by Guy Bolton
“He’s just a kid,” Craine said uselessly, his pulse beating so wildly in his ears he couldn’t even hear himself speak. “You don’t have to do this.”
The man in the coat didn’t say a word, even when the boy started crying. He pulled the child toward him and began to back away, glancing from Craine to the boy, brow knotted, his pistol arm now squarely aimed at Craine’s chest. Craine couldn’t understand why he was sidling backward until he looked past him and registered the windowpane.
Craine took a step forward, aiming down his pistol, trying to find a clear shot. As if in response, the boy began squirming, unaware of the complexity of the situation. If he closed one eye down the muzzle, Craine could see the man’s head in his sights but his hand was shaking. If he squeezed the trigger he might kill the boy.
Like the twisting climax of a play, a woman stepped out into the hallway from the same door, confused but not alarmed by the shouting. Blankly she looked around. It wasn’t until she realized her son was being held at gunpoint that she began screaming.
The shooter seemed as startled as Craine was and the two of them shared an exchange of looks that might in another situation have produced laughter. There was a disbelieving pause before he put his pistol to the child’s temple—a boy even younger than Michael was—and continued moving backward.
The situation now apparent, the woman focused her shouting at the gunman, spitting words at him in some Eastern European tongue that did nothing to ease the situation. Every time she took a step toward the gunman he pointed his long-barreled pistol in her direction, provoking what looked like an electric shock as she shuddered on the spot with her hands held outward, yelling obscenities they didn’t understand. What language was she speaking? Polish? Russian? The words were wild and unformed, evidence she was struggling to put into sentences what she was feeling right now.
Neither Craine nor the gunman said anything back. At this point, words only seemed like a distraction. Although his eyes darted from the woman to Craine, the man’s attention was now focused solely on Craine’s pistol. He pulled the boy tighter into his shoulder and threw Craine an unmistakable look that warned him as well as words would have done that if he stepped any closer he was going to end all of their lives, starting with the boy’s.
Craine stopped moving and lowered his pistol just enough that he wasn’t escalating things any further. All of it—the screaming, the crying, his ringing ears—was somehow bouncing off the walls, the room seeming to swell then shrink like a Surrealistic nightmare. Everything that was happening felt like it was in slow motion, his mind alert, his muscles taught, the adrenaline so rich in his veins he felt almost drunk with it. He couldn’t see any way out of this situation, and part of him was relieved that the shooter had found an exit because otherwise there was no way for this scene to play out peacefully.
By now the boy’s mother was chalk white, her guttural shouting had segued into a steady sob, and her frightened eyes began to sweep across the hallway as if one of the other doors might hold her salvation. Her eyes snared Craine’s and in a half-moment, when Craine’s attention was diverted, the gunman dropped the boy with open arms and fired wildly down the corridor, splintering the doorframe a few inches above Craine’s head.
The report was so loud that Craine sank to the floor with a violent shudder, almost dropping his pistol entirely. Ignoring him, the gunman spun full circle, sprinting straight toward the window at the end of the corridor.
The woman, jolted into life, threw herself onto her son and pushed him hard against the wall. Craine had a free shot.
Lying prone, he fired back, grazing the man’s thigh and taking the glass out of the window before his clip emptied. Still winded, breathing hard, he dropped the magazine out of the butt and grabbed for a fresh one. The man didn’t stop. He limped on, wrapping his arms around his head and throwing himself at the broken window, his body punching through the remains of the glass and dropping out of sight onto the street below.
Craine got up and ran to the end of the corridor. They were still two stories up; the fall would have broken both his legs or knocked him out cold.
He got to the window. There was a truck parked below, a bloodstained dent in its roof. He spotted a jagged pool of blood trailing across the sidewalk but it was quickly lost in the thick crowd of hats and umbrellas. It was raining hard now; the road was busy and the sidewalks were starting to fill with commuters anxious to get home. A half-mile up the street, an electric trolley was pulling out of the Red Car shed and there were traffic queues in both directions. Craine looked up and down the street but there was no sign of the man in the long gray coat anywhere.
Kamona managed to get through the hotel lobby without dripping any blood on the floorboards. He walked quickly past reception so no one could see the bloodstains covering his pants leg but the clerk never even took his eyes off his newspaper. Kamona took the cage elevator up to his floor and limped to his room.
Once inside, Kamona set the Mauser on the bed and took a bottle of whiskey and his army medical kit out of his suitcase. Slowly, he unwrapped the strips of shirtsleeve that he had tied around his thigh. Blood started to run down his calves and form a pool by his feet. He quickly washed his hands then inspected his leg: a surface wound. The bullet hadn’t penetrated deep into his thigh, only torn through the skin layers and grazed his outer quadriceps muscle, a finger-width canyon trailing across the outside of his leg.
Kamona cleaned the wound with warm water and sulfa powder but there were still small pieces of cloth stuck to the flesh so he propped his leg up on the bath and used the tip of his razor blade to remove the fibers. The pain was sharp and he felt nauseous. He sat on the floor with his back against the bath and waited for the pain to ease, taking slow, deep breaths and swigging from the whiskey bottle.
