He raced over to the rear entrance, and that was where his luck turned. The door was open. And Decker well knew why.
The shooter had entered this way.
He eased the door open and stepped through. He knew he was a big target, and he squatted down to make himself less of one.
He took stock of the situation. The shooter might have already fled, out the door, and either driven off or used his own two feet to get away.
Only Decker had heard nothing that would indicate either had happened. And he doubted enough time had elapsed for the shooter to make his exit.
That would leave the person still inside an empty building, probably with a long-range, high-powered rifle, while Decker only had his new pistol, which he had never once fired, and would not be that accurate over any meaningful distance. The shooter could nail him from a lot farther away than Decker could the shooter.
He saw a bank of elevators but knew there probably was no power turned on in the building. That left the stairs. He used his Maglite to show the way and reached the door to the stairwell.
Like Lancaster, he’d seen the muzzle flash and downloaded the image in his head, counting up the floors.
Sixth.
He cautiously opened the door and made his way up, slowly. He might meet the shooter coming down. Or the person could be up there waiting for him.
He counted the floors until he reached number six, understanding that the shooter could have gone to a lower floor, let him pass by, and then made his escape out the rear.
A moment later, he heard the sirens. Okay, the good guys were on their way. And an ambulance too, depending on what had happened in Katz’s apartment.
He opened the door to the sixth floor and peered inside.
He hesitated to use his Maglite because it would just make him a target. There was enough light from the windows to allow his eyes to adjust rapidly. The floor plan was open, which was good and bad. It cut down on the places Decker would have to look, but it also allowed him no cover while he did so.
He closed the door quietly behind him and skittered over to behind an old metal desk.
Take your time, focus, and listen.
All he heard were the sirens coming closer.
That could be drowning out any sound of movement up here. He redoubled his efforts to hear any noise the gunman might be making.
His position had been chosen wisely. If the shooter wanted to escape, he would have to leave through the door Decker had come through.
He decided to try to move the needle.
“Police. You’re surrounded. Put down your weapon and come out into the open where we can see you. Hands over your head, fingers interlocked. Do it now!”
He fell silent and waited.
The sirens outside had stopped. Any moment he expected to hear the front door being knocked open, followed by feet pounding into the building.
All he had to do was hold his position.
Come on, come on, show yourself.
If it was the same shooter, Decker didn’t fancy getting into another hand-to-hand battle with the guy. If it was the same man, he probably outweighed him by well over a hundred pounds. Yet he had grave doubts that he would win such an encounter.
That’s when he saw it.
The red dot swooping over the space, looking for him.
The guy had a laser scope.
That gave him the advantage over Decker, at least in some respects. But as Decker watched the dot flit around, the dust in the abandoned building was doing something quite remarkable. It was gathering around the light beam emanating from the scope, as though someone had clapped chalk erasers around it.
Decker quietly slid to his left, moving out into the open briefly before taking cover behind some crates. He peered over the top of the crates, but didn’t see the red dot anywhere.
He ducked back down as the shot came his way, smacking the wall behind him. The dot had apparently been on his head.
He kept moving, keeping behind the limited cover until he had worked his way to the far side of the room. He lay on his side and peered around the leg of a desk. He could see the red beam again.
This time he followed the thing to its source.
He lined up his shot. A large wooden box.
He fired five times, four through the wood, and when those shots flushed the guy, he unloaded his fifth shot at the exposed flesh.
He heard a grunt of pain.
Okay, he’d hit the guy. But it wasn’t over yet.
He looked for more red dots, but saw none. He slid forward on his belly until he had halved the distance between them.
He heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
He was sure the other guy could too. That might draw him out, make him desperate.
It did, only not in the way Decker was expecting.
A blur came out of nowhere, leaping through the air and landing on top of him before he had a chance to fire.
The pair rolled around on the floor, struggling for the upper hand. Decker collapsed on top of the guy, trying to use his far heavier weight to crush him. He felt something on his face and realized it was the other man’s blood.
Then a wedge of elbow slammed into the side of his face, stunning him.
He gripped the man’s chin with his hand and forced it back, trying to take the neck to a place necks were not designed to go.
He had not accounted for the man’s other hand, though. The fist hit him once and then twice, both pummeling shots. Decker’s grip was broken and he was forced to roll off the guy.
He saw the flash of blade and put up an arm to protect himself.
Two shots rang out.
He saw the man above him flinch once, and then a second time.
He dropped the knife. And then he fell to the floor with a thud.
Decker sat up to see Lancaster slowly lower her gun.
Chapter 53
IT WAS MORGUE TIME AGAIN.
Decker still felt slightly queasy from his fight.
He stared over at the body on the gurney. I’d be on this slab instead of him but for Mary.
Decker had been tremendously relieved to learn that Mars was unharmed, though Rachel Katz had been shot and was still in surgery.
He lifted the sheet to stare down at the man. The tats on his arms were nearly identical to the ones Karl Stevens had. Decker had had the prison take pictures of Stevens’s tats for comparison just to be sure.
He looked at them more closely and was once more struck by the unusual variety of images inked there. But they all had something in common: They were symbols of hate groups. He looked over them, starting with the right forearm and going over to the left arm. Decker knew many of these symbols from his work with the police and later with the FBI. The folks represented by these tats were not exactly law-abiding.
The number 88. That was the numerical equivalent (the eighth letter of the alphabet being H) of “Heil Hitler.”
Then the shamrock and the swastika, taken together, was often the mark of the Aryan Brotherhood.
The Blood Drop Cross, which was the primary insignia of the KKK and known by the acronym MIOAK, meaning “mystic insignia of a Klansman.”
And the initials KI, which might refer to another hate group, though Decker didn’t recognize them.
Still, there were some Decker had had to Google. The Aryan Terror Brigade symbol, and Weiss Macht, which was German for “white power.” The sonnenrad, which was an ancient Indo-European sun-wheel and had been co-opted by the Nazis, who had placed the swastika dead center.
Then there were the SS bolts, another Nazi symbol, and the triangular Klan symbol, which looked like three triangles within a triangle, but upon closer inspection would show itself to be three letter k’s in the triangle facing inward.