Long Teeth by Marvin H. Albert

Author:Marvin H. Albert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, france, private eye, sleuth
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

The second bullet cut between Claudette and Bardin, chest-high. It thudded into the wall, spattering them with more brick dust.

I reached them a split second later, crouching and snarling at them again to drop down. They cringed away from me and my gun, dazed with fright. Then Claudette recognized me. Her eyes went wide as I darted past them.

I got a section of ancient wall between me and the position the shots had come from and went up and over the chain link fence surrounding the ruins. Landing behind the cover of the inner wall section, I spared a swift glance behind me.

Claudette and Dr. Bardin hadn’t dropped to the ground. They were running away, back through Rue de Grand Prieuré toward his building. Nobody fired at them again. The shooter inside the ruins with me would be concentrating on coping with my approach.

I concentrated on what the shooter was most likely to do next. There was no reason for him to hang around. Him or her. Could be either. But when an assailant’s gender is unknown it automatically gets marked down as masculine. Maybe because we’re still not at ease with the thought of a woman trying to murder people, in spite of all reforms and past proofs of equal capability at homicidal arts and crafts. Victorian prejudice hangs in there.

Man or woman, his targets were gone, I was in there with a gun, and people in nearby apartments would have heard the shots and called the police by then. It was time for the shooter to get out of there.

The deeply shadowed spread of the ruins was three hundred feet long and a hundred and fifty feet wide. I was at one end. He’d head for the other—or for either of the long sides.

I angled off to my right and worked my way in deeper, keeping low and leading the way with the P7, my finger tensed across its trigger. There was no shortage of cover—for me and the shooter. It was fifteen hundred years since the place had been Roman public baths. After that it had been a fortress and palace for waves of conquering invaders: Goths, Moslems, Vandals, Franks. Each had smashed it getting in and rebuilt parts before getting booted out by the next wave.

What was left was a haphazard labyrinth of wall sections of varied heights—some brick, some stone, some a mélange. The darkness inside that jumble was varied, too. It required close attention to determine which patch was shadow and which was solid. I’d had experience at this kind of night stalk, from the back alleys of Chicago to Nam to the nasty corners of Europe. I hoped my adversary didn’t have that much practice.

I’d threaded my way about twenty yards when another gunshot came from ahead of me and off to the left. I went flat to the ground. But the bullet didn’t come close. Its ricochet off the top of a marble column stump was six yards away. The shooter hadn’t seen me; just detected movement and fired in my general direction.

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