‘‘Where are you?’’
‘‘On the way.’’
‘‘I don’t think you should.’’
‘‘I can identify her,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I saw her twelve hours ago. Are you there?’’ she asked.
‘‘On the way.’’
‘‘See you there.’’ And she rang off, before he could object.
‘‘There’’ was a cluster of vehicles with light bars, a halfdozen men looking down a highway embankment: something she saw every night, now harsher in the light of day.
Wyatt hadn’t arrived yet—she didn’t recognize any of the cops at the scene. They waved her on down the road, but she stopped, and when the cop came up, she said, ‘‘We’re supposed to meet Detective Wyatt here, from Santa Monica. He’s on the task force: I talked to China last night, the woman you think is down there. He wanted me to see if I could identify her.’’
‘‘Okay . . . just pull up to the head of the line.’’
She drove up past the last car and turned to Harper: ‘‘Are you coming?’’ she asked.
‘‘Yeah. You better leave the gun in the car, though. They’ll spot it and take it away from you.’’
‘‘Good thought.’’ She took the gun out of her jacket pocket and pushed it under the front seat. ‘‘Let’s go.’’
China was halfway down the embankment, wrapped in the dress she’d been wearing the night before. She’d landed on her face, apparently, but the gravel on the embankment hadn’t done any real damage. It’d cut, but there was no blood to run; the cuts looked like scratches in beeswax.
Anna and Harper dropped carefully down the embankment, escorted by a young uniformed cop who watched their faces as they went down, down past the foot with a sock— what used to be called an anklet—and the foot without one, with the thighs impolitely apart, unguarded by underwear, the trails of dark pubic hair, down to the face that had bitten into the gravel . . .
‘‘Yeah,’’ Anna said, and Harper said, ‘‘Goddammit.’’ Anna said to the young cop, ‘‘That’s China Lake. She’s an actress. Was.’’
‘‘Do you know next of kin?’’ the young cop asked.
‘‘No, but . . . I could find out.’’
‘‘Anything you could get, we’d appreciate.’’
‘‘Yeah.’’ She never looked back at the body, but she held the image of China’s face to her heart. Squeezing it. Filing the memories with the hate.
‘‘Do you want to wait for Wyatt?’’ Harper asked, as they got back to the top of the embankment.
‘‘What for?’’ Anna asked bitterly. ‘‘The guy couldn’t find his butt with both hands and a searchlight.’’
‘‘Not fair,’’ Harper said, as he followed Anna back to the car.
‘‘Fuck fair,’’ she said.
‘‘All right, princess. So now what?’’
‘‘We gotta go back to my place, so I can get my car. I
don’t want you ferrying me all over the place.’’
‘‘Anna, I’m happy to . . .’’
‘‘I know, I know, but I want my car,’’ she said. And she added, ‘‘I’m sorry, Jake. But China . . .’’
The midday traffic wasn’t too bad, and they made it back to Anna’s in a half hour. She backed the Toyota out of the garage, as Harper waited in the street, then followed him out, up the San Diego, over the hills to his house. When they got there, she said, ‘‘You know, I forgot something . . . I’m gonna go away for a while.’’
‘‘I better come with you.’’
‘‘Nope. I’m doing this on my own—don’t worry, I’ll be okay.’’ She took in his face, softened, and said, ‘‘Listen, I just want to drive around a while, by myself, and get my head straight. And see Creek at the hospital. I’ll be careful. I’ve got this.’’ She patted the pistol in her pocket.
‘‘Goddammit, Anna, you
better
be careful.’’
He took her shoulders and kissed her, insistently; she let herself relax into the kiss, held it for a moment, then pushed him away. ‘‘Hold that thought,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll be back.’’
He came out to watch her go, and just before she did, she ran the window down and said, ‘‘He might have tracked us out here—so be careful yourself.’’
‘‘It’s all private property, and people are pretty insistent about that. He’d have a hard time sneaking in, during the day, anyway,’’ Harper said. ‘‘But I’ll watch.’’
