuring criminal excellence, those guys wouldn’t even hit the lowest level. If they were caught fleeing the scene then they’d immediately do one of two things: concoct a totally ridiculous story demonstrating their innocence or blame everything on us. I trusted it would be the latter. Best-case scenario was that they got well away, but time would tell. I had to stop worrying about them and concentrate on the main issue. Despite my shooting Markus Colby or Peterson — or whichever name he was using — and the man tumbling from the tower block, somehow he had survived. It told me something I hadn’t considered before: that he was more resilient than I gave him credit for. On most counts his victims had been elderly and not exactly a match for an armed man; what was more some of them — in particular Takumi — were infirm and it didn’t take a pro to murder them. I’d been thinking of him in terms of a reckless amateur, who’d managed to avoid capture before now due to his anonymity, Yukiko’s reluctance to speak about what occurred all those years ago helping him, and a healthy dose of luck. Now I had to see him as a dangerous and capable adversary.

Making it to the car, Rink drove. He used a service alley to edge out on to the next street up from where all the activity was. Immediately he looked for another, and he turned into it to take us further across Potrero Hill and out of the cordon of response vehicles. I was thankful that Jones and Tyler were unaware of Parnell’s status as a future victim in their homicide investigation; otherwise the cops would have descended on Hayes Tower en masse. The report would have been of shots fired, of a commotion in an apartment, but when they found no evidence of either the police activity would be scaled down. There was still that damned sprinkle of blood that might cause alarm, but with no assailants, victims or complainants in evidence, I expected the matter would be filed and that was all. There was always the possibility that Markus was still in the vicinity and that the cops would locate him, but I didn’t give it much credence. He was a dangerous and capable adversary, as I’d just concluded, and it wasn’t likely that he had hung around after such a lucky escape.

Hayes Tower would be out of bounds to him for the rest of the night, and in all likelihood the police would be present the following day as officers conducted door-to-door enquiries. My regret was that it was also a no-go area for us and we’d lost the advantage for trapping the killer. I trusted Harvey Lucas would come through for us though, and if our suspicions were correct, in that the killer was Charles Peterson’s firstborn son, then he would find him. Next time we would take Markus in a frontal attack that wouldn’t be messed up by outside interference.

‘What do you propose we do about Sean Chaney?’ I asked.

Rink had directed the car back towards downtown now that we were well away from Hayes Tower. He had tucked in behind a FedEx delivery vehicle on an evening run. Behind us was a taxicab with two female passengers. There wasn’t a cop car in sight. ‘Nothing yet. I think we let his dimwit heavies report back and see if he takes up your advice to leave town. If not, we’ll show him the error of his ways… once Markus Colby is squared away.’

‘I can’t help feeling we brought this on ourselves. We went after Chaney first. It’s no wonder he sent his boys after us in revenge.’

‘Cause and effect,’ Rink said. ‘Chaney shouldn’t have muscled Jed Newmark in the first place. It’s his fault. He started this, we’ll finish it.’

I didn’t reply. There was an answer for everything if you looked deep enough, and then twisted it to suit purpose. It made me consider who was to blame for the larger picture we were involved in now. We saw ourselves as the good guys, but I guessed that Markus also fancied himself as the great avenger, doling out justice to a group of murderers. Was he acting any differently than Rink, in that each was a son who wanted revenge for their slain father? What Andrew and the others did to Charles Peterson was horrendous, and if the shoe was on the other foot we could have been hunting them down. But the saving grace in all this was that Peterson had kicked everything off when he’d preyed on those innocent girls. Following Rink’s line of logic there was only one person to blame and that was Charles Peterson. His son was his emissary in the here and now, still intent on causing pain to his victims and their families, and — as a result — definitely the bad guy.

There are always circles within circles, some overlapping and converging, that serve to bring lives into conflict. That, I understood, was what had happened here in San Francisco. But it was also the way of the world. There was nothing I could do about it other than try to end the Rington versus Peterson loop before it continued through further generations. I knew that Rink had no children, but what if Markus Colby had a son? If so, we could find this war raging into eternity. I rejected that idea as not even worthy of a joke.

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