Gray had no idea what Scarface was jacking his jaws about. He skirted a Cadillac that was traveling too slowly in the fast lane.
"You're going to kill me," Brand said in the same low monotone. "Right?"
"What little birdie whispered that in your ear?"
"You're a killer. It's what you do."
"Maybe I'll go easy on you."
"You won't. You can't. You're the big dog in the ring. All you know is kill or be killed."
Leaving the Caddy behind, Gray eased back into the fast lane. "You might have a point there, Sarge."
"Kill or be killed amp;" Brand's voice trailed away.
"As mottos go, it ain't half-bad." Gray smiled, warming to his theme. "The way I see it"
He had no time to finish. Beside him, Brand's right hand came up fast, and in it was a gun, a little snub-nosed job that had appeared out of nowhere like a magic trick.
Gray spun the wheel hard to the left, slamming the Crown Vic up against the guardrail. The car made a grinding noise and slewed across two lanes. Every horn in the world started blasting, headlights flying everywhere as the vehicles behind the Vic peeled around the car, some of them scraping the rear end and throwing new shudders through the chassis.
Brand, flung half-out of his seat by the collision, twisted around and fired the gun, and even though there was no way he could miss at a distance of two feet, somehow he missed anyway. He had time for only one shot, and then Gray squeezed the trigger of his Beretta.
He didn't miss.
Blood splashed him. He blinked it out of his eyes. Brand flopped and spasmed in the passenger seat, his butt-ugly face shredded like a Halloween mask. Gray snatched Brand's gun away before the cop fired it again in some kind of death twitch.
"You was right, Sarge!" he yelled over the ringing in his ears. "You ain't smart!"
He floored the brake pedal, stopping the car. A moment later, the engine died. Smoke rose from under the hood.
By now he'd conned what had happened. Brand carried an extra gun in his personal car. Kept it under the seat, it seemed. He'd been waiting for Gray to let down his guard. Nearly scored on that play, too. If Gray had been a split second slower, he would be the one barfing up his own brains right now. But he'd come through. He was alive, and the shit-eating, dick-stroking son of a black-eyed whore was dead.
"You hear me, Sergeant Fuck?" he screamed at the pale, shaking, faceless thing bleeding all over the other seat. "You're dead!"
Gray exploded out of the car. The freeway was backed up in the two lanes blocked by the slant-parked car. A frozen chain of headlights stretched for a half mile. The other lanes were clear, traffic whizzing past, leaving red comet tails of taillights.
Directly behind the ruined Crown Vic, some asshole in a green Volkswagen Beetle was tooting his horn and making faces through the windshield, pissed about the delay but too chickenshit to risk nosing around the obstruction.
Gray had never liked Volkswagenshe still thought of them as hippie carsbut he wasn't in a position to be choosy. He ran up to the door on the driver's side and rapped his gun against the glass.
"Out, motherfucker! Outta your clown car now!"
The jerkoff had stopped honking. He stared at Gray through the glass, not resisting, just plain paralyzed with fear. Gray knocked out the window with a swipe of the gun barrel, dusting the moron with crumbs of safety glass. "Out!"
It registered. The guy got out, Gray assisting with a tug that sent him tumbling to the asphalt. He jumped behind the wheel and swerved into the next lane, not giving a shit about the high speed of traffic or the flurry of horns and squealing brakes behind him.
With his foot stamping the gas pedal, he crossed the remaining lanes and took the next exit to the surface streets. Freeway would've been faster, but he couldn't stay on that road after jacking a ride and fleeing an accident. The Chippies and the city cops would all be after his ass, especially if Joe Volkswagen had made him as the city's most wanted fugitive.
He wasn't far from Doc Robin's digs anyway. He could make it there in another three, four minutes, even on surface streets.
He wondered what he would find when he got thereand whether the doc would still be alive.
Chapter Fifty-two
For Hammond, everything was falling apart. They had failed to net Gray in Hollywood. The TV crews had been there to capture the debacle. That was bad enough. What was happening now was worse.
