‘‘You better sit down,’’ Harper said. He introduced himself and said, ‘‘I saw you a couple of days ago, I was in talking to Jim.’’
‘‘Oh, yeah . . .’’ she said vaguely. She looked back toward the operating suite: ‘‘What have you heard?’’
‘‘Not much: he’s hurting. And he’s been in there a while.’’ ‘‘Oh, my God . . .’’
Anna was watching her; and watching her, knew that Creek had made a connection with the woman. Nothing forced here, no sense that Creek was a fling for her. She liked him, a lot. And Anna liked her, for that.
Anna sat on a too-soft chair with her legs curled beneath her, and stared, running mental movies of her time with Creek. Glass tried to read a Times; Harper wandered.
‘‘Look,’’ Harper finally said to Anna. ‘‘We’re not gonna do your pal any good sitting around.’’
‘‘I’m not leaving until I know how he is,’’ Anna said.
‘‘Neither am I,’’ Glass said.
Harper pulled a chair out of the line beside Anna’s, and faced it toward her. ‘‘What have you been doing the last couple of days?’’
The question had a rhetorical sound to it, and Anna shrugged and opened her mouth and Harper cut her off: ‘‘I’ll tell you what. You’ve been shuttling around from one bunch of cops to another. Santa Monica, L.A., Venice, these guys up in Burbank, whoever they were . . .’’
‘‘North Hollywood . . .’’
‘‘Whatever. And you know what? All those cops are hoping that somebody else’ll get this guy, because they ain’t got squat, and they don’t have enough time to chase him with everything else they gotta do.’’
‘‘We’re chasing him,’’ Glass said grimly.
‘‘C’mon,’’ Harper said to her. ‘‘How many hours will you put on it? The only reason L.A. tolerates me running around is because I used to work there, and they’re hoping I might turn something up and call them. They just don’t have the time.’’
‘‘They’ll make the time,’’ Anna said grimly. ‘‘The only reason this guy isn’t a big story is that nobody’s paid attention to him. If I want them to pay attention, they will.’’
‘‘Oh, bullshit,’’ Harper said. ‘‘How’re you gonna do that? You can’t . . .’’
‘‘You don’t know anything about television,’’ Anna said, interrupting. ‘‘You look at anybody in this place’’—she waved at the emergency room in general—‘‘and I could do a story on him—or her—and I could sell it. Anybody. You, me, the nurse guy, the guy with the cut. A serial killer? Everybody would take it, if it was done right. And I’ll tell you what—the cops don’t want to chase him, I’ll put them on CNN tomorrow morning. Then they’ll chase him.’’
Harper was shaking his head: ‘‘All right. Maybe you could do that, but . . .’’
‘‘You’d just start a cluster-fuck,’’ Glass said, interrupting him. ‘‘They’d bring in the nine patrolmen with the flattest feet and put them in suits and have them go around with notepads, playing investigator, and nothing would get done. I mean, you’d just panic them—us—and piss ’em off.’’
‘‘I’ve dealt with a couple of these guys, the fruitcakes,’’ Harper said intently. ‘‘They’re crazy and screwed up but most of them are . . . sort of smart. Twisted, but not stupid. You sic the cops on him really heavy—you put him on TV— and he’ll love it. And then he’ll kill somebody else just to keep things going. One of your friends, maybe. And he’ll be looking for you, too. He’ll be out there—and if the cops don’t get him, he’ll get you, eventually.’’
‘‘Are you trying to scare me?’’ Anna asked coldly.
122 john sandford
‘‘Yes. ’Cause you should be scared. Now what I’m suggesting is, we get a little proactive . . .’’
‘‘Proactive? You sound like the Long Beach chamber of commerce.’’
‘‘What I’m saying is, you talk to me: about your friends, about Creek’s friends, about the dopers you’ve known, about weird shit you’ve seen the last couple of months. . . . Creek must know some dopers, living where he does, there’s dope coming through the Marina all the time, and with your job . . .’’
‘‘You’ve been down to look at Creek’s place?’’ Glass asked.
‘‘Sure. Looked at his boat, looked at his house . . .’’ He turned back to Anna. ‘‘But getting back to the point: talk to me. Let me debrief you. The shooter—you know him. We can work out a few ideas together, and I’ll check them out.’’
