In Dark Places

by Michael Prescott

  "All right," Hammond said, ignoring the Hollywood officer and addressing Lewinsky, "this is a crisis-team situation. We need SWAT on the scene, negotiators, traffic control, a comm team. If we're lucky, we can talk Gray out of the car in time for the eleven-o'clock news. If we're really lucky, he'll surrender at eleven on the dot and we'll lead the news with live coverage of his arrest."

  On cue, a news chopper appeared in the night sky, competing with the Air Support unit for airspace.

  "And if he opens fire and SWAT has to take him out?" Banner asked. "That won't look so good on TV."

  "Won't it?" Hammond smiled. "Wasting a serial killer might get the ACLU crowd riled up, but I'll bet it goes down pretty smooth with Ma and Pa Six-pack. Of course," he added piously, "I hope it won't come to that. Now let's get going on that SWAT call-up."

  "Chief," Lewinsky said, "that may not be necessary."

  Hammond saw his adjutant staring past him. He followed Lewinsky's gaze to the end of the street, where the door on the driver's side of the Firebird had swung open.

  "Hell," Hammond said. "Except for the chopper, there's not a single news crew here. I don't want just aerial shots. The bastard gave up too soon."

  Slowly, Justin Gray emerged from the car, head lowered, hands raised. The hovering police helicopter pinned him in its searchlight.

  The Firebird's passenger door opened. A second figure emerged into the glare.

  "Who the hell is that?" Hammond said.

  "Maybe it's the girl," Lewinsky offered. "The daughter. We got ourselves a twofer."

  It was a girl, but not Megan Cameron. This girl had the skanky, strung-out look of a habitué of the street. Her hair was a frazzled pile, her arms skeletal and blotchy, her thin frame clad in a micromini and tank top. Everything about her said whore.

  The driver lifted his dazed face into the light. He was not Justin Gray.

  "God damn it," Hammond whispered.

  He knew what had happened, of course. Some bozo from Hyde Park, the actual owner of the Firebird, had been cruising Selma Avenue, where the strawberries hung out ever since they'd been chased off Hollywood Boulevard. He'd picked up a hooker, and he'd been driving her somewhere, maybe to a motel, when a squad car had fallen in behind them. The John had panicked and tried to flee, leading Hollywood's finest on a pointless chase.

  "I don't get it," Banner said. "The patrol units reported the driver alone in the vehicle. No passenger."

  Hammond understood that part, too. "She was bending low."

  "Keeping out of sight?"

  "Giving him head."

  Banner took this in. "During the chase? That's pretty impressive. I mean, you've got to admire that kind of focus."

  "Shut up, Phil."

  The driver and his passenger were on the pavement, being patted down and handcuffed by patrol officers. The hooker was laughing. The John looked like he was about to throw up.

  "It's not a problem, Chief," Lewinsky said. "We're not any worse off than we were before."

  The KNBC news van bearing Susy Chen turned the corner at that moment. There would be others.

  "We're not, are we?" Hammond shook his head in gathering fury. "Every station will lead with this. Cops let a serial killer slip through their fingers while they nab a perv with a party girl."

  "It's a setback, is all," Lewinsky said with exasperating optimism.

  "It's a fuckup. And I'm the one who has to take the blame." He caught Banner flashing an I-told-you-so look and answered it with a cold glare. "Phil, start working the Channel Four crew. Put the best spin on this. I'll make a statement once the rest of the TV assholes show up."

  Only TV mattered. Radio and newspapers were strictly minor-league ball.

  "Got it, Chief. Meanwhile, you gonna get some background on the driver?"

  "Fuck the driver. I want to talk to Wolper. I want to know what in Christ's name went on here."

  Hammond stalked toward Wolper's Sable, Lewinsky trailing him like an eager puppy.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Robin got out of the car along with Wolper and Brand as the deputy chief approached. By now it was obvious that the pursuit had been a mistake. The wrong car had been followed. Gray had slipped away. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. She ought to want him apprehendedbut part of her, oddly, was relieved.

