The Devils Teardrop

speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, which had been Robby’s introduction to theater. The boy had memorized the speech the day after they returned from Kennedy Center.
    “All right,” Lukas said. “Any questions?”
    “Anything more on his armament?”
    “He’s been armed with a full-auto Uzi loaded with long clips and a suppressor. We have no further information.”
    “How green-lighted are we?” one agent asked.
    “To light up the shooter?” Lukas replied. “ Totally green-lighted. Anything else?” No one raised a hand. “Okay. We’re on emergency frequency. I don’t want any chatter. Don’t report in that you haven’t found anything. I don’t care about that. You see the suspect, call for backup, clear your background and engage. Now go find me that safe house.”
    Parker himself felt oddly moved by these words. It had been years since he’d fired a weapon but he suddenly wanted a piece of the Digger himself.
    Lukas directed teams of agents and officers to those parts of Gravesend she wanted them to canvas. Parker was impressed; she had a remarkable sense of the geographyof this neighborhood. Some people, he reflected, are just natural-born cops.
    Half of the agents started off on foot; the others climbed into their cars and sped away. Leaving Cage, Lukas and Parker standing on the curb. Cage made a call. He spoke for a moment. Hung up.
    “Tobe’s got an MCP. They’re on their way. He’s analyzing the tape from the theater. Oh, and that psychologist from Georgetown’s on his way over here too.”
    Most of the streetlights were out—some shattered from bullets, it looked like. Pale green illumination lit the street from the fluorescent lights of the few stores that were open. Two agents were canvassing across the street. Cage looked around and saw two young men rubbing their hands over an oil drum in which a fire burned. Cage said, “I’ll talk to them.” He walked into the vacant lot. It seemed that they wanted to leave but figured that would look more suspicious. Their eyes locked onto the fire as he approached and they fell silent.
    Lukas nodded toward a pizza parlor half a block away. “I’ll take that,” she said to Parker. “You want to wait here for Tobe and the shrink?”
    “Sure.”
    Lukas started up the street, leaving Parker alone.
    The temperature was continuing to fall. There was now a sharp edge to the air: that frostiness that he enjoyed so much in the autumn—evoking memories of driving the children to school while juggling mugs of hot chocolate, shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, picking pumpkins in Loudon County. But tonight he was aware only of the painful sting in his nostrils and on his ears and fingertips; the sensation was like a razor slash. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
    Maybe because most of the agents had left, the locals were returning to the streets. Two blocks away, a nondescript man in a dark coat stepped out of a bar and walked slowly up the street then stepped into the darkened alcove of a check-cashing outlet—to pee, Parker guessed.
    A tall woman, or transvestite, obviously a hooker, walked out of the alley where she’d been waiting for the crowd to disburse.
    Three young black men pushed out of an arcade and cracked open a bottle of Colt 45 malt liquor, laughing hard as they disappeared down an alley.
    Parker turned away and happened to glance across the street.
    He saw a thrift store. It was closed and at first he didn’t pay much attention to the place. But then he noticed boxed sets of cheap stationery on shelves near the cash register. Could this be where the unsub had bought the paper and envelope for the note?
    He stepped to the window of the store and gazed through the greasy glass, cupping his hands against the glare of the one nearby streetlight that still worked and trying to see the packages of paper. His hands shook in the chill. Beside him a rat nosed through a pile of trash. Parker Kincaid thought, This is crazy. I have no business being here.
    But, still, he lifted his sleeve and, using the fleece cuff of his bomber jacket, wiped the grimy glass in front of him as carefully as a diligent window cleaner so that he’d have a better view of the merchandise inside.

16
    “Maybe I seen him . Yeah, maybe.”
    Margaret Lukas felt her heart pump faster. She pushed the picture of the unsub closer and the counterman at the Gravesend pizza place—a chubby Latino in tomato-sauce-stained whites—continued to study it