by Lois Greiman
“Thanks anyway,” I said and dug in my pocket for the pepper spray Rivera had given me.
“Well, okay then, suit yourself, luv,” he said and gave me a smile that, under normal circumstances, would have melted my intestines. As it was I just felt like peeing in my pants.
He revved his engine and zoomed off into the night.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the fence. Down on Burbank Boulevard another pair of headlights turned north. I swore to myself, relinquished the defense spray, and scurried back to the safety of my Saturn.
In my rearview mirror, I watched the car turn east and disappear. I concentrated on my breathing. It didn’t help, so I turned on the AC and tried to stop sweating. Maybe I should have taken yoga with Elaine. Which reminded me, I had to talk to her about Solberg. It couldn’t be put off this time. I owed him big. I glanced idly toward Bomber’s house. Even if I didn’t scrounge up enough nerve to play cat burglar, he had come through with his end of the bargain. Maybe ol’ J.D. wasn’t such a bad egg after all. True, he brayed like a jackass and wore his pubic hair too far north, but he didn’t seem to have any weird attachments to his mother’s vacuum cleaner and he hadn’t once chased me around my desk like . . . But in that moment all thought processes teetered to a halt because there—in Bomstad’s upper window—was a light.
I blinked, then looked again, but it was gone.
Holy crap! Frantically scanning the house, I tried to convince myself I wasn’t insane. I stared until my eyes burned, then, just before they shut down, I saw it again—a flicker of light.
Someone was in Bomstad’s house. And it wasn’t me.
I glanced out my side window, maybe searching for some answers, maybe certain someone had set me up. But it seemed apparent that I had to try to determine who the intruder was.
Mind spinning, I reached up and clicked off my dome light so that it wouldn’t flip on when I opened the door. My hand, I realized, seemed strangely unsteady, but I managed the gargantuan feat. Foresight. I was proud of myself. But when I opened the door, the Saturn blared as if it were being carjacked. I fumbled manically, trying to pull the keys out of the ignition. They tumbled to the floor. A dog barked, jerking my attention to the east, but he was farther away than my frantic mind suggested, so I gathered the keys in spastic fingers, stepped out of the car, and carefully pressed the door closed. I couldn’t have made more noise if I had shot a cannon across Bomstad’s front lawn.
I waited, hearing nothing but the dog and my own heart trying to hammer its way through my ribs.
Between the branches of nearby trees I thought I saw a flicker of light again, but I was pretty sure I was imagining things this time, because it was pink and rising to the treetops. I didn’t think there was really an ogre breathing on my neck, either, but I turned woodenly to check, just the same. Sure enough, no ogre, which left me pretty much without excuses. I was going to have to investigate the house.
My legs felt as ungainly as stilts as I crept across the grass, and it was no simple task to shimmy over the wrought-iron fence. The spikes at the top poked me in the belly and caught at my sweater on the way down. Yeah, I’d worn a sweater. In September, in L.A. I’d needed something black with sleeves and didn’t want to snag my Dior just to keep from going to jail. In retrospect, that might have been a bit shortsighted.
Before I was halfway across the yard, I was sweating like a pig—which is a strange analogy because my cousin, Kevin the pig farmer, had assured me the porcine species doesn’t sweat. But he’d always seemed strangely defensive about his animals and may simply have been . . .
Holy crap! The light was back! I froze like a Popsicle, staring at the house. I was only fifty feet from it now, so I could hardly be mistaken. Although, an instant later it was as dark as Hades again. I couldn’t think over the sound of my own breathing, but a light had been there. I was sure of it. Wasn’t I? But what if I was right? What then?
Then I’d have to figure out who was in there. But how?
An excellent question. Maybe I should call Rivera. Tell him someone had broken into Bomstad’s house. Someone besides me. I winced. A noise scraped, off to my left. I didn’t pass out. Instead, after a moment of petrified immobility, I crept, breath held, off to the right, heart pounding like mad, knees weak.
