The Shadow Hunter

by Michael Prescott

  Crouching on the mudflat, his flashlight off, Travis considered his next move. Carruthers and Pfeiffer were too far away to see him. The highway patrol cops were within hailing distance, but he would be invisible to them as long as he stayed in the high bulrushes and sedges along the bank.

  Carefully he pocketed his flashlight, then made his way through the foliage, keeping his head down and relying on the tall plants for cover. He advanced step by step, waiting for a gust of wind to shake the sedges and mask the disturbance his passage caused. As he drew close to the bridge, he timed his moves to coincide with each new rush of traffic, letting the roar of a Harley’s unruffled motor or the rattle of a camper drown out the noise of his progress.

  It had been a long time since he had been involved in the pursuit of an armed assailant. He found himself enjoying it. He almost wished he were an employee of Travis Protective Services, assigned to field duty, rather than the founder and proprietor, condemned to spend most of his time behind a desk.

  He proceeded to within five feet of the bridge, and still the cop with the flashlight hadn’t spotted him. Travis could see the patrolman leaning over the side, casting the beam into the waist-deep water, then exploring other parts of the creek and pond. Behind him the CHP car’s lightbar threw blue and red pulses over the scene.

  Travis was wondering how he would get past the drifting glow of the flashlight when his problem was solved for him. The patrolman abruptly lifted the flashlight and turned away, his attention drawn by the rising whine of two ambulance sirens.

  The fire station was practically next door to Malibu Reserve, and the paramedics must have arrived almost immediately. The nearest hospitals were in Santa Monica and West LA. To get there, the ambulances had to cross the bridge, heading south on PCH. The patrol cops had paused in their surveillance to slow oncoming traffic and wave the emergency vehicles through.

  It would take less than a minute for both ambulances to pass, but that was all the time Travis needed. He entered the creek, holding his gun high, and with one hand he cut the water with a strong stroke, gliding under the bridge.

  When the first ambulance screamed overhead, he risked propelling himself forward with a strong kick. He was sure Hickle couldn’t hear the splashing above the din from above.

  Behind a pylon Travis paused, only his head and the Walther above water. Hickle, he saw, had turned toward the far side of the bridge. He was watching the spotlight, which had stopped moving. The duffel was strapped to his shoulder, and the shotgun was in his hand.

  The second ambulance blew past with a cacophonous wail. Travis used the covering noise to glide forward, eel-like in the slippery water, moving from pylon to pylon until Hickle was within reach.

  At the last moment Hickle seemed to sense another presence in the dark, but it was too late. Before he could turn, Travis pressed the Walther’s muzzle to the back of Hickle’s head. “Don’t move, Raymond.”

  Hickle stiffened. Travis knew he was thinking of the shotgun, calculating odds and risks.

  “I know you want to do something heroic,” Travis whispered. “Something crazy. Don’t. Just listen to me. Will you do that, Raymond? Will you listen to one thing I have to say?”

  “So say it,” Hickle breathed, tension bunching up the muscles of his shoulders.

  “Okay, here it is, Raymond. Here’s what I came to tell you.”

  Travis leaned close, pressing his mouth to Hickle’s ear, and smiling in the dark, he recited the words of a nursery rhyme.

  “Jack, be nimble…Jack, be quick…”

  38

  The gas was off. The furnace’s pilot light was out.

  The windows in the bedroom and living room were open. Abby had not yet risked turning on an electric fan to expel the gas—any spark might ignite an explosion—but already the air was clearing.

  “We’ve got to get you to a hospital,” Wyatt said for the third time. The rover radio clipped to his uniform belt crackled with unintelligible crosstalk; he ignored it.

  “I told you,” Abby said, “I’ll go when I’m through here.”

  “Through with what, exactly?”

  “Damage control.” She tried giving him a sharp look, but the effort of focusing her gaze spun ripples of vertigo through her skull.