Anna went back out the way she came, watching the rearview mirror. She had cars behind her, from time to time, but nothing that looked consistent. She continued back into town, to her house, went in, gathered a few clothes, stuck them in a leather satchel and carried the satchel out to the car.
‘‘Anna, what’s happening?’’ A voice from the sky, and she looked up.
‘‘Hobie?’’
‘‘Come on up; we’re having margaritas.’’
‘‘Aw, I’m on my way to see Creek.’’
‘‘How is he?’’ She could just see the top half of Hobie’s moon face past the shingles on a dormer.
‘‘Better, I guess. They said he had to sit still for a few days, but one of these days he’ll be up.’’
‘‘That’s great . . .’’
‘‘Listen, this jerk, this killer, the cops think he might be tracking me. If you or Jim see anyone around, take down some tag numbers, huh? I’m carrying my cell phone all the time, you’ve got the number . . .’’
‘‘Give it to me again.’’
She gave him the number, and started out again, down the one-way street that took her out of the canal district, and out to the hospital. Watched the rearview mirror. Nothing that seemed furtive, nothing that seemed consistent. But Anna read thriller novels, and thought she could probably trail somebody all over L.A. without being spotted. You stay ten cars back, with traffic the way it was, and you’d never be spotted.
Of course, once he saw which way she was going, he might figure that she was heading for the hospital. There wasn’t much on-street parking, he’d figure her for the ramp. She worked it out: and when the hospital came up, she turned in at the ramp, found a place on the third floor.
Put her pistol in her main pocket, her trigger finger wrapped around the front of the trigger guard so she wouldn’t accidentally fire it. Checked the mirrors, got out and walked self-consciously to the hospital entrance.
She saw no one who seemed out of place, who seemed to be watching, who seemed at all interested in her.
• • •
Except Creek. When she walked into his room, Creek was on his feet, like a bear in a dressing gown, trailing plastic lines that went to a saline bottle hung from a three-wheeled pole. Pam Glass sat in a chair by the window, knitting.
Creek turned as Anna came in, and grinned, and she said, ‘‘My God, what are you doing out of bed?’’ and looked at Glass for an answer.
‘‘I’m getting better,’’ Creek said, but his voice was a croak, and his face still seemed gray.
‘‘The doctor told him to,’’ Glass said, answering Anna.
‘‘They’re sure that’s okay?’’ Anna asked Glass.
‘‘They think it’s great,’’ Glass said. ‘‘As long as he doesn’t overdo it.’’
‘‘ ‘Overdo’ is his middle name,’’ Anna said.
They discussed it for another fifteen seconds, Anna and Glass talking to each other, checking Creek like he was a defective car, until Creek said, ‘‘Hey, am I the village idiot or something?’’
‘‘You’re not that responsible,’’ Anna said. Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. ‘‘Jeez, I’m glad to see you up.’’
‘‘Where’s Harper?’’ Creek asked. ‘‘He’s supposed to be watching you.’’
‘‘I had to get away for a little while—I’m being careful,’’ Anna said. To Glass: ‘‘Have you heard the latest?’’
Glass nodded: ‘‘The actress. Brutal. They added a halfdozen guys to the task force, and there’s gonna be some news about it.’’
Anna recoiled: ‘‘I won’t come into it, will I?’’
Glass grinned. ‘‘Can’t stand the heat, huh? You know how it is . . . a couple of days, and something’ll leak.’’
‘‘Yeah . . . jeez.’’ Anna pulled at her lip, staring at Creek. ‘‘You: get back into bed.’’
‘‘Why? I feel okay.’’
‘‘ ’Cause I want to take Pam away for a few minutes, and I don’t want you dropping dead while we’re gone.’’
‘‘You’d rather have me laying dead in bed?’’
‘‘Yeah, as a matter of fact. Then it wouldn’t be my fault for not telling you to lay down.’’
Creek shook his head, not following the logic, but sat on the bed, and finally pulled his legs up.
‘‘Stay there,’’ Glass said.
‘‘Arf, arf,’’ Creek said. ‘‘Like the family dog. Stay, Fido.’’
