THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (34 page)

Tay began to lumber along Joo Chiat Avenue as fast as he could without falling down. He stayed close to the houses to keep Suparman from surprising him from above exactly as he had told Claire to do, but every twenty feet or so he lurched out into the road to get a better view of the roof.

Nothing.

Tay glanced at the .38 in his hand. Five shots and a two-inch barrel. It would take an expert using a full-sized handgun with fiber optic sights to shoot a running man fifty or a hundred feet in front of him and twenty or thirty feet above him. But to do it with a small, short-barreled revolver that had open iron sights? For almost anyone, that would be like winning the lottery. For him, it would be like winning
all
the lotteries at the same time.

Even if he still had five rounds, he knew he wouldn’t have much of a chance, and he didn’t have five rounds. How many shots had he already fired? Three? Or four?

He couldn’t take the time to stop and open the cylinder and count so he tried his best to remember. He was pretty sure he had fired three shots at Suparman on the staircase, which meant he had two rounds left. But maybe he had fired four times. Then he had only one round left.

Two rounds? One round? What different did it make? He would need a machine gun to have any confidence about his chances of bringing Suparman down.

About halfway along the line of row houses Tay realized he was still alive and he forced himself to move faster. He broke into something that was almost, but not quite, a jog.

After thirty feet or so he dodged into the roadway and looked up at the roof again.

This time he did see something, or at least thought he did. It was motion down near the very end of the line of row houses almost to the next cross street. It could have been a man climbing down from the roof. But it could just have easily have been a flock of birds flying away.

Tay bit back the pain and loped on down the street.

CLAIRE TROTTED PAST the kitchen and into the dining room.

“Whoever you are,” Linda began, “would you—”

“Sam’s okay,” Claire said as she headed directly to the back door. “Suparman is running and we’re trying to cut him off. I’ll be back.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—”

The slamming of the back door cut Linda off.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Claire stepped out into the alleyway and lifted the Mossberg to her shoulder. She moved away from the house and looked down the length of the roof.

She spotted Suparman right away. He was on the roof at the end of the line of row houses almost all the way down to the cross street. Tay had been right. Claire pulled the Mossberg down across her chest and broke into a run.

She tried to keep one eye on Suparman as she ran, but she didn’t want to fall over anything so she kept shifting her glance back and forth between the alleyway and the roof. About halfway to the end, she glanced down long enough to sidestep two large black trash barrels and then looked up again.

Suparman was gone.

She slowed to a jog.

There weren’t that many possibilities as to where he might have gone. If he had gone over to the front of the roof and doubled back, Sam would have him. If he hadn’t, he must have started down somewhere. She couldn’t see him coming down her side of the row of houses, and if he went down the other side Tay would be there, so her guess was Suparman had gone over the end of the last house. He was somehow getting down into whatever the street was there.

Tay thought Suparman must have parked a vehicle somewhere. It had to be there.

Claire started to run again.

The last house at the end of the alley had a four-foot wide strip of dirt behind it. The part of the strip closest to her was bare and whoever lived there was using it to park his motorbike, a shiny black Kawasaki.

The part of the strip closest to the end of the alley was covered with a clump of banana trees so thick it looked almost solid. The banana trees rippled in the breeze as she ran toward them and she made a mental note that the trees would make a good place to take cover if they got in a gun fight with Suparman.

She slowed as she approached the corner and slid up close to the banana trees. She ducked her head around the corner quickly and pulled it back.

She didn’t see Suparman. She didn’t see anything. The street was quiet and empty. No people. No vehicles.

What the hell?

Where did he go?

Claire edged around the corner keeping as close to the building as she could. She crept toward Joo Chiat Avenue where Tay was covering the other side of the roof. Suparman had to be over there somewhere. Where else could he be? He sure as hell hadn’t gotten past her.