He thought of the detective at the apartment. By now he would have returned to his precinct and instructed search teams to go out and canvass hotels in the area or set up watches at the bus and rail stations. He wasn’t particularly worried that the police would be looking for him: it would take hours to draw up a profile picture, and there were over a hundred hotels in Los Angeles to choose from. Door-to-doors could take days. No doubt the client would be concerned but these events were inevitable—you couldn’t kill people without the police becoming involved, not anymore anyway. If they had really thought it an issue they would have had him dump Lloyd’s body somewhere in the first place. His rates were worth the trouble.
But anyway, if they were still looking for a James Campbell, and to be honest they probably would be, they’d likely have already figured he was headed for San Bernardino and try to take him at the motel. He’d have to make sure he found Campbell before they did.
After a few minutes he pulled himself up and prepared himself for the next step. He’d stopped the bleeding, cleaned the wound and protected himself against infection. Now he had to stitch the wound shut.
Chapter 13
“So I already put an A.P.B. out for known felons in the area. Nine names came up. But it’ll take me half the week to grind one of them down to sign a confession.”
Detective Henson was pacing back and forth in front of O’Neill’s desk, smoking furiously. Henson was older than O’Neill by ten years. He was friendly and approachable but a little brash too. That seemed to be the most common trait of detectives in the Bureau.
“That may not be necessary,” O’Neill said.
“You found something?”
O’Neill was helping Henson on a homicide case. An accountant from the Hollywood Hills had come home from a golf weekend to find his house broken into and his wife stabbed to death. Henson was trawling through known burglars in the area. O’Neill wasn’t convinced that was necessary.
“You said her husband found her dead around midnight?”
“That’s what he said. Seemed pretty cut up about it. Autopsy put T.O.D. around eleven.”
“And he’d been away?”
“Went away the
whole weekend. Witnesses corroborated it. Came home and found her butchered like that. Uniforms got there maybe one in the morning, I got there an hour later.”
O’Neill shook his head and held up the case notes for Henson to see. “In the evidence slip it says he had a bottle of bourbon in a brown bag.”
“I saw it when I got there. Said he got a bottle of something nice from the liquor store near his house.”
“Liquor stores close at eleven. So either he spent an awful long time driving around or he was home earlier than he told you.” As Henson mulled this over, O’Neill added: “One last thing—your autopsy report indicates she had intercourse a few hours previous.”
“Really?”
“I think maybe your husband knew that.”
Henson nodded, suddenly understanding. “So she’s banging some guy all weekend, husband comes home, they argue, he stabs her then frames it to look like a break-in.”
“Exactly.”
Henson smiled, impressed. “I’ve been working this case over two days. You got all of that from scanning the reports for ten minutes?”
O’Neill shrugged. Some people didn’t pay attention; too busy trying to get things done quickly than get things done right. “Easy to miss, I guess.”
Henson seemed genuinely pleased, not in the slightest bit embarrassed. “Hell, saves me pounding some poor wetback for two days.”
“Glad to be of help.” O’Neill gathered the photographs together and put them back in their file. “Might want to bring the husband in before he consolidates his statement, gets his alibi straight.”
Henson laughed. “You’re too smart for your own good, O’Neill. You’ll be running this place one day.”
Another detective wandered over with his coat under one arm. He lifted his chin to Henson. “Drink?”
“Absolutely.” Henson stood up and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. O’Neill heard him whisper, “Shall I invite him?” The other detective glanced at O’Neill. A side shake of the head—no, Patrick O’Neill wasn’t going to join them for a drink.
Henson turned to O’Neill and smiled apologetically. “Thanks for your help, kid, have a good night. I’ll be sure to mention it to the Captain.”
The other detective made to leave then said to Henson, “Hey, you hear about Craine? Got himself in a shoot-out in some apartment building off Main Street.”
Henson guffawed. “Craven Craine? Didn’t even know they let him have a service pistol.”
O’Neill’s ears pricked. “What was that?”
They didn’t hear him so he called after them. “What was that you said about a shoot-out?”
This time both detectives turned round. “Jonathan Craine. Been in a shoot-out.”
“Where?” O’Neill asked, frantically checking his desk for the keys to his Plymouth. “What happened?”
“Who knows?” the detective said. “All I heard is he got shot at by some perp downtown.”
The two deaths were unrelated: Lloyd’s murder, Stanley’s suicide. The two of them had no connection, no obvious association. Surely it was simply a coincidence that Campbell was acquainted with both of them?
“We’ll get him, don’t you worry,” Simms reassured him. “I won’t have hard-working police getting shot at. Not in my district.”
Craine was walking through the corridors of the apartment building, Simms keeping step. Inebriated with lassitude, Craine didn’t reply. Around them were uniforms and ballistics, a few lab techs taking prints, all wondering what had happened here. He was surprised Simms had come at all. You didn’t see brass show up at crime scenes unless they had to.
Craine yawned, feeling the ache of insomnia in his chest. Or was it something else? Something that felt a lot like guilt. He had sentenced a man to death for Lloyd’s murder and convinced the general public that Stanley’s death was a willing suicide. Now he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that maybe it was James Campbell who had killed Lloyd, that Campbell might also have had something to do with Stanley’s death. Was O’Neill right to be suspicious? Had Stanley been murdered?
