Mr. Smaller departed in the Chevy. Drackman and Tilton drove away in the paneled van, and Fiona followed in the Dodge that she had rented when she’d first returned from their farmhouse hideaway.
The metropolis glistened in the storm, all silver and black, headlamp beams wriggling like bright snakes across the streaming streets, every bulb and tube of light reflected in one or more wet surfaces, and yet Drackman thought the city appeared darker than usual, cloaked and riddled with mystery. Perhaps because the oily blacktop contrasted so starkly with the reflected lights, it looked blacker than on other nights, blacker than black. There were vistas, scenes, moments when the buildings and bridges, all of it, seemed like an illusion projected on the screen of rain, nothing really there except the rain-captured light and a fearsome void beyond it, an abyss below. It spoke to him, this trembling city of ephemeral light and the darkness underlying it, and he felt at home.
When Drackman turned the corner onto the Bledsoes’ street, the surveillance van, identical to the one he drove, stood at the curb where he had been told it would be. Police stakeouts often involved three shifts, eight hours each, but just as often, as in this case, they ran it in two twelve-hour shifts, maybe because it allowed the cops to pile up overtime hours at double their usual pay, maybe because at the moment the department was understaffed. Twelve-hour shifts, day after day, were a big mistake. The detectives grew bored, tired, less than fully observant, slow to react, and if they returned for duty every twelve hours, the effects were cumulative.
Fiona had observed that the shift changes came at four o’clock in the morning and four in the afternoon. When Drackman pulled to a stop behind the first van, almost five hours early, the detectives on duty had to be thinking either that some dink at HQ had altered the shift-change time without telling them or that a clueless dispatcher had sent these newcomers to the wrong stakeout … or that bad actors had entered the picture.
That last possibility, if the cops jumped to it quickly enough, could mean trouble for Drackman. Boldness was the hallmark of his style, however, and now he pulled up the hood of his jacket, got out of the van, and hurried forward through the driving rain, intent on giving them little time to think.
No traffic on the street just now. Everyone preferring home and hearth in the storm. Perfect.
He didn’t know if the new-shift guys had a way of talking to the old-shift guys, van to van, by radio or walkie-talkie. He didn’t have a radio or a walkie-talkie, and he didn’t want to talk to them, anyway, because his cover would be blown the moment he said the wrong thing or didn’t say the right thing.
He had a badge, a shield, a real one, a heavy chunk of gold-plated bronze that he’d taken off a detective he’d killed eighteen months earlier. When he reached the driver’s door of the stakeout van, he bent down and, with his left hand, held the shield to the window. The tinted glass offered a clear view from inside but not much from outside. He could see a shape, a paleness of face, the guy in there checking out the shield, seeing it was real, but it could go badly wrong at any moment.
The driver began to crank down the window, a good sign, and now the big question was, Both guys in front or one in front and one in the back? They were running a two-man stakeout for maybe a couple of weeks, and nothing to show for it. So one guy might be napping in back, although it was a violation of department policy, or maybe he was back there taking a leak in a bottle, whatever. The window came down far enough that Drackman saw two in front, the ideal situation, because in his right hand he had a pistol fitted with a state-of-the-art sound suppressor. As the cop lowering the window started to say something, raising his voice above the incessant rain, Lucas Drackman pumped six rounds into the interior of the van, aiming down to spare the windows. A shattered window would be as revealing as a scream to anyone who might drive by.
He knew the driver was dead, but he couldn’t be certain of the cop in the farther seat. He opened the door, and the ceiling light came on, and the moment he saw the passenger’s broken face, he knew he’d gotten them both.
After rolling up the window, he closed the door and waved at the van he’d been driving. The hood of his jacket raised, reminiscent of a monk in a movie Drackman had once seen, Tilton came toward him, carrying the little kit that contained the glass-cutter, the suction cup to keep the cut piece from falling into the house, and several other burglary tools that they might need.
Fiona turned the corner behind them, drove past them in the rental Dodge, and parked two houses beyond the Bledsoe place. They would abandon the van and leave in her car when they had concluded their business.