Next to the closet.

His vision was still blurred, but he could make out the dark rectangle of the open closet door. He crawled toward it and located the nearby umbrella stand by touch. As he reached up to grab the bat, he heard the running footsteps, gained his legs and swung at the thing rushing toward him.

He hit something. Yes, flesh and bone. The shadow man was down.

Mrs White looked at the sketches and the photograph.

‘Take your time,’ said Mallory. As if she had the time. ‘Have you ever seen him before?’

‘Well, he looks like lots of people. He could even be that young policeman. I told him George wasn’t here. But the man he sublet the apartment to – ’

‘He works nights,’ said John White. ‘Same as old George.’

‘So I thought he might be sleeping,’ said his wife. ‘And I told that to the officer.’

‘The first one?’ asked John White. ‘Or do you – ’

‘Well, both of them,’ said his wife. ‘The second policeman was a detective. He asked if it was all right to leave a note under George’s door.’

Deluthe’s legs were pulled out from under him. He cracked the back of his skull when he hit the floor. The baseball bat was still clenched in his right hand.

The other man’s weight was on top of him, and together they rolled across the rug and knocked up against the wall. The assailant was beneath him now, and Deluthe smashed his fist into the face that he could barely see. His opponent did not seem to feel the blows, a hand was closing on Deluthe’s testicles, and he screamed in agony.

When had he let go of the bat?

Mallory was deep in denial. ‘This man lives in your building, and you never got his name?’

‘Well,’ said Mr White, speaking for his wife, ‘it’s not like he’s a complete stranger. He’s been visiting old George for years.’

Once more, Mallory tapped the pictures on the coffee table. ‘Could this be your sublet?’

‘It could be.’ Mrs White picked up one of the sketches. ‘I’m not sure. It could also be one of those policemen. The detective – he’s the one who wanted to leave a note. He came by just a little while ago, and I sent him upstairs. Well, I had to run to the store, so the young man said he’d let himself out.’

Pssst.

Ronald Deluthe was lying on his side. He could taste the blood in his mouth as he ripped off the tape. His other hand was feeling around for the baseball bat. Blind fingers no sooner closed around the wood than it was twisted out of his grasp. His right arm was forced up behind his back, and he could feel muscle and bone ripping away from the socket. The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined. Tiny points of shooting white lights were all that he could clearly see. His scream was muffled by another piece of tape covering his mouth.

‘George’s sublet is a very quiet young man,’ said Alice White. ‘We never hear a sound from that apartment.’

‘Well, we wouldn’t, would we?’ Her husband smiled. ‘It’s on the top floor. So one day, I met him on the stairs. He had George’s keys. He said the old man left town in the middle of the night. Some family crisis.’ He smiled to reassure the skeptical detective. ‘Well, he did have George’s keys, and he seemed presentable. There was no reason to – ’

‘And you were afraid of him.’ Mallory did not have to wait for a reply. It was in the man’s face. And now she understood why no one had pressed the sublet for so much as a name to call him by. ‘Take another look.’ She held up one sketch. ‘Imagine him with a baseball cap and a gray canvas bag with a red stripe.’

‘Oh, that’s the sublet, all right,’ said Mrs White. ‘You never see him without that bag of his.’

Mallory turned her eyes to the ceiling, as if she could see through all the floors of the building. ‘Is there a back exit?’

‘We have a door to the backyard.’

‘That’s it? No fire escape?’

‘No.’

‘So if he wanted to get out, he’d have to – ’

‘You’d see him out there in the hall,’ said John White, who now finished sentences for the detective as well as his wife.

‘Give me your keys.’ Mallory held out her hand. ‘Now!’ Later, she would not remember screaming at this man to make him move faster. ‘Keys!’

When Deluthe regained consciousness, his hands were bound. He tried to lift his head. A rope was pulling tight around his neck, and his body bucked against the heavy weight of the man on top of him.

No breath. Eyes bulging, heart hammering.

Panic was magnified to monster-size primal fear. His legs kicked out, then thudded on the floor. His struggles ceased. His prone body was lighter now. Head swimmy, muscles relaxing, fear gave way to euphoria, and he closed his eyes. The heavy weight that had straddled him was suddenly lifted, and gravity ceased to hold his body down. He floated up into an ether of midnight black.

All sensation ceased.

The door closed. The room was dead quiet.

Riker yelled, ‘Yes, you can go faster! You’re with a damn cop!’ Charles pushed the gas pedal to the floor and never flinched at the near miss of a cab and now a truck coming out of a side street. The detour was a long one, twisting round the gridlock traffic of a broken water main on Houston. They were driving ten miles of bad traffic to travel one as the crow flies.

CHAPTER 21

The landlord had disobeyed a direct order to remain downstairs with his wife. He had silently followed Mallory to the top-floor apartment, and now it was too late to threaten the man – and unnecessary. John White quickly backed down to the lower landing when she drew her.357 Smith and Wesson, a cannon among revolvers. She favored it above all others for its drop-dead stopping power.

Pssst.

The door was ajar by the crack of a bare inch. She kicked it dead center, and it flew back with a bang and the sound of plaster crumbling where the knob had crashed into a wall. Fresh wet blood was splattered across the rug, and some of it stained a baseball bat. Mallory only glanced at the body on the floor. Ronald Deluthe had a rope knotted around his neck. She entered the apartment, aiming her gun at every piece of furniture that might give cover to the scarecrow. The bathroom was empty. She kicked open another door – no one there.

Upon returning to the front room, she found John White crouching on the floor and holding the wrist of the fallen detective.

Deluthe’s left arm was twisted in an unnatural attitude. His nose was smashed to one side and still gushing blood, the only sure sign of a beating heart and life.

‘I’ve got a pulse,’ said White, ‘but it’s thready.’

Mallory knelt beside the unconscious man, then put one finger between the rope and his neck. It was a tight fit. His oxygen had been completely cut off, but his lips were not yet blue. The scarecrow could only be a minute away.

John White was also working at the rope, but to a different purpose; he was trying to clear the man’s air passage, saying, ‘I was a volunteer paramedic back in Wisconsin.’

Mallory was not listening, nor did she watch as White performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She stared at the open closet and its contents for a moment, then reached down and ripped back the lapel of Deluthe’s suit jacket. His shoulder holster was empty.

The scarecrow has a gun.

She was rising, moving quickly toward the door and the inconvenient obstacle of Alice White. Mallory pushed the woman aside, shouting, ‘Call 911!’

‘I did. You told me – ’

‘Call again). Tell them an officer’s down!’

The last staircase at the end of the hall would lead her to the roof, and Mallory was running toward it. She had climbed to the door at the top of the stairs when she heard a scream from the apartment below. Apparently, Alice had noticed the moldy corpse on the floor of the closet.