"Partly. It's also for my own good. My peace of mind."
Meg showed a sly smile. "You know, even Gainesburg students get into trouble sometimes."
"But you won't. Will you?"
She deflated. "I'll never get the chance."
That's the way I like it, Robin thought. "Get your book-bag, and I'll set the alarm."
Their two-story, three-bedroom condo had come equipped with a security system, a major selling point in Robin's estimation. Meg chided her for her obsession with the alarm, but Robin was taking no chances.
West Los Angeles was a safe neighborhood by local standards, but within the last month there had been a break-in down the street, an armed robbery at a jewelry store two blocks away, and shots fired from a moving car on a Saturday night.
It wasn't that safe, no matter what people believed.
No place in this city was safe.
That thought stayed with Robin as she picked up Meg's friend Jamie, who carpooled with Meg, then drove them both to the private school on Barrington Avenue. She waved good-bye and hit the freeway, her Saab speeding east toward downtown, the CD player on. The disk on the tray was Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, the rich tones pumping through the dashboard speakers.
She wondered if she was too hard on Meg. But exiting the freeway, entering the wasteland of a burned-out neighborhood, she saw the ugliness and desperation of the city. It might seem exotic to her daughter, like the backdrop to a music video on MTV, but there was nothing exotic about drive-bys and drug deals. Nothing exotic about the patients she treated or their life stories, many of which had gone wrong in their teenage years when they'd fallen in with bad company and started making bad choices. She intended to shield Meg from that. And if her daughter thought she was overprotective amp; well, too bad.
Although the day was mild, with highs expected only in the seventiesseasonable for LA in the middle of Mayshe kept her windows up, the AC on. The closed windows, like the enveloping cocoon of music, were her way of holding the outside world at bay.
She had spent the last two years in Los Angeles, a city of transients, a place of people lingering nowhere, always on the move. But in the neighborhoods around her now, there was no place to go. The people here were transients who stayed put, or maybe it would be less paradoxical to say that their travels had been circumscribed by the narrow dimensions of their livesfrom slum apartment to prison cell, from motel room to abortion clinic, from desolation to degradation. There were people here, less than twenty miles inland, who had never seen the ocean. There were people here, a bus ride away from downtown LA and one of the largest public libraries in the country, who had never read a book.
She passed from the remains of a residential district into an industrial section, largely deserted, the businesses gone. Around her stood bleak commercial structureswarehouses and windowless brick buildings bearing faded signs with words like Packing and Processing.
Idling at a stoplight, she noticed two teenagers staring at her from a street corner. She'd seen hundreds of young men like them on the streets of LA. Even the details were familiarthe baseball caps pulled low over their foreheads, the black sweatshirts, the oversize baggy pants. Every day, after leaving the comparative safety of the freeway, she drove past these young men or others like them. It wasn't just this part of town. They were everywhere in this city.
She looked away, afraid that her gaze might be misconstrued as a challenge. The music continued, but she couldn't focus on itnot when her first session with Alan Brand was scheduled for one o'clock. It was an appointment she'd been anticipating all week, ever since she'd received the go-ahead from Deputy Chief Wagner, her liaison with the LAPD.
She remembered Wagner asking why she was so gung ho to poke around in a cop's psyche.
"What I'm gung ho about," she'd explained, "is the chance to show how effective my method of treatment can be. But I need a more diverse pool of patients than the inmates of the county jail."
It hadn't been easy to get the LAPD on board. She had put months of effort into securing a police officer as a patient, invested hundreds of hours in writing and rewriting proposals, meeting with the police brass, working her way through the tiers of bureaucracy. She had lost nights and weekends. She had lost sleep.
And now everything was signed and delivered, and she finally had the approval she needed. She had permission to use one police officer, just one, as a test subject. If she didn't get results with Sergeant Brand, she wouldn't be given a second chance. So she would get results, starting today.
It was taking a long time for the light to change. Maybe she should just run the red. The intersection was empty of traffic. She didn't like to break the law, but
A heavy thump, a crunching sound.
Glass pellets sprayed her lap.
She whirled in her seat in time to see the crowbar's second impact against the window on the driver's side. The remaining fringe of safety glass was swept away in a shower of glittering crumbs, and then a hand reached through the window frame and unlocked the door.
It was the two young men she'd seen a moment ago. The nearer one had the crowbar.
The CD kept playing, the concerto bursting from the speakers.
A sharp rap on the windshield. Her eyes cut in the direction of the noise. She saw a gun, a large steel-frame pistol, held sideways, movie-style.
"Outta the car, bitch!" the one with the crowbar screamed over the music.
His voice was higher than she'd expected, almost a girl's voice. Distantly she wondered how young he really was.
"Okay," she said. "You can have it. You can have the car."
"Get out!"
"I am." But she wasn't, because she couldn't seem to unhook her seat belt, couldn't get her shaking fingers around the buckle.
"Get the fuck out!"
Finally she popped open the buckle, and the lap belt and shoulder belt slid away, freeing her.
"I'm coming," she said, "I'm coming."
