He’d parked his Ford a short way up the block; he went and sat behind the wheel without moving. Might as well wait awhile. People don’t usually leave so many lights blazing when they went out for an entire evening.
Cars came up and down the street now and then, but none of them parked in the vicinity. It was after eight now and there weren’t any pedestrians. Foggy shadows obscured most of the paths and lawns on this edge of Dolores Park.
He hadn’t been there long when he saw the woman.
She was on the far side of 19th Street, coming uphill alongside the park. Alone, bundled in a coat and some kind of cloth cap, walking briskly. He watched her progress because she appeared to be the size and shape of Arletta Madison. If that’s who she was, she’d cross over once she drew abreast of the Madison Victorian.
She didn’t cross the street. Started to, he thought, but she didn’t have time.
A line of trees and low shrubs flanked the sidewalk where she was, with a separating strip of lawn about twenty yards wide. The tall figure of a man came out of the tree-shadow as she passed. Runyon couldn’t see him clearly through the fog, but he had one arm up in front of him, a familiar black shape jutting from a gloved hand. And he didn’t have a face—it was hidden beneath something dark pulled down tight over his head.
Gun. Ski mask.
Runyon reacted instinctively. His .357 Magnum was locked in the glove box; there was no time for him to go after it. He hit the door handle, piled out of the car. The mugger was ten yards from the woman and closing. She’d heard him and was turning toward him; he lunged forward, grabbing at the shoulder-strap purse she carried. Runyon pounded across the street, his shoes slipping on the wet pavement, yelling at the top of his voice, “Hold it; police officer!”—the only words likely to have an effect in a situation like this.
Not this time.
The mugger’s head swiveled in Runyon’s direction, swiveled back to the woman as she pulled away from him. She made a frightened, chicken-squawking sound and turned to run.
He shot her.
No compunction: just threw the gun up and fired point-blank.
She went down, skidding on her side, as Runyon cut between two parked cars onto the sidewalk. The mugger pumped a round at him then. He was already dodging sideways, onto the lawn, when he saw the muzzle flash, heard the whine of the bullet and the low, flat crack of the weapon. The grass was thick and mist soggy; his feet slid out from under him and he went planing forward on his ass, clawing at the turf and trying to twist his body toward the nearby shrubbery. Out there in the open, with only twenty yards or so separating him from the gun, he made a hell of a target.
But the mugger didn’t fire again. Most of them were cowards and when they lost the elements of surprise and control their instincts were to run. By the time Runyon checked his momentum and squirmed around, this one was running splayfooted back into the park. Shadows and fog swallowed him within seconds.
Runyon had banged the knee on his bad leg in the fall; it sent out twinges as he hauled himself erect, hobbled toward the woman. She was still down but not hurt as badly as he’d feared: sitting up on one hip now, holding her left arm cradled in against her breast. The woolen cap had been knocked askew when she went down; the wind whipped long, stringy hair around the pale oval of her face. When she heard him coming, she looked up with fright-bugged eyes.
Arletta Madison, all right.
She blinked at him without recognition when he hunkered down beside her. He said, “It’s all right, he’s gone now.”
“He shot me,” she said in a dazed voice.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My arm—”
“Shoulder? Forearm?”
“Above the elbow.”
“Can you move it?”
“I don’t . . . yes, I can move it.”
Not too bad then. The bullet hadn’t struck bone.
She blinked at him again, with clearer focus. “You’re the man who was here yesterday. The detective . . . Runyon.”
“Yes.” You weren’t supposed to move gunshot victims, but her wound didn’t seem serious and he couldn’t just let her sit here on the wet street. “Can you stand up, walk?”
“If you help me . . .”
He wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her. The blood was visible then, glistening blackly on the sleeve of her coat.
“My purse,” she said.
It was lying on the sidewalk nearby. Runyon let go of her long enough to pick it up. She took it from him with her good hand, clutched it tightly against her chest: something solid and familiar to hang on to.
The street was still empty; so were the sidewalks on both sides and what he could see of the park. Somebody was standing behind a lighted window in one of the duplexes across 19th, peering through parted drapes. No one else seemed to have heard the shots, or to want to know what had happened if they did. City dwellers didn’t come out to investigate gunshots these days: too many drive-by shootings, too much random violence.