  Her worst fear had been that Gray would die in a shoot-out resisting arrest. Then she might never find Meg, never know what had really happened today. That possibility was too painful to consider.

  "All right," Hammond said to Wolper and Brand, while Robin lingered close by. "I want to know what the hell happened here."

  "We spotted Gray in a video arcade," Wolper began.

  Hammond interrupted. "I know the fucking chronology. What exactly were you two men doing there in the first place?"

  "Sergeant Brand just happened to be in the area on personal business," Wolper said. "We ran into him on the street. He had nothing to do with this. I take full responsibility."

  Robin had to admire Wolper for loyalty to his subordinate, even if she still didn't trust Brand or buy his story.

  Hammond seemed unimpressed. "Fine. Then I'll direct my questions to Lieutenant Wolper. You were in the arcade with Dr. Cameron?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I assume you had a good reason for bringing a civilian into danger."

  Robin started to answer, but Wolper waved her silent. "It was an error of judgment on my part."

  "Do you really think so?" Hammond asked with heavy sarcasm. "You're paid to exercise good judgment, Lieutenant."

  "I'm aware of that, sir."

  "If you thought Gray was in this area, you should have passed on the information to me. Investigating on your own initiative is bad enough. It's cowboy stuff."

  "Yes, sir." Robin noticed the deputy chief's adjutant, whose badge identified him as Lewinsky, smirking at Wolper, enjoying his humiliation.

  "Allowing a civilian to accompany you," Hammond went on, "especially a civilian who has already been victimized and who is personally known to the fugitive, was more than an error in judgment. It was potentially a catastrophe. If something had happened to Dr. Cameron while she was in our protective custody amp;"

  Robin felt sure that Hammond was thinking about how it would have played in the media. His definition of a catastrophe was unfavorable news coverage.

  "I understand, sir," Wolper said humbly.

  "I hope you do. We'll have a fuller discussion of this matter when there's more time."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Meanwhile, you are to have no further connection with this investigation. Is that clear?"

  "It's clear."

  "I hope so, Lieutenant. I really do."

  Robin spoke up at last. "Excuse me, Chief. Aren't you forgetting something?"

  Hammond turned a cold eye on her. "What would that be?"

  "We did find Gray."

  "And lost him."

  "We tracked him down," Robin persisted. "I had an idea of where he might go. Lieutenant Wolper helped me check it out. And we were right. Isn't that what's important?"

  "What's important is following proper procedure. Without organization there is chaos."

  "Did you hear that in a management seminar?"

  Hammond straightened his shoulders. "Under the circumstances. Dr. Cameron, I would think you'd be less concerned with LAPD policy and more concerned with the recovery of your daughter." He cocked his head at a politely quizzical angle. "Or had you forgotten about her?"

  Anger lashed her. She said the first thing she could think of. "You fucking pogue."

  Wolper laughed. Lewinsky looked stricken. Hammond simmered, searching for a reply, found none, and spun on his heel to stride off, pursued by his adjutant.

  "Nice use of the lingo," Wolper said.

  Robin sighed. "I probably just got you in more trouble."

  "Oh, yeah." Wolper smiled. "But it was worth it."

  Wolper drove Brand back to the arcade, where he'd left his car
. Robin sat in the backseat. No one said anything. The silence between them was thick and close, almost tangible.

  Her cell phone rang. Gray again? Hurriedly she dug it out of her purse. "Hello?"

  "Dr. Cameron?" It wasn't Gray. It was the criminalist, Gaines. "Your daughter had set up a password to protect her e-mail cache. I brought in someone from the computer crime unit to hack into the files. It turns out she was corresponding with this man Gabe, as her diary indicated. It's not clear if she actually met him or if it was just an Internet thing."

  She kept her voice low, not wanting Brand, in the front seat, to hear. "Can you find out who he is? Trace the e-mails?"

  "Let me have you talk to Pete Farber. He's our computer guy."

