Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “You are nothing but a stupid woman,” Gabriel said.

  There it was. My life as told to me by a serial killer.

  “No longer,” I said.

  Just past Washington, the road began to rise more steadily as I headed into the more expensive homes of the foothills. On either side, the streets began to twist and curve as if in a dreamscape. The dark shapes of the mountains rose above me and threatened to tumble down and cover everything at their feet. With each block the streets became darker and emptier. A coyote stopped in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead and let loose a string of cries before disappearing into the night.

  “Turn left on Midwick. Go a block and a half and stop,” Gabriel said.

  I turned, my headlights cutting into the darkness ahead. The eerie, red eyes and the ghostly gray shape of a possum reflected briefly in the lights before vanishing down a storm drain. There were no houses on the street, the hillsides being too steep. A block and a half up I pulled to the side and stopped. The nearest streetlight was another block and a half farther on. Beyond that, I could make out four cars parked on the street in the darkness. One of them, I assumed, contained Gabriel and maybe my daughter. He was that close. For whatever he had planned, he had picked a perfect spot. I was sitting on the dark side of the moon. The lights of Los Angeles spreading out below me might just as well have been the swath of lights of the Milky Way for my ability to contact one of them.

  “Turn the engine and the lights off.”

  My hand fought the impulse to follow the directions then reluctantly obeyed his command. The plunge into darkness was sudden and complete, and my eyes were slow to adjust. I checked all the mirrors for any movement in the darkness behind me, but nothing stirred that I could see. I reached down and slipped my Glock from my holster and set it on my lap. The silence I thought I was hearing wasn’t silence at all but the white noise of rushing water plunging from the mountains in a nearby ravine. Something moved through the brush on the hillside below. I clicked off the safety on my weapon and placed my hand on the grip, but the movement in the brush stopped.

  In the rearview I saw a beam of headlights heading up Altadena slice the darkness. As the car reached the corner and came into view, it slid to a stop in the middle of the street. I tightened my grip on my Glock and raised it into an upright shooting position. The headlights of the car swept across my mirror and slowly came toward me.

  “What is that?” Gabriel said. There was tension in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You had them follow you—”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “If you’re lying, I kill her right now.”

  “No! I’m not lying.”

  “Then what is that?”

  “It’s someone coming home from a party, that’s all.”

  Even as I said it, I realized it wasn’t true. I recognized the profile of the roof lights coming toward me.

  “It’s a policeman.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Your daughter’s dead.”

  “No,” I screamed into the phone. “It’s not a cop. It’s private security, a rent-a-cop. All the neighborhoods have them up here. It’s nothing.”

  “Rent-a-cop? What is that?”

  “They patrol neighborhoods, they’re not police.”

  “You said cop.”

  “It’s a figure of speech. They’re paid seven bucks an hour to drive around. That’s all they do!”

  I held my hand up in front of the mirror so the headlights of the sedan wouldn’t blind me. It pulled up behind, hesitated, then drove by, the driver glancing in my direction though I couldn’t see his face in the darkness. On the side of the car, the company’s name was spelled out in bold letters. ARMED RESPONSE.

  “You see. It’s nothing.”

  “If you’re lying to me . . .”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Seventy feet in front of me the rent-a-cop pulled to the curb and stopped, his red brake lights glowing in the darkness like two menacing eyes. I stared at it in disbelief. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be. The driver made no attempt to get out of the car. He just sat there, waiting. I felt as if I were standing on a plate-glass window spanning an abyss, my daughter’s life hanging on what a wannabe cop with a GED was going to do next.

  “Move,” I whispered. “Just drive on.”

  “Why did he stop?” Gabriel demanded.

  “He thinks I’m a burglar. He’s doing his job, that’s all.”

  “He followed you!” he shouted, on the edge of rage.

  The glass under my feet began to crack.

  “No!”

  “I’m placing a knife to your daughter’s throat.”

  “I’ll get rid of him!”

  “He followed you!”

  “No!”

  “You lie!”

  “No!” I pleaded.

  Only silence came back.

  “I swear it, I swear I’m not lying.”

  Still nothing came over the phone.

  “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  I closed my eyes. I could hear the sound of the glass beneath my feet begin to splinter.

