Roarke stood for a moment taking it all in, then walked the outer paths, passing sleeping clumps of homeless camped out under the trees, thinking, but really just letting himself be seen by… whoever might be watching.
He found a bench in a cluster of bushy palm trees and sat for a while contemplating the city lights through the soup of fog. Then he stood.
Leaving the case file on the bench.
His heart was beating faster already. He would arrest her if he had the chance. He was crystal clear on that point. But as far as he was concerned, they could arrest her later. If a few more pimps, child molesters or rapists died in the next week, so be it, if Cara knew anything that could help him catch the Reaper.
He did some stretching as he moved out of the grove of trees, more than usually aware of the Glock hanging heavy at his waist, and then moved forward, easing into a slow run up the steep incline. Close as the park was to his house, he rarely used the track for running. It was too crowded with nannies and kids and dogs by day. But at night and deserted like this it would do, and pass the time. He hadn’t had a chance to run in weeks and it was irritating to feel himself losing muscle tone. His thighs and hamstrings warmed and loosened and he picked up speed on his second lap, running full out for his third and fourth, recapturing the sense of power in his own body. He slowed for one last round, riding the buzz of endorphins, feeling the knotted parts of his soul unraveling, knowing he was an idiot for not making time for this every single day.
And that was when he saw her.
He saw
something
.
A figure, ghost pale and slim, standing in the palms.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Just as quickly the shape was gone, slipping into the trees.
After one suspended second he bolted forward, legs pumping, barreling across the grass toward the grove.
His heart was pounding out of his chest when he hit the palm grove. He stopped in the midst of fallen fronds, looking around him.
The trees were not so densely packed that someone could hide. It was only the thick mist that had been concealing. There was no sign of anyone.
He ran through the trees, dodging the thick trunks, looking around him frantically… but aside from the sleeping lumps of the homeless, there was no one else stirring.
His heart had slowed, but it started to race again as he moved back through the palm sanctuary, approaching the bench…
He stared ahead in the dark, and his heart spasmed.
The contents of the file were scattered, on the bench, on the ground, pages everywhere. Pieces of a photograph were torn and flung like confetti. He stooped and gathered a few of the ragged squares. It was the wild-eyed mug shot of Santos that had been destroyed.
He stood, moved slowly to the bench, where the file folder itself lay, intact. The word
NO
was scrawled on the face of it with the pen he had left inside the file. Huge, angry slashes.
The word paralyzed him. What did she mean?
No
as in Santos was not the Reaper? Or just a
No
of protest against old horrors?
He turned and stared into the drifting mist.
She was here. Where
?
Where could she have disappeared
?
He focused on the one building inside the park: a tiny clubhouse with restrooms underneath. Too small to make much of a hiding place, but he ran toward the structure and circled the building, trying all the doors, alert to any sound. The doors were all closed, locked.
He stepped away and turned toward the hill, scanned the park through the mist. There was only one other place she could have vanished so quickly. In the shallow ravine that housed the Muni tracks, there was a bridge and trestle.
He sprinted up the slope toward the tracks, and stopped at the top, panting, staring down toward the bridge.
Across the tracks was a slope with trees and thick undergrowth, with any number of places for anyone to crouch in and hide. He scanned the shrubbery, looking for a flash of blond…
From the bridge came the hollow thud of rock on rock.
He sidestepped down the slope, heading for the trestle even as it crossed his mind that she had killed in spots like this more than once, not just Ramirez but also the Preacherman, a home-grown anarchist who had been making a bomb to set off at a Portland street fair — before Cara had sliced his neck open in a culvert.
As Roarke reached the bridge he pressed himself against the wall of the arch and drew his weapon automatically. The place felt resonant as he tried to sense a presence.
He leaned against the wall, his thoughts racing.
He highly doubted she was armed with more than a razor. But he had no idea what she might do if she felt cornered. It was like approaching a tigress: if threatened, he had no doubt she would attack instinctively and completely.
“Cara,” he spoke aloud, and his voice echoed in the arch of the bridge. His eyes searched the darknesses beyond. His whole body was humming but he had no idea if she was there.
“I think the Reaper is out there. I don’t know how, but… it’s him. If it’s not Santos, it’s someone.” He listened, focusing every nerve he had to hear. “We don’t have much time. If you can help—” he stopped mid-sentence, remembering that Cara’s idea of help was different from the rest of the world.
He held his breath, listening to the silence. There was a tautness in his stomach and thighs that he knew was more than adrenaline.
Almost desperate, now, he took one more shot. “If there’s anything you can tell me, I need to know. You’re the only one who does know.” Again he strained all of his senses into the night, listening… hoping for some sign. And then he spoke words he didn’t know he was going to say until they were in his mouth. “I’m going to get him. I swear to you, I’ll get him.”
He stared into the darkness, willing her to step out, dreading her stepping out… not for what she would do, but for what he would have to do.
He waited for what started to seem like forever. But there was no one.
Chapter Twenty-five
The crime scene photos were gone.
The images of the Lelands killed in their beds, the slaughtered children. Cara had taken them.
Roarke stood at the bench looking down at the open folder with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d searched all around the hill, the nearby palm groves, thinking she might just have scattered the photos in her frenzy. But they were gone.
What she would do with them, he had no idea. But he realized he’d completely crossed a line.
Images raced through his mind.
The pimp in a lake of blood. The carnage at the cement plant; ten men lying dead in the sand
.
There was no telling what Cara would do with the knowledge that the Reaper was out there. Whether or not it was true, letting her think it was like unleashing a search-and-destroy missile, if such a thing had existed.
She had been here, and he had lost her, and whatever blood came next, it was on his hands.