Anna said, ‘‘Look, Jake, I don’t know what’s going on, but I really think you’re wasting your time. This can’t have anything to do with your son. If you think about it . . .’’
He spread his hands, then touched her knee: ‘‘So maybe it doesn’t. I’d like to find out for sure, though. That’s the only thing I’ve got—I want to know what that dope was about.’’
‘‘If you find the dealer, what’re you gonna do?’’ Glass asked.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ he said.
‘‘Kill him?’’ asked Anna.
He looked away from them, down the hall. ‘‘I don’t know. I doubt it. But I won’t know for sure until I get there.’’
They were still talking when a doctor came down the hall, surgery gown showing a half-dozen blood spots, his mask pulled down under his chin. He pulled off his cap as he came up, looked at Anna and asked, a little doubt in his voice, ‘‘Are you Mr. Creek’s relatives?’’
Anna and Glass were on their feet: ‘‘How is he?’’
‘‘You don’t look like sisters.’’
‘‘Different mom,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Tell us . . .’’
Again, their intensity banished doubt about the connection and the doc smiled gravely and said, ‘‘Unless there’s something we didn’t find, he should be okay.’’
‘‘Oh, thank God,’’ Anna said, and Glass started to leak tears again.
‘‘But he’s hurt badly,’’ the surgeon continued. ‘‘The lung will repair itself fairly quickly, but there’s muscle damage in the chest wall and the back muscles, and that’ll take a while.’’
‘‘When’s he gonna be able to talk?’’ Harper asked.
‘‘Tomorrow, probably. He’s going to be pretty sleepy for a couple of days, at least. Then he’s going to hurt—but I doubt he’ll be in here a week.’’
‘‘Did the police tell you about the circumstances of the shooting?’’ Harper asked.
The doc nodded: ‘‘Yes. We’ll list him under an alias—we do it all the time in battering cases. If somebody doesn’t know exactly where to find him, they won’t.’’
‘‘Aw, that’s great,’’ Anna said.
Glass started sniffing again, and then turned to Anna and said, ‘‘I don’t cry for anything. Ever.’’
Anna nodded. ‘‘Neither do I,’’ she said, another tear rolling down her cheek.
They stayed until Creek had gone to the recovery room, then Glass left in a hurry: ‘‘I’m moving in here,’’ she declared. ‘‘I’ve got to get some stuff together, and get some time off.’’
‘‘Moving in?’’ Anna asked.
‘‘The guy may be stalking you, but he’s killing the people around you,’’ Glass said. ‘‘I’m gonna get a chair and sit in his room with a gun.’’
When she was gone, Harper and Anna stood by the side of the street, the sun beating down. ‘‘What’re you gonna do?’’ Harper asked.
‘‘Try to get some sleep,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Try to think of some names.’’
‘‘Think of some names?’’
‘‘Yeah. I’m gonna talk to you. And something else.’’
‘‘What’s that?’’
‘‘When you go looking for this guy,’’ Anna said, in a way that left no doubt, ‘‘I’m coming with you.’’
twelve
Anna made lists.
She slept, exhausted, but her brain made lists, the crazies, the dopers, the men who’d come on to her in the past six
months, anyone who might have fixated on her.
She dreamed, twisting in the percale sheets, of the man at the truck, the shooter: a big man, with something familiar to him, a way of holding his shoulders. And the voice: he’d said only one word, her name, but he’d spoken it before, in her hearing. She knew this man.
But who was it? She found herself paying attention to Harper, when he spoke her name. Was the voice the same? She didn’t think so—but now she was confusing her memories of the shooting with other moments, with other people calling her name.
She made lists.
A thump—a human sound—from downstairs. She rose out of her sleep like a diver coming to the surface, breaking through, gasping, looking around, thinking, gun. But she had no gun, the gun was in the truck.
Then another thump, running water . . . and she recognized the thump as a toilet seat going up, then coming down, the water in the downstairs toilet.
Harper. He’d been sleeping on the couch. He wouldn’t go away. She pushed herself up, glanced at the bedroom door. Closed, not locked.
Harper? No. She knew why Harper was here.
