"Heads up!" shouted Angel.

The front window of the station house exploded inward and bullets tore into the walls, the desks, the filing cabinets, the light fittings. They shattered glass partitions, blew up the watercooler and turned reports and files to confetti. Ressler fell to the ground, the back of his leg already ragged and red. Beside me, Angel rose and opened fire with the Glock. Louis's Roadblocker thundered as he took up a position beside him.

"We're going to be torn apart here," shouted Angel. The firing from outside ceased. Behind us, there was only the sound of paper settling, glass crunching and water still dripping from the remains of the ruined cooler. When the pain in my side at last began to subside a little, I looked at Louis. "We could bring the fight to them," I said.

"Could do," he said. "You up to it?"

"Just about," I lied. On the floor, Jennings was cutting the leg of Ressler's pants to get at the wound. "You got a window that leads out into somewhere dark, maybe concealed by a tree or something?" I asked.

Jennings looked up at us and nodded. "Window of the men's john, down that corridor. It's right beside the wall, too narrow for anyone to fit through the space but someone could get onto the surrounding wall itself from there."

"Sounds good," said Louis.

"What about me?" said Angel.

"You doing a bang-up job with that Glock," replied Louis.

"You think?"

"Yeah. You actually hit anybody I'll start believing in God, but you sure scaring the hell out of Tony's boys."

"What about me?" said Walter. They were the first words he had spoken to me since the funeral in Queens.

"Stay here," I said. "I think I've figured something out."

"About Ellen?" The pain in his eyes made me wince.

"It's no good to any of us while Tony Celli's men are out there," I told him gently. "When this is done with, we'll talk."

We turned to leave, but it seemed like it was going to be one obstacle after another. Rand Jennings was still kneeling by Ressler. His gun was still in his hand. It was still pointing at me.

"You're not going anywhere, Parker."

I looked at him, but continued walking. The muzzle of the gun followed me as I moved past him.

"Parker…"

"Rand," I said. "Shut up."

Surprisingly, he did.

With that, we left them and headed to the men's toilet. The window was frosted and opened out above a pair of sinks. We listened carefully for movement outside, then slipped the latch, pulled the window open and stepped back. There were no shots, and within seconds we were hauling ourselves over the wall and into a patch of waste ground behind the north wall of the station, the shells in Louis's coat pockets jangling dully as he hit the ground. My side hurt, but by now I was past caring. I reached out for Louis as he prepared to move away.

"Louis, the old man out at Meade Payne's house is Caleb Kyle."

He almost looked surprised. "What you say?"

"He was waiting for Billy. If something happens to me, you take care of it, okay?"

He nodded, then added. "Man, you be takin' care of it yourself. They ain't killed you yet, then they ain't never gonna kill you."

I smiled and we separated, slowly making our way in a pincer movement toward the front of the station house, and Tony Celli's men.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I do not remember clearly much of what happened as I stumbled into the darkness. I recall that I was shivering constantly, but my skin was hot to the touch and my face was shiny with sweat. I had Jennings's gun, and had restocked the speed loader from the box of shells, but it still felt strange and unfamiliar in my hand. I vaguely regretted the loss of the Smith & Wesson. I had killed with it and, in doing so, had killed something inside me, but it was my gun and its history over the previous twelve months had mirrored my own. Perhaps it was for the best that it now lay deep in the water.

Snow was falling and the world was mute, its mouth stifled with flakes. My feet sank deep as I followed the wall, the station house to my left, cold piercing my boots and numbing my toes. On the other side of the station, I knew, Louis was moving steadily, the big shotgun in his hands.

I stopped where the wall fell suddenly at the edge of the building, becoming instead a three-foot-high surround for the parking lot. I glanced into the lot, saw no movement and made for the cover of a late-model Ford, but my responses were sluggish and I made more noise than I should have. My hands now shook continuously, so much so that I had to reach up with my left and still the barrel of my gun as I went. The pain in my side was unrelenting but, when I looked down, I saw only small bloodstains on the sweater.

The snow was being urged on by a wind that seemed to have gathered renewed vigor as the night drew on. Great swaths of white were swept into my face, and flakes crowded on my tongue. I tried to find Louis's dark form, but could see nothing beyond the lot. I knelt down, breathing heavily, sick to my stomach. For a moment, I felt that I might faint. I took a handful of snow and, crouching carefully, rubbed it into my face. It didn't make me feel much better, but the gesture saved my life.

Above me, and to my left, a shape moved behind one of the cruisers. I saw a black, patent leather shoe rise from the snow, flakes still clinging to the cuff of the dark pants above it, the tail of a blue overcoat dancing and waving in the wind. I rose, and the gun rose with me, up, up, until my head and the gun were above the hood of the Ford. And as the figure turned, registering the movement, I fired a single shot into his chest and watched dispassionately as he fell back into the drift that had built up against the wall. There he remained slumped, his chin resting on his breast, his blood turning the snow black.

And in that instant, something happened inside me. My world turned dark as the blood-drenched snow and my mind began to lose its general focus. The universe blurred at its edges, leaving me with only a pinhole of perspective. And as the world shifted and tilted I seemed to both feel and hear the sound of a blade entering flesh and then a noise like a melon being halved with a single blow. I followed the tiny lens of clarity across the wall and over the road, where a small bank sloped down to the trees. In the snow a man lay in a heap, his body split from chest to navel and snowflakes gathering in his ruined head. There were footprints around his body, deep and firm. The footsteps veered away from the body and headed toward town, following a second trail of prints whose footfalls were distorted by a limp. There was blood between the marks of Mifflin's shoes. As I followed the tracks, more shots came from the direction of the station house, among them the sound of Louis's gun.

I walked south for five, ten minutes, maybe a little more, before I found myself at the end of a residential street. A woman and a man, both elderly and wrapped tightly in overcoats and blankets, stood on their porch, the old man with one arm around the woman's shoulders. There were no more shots now, but still they waited, and still they looked. Then they caught sight of me and both drew back instinctively, the man pulling his wife, or perhaps his sister, back through the open door and closing it behind them, all the time never taking his eyes from me. There were lights on in some of the other houses, and here and there curtains moved. I could see faces haloed with dim light, but no one else appeared.

I reached the corner of Spring Street and Maybury. Spring Street led on into the center of town, but there was darkness at the end of Maybury, and the twin trails of prints moved in that direction. About halfway down the street, they separated, the distorted set moving on into the shadows, the second set veering northwest through the boundary between two properties. I guessed that Mifflin had got there first and found himself a position in the darkness from which he could view the street below him, and his pursuer had veered off to circle him when he guessed what was happening. I turned south and made my way around the backs of the houses until I came to the edge of a copse of trees where the western verge of the forest began. There I halted.