And I thought, for a moment, how odd it was, that a guy, knowing his life was going to be over in a few seconds, would still favor his bad foot so it wouldn’t hurt him too much.

Chapter 34

34

We both ran to the balcony, but Trimble edged in front of me to get out there first. I noticed he was careful not to touch the railing as he peered over, so I followed his lead. Ten floors down, the lower half of Eddie Mayhew was sprawled across the short hood of a minivan, and the rest of him had gone through the windshield. The van’s alarm system had kicked in and was whooping.

“Terrific,” said Trimble, going back into the room. He took the case off a pillow and wiped down the back of the chair he’d grabbed, the handles of the over-the-shoulder bag. “Did you touch anything?” he asked me.

“We didn’t kill him,” I said. “You didn’t kill him. He jumped.”

“Yeah, well, I had every reason to have tossed him off the balcony, so I might as well have. Did you touch anything?”

“No. I don’t think so.” I honestly wasn’t certain, shaken as I was by what I’d just seen.

To be sure, Trimble used the pillowcase to wipe down the doorknobs, and the last thing he did was open the door with it, then tossed the case back into the room. “Put it back on the pillow,” he told me, and I did.

And then we were in the hall, heading for the elevator. But Trimble shouldered open a door under an Exit sign and we were in the stairwell. “I don’t want anyone downstairs seeing an elevator come up to ten,” he said. He was running down the steps, taking two at a time. We did about a flight every five seconds, and about a minute later, we were back on the first floor, going down a hallway and out a side entrance that wasn’t locked from the inside.

I had thought we’d be hearing sirens by the time we went outside, but there was only the distant wailing of the van’s alarm from around the other side of the building. As if reading my mind, Trimble said, “No one pays any attention to those things.”

It was true. Anytime I hear an alarm go off, I figure someone’s hit the wrong button on their remote key by mistake.

We got into Trimble’s car, me behind the wheel again. I could still see the gun down by the pedal. “Drive out slow,” he said. “We don’t want anyone thinking this is a getaway vehicle.”

I glanced at the dashboard clock. It was time for another call to home base.

Trimble got out his cell, entered the number. “Can’t get a signal,” he said.

“What?”