  The phone was handed over to Farber, who started in on a technical explanation without any social preamble. "We have twenty-six e-mails generated by Novell's GroupWise software. The routing info indicates that the point of origin was the Los Angeles municipal WAN." He pronounced it like ban. "The IP address assigned to the user's computer is within a range reserved for the LAPD WAN"

  "Wait a minute." She lowered her voice still further. "LAPD?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "What is a WAN, exactly?"

  "Wide-area network. Computers can be connected into a network of any size. If the network is smallsay, all the computers in one office or one buildingit's a local-area network, a LAN. If you start linking up LANs from different offices or buildings, you've got a WAN."

  "And the LAPD has one of these WAN networks?"

  "That's right. There are more than thirty-five hundred workstations in the LAPD, running the Novell NetWare operating system. Each LAPD station is a local-area net. The stations are linked together in a wide-area net, using highspeed T-one lines, mainly."

  "And these e-mails were sent from within that system?"

  "Right. GroupWise e-mail is used primarily for interoffice communication throughout the WAN, but the network does have Internet egress pointsmeaning it's possible for a user to send a message to someone outside the municipal net. That's what happened here."

  "So just find out which user sent the e-mails"

  "It's not that simple. Any user can create an e-mail account under any name. The name 'Gabe'no last nameis almost certainly an alias. The routing info tells us that the LAPD net was used, but to determine the specific workstation, we need additional information from ITA." He anticipated her question. "Information Technology Agency. The city agency that established the system."

  "Then make them tell you."

  "It takes time. We're trying to track down the administrator right now."

  She bit back her impatience. "When you find him, will you know who sent the messages?"

  "We'll know which terminal was used, that's all. It might be a terminal shared by various people."

  "One way or the other, we're talking about a police officer?"

  "Well amp; not necessarily a sworn officer, but someone on the LAPD system. It could be a clerical worker or, who knows, a civilian volunteer, a janitor, anybody with access to the terminal."

  "But it could be a police officer?" she pressed. "The officers do use these terminals?"

  "They do, yes, of course."

  She thanked Farber, and when Gaines came back on the line, she asked him to keep her updated. "When we've traced the messages, you'll know," he promised.

  The call was over. She put the phone back into her purse.

  "What was that about?" Wolper asked from the driver's seat.

  She couldn't give a truthful answer with Brand present. "A neighbor of mine. Calling to see if there's any news."

  "It's better not to talk to friends and neighbors right now. You never know who'll start blabbing to the media or what they'll say."

  She didn't answer. She stared at the seat in front of her, where Brand was sitting. She would never believe that Meg had been drawn to him in a personal encounter, but if he had created an Internet persona, perhaps passing himself off as a younger man amp;

  She remembered Gray telling her that Mr. Cool was probably a cop. Was it Brand? She wished she'd asked how long Meg and Gabe had been exchanging e-mails. Had the relationship started before or after Brand became aware that he was likely to be selected as Robin's test subject? If it had started afterward, then maybe Brand had decided to get even with her by playing a sick game with her daughter.

  She didn't quite buy it, though. Such a plan seemed too complicated, too subtle, for Sergeant Brand. Then again, she didn't really know him. And the messages had come from someone inside the LAPD.

  Damn. She rubbed her head. Somehow things just kept getting worse.

  "Headache?" Wolper asked. He'd been watching her in the rearview mirror.

  "It's nothing."

  "Not too late to take a trip to the hospital."

  "No, thanks."

  He shrugged. "Just asking."

  At the arcade, Brand got out. "Nice to know who your friends are," he said in Wolper's direction. He glanced at Robin as she exited the backseat. "You too, Doc."

  She stared back at him with cold, suspicious eyes. He walked off, not looking back. Quickly she slipped into the passenger seat beside Wolper. "Can we follow him, see where he goes?"

  Wolper shook his head. "He knows my car. Under the circumstances, he'll be looking for it. I guess I should take you back to Parker Center."

  She thought for a moment. "No."

  "I told you, following him isn't an option."

  "There's something else we can do."

  "What is it?"

