While Robin watched, Gray thrust the gun into his waistband, then climbed onto the conveyor belt. He straddled Meg, who lay unmoving, frozen by shock.
"Don't act like you never had none before," Gray said. "I told your mommy you ain't no virgin. Your cherry's been popped good. Am I right?"
From Meg, a whimper. "Yes."
Gray glanced across the room, meeting Robin's eyes with a smile of triumph. "Told you so. Your baby girl's a whore. Well, I know how to treat a whore." He unzipped his pants. "You're gonna like this, sweet thing."
Meg moaned. She still couldn't move.
But Robin could.
Her pain and shock had receded. Only anger and adrenaline remained.
Gray leaned over Meg, a jackal on a carcass. He wasn't looking in Robin's direction.
He didn't see her get to her feet, teeth gritted against a swirl of light-headedness.
She picked up a plank from the smashed carton. She advanced on Gray as his shoulders moved in the starlight.
"You want it, don't you, bitch? All you young cunts want what I got. It may be a little big for youI'm what you call supersizedbut I guarantee it'll fit just fine."
Robin lashed out with the plank. She caught Gray on the side of the head, and there was blood and a rip of flesh, and she realized there had been a nail in the plank.
He was howling as he swung off the conveyor belt, his face bleeding, penis hanging out of his fly.
She hit him again. He stumbled away.
"Meg, run!"
Shaken out of her paralysis, Meg scrambled off the conveyor belt and made a move for the exit. Gray darted in front of her to block her escape.
"There are other rooms in back," Robin shouted. "Hide there and don't come out no matter what."
She didn't wait to see if Meg complied. She ran for Gray and swung the board again.
He seized the plank by the edges, ripped it out of her hands, and threw it aside.
And he laughed.
The laugh told Robin that all this time he'd been playing games with her.
He liked games. He'd let her think she had a chance. But that was all over now.
"You're dead," he told her, his hand reaching into his waistband for the gun.
The chopper's Nightsun searchlight prowled the factory grounds, illuminating the vast expanse of the parking lot, as Hammond addressed his troopsBanner, Lewinsky, his driver, and four patrol officers from the crash site.
"All right, people, I want us going in prepared for anything. Gray's in there. He seems to have someone with him." He noticed Lewinsky on his rover. "Something up, Lieutenant?"
"Slickback's been ID'd, Chief," Lewinsky said. "It was signed out of Newton Area by Detective Tomlinson."
"Tomlinson? What the hell is he doing here?"
"Nobody seems to know."
Banner, looking more anxious than ever, drifted close to Hammond. "Chief," he said, his voice low, "you sure we don't wait for backup? Or for SWAT, maybe?"
"With the possibility of one or more civilians and a fellow officer inside?"
"I'm a media guy. I used to work Traffic. I didn't sign up for this."
"You're signed up now, Phil." Hammond raised his voice to address the group. "Move out."
Robin saw the gun in Gray's hand. At this range he couldn't miss.
She turned and ran. There was no place to hide in the empty room, no time to get to the hallway where other rooms might provide concealment. There was only the open door to the cellar. She threw herself onto the landing.
Behind her, the gun boomed.
Was she hit? She didn't think so.
On hands and knees she crossed the landing. The flashlight, still resting there, spun and rolled against the door, shining into the main room, lighting up Gray as he bounded over the conveyor belt and sprinted toward her.
She picked up the flashlight and pitched it at him, a feeble gesture. He laughed again. She reached the stairs and tumbled down, colliding with something soft and fleshy, which was Detective Tomlinson, dead, his face shot away, and in his hand was his gun.
She pried it out of his fingers, and Gray burst through the door, and she raised the gun in both hands and fired.
Her finger worked the trigger again and again, muzzle flashes flickering in the cellar. She had never fired a gun in her life, had never even handled one, and she had no idea if she was hitting anything or not.
She pulled the trigger until the gun was empty, and then over the furious clamor in her ears she heard voices.