  “Please—”

  “Get rid of him, now.”

  I instantly stepped out of the squad, holstering my weapon and starting toward the rent-a-cop. The white noise of the rushing water was punctuated by what sounded like thunder. I glanced at the sky, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight, no flashes of lightning. With each step I took toward the idling patrol car, the rumble grew louder as if I were walking into the eye of a storm. I felt a small tremor under my feet, and then the rumble became a cascade of violent reports, one after another. I realized that a piece of the mountain above had broken loose and was careening down the wash in the darkness, sending boulders the size of cars bouncing off the concrete walls, swallowing everything in its path.

  “Take him,” I whispered, or prayed, or just blindly hoped that Gabriel was in its path. “Sweep him away.”

  But as quickly as it had approached, the slide passed, the rumble quickly fading until the night was once again eerily silent. No miracles, not tonight.

  Twenty feet from the back of the patrol car, I could just make out the driver’s hand reaching up to adjust the mirror to watch my approach. I removed my badge and held the gold shield out so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a weapon. As I passed the back bumper the driver’s window began to roll down.

  “Police officer,” I said, holding out the badge. “I need you to move from the area right now!”

  As I stepped to the door, the driver turned, his face catching enough starlight to reflect briefly in the darkness. I saw his eyes just long enough for a dreadful sense of familiarity to hit me. I knew those eyes, and they were now measuring me like a predator.

  The unmistakable shape of a shotgun barrel protruded out the window. I reached for my weapon, but it was already too late. My hand just touched the cool plastic of the grip when the muzzle flash lit up the darkness like heat lightning, and the whole world turned white.

  22

  THERE WAS NO SOUND, no color, no smell, no touch. Was I falling? Standing? Lying down? How long had it been? An hour, a minute, or just a second? If I was breathing, I wasn’t aware of it. A dull pain rose in my chest with each beat of my heart and traveled through my body like a spreading virus, deadening everything in its path. Was this how you die, inch by inch, cell by cell?

  The faint light of the night sky gradually began to come into focus, moving and shifting as if in a fun-house mirror. I was on the ground next to the car. I could feel the grit of the pavement on the side of my face. A faint taste of oil played on my lips. There was movement around me, though it was too quick for my eyes to focus on. I heard the trunk of a car open and then the sound of footsteps on the gravel of the pavement.

  I looked over to my right and saw my hand splayed out, holding my Glock as if it had no connection to the rest of my bod
y. What had happened? I tried to replay the events, but unconsciousness began to rise like a cresting wave, and my hand began to dissolve into the pavement as if it were melting wax.

  Fight it. Find something, remember something. Push it back, push it.

  “Lacy,” faintly crossed my lips.

  The wave began to settle and then retreat. I remembered walking up to the car, the blast of the shotgun.

  Where had I been hit? Why didn’t I feel the moisture of blood on my skin and shirt? It didn’t make sense. Death would make sense. There was something else, just before the shotgun.

  “The eyes,” I whispered.

  I knew those eyes, but they weren’t the eyes that stared out from the drawing of Gabriel. But whose? I tried to place them, but the face remained just out of focus.

  The sound of the footsteps began to move in my direction. I looked at my hand holding my gun and tried to will it to move, to do something, but it was like trying to yell instructions across a vast canyon. The steps drew closer. One by one my fingers began to tighten around the grip of my weapon.

  “Move, goddamnit, come on, come on,” I whispered, willing the gun up off the ground as the footsteps drew closer.

  I tried to point it at the approaching figure, but my hand drifted uncontrollably in space as if I were lying on the rolling deck of a ship at sea.

  “Lieutenant,” a voice said.

  I tried to steady the weapon on the dark shape of the figure looming over me. The gun swung wildly back and forth across my field of fire.

  “Steady it,” I told myself, fighting for control of my own hand.

  The gun swung left, then back to the right.

  “Steady.”

  As it swept back across the shape of the figure, I began to pull the trigger.

  “Now,” I commanded my hand. “Now!”

  The gun steadied and for an instant, I had a clear shot.

  “No, Lieutenant,” Gabriel said.