If someone really had broken into Bomstad’s house, they’d probably gone through the back door or a window. Which meant they must have either known the security system was disabled or had the code or . . .
Something shone on the grass in the moonlight. Was it glass?
I think it was curiosity that pushed me forward. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t courage, and I have a bad feeling about good sense. Good sense, if I had any, was surely urging me to get my ass out of there as fast as my little wooden legs could carry me. But instead I continued to creep along like a demented monkey. I held my flashlight in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, but I was totally unaware of both. Nothing mattered but the light in the window.
Maybe this was a clue, a piece of evidence, a means of extricating myself from the position I found myself in. If I could learn who was in the house, I could surely use that information to—
“Don’t move.”
The voice was right behind me. I squawked like a pigeon and pivoted around, swinging with all my might.
I heard a grunt. Someone grabbed my arm, but I jerked free and swung again, terror clawing my throat. I felt my flashlight strike flesh. My attacker cursed and wrapped his arms tight around my chest. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. So I did the only thing I possibly could. I bit him.
“Jesus Christ, McMullen!” Rivera growled. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
19
Sanity is highly overrated.
—Whack,
proprietor of Tats “R” Us, just before tattoing a heart on Christina’s left buttock
“WHAT THE FUCK are you doing here?” Even through the haze of terror and adrenaline, I noticed his tone didn’t sound very happy.
“Rivera?” My voice was as breathy as a porn star’s. I would like to say I was disappointed to see him. After all, he was the bane of my existence. And yet, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to bludgeon me with my flashlight and dump my decaying body into the bay.
Which couldn’t necessarily be said about whoever was skulking about in Bomstad’s darkened house.
On the other hand, Rivera did take my flashlight. He gripped both my arms, and none too gently, I might add. Maybe I’d sue for that police brutality thing after all. He had no right to—
“Any idea what the penalty is for breaking and entering?” he asked.
I jerked my attention in the direction his had gone. Sure enough, there was broken glass amongst the shrubbery.
“Hey!” I said, righteousness rife in my tone. So what if I had hoped to enter the house in a similar manner? “I didn’t do that.”
“Really?”
“Really!” I tried to pull away. Seems he was stronger. Who would have thought? “There’s someone in there.”
“Have you been drinking, McMullen?”
“There is someone in there!” I repeated, slower now, in consideration for his gender and his occupation.
He leaned closer. It took me a minute to realize he was smelling my breath. I gave him a shove. He teetered back a half a step but that was it. I’d been right about the percentage of his body fat. Nil. If I ever got tired of psychoanalysis I could go into psychic body fat testing.
“I’m telling you . . .” I was hissing now as I glanced toward Bomstad’s house. “I saw a light.”
“Here’s a little pertinent information for you,” he said, ushering me toward the walkway with a hand on my arm, “officers of the law are issued flashlights. It’s standard equipment.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. “It was you? With the light? It was you?” Holy crap, I’d snuck up on Bomstad’s house only to find Rivera. What were the chances?
He pressed me
up against some shrubbery. Little barbs pricked through my sweater. I’d learned shortly after arriving in L.A. that most of its vegetation is engineered to try to eradicate the human species.
“What are you doing here, McMullen?”
My heart rate slowed to a mere gallop and I realized we were standing really close. In fact, my hands had somehow landed on his waist. Maybe I was trying to fend him off. Anyway, even through his shirt I could feel the bunched muscles of his abdomen. It reminded me of my Batman dream, but I think I’d read somewhere that Batman wore Plexiglas armor during the movie. I was pretty sure Rivera’s abs were the real deal.
How long had it been since I’d been so close to that kind of muscle? Years, for sure. Maybe decades. Maybe I never had been. Although my old beau, Luke Harken, had had muscle to spare. Unfortunately, most of it had been firmly packed inside his cranium and—
“Jesus, McMullen! Snap out of it!” Rivera ordered and shook me.
