Dead Heat Read Free

Donagher had taken, the gravelly, narrow, uphill trail. Spraggue’s toes bit into the turf and he leaned slightly forward at the waist to counter the incline. He saw a flash of metal in Collatos’ hand, wondered where the ex-cop had managed to conceal a gun in his running clothes.
    They topped the hill. “Brian!” Collatos hollered, and Spraggue wondered, too, where he got the breath for the full-throated bellow. The ex-cop stared wildly around and plunged full speed down the slope.
    The Beacon Street traffic noises faded into insignificance in the background. The pain came back to Spraggue’s side; he ignored it. They passed the life-course exercise stations scattered along the side of the trail without stopping to perform any prescribed number of sit-ups or push-ups. The path changed from gravel to cement, broadened, leveled out. Spraggue’s breath rasped his throat, and he ran slightly bent now, not because of hilly terrain, but in an attempt to ease the stitch in his side. A burst of noise erupted just over the next rise. Someone shouted, “Stay down!”
    â€œBrian!” Collatos hollered again. This time his voice shook and died.
    â€œPete!”
    Collatos’ relief was so great Spraggue could see the spasm pass through his whole body. He sagged momentarily, straightened, sped up, and Spraggue fell in behind him on the narrowing path.
    â€œDon’t come any closer!” The voice was Donagher’s. Collatos ducked behind an overhanging boulder. Spraggue dodged after him, staring at the scene spread out in front of them. Donagher had taken shelter from the sudden barrage of fire by vaulting the fence that surrounded the reservoir and flattening himself behind one of the elms. Every other runner in the vicinity seemed to have followed suit. Faces peered out from behind bushes. The potential targets stayed low, some prone, the more daring on their knees. Those not staring at Spraggue and Collatos kept their eyes fixed across Lake Street on the old Boston College graveyard.
    Donagher picked that moment to leap to his feet. “Behind the column,” he yelled. “On the hill in the graveyard!”
    Donagher pointed as he shouted and Collatos sprinted forward, crossing the road with a total disregard for traffic, climbing a formidable fence into the graveyard, and charging up the hill toward the tallest monument, gun drawn. In seconds, he was out of sight.
    Spraggue considered pursuit, but his legs wouldn’t deliver.
    The runners ventured out slowly, forming a gawking ring around Donagher, whispering his identity, examining scratches and bruises. One elderly man had twisted an ankle clambering over the fence. He knelt, cursed, and rubbed his leg. Several witnesses, not sure what to do, giggled awkwardly.
    â€œWhat happened?” Spraggue cut across the murmur of the crowd with the question.
    â€œI’m not sure,” Donagher said hurriedly. “Reflex action, I guess. A noise. I saw something moving in the graveyard—”
    â€œEveryone hid, so I did, too,” piped up a woman in an orange tank top. “Maybe it was just a car backfiring.”
    â€œNo way!” This from a burly bare-chested man with an abundance of curly dark hair. “Shots. Rifle shots. I heard enough of ’em in ’Nam to last a lifetime. Man, I thought I was hallucinating, having a nightmare or something.”
    â€œShouldn’t somebody call the police?”
    â€œIs everyone okay? Did anybody get hit?”
    â€œThat man running away, his face was all mashed-in looking, not like a normal face.”
    The last offering, rising over the hubbub of the suddenly talkative crowd, came from a blond teenager Spraggue recognized as one of the young females who’d passed him earlier in the day.
    Stocking mask, Spraggue thought.
    Donagher’s pleasant baritone took charge. Spraggue didn’t hear all the words because he was peering off for a returning Pete