In the hall, Glass said, smiling but intent, ‘‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’’
‘‘About Creek.’’
‘‘Yes. Right now, if you crooked your finger, he’d come running. I want to know if you’re going to crook.’’
Anna shook her head. ‘‘I’m not sure you’re right about that—but anyway, Creek and I . . . I don’t know. We went past that point. Or I did. And I think he did, but maybe he hasn’t figured it out yet.’’
‘‘Why didn’t . . . you know.’’
‘‘He came along at the wrong time, and by the time I was, you know, ready for something . . . it was too late. We’d been sort of . . . brotherly-sisterly for too long.’’
‘‘He never tried to . . .’’ They were both fumbling for words, as though they were creating a special Creek vocabulary. ‘‘. . . develop anything?’’
‘‘Not directly. Creek looks like a bear, and he’s been to jail, and the Marines, and all that—but he’s sensitive. He usually knows what I’m thinking before I do, and if you guys last, he’ll get that way with you.’’
‘‘He already is, a little.’’
Anna nodded, grinned and poked Glass on the arm: ‘‘He’s a good deal.’’
Glass blew hair out of her face and her shoulders drooped, as if her blood pressure had just dropped fifty points. And she said, ‘‘You needed something from me?’’
‘‘I just needed to talk to you about your partner.’’
‘‘Huh?’’
‘‘I think he’s the guy we saw up here, that we chased. I think he was trying to check on you.’’
The other woman’s eyes defocused for a few seconds, then she nodded briskly and said, ‘‘Yeah. Damn.’’
‘‘So . . .’’
‘‘I’ll talk to him,’’ Glass said. Then she grinned ruefully and said, ‘‘Men really do come from another planet, you know?’’
Anna was ready when she went back into the parking garage: but nothing happened. Nothing. The garage was so silent that no television movie in history could have resisted the moment: the killer and Anna would be there, toe to toe, and Anna would kill him.
Or something.
She was barely prepared for nothing at all.
In the car, she went back to her house, parked nose-in to the garage, left the engine running. Hobie called down, ‘‘Offer’s still open,’’ and she yelled, ‘‘Thanks, Hobie, but I’m out of here.’’
She sat in the house for a moment, then walked through the kitchen and checked the lock on the canal-side door, and then went back through the house and out, locked the front and drove back out.
She thought this way: If the killer was watching her, he couldn’t watch from within the canal area. The road through the district was one-way, and narrow, and nobody could wait on it without being noticed. He’d watch either the entrance
or the exit, and pick her up coming or going.
All right. Let him pick her up.
She touched the gun in her pocket.
When she told him on the phone that she was going to kill him, it wasn’t idle chatter. If she could get him in the right place, she’d do it.
But she’d have to handle it carefully.
She liked Jake a lot, liked everything about him—or, at least, thought she could straighten out the parts of him that weren’t quite right. A snip here, a tuck there, and he’d be presentable. But she liked his looks, his attitude, the way he lived.
But she didn’t quite understand, deep in her heart, why he hadn’t killed the dealer in the hotel. She would have.
So if she was going to stir this killer out of his muck . . . Jake couldn’t know.
twenty-two
Harper was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his house, a hardcover book by his heel, in an attitude of
waiting
. He pushed himself out of the chair when Anna pulled up, and sauntered around the car.
‘‘Long time,’’ he said. ‘‘Did you get your head straight?’’
‘‘About some things,’’ she said. She stood on her tiptoes, gave him a peck on the lips, feeling guilty for not telling him that she was trolling for the killer. More guilty—this was odd—because he smelled kind of good. She said, ‘‘Creek’s walking around.’’
‘‘Excellent.’’ Harper, nice guy, seemed genuinely pleased. ‘‘Listen, I’ve had a few thoughts.’’
‘‘Let’s go around back. I’ve been itching to fire the gun again.’’
His eyebrows went up: ‘‘Your violent streak is showing.’’
She grinned at him: ‘‘I’ve just been carrying it everywhere, and . . . I don’t know, I’ve just got the urge to pull the trigger.’’
