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Outside the museum tension was building. The sun had moved far down the sky.
The first, faint smells of cooking were coming into the afternoon
air. When the subways stopped beneath the street the sound of more
and more feet were heard getting off.
Man s afternoon ritual of moving back to his nest was under way. And this
would also be occurring to the hated ones inside the building. There would be
no need to take the risk of going inside after them. Soon they would want
their food and their nests, and start their movement. Then the moment would
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come, not so long from now. Waiting like this made your heart soar, knowing
that relief and success lay as the reward for patience. Soon they would come
out, very soon.
Garner had returned to the scene of the Evans murder and picked up Rich
Fields, the photographer the paper had sent to join him on the
story. We re gonna take some pictures of a couple of cops, he said to
Fields.
What for?
Nothin . Don t even waste film. Just flashes. I want flashes.
Great. Makes good sense. Keep convincin me.
Shut up, Fields, you re too dumb to understand.
They got into Garner s car and rattled out of the park, back up to
the Museum of
Natural History. Garner felt full of vitamins. There was a Goddamn good story
in here and these two detectives were the exact center of the whole little
cyclone. Ah, a beautiful story, had to be. Let the
Times send fifty gentlemen downtown to worry the Police
Commissioner, Sam Garner was going to stick right close to these two
detectives until he got the story. He parked his car directly in front of the
museum and settled back to wait.
Want me to start shootin ?
Shut up, Tonto. I ll tell you when. And make it fuckin good if you don t
mind. I mean, run up and flash at em. Make em mad.
You payin my hospital bills, honey?
The
Post
ll take care of you, darlin . Just do your thing.
He stared at the huge edifice. Sometime soon the two cops would
appear in the doorway and start down. Fields would get after them with the
camera. No words, no more questions. Those two cops were scared already.
This would panic them. If they were hiding anything interesting the
little picture-taking session would make them think the
Post was on to it. So next time Sam Garner got to them maybe they d start
trying to save their own asses by doing a little singing.
It had happened before. Pressure breeds information. The first rule of
investigative reporting. Make em think you know enough to hang em, then
they ll give you what you need. Visions of delicious headlines went through
his head. He didn t know exactly what they said, but they were there. The way
it felt, he had a good week of dynamite on his hands. The boss would love it.
It must be something really horrible. Whatever was going on, somebody had
seen fit to tear the Medical Examiner apart. Not just kill him,
but actually tear him apart. The skin had even been pulled down off the skull,
the face nearly separated from the body. The throat was gone. The stomach was
pulled open and the body severed so completely that the legs fell to the
floor of the car when the orderlies tried to move the body. It had been a
vicious murder, particularly so, unusually so. A
monstrous murder. Hell of a bad thing. All of a sudden he felt kind of
chilled, sick inside, like he was going to throw up. Hurry up, he muttered
under his breath. A drink lay just
the other side of this little assignment and he needed it very badly.
I got some good stuff on Evans, Fields said. I mean that was some mess.
I just been thinkin about it. Doesn t make much sense, does it? Whoever
did that must have hated the hell out of the guy. And right in broad
daylight, right in the middle of the park. Strange as hell, weird as hell, you
ask me.
Look close, boss. The doll and the old guy?
That s them. Get moving.
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Fields opened the door of the car and walked forward to the base of
the statue of
Teddy Roosevelt that stood before the museum entrance. In this position he
would be concealed from Neff and Wilson until they came down the steps and
were beside him.
They were moving quickly. Another man, hunched, tall, his hands
folded before him, walked just behind them. There was something familiar in
the way they moved. And then
Fields realized why: in Nam, people under fire had moved like that.
As they came nearer he could hear their footsteps crunching on the snow. He
stepped out from his position near the statue and started shooting. The flash
popped in the gray afternoon light, and the three figures jumped away
startled. Almost before he knew it there was a pistol in the hand of the
old guy. The woman was also pointing a pistol at him.
This all happened in the same strange slow motion that things had happened in
the war, when an attack was going on. The closer you got to action, the more
events separated into individual components. Then an end would come, usually
violent, the roar of a claymore going up, the black arcing shapes against the
sky, the screams and smoke& Goddamn, they have guns and all I got is a
camera.
Something else moved and the old guy s pistol roared. Don t shoot!
But it roared again, sending out sparks. The tall man shrieked. Now the
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