Invisible Prey

We haven’t seen her in anything but high heels. Now she’s wearing sneaks.”
    When she’d finished scouting, Widdler walked across the street to Galtier Plaza, went to the Subway in the food court, got a roasted chicken sandwich, and sat in a window looking out at the park.
    Jenkins was at the opposite end of the food court with three slices of pizza and a Diet Coke. “She’s cool,” he told Lucas, talking on his cell phone, sitting sideways to Widdler, watching her with peripheral vision.
    At two minutes to one, Lucas called Del and said, “Put her in.”
     
    S HRAKE HAD BEEN HIDING in a condo lobby. Now he ambled up to the corner, waited for a car to pass, jaywalked to his car, got in, watched in his rearview mirror until he saw Coombs turn the corner. He pulled out, turned the corner, and was out of sight…
    Coombs saw him leave, pulled up to the parallel-parking spot, and spent three minutes getting straight, carefully plugged the meter, and then started walking around the perimeter of the park, looking down into it.
    Jenkins, on the cell phone, said, “She’s moving.”
    Lucas and Flowers had moved to the glass doors of the building across the street from the bench. Coombs was walking slowly on the sidewalk, peering into the park. She was still wearing the blue muumuu and was carrying a Macy’s bag, looking fat and slow.
    Widdler stepped out of Galtier into the sunshine, slipping on sunglasses. She was carrying an oversized Coach bag, black leather, big enough to hold eighty thousand. She crossed the street, walking casually. She was forty yards behind Coombs, and closing.
    “Lucy doesn’t see her,” Flowers said.
    “We’re okay, we’re okay,” Lucas said.
    A guy eating his lunch got off the park bench, tossed the brown bag in a trash container, and started across the street, talking on a cell phone, not looking back. A St. Paul vice cop. Del called: “I’m coming in.”
    “We’re in,” Shrake said. He and Jenkins were moving down the east side of the park, where they could cut Widdler off, if she made a run for it.
    From Lucas’s point of view, everything seemed to slow down.
    Coombs plodding toward the bench, sitting down in slow motion, looking tired, the Macy’s bag flapping on the bench…
    Widdler closing in on her, from behind, twenty yards, ten, five, her hand going in her purse, back out.
     
    L UCAS: “Shit. She’s got a gun.”
    He and Flowers hit the door simultaneously, Flowers screaming, “Lucy, Lucy, watch out, gun…”
    Widdler never heard them or saw them. Her world had narrowed to the target on the bench, the big fat hippie with the bushy hair and the Macy’s bag, and there was nobody around and she was moving in fast, the woman might never see her…
    Widdler had the gun in her hand, a four-inch double-trigger, double-barreled derringer that Leslie had given her to keep in her car. He’d said, “It’s not accurate at more than two feet, so you pretty much got to push it right against the guy…” He’d been talking about a rapist, but there was no reason that Coombs should be any different.
    The gun was coming up and somewhere, in the corner of her mind, she realized that there was a commotion but she was committed and then Coombs was half standing and turning to meet her and the gun was going and she heard somebody shout and then she shot Coombs in the heart. The blast was terrific, and her hand kicked back, and there was a man in the street and car brakes screeching and she never thought, just reacted, and she turned and the gun was still up…
    And suddenly she was swatted on the ankle and a screaming pain arced through her body and she hit the ground and she registered a shot; she got a mouthful of concrete dust and her glasses came off and she rolled and Lucas Davenport was looking down at her…
     
    L UCAS NEARLY RAN through a car. The car screeched and he was knocked forward and registered the face of a screaming woman behind the windshield, and he saw Coombs get shot and he was rolling and then he heard a shot from behind him, saw Flowers with a gun and saw Widdler go down, then he was up and running and looking down at Widdler.
    Coombs was on her hands and knees, looking up at him, and she said, “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
    And Lucas turned to Flowers, as he straddled Widdler, his heart thumping, Flowers pale as an Irish nun, and Lucas asked, “Why’d you shoot her in the foot?”
    Then Widdler screamed, the pain flooding her, hit in the