by Scott Frost
“He couldn’t photograph him after the explosion, so he did before,” Harrison said.
“I thought I understood who Gabriel was. . . . I was wrong.”
I turned away, unable to look at those eyes any longer, but I could still feel them. I doubted they would ever entirely leave me.
“Did you see anything in the background of the photograph that would hint at a location?”
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
Next to the photograph of Breem was a picture of Colorado Boulevard. For a moment, I thought it was out of place until I realized why it was on the wall.
“Oh, God, the parade route.”
“Just east of Orange Grove and Colorado.”
“The block that’s televised.”
Harrison studied the photograph for a moment, then shook his head.
“He’s not going to be able to get anywhere near it. It’s already been sealed, every float, streetlight, every bleacher’s been searched. No one gets close to the parade without being screened.”
“Then how does he do it?”
“He can’t.”
Even as he said it, I could see the conviction behind his words disappear. We all knew that there was no longer any such thing as “It can’t happen here.”
I turned around and looked across the room. On the far wall, a space the size of photograph had been left blank.
“He’s left room for another picture.”
I stared at it as if waiting for another image to appear out of the paint.
“That could mean anything or nothing,” Harrison said.
“It means someone else is going to die. It means we have to . . .”
My voice faltered and we both stared silently at the space on the wall. Harrison turned and looked at me, his eyes carrying the unspoken truth neither of us wanted to utter.
“Lieut—”
I shook my head and turned away.
“When he calls again and he gives you the choice to save your daughter or a stranger, you have to choose Lacy.”
I let the words pass as if I hadn’t heard them.
“We need to go through every inch of this apartment, every file in the computer. There’s got to be something that points to where he is.”
“Lieutenant, when he calls—”
“There’s no point to this.”
“I think there is.”
I turned angrily. “Did you see something in this room that suggests Gabriel possesses the quality of mercy? Because I missed it.”
“It may buy time.”
“He’s going to kill her. If I had any doubt of that, it’s gone.”
I hadn’t allowed myself to say it before, but now I did. The words carried a terrible finality, and I instantly realized why I had avoided using them before.
“She is all I have . . . all I ever wanted. I didn’t know how to tell her that . . .”
“We’re a step ahead of him now,” Harrison said.
All I could manage was a nod. Then I forced myself to say something else as if to purge the other hopeless words.
“A small step.”
I walked out of the room and called Chief Chavez to set up surveillance of the apartment. If Gabriel were to come back here, we would have him. But I also knew that if he came back, it would be to put that last picture up on the wall, and it would be too late.
When I finished with Chavez, I stepped outside to clear my head of the odor of stale cigarettes and the images of death. In the adjacent yard I noticed a lone lemon tree heavily laden with fruit the size of clenched fists. I tested the air to see if citrus flavored it, but there was nothing there. The moisture in the evening chill seemed to settle everything it touched into place for the night, even sound, as it was unnaturally quiet.
I exhaled heavily into the darkness and watched the steam rise from my breath. Somewhere down the block, several shouts of people still celebrating the new year interrupted the night’s silence. I thought of the ice and snow of the Midwest and how millions would be up in the morning to watch the parade. The highest achievement in civic salesmanship. The ultimate “Wish you were here” postcard.
I turned and looked back into Gabriel’s shabby apartment. Exactly when had we let paradise slip through our fingers here? Was there a moment in the history of Los Angeles that we could point to and say, “There it was lost, right there, right then.” Was it the first orange grove that disappeared under pavement? The first concrete laid on the first stretch of the Pasadena Freeway? The first subdivision, the hundredth, or the thousandth? Maybe it was the first seeding of a lawn in a desert. The stealing of the Owens Valley’s water. The paving of the Los Angeles River, or Disney declaring that two acres of Orange County was the happiest place on earth. Maybe it all began and ended with the first frame of film in the first movie in a town based on illusion. Or maybe there isn’t just one point. Maybe everyone who was ever born here or moved across a continent or traveled an ocean to live here has his own moment of finality. That demarcation point where the dream is no match for reality.
To the south the high-pitched cycle of a squad car’s siren briefly pierced the night. I turned and walked back into the apartment. Harrison stepped to the door of the bedroom, made brief eye contact, then looked back into the room as if he’d left something behind. I joined him at the door.
“There’s a journal, of sorts. It actually reads more like a novel—a bad novel. I think it begins with the very first killing he ever committed.”
“A journal?”
He nodded, then glanced at the notepad in his hand and began to read.
“I’m the boy in the third row of the class photograph that everyone’s eyes pass over. No one remembers my name, the color of my hair, or the sound of my voice. I’m invisible.”
He slipped the pad into his pocket.
“That’s how it begins.”
I started to walk into the bedroom and Harrison reached out and took hold of my arm. He hesitated, then looked at me, his eyes carrying the weight of what he’d read. The sudden high of hope I had felt began to bleed away like a severed artery.
“What is it?”
He took a shallow breath. “He’s already written the ending.”
