The Devils Teardrop

his targets.
    Perfect.

32
    Margaret Lukas , gazing at the Christmas tree in the lobby, stretched like a cat.
    She listened absently to footsteps coming up the hall behind her.
    Two weeks ago the entryway here had been filled with presents that the agents and staffers had donated for homeless families. She’d volunteered to give away some of the toys but at the last minute she canceled and, instead, worked twelve hours on Christmas day, investigating the killing of a black man by two whites.
    Tap, tap, tap . . .
    Now she wished she hadn’t canceled on Christmas. At the time she’d reasoned that giving out toys was frivolous when she could be doing “serious” work. But now she admitted that the thought of seeing small children on the holiday was more harrowing to her than kicking in the door of a redneck gun nut in Manassas Park.
    Coward, she told herself.
    Tap, tap, tap . . .
    She looked out the glass windows. Crowds, people returning from the Mall. She thought about the Digger. Wondered about the shoot-out, about who’d fired the shots that killed him. She’d been in two firefights in her career and remembered mostly confusion. It was so different from in the movies. Never any sense of slow motion—a gunfight in real life was five blurry seconds of utterly terrifying chaos and then it was over with.
    The vivid images came afterward: caring for the wounded and removing the dead.
    Tap . . . tap . . .
    A buzzing phone startled her.
    In front of her Artie answered and she absently watched his grizzled face.
    “Front desk . . . Oh, hello, Agent Cage.”
    Suddenly the guard was frowning. He glanced at Lukas then focused past her. His eyes went wide. “Well,” the guard said uneasily. “Detective Hardy? . . . He’s who? What do you mean? . . . But he’s right here, he’s—Oh, Jesus.”
    Artie was dropping the phone, fumbling for his weapon.
    Tap tap taptaptaptap . . .
    Instinctively Lukas knew that the footsteps, now running toward them, were an attacker’s. She fell forward just as the rounds from the silenced pistol snapped into the back of the couch where she’d been sitting, ripping Naugahyde and bits of stuffing from the upholstery.
    She looked behind her, twisting around, scrabbling for cover behind a potted plant.
    It was . . . Wait, it couldn’t be! It was Hardy.
    Firing wildly, Artie shouted, “It’s him! He’s the killer. He . . . Oh, my. Oh, no . . .” The guard looked down at hischest. He’d been hit. He slumped to his knees, fell behind the desk.
    Another bullet snapped through the back of the couch, near Lukas’s head. She curled for cover behind the anemic palm tree so many agents had ridiculed. She cringed as a bullet was loudly deflected by the chrome pot.
    Lukas was on automatic. She didn’t even try to figure out what had happened or who this man really was. She looked up quickly, searching for a target. But she had to duck fast as another bullet chopped though the thick green blades of leaf inches from her face. She rolled to her left, against the wall, rose and drew a target. In a portion of a second she checked the backdrop behind Hardy and fired three fast shots.
    The heavy 10-millimeter slugs just missed him and dug huge chunks out of the wall. Hardy fired twice more at her then vanished back down the corridor.
    She ran to the wall beside the hallway, pressed her back against it.
    The tapping footsteps receded.
    Another voice from the far end of the corridor called, “What’s going on? What’s going on!”
    Somewhere along the hallway a door slammed.
    Lukas looked around the corner quickly then went back to cover. She’d seen a man down at the end of the hall, in silhouette. She dropped to her belly, drew a target, shouted, “I’m a federal agent! Identify yourself or I’ll fire!”
    “Ted Yan,” the man called. “In Software Analysis.”
    Lukas knew him. He was a friend of Geller’s, an agent. But she thought: Great, I’ve got a computer nerd for backup.
    “You alone?” she shouted.
    “I’m—”
    Silence.
    “Ted?”
    “No. There’re two of us . . . Susan Nance is here with me.”
    Nance’s voice cracked as she called, “Oh, Margaret, he got Louise in Security! She’s dead. And Tony Phelps too.”
    Jesus. What was going on?
    Ted said, “We’re by the—”
    “Okay, quiet,” Lukas barked. “Don’t give away your position. Did anybody go past you?”
    “No,” Ted called. “He couldn’t’ve gotten by me. I