I realized then that I seemed to have slipped into some sort of hypnotic state of shock. I shook my head, disgusted with myself.
“Listen. I saw a light,” I said. “I had no way of knowing you’d be skulking around in there.”
“Police officers don’t skulk.”
I gave him the look I reserved for perverts and liars, which in my line of work included most everyone I met. “I assumed someone had broken into Bomstad’s house,” I said, using my nose voice. “Thus, I—” I realized somewhat belatedly that my explanation might not justify my current whereabouts. I’m not sure if I should blame that tardy logic on hormones or stress. Or both. Both are good.
“So you what?” he asked, his tone deceptively level.
I found his gaze and rethought the idea of him bludgeoning me with my flashlight. “I didn’t know it was you,” I repeated. A mynah bird would have sounded as intelligent. “And I didn’t break the window.”
“Maybe it spontaneously combusted.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was being somewhat facetious. “Be a smart-ass if you like,” I said. “But I didn’t break the window.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Back to that. It seemed to be a recurring theme. “Well . . .” I was thinking fast, or trying to, “you wouldn’t let me help with the case.”
He neither argued nor tried to justify his reasons. He merely stared. I hated that.
I drew my hands away, but he didn’t do the same. It would have been nice to believe he just liked touching me, but it could be that he thought I’d zap him with his own defense spray if he let me go. And I have to admit, the thought had crossed my mind.
“So I thought I’d just . . .” I glanced away. It was difficult holding his gaze, even in the dark, although I had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. I hadn’t killed Bomstad, after all. And if Solberg wanted to disarm the man’s security system . . . But wait a minute. Maybe Rivera had shut it off and Solberg hadn’t come through at all. In which case I didn’t owe him any favors and Elaine wouldn’t hate me for the rest of my natural life. Which would be really nice, because the way things were heading I was going to need friends to visit me in Sing Sing, or wherever third-degree murderers went.
“You thought what?” he asked and shook me a little. “You’d break into the Bomb’s house for a little evening entertainment?”
“This is not—” I began, but at that moment I saw a flicker of light behind him. I tried to speak, to tell him, but my life had become strangely surreal.
“Is it the diary?” he asked. “Is that what you’re looking for? What’s in the damn thing, McMullen?”
The light! It had shone in a window. I was sure of it. But it was gone. No. There. No. Gone.
I tried to pull out of his grip, straining to see through the darkness.
“What the devil did you do to make—”
“There’s a light!” I rasped.
“Will you shut up about the fucking—”
I yanked out of his grasp. “A light!” I hissed, my brain finally kicking in. “I didn’t break the window. I assume you didn’t.” I waved somewhat frenetically. “Someone did.”
He glanced at the house, then hissed low and shoved me into the bushes. “Stay there. Do you hear me? Don’t move. Don’t speak, and for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid.”
I was trying to conjure up a sufficiently insulted rejoinder when he slipped away. In a heartbeat he was invisible. I couldn’t even hear him, at least not over the thumping of my own heart. But then I thought I heard a sound, something from inside the house. Someone was coming. Maybe they were searching for the very thing I wanted. Maybe they had it already.
Holding my breath, I sidled closer, skirting along the bushes with my knees rattling and my hand curled around my pepper spray. I missed my flashlight something fierce. It didn’t put out much light, but it was nice to have something in my left hand besides sweat. When I was just about even with the window I stopped. Crouching there like a cowed kitten, I waited, and sure enough, someone appeared in the window—just a block of blackness beneath the jagged shards of broken glass. My throat ached with tension. Where was Rivera?
Then suddenly a beam of light cut a swath through the darkness and across the window. “LAPD! Stay where you are.”
For one fragmented second I caught a glimpse of white skin and dark clothing, and then the figure leapt. I saw Rivera go down under the attack. The flashlight spun into the darkness. Someone grunted. Bone thumped against flesh. There was a rasped curse, and then, like a fleeing rabbit, the intruder lurched to his feet and bolted away.
