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A long moment of complete silence. What was Boyd up to? It was as if he was debating what to do next.
Then he fired a single round.
The detective flinched. The bullet was wide, though. It completely missed the wall where Sachs stood.
But, it turned out, Boyd hadn't been aiming at her at all, and the slug did indeed hit its target.
The brunette was dropping to her knees, her hands on her thigh, which gushed blood. "Tom," she whispered. "Why? . . . Oh, Tom." She rolled onto her back and lay clutching her leg, gasping in pain.
Just like at the museum, Boyd had shot someone to distract the police, to give him a chance to get away. But this time it was his girlfriend.
Sachs heard the crack of glass as Boyd broke through a window to escape.
The woman kept whispering words Sachs couldn't hear. She radioed Haumann about the woman's condition and location, and he immediately sent medics and backup. Then she thought: But it'll take a few minutes for EMS to get here. I have to save her. A tourniquet would slow the bleeding. I can save her life.
But then: No. He's not getting away. She looked around the corner, low, fast, and saw Boyd drop out of the hall window into the side yard.
Sachs hesitated, looking back at the woman. She'd passed out, and her hand had fallen away from the terrible wound on her leg. Already, blood pooled under her torso.
Christ . . .
She started toward her. Then stopped. No. You know what you have to do. Amelia Sachs ran to the side window. She looked out, fast again, in case he was waiting for her. But, no, Boyd expected that she'd save the woman. Sachs saw him sprinting away from the apartment down the cobblestoned alley without a glance back.
She looked down. A six-foot drop to the ground. Her story about the pain from the fall she'd told to Sellitto twenty minutes ago was fake; the chronic pain wasn't.
Oh, brother.
She scooted up onto the sill, clear of the broken glass, and swung her legs out, then pushed off. Trying to ease the shock of the landing, Sachs kept her knees bent. But it was a long drop and as she landed her left leg collapsed and she tumbled onto gravel and grass, crying out at the pain.
Breathing hard, she struggled to her feet and started off after Boyd, now with an honest limp slowing her up. God gets you for lying, she thought.
Shoving her way through a row of anemic bushes, Sachs broke from the yard into an alley that ran behind the houses and apartments. She looked right and left. No sign of him.
Then, a hundred feet ahead of her, she saw a large wooden door swing open. This was typical of older parts of New York--unheated, stand-alone garages lining alleys behind row and town houses. It made sense that Boyd would keep his car garaged; the Search and Surveillance team hadn't found it anywhere on the surrounding blocks. Jogging forward as best she could, Sachs reported his location to the command post.
"Copy, Five Eight Eight Five. We're on our way, K."
Moving unsteadily over the cobblestones, she flipped open the cylinder of Sellitto's Smittie and grimaced to see that he was among the more cautious gun owners; the cylinder beneath the hammer was empty.
Five shots.
Versus Boyd's automatic with three times that many and possibly a spare clip or two in his pocket.
Running to the mouth of the alley, she could hear an engine start and a second later the blue Buick backed out, the rear toward her. The alley was too narrow to make the turn in one motion, so Boyd had to stop, drive forward then back up again. This gave Sachs the chance to sprint to within sixty or seventy feet of the garage.
Boyd finished the maneuver and, with the garage door as a shield between him and Sachs, accelerated away fast.
Sachs dropped hard to the cobblestones and saw that the only target she had was under a narrow gap at the bottom of the garage door: the rear tires.
Prone, Sachs sighted on the right one.
It's a rule in urban-combat shooting never to fire unless you "know your backdrop," that is, where the bullet will end up if you miss your shot--or if it penetrates your target and continues on. As Boyd's car peeled away from her, Sachs considered this protocol for a fraction of a second, then--thinking of Geneva Settle--came up with a rule of her own: This fucker's not getting away.
The best she could do to control the shot was to aim low so that the bullet would ricochet upward and lodge in the car itself if she missed.
Cocking the gun to single action, so the trigger pull was more sensitive, she aimed and squeezed off two rounds, one slightly higher than the other.
The slugs zipped under the garage door and at least one punctured the right rear tire. As the car lurched to the right and collided hard with the brick wall of the alley, Sachs rose and sprinted toward the wreck, wincing from the pain. At the garage door she paused and looked around it. It turned out that both right tires were flattened; she'd hit the front one as well. Boyd tried to drive away from the wall, but the front wheel was bent and frozen against the chassis. He climbed out, swinging the gun back and forth, searching for the shooter.