Something hit the windshield. The spot in front of her face shivered into a meshwork of fractures, bending inward but not crumbling, held in place by the thin layer of plastic embedded in the safety glass.
It was the second thug, the one with the pistol. He'd delivered a hard swat to the glass with the gun barrel.
The first one grabbed her by the shoulder, hauled her out of her seat. She looked into his face, his eyes. Wild eyeshe was high on somethingpupils dilated, the whites bloodshot.
His voice was a whisper. "Gonna mess you up, kitty cat."
In that moment she knew they didn't want only the car. They wanted her. They were going to hurt her, kill her.
She bent her left leg at the knee and kicked at the one with the crowbar, catching him in the stomach, surprising him. He let go of her, and she ducked back into her seat, bending low, and slammed her foot on the gas.
There was another smack against the windshieldthe assailant with the gun must have hit it againand then the Saab's front end thudded into him and knocked him reeling. She powered forward while a nasty scraping noise rasped along the rear of the car.
The intersection was still empty of traffic. She tore through it and around the corner, slamming the door shut as she took the turn, keeping her head down out of some unsuspected combat instinct. A block away she cut into the parking lot behind the building where she worked, pulling alongside a huge sport-utility vehicle that concealed her from the street. With a shaking hand she shut off the CD player.
There was a cell phone in her purse. She ought to call the police. But she couldn't do it right now. She had to know if they were still after her.
They had been out for blood. That was certain. Any possible doubt had been removed by that second impact to the windshield. It had not been another strike by a blunt object. It had been a gunshot, one that had punctured the glass with a neat round hole, surprisingly small. The bullet itself was lodged in the headrest of the driver's seat. If she hadn't ducked amp;
"But you did," she told he
rself. "So it's okay."
A lie. There was nothing okay about any of this. Since when had a morning drive to work become an exercise in survival?
She waited another couple of minutes, the Saab's engine idling, gearshift thrown into reverse. If the two menboys, they were boysappeared, she was ready to back out of the parking space at top speed.
But they hadn't pursued her. How could they, when they were on foot? They had no way of knowing where she worked, no way of knowing she was still in the neighborhood. They had given up on her, moved on to another victim, easier prey.
She shut off the engine and got out of the car. Her knees briefly failed, and she had to lean against the open door. The scraping noise she'd heard as she sped away had been the sound of the crowbar leaving a long, ugly groove in the trunk lid. A parting gift from the lead attacker.
Gonna mess you up, kitty cat.
She could ask the obvious questionWhy me?but she already knew the equally obvious answer. There was nothing personal about it. She was not any special target. They had simply spotted her, a woman alone in an expensive car, a Saab 9-5 sedan, and they'd decided to make their move. They would have beaten her or raped her or killed her because she had money and they didn't, or because she took too long to comply with their orders, or because it would be fun.
Just kids. Two of them. How many more were out there? And how many other kids, a few years younger, would be following in their footsteps?
You can't save the world, Robin, her mother used to say.
She had always answered, You can try.
She restarted her car and parked in her reserved space. When she was ready, she took the cell phone from her purse and called 911.
Chapter Two
During the next hour, two squad cars patrolled the neighborhood in search of young males matching the descriptions she'd given the 911 operator, while a third patrol unit was dispatched to take her statement and examine the Saab. One officer took photos of the damage with a pocket camera. His partner dug the expended round out of the headrest and bagged it as evidence.
"Shouldn't a forensics team do that?" Robin asked.
Both cops looked at her as if she'd been watching too many crime dramas on TV. They were in their late twenties, a decade younger than she was, trim and tanned with buzz-cut hair and dark glasses.
"Dr. Cameron," the first cop said, "there are two or three hundred incidents per day in this division. If we brought out the crime-scene guys for every violent crime, they'd never get anything done."
"This isn't just any violent crime. It's attempted murder."
"Just be glad it was an unsuccessful attempt. You know, it's not worth losing your life to protect your vehicle."
"I told you, I was trying to cooperate, but they didn't give me enough time. I think they were on something. Amphetamines or cocaine."
"Unfortunately most of the lowlifes around here are high most of the time, so that doesn't exactly narrow it down."
"If you want my advice," the second cop added, "move your office to a better neighborhood. You're in a real bad section here, Doctor. VFW territory."
"VFW?"
The cop looked uncomfortable. "Never mind. Just an expression. Thing is, you're too close to downtown. Why not move to West LA or the Valley?"
"I need to be near downtown. That's where many of my clients come from."
"They live downtown?"
"They live in the county jail."
The two patrolmen exchanged a glance, and then the first one got it.
"Ohyou're that doctor."
"Right."
"The psychiatrist. The one who works with cons."
"That's me."
"Didn't you get an award from the city or something?" He seemed impressed.
She tried not to show her pride at being recognized. "A few months ago, yes. For my work with prisoners."
"You try to rehabilitate them by putting wires in their heads."
"Something like that."
"Huh." His tone changed. Suddenly he was accusatory. "Well, lemme ask youyou think the two jackers who tried to pop you today can be rehabbed?"
