The Devils Teardrop

goes blank.
    He should . . . click.
    More agents, more police. Shouting.
    There’s so much confusion . . . Dozens of agents will soon be in the corridor outside the box. They’ll throw a hand grenade at him and stun him and maybe shoot him to death and the bullets won’t rattle around—they’ll go straight through his heart and it will stop beating.
    Or they’ll take him back to Connecticut and shove him through the entrance to hell. He’ll stay there forever this time. He’ll never see the man who tells him things ever again.
    He sees people jumping from the balcony onto the crowds below. It’s not far to fall.
    Shouting, the agents and the policemen.
    They’re everywhere.
    The Digger unscrews the suppressor and aims the gun at the chandelier. He pulls the trigger. A roar like a buzzsaw. The bullets cut the stem and the huge tangle of glass and metal tumbles to the floor, trapping people underneath. A hundred screams. Everyone is panicked.
    The Digger eases over the balcony and drops onto the shoulders of a large man, fifteen feet below. They fall to the floor and the Digger springs to his feet. Then he’s being rushed through the fire door with the rest of the crowd. He still clutches the shopping bag.
    Outside, into the cool air.
    He’s blinded by the spotlights and flashing lights from the fifty or sixty police cars and vans. But there aren’t many police or agents outside. They’re mostly in the theater, he guesses.
    He jogs with a middle-aged couple through an alley away from the theater. He’s behind them. They don’t notice him. He wonders if he should kill them but that would mean mounting the suppressor again and the threads are hard to align. Besides, they don’t look at his face so he doesn’t need to kill them. He turns into another alley and in five minutes is walking along a residential street.
    The bag tucked neatly under the arm of his black or blue coat.
    His dark cap snug over his ears.
    I’d love you if you’re sick.
    I’d love you if you’re poor.
    The Digger’s humming.
    Even when you’re miles away
    I love you all the more . . .
    “Man, Parker,” Len Hardy said, shaking his head with youthful admiration. “Good job. You nailed it.”
    C. P. Ardell meant the same when he said, “Don’t fuck around with this man, no how, no way.”
    Margaret Lukas, listening to her phone, said nothing to Parker. Her face was still emotionless but she glanced at him and nodded. It was her form of thanks.
    Yet Parker Kincaid didn’t want gratitude. He wanted facts. He wanted to know how bad the shooting had been.
    And if the body count included the Digger’s.
    On a console, speakers clattered with static as Jerry Baker and the emergency workers stepped on each other’s transmissions. Parker could understand very little of what they said.
    Lukas cocked her head as she listened to her phone. She looked up and said, “Two agents dead, two wounded. An usher killed and one man in the audience was killed by the chandelier, a dozen injured, some serious. Some kids were hurt bad in the panic. Got trampled. But they’ll live.”
    They’ll live, Parker thought grimly. But their lives’ll never be the same.
    Daddy, tell me about the Boatman. . . .
    Parker asked, “And he got away?”
    “He did, yes,” Lukas said, sighing.
    “Description?”
    She shook her head and looked at Cage, who was on his phone too. He muttered, “Nope, nobody got a damn look at him. Well, two people did. Two of ours. But they’re the ones he capped.”
    Parker closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the gray padding of the office chair. It had to have been the one he’d ordered years ago; there was a certain musty, plasticky smell about it that brought back memories—some of the many that were surfacing tonight.
    Memories he had no desire to experience.
    “Forensics?” he asked.
    “PERT’s going over the place with a microscope,” Cage said. “But—I don’t get it—he’s firing an automatic weapon and there’re no shell casings.”
    Parker said, “Oh, he’s got the gun in a bag or something. Catches the casings.”
    “How do you know that?” Hardy asked.
    “I don’t. But it’s what I’d do if I were him. Anybody at the hotel get a look at him leaving the bullets?”
    “Nope,” Cage muttered. “And they’ve canvassed everybody there. One kid said he saw the boogeyman. But he couldn’t remember anything about him.”
    Boogeyman, Parker thought wryly. Just