by Jodi Compton
“… must’ve just slid down behind a seat or something,” Quentin’s voice said. Under his words I heard the clopping of hard-heeled shoes.
He came into view first, moving quickly down the front walk to his parked car. He unlocked the passenger side and stuck his head, then half his body, inside. Languidly, a second figure moved into my narrow field of view. She was shorter than me, maybe five-four, and slighter. Her blond hair, pulled up into a high ponytail, was a brighter, paler shade than mine. I couldn’t see her face. She was wearing a silk robe that in the moonlight looked jade green, over pointed-toe cowboy boots. While Quentin poked around for a lost item in his car, she stood at the end of the driveway looking up at the stars.
I leaned forward as much as I dared behind the protective screen of branches. This was her; I wanted to drink in the sight as though I could understand her just by seeing her face.
She had fine bones, eyes more almond-shaped than mine. Hotter than you, Quentin had said, and I had to say he was right. But I could see where someone would look from her to my old driver’s license photo without saying, Hey, this isn’t you.
Quentin pulled out and slammed the door.
“Got it?” she said, turning.
She looked so normal. I’d expected to see something in her face, a cool vacancy that said sociopath. There was nothing like that.
Quentin was standing with his hands on his hips. “Fuck me,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t under the seat?” Brittany said. “You think you left it up north?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s got it.”
He was talking about his cell phone, I realized.
“What would she do with it?” Brittany asked him.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure, but she already used it to scam you—”
“That’s not my fault! I couldn’t have known what was going on! She said she was someone in your boss’s office!”
“Calling from my cell?”
“Well … I …”
“It’s okay, babe,” Quentin said. “Maybe I just left it up north.” I doubted he really thought so, but he was tired of arguing with Brittany. He changed the subject. “You know what I just thought of? We gotta move this car. She might know what I’m driving. If she sees this parked outside the house, it’ll scare her off.”
“Good,” the girl said.
“No, not good. You know why.”
“I don’t want—”
“If she doesn’t try to approach you, there’s no point in me having come here in the first place,” Quentin said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “We talked about this.”
Then he leaned in and kissed her, and his hand cupped her left breast.
She giggled. “That’s kinky, Cousin Quentin. Brian wouldn’t like it.”
His response, against her neck, was unintelligible, but she giggled again and then turned and went back inside.
I wondered how Quentin had explained his developing bruises to her, if he’d admitted I’d given them to him or he’d told her it was unrelated, a bar fight with a guy. A story that didn’t compromise his ego.
Quentin went around to the driver’s side of the car, got in, and started the engine. I shifted position again, pulling back. I didn’t want to be visible if headlights splashed over my hiding place.
It would have been nice if Quentin had called her by name, but there was no doubt in my mind that the young woman in the driveway was Brittany Mercier. It seemed likely that the house belonged to an ex-boyfriend—that was what I’d taken the “Cousin Quentin” remark to mean, that he was posing as family in order to not raise the possessive hackles of their host.
Still, none of this was anything I could adequately support in another call with Ford. She looks the part, I’d say, and she’s hanging out with the guy who confessed to selling my ID and gun.
Actually, that second part—the whole story that Quentin had told me in his apartment—was progress worth reporting to Ford. That was just another reason to get into town. I needed a pay phone.
Quentin returned, his feet tapping soft but fast on the sidewalk. He paused a moment in front of the house, looking around at the shadows, then went inside.
Still under the shelter of the oleander bush, I pulled out Quentin’s cell phone. It was time to call Serena, to get a ride into town and regroup. I didn’t want to leave Brittany alone for long, but I needed to eat, maybe to get an hour or two of sleep. Serena, if she’d left San Francisco a little before Quentin, should already be home. The timing was perfect for her to come by and pick me up.
First, though, I had to figure out where I was. I got to my feet and emerged from the bush. My legs were unsteady again; it was a surprise that I’d been able to run earlier, when I’d been surprised by the driveway floodlight. Slowly I walked out to the street; it took several minutes of crossing and recrossing the street, checking mailboxes, before I found one with mail in it. I was in Woodland Hills, the western reaches of L.A. County.
I dialed Serena’s number. Instead of ringing, her cell went straight into her recorded message: “It’s me, leave a message and I’ll call you back.”
She used neither her Christian name nor her street name in her message; some people in her life didn’t know the first, while others were ignorant of the second. A terse greeting was the safest kind.
I left her a similarly vague message: “Hey, it’s me. I’m safe and watching a house in Woodland Hills. She’s here, I saw her. Call me as soon as you can. I’m gonna need help.”
I disconnected the call and stood still for a moment, thinking. It wasn’t like Serena to have her cell off during waking hours. If she was back in town and had fallen into exhausted sleep, I wouldn’t hear from her until well into daylight hours, by which time I’d need to be here, watching the house.
This was more than a logistical problem. Why would Serena turn off her phone? She’d been so worried about me when I’d told her about the trunk-of-the-car plan. Had she, in the past six hours, somehow become cavalier about whether I’d made it to L.A. alive?
