“Shit!” Marino exclaimed, snatching the radio out of his jacket pocket.
Ten-thirty-three was the code for “Mayday.”
Radio broadcasts were ricocheting like bullets through the air. Patrol cars were responding like jets taking off. An officer was down at a convenience store not far from where I lived. Apparently he had been shot.
“Seven-oh-seven, ten-thirty-three,” Marino barked to the dispatcher that he was responding as he hurried to my front door.
“Goddamm it! Walters! He’s just a fuckin’ kid!”
He ran out cursing into the rain, calling back to me, “Lock up tight, Doc. I’ll have a couple uniform men over here right away!”
I paced the kitchen, finally sitting at the table nursing straight Scotch while a hard rain drummed the roof and beat against windowpanes. My suitcase was lost and my .38 was inside it. It was a detail I had neglected to mention to Marino, my mind dulled by exhaustion. Too jittery to go to bed, I flipped through Beryl’s manuscript, which I had been wise enough to hand-carry on the plane, and sipped my drink waiting for the police to arrive.
Just before midnight my doorbell rang, startling me out of my chair.
Looking through my front door peephole and expecting the officers Marino had promised, I saw a pale young man wearing a dark slicker and some sort of uniform cap. He looked cold and wet as he hunched against the blowing rain, a clipboard held against his chest.
“Who is it?” I called out.
“Omega Courier Service from Byrd Airport,” he answered. “I’ve got your suitcase, ma’am.”
“Thank God,” I said with feeling, deactivating the alarm and unlocking the door.
Incapacitating terror seized me as he put down my suitcase inside the foyer and I suddenly remembered. I had written my office address on the lost baggage claim I had filled out at the airport, not my home address!
17
Dark hair was a stringy fringe beneath his cap, and he did not look me in the eye as he said, “If you’ll just si-sign this, ma’am.”
He handed me the clipboard as voices played madly in my mind.
“They were late coming in from the airport because the airline lost Mr. Harper’s bag.”
“Is your hair naturally blond, Kay, or do you bleach it?”
“It was after the boy delivered the luggage …”
“All of them gone, now.”
“Last year we got in a fiber identical to this orange one in every respect when Roy was asked to examine trace recovered from a Boeing seven forty-seven …”
“It was after the boy delivered the luggage!”
Slowly I took the offered pen and clipboard from the outstretched brown leather-gloved hand.
In a voice I did not recognize, I instructed, “Would you please be so kind as to open my suitcase. I can’t possibly sign anything until I make sure my belongings are present and accounted for.”
For an instant his hard pale face registered confusion. His eyes widened a little as they dropped down to my upright bag, and I struck so fast he didn’t have time to raise his hands to ward off the blow. The edge of the clipboard caught him in the throat, then I bolted like a wild animal.
I got as far as my dining room before I heard his footsteps coming after me. My heart was hammering against my ribs as I raced into the kitchen, my feet nearly going out from under me on the smooth linoleum as I wheeled around the butcher block and jerked the fire extinguisher off the wall near the refrigerator. The instant he burst into the kitchen I blasted him in the face with a choking storm of dry powder. A long-bladed knife clattered dully to the floor as he clutched his face with his hands and gasped. Snatching a cast-iron skillet off the stove, I swung it like a tennis racket, hitting him solidly in the belly. Struggling for breath, he doubled over and I swung again, this time at his head. My aim was off. I felt cartilage crunch beneath the flat iron bottom. I knew I had broken his nose and probably knocked out several teeth. It barely slowed him down. Dropping to his knees, coughing and partially blinded by the powder, he grabbed at my ankles with one hand, his other hand groping for the knife. Throwing the skillet at him, I kicked the knife out of the way and fled from the kitchen, slamming my hip into the sharp edge of the table and knocking my shoulder against the doorframe.