“So . . .” Simms went on, taking a deep breath. “We’ve put out calls to all hotels and local hospitals for the name Campbell. Nothing has turned up yet but we’ll keep you in the loop.”
Craine nodded. The shooter would need immediate medical attention, that was almost certain. But something about him had been so desperate to avoid being caught—would he risk going to a hospital knowing that Craine would try and track him down?
“He was injured. He took a round to his leg.”
“It’s on the bulletin. But you should include that in your report.”
The two of them continued down the corridor, passing uniformed officers ushering people back into their apartments. “Stay inside please, ma’am,” he heard one of them say. “This whole area is a crime scene.”
Craine looked up and down the corridor. “There was a woman and a young boy here—”
“Uniforms downstairs said they interviewed them. Couldn’t give a positive I.D. Different floor.”
“Were they okay?” His own hesitation had almost got that boy killed. He’d been afraid to pull the trigger when he had the chance. A braver man would have taken that shot.
Simms shrugged. “They didn’t ask to go to hospital. We had a Polish uniform take a statement. Were you hurt?”
“No, nothing but a few bruises.”
Simms lifted up police rope and moved toward the stairwell door at the end of the corridor. “Do you want me to call anyone for you? Michael’s school, perhaps?”
“No, that’s not necessary.”
“Then I think there’s nothing else we can do today. I suggest you go home and get some rest, try and put this behind you. Although I have to say I’m still a little confused as to what you were doing here in the first place.”
“Patrick O’Neill came to me earlier with this address.” Craine spoke carefully, unsure of how Simms would react. “It seems James Campbell called Herbert Stanley the morning he died. I was looking into it.”
Simms blinked twice. “Huh. I see. A horrible coincidence.”
Craine was unconvinced. He wanted to agree with Simms, but a part of him couldn’t dismiss what had happened so easily. “Do you think there’s something more to this?”
Simms visibly tensed. “In what way?”
“Maybe something relating to Stanley’s death.”
“Because of the phone call?”
“I can’t help but think . . . Why would Campbell call Herbert Stanley? How did they know each other? If there’s a simple reason, then I can’t think of it. And if it weren’t important, why would he fire at me? He panicked and ran when I asked him about Stanley. Doesn’t that imply . . . guilt?”
“Guilt for what? Look, Craine,” Simms said, almost bemused by the whole thing, “who knows why he shot at you? There could be a hundred reasons. He might be some crook got annoyed you were knocking on his door.”
“What about the phone call?”
“Maybe he was some jilted writer desperate to get his script made, determined he was sitting on the story of the year. Or some actor convinced he’s the next Spencer Tracy. Throw a ball out the window and you’ll hit someone desperate to make it in the movies. That doesn’t make them all murderers. Are you going to drag up everyone Stanley’s ever spoken to? Every studio worker? Every dreamer in town?”
“There’s something else you should know about Campbell. I found a picture of Florence Lloyd in his apartment. She was the girl killed two nights ago. He had a photograph of her.”
Simms looked at Craine like he was cracked. “And?”
Craine continued tentatively. “I’m starting to think that maybe . . . Well, what if Campbell also killed Florence Lloyd, and that somehow they’re both connected to Herbert Stanley’s death?”
“This is ludicrous,” Simms broke in. “You don’t have a shred of evidence, no proof whatsoever for any of this.”
A short silence pas
sed and Simms’ voice softened. “In every case there are a few loose ends, Craine. You yourself closed both investigations. Why would you want them reopened?”
Craine thought for a long time about that. Simms was right. It was out of character for him to question a closed case. He wasn’t thinking straight. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I forgot myself.”
Simms slowed and put his hand on Craine’s shoulder. “I’ve put you under a lot of pressure. Maybe it was too early to bring you back.”
“I can handle this, Captain,” Craine said protectively.
“You’re sure?”
“Really, I’m fine. I wanted to make sure that we weren’t missing anything that might be problematic later, that’s all.” He felt angry with himself for losing focus on what was important and for speaking so freely in front of Simms. It was O’Neill’s fault. He’d made him second-guess his instincts.
Simms smiled graciously. “You’re a good detective, Craine. I know you were looking out for our best interests. But don’t let O’Neill’s paranoia play into the hands of the press. He’s been sniffing around for trouble ever since he got here and I won’t have it.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll keep him in check. Thank you again for coming down. I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time.”
“Not at all, Detective. Not at all.”
They stopped at the stairwell and Simms checked his watch. “I have to get back to the office. Senior command panicking about the next quarter. Budget cuts inevitable, targets most definitely raised. Do more with less seems to be the call. You happy to wrap this up?”
“Yes, Captain. Not a problem.”
As Simms began climbing down the stairs, Craine remembered something. It had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he was last in Simms’ office. “Captain, what about Leonard Stone? If Florence Lloyd did know Campbell, is it worth us questioning him again? To establish whether he knew Campbell at all or where he might be?”
