The Shadow Hunter

by Michael Prescott

  Two years ago, at twenty-six, she was ready. Her first assignment had been for Travis Protective Services. More jobs followed. She divided her duties between TPS and other security firms. Keeping her distance, as usual. She prided herself on being an independent contractor. Independent—that was the key word. Nobody owned her. Nobody controlled her. At least, she liked to think so.

  When she had paid for the items in the bookstore, she stopped in a bar down the street and ordered a piña colada, her one weakness. Normally she didn’t drink alone, but her new assignment with TPS was worth a private celebration.

  Midway through the drink, a young man with a fuzzy mustache that barely concealed a rash of acne sat down next to her. He ordered tequila, presenting his driver’s license to get it, then glanced at her shopping bag. “Been buying books?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m really into Marcel Proust. You know him?”

  Abby ignored the question. She showed him the gun in her purse. “LAPD,” she whispered gravely.

  He blinked at the gun, unsure whether to be scared or turned on. “You running some kind of plainclothes operation?”

  She nodded. “We’ve heard rumors this bar is selling drinks to UCLA students with fake IDs.”

  Most of the color left his face. He mumbled something and moved away, leaving his tequila behind. Abby smiled, pleased with herself, and then a voice behind her said, “I could have you arrested.”

  She turned on her bar stool. A man stood a yard away, watching her. He was in his early thirties, wide-shouldered and sandy haired, dressed casually in a dark sweater and cotton pants. “For what?” she asked.

  “Impersonating a police officer.”

  She swiveled away from him and picked up her piña colada. “Go easy on me. It’s my first offense.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that.” He took a seat next to her, resting his hands on the bar. He had blocky fingers and thick, muscular wrists.

  She sipped her drink. “Are you saying I’m a criminal?”

  “I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions. It might have been an innocent mistake. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You don’t look innocent. But don’t be offended. Innocence is boring.”

  “Well, at least I’m not boring. I would hate to think I was wasting your time.”

  “You never do, Abby. You never do.”

  He ordered a draft beer. For a minute they were quiet as he worked on the beer and she finished her drink.

  “So,” she said, “how’s it going, Vic?”

  “Could be worse. You?”

  “Can’t complain. Streets getting any safer?”

  “So we’re told. Couldn’t prove it by me.”

  Abby had known Vic Wyatt for roughly a year, ever since the Jonathan Bronshard case. Bronshard was a stockbroker who had put up a website with pictures of his family and a description of their happy home, only to become the target of threatening phone calls. He went to Paul Travis. Ordinarily Travis limited his services to celebrity clients, but he made an exception for Bronshard, whose office was down the hall from the TPS suite.

  The calls were traced to a pay phone in Hollywood, which TPS officers staked out until the next call was made. They followed the caller home and identified him as Emanuel Barth, a man who’d spent some time in prison for vandalism, breaking and entering, and related offenses. Abby interviewed the patrol sergeant who had supervised the arrest that put Barth away. The sergeant was Vic Wyatt of Hollywood Division.

  Mr. Barth, she learned, had a hang-up about upper-middle-class families. Friendless, unmarried, chronically unemployed, he took out his frustrations by blaming those who had more than he did. In 1998 he’d broken into an upscale house in Toluca Lake and trashed the place. His fingerprints, on file after a previous arrest, had led police to his shack in Hollywood. A guilty plea had reduced his jail time, and he was now out of prison.

  Wyatt had explained all this to Abby, who’d let him think she was merely a researcher under contract to TPS. The information had proven helpful as she went about the business of installing herself in Emanuel Barth’s life. Eventually she had found a way to get Barth off the street again, this time for the next three to five years. Wyatt hadn’t handled the second arrest; he knew Barth had gone back to prison on a new conviction, but he had never learned of the role Abby played in putting him there. At least she hoped he hadn’t.

  She had relied on Wyatt several times since. There was a higher concentration of wackos in Hollywood than in most other districts of LA, and as a veteran cop, he knew most of them. He might even know Hickle. She considered raising the subject but decided against it. Not tonight.

  “You’re quiet this evening,” Wyatt said.

  “Just zoning out. What brings you here, anyway?”

  “Some nights I pass the time in Westwood. Nicer ambience than Scum City.” His term for Hollywood. “How about you?”

  “I live down the street. The Wilshire Royal.”

  “Fancy digs. Those security firms must pay pretty good for research.”

  “I survive.”

  “So far,” Wyatt said gravely.

  She looked away. She had never told him what she actually did for a living, but he wasn’t dumb. He had patrolled the streets for years, and he knew people. He must have guessed some of the truth about her. She knew that if he ever learned the full truth, he might really have to arrest her—no joke.

  She steered the conversation in a less dangerous direction. “I’ll bet I know what you’re here for.”

  “Do you?”

  “You were hoping to pick up a UCLA girl. Some of them might go for a cop.”

  “I’m past thirty. Too old for them. Anyway, I don’t want a girl.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me. Don’t ask, don’t tell, that’s my policy.”

  “What I meant was, it’s a woman I want. A grown woman.”

  “There are three million of them in the greater LA area.”