"LAPD, drop your weapon!"
The police were here. Better late than never.
She set down the empty gun. Slowly she pushed herself upright and climbed the stairs.
The wavering beams of several flashlights had found Gray on the landing. He lay curled in a fetal pose, groaning softly. Blood crisscrossed his body in a red skein.
As she reached the landing, the flashlights discovered her.
"It's me," she said weakly. "Robin Cameron."
Her own name sounded unreal, as if it belonged to some other person, or to a person she used to be.
The police didn't respond for a moment, giving her time to think that these officers might be part of the conspiracy too. If they were, then all her efforts had been wasted, and she and Meg were dead.
Then one of the menDeputy Chief Hammond, she realizedcame forward. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
The statement struck her as absurd under the circumstances, yet somehow it was true.
"Call an RA," Hammond snapped to the man next to him, the one named Lewinsky, who'd been hostile to Wolper. "Call twoone for Dr. Cameron, one for him." His curt gesture indicated Gray. "What happened here, Doctor?"
She ignored the question. "I need to find Meg," Robin said.
"Is she here?"
"I sent her"she waved toward the offices and hallways"sent her to hide."
"Banner," Hammond said.
"I'm on it, Chief." The man named Banner left the room, following the glow of his flashlight down the hall.
Robin stepped past Gray and the two officers kneeling beside him on the landing. They seemed to be checking his vitals. As a doctor, she was in the best position to offer medical assistance, but she had no strength for it and, at the moment, no concern whether Justin Gray lived or died.
"What happened?" Hammond asked again.
"How did you find me?"
"Traced your phone call."
So hitting redial had worked. She stooped and retrieved her purse from the floor, then ended the call, breaking the connection.
"Doctor?" That was Hammond again.
"I shot him," she said, finally answering his question. "I shot Justin Gray."
"I can see that. Where's the gun you used?"
"In the cellar. Along with a dead man, Detective Tomlinson."
Hammond was bewildered. "You shot him too?"
"Gray did."
"What was Tomlinson doing here?"
"He came to kill Meg."
"This isn't making sense, Doctor."
"It will. I can't explain it all now. Wolper was part of it"
"Wolper?"
"And Tomlinson and probably others."
"What possible connection could Tomlinson or Wolper have with Gray?"
"No connection. That's why they used him. He was the fall guy." She looked at the bleeding man. "He likes to play games, you know. This time, somebody tried playing a game on him."
Hammond shook his head. "I don't understand."
"It will all make sense. Later."
He seemed to accept this. She knew she should say more, but she was tired, very tired amp;
Her cell phone rang. She wondered who it could be, and if she should even answer. Out of habit she fished the phone out of her purse and took the call. "Yes?"
"Dr. Cameron? This is Gaines." The criminalist. She'd forgotten about him. "Farber got through to the ITA administrator. We traced those e-mails to a specific terminal. Gabe is a police officer, I'm a
fraid."
Tomlinson, she thought. Or Brand.
"He works in the office of Deputy Chief Hammond. A lieutenant, name of Banner."
Robin stared at the phone, and then it had fallen from her hand, and she was running for the hallway, pausing only to grab the flashlight from the landing. She aimed the beam at the shoe prints stamped on the dust-coated floor. Two sets of tracks. Meg'sand Banner's.
Hammond and the other cops sprinted behind her, yelling questions she ignored.
This part of the factory had housed the administrative offices. She passed rows of doorless entry ways. No skylight in here, but each office had a narrow window that let in ambient light from outside. Maybe Meg had found a way out through one of those windows. Maybe Banner hadn't found her.
But she knew this was an idle hope. The windows were too small to allow escape. Even if she had gotten out, Banner would follow.
He had to kill Meg. She could identify him as her kidnapper. He didn't know about the e-mail trace, didn't know he'd already been caught.
