I didn’t move. I knew the killer must be in there. He couldn’t have got away.
Kerman sneaked into the living-room behind me and flattened himself against the other side of the door. His heavy .45 looked like a cannon in his fist.
“Come on out!” I snarled suddenly. My voice sounded like a buzz-saw cutting into a wood knot. “And with your hands in the air!”
A gun went off and the slug ploughed through the doorway, close to my head.
Kerman slid his arm around the door and fired twice. The crash of his gun rattled the windows.
“You can’t get away!” I said, trying to sound like a tough cop. “We’ve got you surrounded.”
But this time the killer wasn’t playing. There was silence and no movement. We waited, but nothing happened. I had visions of the cops arriving, and I wasn’t anxious to be involved with the Frisco cops: they were much too efficient.
I motioned to Kerman to stay where he was and sneaked over to the window. As I pushed it up, Kerman fired into the room again, and, under cover of the noise, I got the window open. I leaned out. A few feet away was the window of the inner room. It meant getting on to the sill, stepping across to die other sill with about a hundred-foot drop below. As I swung my leg out of the window I looked back. Kerman’s eyes were popping and he shook his head at me. I jerked my thumb to the next window, levered myself on to the sill.
Someone let off a gun from below and the slug splashed cement into my face. I was so startled I nearly let go of my hold, looked down into the street at the up-turned faces of a sizeable crowd. Right in the centre was a beefy-looking cop, taking aim at me.
I gave a strangled yell, flung myself forward and sideways, lurched against the window of the next room and crashed through the glass to land on all fours on the floor. A gun went off practically in my face, and then Kerman’s cannon boomed, bringing down a chunk of ceiling plaster.