Jimbo looked up, his eyes glassy, spit dribbling from his mouth. “I never liked the cops before, always thought you were a bunch of fascists, but you saved me. You actually saved my life.”
“Yeah, well, we do try to do that occasionally. Now, let’s just get you out of here. Here’s Agent Sherlock and Agent Warnecki. They’re going to take you out to the medics for a once-over. You’re okay, Mr. Marple. Everything is okay.”
Savich stood there a moment, listening to Sherlock talk to James Marple in that wonderful soothing voice of hers, the one she had used at Sean’s first birthday party. One terrified math teacher wouldn’t be a problem compared to a roomful of one-year-olds.
Agent Dane Carver helped support James Marple, until Sherlock stepped forward, and then she and Agent Warnecki escorted Marple to the waiting paramedics.
Savich turned back to the body of Marvin Phelps. Cooper had nearly blown the guy’s head off. A great shot, very precise, no chance of his knifing Marple in a reactive move, no chance for him to even know what was happening before he died.
It wasn’t supposed to have happened that way, but Cooper had standing orders to fire if there was imminent danger.
He saw Police Chief Halloran trotting toward him, followed by a half-dozen excited local cops, all of them hyped, all of them smiling. That would change when they saw Phelps’s body.
At least they’d saved a guy’s life.
But it wasn’t the killer they were after, Savich was sure of that. Theirs had killed two women, both high school math teachers. And in a sense, that maniac was responsible for this mess as well. It was probably why Cooper had jumped the gun and taken Phelps out. He saw himself saving James Marple’s life and taking out the math teacher killer at the same time. In all fairness, Coop was only twenty-four, loaded with testosterone, and still out to save the world. Not good enough. Savich would see to it that he had his butt drop-kicked and then sentenced to scrubbing out the SWAT team’s bathroom, the cruelest penalty anyone could devise.