"I don't understand it," he said from the backseat as his driver chauffeured him and Lewinsky and Banner to the Hoover Street exit of the Santa Monica Freeway. "I just don't get it."
"Doesn't make sense," agreed Banner, sitting next to him. "Whole goddamn thing is spinning out of control."
Hammond gave Banner a warning glare. "No I-told-you-sos, Phil. I don't need any bullshit from you right now."
Banner frowned. "Just because this gamble of yours didn't pay off, you don't need to take it out on me."
"Why the hell not? I've got to take it out on somebody. Anyway, it's too soon to say it didn't pay off."
"Come on, Chief, it's a fucking catastrophe. We're talking Bay of Pigs here. We've got Sergeant Brand's car wrecked on the freeway. A DB inside that's probably Brand himself, and an armed carjacker ID'd as Justin Gray. It's a total meltdown."
"We don't know for sure it was Gray. The carjack vic might've been seeing things. You know how unreliable eyewitnesses are."
"That's a pretty thin branch to cling to," Banner groused.
"Are you forgetting the chain of command here, Lieutenant?"
"I'm not forgetting anything. Including the fact that I warned you not to stick your finger in this particular pie."
"That's an I-told-you-so. I don't want to hear any I-told-you-sos, God damn it."
"Sir?" Lewinsky broke in. "We're here."
The car had come to a stop on the left-hand shoulder of the freeway. Hammond hadn't even noticed.
He stepped out. Cones and flares had been set up by CHP, cordoning off three lanes and forcing eastbound traffic over to the right. Highway Patrol officers stood waving flashlights to direct the vehicular flow.
Brand's Crown Victoriathe plate had been traced to him by the first officers on the scenelay crosswise on the road, straddling a lane division. The front was all crunched in and busted up, and the dented guardrail some distance to the west showed why. The rear of the car had taken some scrapes as well. Both taillights and one headlight were out. The engine was dead. The occupant of the passenger seat was likewise.
Hammond approached the driver's side and looked in, not touching anything.
It was Brand, all right. His face was largely gone, but his build and the dark windbreaker he'd been wearing in Hollywood were still identifiable, although the windbreaker had changed color, having been dyed in a geyser of blood.
"It's him," he said as Lewinsky and Banner joined him. "Gunshot to the face. Where's the carjack vie?"
"First officer said a unit took him to Saint Vincent's," Banner reported. "He wasn't hurt, just shook up."
"Damn." Hammond shook his head. "I need to talk to him, confirm it was Gray. We got anybody at Brand's residence?"
"Hollywood unit is on the way," Lewinsky said.
"Maybe they'll find something that makes sense out of all this." Hammond took another look at the dead man in the passenger seat. "Somebody has to."
Chapter Fifty-three
During her hospital internship Robin had seen a few cases of smoke inhalation. She knew the smoke could kill her in a variety of ways. It could squeeze the oxygen out of the room, replacing it with carbon dioxide, leaving an inadequate supply of breathable air. It could irritate her respiratory passages until her airway swelled up and closed, choking off breath. It could poison her body with carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanidetoxins that would render her unable to metabolize oxygen. Most likely, it would kill her in all three ways at once.
There was some consolation. She probably wouldn't burn to death. She wouldn
't last that long.
The room was dark with smoke now. The overhead light was vanishing behind a sooty haze. Because Wolper had disconnected the smoke detectors, no alarm would sound until the smoke escaped into the hallway. It would take a long time for the fumes to seep through the door to her waiting room and the door to the hall. By then she would be dead.
Already she was coughingthe MBI current did not inhibit autonomic reactions like bronchial spasmand her head pounded, and her eyes were watering from heat and toxic vapors. Soon her respiration would become troubled.
She would experience shortness of breath. She might begin to hyperventilate, an instinctive response that would only aggravate the problem. She would become light-headed, disoriented. Her eyesight would fail. She might go into convulsions, or slip into a coma, or drift off to sleep. That would be best. Dreamless sleep.