My mind began to race. “Lacy? What does it—”
He shook his head. “I just skimmed the last couple of pages, but she wasn’t mentioned.”
“What was?”
“You. You’re in the ending, Lieutenant.”
“Me?”
“Maybe you’d better read it.”
I looked past him into the room toward the computer.
“Tell me what it is, Harrison.”
The muscles in his jaw tightened as if bracing for an impact, then he looked at me with the finality of a lover’s good-bye.
“You’re walking down Colorado Boulevard during the parade. . . . You’re strapped with explosives.”
21
HARRISON ’S WORDS seemed to gather up the air in the room, making it hard to take a breath.
“You okay?” he said.
I nodded, though he knew as well as I did that it was all for show. The ground itself was falling apart beneath our feet.
“I’m his suicide bomber,” I whispered.
I struggled to take a deep breath, my body fighting the impulse as if instinctively not wanting any part of the space we were in.
“We wanted to know how he would do it. Now we do.”
I shuddered as I imagined the weight of the explosive-laden harness being fitted over my shoulders.
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“There’s no way in hell he gets you to walk down Colorado boulevard into a crowd of people.”
“He has my daughter. . . . He can get me to do anything he wants.”
Harrison’s eyes fell on mine trying desperately not to reveal the uncertainty that was just under the surface.
“Not that.”
“You said it yourself. I have to choose Lacy. And
that’s what I’m going to do.”
“We need to get you wired with a transmitter. You’re not going anywhere without us knowing exactly where you are.”
I nodded. “Call Hicks. They’ll be better at it than we will.”
Harrison took out his phone and began to dial when my cell phone rang. I started to reach for it.
“No!” Harrison shouted. “If it’s him and he wants you moving . . . That can’t happen until you’re wired.”
“That could take half an hour.”
“It doesn’t matter. You have to wait.”
I reached into my pocket, took it out, and let it ring in the palm of my hand. On the seventh ring I began to shake my head. The eighth ring felt like the recoil of a gun pointed at my daughter.
“I can’t—”
“Don’t.”
Harrison began to reach for my phone but I already had opened it.
“Delillo,” I said.
“Choose,” Gabriel said.
The word felt like the door slamming against my face. I looked at Harrison and nodded. He immediately stepped back and rang Hicks.
“I first want to hear my daughter’s voice, or you can go straight to hell.”
“Interesting choice of words, Lieutenant.”
“Put her on, or this is how it ends, right here, right now. Is that what you want?”
Gabriel laughed, and then the line went silent but it wasn’t cut off.
I looked at Harrison, who was across the room shaking his head in disbelief and nearly shouting into his phone.
“Get him on the line right now! I don’t have two minutes. . . . No, he cannot call me back. I need him now!”
Over my open line I heard what sounded like a chair sliding across a floor. I then heard several shallow breaths. I knew the sound. It was as if I were listening to a recording of my own heart. It was Lacy, there was no doubt. They were the same breaths I felt against my breast when I held her moments after she was born.
“Lacy,” I said.
Nothing came back.
“It’s me, honey.”
“Mom,” she said.
“I’m right here.”
She started to say something, but her voice cracked with emotion.
“Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“This fucking asshole—”
The phone was yanked from her hands and fell to the floor.
“Lacy! . . . Lacy, can you hear me? Lacy!”
There was no sound on the other end. I pressed the phone to my ear as if I could somehow get closer to her.
“Lacy, can you hear me?” I said desperately. “I love you. You’ll be all right.”
Nothing.
“Lacy.”
I heard something slide across the floor.
“Lacy . . . Lac—”
“Choose.”
My breath left me for a moment as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
“You bastard. You know damn well what I choose.”
“Say it.”
He sounded like an angry teacher demanding respect from a student.
“Say it!” he shouted. He commanded.
“Lacy.”
“Be at the corner of Orange Grove and Altadena in six minutes. I see any other police, if I hear a helicopter, if I see someone walking a dog, I’ll cut her throat. Do not hang up. Keep the line open. I want to listen to every word you say.”
I turned to Harrison and held my finger up to my lips, motioning for him to be silent, then gestured for a pen and paper. He reached into his pocket and took out a notepad and pen and handed them to me. I began to write furiously as I started walking toward the door.
Was Hicks listening?
He nodded and wrote down his answer on the pad.
Twenty minutes to get here and get you wired.
I shook my head and we began passing the notepad back and forth as we walked out toward the squad.
Six minutes to get to the corner of Orange Grove and Altadena.
I’m coming with you. I can hide in the back—
I shook my head as Harrison kept writing.
No, you—
I yanked the pad out of Harrison’s hand.
Read the journal!!! I wrote with several exclamations. It’s got to tell where he has Lacy—find her.
I underlined find her several times.
We reached the car and I opened the door. Harrison reached out and covered my phone with his hand.
“How do I find you?” he whispered.
Our eyes met for a moment, then slipped apart.