  “Women, yeah. Grown women? I’m not so sure. That’s the thing about LA.” Wyatt sipped his beer. “People don’t have to be adults here. They can be kids forever. Like, I was talking to this grocery checker the other day, and she tells me how her houseplants can read her mind. When she’s unhappy, they don’t bloom. So to keep them healthy, she only thinks happy thoughts. She beams happy thoughts to her azaleas.”

  “Future rocket scientist,” Abby commented.

  “Future nothing. She’s thirty-five years old. This is it for her. This is as grown up as she’s gonna get.”

  “She may have other redeeming qualities.”

  “I don’t want somebody with redeeming qualities. I don’t want redeeming qualities to be an issue in the first place.”

  “You have high standards.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Maybe nobody can meet them.”

  He looked at her. “Oh, I think somebody can.”

  This conversational path had turned out to be not so safe after all. “I’d better get going,” Abby said.

  “Nice to run into you.”

  She slid off the bar stool and picked up her purse. “I may need to get in touch about something.”

  “Business related? Don’t answer that. It’s always business related. Well, you know where to find me—but I was hoping you’d quit that line of work.”

  She slung the purse over her shoulder. “You mean research?”

  “No, not research.”

  “What, then?”

  “That’s something I’ve been trying to figure out. It keeps me up nights.”

  “Don’t lose sleep over me. I’m not worth it.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Night, Vic.”

  “See you, Abby.”

  She left the bar and emerged into the whirl of Westwood Village. Two come-ons in a half hour, a new record. Of course, the kid with fake ID had been only—well, only a kid. As for Wyatt, she didn’t know quite what to m
ake of him. He was lonely, she guessed. Maybe she was lonely too. Lonely despite Travis. Or because of Travis. Because of the peculiar nature of their relationship, its built-in distance and wariness.

  She put the issue out of her mind. It didn’t matter. Whatever she was feeling, she could handle it. She could handle anything. She was tough.

  Jet lag had never been a problem for her. She dropped off to sleep at midnight and woke refreshed at seven. For breakfast she fried vegetable-protein sausages and an egg-white omelet. She avoided coffee; in her profession it didn’t pay to be jumpy. Instead she brewed herbal tea.

  Before showering, Abby ran through a workout routine drawn from the YMCA Fitness Manual—no-nonsense exercises like sit-ups, bent-knee push-ups, hamstring stretches, and chest rotations. The full program, from warm-up to cool-down, took thirty minutes. On some days she substituted t’ai chi or shadow-boxing. There were many ways to stay fit.

  Only after she was dressed in fresh clothes, with her hair toweled dry and brushed straight, did she allow herself to look at the case file. Paper-clipped to the back page was an eight-by-ten color glossy. The shot had been taken with a telephoto lens, squashing its subject against an unfocused background smear. It had probably been snapped from a moving car—a drive-by, in the strange parlance of the security business.

  The subject was Hickle, of course. He had been caught on film as he emerged from a doorway, perhaps the entrance to his apartment building or the donut shop where he worked. She couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was the man himself. He had a thin, suspicious face and small eyes. He was scrawny and looked tall. His black hair was a sloppy, disarranged pile.

  She tried to draw a few preliminary conclusions from the photo. Hickle seemed indifferent to personal grooming, often a sign of depression or social alienation. His skin was pale, almost pasty, suggesting he spent most of his time indoors. He wore a shapeless brown sweatshirt and faded jeans, clothes that would not attract attention; he didn’t want to stand out. His body language—head lowered, eyes narrowed, lips pursed—conveyed a cagey wariness that reminded her of a mongrel dog that had learned to fend for itself on the street.

  Bringing the photo up close, she looked intently at Hickle’s face. There was something in his eyes, in the set of his mouth…

  Anger. Hickle was an angry man. Life had not given him what he thought it owed him, and he was looking for someone to blame.

  “Wrong,” she said aloud. “He’s not looking. He’s already found her.”

  She spent the morning with the file, reading it carefully. When she was done, she returned to the first page, which listed Hickle’s address. He lived in an apartment in Hollywood, on Gainford Avenue, south of Santa Monica Boulevard. Unit 420. Fourth floor. Must be a good-sized complex. In that neighborhood the turnover rate among tenants would be high.

  The LA Times was delivered to her door every morning when she was in town. She studied the classified ads. When she found what she was seeking, she said, “Bingo,” just like in the movies.

  There were vacancies at the Gainford Avenue address. No apartment numbers were listed, but with any luck, one of the available units would be on the fourth floor. And the units were furnished; she could move in immediately.

  By the end of the day, if all went well, she would be Raymond Hickle’s new neighbor.

  7

  The dough was soft and supple like a woman, and George Zachareas’s big, callused, age-spotted hands worked it with a lover’s touch, pushing and pulling, folding and turning. Gradually he fell into a rhythm, arms and shoulders and upper body thrusting together in a slow, practiced dance. Zachareas—Zack to all who knew him, owner and proprietor of Zack’s Donut Shack—found himself smiling, relishing the sheer sensual pleasure of the task.

  “I appreciate you staying past your shift,” he told the tall young man who stood beside him in a matching red apron and cap, working the same mound of dough.