  She knew he was right about the hospital. It wasn’t the inhalation of gas that worried her as much as the head trauma she’d suffered when Hickle knocked her out. She still had a raging headache centered behind her eyes, pain that she could no longer attribute entirely to the gas. She was less steady on her feet than she ought to be, and the nausea in her belly had not completely vanished even after she’d started breathing fresh air.

  So, yes, she would go to a hospital, but not until she had tied up a few loose ends. The police—by which she meant officers of the law other than Vic Wyatt—would arrive before long to check out Hickle’s apartment and look in on his immediate neighbors. This was standard investigative procedure, and it would be triggered by Hickle’s attack on Kris Barwood.

  Abby knew there had been an attack. On the phone she’d heard Travis yell an order to a driver. Kris’s voice had been briefly audible, asking what was wrong. Then, gunfire. The shotgun, from the sound of it. Several shots, Kris screaming, Travis yelling at her to get down—

  And silence. The connection had been lost.

  Anything could have happened after that. Desperate to know, Abby had redialed Travis’s cell phone twice. No answer. She’d considered phoning 911 before remembering that TPS had stationed security agents at the beach house. They must have heard the shots, as had Kris’s neighbors.

  So the police were definitely involved. Whatever the outcome of the attack, there would be a thorough investigation. The Hollywood side of the case would focus on Hickle’s apartment. Nice men in suits would be banging on every door on the fourth floor very soon. But by then she would be gone.

  She made her way somewhat unsteadily into the kitchen and took out a pair of rubber gloves. As she was pulling them on, she heard Wyatt’s low-top boots on the linoleum floor. “I’m not sure I want to know what those are for,” he said wryly.

  She saw a frown of disapproval pinching his mouth. “Then you’d better not follow me when I go into Hickle’s apartment.”

  “His apartment?” The frown deepened, and he folded his arms across his chest, the blue sleeves of his jacket straining taut. “Sounds like tampering with a crime scene.”

  “Going to arrest me, Sergeant?” His silence was an eloquent reply. “Okay, then.”

  Taking her cell phone in case Travis called back, she hustled into the bedroom, where she picked up the padlock and chain. Then she climbed onto the fire escape and lifted herself into Hickle’s bedroom window.

  “You took a blow to the back of the head,” Wyatt said from behind her.

  His voice surprised her. He had followed her so silently that she hadn’t been aware of his presence. She paused, straddling the windowsill. “Yeah, Hickle clipped me,” she admitted, self-consciously fingering the bump he had seen. There was no laceration, no bleeding, only a large, swollen knob, tender to the touch.

  Wyatt leaned close and patted the injury also, drawing a wince from. her. “How?” he asked, worry in his eyes. “What did he use, his fist or a weapon?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a little memory gap. I remember fighting him…then coming to.”

  “You lost consciousness from the blow? Hell, Abby, you’ve suffered a grade three concussion. We have to get you to an ER. You need a neurologic exam—”

  “I need to take care of business. The ER can wait.”

  She tried to complete her unlawful entry into Hickle’s apartment. Wyatt grabbed her hand to stop her. “You have any idea how serious a major concussion can be?”

  She raised her head and met his eyes, experiencing another swoon of vertigo. “I think I do. Let’s see, when my brain sloshed forward, I could have suffered a contre-coup injury—contusion of the frontal and temporal lobes. Or I coul
d have ruptured some blood vessels, in which case I have a nice little subdural hematoma building up pressure in my skull. Maybe I’ve formed a blood clot, and if I receive another blow it’ll be jarred loose and I’ll have a stroke, possibly fatal. So yes, Vic, I have a vague idea of how serious a concussion can be, and the sooner you let me do what I have to do, the sooner I can get medical attention. Okay?”

  She shook free of his grip and finished climbing through the window. She knew she had been sharp with him. Irritability was one symptom of head trauma.

  The air in Hickle’s apartment was clean. He hadn’t set a similar death trap in his own place. “Don’t touch anything,” she instructed Wyatt when he followed her inside. “You were never here.”

  She wiped off the padlock and chain, tossing both items on the bedroom floor, and proceeded into the living room. The first thing she saw was that Hickle had pulled down the smoke detector. Scanning the carpet, she discovered the camera’s crushed remnants. She put them in her pocket.