Everything was so quiet it made her edgy. Half a dozen shotgun blasts and another half dozen shots from handguns and nobody was even a little curious? Even if the neighborhood was mostly deserted during working hours, there had to be somebody around. She gathered Tay was right about Singaporeans. They were good at minding their own business and they really didn’t want to get involved in anyone else’s.

Where the hell
was
Suparman? He sure wasn’t going to walk away through a neighborhood this quiet. But if he had stashed a car somewhere like Tay thought, where was it? There wasn’t a single car anywhere in the alley and there were none here on the cross street at the end of the line of row houses. There might be a few in the parking areas along Joo Chiat Avenue, but what good would those do him? Even if he stole one, he would have to break through locked gates to get it out and that wasn’t something you wanted to do when you were in a hurry.

When Claire left the alley she had dropped the shotgun down next to her leg to make it as inconspicuous as possible, if a shotgun could ever really be inconspicuous, but now she swung it up across her chest again and got ready to fire.

Suparman was somewhere, and it looked now like he had to be just around the corner. There was nowhere else he could have stashed a vehicle.

Claire suddenly stopped dead. In some corner of her consciousness she suddenly remembered she had seen a vehicle. The black Kawasaki motorcycle behind the house she was creeping along right next to. She had been thinking about a car so she hadn’t paid much attention to the bike when she jogged by, but a motorbike would be even better than a car to disappear on. Faster, more maneuverable, and less conspicuous.

The Kawasaki
, she thought,
I am so damn stupid!

Claire was just turning to go back when Tay rounded the corner not twenty feet in front of her. She opened her mouth to tell him about the motorcycle, but the words froze on her lips.

Tay had his .38 thrust out in front of him, and he was pointing it at her. She stopped and stared.

“What are you doing, Sam?”

Tay didn’t say anything. He just aimed directly at her and pulled the trigger.

BANG!

The shot passed so close to Claire she could feel it buzz past her cheek.

“What the fuck?
”
she screamed. “
What the fuck are you doing, Sam?”

Tay shifted the muzzle of his gun slightly and pulled the trigger again.

Tay kept jumping out into Joo Chiat Avenue, looking up at the roof, and veering back as close to the row of houses as he could, but he didn’t see any more signs of motion or catch a glimpse of Suparman.

Where
was
he? He had to be on the back of the roof where Claire would have him in sight. Unless of course he wasn’t on the roof at all. But Tay didn’t even want to think about that. Had Suparman hidden upstairs until they left and then come downstairs, killed Linda, and run away? No, that didn’t make any sense. At least Tay hoped it didn’t.

If that had been Suparman he had seen on the roof, Tay thought it was likely he had gone over the end of the row of houses and somehow gotten down into the cross street. That must be where he had left his vehicle. But Tay hadn’t heard a car start and he certainly hadn’t seen a car pull out up ahead of him, so perhaps Suparman hadn’t made it down to the ground yet. Maybe there was still time.

The corner was fifty feet away.

Tay ran as hard as he could.

Thirty feet away.

He raised his .38, brought it around in front of him in a two-handed grip, and held it in front of his chest with the barrel slightly elevated.

Ten feet away.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself.

At the corner.

He thrust his .38 out in front of him and lifted the sights to eye level.

Then he was around the corner…

And he stopped dead.

Twenty feet in front of him Claire stood holding the shotgun across her chest. She started to speak, but stopped and just stared.

Over her shoulder, a rustling in a clump of banana trees that poked out from behind the house caught his eye. He shifted his eyes there just in time to see Suparman step out and point his pistol at Claire’s back.

Tay was eighty or a hundred feet away, but what choice did he have?

He focused on his front sight, put it squarely on Suparman’s center mass, and lifted his point of aim to compensate for the distance.

“What are you doing, Sam?” Claire asked, but Tay barely heard her.

He didn’t say anything. He just squeezed the trigger as smoothly as he could.

BANG!

He missed.

“What the fuck?” Claire screamed. “
What the fuck are you doing, Sam?”