Harper got the earmuffs and a couple of Coke cans and they walked side by side out to the gully. ‘‘We didn’t spend enough time with Catwell, Jason’s friend at Kinko’s,’’ he said. ‘‘I figured out this much: either it’s a coincidence that this killer shows up the day after Jason is killed, or . . .’’
He waited for her to fill in the blank, but she couldn’t think of anything. ‘‘Or what?’’
‘‘Or,’’ he said, ‘‘it’s not. A coincidence.’’
‘‘Gosh. You’re just like Einstein.’’
He held up a finger, his face serious: ‘‘Listen. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Maybe it is—I’ve got some ideas about that, too—but I don’t think so. So let’s take them one at a time.’’
‘‘Go ahead.’’
‘‘If it’s not a coincidence, then the killer fixed on you between the time you picked up Jason, and the time Jason ran off.’’
‘‘Okay.’’ She was amused by his lawyerly dissection.
‘‘In that time, you only did two things,’’ he said. ‘‘You went to the animal rights raid and you went to where Jacob was. So you probably picked up the guy at one of those places. We’ve assumed it was with Jacob, because of the drugs. We were probably wrong.’’
Anna frowned, took the pistol out of her jacket pocket, flicked out the cylinder, spun it once, looking at the little undimpled primers. ‘‘We talked to two guys, really, at the animal rights raid,’’ she said, snapping the cylinder shut. ‘‘One of them was wearing a mask, but he had this voice. I was thinking, maybe someday he could go on TV. Jesus, this guy—it could be him! I mean, he was a little strange, his attitude, I didn’t pay much attention because we run into lots of strange people . . .’’
‘‘All right,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Where do we look him up?’’
‘‘I don’t know—Jason was the contact. But I could find out.’’
Harper was absently juggling the empty Coke cans: ‘‘Okay. But before we get too enthusiastic . . . you said there were two guys at the animal rights raid.’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ she nodded, thinking about it. ‘‘The other one, he was just a kid, kind of wimpy.’’
Harper found a dirt ledge for the cans, and set them up. ‘‘I saw him on TV—you mean the kid who tried to fight them off.’’
‘‘Not a violent type, like me,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He was crying about getting a bloody nose.’’
‘‘Doesn’t sound like our guy,’’ Harper agreed. He pointed at her plastic muffs: ‘‘Pull down your earmuffs, you’re too young to lose your hearing.’’
Harper stuck his fingers in his ears, and Anna pulled down the earmuffs and pointed the gun at one of the cans. Then a thought struck her and she pulled the muffs back and said, ‘‘I just thought of something else.’’
‘‘Yeah?’’ He took his fingers out of his ears.
‘‘Creek noticed that there was only one guy on the raid, all the rest were women. And they were, I don’t know, kind of
busty
. Creek said it looked like a harem.’’
‘‘So maybe the guy’s a freak.’’
‘‘God . . .’’ She pulled the muffs down again, and Harper stuck his fingers back in his ears and Anna pointed the pistol at the first can, jerked the trigger. She missed by two feet.
‘‘Settle down,’’ she said aloud. She relaxed, brought the pistol up, fired again and the can flipped up the dirt wall, and clattered back down again, a neat hole punched in the center of the white C-for-Coke. Anna pulled the muffs up and said, ‘‘I just thought of something else: He had this pig and it knocked him down . . .’’
‘‘I saw that,’’ Harper said. ‘‘He must’ve been humiliated.’’
‘‘Yeah.’’ She pulled the muffs back down, emptied the gun. She hit the cans twice more, and the rest of the shots were bunched around them.
‘‘You ain’t going to the Olympics,’’ Harper said, as she shucked the empty shells out. ‘‘But they’d all hit between the nipples.’’
‘‘That’s all I need,’’ she said, reloading. She stopped with a shell still in the palm of her hand and said, ‘‘You said if it wasn’t a coincidence, all of this starting—you said you had some ideas about that, too.’’
‘‘One thing at a time,’’ Harper said.
She pushed the last shell home. ‘‘Let’s go find this guy.’’
Louis found him, running down names on the letterhead press release.
