It arched through sixty feet of falling snow and hit Bollinger-not a
solid blow on the head, as Graham had hoped, but on the hip. It glanced
off him with little force.
Nevertheless, the drill startled Bollinger. He jumped, put a foot on
ice, pitched forward, stumbled off the curb, skidded with peculiar grace
in the snow, and sprawled facedown in the gutter.
The driver of the grader had expected his quarry to run away; instead,
Bollinger fell toward the machine, into it. The operator braked, but he
could not bring the rader to a full stop within only eight feet.
The huge steel plow was raised twelve inches off the street; but that
was not quite high enough to pass safely over Bollinger. The bottom of
the blade caught him at the buttocks and gouged through his flesh,
rammed his head, crushed his skull, jammed his body against the raised
curb.
Blood sprayed across the snow in the circle of light beneath the nearest
street lamp.
2!PS 43 MacDonald, Ott, the security guards and the building engineer
had been tucked into heavy plastic body bags supplied by the city
morgue. The bags were lined up on the marble floor.
Near the shu”ered newsstand at the front of the lobby, half a dozen
folding chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle. Graham and Connie
sat there with Ira Preduski and three other policemen.
Preduski was in his usual condition: slightly bedraggled. His brown
suit hung on him only marginally better than a sheet would have done.
Because he had been walking in the snow, his trouser cuffs were damp.
His shoes and socks were wet. He wasn’t wearing galoshes or boots; he
owned a pair of the former and two pairs of the latter, but he never
remembered to put them on in bad weather.
“Now, I don’t mean to mother you,” Preduski said to Graham. “I know
I’ve asked before. And you’ve told me. But . I worry unnecessarily
about a lot of things. That’s another fault of mine.
But what about your arm? Where you were shot. Is it all right?”
Graham lightly patted the bandage under his shirt. A paramedic ‘m just
fine.”
“What about your leg?”
Graham grimaced. “I’m no more crippled now than I was before all this
happened.”
Turning to Connie, Preduski said, “What about you?
The doc with the ambulance says you’ve got some bad bruises.”
“Just bruises,” she said almost airily. She was holding Graham’s hand.
“Nothing worse.”
“Well, you’ve both had a terrible night. just awful. And it’s my
fault. I should have caught Bollinger weeks ago. If I’d had half a
brain, I’d have wrapped up this case long before you two got involved.”
He looked at his watch. “Almost three in the morning.” He stood up,
tried unsuccessfully to straighten the rumpled collar of his overcoat.
“We’ve kept you here much too long. Much too long. But I’m going to
have to ask you to hang around fifteen or twenty minutes more to answer
any questions that the other detectives or forensics men might have. Is
that too much to ask? Would you mind? I know it’s a terrible,
terrible imposition. I apologize.”
“It’s all right,” Graham said wearily.
Preduski spoke to another plain-clothes detective sit ting with the
group. “Jerry, will you be sure they aren’t kept more than fifteen or
twenty minutes?”
“Whatever you say, Ira.” Jerry was a tall, chunky man in his late
thirties. He had a mole on his chin.
“Make sure they’re given a ride home in a squad car.”
Jerry nodded.
“And keep the reporters away from them.”
“Okay, Ira. But it won’t be easy.”
To Graham and Connie, Preduski said, “When YOU get home, unplug your
telephones first thing. You’ll have to deal with the press tomorrow.
But that’s soon enough. They’ll be pestering you for weeks.
One. more cross to bear. I’m sorry. I really am. But maybe we can
keep them away from you tonight, give you a few hours of peace before
the storm.”
“Thank you,” Connie said.
“Now, I’ve got to be going. Work to do. Things that ought to have been
done long ago. I’m always behind in my work. Always. I’m not cut out