She held her ground. "I think anybody can be rehabilitated."
"Do they deserve to be?"
"Everyone deserves a chance in life."
"How about their victims? What kind of chance did they get?"
"There would be fewer victims if we could reduce the recidivism rate."
"The work you do just gives the system an excuse to put these pukes back on the street."
"In most cases they're going to be back on the street anyway. The only question is whether they leave prison reformed or more dangerous than before."
"So you'd try to reform the gangbangers that tried to clip you today?"
"I would."
He shook his head. "It'll never work. Some people are just scum. They never change."
"I hope to prove you wrong."
"You need to learn more about the bad guys, Doctor."
Her voice was low. "I already know more than you might think."
They told her that a detective would be in touch within forty-eight hoursmore or lessand that she might be asked to look at mug shots of known offenders whose MOs fit the crime.
"You're sure you don't require medical attention?" the lead cop asked for the second or third time that morning, before climbing back into the squad car.
"I'm okay." She managed a smile. "A stiff drink wouldn't hurt."
"All right, Doctor. Well, you keep working to make the streets safe your way, and we'll keep doing it our way. Maybe together we can fix things so your morning commute isn't so stressful in the future."
The patrol car pulled away, giving a little bloop of its siren as a parting salute.
She stared after it, trying not to think about the rampant, random violence of this city. There was crime in Santa Barbara, but not like this. Meg was always saying she wanted to go to public school. No way.
Robin went back inside the building and wandered through her office suite. Well, suite might be overstating it a little. She had a small waiting room with a pile of magazines that were nearly current, and a second, larger room that served as her office, with an adjoining kitchenette. She had no receptionist or assistant. Voice mail was adequate for handling her routine calls when she couldn't get to a phone. In emergencies, her patients were instructed to call her cell phone number, which was printed on her business cards. She always carried the phone or kept it close.
Yes, she'd taken pains to prepare for her patients' emergencies, but she'd given little thought to an emergency of her own.
The prospect of dying didn't frighten her unduly. What worried her was what she would leave behind.
If she had died today, Meg would be alone.
Not technically alone. Dan would take her. She would go back to Santa Barbara, back to the house in the hills where she had grown up. But Dan was too irresponsible, too wrapped up in himself to take much interest in raising his fifteen-year-old daughter. Meg would be left to fend for herself, and she wasn't ready for that. She was not as grown up as she liked to think.
Robin shook her head, brushing off these thoughts. Nothing had happened to her. There was no reason to worry. She was fine. Meg was fine. Everything was fine.
Sure it was.
Chapter Three
Justin Gray lay on his bunk, gazing at the ceiling of his cell in the high-power ward of Twin Towers, where the K-10s were lodged. K-10sthe keep-away prisoners, the baddest of the bad. Some were bunking here for their own protection. They were the child rapists, the kid killers, the suspected snitches, all the ones marked for the big chill by their fellow inmates. Others were here because they were just plain old-fashioned dangerous motherfuckers, too damn scary to be put anywhere else.
Gray fit into both categories. He knew there were plenty of Twin Towers residents who would have been happy to slip a shiv between his shoulder blades. He also knew none of them would dare to try.
He
didn't mind his K-10 status. It came with certain perks. A bright yellow jumpsuit, flashier than the standard orange duds worn by most inmates. And a private dormthe authorities couldn't bunk two K-10s together or one of them would end up dead.
The downside was that the guards watched you twenty-four fucking hours a day. Deputy Dawgs, Gray called them, in honor of the old-time cartoon character he'd watched in reruns when he was growing up. Goddamn screws never let you out of your cage, not even for exercise. Hell, the high-power ward didn't even have a recreation yard. No common room, either, which meant no poker games, no trades of candy and cigs, no socializing or casual bullshitting or swapping jokes. Showers were allowed once every other day. The tiny cell was bare of anything except a cot, a combination sink and toilet, a phone that allowed collect calls only, and a TV mounted in the wall. There was nothing to do but sit on your rack and watch the tube and stroke your dick whenever a nice set of jugs came on the screen.
There was one bitch in a car commercial who was so damn fine, she'd stiffened Gray's hog for a week. He'd gotten a regular love jones for that slut. Fucked her a million times in his dreams, missionary style, doggie style, in the mouth, up the ass, every which way but loose. Fun times.
Yeah, sure. Meanwhile, out in the real world she was giving lube jobs to TV producers, and he was stuck in a glass box feeling his own wood. He was twenty-eight years old, for Christ's sake. He ought to be out on the town, kissing the girls and making 'em cry, sowing all those wild oats of his. Instead his girlfriend was a thirty-second apparition on a picture tube. Life fucking sucked sometimes.
Still, it could be worse. Lockup in County was a vacation compared with a stay in a state pen. And a state pen, some maximum-security shithole like Pelican Bay, was where Gray should have been by now.
He'd been convicted four months ago. Once sentenced, inmates were typically transferred to the state system as fast as County could spit them out. Gray, however, was still enjoying the dubious delights of life in Second City, as the county jail system was called in reference to the sheer size of its population.
In Dark Places Page 2