  “What was that?” Wyatt asked.

  “Surveillance camera. In pieces, but the crime scene guys would still be able to identify it.”

  “Camera? One of yours?”

  “It’s just a tool of the trade, no big deal, except it’s illegal.”

  “Yeah, except for that.”

  Abby retrieved the infinity transmitter from the smashed telephone, then found the bug in the oven’s ventilation hood, which Hickle had overlooked. She returned to the bedroom. The place was a mess. Hickle had torn down most of the photos; they littered the floor like a drift of faces. Abby wondered if Wyatt noticed that the subject of every photograph was Kris Barwood. If so, he didn’t mention it.

  As she was groping underneath the drawers of Hickle’s nightstand to recover the other microphone, she heard Wyatt say, “You think you can disappear, is that it?”

  “Possibly. I’ve done it before.”

  “You mean when you were Emanuel Barth’s housekeeper?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I didn’t, until Sam Cahill gave me the details. He’s the detective who handled the case and put Barth away the second time.”

  She looked at him. “You talked with a detective about me?”

  “Your name never came up.”

  “Even so, you must’ve raised his suspicions.”

  “Sam’s a friend. He’ll be discreet. You can trust him.”

  “I don’t seem to have a choice,” she snapped.

  “You know, for someone who just cheated death, you’re in a pretty foul mood.”

  Abby found a smile. “Sorry. I just don’t like people knowing my secrets, that’s all.”

  “Even me?”

  “Even you, Vic. Even though you saved my life. It may be irrational, but that’s the way I am. Anyway, you’re right about the Barth case. I was Connie Hammond.”

  “And you disappeared.”

  “It was easy enough. Nobody was looking very hard for Connie. This time there are complications. Hickle knows the truth about me. Someone else may know also. If either of them ends up in custody and wants to talk, I could have some explaining to do.” She pocketed the second mike, then picked up her microcassette recorder, which Hickle had left on the bed.

  “Sounds like you’re in a lot of trouble, Abby.”

  “No, I was in a lot of trouble. Now I’m fine, thanks to you. And I do mean thanks. I was wrong, you know, the other night.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “When I said I didn’t need any help, that I could handle myself and I didn’t need anybody watching my back. I was wrong.” It was difficult for her to say this. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency had been the basic credo of her life.

  “Yeah, well”—Wyatt shrugged—“we all make mistakes.”

  The last thing Abby took out of Hickle’s apartment was the Maidenform briefs he’d stolen from her laundry. She noticed Wyatt eyeing the underwear with a puzzled look, but he didn’t ask any questions, and she didn’t feel like talking about it.

  They returned via the fire escape to her apartment. By now the gas had largely dissipated, and Abby felt ready to risk a spark. She turned on a table fan, blowing the rest of the fumes out the living room window. In her bedroom, she removed the monitoring gear from the closet and arranged it on the bureau.

  “More spy stuff?” Wyatt asked.

  “Not anymore. Now it’s your garden-variety TV and VCR.”

  “And an audio deck with long-playing reel-to-reel tapes.”

  “Quirky, but not particularly suspicious. I doubt anybody will even notice it on a casual walk-through. Can you get me a trash bag from the kitchen?”

  While Wyatt fetched it, Abby went into the bathroom and poured a long drink of water. God, her throat was so sore. She was tempted to take aspirin, but she knew it would thin her blood and exacerbate any internal bleeding. At least her head no longer was beating like a bongo drum. Now it was more like a snare drum. That had to constitute an improvement.

  She checked her eyes in the mirror. The pupils looked evenly dilated, a good sign. Maybe her injury wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. Had she dodged the blow at the last instant, receiving only a glancing impact rather than a direct hit? Had her reflexes saved her from a skull fracture and brain injury? It was possible. She didn’t remember how she had reacted or even what Hickle had hit her with. She didn’t remember the moment of impact at all.

  “You’re hurting,” Wyatt said when she emerged from the bathroom. He had been watching her.

