He walked toward the coffee counter and the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses. Bill wanted another cup of coffee to sip while awaiting the arrival of the cavalry, since he, clearly, wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Behind most of the other counters, employees were taking the first, tentative steps toward reestablishing service. Broken glass was being swept off the floor, tables and chairs were righted, even some orders were being taken across the room at the pizza place, but the kid with the acne problem who had served him before was nowhere in sight. That seemed monumentally unfair to Bill. Shouldn’t it be easier to start pouring coffee than to cook and serve pizza? He wondered whether the kid behind the coffee counter had been working alone and had slipped out the back doors when the trouble started—there had to be an employee entrance somewhere—and was, even now, sprinting toward town.
Tired of waiting, Bill clambered over the counter, dropping to the other side with the distinctive crunch of hard-soled shoes on broken glass, and grabbed a small, Styrofoam cup. He figured a small would do because, once the cops arrived, he would be pretty busy for a while, and sipping coffee would likely be out of the question. No point being wasteful. He placed the cup under the spigot and enjoyed the rich aroma as the brew drained out of the urn. Employees behind the other counters looked at him curiously, but no one challenged him.
Bill walked to the register and placed two, one-dollar bills in front of the drawer. There was still no sign of the coffee kid. He climbed back over the counter and walked slowly toward the plaza’s entrance. This time, as he moved through the crowd, he thought he could hear people whispering and muttering, “That’s the guy,” as he passed, but nobody spoke directly to him. He imagined people nudging each other and nodding in his direction, too embarrassed to point.
Bill crunched through the mess and out the glass double doors, back into the oppressive late-May heat. Staying inside with the comfort of the air conditioning would have been nice, but the prospect of all those people staring at him like he was some kind of circus freak or crazed lunatic was unappealing. His headache felt a little better as the adrenaline rush drained away, although the bump on his head didn’t seem to be getting any smaller.
Sipping his coffee, Bill eased down into a sitting position on the four steps leading from the walkway into the building and waited for the arrival of the police. Judging from the sound of things, they were now only seconds away. He could hear the wail of multiple sirens getting noticeably closer and wondered how many cruisers the dispatcher had sent at the report of two men with guns scuffling inside the rest stop. Probably everyone available. He would find out soon enough.
He took another sip of his coffee. It really was quite good.
CHAPTER 12
THE POLICE CARS RACED into the parking lot, screeching to a halt in the travel lanes, blocking access for any cars attempting to come or go. Their drivers didn’t seem to care. There were dozens of vehicles, including a blocky, dark blue, armored truck that Bill assumed must be some kind of tactical response command post. He rose and stood erect in the parking lot directly in front of the entrance of the rest stop, hands prominently displayed high above his head for the benefit of the cops. He figured they were about as stoked as you could get without any kind of chemical assistance and didn’t want to risk getting ripped to shreds by flying bullets.
He had already placed his Browning on the pavement a good ten feet in front of him, where it now lay baking in the sun, halfway between himself and the closest police cruisers. The scene was one of complete bedlam. Officers leapt out of their cars, taking defensive positions behind their open doors and pointing their weapons at him. Everyone seemed to be yelling at once. Bill could sense the people inside the plaza gathered at the door and the big plate-glass windows behind him watching in fascination, not considering the possibility they would be mowed down where they stood if these cops started blasting away with their weapons.
It was hard to tell for sure, with all of the officers screaming at him at the same time, but the general consensus seemed to be that they wanted Bill to lie face-down in the parking lot, which he had no intention of doing. The temperature of the pavement had to be one hundred fifty degrees. He stood his ground, picking out the closest group of officers and raising his voice to be heard.
“I’m unarmed,” he announced loudly, making eye contact with the cop at the front of the phalanx of officers. He guessed that one might be in charge. “My weapon is on the ground right in front of you.”
The man hesitated, then edged out from behind the cover of his vehicle, holding his weapon eye-level in a two-handed grip, similar to the one Bill had employed a few minutes ago. It was aimed dead-center at Bill’s body mass, right in the middle of his chest. The shouting had died down, replaced with an expectant silence as all the other cops seemed to have decided at the same time to wait and see what happened next.
Bill was a little curious himself. He had known the cops would be twitchy when they got here; after all, they probably had been given no details other than something bad had gone down at the travelers’ plaza and guns were involved. They didn’t know whether anyone was hurt or maybe even dead inside the building, and they had no way of knowing if Bill was any kind of threat. He had put the odds of getting through this without taking a bullet from a nervous cop’s gun at about fifty-fifty as the sirens approached, but he was beginning to wonder if maybe he had been overly-optimistic.
The police officer moved forward, tension written on his face. “Get yourself face down on the ground, right now,” he said in an almost conversational tone of voice. Bill had expected the man to scream, but he was maintaining a calm posture, clearly hoping to keep this situation from sparking into something deadly.
“Come on, the tar is too hot,” Bill answered. “My weapon is on the ground right in front of you. I’m unarmed.”
“I can’t be sure you don’t have another gun. Get on the ground, and we’ll have you back on your feet in just a couple of seconds.”