She was sleepy now. Even as the coughing grew worse, she seemed to distance herself from it. She might be leaving her body, a near-death experienceshe'd read of those, had even talked to some critically ill patients who'd had such adventures. They had come back. She wouldn't. So it was not a near-death experience, was it? Just a death experience, that's all. What was it they always said? Go into the light. The light
Darkness.
She blinked, coming back to herself. Everything was the samesmoke and heat, coughs racking her chestyet everything was somehow different.
The overhead light. It was out. The clicking of the coils had stopped.
And she could move.
She leaned forward in the chair, testing her muscles, unsure what had happened, and then she was scrabbling at the appliance, pulling it off her head, letting it fall to the floor as she pitched headlong onto the carpet, climbed to one knee, and collapsed.
A new smell, burned rubber, filled the air. The insulation on the office wiring. The fire had burned through the wall, shorted out the wires, killing power to the lights and to the MBI gear. No power, no currentno current, no inhibition of her motor control, no paralysis. She could move again.
Couldn't walk, though. Lacked the strength.
Her coughs were savage, torturous. She spat up something like black goo. Mucus from her respiratory tract, dyed with soot.
She could barely see. Smoke everywhere and an orange flickering at the corners of her vision, the rise and fall of flames progressing around the perimeter of the room, inexorably sealing her in.
Her groping hands discovered her purse on the floor. It had been in her lap, must have been flung forward when she fell. Her cell phone was inside the purse, but she had no strength or voice to use it, and help could never arrive fast enough.
Still, the purse might help her. She unclasped it and thrust it over her nose and mouth, a makeshift mask. The air in the purse was stale but uncontaminated. She drew a deep breath, felt a little stronger.
With one hand pressing the purse to her face, she crawled forward. She reached the door to the anteroom. Raised her arm, searching for the knob, which seemed high, so high above her head, and slippery when she grasped it, the smooth metal resisting her efforts to turn it, until finally it yielded and she swayed backward, pulling the door open.
The lights in the waiting room were still on. That circuit hadn't failed. The room looked almost clear of smokea haven, a refuge. If she could get in there, cross the threshold, then she would be okay. She had to do it, even though her body insisted that it was time to curl up and rest, just rest. She had to keep going, for Megfor Meg, for Megher mantra, her focusfor Meg.
She struggled across the threshold into the waiting room, fighting to catch her breath, recovering slightly. But already the smoke, a tenacious adversary, was crowding into the smaller room. She inched forward and encountered something dark and tacky on the carpetbloodthe deputy's blood. What was his name? Rains, Rivers? It seemed wrong that she couldn't remember.
She tried pushing herself to her feet, but her legs wouldn't carry her. Helplessly she fell onto the couch where her patients waited before sessions. A long spool of mucus, black and heavy, unreeled from her mouth onto the sofa cushion as she hacked out another series of deep coughs.
Her hands amp; she could see them gripping the arm of the couchthe fingers so pale, almost bluish. Cyanotic. Insufficient oxygen to the extremities.
It was happeningdeath by asphyxiation, just as Wolper had said. She'd come this far. No farther. And Meg amp; she couldn't help Megcouldn't do anything except cough and spit up black gunk and gasp out shallow, useless breaths and die amp;
"Fuck, Doc Robin. You're a mess."
A hand on hers. Strength lifting her. Arm around her waist, propping her up.
Justin.
He hustled her out of the waiting room, into the hall, and laid her down on the floor, where she endured a final stint of bronchospasms that cleared out the last of the mucus. She was breathing again, pulling in oxygen and feeling it work. Her eyes focused. Her mind cleared.
"What are you amp;? How amp;?" Her voice was hoarse, every word a separate pain.
"It's the cavalry to the rescue, Doc. Just like in the movies, only I don't use no stuntman. Now let's get you outside."
He lifted her again. As she stood upright, she remembered the last clear thought she'd had.
"Meg amp;"
"What about her?"
"I know where she is."