When she came down from the bedroom, hair still wet from the shower, Harper was putting at a paper circle on the living room carpet. ‘‘Your floor breaks about an inch toward the back wall, on a fifteen-foot putt,’’ he said.
‘‘Do tell.’’ She went on past and picked up the phone in the kitchen.
‘‘He was awake for an hour about noon, but he’s sleeping again. He’s doing fine and without complications, he could be out this week,’’ Harper said. He was squatting, looking over a ball at the paper circle.
She put the phone back on the hook: ‘‘How is that possible? This week?’’
‘‘They push them out in a hurry,’’ Harper said. He stood up, and hovered over the ball, then looked at Anna. ‘‘Are you going to say something before I putt?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘I’d hate to have you say something right in the middle of my backswing.’’
‘‘No, go ahead.’’
He moved the putter head back an inch, and Anna said, ‘‘Watch it.’’ The stroke came through, and the ball missed the paper circle by two inches. ‘‘That’s fuckin’ hilarious,’’ he said.
‘‘Are we gonna talk, or are you gonna spend the afternoon playing with your putter?’’
They walked out to Jerry’s, into the sun, Anna quiet, head down, Harper carrying the putter, swinging it, balancing it, turning it like a walking stick. The afternoon traffic was already building toward the rush, and they had to wait before crossing Pacific to the restaurant.
‘‘You’re not scared enough,’’ Harper said, as they walked.
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Most people, if a madman was stalking them, they couldn’t move,’’ he said.
She thought about it as they crossed the street, and said, ‘‘Maybe I’m burned out on being scared. Going out every night, we see all kinds of stuff, people shot and stabbed and squashed in cars and burned to death. When you see enough of it, you’ve got to assume it won’t happen to you. You must’ve felt like that when you were a cop.’’
‘‘Nope. Never did. I was scared shitless all the time.’’
Logan had parked the truck in the restaurant lot after the shooting, and now Anna unlocked the door, knelt on the seat and fished in the hideout box for the .357, got it, turned, and caught Harper appreciating her ass. She hopped out of the truck and dropped the pistol in her jacket pocket.
‘‘I thought you kept the gun at home,’’ Harper said, grinning. He knew he’d been caught, and he wasn’t the least abashed by it; he twirled the putter like a baton.
‘‘I do, but I had it last night when Creek got shot, and I didn’t want the cops to take it.’’
Jerry’s was Anna’s regular spot, with comfortable booths and decent coffee, mostly empty in the late afternoon, the waiters bustling around, getting ready for the dinner rush. The owner, Donna Tow—Jerry’s ex-wife—came over with coffee and said, ‘‘Heard about Creek. I called the hospital and they said he’d be okay.’’
‘‘Looks like it,’’ Anna said. They talked for a few more minutes, Anna giving her a quick account of the shooting.
‘‘Too goddamn many guns around,’’ Tow said, as she headed back toward the kitchen.
Anna and Harper slid into a booth, and a waitress brought a pot of coffee and two cups. ‘‘So what are we doing?’’ Anna asked Harper.
‘‘Having you along won’t make it easier,’’ Harper said.
‘‘It might; I’m probably smarter than you are,’’ Anna said. ‘‘
That could help,’’ he said. He grinned again: he wouldn’t be goaded.
‘‘So what . . .’’ The grin faded and he squared himself in the booth and said, ‘‘Names. The whole thing is connected to O’Brien and Jacob: You shoot Jacob’s . . . fall . . . and the next thing, the guy is coming after you and kills O’Brien and MacAllister, who also happen to be connected by drugs. Somewhere in there, we’ll find his track.’’
‘‘But I didn’t know that much about Jason,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We’d done a few things over at UCLA, Creek and Louis and me, and he was taking film classes, and heard about us. He came up with a story—this was a year or so ago—and we shot it and sold it. So he started looking for stuff, and whenever he’d come up with something, he rode along, shot it, and got a cut, ten percent.’’
‘‘But you weren’t social.’’
‘‘No. He’d get me by phone, or if I needed an extra guy, I’d call him up. He was good with a camera and he had a cool head when things were getting rough. He’d keep shooting no matter what . . .’’