To save himself, he would kill Meg and make it look as if Gray had found her before tangling with Robin. Robin's testimony would contradict this version of events, but no one would listen to her. They would say that her memory had been altered by stress and trauma.
She could never prove otherwise. Memory, as she knew too well, was a tricky thing.
The trail curved into an intersecting corridor, ending at an office straight ahead. Robin ran to it, not caring that she was unarmed and unprotected.
In the office she found Meg huddled in a corner, staring. And Bannersprawled on the floor, half-conscious, awash in his own blood. Imbedded in his neck was something slender and shiny.
A syringe.
"Little whore," Banner wheezed.
Robin slipped past him and knelt by her daughter. "Better watch yourself, Lieutenant. I shot the last man who called her that."
She hugged Meg and stroked her hair, while Hammond called for another ambulance.
Chapter Sixty
"Granola bars. Yum."
Robin studied her daughter for signs of sarcasm but found none. Meg seemed honestly contented as she sat at the kitchen table before a plate occupied by two unwrapped honey-oat granola bars.
"I seem to recall your showing a certain aversion to all things granola," Robin observed suspiciously.
Meg shrugged. "I've grown to love them."
"Since when?"
"It's an acquired taste."
Robin sat down opposite her. "So you ready for your triumphal return?"
"Definitely."
"There will be questions. And stares."
"I know."
Robin nodded. Although Meg's name had been kept out of the media, her friends knew what had happened, and friends always talked. In the six weeks Meg had been out of schoolfirst recuperating in the hospital, then visiting her father in Santa Barbara, then traveling with Robin on an extended getaway to northern California the word would have spread throughout the small social circle of the Gainesburg School.
For much of that time the school, which was on a year-round schedule, had been out of sessionsummer recess, they called it, though it lasted only a month. Still, nearly all the kids lived on the Westside, and they would have stayed in touch.
Now, with classes resuming and Meg's return expected, the entire student population would be waiting for her. Robin pictured them as vultures in gray-and-white uniforms. The image, she admitted, was probably unfair.
Meg saw her mother watching her. She smiled. "Don't worry, Mom. I can handle it."
Of course she could. She'd proven she could handle anything.
"Sorry," Robin said. "You're right. You'll be fine."
"Better believe it. Everything's copawell, you know."
"Copacetic. You can say it."
"Even though it's his word?"
"He doesn't have a monopoly on it."
Meg finished the first granola bar and started on the second. "Any plans for today after you drop me off?"
"Nothing special." She hated lying to Meg, but she didn't want to talk about it.
"No patients?"
"In the afternoon. Morning's free."
Meg seemed to sense that this topic was going nowhere. "Happy with the new office?"
"It's a big improvement. Working there, I feel almost like an actual urban professional."
"You may need to start carrying a briefcase."
"Let's not get carried away."
The fire had rendered Robin's previous office unusable. She had no desire to remain there anyway. She had relocated to a building in the mid-Wilshire district, a safer neighborhood, but still within reach of downtown.
Downtown. The prison, she meant. The population of convicts who had served as her test subjects.
She wasn't treating any of them now. The loss of her MBI gear in the fire had given her an excuse to suspend her experimental program. But new equipment was being made to order and would arrive soon. Then she would have to decide what to do with it. It could be used for purposes more prosaic than rehabilitationfighting phobias, for instance. She wasn't sure if she would be satisfied with curing people's fear of spiders when millions of prisoners remained warehoused in jails.
Still, maybe the jails were where they belonged. All of them, forever. Lock them up, throw away the key.
She wasn't sure. Her old certainties had died on the night of Gray's rampage. She hadn't found any new truths to replace them. Not yet.
"Better get a move on," she told Meg. "Don't want to be late for your first day back. How would that reflect on me, your doting mother and unpaid chauffeur?"
"Badly."
"That's what I thought."
"Just let me brush my teeth. I intend to do a lot of smiling today."
Robin thought that was good. Her daughter was due a few smiles.
