Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [145]
“Hide in the other room,” I said, picking up the gun. “Once I get them in here, go out the back way.”
“I’m not going to desert you.”
“We get in a dither with the police, what do you think is going to happen to that?” I gestured to the vial Stephanie was holding. “Karrie needs it. Maybe you, too. That stuff is all over the room.”
“I didn’t touch any of it.”
“Let’s hope not. I’m going to keep your cell phone. When I know you’re safe, I’ll surrender.”
Sixty seconds later DiMaggio and two underlings I recalled from our earlier visit popped into the doorway, huffing and puffing as if they’d run the whole way. Stephanie had concealed herself in the smaller room off to the side. The police remained outside.
“Good God!” Marge DiMaggio said, bursting into the room.
“Stay out. We’ve got D number fifty-six all over the place.”
“What are you talking about?”
Donovan moaned. The coworkers, a woman and a man, followed DiMaggio through the spill area, muttering about getting out of the building, that I had a gun, that I was berserk. After the fight with Donovan and the threats to Stephanie’s life, I felt berserk.
“What’s wrong with his eye?” DiMaggio demanded, kneeling next to Donovan. “What did you do to him?”
“Just a little less than he was trying to do to me.”
62. EXECUTIVE ANNIE OAKLEY ENDS
MADMAN’S MIDNIGHT TERROR SPREE
I pointed the gun at Marge DiMaggio and told all three of them to stand in the corner behind the desk, an area I knew to be free of the chemical. The coworkers complied, but DiMaggio was the kind of woman who could get herself killed over a two-for-one pizza coupon. And she wasn’t about to take orders from me.
“Over behind your desk, Mrs. DiMaggio.”
“You go to hell.”
“He’s got D number fifty-six on him. By now you have it all over yourself.”
Neither of the coworkers could take their eyes off the puckered puddle that had been Donovan’s eyeball.
If the police were inside the building, I couldn’t hear them, but then I was stone-deaf in one ear, so it wasn’t likely I’d hear the sound of footsteps. “I was in your safe. Some of the D number fifty-six spilled on the floor.”
DiMaggio got up and tried the vault handle, then smiled. She had the encyclopedia of smugness down pat. “You don’t expect me to believe you’ve been inside this?”
“Achara gave me the combination.”
“Did she now?” Amusement flitted in her dark eyes.
I might have recited the combination, but my head was ringing so badly I couldn’t have spelled my middle name. Could barely remember it. Jerome. James Jerome Swope.
“If you’re going to prevaricate, Mr. Swope, at least be reasonable. Achara didn’t know the combination any more than the security guard out at the front gate knows that’s a Paul Klee on the wall. Try again. I don’t believe you.”
There was more police activity in the parking lot below the window, men giving orders, car doors slamming, the sounds of radios. The office walls jumped with blue lights.
“Fine,” I said. “Kill yourself. In the meantime, go over to the window and tell the police you three are hostages and we need a medic unit. While you’re at it, tell them to stay out of the building.”
“The police have been instructed to remain outside, at least until our security personnel call them in.”
I caught my reflection in the office window.
The too-small hospital blues I’d put on after my shower had been shredded and torn during my combat with Donovan, so now I was naked. I pulled the remaining strands from around my hips and off my neck. The clothes I’d worn from the hotel were contaminated. There were more hospital blues in the shower facility, but I wasn’t going to turn my back on DiMaggio to get them. I would just have to be naked.
I figured she had a gun hidden either in her desk or on her person and would