Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Love, Dad

  When she finished the letter she understood what had happened Mike McNally. When she looked over at Evan, she understood just how close she had been to the truth.

  He stood there, leaning against the entertainment cabinet, a revolver in his hand.

  "Dad's gun," he said. "I got it out of evidence when they were done. Put it right back here in the cabinet, where he always kept it."

  "I understand," she said. "You should put that thing down, Evan. "Dream on."

  He lifted the barrel at her, made a soft clicking sound.

  "Gotcha, girl."

  "Come on, Evan."

  "At first I didn't want you to see that letter. But the long ride out here gave me some time to think. I'm still in the driver's seat."

  Merci stared at his face for any sign of O'Brien's mean humor, any sign of his sarcasm. None. No humor, just a calm alertness. She tried to think of a way to lead him away from all this, let him off the hook.

  "That letter's between you and your father. We'll keep it that way. Let's head out, get back to work."

  "Now you come on. This is it, Lady Dick. Don't move either hand. Not one inch."

  Her arms were at her sides. She still had the letter in her right hand. She dropped the sheets to the floor without looking down, then tilted her palms outward, spreading her fingers.

  Evan tilted the revolver sideways like the TV cops, then righted it. The barrel was steady on her, no waver at all.

  "It's better this way. I'm so damned proud of things, Merci. The way I led you into it, let you do the fun part. I'm tickled pink."

  "You ruined Mike to get Big Pat back for what he did to your father. To get back at the whole department."

  Evan shrugged, grinned. He was twenty feet away. She figured if she went for the H&K he might shoot her before she got her hand inside her coat. There was a sofa between them and that was all.

  "But you left the mystery prints in Whittaker's kitchen. Your prints."

  "I'll work around that. I knew Mike was working with one of the outcall girls, thought there might be an opportunity. I got her name and address off the wiretap request that was never filed. I got her picture from her sheet. Nice face. So I set up my own recorder on her phone and what do you know? Things developed. Pretty girl, horny guy, what do you expect? Waited outside the night they had dinner, went up and iced her. Planted the silencer and chukka boots when he was at work."

  "I knew something was wrong at Mike's, but I couldn't nail it. You should never have known where the kennel key was. But you did, because you'd been inside."

  O'Brien smiled. "No. I knew where it was before I ever picked the locks. Mike described it to Aubrey one night. He was talking about how knowing her made him question everything he did. Why he wore the clothes he wore. Why he shaved with a blue razor instead of a yellow one, why he kept the kennel key under the cabinet, why he always carried his wallet in his left pocket, why he combed his hair the way he did.

  She had him all shook up. The second I handed that key to you, I knew I'd made a mistake. I didn't know if you'd catch it or not."

  The wind whistled against the windows, sent a spray of dust across the yard.

  "Put down the gun. Now."

  "Merci, shut up. Now. You're taking your orders from me, babe. Get used to it."

  He raised the revolver, steadied it with both hands, bringing the black of the barrel into line with her chest.

  "Zamorra's off to the wrong address," he said. "It's on the other side of the county. San Bernardino County is the size of Delaware, in case you didn't know."

  Keep him talking, she thought. Her heart was racing and her mind was jumping.

  "What about the brass? How did you get brass from Mike's gun into Whittaker's flower vase?"

  Evan smiled. "Mike went to the range twice a month. I followed him one day, watched some of the guys shoot, shot some targets myself. Picked up one of his empties along with my own. Easy. The hard part was lining up the shot so the bullet would go out the window and not stick in a wall stud. The lead wouldn't have matched the brass. I pick the lock on Whittaker's place one day, let myself in and figured it out. The picture windows gave me the idea. Figured I'd have to shoot her right there in the doorway, fast, on an up-angle, to get the bullet out ii the ocean."

  "You let Coiner find it. Nice."

  "That was easy. She's a good CSI. The only thing that really was wrong was the struggle in the kitchen."