  "We need to go to my office."

  "Why? What's there?"

  "The answer to my questionsmaybe."

  "The chief made it pretty clear that I'm to have no further involvement in this case."

  "So you won't take me there?"

  "Oh, I'll take you." Wolper smiled. "I just wanted to establish what a great guy I'm being."

  She smiled backher first smile in hours, she thought distantly. "Duly noted," she said.

  "Then let's go."

  He put the car into gear and headed east, toward the skyline.

  Chapter Forty-six

  It took Meg a long time to come back to herself. She felt as if she had gone away for a while, into a dream world of radiant peace.

  She hadn't wanted to return. It was the moaning that had brought her back, a low, dismal sound like a foghorn.

  She opened her eyes and found herself huddled on the bottom step of the cellar staircase, her handcuffed wrist suspended at shoulder height, her right arm wrapping her waist in a tight embrace. The flashlight still shone down from the landing, dimly illuminating the room.

  A couple of feet away lay the man who'd tried to kill her, Detective Tomlinson, LAPD. He was still sprawled on his stomach, unmoving, showing no sign even of a rise and fall of breath. But he was alive. The moaning that issued from his open mouth was proof of that. Maybe he'd pulled free of the syringe before its entire contents could enter his bloodstream. Maybe he was big enough to absorb a dose that would have proven lethal to her. Or maybe he really was dying, but slowly.

  She hoped not. She didn't want to take a life, even in self-defense. On the other hand, if he stayed alive, he might eventually awaken from his blackout or coma or whatever it was. And even if he didn't, Gabe or someone else was bound to stop by when Tomlinson failed to return.

  One way or the other, she couldn't afford to be here. She had bought herself a reprieve, nothing more.

  The cellar door was open. Escape was so close. The only thing holding her back was the handcuff on her wrist, the handcuff Tomlinson had claimed he would unlock.

  She blinked with a new thought. Cops really did carry handcuff keys. And Tomlinson must have brought a key with him if he intended to move her after she amp; after he had amp;

  She pushed away that idea. What mattered was the key. It had to be somewhere on his person. In one of his pockets, probably.

  She moved closer to the unconscious man, a
s close as the short tether of the handcuff chain would permit, and reached out to the side pocket of his jacket. Some residual fear or distasteperhaps the simple reluctance to touch a body that was so nearly deadmade her hesitate before actually slipping her hand into the pocket.

  She shut her eyes and did it. Her fingers closed over something small and metallica coin, not a key. She dug deeper. More spare change. Nothing else. His pants pocket, maybe. She didn't want to touch him there, so close to his groin, his crotch, but then she remembered that she'd already had his private parts in her hand.

  Somehow the thought made her smile, and the smile made it easier for her to explore this pocket also. She touched a wad of cloth, probably a handkerchief. A few crumpled dollar bills. That was all.

  His belt, then. Sometimes cops wore keys and stuff clipped to a belt. She reached under his jacket, running her hand along the belt, feeling cracked leather, brittle and old, but found no keys, no equipment of any kind.

  There was still the other side of his body to check, but she couldn't reach it. She grabbed the dead weight of his arm and tried dragging him toward her.

  No use. He weighed easily two hundred pounds. With both hands free and the proper leverage, she might have been able to drag him. As it was, she had no more hope of shifting his position than of breaking the steel chain of the handcuff by sheer strength. And what if the key was in his vest pocket or the pocket of his shirt? She would have to turn him over, onto his back, an impossible task.

  "So I'm screwed," she whispered.

  Tomlinson groaned in answer.

  There was one other possibility. The syringe.

  She'd dropped it on the floor by her feet. Picking it up, she studied the slim needle as it caught the flashlight beam. She knew nothing about picking locks except what she'd seen on TV. It looked easy enough on cop shows.

  Still, it might be possible to use the needle as a locksmith tool. Insert it in the handcuff's keyhole, try to jigger the thing open.

  She gave it a shot, working the cuff on her wrist. She probed with the needle, having no clear idea of what to do.