‘‘His name is Steven Judge. He and two or three more of them live at what they call the Full Heart Sanctuary Ranch, and it’s not far from where you are,’’ Louis said. ‘‘It’s up in Ventura, just on the other side of the Santa Susanas.’’
‘‘Half an hour,’’ Harper said, when Anna told him. He glanced at his watch: ‘‘We’ve got time.’’
The countryside of Southern California was rarely empty, not this close to L.A. and the coast, but the Full Heart Ranch was on a gravel road up a washed-out dirt canyon, about as isolated a place as could be found. The sign at the entrance to the canyon was neat and businesslike, a metal plaque that said, ‘‘Full Heart Ranch,’’ and below that, in smaller letters, ‘‘Animal Sanctuary.’’ A hundred feet up the trail was another sign, this one resembling the signs in national forests, yellow burnt-in letters on brown-painted boards: ‘‘Welcome. Please register at the ranch house. Do not leave your car before
registering—some of our animals are sensitive to the scent of humans.’’
‘‘Probably got tigers out there,’’ Harper said. ‘‘And when they say ‘humans,’ they mean, ‘meat.’ ’’
‘‘Probably,’’ Anna said.
The canyon was a tangle of brush, with an occasional glimpse of trails leading through it; they crossed a low ridge on the way up, and saw the ranch house just below them, in a bowl. A half-dozen outbuildings surrounded the main house, and three cars faced the front of it.
‘‘Pretty nice spread,’’ Harper said.
‘‘The way this kid looked, the way he acted—he might have some money,’’ Anna said.
‘‘You think he owns the place?’’
Anna shrugged: ‘‘He was the boss that night.’’
They parked the car, stepped out, and looked around: They could hear an odd goatlike sound, and they both stepped off to the right to look past the house. A tall, fuzzy-headed animal looked at them over the top of a high board fence, pursed its lips, made the noise again.
‘‘A camel?’’
‘‘A llama,’’ Anna said.
A door banged, and a woman in jeans, a Western shirt and cowboy boots came out onto the ranch house porch. She looked like a ranch woman, in her early forties, with wide shoulders, a round, moon face, deeply tanned with a scattering of freckles. Her sandy hair was pulled back in a ponytail. ‘‘Can I help you?’’
‘‘Yeah, hi,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We were just looking at your llama. Where’d you get him?’’
‘‘We . . . found him,’’ the woman said, pleasantly. ‘‘He was rather badly abused, or, rather, neglected. The former owner had ideas about breeding llamas. When it didn’t work out, he just turned him out and left him in the desert. He
would’ve died, if one of our members hadn’t found him.’’
‘‘Terrific,’’ Anna said cheerfully. Harper followed her as she walked up on the porch. ‘‘My name is Anna Batory, and this is my friend Jake Harper. We filmed the raid at the UCLA medical center and Steve mentioned the possibility of doing another piece. Is he around?’’
The woman shook her head and said, ‘‘Steven,’’ and then said, ‘‘I’m sorry you missed him, but he should have told you that he wouldn’t be around. He won’t be back for another two weeks.’’
‘‘Where is he?’’ Anna asked. ‘‘Can I call him?’’
‘‘Sure—or, I think so. He’s up in Oregon, at the Cut Canyon Ranch. He went up there the day after the raid, to help organize it. And probably run the river a few times.’’
‘‘Cut Canyon?’’
‘‘Yes, it’s a new ranch that some people are putting together up there. They just got a phone . . . c’mon, I’ll get a number. I’m Nancy Daly, by the way, I’m the ranch forewoman.’’
Harper said, ‘‘How do. Like the boots.’’
‘‘Genuine vinyl,’’ the woman said, smiling at him.
They followed her inside, where another woman was working at a computer; the other woman turned and smiled briefly, then went back to her work. Daly said, ‘‘Steve has got that square chin and all those teeth. Somehow, it makes him seem a little more organized than he really is.’’ She was shuffling through the papers on her desk: ‘‘I don’t know, I don’t seem to have it. God, I’ve got to do something about this desk.’’
