“The hell I did. I had your back then and I have it now. All the way, and you damn well know it. I told the chief the only version of the story that makes sense, so stop trying to alienate everyone. I am not your enemy. Neither, by the way, is Billy Trout or the rest of the human race. ”
Her eyes blazed with icy blue challenge. “So, you’re saying that you believe that the Russian broad attacked me?”
“How many ways would you like me to say it?”
She poked him hard in the chest with a stiffened finger. “Then why didn’t you say so when we were inside?”
JT pushed her finger aside. “Because I was in shock, what the hell do you think? You were in shock, too. At that moment I didn’t know what to think about anything. Can you stand there and tell me that everything that’s happened today makes sense? That it’s easy to swallow?”
Dez said nothing.
JT nodded. “What I thought. So, what would you have said if I’d told you that Doc Hartnup just got up and strolled off? You trying to tell me that you’d accept that without pause? Without question? No … you wouldn’t because it doesn’t make sense. But we know it happened. Just like we know the cleaning lady attacked you. None of this makes sense. ”
JT and Dez stood staring at each other for several silent seconds. Far to the west there was a low mumble of thunder. The sound broke the moment, and Dez’s eyes flicked to the west and then down at the gravel.
“Shit,” she said.
“It’s okay,” JT said softly, touching her arm. “We’ll get it all sorted out. ” He didn’t specify which issues would be resolved. The case, Billy, or the train wreck that was Dez’s life. Even so, she nodded slowly.
There was a dull crackle behind the trees. Dez looked up at the clouds. The radio said that a bad storm was coming, but …
The crackle came again.
Not distant thunder.
It was gunfire.
That’s when the screaming started.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GREEN GATES 55-PLUS COMMUNITY
Dr. Herman Volker nearly shot himself when the phone rang. His nerves were fiddle-string taut, his heart fluttered like nervous fingers on a tabletop, the old Makarov pistol rattling in his hand. His clothes smelled of body odor, Old Spice, cigarettes, and fear. He had the barrel pressed to his temple but had not yet slipped his finger inside the trigger guard. If he had, he would already be dead. Instead his finger jerked tight round the outside of the guard.
“God!” he gasped aloud. There was no one to hear him there in the brown shadows of his house. The single word banged off the walls and burst apart into silent dust.
The phone rang again. It was an old hotel model. Kitschy when he bought it, merely cumbersome now. And loud. The bell seemed to shriek at him.
Volker’s entire body had jerked on the first ring and he could feel the tremulous echo still reverberating in his chest. The sensation grew worse with the second ring. Anxiety was a cold wire in his stomach.
Was it the police? Had his handler called them? Turned him in for what he’d done? Would the police call first or just burst in? Even after all these years working with prisons he didn’t really know.
Ring!
Mr. Price—Volker’s handler at the CIA—would call his cell rather than the home phone. So would the warden and the staff at Rockview.
The hand holding the pistol twitched like a dying fish. He slapped the pistol down on the table, jerking at the solid clunk the metal made against the hardwood. Then he jerked again a second later as …
Ring!
Volker knew that he was a dead man. Even if the police broke down the door and arrested him before he could pull the trigger, he was dead. A prison official in jail was marked. The convicts would tear him apart. Especially when what he did got out. Homer Gibbon was a legend at Rockview. A convict’s convict. They called him the Angel of Death. Some of them had Gibbon’s face tattooed on their arms.
When they learned what Volker had tried to do—had, in fact, done—they would … His mind refused to form any specific end to that thought.
Volker held his breath as he watched the phone ring two more times. Five in all. There was no answering machine attached to the phone. No voice mail. It would ring until the caller gave up. Or until Volker went mad.
Who was calling?