  “It’s nothing a little fresh air and exercise won’t cure.” She took the trash bag from him and stuffed it with the wrecked video cassette and audio reels, as well as the Maidenform briefs, which she sure as hell wasn’t going to wear again.

  Wyatt grunted. “Maybe. But you’re still going to the ER, if I have to drag you there by your hair.”

  “How Neanderthal of you. But entirely unnecessary.” She added the camera, microphones, and transmitters to the bag, along with the rubber gloves. “I’m going of my own volition. See?” She held up the trash bag. “All packed.”

  In the living room she picked up her purse and checked to confirm that her gun was still there. She put her microrecorder and cell phone inside, pausing as she wondered if she should try Travis’s number again.

  Wyatt saw her hesitate. “He still hasn’t called back—whoever you reported to.”

  “Maybe he can’t. Maybe the alert came too late. Maybe”—she hated to say it—“maybe he’s dead, and the client too.”

  “Kris Barwood,” Wyatt said. So he had noticed the photos.

  Abby nodded. This time her head did not reel from the effort, and she took some comfort from that.

  They left the apartment together and rode the elevator to ground level. Wyatt said he would drive her in his squad car, and she said, “Yes, of course.” In her present state she was unfit to sit behind the wheel of an automobile. If she had suffered any serious craniocerebral trauma, she could black out at any time. “But,” she added, “we have to move my Dodge out of the parking lot so your pals in blue don’t find it.”

  “Why?”

  “So if I’m interviewed, I can say I drove myself to the hospital.” As he walked her to the Dodge, she explained more fully. Talking was good. It kept her alert. “See, I’m trying to keep all my options open until I know how things work out. I’d prefer to have Abby Gallagher disappear forever, like Connie Hammond. But if Hickle or someone else identifies me to the police, I’ll have to come clean. At least, reasonably clean.”

  “How clean, exactly?”

  “I won’t admit to any illegalities. No electronic surveillance, no breaking and entering. I was hired to move in next door to Hickle and keep an eye on him, that’s all. He found me out and attacked me. When I came to, I was confused and disoriented. I drove myself to the hospital in a daze and didn’t remember my obligation to talk to the cops until my memories came back at a convenient time.”

  “Weak.”


  “But undisprovable.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “It is now.”

  “Hickle will tell them about the bugs in his apartment. How are you going to explain that?”

  “Explain what? The paranoid ravings of a homicidal stalker?”

  “And if Hickle is never caught and your cover isn’t blown?”

  “Then farewell, Abby Gallagher, wherever you are.”

  He looked at her with admiration. “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?”

  “This is nothing. You should see me in action when my brain hasn’t been batted around like a beach ball.”

  Wyatt moved the Dodge to a side street, then escorted her to his cruiser. He asked which hospital she wanted. She ran through the options in her mind and decided that on a Friday night any emergency room in this part of town would be a war zone. “I don’t suppose you could chauffeur me all the way to Cedars-Sinai,” she said. It was in West Hollywood, a better neighborhood.

  “No problem.”

  “It might be a problem for you if the watch commander starts to wonder where you’ve been for so long.”

  “I’ll tell him I stopped at a donut shop. That’s always plausible for a cop, right?”

  Abby smiled. “No comment.”

  Three blocks from the Gainford Arms, Wyatt detoured into an alley and discarded the trash bag in a Dumpster. As he pulled onto Santa Monica Boulevard, heading west, Abby fished her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed Travis’s number. Still no answer.

  “It’ll be all right,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “Sure. I know. The good guys always win, don’t they?” She sank back wearily in the passenger seat and shut her eyes, repeating the words as a mantra. “The good guys always win.”

  39

  “Are you really him?” Hickle breathed. “Are you JackBNimble?”

  “I’m him. You still thinking about using that twelve-gauge?”

  The tension eased out of Hickle in a shaky expulsion of breath. “Guess not.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Travis stepped back, lowering the Walther. “You can turn around. No reason we can’t talk face to face. We’re partners, after all.”