‘‘Think it’d be on directory assistance?’’ Anna asked.
‘‘Should be,’’ Daly said.
‘‘No problem,’’ Anna said. She took her cell phone out of her pocket, but the woman shook her head. ‘‘We’re too
far out. You can use ours. The area code, I don’t know, it’s probably in the phone book.’’
‘‘It’s five-oh-three,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I’ve got friends up there, they run a pottery.’’
She dialed directory assistance, asked for a new listing for the Cut Canyon Ranch, got the number, and punched it in.
‘‘Cut Canyon.’’ Another woman.
‘‘Is Steve Judge there?’’
‘‘Yes, somewhere. Can I tell him who’s calling?’’
‘‘My name’s Anna Batory.’’
‘‘Hang on. I’ll put you on hold. I’ve got to go find him.’’
‘‘Okay,’’ Anna said.
Harper asked Daly, ‘‘Does Steve . . . own this place, or what?’’
‘‘Oh, no,’’ Daly said. ‘‘His parents provided some seed money. Steve is active with the group, but he avoids bureaucratic entanglements, so to speak. He’s a little . . .’’ She looked at the other woman. ‘‘What is he, Laurie?’’
Laurie never looked away from the screen. ‘‘Hippie,’’ she said.
‘‘Ah . . .’’
At that moment, Judge came on the phone: ‘‘Yeah, Steve Judge.’’
The voice wasn’t the killer’s—higher than she remembered, not squeaky, but nasal, rather than full. Anna looked at Harper and shook her head, as she said, ‘‘This is Anna Batory. I stopped by the ranch to see if we might put together another piece on this animal thing.’’
‘‘Oh!’’ Judge said. Then: ‘‘You know, I wasn’t too happy about the way the raid thing came out, I think it made me look foolish, with the pig and all.’’
‘‘Well—that happens. The stations cut the tape the way they want. We didn’t have anything to do with that,’’ Anna said.
‘‘Okay . . . I guess I’m willing to give it another shot,’’ Judge said. ‘‘We’re just finishing things up here, I was going to head back tonight. When do you want to get together?’’
‘‘Couple days, next week,’’ Anna said, now in no rush.
But Judge rambled on, eager to make another movie. ‘‘The neatest thing we’ve got right now is a vet who’s made a specialty out of fixing bird wings,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re gonna start rehabilitating raptors, you know, hawks, eagles. You can’t just fix them up and let them go. You have to rehab the wings; people shoot these poor birds . . .’’
She let him go, throwing in a couple of questions about the raid, until she was sure it was really him. When she was sure, she looked at Harper and shook her head.
‘‘Damn it, I thought he was a possibility,’’ Anna said, as they went down the road from the ranch. The afternoon was sliding into the evening.
‘‘Might still be—could be something tricky going on.’’
‘‘I suppose,’’ Anna said. But she yawned and shook her head. The morning—when she crunched down that highway cut and looked at China Lake—seemed half a lifetime back. She yawned and said, ‘‘Let’s go see Creek.’’
‘‘Fuckin’ vinyl cowboy boots,’’ Harper said. ‘‘You show me a woman who wears vinyl cowboy boots and I’ll show you a woman whose . . .’’ He trailed off, glanced at Anna, and then concentrated on the road ahead.
‘‘Whose what?’’ Anna demanded.
‘‘Never mind,’’ Harper said.
Anna took the phone out of her pocket and tried it; still out of range. ‘‘Wait’ll we get over the hill,’’ Harper suggested. ‘‘Two minutes.’’
Two minutes, and they were back in range: She had a message waiting, but called Louis and asked him to locate
the other kid at the animal raid. Then she punched in the message, and got Wyatt’s voice.
‘‘We’ve got a proposition for you,’’ he said. ‘‘Call me.’’
‘‘Wyatt,’’ she said to Harper. ‘‘He’s got a proposition.’’
Wyatt was in the office: ‘‘Things are gonna get out of control pretty soon,’’ he said, his voice tinny in the little phone. ‘‘We haven’t had an O.J. case or anything else for the media assholes.’’