Concrete Desert (David Mapstone Mystery 1)

This is nuts, a voice in my head warned. Wait for the cops.

Except that he knew why Susan Knightly and I were targets.

I picked a direction and ran that way, hugging close to a wall, ready to meet my killer around every post or alcove. I went a hundred feet and stopped, listening. I could still hear screaming and shouting from the bar area. Maybe some sirens in the distance. A fan whining somewhere. Empty storefronts and mannequins. A fountain’s rush. My own breathing. A burning in my lungs.

Footsteps.

He bolted suddenly from a doorway, turned down an exit corridor, his steps echoing behind him.

“Deputy sheriff! Stop!” I yelled, close behind him now. “Stop!”

I raised the revolver and lined up the Colt’s twin sights. Right between the shoulder blades: Bye-bye, asshole.

I didn’t take the shot. He banged out the fire exit into the night.

I ran after him and had just reached the exit bar when a voice stopped me

from behind.

“Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon! Do not move!”

I heard the chilling sound of a round being chambered in a semiautomatic pistol.

I froze. “I’m a deputy sheriff,” I called, still facing toward the exit door. I let the Python down easy. “The suspect just ran outside here.”

“Mister, I don’t know who the hell you are,” came a scared young voice. “But I want you facedown on the ground, hands spread straight out! Push your weapon away very slowly!”

“Let me show you my ID.”

“Mister, you are five seconds away from eternity.”

A big drop of sweat trickled down my spine. Or maybe it was blood.

I almost started to turn around and yell that the son of a bitch was getting away. But I thought better of it. I got facedown on the cold, dirty mall floor and pushed the Python gently away.

Chapter Eighteen

I sat in the back of a large, bright fire department ambulance as a fireman in a dark blue T-shirt picked glass out of my neck and cheek. It stung like hell. But the good news was that I was the only casualty of the gunfire. The air-conditioning was running, but I was sweating nonstop. Peralta-wearing a tux-and three Phoenix cops surrounded me, firing questions.

“What direction did he go in after exiting the mall?”

“What vehicle did he drive?”

“Did he have anyone else with him in the parking lot?”

“Ow.” I winced. “I’ve told you five times, I never got out the door after him because the officer behind me wouldn’t let me go.”

“He didn’t know who you were,” said a uniformed police captain who had a tuft of hair missing from his cop mustache.

“I tried to tell him,” I said.

“How do you know you and this unknown woman were the intended targets?” asked a Phoenix PD deputy chief, a slim, bloodless man wearing a gray herringbone suit that was wildly out of place in the heat. “Dressing like an easterner,” my grandfather would have called it.

“Well, he looked at me, chambered a round, and pointed the gun. And the first burst came right at the woman who was giving me information on a homicide case.”

“I don’t know,” the captain said skeptically.

“Mike, Susan Knightly was in touch with Phaedra just before she died.” Peralta raised his eyebrows, and I related Susan’s conversation. Then I told him about the break-in at my house-and the beating I’d gotten in the carport. He asked a couple of questions and made some notes. He handed back my Python.