  He smiled, laughed quickly, stopped smiling. "That had you and Zamorra pulling out your hair, didn't it?"

  "There was no struggle," said Merci.

  "So true."

  "You had a seizure right there on the floor. Ripped up the drawer. Tore your coat, snagged one of your latex gloves. No blood, but you did your prints in places you didn't have time to clean up. You were dazed. You didn't know how much time had passed, how much noise you made. That's why there was a ten-minute gap between the time you went up and the time you came down. That's why you hesitated on the stairs. You were steadying yourself."

  "Pretty much. I'm surprised you came up with Dad's prints from CAL-ID. You'd have to throw your parameters all the way back to deceased law enforcement to come up with them. Who'd ever think of that?"

  "Zamorra."

  "He's like a Gila monster: clamps onto something and won't let go 'till the sun goes down."

  A grudging respect joined Merci's surprise and fear.

  "You've been working on this for years."

  "The hours fly when you're having a good time."

  "You transposed your prints with your father's, after he killed himself. You were still working in Sacramento then, on the CAL-ID computer changeover. You couldn't just delete your own, somebody would realize a set was missing. So you traded yours for your father's. It got you out of the system. Just in case you ever left a print you wished you hadn't. Just in case you ever tore a glove. You knew those prints would be tough to find in the registry, attached to a dead man. Later, you got the job here in Orange County so you could do what you did. But you'd been thinking about it for almost two years."

  "I was undecided, actually. But when the hiring committee passed on me for my minor medical condition, I figured fuck it, I'll stick the clowns were it hurts."

  "You have."

  O'Brien looked relaxed behind the gun. The barrel wasn't moving much at all. She could hear the wind howling behind her outside, could hear the sand hitting the windowpanes.

  "I used to watch you and Mike in the living room at his place, Sergeant. There's a nice little clearing in the brush on the hillside behind the house. You can sit there and see right in the back window. I spent hours there. Remember the night you did him on the couch when The Ten Commandments was on?"

  "Easter."

  "You climaxed when Charlton Heston was coming down with the tablets. From the hillside, it looked like his hair turned white when saw you having that big O. I started falling in love with you at that moment. Hated you, too. I still kind of love-hate you. I hate the way 3 smug bastards with the badges think you own the world. Nothing made me sicker than watching you and that big idiot McNally, walking around together like you owned the Sheriff Department, barging into my lab to tell me what to do. You don't deserve anything you have. I knew I was as good as you. Even when the personnel board turned me down for epilepsy, I knew I was as good as you. And I proved it. I got Mike in for a murder he didn't commit. I got you to investigate him. I got Brighton's department looking like a bunch of whore killers and incompetents. I won. The little bastard who wasn't good enough to wear a badge beat all you arrogant suck-ups."

  "You killed an innocent woman to get all that."

  "She got what she deserved. So did Bailey. Whores ruin lives. Don’t even bother me with that kind of thinking."

  She watched his face for a tic or twitch, hoping the situation might breed a seizure. His eyes looked steady behind the barrel.

  He smiled. "I took an extra Dilantin this morning. I'm s
teady a pack mule right now."

  "Why go to the trouble? Why not just take care of Big Pat and Brighton and be done with it?"

  He shrugged, but the gun stayed trained on her. "Sure, I could have run over that drunkard Pat in a parking lot some night. I could have shot Brighton on one of his morning jogs. I thought about it. But, you know?” That's too easy. I want them to watch their own ruin and not be able stop it. I want Pat to watch his son rot. I want Brighton to watch department fall apart because of the shit they pulled on Jim O'Brien. I want them to feel what Dad felt—ashamed and useless and betray. You know what my dad got for being a deputy, for being a friend to those guys? He got a drunk wife, a fucking epileptic son and his own bullet in his brain. That sucks. Death is too good for any of them. I wish you hadn't figured this out because now I've got to kill you and it kind of spoils things a little. On the other hand, I like the fact that someone knows. Makes it complete. It was delicious hating you, because really to me, you're so beautiful—big and dark and proud and completely self absorbed, completely full of yourself. You're two gallons of shit in a one-gallon bucket, Rayborn. I couldn't pass up using your undies when I found them in one of Mike's drawers. The whole show would have been great, watching you watch Mike go to prison. It would have eaten you alive. Better than cancer."