Whatever the reason for her silence, just waiting for her to call me back wasn’t much of a plan. I didn’t merely need stuff brought up from town—though food was becoming urgent—I needed to go into town, in order to ride the Aprilia back. Without it I’d be stuck here if Brittany and Quentin decided to move somewhere else tomorrow. It hadn’t sounded like they were going to, but you never could tell. Maybe they would even decide to move Brittany someplace more public and visible, in hopes that I’d track her more easily. According to the conversation they’d had, Brittany wasn’t keen on being used as bait, but she was allowing it.
If they went somewhere else, I’d have to be ready to tail them, which meant I’d need my bike. Quentin had never seen it, which was good. If I myself had to stay out of his sight, the Aprilia could easily be parked on the street outside a neighbor’s place without drawing suspicion.
Now I just needed to get down to where it was.
With long strides I hiked up to the top of the street. The cross street ran along the top of the hill, and it was wide and broad. Turning back, I could see down into the valley and the lights of town and, running through it, the glowing white vein that was the 101. A vague sense of familiarity tickled me, and I went to look at the street sign. I was on Mulholland Drive. I’ll be damned, I thought. I’d heard of it all my life and never driven it, and now here I was, standing on it, strictly by accident.
My cell phone remained silent. I was tempted to call Serena again, because I had nothing else to do, but it had only been five minutes. Calling so soon was pointless.
Who else was there? I wouldn’t drag CJ into this. Nor Tess. Things had gotten too serious.
Resigned, I began to walk toward town. Every time headlights approached, I turned back and stuck out my thumb, hopefully.
• • •
Half an hour later, I was at a pay phone outside the glowing windows of an all-night coin-op laundry. No one had picked me up hi
tchhiking on Mulholland, so I’d walked all the way down into town. Serena still wasn’t answering her phone. But when I saw the pay phone, I decided it was time to update Ford on what was going on.
I dialed his cell number. Somehow I never doubted he’d pick up. I imagined him working late at headquarters, his the lone lighted cubicle in an otherwise dim warren of empty desks.
“Ford.”
“It’s me.”
“Hailey,” he said. “When do you sleep?”
“I’ll sleep when she’s in a cell.”
“She? The other Hailey?”
“I found her. I’ve seen her.”
“Tell me,” he said.
I explained what I’d learned: Brittany’s full name, the address where she was staying, and the most salient parts of the story of how she came to kill Greg Stepakoff and V. K. Eastman.
“You got all this from her partner in crime, Corelli?” Ford said.
“Yeah.”
“Whom you identified and found how?”
“I had a pretty good idea that it was him who stole the gun,” I told him. “After that it was just a matter of getting his current address up north and us having a little meeting of the minds.”
“I see. And nothing he said might have been bullshit to get you going the wrong direction?”
“He was pretty inspired to tell the truth.”
Long pause after that. I expected Ford to comment, inquire further about my methods, but he didn’t.
Finally I said, “How about a little quid pro quo? What’s going on behind precinct doors?”
He said, “You don’t realize how much quid you’ve been getting from me already.”
Actually, I did, but I couldn’t let on that I knew about Joel’s fact-finding mission up north. I said, “I just keep hoping that something will come out that tends to exonerate me.”
Another pause, this one shorter, and then Ford said, “The SFPD had an interesting piece of information about a city-college newspaper up there.”
“The one Brittany enrolled at in order to get a student ID?”
“Did Corelli tell you that?” Ford said. “Then I guess he wasn’t jerking you around. The college has a weekly newspaper, and the kids on the staff just came back from spring break and wanted to do a story on this notorious killer being in their student body. They requested her ID photo from the administration offices, and the woman who pulled it for them thought, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like the pictures on the news.’ ”
I felt myself smile, genuinely, for the first time in days.
Ford said, “This hasn’t been made public yet. Fortunately the administration staffer called us. Because the student-newspaper kids wouldn’t have—it’s a freedom-of-information issue for them. A fed went over to their offices and rattled his saber pretty hard for them to sit on the photo, as well as the news about the discrepancy. They didn’t like it, but we’re hoping they will.”
“Because you don’t want to spook her.”
“Yeah. Hailey, where are you?”
“Close to the finish,” I said, and hung up.
21
By midnight I was crossing the L.A. River in a minivan, warm wind lightly battering me from an open rear window. My traveling companions, two of whom were asleep in the cargo area in the back, were UC Santa Cruz students, road-tripping on their spring break. College students are about the only drivers brave enough, or naive enough, to still pick up hitchhikers. If it weren’t for them, I would still have been standing at the base of an on-ramp in Woodland Hills. After calling Serena again and getting no answer, I’d stood at the foot of the freeway on-ramp for twenty-five minutes, the breeze from the passing cars tugging at my hair, as one after another drove by without stopping.
Until these kids and their old Toyota Previa. They’d pulled over and rolled open the side door, waved me inside, asked me where I was going, and promised to take me all the way to East Los Angeles: “We’re not on a schedule, it’s cool.”
But about five minutes after we crossed the river, the driver, a guy with pale blond hair and a short beard, looked around at his surroundings, then turned to address me in the backseat, saying politely, “Listen, I think this is getting a little bit out of our way.”
