Double Take

foot toward Pallack’s right arm, but Pallack jumped back and fired. The bullet went wide, and slammed into the dark wood wainscoting.
    Pallack made a strangled noise, and ran out of the study.
    Dix grabbed his Beretta from the desktop and ran after him.
    Pallack fired again. Dix felt a bullet fly past his head and slam into the wall, and he hit the floor. He heard Pallack run all out, pause a moment to jerk open the front door, then he was through it. He jumped to his feet, saw Charlotte, white-faced, hugging herself, and left her standing next to her husband’s desk, Makepeace’s body close to her foot.
    The sirens were close now.
    Dix ran out the Pallack front door to see a metal door slam shut at the end of the short hallway. He jerked open the heavy door and ran up the dozen concrete steps to a small square landing. He shoved open the steel-reinforced roof door, fell back when a bullet caromed off it.
    Dix yelled around the door, “Pallack, the cops will shoot you for sure if you go down those fire stairs. Give it up, it’s over now. You can still come out of this alive.”
    He heard Pallack breathing hard, and wondered if he was going to have a coronary. He eased out from behind the door onto the roof, six stories up. Pallack was standing at the edge, looking down, his knees pressed to the roof guard, his gun dangling loose in his right hand.
    Dix heard voices from the street, recognized Savich and Ruth.
    “Give it up, Pallack,” he said again. He raised his gun and began walking toward Pallack.
    Pallack slowly turned to face him. He didn’t look at all worried. He still held his gun at his side. He smiled. “You had a beautiful wife, Sheriff, but in the end, she wouldn’t have me.” He laughed. “She told me about you, about her sons, on and on trying to convince me to let her go, until—I’ve got to admit it—I lost it.” He shrugged. “She was blind to what I could give her.”
    Dix’s finger was trembling on the Beretta trigger. It would be so easy, he knew, the slightest squeeze, the small buck of recoil, and it would be over.
    “You insane old man—you killed my wife because she looked like your damned mother. She was just a face, nothing more to you.”
    “I told you, it was an accident.”
    Dix knew he didn’t have much time before cops poured out the roof door. If he was going to kill Pallack, he would have to do it now. He leveled his Beretta at Pallack’s chest. “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to find her? Can you even begin to imagine how much I hate you?”
    “So? A sheriff is going to shoot me in cold blood?”
    “If I shoot you, Pallack, it will be an execution.” His finger tightened on the trigger. In that moment Dix felt something warm and soothing touch him. He knew it was something outside himself, but it didn’t matter, it gave him balance and understanding, and it gave him hope. His breath slowed. He lowered his Beretta. “No, I don’t want your blood on my hands. Drop the gun, Pallack, now, or I’ll have to shoot you.”
    Pallack laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t shoot me, Sheriff.”
    “The sheriff won’t need to, Thomas.”
    Dix whirled around to see Charlotte standing just inside the roof door behind him, her nightshirt blowing around her legs. In her hand she held Dix’s two-shot derringer. “There are two bullets in my gun, Thomas.”
    “Shoot him, Charlotte! It’ll be self-defense. He’s insane with grief, came here because he believed I killed his wife—”
    “Shut up, Thomas. But you can put your gun down, Sheriff, won’t you? As I said, my little gun has two bullets. They’re for you, Thomas.”
    “No, Charlotte, don’t—”
    She spoke right over him—”You vile old man, you had David killed. You had my brother killed.”
    “I had no choice, do you hear me? He called me, hysterical, yelling that the FBI had come to see him, asking him all their questions about Christie, and he wanted money or he’d tell them everything. I had no choice, dammit, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t let him live.”
    Charlotte pulled the trigger.
    Pallack’s gun went flying as he grabbed his shoulder and staggered back. For several seconds, Dix thought he was going over the roof guard, but Pallack managed to jerk sideways and fall to his knees. Dix saw blood flowing through his fingers from the shoulder wound.
    Pallack raised pain-glazed eyes to his wife. “You bitch! You’re nothing without me, nothing!”
    She fired again, but she