  O'Brien smiled again and moved his feet apart just a little, into a more stable shooting stance. Merci's ears were roaring and she wondered if he could hear them.

  Think. Anything. Keep him talking.

  "How do you explain a dead detective in your dad's house?"

  "Easy. You intercepted me on my way to work. True. Said you wanted me to supply the suicide note and videotape of dad. True again. I said the stuff was out here, so you said let's go. True. When we got here, I couldn't find the note. That will become true. But I showed you the suicide gun and you inspected it, must have assumed it was empty, and it went off. Sort of true. I administered CPR but it was too late. Then, just the obvious, I'll wipe the gun off before I put it in your hands. Then I'll help you shoot it through that window, but you'll be dead so it won't be difficult. I'll replace the spent cartridge so it looks like only one shell went off. I'll replace the glass with plywood so it matches half the other windows in here. Then I'll hit my hands with a double dose of solvent to get the gunshot residue off. After that it's my word against yours, but you won't have much to say. Accidents happen."

  "Zamorra won't buy it."

  "I'll handle Zamorra. He's so ditzed out right now, he probably will buy it."

  "Your prints were in Whittaker's kitchen."

  "Hey, babe, I'm a CSI. I worked that scene. Mistakes happen."

  She dove behind the sofa, landing on her left side, hand already jammed under her coat. The room exploded with a roar and she felt something slam into her side. Two more booms then, the reports echoing through the room. Her leg seemed to burst into flames. She reached the nine over the couch top and fired twice but four loud detonations went off and the sheet over the couch puffed out and sprouted two holes. When the echoes died off she heard O'Brien curse, then footsteps fast away from her. She labored to her knees with the H&K ready, saw O'Brien disappear into the kitchen, saw the smear of blood on the floor. She swung away her coat with one elbow, then reached down toward her bleeding holes. She poked her trigger finger in one and saw the tip come out the other. She almost fainted. The blood was already all over the place. There was a rip in her pants, down below the knee, but she couldn't tell if the bone was shattered or not. She stood and dragged herself toward the kitchen.

  Blood on the floor and on the doorframe. The outside door swung open, banging in the wind. She steadied herself on the counter, got across the room to the door and looked out.

  A pool house to her left, garages to her right, the whole table dusted by the blowing sand. Eyes burning, the wind ripping at her face, a huge tumbleweed bouncing along and a few drops of blood leading to the pool.

  She took a deep breath, got the nine steady in both slippery hands and limped across the deck toward the pool. She looked in. No water just a bunch of tumbleweeds trapped in the bottom. But she saw movement on the far wall, something rising up from the bottom, growing taller, the shadow of a man and all she could think of was jump out a turn midair and crank off three quick shots as she dropped straight down into an ocean of thorns.

  She sank. She tried to stay upright but it was like treading broken glass. She got up against the near side and saw the gun barrel come over the lip of the deck, saw the hand behind it.

  For a moment it seemed to watch her, one big black eye, then it moved right and left as if to locate her, and she was just about to roll one side when the black eye dropped and skittered down the gunite and slid under the tumbleweeds.

  She could feel her breath coming short and fast but she couldn't hear anything but the wind shrieking above her. O'Brien's hand was twitching rhythmically. She rolled away from it, toward the shallow end, fighting her way through the thorns and dust and finally got to the steps, trying to keep the sights of her gun on the facedown body of Evan O'Brien.

