The Devils Teardrop

here.
    He turned to Claire, started to mention this but suddenly she tensed.
    “What’s that?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “Gunshots,” she said. “I hear gunshots.”
    Kennedy looked into the air, wondering if the sound perhaps was the fireworks, starting early. But, no. All he saw was the dark, cloudy sky, pierced by the white shaft of the Washington Monument.
    Then they heard the screaming.
    * * *
    Czisman’s shots did what he’d intended.
    When he’d realized that nobody had seen the Digger—and that he himself had no clean shot at the killer—he’d fired twice into the air, to scatter the people and clear a line of fire.
    The explosions sent the crowd into a panic. Howling, screaming, everyone scattered, knocking the Digger to his knees. In seconds the area immediately in front of the Vietnam Memorial was virtually empty.
    Czisman saw Kincaid too, flinging himself to the ground and pulling a small automatic out of his pocket. The man hadn’t seen the Digger—a thick stand of evergreens separated them.
    That was fine with Czisman. He wanted the killer.
    The Digger was rising slowly. The machine gun had fallen from his coat and he looked around for it. He caught sight of Czisman and froze, gazing at him with the strangest eyes Czisman had ever seen.
    In those eyes was less feeling than in an animal’s. Whoever the mastermind behind the killings had been—the one lying on the slab in the morgue—that man wasn’t pure evil. He would’ve had emotions and thoughts and desires. He might have reformed, might have developed the nub of a conscience that was possibly within him.
    But the Digger? No. There was no redemption for this machine. There was only death.
    The killer with a man’s mind and the devil’s heart . . .
    The Digger glanced at the gun in Czisman’s hand. Then his eyes rose again and he stared at the journalist’s face.
    Kincaid was rising to his feet, shouting at Czisman, “Drop the weapon, drop the weapon!”
    Czisman ignored him and lifted the gun toward the Digger. With a shaking voice he began to say, “You—”
    But there was a soft explosion at the Digger’s side. A tuft of the man’s overcoat popped outward. Czisman felt the hard fist in his chest, dropped to his knees. He fired his own gun but the shot went wide.
    The Digger removed his hand from his pocket, holding a small pistol. He aimed at Czisman’s chest once more, fired twice.
    Czisman flew backward under the impact of the rounds.
    As he tumbled to the cold earth, seeing distant lights reflected in the wall of the Vietnam Memorial, he muttered, “You . . .”
    Czisman tried to get his gun . . . But where was it? It had fallen from his hand.
    Where, where? . . .
    Kincaid was running for cover, looking around, confused. Czisman saw the Digger walk slowly toward his machine gun, pick it up and fire a burst toward Kincaid, who dove behind a tree. The Digger trotted away, crouching, through the bushes toward the fleeing crowds.
    Czisman groped for his gun. “You . . . you . . . you . . .” But his hand fell to the ground like a rock and then there was only blackness.
    * * *
    A few people . . .
    Click, click . . .
    Funny . . .
    A few people were nearby, huddled on the ground, looking around. Frightened. The Digger could easily have shot them but then the police would see him.
    “The last time kill as many as you can,” said the man who tells him things.
    But how many is as many as you can?
    One, two, three, four, five . . .
    The Digger doesn’t think he meant only a half dozen.
    The last minute of the last hour of the . . .
    So he’s hurrying after them, doing the things he ought to do, looking scared, running the way the crowd does, hunching over. Things like that.
    You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re the best.
    Who was that man back there? he wonders. He wasn’t a policeman. Why was he trying to shoot me?
    The Digger has hidden the . . . click, click  . . . the Uzi under his overcoat, the overcoat that he loves because Pamela gave it to him.
    There are shouts nearby but they don’t seem to be directed at him so he doesn’t pay any attention. Nobody notices him. He’s moving through the grass, near the bushes and trees, along that wide street—Constitution Avenue. There are buses and cars and thousands and thousands of people. If he can get to them he can kill hundreds.
    He sees museums, like the one where they have the picture of the entrance to hell.