Detective William Tully directed
his center-mounted spotlight at the 1988 Ford Topaz parked in front of a
dead eucalyptus tree in the middle of the hospital parking lot. He would've
recognized that crap color anywhere. He got out and approached the
stolen vehicle with caution, then checked out the interior-Mardi Gras
beads, junk-food wrappers, a tiny beer bottle dangling from the key chain.
It was Jack's car, all right. "Shit." Tully had been trained to
show no emotion, but his heart beat out a nasty vibrato as he holstered
his weapon. One thing was certain-if Roy Gaines had escaped from Jack's
custody and stolen his wheels, then Jack was probably dead. "Jesus,
Jack. What the hell happened here?"
Tully's partner was the smartest
cop he knew. Jack Makowski might bend the rules a little, but he would never
deliberately put himself in harm's way. Tully held on to a thread of hope
as he keyed his portable. "30H24 to dispatch, where's my backup?"
"On its way," dispatch
responded drily.
Tully wiped his face and blinked
the sweat out of his eyes. It had reached ninety-nine degrees in downtown
Los Angeles today, breaking the day's 1926 record. Nobody smiled in this
heat. He stood in the dark and noticed that half the parking lot was in
shadows. He'd read somewhere that of the thousands of streetlights in
the Greater Los Angeles area, at least 10 percent went out each week.
That was a whole lot of darkness. The night sky was starless. You could
probably see stars if there were any, but there weren't. Not in this desolate
part of town.
Tully had grown up in a neighborhood
much like this one, where the backyards bordered the freeways and a long
thin strip of smog settled over buildings like a permanent bad mood. As
a boy, he used to hold his mother's gin and tonic while she drove them to
the supermarket in her rust-bucket Chevy. The wipers didn't wipe anymore.
You could play only one side of any cassette in the broken tape player.
They would listen to Gary Lewis and the Playboys or Love Unlimited Orchestra.
The glove compartment was jammed shut from the time his mother's boyfriend
had kicked it in. Who knew what was inside that battered glove compartment?
You couldn't pry it open. Young Tully had tried.
Now a black-and-white pulled up behind
him,:*and Tully stood squinting into its brilliant high beams! The
lights cut out, and two LAPD officers stepped out of the vehicle. The older
cop had a pinched expression, as if he didn't have anything to be excited
about. The rookie was jittery. "
Whaddya
got
for us, Detective?"
"There's a fugitive at large.
I want you to sit on this vehicle. If he comes back, I want you to grab
him."
"What's he look like?"
"Male Caucasian, six foot
three, black hair, brown eyes. Goes by the name of Roy Gaines."
The officers eyed one another.
The De Campo Beach Strangler arrest had been in all the papers, and Jack
w a local hero.
Now Tully heard a small
thunk
on the side door panel. There was another
thunk
on the windshield. June bugs. They were early
this year. It was this heat. The mercury had shot up to August levels. He
felt a tap on his arm-another June bug-and a chill ran through him.
Goddammit
, Jack, what the hell happened here?
Daisy sensed a presence in the
operating bay with her and turned around. The young Hispanic nurse was
standing in the doorway, the same nurse she'd seen wheeling a warming
bed into the E.R. earlier.
"Sorry to interrupt,"
she said softly, "but whenever you're ready, I've got something to
show you."
Daisy nodded absently.
"I'll come back later."
"No. I'm ready." Daisy
released Anna's hand, a twinge of pain shooting up the right side of her
body. After one last look, she followed the nurse back through the swinging
doors and had no idea where they were going. She didn't ask.
They took an elevator up to the
eighth floor. The nurse's right eyelid drooped a little, the only flaw in
her otherwise pretty face. Her hair was the color of powdered cinnamon.
When the polished metal doors whooshed open, Daisy followed her down
another corridor and into a nursery full of wailing babies.
The screams of the newborns were
like paper cuts-sharp and clean and slow to bleed. Most babies were
born with day and night reversed. They slept during the day and became
very lively at night, and that was certainly true now. These babies cried
and squirmed and waved their little arms, wanting their mothers' attention.
There were colorful posters on the walls and lots of pamphlets about
breast-feeding. A small crowd had gathered behind the viewing window-anxious
fathers peering in through the glass and pointing out the new arrivals
to their excited siblings and proud grandparents. One man held his five-year-old
up to the glass so that he could see into the warming beds.
"It's a boy," the nurse
said, bending over one of the beds and cradling a bundle in her arms.
