Strangled - Brian McGrory [157]
So I scooped out another stack. I couldn’t hear anyone at the door. I couldn’t hear anything at all but my own heavy breathing. And that breathing got a whole lot heavier when I came upon a plain white envelope with “Detective Mac Foley” typed in a familiar font. I tossed the rest of the mail back in the carrier and set out for the door.
I slammed into a desk, stopped for a moment to get my bearings, and shone my light across the room to determine an easy flow to the door.
Click.
That sound, though, stopped me cold. It occurred right in front of me, in an open area of the room unencumbered by furniture or tall baskets. I shone my light onto the floor, and about ten feet away, in my path toward freedom and what I strongly suspected was a magnificent story that no one else would ever have, that middle-aged man with the bloody thigh was aiming a handgun directly at the bridge of my handsome nose.
“Drop it,” I said. I had no authority to command this. Well, maybe moral authority, but not a whole lot else. I had no weapon. I had no easy hiding place. I didn’t even have the power of persuasion, because by the time I’d use it, I think I’d already be dead.
The man, dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, was trembling as he held the trigger up around his eyes and took aim at my face. I had watched Hank Sweeney grab the guy’s gun, but apparently, like the perpetrator in the CVS, he was hiding another. Actually, I shone my light on his face and realized he was the same attacker as in CVS, a thought that didn’t exactly thrill me because it meant he had no compunction about killing.
“You don’t want to do that,” I said.
I said this mostly to buy time, to play out my options, to give Hank or Mongillo or the postal inspector or the Easter Bunny time to walk inside this goddamned dank post office and shoot this nutcase in the back of the head. Problem was, I didn’t see any of the above — and didn’t hear them, either.
The gunman, by the way, didn’t reply to my assertion. He just kept pointing, trying to get his bearings, shaking all the while.
I said, “I can help you with that wound. I can drive you to the hospital, drop you off at the emergency room, get you taken care of, and no one will ever know why you or I were here.”
Again, nothing.
I shone my light more directly on him, and noticed what his hesitance was in shooting me. He was slowly gathering his body, arduously lifting it upward against the pain of his own wound. He was obviously trying to position himself to be able to flee once the gunshot rocketed through the room and I lay dead on the floor. Sweat was pouring down his face as he tried to move, hampering his vision.
“Get that fucking light down,” he said, his Boston accent thick, his voice craggy and tough.
I pushed the light off to the side, and in the process saw the glint of a metal object on the desk that I had just slammed into. It was a letter opener, long and sharp, just sitting there for the taking.
So here’s what happened next. I sized up the gunman’s position, and then mine. I flicked my flashlight off, leapt over the desk, grabbed the handle of the letter opener, and flung it directly into his temple, kung-fu style, killing him instantly.
Well, all right, that’s what I was trying to do, anyway. Would have been good, even if I wasn’t.
Here’s what actually happened. I flicked off my flashlight. The split second I did that, he began firing, the bullets passing so close to my face and shoulders that I could hear them scream past in the air.
I dove for cover, paused for about ten seconds, picked a basket filled with mail up off the floor, and heaved it in his direction — one, then another after that, and still another. After the third one, the gunman groaned in agony. Suddenly the lights sprung to life in the room. Sweeney raced toward us with his weapon drawn. The perpetrator lay on the ground, still as a statue, his gun just out of reach of his hand. Sweeney approached frantically, kicked the gun farther away, lifted the guy’s head off the concrete, and announced,