‘‘I know.’’ A sudden deep sadness crossed his face, and Anna reached out and touched his hand on the coffee cup. ‘‘I’m really sorry about your kid. I mean, I really am.’’
‘‘Yeah.’’ He looked out the window, at a woman skating by in the street, Walkman phones on her ears. ‘‘Christ, I hardly knew him. I mean, I’d see him all the time—but I didn’t know him. It was like, I could get to know him later. My ex-wife, I think she did a pretty good job with him, now this . . .’’ He shook himself and said, ‘‘So do you have any ideas about O’Brien? Where we start?’’
‘‘I know one name and face—Bob—and I’ve heard about a couple of other people. But if we can find Bob, we might have something.’’
Bob, she told Harper, was also in film at UCLA. A few months earlier, Jason had called about a possible story. They’d arranged to meet in Santa Monica, and when they did, Bob was with him. They were both high.
‘‘They either shared the dope or shared the dealer,’’ she said. ‘‘One way or another . . .’’
‘‘So let’s go talk to Bob,’’ Harper said, pushing the coffee away.
‘‘Hospital first,’’ Anna said.
Creek was in a third-floor critical care unit, sleeping, an IV dripping into his arm. Pam Glass was curled up on a chair next to the bed, reading a magazine, wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing that morning. When she saw them coming, she smiled, weakly, and stood up. ‘‘He should sleep for another hour or two,’’ she whispered.
‘‘Have you been home?’’ Anna asked.
‘‘No, I just went down to the corner for a sandwich. I’m okay.’’
‘‘God, Pam . . .’’ They both turned and looked at Creek. His hair had been tamed, and was pulled back under his head. His face was pale under the sailor’s tan, his cheekbones more prominent than Anna remembered. And he looked, she thought, almost . . . old.
‘‘An hour or two?’’ Anna asked.
Pam nodded. ‘‘What are you guys doing?’’
‘‘Looking around,’’ Harper said.
Glass hardened up: ‘‘Look, I know you were a hotshot when you were with the sheriff’s department, but I don’t think we really need . . .’’
Harper grinned at her and said, ‘‘Shhh . . .’’
‘‘W
hat?’’
‘‘Just a minute ago you were really worried about Creek. That’s a very nice aspect of your personality.’’ He looked at Anna and tipped his head toward the door. ‘‘Let’s go. We can be back in two hours.’’
On the way to UCLA, Harper said, ‘‘I’ve got a question, but I don’t know exactly how to phrase it.’’
‘‘Think real hard,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Pretend the question is a putt.’’
‘‘Okay. The thing is, you’re an interesting woman. We’re just starting to know each other, and I figure we can go one of two ways—we can have a pure business relationship, or we can think about maybe, you know, doing something together. I mean, not for sure, but leave the possibility open, since you don’t seem to be involved with anybody. You know what I mean?’’
‘‘No. I don’t think I understood the last sentence at all; it was too complicated,’’ Anna said. She understood. She was also enjoying herself.
‘‘I’m saying that I’ve been tempted to come on to you, just a little bit,’’ Harper said.
‘‘A little bit tempted, or a little bit come on?’’
He changed lanes with a lurch, cutting off a Mercedes that had been coming up from behind. ‘‘A lot tempted to come on a little bit.’’
‘‘Okay, I’ve got that. Go ahead.’’ She put her feet on the dashboard.
‘‘But if there’s no point, I’ll forget it,’’ he said. ‘‘Give up. On the other hand, if there is a point, then I’ll continue to be tolerant and charming and liberal and shit, in my own cowboy way.’’
‘‘Jesus,’’ Anna said, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘‘Cowboy. You were probably born in Reseda.’’
‘‘So is there a point, or not?’’
‘‘Well,’’ she said, letting her eyelids droop, ‘‘I wouldn’t totally give up.’’
‘‘Totally,’’ he said, satisfied.
Tracing Bob took time. The administration offices were closed, but they found a course guide in the library. Anna thought Bob and Jason had been taking an editing course together: they found a course description that might be right, located the classrooms on a map. They got into the building as a kid was coming out, then walked through the hallways, looking for someone who might be a teacher. They didn’t find any, but after talking to a few students, scored with two pale-faced kids in an editing room.
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