The Broken Window

did you get here?” she asked.
    Jorgensen’s eyes were wide, just like she remembered from the cheap hotel on the Upper East Side. “I’ve been following you ever since you came to see me. I’ve been living on the street. I knew you’d lead me to him.” A nod back at Gordon, still immobile, breathing shallowly.
    Jorgensen was gasping as he grabbed huge handfuls of paper and flung them away.
    Sachs said, “ You were the one following me. At the cemetery and the loading dock on the West Side.”
    “That was me, yes. Today I followed you from the warehouse to your apartment and the police station and then to that office building in Midtown, the gray one. Then here. I saw you go into the alley and then when you didn’t come out, I wondered what had happened. I knocked on the door and he answered. I told him I was a neighbor looking for a delivery. I lookedinside. I didn’t see you. I pretended to leave but then I saw him go through the door in the living room with a razor.”
    “He didn’t recognize you?”
    A sour laugh as Jorgensen tugged his beard. “He probably only knew me from my driver’s license photo. And that was taken when I bothered to shave—and could afford haircuts. . . . God, these are heavy.”
    “Hurry.”
    Jorgensen continued, “You were my best hope of finding him. I know you have to arrest him but I want some time with him first. You have to let me! I’m going to make him undo every bit of agony he’s put me through.”
    The sensation began to return to her legs. She glanced toward where Gordon lay. “My front pocket . . . can you reach the key?”
    “Not quite. Let me get some more off you.”
    More papers flew to the floor. One headline: DAMAGE FROM BLACKOUT RIOTS IN MILLIONS . Another: NO PROGRESS IN HOSTAGE CRISIS. TEHRAN: NO DEALS.
    Finally she squirmed out from underneath the papers. She clumsily rose, on aching legs, as far as the cuffs would allow. She leaned unsteadily against another tower of paper and turned toward him. “The cuff key. Fast.”
    Reaching into her pocket, Jorgensen found the key and reached behind her. With a faint click one of the cuffs unlatched and she was able to stand. She turned to take the key from him. “Fast,” she said. “Let’s—”
    A stunning gunshot sounded and she felt simultaneous taps on her hands and face as the bullet—firedby Peter Gordon from her own gun—struck Jorgensen in the back, spattering her with blood and tissue.
    He cried out and slumped into her, knocking her backward and saving her from the second slug, which zipped past and cracked into the wall inches from her shoulder.

Chapter Forty-nine
    Amelia Sachs had no choice. She had to attack. Immediately. Using Jorgensen’s body as a shield, she lunged toward hunched-over, bleeding Gordon, grabbed the Taser from the floor and fired it in his direction.
    The probes don’t have the velocity of bullets and he fell backward just in time; the barbs missed. She snatched Jorgensen’s metal bar and charged toward him. Gordon rose to one knee. But when she was just ten feet away he managed to bring the gun up and fire a round directly at her, just as she flung the bar at him. The bullet slammed into the American Body Armor vest. The pain was stunning but the round had struck her well below the solar plexus, where a hit would have knocked the breath from her lungs and paralyzed her.
    The crowbar spun into his face, colliding with a nearly silent thonk, and he cried out in pain. He didn’t go down, though, and still held the gun firmly. Sachs turned in the only direction she could flee—to her left—and sprinted through a canyon of artifacts filling the creepy place.
    “Maze” was the only way to describe it. A narrow path through his collections: combs, toys (a lotof dolls—one of which had probably sloughed off the hair recovered at an early crime scene), old toothpaste tubes, carefully rolled up; cosmetics, mugs, paper bags, clothing, shoes, empty food cans, keys, pens, tools, magazines, books . . . She’d never seen so much junk in her life.
    Most of the lamps were off here, though a few faint bulbs cast a yellow pall on the place, and pale illumination from streetlights filtered in through stained shades and newspapers taped over the glass. The windows were all barred. Sachs stumbled several times and caught herself just before sprawling into a stack of china or a massive bin of clothespins.
    Careful, careful . . .
    A fall would be fatal.
    Close to