Now, as I recall it, the encounter seemed as if it took place in slow motion. But in reality, everything happened in a heartbeat, in a breath of time. One moment there was someone perched in the window, and the next there were foot beats racing past me into the darkness.
Rivera coughed. I glanced frantically at him, then jerked my attention in the direction of the escapee. For one wild, inexplicable second I actually thought of racing after him. As I tell my clients, even the most lucid of us has bouts of insanity, but the lunacy quickly passed. Just as quickly, the black shape was gone, the racing footfalls disintegrating into silence.
Rivera cursed, making me wonder if I might be safer going after the window guy, but he coughed again and sat up and it didn’t seem like there was much I could do but approach him.
“Are you okay?”
He turned toward me. He hadn’t been Mr. Congeniality before. I doubted if he was going to qualify for the title at this late date. “Wanna tell me who that was?”
I was actually, physically, taken aback. “You think I know?”
He let loose a fluid string of obscenities that made me wonder where one quit and the next began. Impressive.
“You’re not making this easy on yourself. I’ll give you that,” he said, and seizing the escaped flashlight, he struggled to his feet. The beam of light wobbled. I realized it wasn’t my own. Apparently the LAPD really did spring for flashlights.
“Listen,” I said. My adrenaline rush had started to subside, leaving fatigue and irritation in its wake. “You think I’m dumb enough to tell you someone’s inside if I’m his damned accomplice?”
He looked at me as if thinking it over, but in a moment I realized he wasn’t thinking at all; he was sliding down the brick exterior toward the ground. I caught him just before he hit the rhododendrons. He wasn’t the featherweight Solberg was, and he wasn’t making my efforts any easier. He hit the ground. I did the same a second later. In fact, I may have landed on top of him because I heard a little ummph of pain. Not that I’m heavy.
Silence echoed around us. Fear zapped in. Maybe he was dead!
I put my hand on his chest and squinted into his face.
“Jesus!” he said. I realized somewhat belatedly that his eyes were open and his face intimately close to mine. Was he talking to God or just being blasphemous again? “Why the hell don’t you just cut my throat and get it over with?” Just as I suspected—
he was too ornery to be dead.
“You’re blaming this on me?” I was immediately irritated, which is unlike me. Must have been caused by an influx of estrogen. “I didn’t ask you to—Oh, crap!” Even in the dark, I could see a dark streak creeping down his face. “You’re bleeding.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he said and wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Did you see which way he went?”
I watched the blood ooze onto his brow again “Who?”
He gave me a look I could have deciphered in a coal mine. “Our friend in the window. Which way did he go?”
“Oh. That way.” I motioned with my head.
He struggled, but seemed to have difficulty getting his feet under him.
“What are you doing?” I asked and leaned automatically against his chest.
“Get the hell off of me,” he growled, but I had dealt with illogical men since the day I was born. Granted, my brothers were generally drunk when they decided to do something obviously suicidal, but drunk and concussed seem to have the same effect on the male thinking apparatus. Actually, a lot of situations seem to have the same effect on the male thinking apparatus.
I leaned over him, applying weight to his chest. He struggled for a moment longer, then settled back into the rhododendrons. But I didn’t trust his capitulation and stayed where I was.
He dropped his head back against the bricks and coughed weakly. I eased up a little, but not too much, in case it was a trick.
“How the hell much do you weigh, McMullen?” he asked.
“Not . . .” I began, then, “It’s none of your damned business what I weigh.”
I thought I saw a flash of teeth in the darkness. Was it a smile? Was he delirious? I applied more of my nearly insignificant weight, just in case he’d lost his mind and was going to make a dash for it. He didn’t.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
“Still proceeding on the asinine idea that I broke into the house?” I asked and tried not to look at the blood on his forehead or consider the idea that that was exactly what I had intended to do.