The cops all turned on their lights and played them through the brush, and caught flashes of Dannon, the movement of the swamp weeds and brush as he tore through them, and Lucas shouted, "Jenkins, Shrake, Del, go after him, take care, take care ..."

Lucas turned and in the light of his own flash, ran back up the dirt track toward the gravel road, pulled his handset and said, "Sarah, Jane, he's coming right at you. Watch out, watch out, he's on foot, I think he's coming for the road... ."

NOTHING AT ALL WENT through Dannon's head. He'd had some escape and evasion classes, and one of the basics was simply to put distance between yourself and your pursuer. Distance was always good; distance gave you options. He didn't think about it, though, he just ran, fast and as hard as he could, and he was in good shape.

Good shape or not, he fell three or four times-he wasn't counting-and the small shrub and grasses tore at him and tried to catch his feet; he went knee-deep into a watery hole, pulled free, and ran on, looking back once. He was out of the light, now, he was gaining on them, he was almost there ...

And he broke free into the road. He couldn't see it, except as a kind of dark channel in front of him. The lights were now a hundred yards back, but still coming, and he ran down the dark channel. When he got far enough out front, he'd cut across country again, and then maybe turn down toward the river... .

He ran a hundred yards down the channel, heedless of the sounds of his footfalls, breathing hard... .

LUCAS WAS ON THE ROAD, moving faster than Dannon, but at the wrong angle-Dannon, though in the swamp, was cutting diagonally across the right angle of the gravel road and the dirt track. Lucas could tell more or less where he was because of the brilliant lights of the cops behind him, and the sound of Dannon's thrashing in the brush. Then the thrashing stopped, and Lucas stopped, trying to figure out where he'd gone.

BRADLEY AND STACK HEARD him coming. Stack whispered, "I'm going to hit the car lights."

"Okay."

Stack reached to the light switch, to the left of the steering wheel, and waited, waited, trying to judge the distance, and when it seemed that he might be close enough,

Flipped the switch.

And Dannon was there, covered with mud, clothes hanging wet from his body, a bloody patch on his head, mouth hanging open. He had a gun in his hand and as Stack stepped to the left of Bradley, he brought it up and Bradley screamed, "Drop the gun," and he didn't, he brought it higher ...

The women shot him.

Later, it would turn out that they'd each fired four times, though neither was counting, and of the eight shots, had hit him five times.

Two of the shots would have been wounding; two of the shots would have killed him in seconds or minutes; one of them went through his throat and severed his spinal cord, and Dannon went down like Raggedy Andy.

CHAPTER 27

Lucas not only heard the gunfire, but saw it. He was at right angles to the confrontation, running back to the cars, saw the lights go on, and then behind the lights, the sound of the gunfire and the flicker of the muzzle flashes. The women were both shooting 9mm weapons, and the flashes were small, even in the dark night. He shouted, "Davenport coming in ..."

Running as hard as he could, he was there in fifteen seconds. The two women were still by the cars, guns pointed at Dannon's body. Lucas came up, and Bradley said, her voice cool, "He had a gun, he pointed it at us."

Lucas nodded once, said into his handset, "You guys get to the closest road, he's down."

He did that as he stepped over to Dannon's body and checked it. He was on his side; blood pooling around him, his gun still gripped in his hand.

Lucas backed away, and Jenkins ran up and looked at the body.

He said, "Who ... ?"

Bradley said, "We did."

"Jesus," Jenkins said.

Del and Shrake came up and stopped beside Jenkins; all three of them were covered with mud, their trousers wet above the knees. Del had a scrape above one eye. Lucas said to Jenkins, "Get your flashers on, block the road. Figure out what county we're in, and call the sheriff's office and get some deputies down here."

To Shrake: "Call the duty officer and get a crime-scene crew on the way. Tell them to bring lights-lots of lights. Tell them to hurry."

And to Bradley and Stack: "You two put your guns away. Decock them but leave them in the same condition, don't reload them. Stay around the car, don't approach the body."

To Del: "Come on. We've got to check on Carver."

"Hope to hell Carver's down there," Del said. "Be a hell of a note if Dannon was out digging black dirt for his flower garden."

THEY HURRIED ALONG THROUGH the night, turned the corner down the dirt track, to Dannon's truck. They shone lights in the window, without touching the truck, but it was empty. They then stepped carefully through the brush back to the spot where they'd heard Dannon digging. There was a hole in the ground, and beside it, a bulky body with a plastic bag on the head. "That's him," Lucas said. "I'm not gonna touch the bag."

"You think Tubbs is out here?" Del asked.

"I'd bet on it, but I'm not looking around here now," Lucas said, shining the light down on his shoes. The ground was damp, but not actually swampy where he was standing.

"One thing about November," Del said, shining his flash up into the sky. "No bugs."

"Yeah, that's one thing about it," Lucas said. "Let's go back and wait for the crime-scene people."

THEY HAD THREE SHERIFF'S cars at the scene in twenty minutes, one blocking the road, the other down by the mouth of the dirt track, one with the BCA group. The crime-scene truck arrived a few minutes after three-thirty, and took charge of the scene, along with the sheriff's deputies. They also took charge of the women's pistols.

After they'd walked the crime-scene crew through the entire action, and marked the critical bits, Lucas ordered the two women and Shrake and Jenkins back to BCA headquarters: "I want full preliminary reports from everyone, start to finish, with timelines. Right now, tonight. When you're done, cross-check them, then get some sleep. We'll meet tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon and figure out the bureaucratics. Jane and Sarah, you did good. The guy murdered at least three people in cold blood, and if you hadn't shot him, he'd have killed you and taken one of the cars. Nobody could have asked for more."

Lucas called the BCA duty officer and asked him to send another crew to cover Dannon's and Carver's apartments. "Seal them off at a minimum."

The four of them coughed and shuffled their feet and talked for a minute or two, before going to their vehicles, to trundle back up the road. By that time, both the area around Dannon and the area around Carver were bathed in work light, and one of the crime-scene people was making a movie of the shooting area.

Del asked, "We're staying?"

"We might have to come back, but right now, we're going to talk to Taryn Grant."

"You think she knew about this?"

"I ..." Lucas had to stop and think. "I'd give you six-to-five that she did. No better than that. We have nothing with her name on it. If she's involved, we'll have to find something in Dannon's apartment. Probably not Carver's."