Chase: Roman

of shouting teenagers went by, screeched at the corner, sounded its horn and peeled off with a squeal of rubber.
        Chase stepped across Richard Linski's body and looked out the window. There was no one in sight. The lawn was dark. The sounds of the struggle had not carried any distance.
        He turned away from the glass and listened to Linski's breathing. It was shallow but steady.
        Chase crossed the room to the other floor lamp, tripped over an ottoman on the way, found the lamp and switched it on.
        He looked at his shoulder, probed the hole in the fleshy part of his biceps. As far as he could tell, the bullet had passed straight through. He could look at it in a moment, under stronger light, as soon as he secured Judge,
        He could also call the police. In a little while. After he had taken care of a couple of loose ends that yet remained.
        

    Sixteen
        
        In the bathroom, Chase stripped off his blood-soaked shirt and dropped it in the sink. He washed the wound and tested the flow of blood, sopping it up with a washcloth until it was not bleeding dangerously any more. He located the alcohol in the medicine chest and poured half a bottle over and into the hole, was nearly knocked down by the rush of stinging pain that exploded in the wake of the fluid. For a while he bent over the sink, staring into the mirror, watching the circles under his eyes grow darker, the whites of his eyes more bloodshot. When he felt he could move again, he found gauze pads and soaked one of them in Merthiolate. He slapped that over the wound, covered it with more clean pads, then wound wide-band adhesive tape over the entire mess. It wasn't professional, but it would keep him from leaking blood over everything.
        In the bedroom, he took one of Judge's shirts from the closet and struggled into it. If their fight had been now instead often minutes ago, he would surely have lost, for his shoulder and back were beginning to stiffen considerably.
        In the kitchen, he found a large plastic garbage sack and brought it to the bathroom. He dropped his bloody shirt, the bloody towel and washcloth into it. He used tissues and wads of toilet paper to wipe up the sink and the mirror, threw those in the bag when he was done with them. Standing in the doorway, he looked the bathroom over, decided there was no trace of what he had done there, turned off the light and closed the door.
        Judge's second shot had missed Chase, but it had thoroughly smashed a three-foot-square ornamental mirror that had hung on the wall above the bar at the far end of the living room. Bits of glass lay over everything within a six-foot radius. In five minutes he had picked up all the major shards, though hundreds of tiny slivers still sparkled in the nap of the carpet and in the upholstery of nearby chairs.
        He was considering this problem when Judge awoke. He went to the chair in the middle of the living room, where he had tied the killer with clothesline he had found in the kitchen. It was a straight-backed, unpadded, armless chair that provided a number of rungs and slats to snake the rope through. Judge twisted and tried to break free, but soon saw there was no hope of that.
        Chase said, ‘Where is your vacuum sweeper?’
        ‘What?’ Judge was still groggy.
        ‘Vacuum sweeper.’
        ‘What you want that for?’
        Chase slapped him hard with his good hand.
        ‘In the cellarway,’ Judge said.
        He brought the sweeper back, plugged it in and picked up every piece of shattered mirror that caught his eye. Fifteen minutes later, satisfied, he put the sweeper away again, just as he had found it.
        ‘What are you up to?’ Judge asked. He was still trying at his ropes, as though not convinced it was hopeless.
        Chase did not answer. He picked up the television and replaced it on its stand, plugged it in and tried it. It still worked. There was a situation comedy playing, one of those in which the father is always an idiot and the mother is little better. The kids are cute monsters.
        Next he picked up the floor lamp he had fallen over and examined the metal shade. It was dented, but there was no way to tell that the dent was new. He unscrewed the damaged light bulbs, and along with the larger scraps of the broken mirror, threw them in the plastic garbage bag on top of the bloody shirt and towel. He used the pages of a magazine to