“He’s written down exactly how he plans to do it,” I said. “If we lose touch . . . you have to be a step ahead.”
Harrison shook his head in disapproval.
“This isn’t fiction.”
“He believes the same thing about what he’s written.”
I got in the car and placed my hand on his.
“Find my daughter.”
I started the engine and stepped on the gas, east toward Altadena.
THE CORNER of Orange Grove and Altadena looked as if a slice of a small town had been misplaced. Lines were painted on the pavement for angle parking. There was a diner, fabric stores, secondhand furniture stores, a barbershop. The only giveaway that it wasn’t Indiana was that the signs were all in Armenian and Spanish.
I pulled to a stop on the southwest corner. A single car drove north heading into the foothill neighborhoods. The driver was a young woman, her eyes focused straight ahead as if she had had too much to drink and was willing herself home. On the opposite corner the light in a Chevron station’s sign blinked erratically on and off from an electrical short. That was it. The corner was deserted.
According to my watch, five and a half minutes had passed. Thirty seconds left. I scanned the street trying to anticipate what he would do next.
Twenty seconds.
Nothing presented itself. If I only knew what was in Gabriel’s computer. Had he written everything down to the last detail? My sitting in the car right now, my next step, my first mistake. But wishing for something that was out of reach would do me no good. All I had was right in front of me. Or maybe, more correctly, what was behind me—the accumulated moments that had brought me to this place.
If what Harrison had read was correct, Gabriel would need to capture me. But how? Was the trap right in front of me? Do I just walk right in and give myself up at the sight of my daughter?
Ten seconds.
No, I won’t do that. I see him, I kill him. My one chance. Lacy’s one chance.
The last seconds ticked off.
“Lieutenant,” Gabriel said.
The sound of his voice was like a gunshot next to my ear. Reluctantly I picked up the phone.
“I’m here,” I said.
“You have one chance to follow my directions. Hesitate, I kill her. There’s a phone booth next to the gas station. Leave your phone in the car and run to it, now!” he demanded.
Across the intersection I heard the first ring.
I got out of the car, leaving my phone on the seat and the door open. The fifty yards across the intersection felt as dangerous as if I were crossing a minefield. Each step took me deeper and deeper into the dark, twisted nightmare of Gabriel’s mind and away from my only connection to the world, which sat on the seat back in my squad. By the time I reached the phone booth, I felt as naked and vulnerable as a child. He was cutting me off from the world, drawing me in. This is terror. A phone ringing, an empty street, the imagination spinning out of control.
I picked up the receiver, gasping for breath from the run and the adrenaline racing through my body. I tried to gather myself to mask the stress in my voice so he wouldn’t fully know his advantage.
“I’m here,” I said between breaths.
“The brown car fifty feet in front of you. Get in it and drive north on Altadena. Run.”
I dropped the phone and sprinted to the car. It was an old model, at least ten years, and in need of paint. An Impala, I t
hink. The interior smelled of cheap aftershave and stale beer. The backseat was littered with beer cans and a pile of dirty laundry. On the floor of the front seat were several receipts from a check-cashing service. It had probably belonged to a day laborer, probably an illegal. And, very likely now, dead. On the passenger seat was a cell phone that began to ring.
If I picked up and followed his next set of instructions, I would be stepping wholly into the nightmare that had swallowed my daughter. I glanced across the street toward my empty squad. I imagined Harrison was reading Gabriel’s narrative of what I was about to do. I could almost hear his voice as he stared at the screen shaking his head saying, “No, Lieutenant, no.”
“Lacy’s there,” I said softly as if explaining to Harrison. “I have to.” I started to reach for the phone but stopped as rage rolled over me like a wave.
“You fucking asshole!” I screamed into the empty car, using Lacy’s words.
I put my hands to my face and clenched my jaw, trying to smother the anger.
“Lacy, Lacy, Lacy . . .” I whispered, trying to quiet my racing heart. I couldn’t lose control, not now. I needed to be thinking clearly. That and a 9mm round I planned to put into his heart were all I had.
I whispered “Lacy” one more time as if she could hear me; then I started the car and picked up the phone.
“I’m going north on Altadena.”
“I know.”
“How far—”
“Quiet,” he shouted. “You’ll talk when I tell you. You’re nothing now, not a lieutenant, not a cop, not a mother. You’re only what I decide you will be.”
“And what does that make you?”
There was a brief, ominous silence.
“Your future.”
I glanced in my mirror to see if I was being followed. Altadena was empty. Nothing pulled out from a side street and followed me. He hadn’t been there. He had bluffed his way through it and I had followed his instructions. I had just given up whatever control of the situation I might still have had.
“Fuck you.”
He laughed at me.
“You’re like your daughter.”
I tried to reply but couldn’t. I hadn’t heard anyone say that other than my mother. And when she had said it, I reacted angrily as if she were insulting me. Why had I done that? Why had I been afraid to approve and love my own daughter without any doubt, any judgment? What was I afraid of? What did I think I would find out about myself by accepting her for who she is?
