"You'll have to move along, ma'am."

The woman didn't even glance at him. Kept her eyes fixed on that downhill grade toward the pump house. "What's going on? What're all these cars doing here?"

"Police business, ma'am. Just move along, please."

To Burke's considerable irritation, the woman did not drive away. She just pulled to the side of the road and continued staring down the hill as if Christ himself were about to rise from the icy depths of Trout Lake. Burke sauntered over, rapped on her window, and pointed a gloved finger up the road. According to the Aylmer training manual, a silent gesture, if authoritative enough, will be just as effective as your voice. It wasn't.

"Move it out," Burke said, louder this time. "We need this road clear."

Although the rain had long stopped, the woman's wipers were still flapping; or rather, one of them was still flapping, there was no wiper on the passenger side. She had some kind of scaly thing happening with her face. Hell of a bandage over one ear, too. Intolerable, the way she stared beyond PC Larry Burke and down the hill, totally ignoring him. No way Larry Burke was going to let her get away with that. Larry Burke was not about to screw up now, no matter how tiny his role in this production might be. "Hey, lady!" Yelling now. "Are you deaf?"

He slammed the flat of his hand on the car roof. The woman jerked her head up, and he caught a glimpse of terrified eyes. Then she shoved it in gear, and the car lurched away. "Jesus," he said to Szelagy. "I hope they've got the highway blocked off by now. Did you see that?"

"Some people," Szelagy said. "Got a big nose for other people's business, you know? Have to stick it into everything."

Burke watched the car rattle up the road, belching clouds of black exhaust. Trout Lake and its surrounding suburbs were an affluent area. Very upscale. You'd think the dumb bitch could afford a better vehicle than a half-wrecked Pinto.

55

THE pump house had been out of use for five years and looked it. It was a low, squat, ugly building of gray stone, its windows boarded up, and its roof piled high with an entire winter's accumulation of snow- three feet deep despite the recent meltage. Icicles the size of organ pipes dripped from the corners. Its virtue- from a murderer's point of view- was isolation. There was not another house for half a mile on either side, and this distance was thick with uncut brush.

Cardinal did a fast reconnoiter and established that there was no door on the lake side, just a single set of stone steps that rose from the lake to the side door, forming a perfectly smooth diagonal under the snow and ice. Fraser's Windstar was parked near the lake. Footprints and drag marks led up to the pump house. A rusty outline showed where a padlock had hung.

Soundlessly, Cardinal moved to the door and grasped the handle. He turned it as gently as possible. It didn't budge. He shook his head to signal the others.

McLeod opened his trunk and pulled out the "boomer," sixty pounds of solid, door-smashing iron. Delorme and he each took a handle and prepared to ram the door. Cardinal would be first in with gun drawn. All this they agreed on without speaking.

What happened next became a featured point in department war stories as they were told for years to come. Delorme and McLeod had backed away for their run at the door. Cardinal had his hand up to make the one-two-three signals. He had just finished "one" and was raising his hand for "two," when Eric Fraser stepped out of the building.

He stood there, blinking in the light.

Later, there would be many theories about what made him step out just then. Going for supplies, was one theory, the call of nature was another. It didn't matter, the effect was the same.

Fraser stepped out of the building in his shirtsleeves- black hair whipping in the breeze, black jeans and black shirt vivid against the snow- stood there like an innocent man, blinking for what seemed like ten seconds but was probably less than one.

As Delorme put it later, "This pale skinny guy with little skinny arms. I would never have called him a killer, not in a million years. That guy, he looked like a boy."

Eric Fraser, killer of four people that they knew of, stood utterly still, his hands a little away from his sides.

Cardinal's voice sounded tinny to his own ears. "Are you Eric Fraser?"

Fraser spun. The Beretta was in Cardinal's hand, but Fraser was through the door before he could raise it.

Ian McLeod was first through the door after him- a bit of bravery that would put him on crutches for the next three months. The side door opened on a steep set of steel steps that led down to the pump systems. McLeod slid down it with all his weight on his ankles.

Keith London screamed from the darkness, "In here! In here! He's got a-" His shouts were cut short. Cardinal and Delorme stood at the top of the stairs, listening to McLeod's groans. Below them, the pump was a collection of deep red pipes and valves, like a colossal heart. There was a catwalk off to the right. Delorme moved along this, and Cardinal went down the steps.

"I'll be all right," McLeod said. "Get the bastard."

The gray light from the half-open door barely penetrated the dark. Cardinal could see a catwalk above the pump and, below that, another set of steel steps zigzagged like steps in a dream. Cardinal was about to make a run for these stairs when the catwalk door opened and a muzzle flash spat white and blue flame, bright as a flashbulb. Delorme was hit. She staggered back, making no sound other than the clang of her Beretta hitting the catwalk. She got as far as the outside doorway and even managed to open it a little wider. Then she sank slowly to her knees, clinging to the door on the way down, her face utterly white.

Cardinal tore up the steps three at a time, expecting at any moment another muzzle flash and a nine-millimeter hole in his skull.

He kicked open the door.

Pressed flat against the wall, Cardinal held his Beretta chest high with barrel up, as in prayer. Then he spun, crouched, and sighted along the barrel. Nothing moved. There was a door on the far side of the room. Cardinal was in what appeared to be a disused kitchen, the London kid strapped to a table, blood dripping from his head. He reached out and felt the boy's neck; the pulse was slow, and he was breathing in ragged gasps.

A rush of footsteps on metal. Cardinal crossed the room to the other door. He stepped out just in time to see Fraser- little more than a black shape- running for the door they had come in. Cardinal aimed and fired. The bullet went wide, ricocheting off the pipes with an earsplitting whine.

Cardinal ran the length of the catwalk, hopping over the motionless Delorme, and out the door. He reached Fraser's van just as the engine caught. Cardinal threw open the passenger door just as the van started to roll downhill toward the lake. Fraser swung his pistol toward Cardinal's face.

The van hit a rock, sending Fraser's shot into the roof. Cardinal fell into the passenger seat and grappled with Fraser's gun arm as the van lumbered onto the ice.

Cardinal had Fraser's gun arm forced nearly to the floor of the van. Fraser squeezed the trigger, and the muzzle flash burned Cardinal's leg. Fraser continued to squeeze off wild shots, so that events seemed to unfold in lightning flashes.

Cardinal got his right hand round Fraser's throat, his left still clutching the killer's gun hand. Fraser's foot crushed the gas pedal. The sensation of being yanked backward as the wheels caught. Cardinal managed to kneel on Fraser's gun hand, pressing all his weight onto the wrist. His right fist smashed into the killer's cheekbone, pain shooting up his arm.

And then a horrible stillness. The van had lurched to a halt. Suddenly, it pitched forward, spilling the two men against the dash. One fact registered in Cardinal's brain like a news bulletin: The right front wheel had broken through the ice.