I understood immediately what he was saying. He’d recognized what kind of area I was leading them into. He understood it might not be the best place for a van full of white kids after dark.
“That’s totally all right,” I said. “You can just let me out at the corner, there, where it’s well lit.”
He slowed and pulled to the curb but then turned to face me, his pale blue eyes concerned. “Are you sure this is where you want to be?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m very familiar with the area, and I don’t have far to go. I promise.”
I thanked them all before rolling open the side door and jumping down.
“Good luck!” the girl in the passenger seat called after me.
God knew I’d need that. These were the small hours of a Wednesday morning, which meant the streets were mostly quiet, but any predators who were out tonight were likely to be serious, dedicated ones, and I had no crowd to get lost in, no one else around me to draw their fire. I might as well have been illuminated by a personal spotlight. I did, however, have the Browning concealed at my back.
I stood for a moment outside the darkened windows of a closed mini–grocery store, tempted to check my cell phone for a message from Serena. But I’d had the phone on me this whole time, switched on since I’d called her from Mulholland Drive. I would have heard it ring. Face it, she hasn’t called.
I began walking, past darkened storefronts, in and out of pools of apricot streetlight. A homeless woman pushed a rattling shopping cart across the street and disappeared down a narrow side lane. The breeze rustled the dried flowers of a sidewalk descanso, a memorial for a slain neighborhood teenager, maybe a gangbanger, maybe the random victim of stray gunfire.
I’d covered about half the distance to Thirteenth Street and Diana’s building when a police car rounded a corner and turned in my direction, facing me head-on. There was nothing I could have done to protect myself. The sight of it had been blocked by the bulk of a large apartment complex, and it had been moving so slowly that there was barely any engine noise to hear. It was crawling, in that quiet, crocodile-predatory way police do when they’re looking for trouble.
I jammed my hands into my pockets protectively but kept walking. To abruptly change direction would have been a sign of guilt that would have immediately piqued their interest. Just ten yards ahead of me was an alley opening. I only had to make that. I walked a little faster, the squad car still crawling toward me. Five yards, three, two … I turned sharply right and headed down the alley.
Behind me I heard the siren make a single whoop, the sign that they wanted a pedestrian’s attention.
I ducked behind a garbage Dumpster and quickly pulled the gun from under my jacket. This could be an innocent lecture about how dangerous it was for me to be walking here after midnight. But if it wasn’t, if they tried to search me, I didn’t need to be caught with a gun.
With the safety on, I dropped the Browning to the pavement and kicked it under the Dumpster. From the alley’s opening, I heard the slamming of a car door, and cherry-colored lights flickered off the building walls. My hands visible in front of me, I stepped out to face the officer standing at the alley’s mouth. He was young, Hispanic, very short-haired, rigid-postured. I raised a hand to above my eyes as though facing a bright light and said, “Is there a problem, sir?”
He lifted his chin, as if about to address me, and stepped forward. Then his dark eyes grew fractionally wider and his hand went to his holster, unsnapping it. He said, “Stay right there. Put your hands up. Do not move.”
He’d recognized me. Double zero. Nobody wins.
I turned and bolted for the chain-link fence that cut off the end of the alley.
“I said, don’t move!”
I hit th
e fence at a run, hands grabbing for the top rail. My feet were much too big to get a hold in the links of the fencing, so I was mostly hoping to grab-and-vault, using momentum. With my left foot braced on the post, I swung my right leg up to the top.
Behind me the cop fired. Sparks flew off the fence where the slug struck it.
He’s actually using deadly force. Holy shit, I have gone platinum in the worst possible way.
I jumped from the fence down into the vacant brown-field beyond it, hearing a second gunshot behind me. I started running. His partner might be out of the car by now and coming around to intercept me, and I had no way of knowing which way he’d go—around the block from the north or the south. Choosing at random, I veered south, toward a line of thin trees at the lot’s edge, the best cover available to me. But I didn’t stop once I was there. I kept running, across the next street and down a side street after that. Over the sound of my own feet slapping the pavement and my own rapid breathing, I couldn’t hear the sound of anyone running behind me, if there was anyone.
I halted and looked around. Parked at the curb was a lunch truck, advertising TACOS BURRITOS HORCHATAS, and I ducked behind it, positioning myself by one of the wheels so even my feet wouldn’t show.
Then I heard the purr of an engine, so low it was obviously the engine of a slowly cruising car.
I dropped to the sidewalk and, making myself as small and flat as possible on my stomach, eased over the curb’s edge and under the truck, crawling sideways, centering myself so my feet weren’t too close to the truck’s rear end nor my head to the front.
The squad car inched past, visible to me only by its tires. I lay on my stomach, heels of my hands pressed against the rough pavement, face turned to the side, the smell of axle grease strong in my nostrils. When the cruiser was past, I resisted the urge to stay where I was safe and began inching out from under the truck. There were still about six blocks between me and the safety of Diana’s place, and the sooner I got going, the better. Pretty soon those six blocks were going to be so thick with police presence I wasn’t going to be able to move at all.