***
There is another park that divides the upper Haight from the lower, Buena Vista Park, a hill that has been host to more hippies and homeless than almost any other in the city.
It is there she comes to rest, in the hours before dawn. The cold is numbing, but though her room is just three blocks away, she too jittery to be confined inside, and she needs to listen now, listen to the night and to the moon.
From the hill she can see the fog-shrouded bay, and Alcatraz, the dark fortress-like former prison on the island in the middle of the bay, with its even darker history: men going slowly or not so slowly insane under unimaginable conditions. Men who deserved to be there… and perhaps some who didn’t.
The crime scene photos are spread out on the grass in front of her, like screenshots taken of a nightmare, her own nightmare. The echo of screams is in the shadows of the shots.
She feels panic rising, panic and darkness and fury.
There are paths converging. The present: the flaming girl who now knows her like no one has ever known her, and the danger that means. And the past, the monster showing its face again.
The pimp in the tunnel, the family slaughtered in their beds
.
Two tracks, two poles. She feels her head splitting apart.
And as she huddles into herself, her hair falling over her face, she can still hear Roarke’s voice, calling to her in the dark. She can see him, a shadow under the bridge, his body tense, his weapon drawn. She has no idea what will happen if she steps out.
But she knows this, all of this, for what it is.
A trap. A trap. A trap
.
She beats her hands on the cold ground and feels the screams rising, rising into the night, rising to the moon, and she does not know if the screams are the earth’s or her own.
Chapter Twenty-six
Roarke nearly jumped out of his skin as his phone buzzed in his trouser pocket. He looked around him, orienting himself. Home. The night was still dark outside his living room. He’d gotten himself upstairs, back through the back gate and up to his flat, where he’d sat for what he’d intended to be only a moment. Instead he’d fallen asleep in the armchair.
He dug for the phone, lifted it to his face.
A familiar voice said into his ear, “We got her.”
Roarke’s pulse spiked with adrenaline and disorientation.
Got her
?
Cara
?
Here
?
Did she follow him
? He had no idea who he was talking to or what was being said to him. After a split second he identified the caller.
“Mills?”
“No, your mother,” the homicide inspector snorted on the other end. “The fuck did you think?”
“You got…”
Mills said impatiently. “Hello? Is this
Special
Agent Roarke I’m talkin’ to? I got the
girl
.”
Roarke finally realized Mills meant the young street hustler. Jade. “You arrested her?”
Mills made a scornful sound. “Yah, and have Rachel Elliott riding my ass from here to eternity?” A lustful note crept into his voice. “Although come to think, that’s not the worst scenario I can envision. However, no, the girl is not arrested. She’s sort of being held for possession.”
“
Sort
of?” Roarke repeated.
“I’ve got her for possession but I gave her the choice: talk to us or get busted.”
“Is she talking?”
Did she see it
? was what he meant.
Is she a real witness
?
“So far, baby, she ain’t said shit. No, that’s wrong, she did say ‘shit.’ Also ‘motherfucker,’ ‘cunting bastard,’ some other things about my anatomy and what I could do with it, all very creative. But nothing useful, if you see my point.”
“Mills, I never see your point.”
“My point is, I don’t know how long I can hold her, this being the People’s Republic of San Francisco and some people thinkin’ that other people have rights and all. And I gotta say, this kid is jumpy as hell. She’s going to rabbit as soon as I cut her loose. No one’s ever gwan see her again. So if you want at her, you need to tell me now.”
“Yeah. I want to talk to her.”
Mills was holding Jade at San Francisco’s Juvenile Hall, on Woodside Avenue.
Roarke jumped into the shower to wake himself up, and leaned back against the tiled wall as the water ran over him.
Maybe Jade is the key. Maybe we can arrest Cara before she does something… inevitable
.
His thoughts turned to the trestle.
Had she been there
?
Had he felt her
?
He stood in the steaming water, water teasing over his skin… and felt again the unbearable tension from the tunnel, his thighs and abdomen tightening with desire, his body straining toward a presence in the dark…
Abruptly he reached for the faucet handles and shut the water off.
He came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around him, and sat on the bed. Then he reached for his phone on the nightstand and dialed Rachel Elliott.
When she picked up, he said, “It’s Matt Roarke,” not realizing he had used his first name until it was out. He instantly regretted it.
“Hello,” she said, and waited, but he could feel the suspended breath in the pause.
“I’m sorry to call you so late. It’s about Jade.”
A silence, and then a voice braced with dread. “What happened?”
“She’s all right,” Roarke assured her quickly. “Mills arrested her but he’s not going to hold her. But I need to question her and I was hoping you’d come down and sit in.” In California, law enforcement officials were able to question minors without the supervision of a parent or guardian, but he thought Rachel’s presence might help. Or not. Or maybe there was some other reason he needed her there that he wasn’t letting himself acknowledge.
He could feel her thinking on the other end of the line, a live, crackling energy.
“You’ll release her to me when you’re done?” she finally asked.
“Of course.”
“Not that she’ll stay,” Rachel said. “All right, I’ll be there.”
The building was modernistic, geometrical shapes of raw concrete with curved walls leading up to it. The halls were shining and clean, the grand entryway was three stories of almost all glass, with big bright green and yellow circles patterned on the floor. But it was still jail. Roarke signed in, took off shoes and belt and emptied his pockets, passed his belongings through the X-ray machine as he went through security, and headed back into the holding area. He was feeling an anxiety that only increased as he passed by bars and gates, various holding cells, and an interview room just as bleak as any in an adult jail.
Mills was on a bench, scrolling through email on his phone. He rose when he saw Roarke and his eyes ran over Roarke’s suit. “Aw, you didn’t have to dress up for me.” He gestured down the hall and Roarke fell into step with him.