Robert Tanenbaum: Enemy within

Then she was in her father's arms and crying again, but not for long. The cop hurried them back. When they arrived, everyone pretended to ignore Marlene's state of dress, but she was soon relieved of warming duties by Cooley's fleece-lined jacket.

"I should get that guy out of there," Cooley said, staring at the newspaper fort across the tunnel. "He could start tossing bombs again."

"Why would he do that? We're not attacking him," Lucy objected.

"Yeah, but a psycho killer like him, you can't tell what they'll do."

"He's not a killer," said Lucy. "David Grale is the bum slasher."

Simultaneous expressions of shock, surprise, and disbelief from the three adults standing.

"No, really," said Lucy over their objections, "he told me so himself. A couple of the moles had me in a side passage, and they were going to assault me, and he killed them both with his knife. And then he told me." She started to cry, then bit her lip to suppress it.

Marlene said, "In that case, Canman can stay there forever, for all I care. I'm going for help. Give me your radio, Cooley. I'll put in a call as soon as I reach the river gate. Keep looking for the dog."

After a moment's hesitation, Cooley handed her his radio, and she ran off.

Lucy went over to sit with Father Dugan. Cooley and Karp settled some distance away. The only light came from the wounded man's flashlight tourniquet, and it was growing dim. Time passed in silence but for the quiet conversation between Lucy and the priest. Karp's watch did not glow in the dark, so he lost track of time. It could have been twenty minutes or an hour. He was thirsty, and his knee hurt. Now Cooley was walking around flashing his light in both directions, and on the ground. He came back and sat down again. "There's four of them dead. No sign of the dog."

More silence. Karp cleared his throat and said, "Interesting development about Grale." Karp was glad that Cooley couldn't see his face, and that he couldn't see Cooley's. He was angry, embarrassed, and confused, angry at Canman, at Grale, at Cooley, at Marlene for concocting this expedition, at Tran, whose heavy artillery would have come in handy for once, but most of all at himself. He had gone down the wrong path many times before-it was a hazard of his occupation-but never as badly as this, and never in a way so void of the constraints built into the system, constraints designed to keep nasty prosecutors such as himself from screwing up the lives of the innocent. That the system had let him down badly was small comfort at this point, and certainly not to a seasoned self-flagellator like Karp.

"If it's on the level," said Cooley after a long silence.

"I think it is. Lucy wouldn't invent something like that, and if you noticed, the legs of her coverall and one of her boots are covered with blood, globs of it."

"Yeah, I guess. Does this mean you don't like me for it anymore?"

"Okay, Cooley, I was wrong," Karp snarled. "If you want, I'll kiss your ass in Macy's window. But I still like you a lot for the other thing."

Cooley made a disgusted noise and stood up. He switched on his flashlight.

"Where're you going?" Karp asked.

"I'm going over there and grab up that asshole."

"I'm coming with you," said Karp, getting up, too.

"No, you're not."

"Oh, yes, I am. I don't want my witness conveniently shot while escaping."

Karp heard a curse and a rustle of fabric, and suddenly he was looking at the butt end of a Glock 17.

"Take it, you fucker!" Cooley shouted.

"Don't be stupid, Cooley. Sit down, and we'll wait for the cavalry to get here."

Cooley took a step forward, and Karp put up his hands defensively, but the detective only grasped Karp's coverall and jammed the weapon into the big patch pocket on its breast. Then Cooley strode off, becoming a bobbing circle of light and the sound of trodden bricks.

"What's going on, Dad?" Lucy was standing by his side, only a voice in the dark.

"Cooley's gone off after Canman, the idiot!"

"No!" Lucy cried, and in an instant all Karp could see of her was a running silhouette against Cooley's light. Without thinking, Karp ran after her, stumbling on the uneven surface and on the dead mole people.

Cooley's beam made a white circle on the newspaper barricade. He tossed a chunk of brick at it and yelled, "Canman! You crazy bastard! Come out of there!"

Nothing. Then a scrabbling sound from behind the barricade.

Lucy came up and stood next to Cooley. "Let me go up there. He knows me."

"Are you nuts! Get the hell out of here!" Karp came staggering up, and Cooley yelled at him to take his daughter away, which he had every intention of doing, and taking Cooley as well.

But she ran away from Karp, and only stopped when Canman's head popped over the bales of paper. A red glow sprang up, lighting his face like a fun-house devil's. He stepped over the barricade, and they saw that he had a highway flare in one hand and a can grasped in the other. The flare was bright enough so that they could see that the can contained two pounds of Hercules Red Dot smokeless gunpowder, and that a short fuse was sticking out of the top of it.

"Get away!" yelled the Canman. "Get away from me or I'll light this off. I swear I will." The flare hovered around the tip of the fuse. Karp and Cooley instinctively backed away, although they knew at some level that if a pound or so of powder went off in this place, a few feet was not going to make any difference.

But Lucy went right up to him. "What are you doing?" she cried. "What are you doing? Haven't enough people been hurt?"

"Get out of my way!" he yelled.

"No! Where are you going to go? You're already in the most horrible place in the world. Living in a sewer! You idiot! Look at me! Do you want to kill me? Why do you think I'm here? Do you think I'm a cop? A social worker? I'm here because of you, John Carey Williams. I care about you, and you know it. It drives you crazy, but it's true."

And she lowered her voice and kept talking. Karp couldn't hear what she said, but the guy wasn't moving. He was listening, his mouth slightly open, his eyes fixed on Lucy. Karp didn't want to move either. None of them did. They were all fixed to the floor like stalagmites. It went on, Lucy talking quietly to the madman, the flare fuming, inches from the fuse, but not moving either. Something uncanny was happening, something outside Karp's experience, something out of a half-remembered myth: the Virgin and the monster in the deep cave. He tried to remember how it came out, what its deeper meaning was, but he could not. It was not his department, this sort of thing.

Then he became aware that Cooley was no longer by his side, although his flashlight was still there illuminating its circle of wall. It had been propped up on a pile of fallen brick.

A scuffling sound, and Lucy's scream, and Karp saw that Cooley had crept up behind Canman and grasped him from behind. The flare wavered and fell. Cooley and Canman went down in a heap, and Karp saw a tiny spark separate itself from the struggling men and roll toward him. It rolled almost to his feet. He could read the label by its sparkling red light. Time stopped. He thought about running, but there was nowhere to run, and there were Lucy and the others to consider. He could pick it up and throw it, but it looked heavy, and how could he be sure of the blast radius of such a bomb? It might bring down the whole rotten tunnel, burying them all under tons of brick. He could throw himself down on it, but he did not really want to do that.

Another second expired. He picked it up instead. The spark had almost vanished into its nail hole. There was no way to pinch it off. Karp lifted the thing to his face and stuck out his tongue. He felt a jolt of intense pain and heard a brief sizzle.