"Six pounds. His
Apgar
score is 8, which is
excellent."
Daisy didn't understand.
"Would you like to hold
him?" The nurse handed her the baby wrapped in a blue blanket. The
blanket had snowflakes and polar bears all over it.
Daisy's heart pushed into her
throat.
"Go on," the nurse said.
"Hold him for a while."
The baby squirmed in protest. The
skin around his mouth looked pale, a sure sign of stress. She couldn't begin
to comprehend this tiny trembling existence and wanted to hand him back
immediately, but the nurse's arms were folded across her chest. The baby
clung to Daisy's finger with his perfect little hand. Her finger was like
a log compared to his tiny grasping ones. After a moment, he settled down
and, gazing up at her, gurgled pleasantly. There was a pink tinge to his
cheeks. "Does he have a name?" the nurse asked. "I don't
know. I don't think so." "Ooh, so handsome," the nurse cooed,
chucking him under the chin. "Ooh, so big and strong."
The baby burped, and Daisy drew
back, utterly lost. His dark blue eyes would take a few weeks to show their
true color. Her thumb was the size of a tree trunk, and he clung to it with
his perfect little hand and watched her with his deep-seated eyes. His
thick dark hair had little bearing on what his hair would eventually look
like. Most Caucasian babies were born with dark blue eyes and thick dark
hair.
He shook with his whole body, as
if he were excited to be there. She wanted to put him down, but the nurse
had walked away. "Hello?" These overworked nurses were very good
at ignoring people.
Daisy rocked her sister's baby
gently in her arms. He had the Russian roulette of genotypes, with two
bullets in the chamber. If Anna was a carrier of
Stier-Zellar's
disease, then her son might also be a carrier. That was the good news. If
both parents turned out to be carriers, then they could transmit their
two mutated genes to their infant, possibly giving him the fatal disease.
But
Stier-Zellar's
was extremely rare, so the
odds were on his side. Looking at him now, Daisy decided that the chances
of both parents being carriers were remote. Still, he'd have to be tested
right away, just to make sure.
The genetics of schizophrenia
was much more complex. The role that genes played in the disease was
still being debated. Daisy shivered, not wanting to think about that
right now. It was too much for her to handle.
No wonder the babies were shrieking.
It was chilly up here in the nursery. She walked over to the plate glass
and stood bouncing the baby gently up and down. He seemed to like that. He
had a button nose and seashell ears and gazed at her with such questioning
eyes she couldn't help falling in love with him.
"Hello, Anna's baby," she
said tenderly. "You can go to sleep now."
She caught sight of their reflection
in the plate glass and realized that she had become Anna's vision of
the Madonna and Child. Her sister had left her with a brand-new worry, like
a shadow she couldn't shake. Here in her arms was a tiny human being, and
somebody was going to have to take care of him.
The hospital's facade of metal
and glass evoked the bland industrial forms of the 1970s. Tully tripped
up a series of broad cement steps into a large lobby the color of twilight
at dusk and quickly located the information kiosk. He got directions
from a crusty-eyed clerk whose makeup had caked in the cracks of her smile.
Up on the eighth floor, several
tired-looking nurses pointed him into a quiet corner of the nursery,
where Daisy Hubbard sat rocking a baby. "Get up," he said, breathing
harder than he should have as he moved swiftly toward her. "Roy Gaines
is on the premises." She glanced up. "What?" "Come with
me."
There were fine lines of despair
on her face. He escorted her into one of the birthing rooms, where everything
was done up in Easter-egg colors. She sat on the edge of an adjustable
bed with the baby in her arms. "He's in the hospital?" she asked
anxiously.
"You'll be safe in here. See
those two officers?"
Outside the door, he'd posted a pair
of security guards.
"They'll protect you. Just
tell me what happened."
She drew her slender shoulders together.
"I found Anna in an abandoned house on Westland Avenue, so I called
Jack to tell him where I was. When he didn't pick up, I left a message on
his voice mail and gave him the address. Half an hour later, Roy Gaines
showed up and started shooting at us. But Anna had a gun. She shot him in
the shoulder, I think, and he left."
"She had a gun?"
Daisy nodded. "We'd both be dead
otherwise."
"Then what?"
"He took off in Jack's car.
The ambulance brought us here, but the doctors weren't able to save my
sister's life." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
"Where's Jack?" she asked with shiny eyes. "Is he all
right?"