Although he had missed, the shot wasn’t completely wasted. It caused Suparman to hesitate, lower his weapon, and move to one side. It bought Tay some time, just not very much time.

Suparman crouched, rose slightly, and began moving his pistol once again toward Claire’s back.

Did he have another round in the cylinder, Tay asked himself, or had he already fired all five?

But even as he formed the question, Tay realized that the answer didn’t matter now. He either had another round or he didn’t. If he did, that gave him one more chance to take Suparman down. If he didn’t, they were both dead.

Tay stopped trying to count the shots he had fired and put his whole being into a single-minded focus on the tiny front sight of his .38. He shifted it to the right until Suparman’s shirt slid out of focus behind it, and then he lifted it a little above the neckline of the shirt to somewhere around Suparman’s head to compensate for what he thought would be the increased bullet drop over that distance. He breathed out and steadied himself.

With hope in his heart, Tay squeezed the trigger.

WHEN CLAIRE LOOKED into Tay’s eyes and realized they were focused somewhere over her shoulder, she finally understood what was happening.

She dropped to the ground and rolled, bringing the shotgun across her body and aiming it between her feet. 
But she held her fire.

Suparman was sprawled in the street, and he wasn’t moving.

Claire 
got up 
quickly
. With the shotgun leveled at Suparman, she edged cautiously toward him. She found his pistol lying near the curb, stepped over it, and pushed it further away with her heel. She inched closer, and then she saw his face.

Tay’s last shot had entered Suparman’s right eye. She could see blood pulsing from it in little spurts.

There wouldn't be an exit wound. That was the thing about those little popguns like Tay carried. Small bullet, low velocity, not enough power to punch back out of the skull. If you placed a head shot perfectly, that little sucker just ricocheted around inside and mushed up everything like it had been run through a Cuisinart. 

No point in calling an ambulance. It wouldn’t do Suparman any good now.

Tay walked up beside Claire and they stood there together looking down at Suparman’s body.

“Goddamn, Sam,” Claire said. “You told me you couldn’t shoot.”

“I can’t.”

She pointed at the blood still pulsing from Suparman’s right eye. “You’re saying that was just luck?”

“That was just luck.”

Claire looked at Tay for a long moment, and then she shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Sometimes the best plan is to have a little good luck,” Tay said. “Exactly the way I did when you sneezed.”

Claire looked puzzled.

“You distracted Suparman just when I had to take cover,” Tay explained. “I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t sneezed.”

Claire smiled, but she didn’t say anything.

Tay lifted his eyes from Suparman’s body and looked around. He saw no sign of anyone on the streets. Still, a bunch of shotgun blasts and a few more shots from handguns would have attracted a lot of attention. There was no doubt in Tay’s mind people had called the police by now. He strained his ears for the sound of sirens, but he didn’t hear anything. They had a few minutes yet. Probably no more than five. Ten, if they were fortunate.

Whatever time they had, Tay needed every minute of it to get this organized.

“You can’t be here,” he said to Claire. “You’re
not
here.”

Tay took the Mossberg from her, safetied it, and pointed to the alleyway behind the line of row houses.

“Let’s get back to Linda’s house.”

“What about…” Claire pointed down at Suparman’s body.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Tay shrugged. “But you are.”

They walked down the alleyway as briskly as they could without running. Tay didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention, but then he remembered he was carrying a revolver in one hand and a shotgun in the other hand and they had been firing both weapons quite a bit during the past few minutes. Perhaps it was a little late to worry about the attracting attention thing.

Tay stopped at Linda’s back door and put a hand on Claire’s arm.

“You need to get out of here now. I have absolutely no idea how I could explain who you are or what you’re doing here. Hell, I’m not even sure I
know
who you are or what you’re doing here.” Tay pointed to the park at the end of the alleyway. “Head out that way and cross the canal. I’m sure you can find a taxi—”