The Broken Window

vise of newspaper and she couldn’t get her hips in position to slip her hand inside her pocket.
    Yes, the claustrophobia was at bay, but pain was rapidly replacing it. Cramps in her bent legs, a sharp corner of paper digging into her back.
    Her hopes that the visitor was a source of salvation died. The door to the killer’s hideaway opened once more. And she heard Gordon’s footsteps. A moment later she looked up from her spot on the floor and saw him gazing at her. He walked around the mountain of paper, to the side, and squinted, noting that the cuffs were still intact.
    He smiled in relief. “So I’m Number Five Twenty-Two.”
    She nodded, wondering how he’d found out their designation for him. Probably from torturing Captain Malloy, which made her all the angrier.
    “I prefer a number that has a connection to something. Most digits are just random. There’s too much randomness in life. That’s the date you caught on to me, isn’t it? Five Twenty-Two. That has significance. I like it.”
    “If you come in we’ll cut a deal.”
    “ ‘Cut a deal’?” He gave an eerie, knowing laugh. “What kind of deal could anyone ‘cut’ me? The murders were premeditated. I’d never get out of jail. Come on.” Gordon disappeared momentarily and returned with a plastic tarp, which he spread out on the floor in front of her.
    Sachs stared at the brown-bloody sheet, heart thudding. Thinking of what Terry Dobyns had explained about hoarders, she realized he was worried about getting his collection stained with her blood.
    Gordon got his tape recorder and set it on a nearby stack of papers, a short one, only three feet high. The top one was yesterday’s New York Times . A number had been written precisely in the upper left-hand corner, 3,529 .
    Whatever he tried, he was going to hurt. She’d use her teeth or knees or feet. He was going to hurt bad. Get him close. Look vulnerable, look helpless.
    Get him in close.
    “Please! It hurts. . . . I can’t move my legs. Help me straighten them out.”
    “No, you say you can’t move your legs so I get close and you try to rip my throat out.”
    Exactly right.
    “No . . . Please!”
    “Amelia Seven Three Oh Three . . . Do you think I didn’t look you up? The day you and Ron Forty-Two Eighty-Five came to SSD I went into the pens and checked you out. Your record’s pretty revealing. They like you, by the way, in the department. I think you also scare them. You’re independent, a loose cannon.You drive fast, you shoot well, you’re a crime-scene specialist and yet somehow you’ve made it onto five tactical teams in the past two years. . . . So it wouldn’t make much sense for me to get close without taking precautions, would it?”
    She hardly heard his rambling. Come on, she thought. Get close. Come on!
    He stepped aside and returned with a Taser stun gun.
    Oh, no . . . no.
    Of course. Being a security guard, he had a full arsenal of weapons. And he couldn’t miss from this distance. He clicked the safety off the weapon and was stepping forward . . . when he paused, cocking his head.
    Sachs too had heard some noise. A trickle of water?
    No. Breaking glass, like a window shattering somewhere in the distance.
    Gordon frowned. He took a step toward the door that led to the entryway closet—and suddenly flew backward as it crashed open.
    A figure, holding a short metal crowbar, charged into the room, blinking to orient himself to the darkness.
    Falling hard, the wind knocked from his lungs, Gordon dropped the Taser. Wincing, he climbed to his knees and reached for the weapon but the intruder swung the metal bar hard and caught him on the forearm. The killer screamed as bone cracked.
    “No, no!” Then Gordon’s eyes, tearing in pain, narrowed as he gazed at his attacker.
    The man cried, “You’re not so godlike now, are you? You motherfucker!” It was Robert Jorgensen, the doctor, the identity theft victim from the transient hotel. He brought the crowbar down hard on the killer’s neck and shoulder, two-handed. Gordon’s head slammed into the floor. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed, lying completely still.
    Sachs blinked in astonishment at the doctor.
    Who is he? He’s God, and I’m Job. . . .
    “Are you all right?” he asked, starting forward.
    “Get these papers off me. Then take the cuffs off and put them on him. Hurry! The key’s in my pocket.”
    Jorgensen dropped to his knees and began pulling the papers off.
    “How