"Yeah. Where's that?"
"Take you amp; I'll take amp;"
"Okay, we'll find her. No sweat. I'm on the job."
"Now. She's in trouble. It may already be too late."
"Then let's you and me get a move on."
Somehow she still had the purse in her hand. She used her key to open the rear door. Gray led her into the parking lot. She wondered how they would get out through the gate, which was locked at night, then saw that it wouldn't be a problem. On his arrival. Gray had rammed the gate with his car and popped it open.
He hustled her into the Volkswagen on the passenger side, then got behind the wheel and pulled away with a howl of tires.
The little car rattled, the hood loose after the collision with the gate. The VW must have been stolen, but right now Robin didn't care.
She noticed Gray watching her. "You okay, Doc?"
"I'm better. I'm all right."
"So where are we headed?"
"It's a factory on South Central Avenue. An old bottling plant."
"Wolper tell you that?"
"How did you know about Wolper?"
"Sergeant Brand told me. Right before he had an accident."
"Brand is dead?"
"Chill, Doc. It was self-defense. He pulled a piece on me. But only after he told me most of what I needed to know."
"But how did you put any of it together?"
"I'm smart, Doc. Not book-smart like you. People-smart. When a thing needs doing, I know how to get it done. Now what's the name of this factory?"
"He didn't tell me the name."
"What's the cross street?"
"He didn't say that, either."
"That ain't a lot to work with."
Robin moaned. "You mean we can't find it?"
"Hey, hey, keep it together. We'll ride south on Central Avenue till we spot the place, is all. Then we'll go in the same way the bad guys did."
"The bad guys." Robin looked at him, a new awareness taking shape. "You're not one of them anymore. You've changed."
"Changed my clothes, for sure. Changed cars a couple times too."
"Wolper said you would never change. He said a leopard doesn't change its spots."
"Cynical dude."
"Knowing we made a difference in our work together amp; it means a lot, Justin."
"Don't get all weepy on me, now."
"It means there's hopehope for people like you. People like amp;"
"Like?"
Like my father, she almost said. "All the others. The ones behind bars. They don't have to rot their lives away. They can be reintroduced to society without risk. It's a whole new world."
"Don't go saving the world just yet, Doc Robin. Let's find your baby girl first."
Chapter Fifty-four
Detective Tomlinson was groaning again.
For a long time he'd lain silent, and Meg had been convinced he was in a coma or maybe dead. He had stopped moving, might have even stopped breathing. She hadn't been sure whether or not she should be glad he was so far gone. She didn't want him to be dead, but she sure didn't want him waking up, either.
Now he was stirring. The dose of heroin hadn't been enough to kill him, not when he weighed twice what she did. It hadn't even been enough to keep him out for the whole night.
When he was fully awake, he would take care of her. And it wouldn't be quick or easynot after what she'd done to him, nearly killed him.
She tugged at the handcuffs still chaining her to the railing. All she accomplished was to chafe her wrist even worse than before. A warm ooze of blood trickled down her arm. Maybe if she pulled hard enough, she could slice her wrist down to the vein and then she would bleed to death. It was a better way to die than what he would do to her, that was for sure.
But maybe she could fight. She still had the hypodermic, empty now, but a weapon even so. She patted the pocket of her blouse, where she had stowed the thing after giving up on it as a locksmith tool. Just let him come close and with a little luck she could amp; she could amp;
She could do nothing. She knew that. He would be expecting a second attack. He would deflect it easily, take the syringe, and use it on her.
Tomlinson issued a grunt and started to rise.
She watched him in paralyzed horror. He thrust out both arms and pressed his palms to the floor, pushing himself up off the concrete. His eyes remained closed, his face blank. Somehow those details made it worse, as if she really had killed him and now he was a zombie rousing himself from the grave.
He was on his knees now. He swayed a little. His eyes opened. His head turned and he stared at her. His pupils were pinpoints of ink. The whites of his eyes were huge, horrible.
He lunged at her, and she screamed
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