  “No problem,” Raymond Hickle said.

  Zack was alone with Hickle in the kitchen, having left Susie Parker, a worthless, barely literate high school dropout, on duty at the counter. He figured it was safe to let Susie fly solo at this time of day. Midafternoon was slow; the shop did most of its business in the morning and the late-night hours. Ordinarily Zack didn’t come in during the day at all, but Hickle had called him a half hour ago with word that the two hundred pounds of dough made by the baker on the night shift had been used up, and Zack had opted to stop by personally and make an extra fifty-pound batch. It was possible to knead the stuff mechanically, by inserting a dough hook in one of the electric mixers, but Zack preferred to do the job by hand. Hickle had volunteered to help.

  “You’re a trouper, Ray,” Zack said in a voice that approached the decibel level of a divine command. He had been going deaf for years and refused to admit it. “To hang around when you don’t have to. After eight hours on the job, you must want out of here pretty bad.”

  “Not really.”

  “Any special plans for the evening?”

  “No.”

  “How about the weekend? It’s coming up. You got something in mind?”

  “I’m working on Saturday, filling in for Emilio.”

  “Again?”

  “I don’t mind. It’s extra money.”

  “There’s more to life than work, Ray, especially when you work in a place like this.”

  “I had the day off yesterday.”

  “Yeah, so you did. Do something fun?”

  “Went to the beach.”

  “Glad to hear it. Look, don’t get me wrong. You do a great job, you’re the best, but plying dough at a donut store is no life for you. Where’s your future?”

  “I’m doing all right.”

  Zack shook his head. At sixty-four he was a tall and vigorous man, but Hickle, three decades younger, was taller still, six foot one, with the potential to develop a boxer’s physique if he applied himself. He had a sallow, intense face and thoughtful eyes, and a mop of black hair that was thick and unruly at the top but cropped close at the nape. He could have been handsome, Zack supposed, but he’d missed his chance somehow. His complexion was too pale, his eyes too small and too deeply sunken under his heavy brows, his features slightly out of proportion in a way that was hard to define.

  “You could do better,” Zack told him. “Hell, you’re a smart guy.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial shout. “Plenty smarter than those clowns I got working the other shifts. Maybe in a couple months we can talk about making you a supervisor—”

  “No, thanks.”

  Zack paused in his labor. “You don’t want a promotion?”

  “I’m happy doing what I do.”

  After a moment Zack resumed attacking the dough. He had no way to figure out Raymond Hickle. The guy said he was happy, but how could he be? He had no ambition, no personal life, nothing but eight hours a day spent on menial chores for indifferent customers.

  Some of his time was passed behind the counter, making coffee and microwaving muffins and toasting bagels, and some of it was spent in the kitchen amid the stainless steel sinks and the large-capacity appliances and the vat in which sizable blocks of lard were melted to form a thick soup of grease for deep-frying dough. Hickle had learned to use the donut filler, a conical, hand-operated apparatus that injected jelly into fried donut shells, and he often was called on to clean the blades of the mixers that blended milk and confectioners’ sugar into a glaze. As jobs went, it was hardly anybody’s dream. Yet Hickle never groused or slacked off, never got sloppy or looked bored. It wasn’t natural.

  Zack liked Ray Hickle, he really did, and he wanted the younger man to feel good about life. “You know, Ray,” he said on impulse, “you’re my employee of the month.”

  Hickle didn’t even look up. “I wasn’t aware you had an employee of the month.”

  “Well, I don’t, but let’s say I do, okay?” He gave Hickle a manly clap on the shoulder, raising a billow of white flour dust. �
��There’s an extra fifty bucks in it for you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “With all the unpaid overtime you put in, Ray, you deserve it ten times over. I’m adding it to your paycheck on Friday. Don’t give me any arguments.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Zack.” There was no enthusiasm in his voice, only empty acceptance.

  “So what do you think you’ll spend it on?” Zack asked gamely, hoping to spur a more positive response.

  Shrug. “Can’t say.”

  “Got a special someone you can buy a present for?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Zack hadn’t realized how much he expected Hickle to say no until he heard the opposite reply. He concealed his surprise behind a smile. “That’s good, Ray. Been seeing her long?”

  “A few months.” Hickle worked the dough with his long-fingered hands. “She’s a beautiful woman. We have a spiritual union. It’s destiny.” The odd thing about this was that he said it so casually, as if such confessions were made every day.

  “Well, that’s good,” Zack said with less certainty. “What’s her name?”

  “Kris.”

  “How’d you meet her?”

  “It wasn’t a meeting, exactly. More of an encounter. I was in Beverly Hills one day, just walking around, and I saw her come out of a store. She didn’t see me. Walked right past me, in fact. But I never took my eyes off her. Because in that moment I knew—somehow I just knew—she was the only one for me. I knew we were meant to be together.”

  “So you went after her?”

  “Yes. I went after her. And now I see her all the time.”

  “Good for you. It shows some moxie, chasing down a girl you like. Hey, next time Kris is in the neighborhood, have her come by for coffee and crullers on the house.”

  “I’ll do that.”