"Let's not worry about that
right now."
"Did something happen to
him?"
Tully's hands were fisted shut.
She would probably find out about it sooner or later, so he said,
"Look, he got the prisoner released to his custody this evening. We
think they drove out to the Angeles National Forest to look for your
sister's grave. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but there's a forest fire
raging in the canyons east of L.A. It's spreading fast. We don't know if
he's up there or not. We don't know anything for certain."
"Oh my God."
"Stay put." He turned to
leave, but she stopped him.
"He'll be looking for Anna,"
she said. "If Roy Gaines is here in the hospital? He doesn't know
she's gone yet. He'll be looking for her."
Tully nodded and went back out into
the corridor, where he got on the phone and called the E.R. After talking
to three different nurses, he found out that Anna's body had been transported
to the hospital morgue, which was located in the basement. He also found
out that a man fitting Gaines's description had been looking for Anna
Hubbard, and that the nurses had directed him to the morgue.
Tully hurried along the corridor,
the odor of disinfectant reaching his nostrils. A maintenance engineer
was mopping the floor with some strong germicidal detergent, and Tully
felt a tightening in his chest. He had to get to the morgue. He stood impatiently
in front of the elevators, pushing the Down button over and over again,
his thoughts falling flat on the polished floor. Jack must be dead. It
hadn't hit him until just this moment. Jack was probably dead. "What's
taking you so long?" he snapped at the slow-moving elevators.
Stairs were faster. He pushed
through a fire door coated with about fifty layers of paint and left the
eighth floor without a clue as to where he was going. His legs carried
him down a flight before his knees buckled and he had to lean against
the railing. A grim scenario kept playing in his head: Jack got the prisoner
released to his custody using the falsified PER form, then drove him to
a remote canyon, where Gaines somehow wrestled the gun away and shot
Jack dead. The prisoner then started a fire before fleeing the scene
in Jack's car. They would find his body tomorrow or the next day, burned beyond
recognition. They'd locate it only after the fire crews had put out the
flames. Burned beyond recognition. Jesus. He'd just seen Jack yesterday,
that charming idiot.
Tully smiled sadly to himself while
standing in a pool of yellow light.
Dammit
, Jack.
You threw it all away, and for what? Jack loved to solve things. He loved to
rescue people, especially pretty women. He believed in fair play. He
believed in justice. Stand back. Step aside. Here comes St. Makowski,
sacrificing everything for principle.
Now Tully heard an echo in the stairwell.
It sounded like footsteps. He leaned over the railing and caught a
glimpse of a figure disappearing through the fire door directly below
him. "Hey!" he shouted as the door slammed shut with a
whump
.
He grabbed the banister and chased
down another flight of stairs, then wheeled for the landing. He pushed
through the heavy fire door in hot pursuit of… nobody. There was nobody
there. Still clinging to his suspicions, he moved swiftly down the
brightly lit corridor, chasing phantoms into each room.
The hospital rooms were dark,
since it was after midnight and most of the patients were sound asleep.
Some were still up, though, restlessly roaming the corridors, senior
citizens pushing their walkers with irritable defiance. He hurried
past the sixth-floor waiting room with its TV monitor mounted on the
wall and its Day-Glo color scheme. He flew past the nurses' station, where
he caught snippets of conversation, then glanced at the directory as
he ran past-Medical, Pediatric, Surgery, ICU. The lettering was
eye-chart small. He was on the geriatrics ward.
Tully approached a bank of elevators
where a few elderly insomniacs shuffled on and off, then spotted a dark-haired
male pushing a laundry cart. The hallway was only eight feet wide, and
there was a serious traffic flow problem due to colliding wheelchairs.
The suspect was a dozen yards ahead of him now, his shoes squeaking on
the rubber tiles.
Tully's heart hitched. He drew
his weapon and held it close to his side, not wanting to alarm anyone. He
trailed the suspect past rushed-off-their-feet nurses and orderlies.
Ahead of him, several large columns bracketed the lounge area, and now
the suspect made an abrupt right turn.
Tully drew his weapon. "Police!
Freeze!" His booming voice sent shock waves throughout the corridor,
senior citizens piling to a stop all around him, their eyes rheumy with
bewilderment.
The suspect turned with distress
on his face. His laundry cart rolled into a water fountain. "Don't
shoot!" He raised his hands in the air.
It wasn't Roy Gaines.
"Shit." Tully holstered
his handgun and made for the stairwell again.