A Fountain Filled With Blood

There was a noise from inside the rooming house, the sound of confusion, an indistinct shout. Then the back door banged open, and he got his first look at Elliott McKinley, skinny, with the thick, ropy arms of someone who breaks his back for a living. McKinley bounded down the four back steps in one stride and jackrabbited to the fence marking the end of the lot.

Russ tumbled from his seat, yanking his weapon from its holster as soon as he was clear. “Stop! Police!” he shouted, taking two steps forward to be clearly seen and dropping into a marksman’s stance. McKinley didn’t spare him a glance. He vaulted the waist-high fence, a ramshackle collection of wire and lathing, and tore off under the neighbor’s laundry-heavy clothesline.

Russ spat out a curse as he jammed the gun back into its holster and heaved himself over the fence, which wob-bled alarmingly under his hands. He was too old for this crap. He plowed through the laundry, board-stiff jeans and towels whacking him in the face. Behind him, he could hear Eric and Noble clattering down the rooming house’s back steps. “Get the car,” he screamed. “Go around the next street!”

He pounded down the short driveway to the sidewalk and spotted McKinley to his left: he was running like an Olympic contender toward the intersection. Russ didn’t waste breath on a warning, just tore off after him, his hard footfalls slapping on the asphalt. Sneakers. Should have worn sneakers, he thought, and God, please don’t let me have a heart attack, and then, What the hell is he doing? as McKinley abruptly veered off the road between two houses and disappeared.

Russ streaked after him, pulling hard with his elbows tucked to keep his pace up, his heart bludgeoning his chest. It was a beaten-down path that ran between the houses, vanishing into a row of dense bushes. He would have slowed down, but he could hear the thudding of McKinley’s feet up ahead, so he plunged through the shrubbery at top speed, only to rebound violently against a chain-link fence.

“God! Damn!” Russ said, clapping his hand to his stinging face and reeling backward. He blinked tears from his eye. He ran down a dusty rut between the fence and the bushes until he spotted a place a few yards down where the chain link had been pried away from a support bar. He pulled the sharp-edged fencing away and squeezed himself through.

On the other side was a wide swath of overly long grass tipping gently downward into the featureless end wall of the old Kilmer Mill. Russ pushed himself into a trot, loping down the lawn toward the old brick pile below. There was no sign of McKinley. He stopped at the corner of the building and leaned against the cool brick while he clawed at the two-way radio on his belt.

He sucked in air. “Fifteen oh three? This is Van Alstyne.”

Instantly, the radio crackled on. “Jesus, Chief! Where the hell are you?”

“I’m inside the Kilmer Mill grounds. On, um”—he pictured the town map in his head—“the western end.”

“How did you wind up there?”

“Shortcut. Listen, there’s no way you can get to where I am in the car. I think he’s run into the mill, but I’m not sure how stoppered up he is in there. The other end flanks the park. I don’t know of any way to get through, but there’s the big gate on Mill Street, and I suppose he could go into the Kill. You two put a call in for the boat to patrol the river. I want you to block off the Mill Street entrance. I’m going in.”

“Not a good idea, Chief.”

He wasn’t wild about it himself. “The kids in this neighborhood have had fifty years to discover hidey-holes on and off this property. If somebody’s not right on his tail, he could vanish.”

“We’ve already turned around. We can be there in five minutes.”

“That leaves the street unguarded. Call in some more backup, whoever’s available. But don’t leave that street clear for him to beat a retreat to. You got me?”

“I got you. Don’t like it, but I got you. Fifteen oh three out.”

Russ pushed himself away from the wall and scanned the grass around him. He wasn’t great as a tracker—his hunting technique in the fall consisted more of ambling around and drinking coffee from a Thermos than actively looking for any deer—but even he could see a few faint indentations in the grass. Lush and green, it would be springing back into place within minutes. McKinley did go this way, then. He walked along the side of the mill, casting back and forth, trying to spot some indication that McKinley had broken for the river. Then he saw it, bolted into the red brick—a rusting fire ladder running from a large third-floor window to five feet above the overgrown grass. It was a pre–World War II relic, from the days when the mill had employed a quarter of the town and occupational safety meant a straight three-story climb to the ground, if you could reach one of the windows before smoke or flames overcame you.