Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

And the boy looks like he's going to cry and he's led away by his father without Gummi Bears or Twizzlers.

The Digger is alone in the corridor. He thinks he feels bad for the boy but he isn't sure. He walks to the side of the horseshoe. There's a young woman in a white blouse walking toward him. She holds a flashlight.

"Hello," she says. "Lost?"

She looks at his face.

The Digger nuzzles the side of the puppy bag against her breast.

"What-?" she starts to ask.

Phut, phut…

He shoots her twice and when she drops to the carpet he grabs her hair and drags her inside the empty box.

He stops just on the other side of the curtain.

My, this is… click… this is nice. Hmmm.

He looks out over the theater. The Digger doesn't smile but he now decides that he likes this place after all. Dark wood, flowers, plaster, gold and a chandelier. Hmmm. Look at that. Nicer than the nice hotel. Though he thinks it's not the best place for him to shoot. Concrete or cinderblock walls would be better; that way the bullets would ricochet more and the sharp bits of lead would rattle around inside the skull of the theater and cause oh so much more damage.

He watches people dancing on the stage. Listens to the music from the orchestra. But he doesn't really hear it. He's still humming to himself. Can't get the song out of his cranium.

The Digger pushes the body of the woman against the velvet curtain. He's hot and he undoes his coat even though the man who tells him things told him not to. But he feels better.

He reaches into the puppy bag and wraps his fingers around the grip of the gun. Takes the suppressor in his left hand.

He looks down over the crowds. At the girls in pink satin, boys in blue blazers, women with skin showing in V's at their necks, bald men and men with thick hair. People aim little binoculars at the people on the stage. In the middle of the theaters ceiling is that huge chandelier, a million lights. The ceiling itself is painted with pictures of fat angels flying through yellow clouds. Like the New Year's baby…

There aren't that many doors and that's good. Even if he doesn't shoot more than thirty or forty people, others will die crushed in the doorway. That's good.

That's good…

Four o'clock. His watch beeps. He steps forward, grips the suppressor through the crinkly bag, glances at a puppy's face. One puppy has a pink ribbon, one has a blue. But no red and no yellow, the Digger thinks as he starts to pull the trigger.

Then he hears the voice.

It's behind him in the corridor, through the pretty velvet curtain. "Jesus Christ," the man's voice whispers. "We got him! He's here." And the man pulls the curtain aside as he lifts his black pistol.

But the Digger heard him just in time and he throws himself against the wall and when the agent fires, the shot misses. The Digger cuts him nearly in half with a one-second burst from the Uzi. Another agent, behind the first one, is wounded by the stream of bullets. He looks at the Digger's face and the Digger remembers what he has to do. So he kills that agent too.

The Digger doesn't panic. He never panics. Fear isn't even a piece of dust to him. But he knows some things are good and other things are bad and not doing what he's been told to do is bad. He wants to shoot into the crowd but he can't. There are more agents rushing onto the balcony floor. The agents have FBI windbreakers on, bulletproof vests, some have helmets, some have machine guns that probably shoot just as fast as his Uzi.

A dozen agents, two dozen. Several turn the corner and run toward where the bodies of their friends lie. The Digger sticks the bag out through the curtain into the lobby and holds the trigger down for a moment. Glass breaks, mirrors shatter, Twizzlers and Gummi Bears fly through the air.

He should… click… should shoot into the audience. That's what he's supposed to…

Supposed to do… He…

For a moment his mind 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 others 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.