  He lay outstretched on the deck with one hand dangling in the empty air above the pool. She sat on the bottom step and leaned forward, resting the H&K on the deck, both hands still firm in spite of the blood and the sand and the thorns that had come off in her skin.

  She got the sights lined up on O'Brien's side and held them there. She rested her arms on the deck and her weight on her arms. She panted. She listened to the wind howl. She looked down at the steps and they were heavy with blood and she felt light and painless and oddly content.

  When she tried to stand she faltered and fell back down the pool-side, boot toes scratching hopelessly for purchase, gun dropping from her hand.

  Caught in the curve at the bottom, she looked forward and saw three things right in front of her face: one section of gunite and two bloody hands resting against it.

  She wondered whose they were. Thorns everywhere, blood and sand. Must hurt.

  She thought she heard sirens, but she thought she heard music, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Her sense of time was all off: Minutes dragged to eternities while hours shot past like hummingbirds. In and out of the world, a world of uniforms and sharp voices, of sirens and tubes in her arms and mouth, of bright lights and hovering masks and finally a room that was quiet active with the comings and goings of people she didn't know and she didn't just dream it, brief inquisitive appearances by her father Paul Zamorra and Sheriff Chuck Brighton.

  Cold. Sleep. Thirst. More cold. More sleep. More thirst.

  Then more sirens and helicopter blades and the blustery roof of UCI Medical Center where the Medi-Vac chopper circled to a stop shook the needles in her veins. And another room hushed with activity, monitors everywhere, more faces she didn't know, more apparitional visitations by faces she did.

  The first thing she noticed were her hands: swollen as if by a thousand stings, small dark shards lodged deep in the red flesh. They hurt. The worst were the pads of her fingers, and around her nails. Moving either hand was like sticking it into a prickly pear cactus.

  The next thing she noticed was her smell: not good. She pulled herself up from the bed, which set off an alarm, which brought two nurses skidding into the room. They strapped her down to the bed and gave a whore's bath when she stopped crying and thrashing around.

  Her lower torso was wrapped with gauze. Her right calf wrapped with gauze. Her butt was wrapped in gauze then fitted loosely inside a large padded diaper. When her right hand began to boil with pus they added a sedative to her saline drip that made her feel like Joan Cash had hypnotized her. They pulled out the thorns. Then they left. She awakened some years later and held up her hands, mittened now in still more gauze but not throbbing like they were before.

  She woke from a terrible dream in which she was shot up and filled with stickers, only to find it true. She screamed and strained against the bedstraps. A nurse added something els
e into her IV drip and the world got warm and fuzzy and humorous. Clark showed up with Tim. The Men!

  She touched Tim with her white mittens then something like a soft hammer hit her. The next thing she knew she was sitting up in bed with a tray in front of her and a carton of orange juice with a straw steadied between the white bandaged clubs of her fingers.

  Nobody was in the room but her father. He told her it was a whole day after he and Tim, Jr., had visited. Monday, the day before Christmas. He smiled and touched her forehead and told her everything was going to be just fine.

  • » •

  Medical news: gunshot to the right lower torso, flesh and muscle wound, lower rib chipped. Bone shards removed, remainder filed and shaped. Entrance and exit wounds sutured and stitched. Gunshot to right upper calf, no damage to bone or nerve, considerable localized destruction of flesh, replaced by tissue and skin graft from patient's posterior gluteal area. Minor flesh wounds on both hands and fingers caused by repeated contact with tumbleweeds—thorns removed and punctures cleaned.

  Blood loss considerable, transfusions continuing, platelet and white cell levels below normal but rising.

  Patient condition: fair.

  Elapsed hospital time: four days and counting.

  • •

  Afternoon, Christmas Day.

  "O'Brien's dead," said Zamorra. His dark face wavered in and out of focus at the end of a cave. "You hit him three times—one in the an two in the chest."

  "Wasted one," she heard herself croak. Her throat burned and no amount of water seemed to bring any moisture to it. "Janine?"

  "Let's talk about that later."