The Saab had been repaired and repainted. At first Robin hadn't liked driving a car that Gray had used. It seemed to be imprinted with his presence. Finally she'd taken it fifty miles up the coast with the windows open, the sea air whipping through. The trip had cleansed the car, expelling whatever psychic residue had lodged there.
She drove Meg the short distance to the Gainesburg School, where other parents were letting off uniformed kids with backpacks and bookbags. The scene appeared so normal, just a part of everyday life. And so it was, but Justin Gray was part of life, too. The miracle was not that the two parts ever intersected, but that they intersected so seldom.
"Mom? You okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You've been kind of brooding and uncommunicative all morning."
"I'm preoccupied, that's all."
Meg made a move to get out of the car. She hesitated. "You're not worried about me, are you?"
"Going into the lions' den? Nope. I know you can handle it."
"That's not what I mean. You're not amp; well, you're not worried about me being on my own again?"
And screwing up like I did last time; Robin heard the unvoiced words. Screwing up with Gabe.
There had been many long talks between them on that subject, and Robin knew there would be many more.
"I'm not worried," she answered. "It's funnyI used to worry all the time. About you and me and amp; well, everything. Not anymore. Not since that night. What do you think that's about?"
Meg smiled. "Delayed reaction to stress? Post-traumatic dissociative depersonalization with delusions of happiness?"
"If it's a delusion, I'll take it. Get going now. Good luck."
"Won't need it," Meg said, leaving the car.
Robin watched her walk into a crowd of students who clustered around her. When Meg was lost to sight, Robin put the Saab in gear and drove away, checking the dashboard clock.
Her morning wasn't as open as she'd said. She had an appointment at ten a.m.
Downtown.
Gray was waiting for Robin in the interview room on the eighth floor.
It had taken him si
x weeks to recover from gunshot wounds to the groin and abdomen. Four bullets had hit him out of the sixteen she'd fired, emptying the Beretta's magazine. His condition had been critical for the first few days, but gradually he'd improved, and now he was healthy enough to be reinstalled in his old cell in Twin Towers.
The doctors had told Robin that Gray demonstrated a remarkable will to live. She hadn't been surprised. Whatever else he might be, Justin Gray was a survivor.
He was seated at the table, secured with handcuffs and leg irons. He smiled when the guards escorted her inside.
"What's up, Doc?"
She took the seat opposite his. The guards remained with them, standing silently by the door.
"How are you, Justin?"
"Took a licking, kept on ticking. Got me some fine scar tissue. It's like body art. I'd give you a look, but I don't think the Deputy Dawgs would appreciate me undressing in front of a lady."
"Probably not."
"You shot me up good, Doc. Regular Dirty Harriet, you are. Bona fide Jane Wayne."
"It was amp; instinct."
"Killer instinct." He said it with a smile.
There was silence, neither of them knowing what to say.
"Been watching the TV," Gray offered. "Nasty little conspiracy them crooked-ass cops had going."
"Yes, it was."
"That motherfucker, Wolper, and that other dudewhat's his name?"
"Banner."
"Looks like they're ratting each other out. DA's playing one against the other to see who can squeal the loudest."
"That's about it."
"Couple of prize scumbags, ain't they?"
"Yes," Robin said. "They are."
Banner had begun manipulating Meg after meeting her at the awards dinner. He had a wife and a teenage daughter of his own, but he also had a secret obsession with young girls. He enjoyed impressing them by pretending to be a tough street cop, though he'd worked only Traffic and media relations. He'd had clandestine relationships with many girls, and Meg had been just one more, chosen at random, for convenience, not as part of any grand design. Only later, when Brand was assigned to Robin as a patient, did Banner begin to think about using his connection with Meg to gain leverage against her mother.
According to Hammond, Banner had tried to discourage him from taking over the manhunt. The reason was fairly clearBanner hadn't wanted to be tied up with the investigation, because it meant he was unable to return to the factory and kill Meg. Wolper had been forced to draft Tomlinson for the job.
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