Free Booked to Die by John Dunning Page A

kitchen. Still nothing. Nothing. No… living… thing. The bedroom door across the room was closed. Here I come, ready or not. I pushed the door wide and stepped in, the gun pointing my way like a beacon. I saw that the wood had been shattered where she’d had a chain lock fastened. That had stopped him for all of twenty seconds. I took four long steps to the bedroom door and listened again. It wasn’t going to happen, was it? They just weren’t going to invite me to their little party. I stood on the verge of big trouble, a brilliant, silly line from James Jones running through my head.
They can kill you but they can’t eat you
. I had news for Mr. Jones, whatever corner of Eternity he’d gone to. They could kill you, yes, and they could eat you too.
    I opened the door. They weren’t there.
    They weren’t anywhere.
    The bed had been neatly made up, not a ripple showing on the pink-and-white spread.
    I looked in the closet and found nothing I could call unreasonable. I looked in the bathroom. Finally I went into the kitchen and began to see what had happened. There was a door that opened onto an outside landing, and a wooden stair-case that ran down the rear of the apartment house to a small parking lot. The door had been slammed open with such force that the glass was broken. I walked back into the main room, the gun still in my hand. The scenario was becoming fairly clear. The curtains were drawn back: the Lamborghini was parked directly below. Barbara had looked out this front window and had seen Jackie Newton down in the street. She had called me: when I wasn’t there, she had hung up. The recorder had activated automatically, and here we were. She had panicked when she heard him coming up the stairs. She took the only way out—down the back way. The lock had bought her a few seconds, then he came through the door and went down after her. That’s where they were now, playing a game of chase on the streets.
    Probable cause had dropped in my lap like a plum. I had never been in here—that was my story before God, Mother, and the state of Colorado. I had come up on a response to a phone call. I had come to her door and knocked: when on one answered, I had gone away. If I happened to spot them in the course of cruising the neighborhood, if it looked to my casual eye like Barbara Crowell was being unlawfully pursued… well, events could take care of themselves.
    I didn’t think it would be hard to find them. Barbara had run without any money, it seemed—her handbag was still on the table beside the radio. She wouldn’t be jumping into any buses or cabs, and I didn’t think she’d be flagging any cops, either. There was too much fear in her: it was an old story to me, I had seen it so many times. As for Jackie Newton, he was out there in hog heaven. This was the kind of game he loved: the cat-and-mouse, the heading-off, the dodging up alleys and down side streets. Playing with people, working on their fear.
    I went downstairs and opened my trunk. In the toolbox I found a rubber hammer and a punch. I flattened one of Jackie’s tires and the Lamborghini sagged back on its haunch, hissing.
    I drove in a widening circle, coming back to Pearl Street every few minutes to check on the Lamborghini. It took me twenty minutes to find them. I came upon Jackie on East Eighth Avenue, a few blocks from the governor’s mansion. He was standing under a tree like a predator, watching. I drove on by. He didn’t see me: like the leopard, his attention was fixed on the prey, on the place where the prey was hiding. I couldn’t see it at first: all I knew was that she was there somewhere. I circled the block, parked the car, and got out. I walked to the corner and got behind a tree of my own. That’s the way we did it for half an hour: Barbara hiding in a place unknown, Jackie watching her, me watching Jackie.
    It was all a lot of fun till it started to rain.
    I went back to the car and pulled into a vacant lot that had a clear