  His boot stepped on my wrist, pressing it painfully into the pavement, and the Glock slipped uselessly out of my hand.

  “I have other plans, Lieutenant,” he said.

  His hand was covering my mouth with a cloth.

  “Breathe, Lieutenant. Take a deep breath.”

  The cloth had a sharp, pungent odor like a cleaning fluid. I tried to pull away, but my strength was already fleeing.

  “Don’t fight it like your daughter.”

  “Go to hell.”

  I reached out toward him as if I could pull aside the fog of unconsciousness that was enveloping me and see his face. He pressed the cloth against my mouth, driving my head hard against the pavement.

  “Breathe!” he said impatiently.

  I fought for another second, trying to resist the instinct, and then I gagged for want of oxygen and took in the bitter air contained in the cloth.

  “There,” Gabriel said, his voice drifting into the distance. “Take it in. Take it.”

  I tried with the last of my strength to shake my head free of his hand, but I no longer had any control over my body to fight it.

  “Lacy,” I said faintly, trying to cling to consciousness.

  I saw my daughter’s face hovering just above me. She was talking, but no sound was coming out of her mouth. In my mind I tried to ask where she was, but I couldn’t form the words. Her eyes filled with the light of stars as she became part of the night sky. I tried to reach out to her but the ground beneath me gave way and I began to fall, and Lacy disappeared into the stars.

  I WAS moving now, flying maybe. Images and sounds passed by me with astonishing speed. I was holding Lacy. I was being kissed by a young man who would become my husband. I was a girl, standing naked in front of a mirror. A dinner table. My mother sitting silently. The sound of a gunshot. A dismembered body. A hand. The shattering of glass. Sirens. Traver lying in the hospital bed, a bandage wrapped around his head, a tear in the corner of his eye. A red sweater floating in a pool. Breem’s eyes pleading for help. Lacy’s empty tennis shoe. A bed of roses, thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, the color of blood.

  My head began to spin from the cascade and I felt the urge to vomit. No. Stop it, reach out, take hold. My fingers groped for a handhold and then slipped their grip and I began to slide. I didn’t fight it. I just wanted to sleep, to let it happen. I picked up speed, the nausea passed. That’s better, now go the rest of the way, let go . . . go. The images lost all color, then all definition, and I slipped back into the refuge of unconsciousness.

  THE MOVEMENT was different now. The constant rhythm of p-dum, p-dum, p-dum played in the darkness like a dripping faucet. I opened my eyes, but there was no light. I tried to move my hands, but they refused. The pain in my chest was different now, like a hand pressing down, trying to force air out of my lungs. If there was a wound, I was not feeling it.

  The cadence of the sound picked up speed, then seemed to fade away and come back without missing a beat. I knew this sound, I thought. I reached out to it as if it were a rope that would lead me back to understanding . . . p-dum, p-dum, p-dum . . .

  I know that, it’s—

  The lightness of unconsciousness began to roll over me again.

  “No,” I said desperately, trying to fight it off, trying to cling to consciousness.

  The rhythm slowed a full measure. P—dum . . . p—dum . . .

  I know it. . . . I know . . .

  P—dum.

  “A car,” I whispered. The sound of tires on pavement. He was taking me somewhere. The rope began to slip through my hands. Who was taking me?

  P—dum.

  “Gabriel,” I whispered. He’s finishing his book. I’m a part of it. The end of it.

  The current of unconsciousness began to lift me off my feet. I fought it for a moment, but I wasn’t strong enough. The sound of the tires began to fade. I reached out one more time to try to hold on. For an instant I saw myself walking down Colorado Boulevard. That’s it, hold on. I tried to reach out farther. The parade. I saw it. I was walking into the middle of a crowd.

  “No . . . no.” I tried to yell, but I couldn’t make a sound. A little girl reached her hand out toward me and began to smile.

  23

  “LIEUTENANT.”

  The voice was calling from across a room, or a long hallway, as indistinct as a memory.

  “Wake, Lieutenant.”

  I felt the sharp sting on my cheek from a slap. A hand then gripped my face and shook it painfully.

  “Wake!” he yelled.

  Consciousness began to return like an amusement park ride, speeding and twisting in jarring jumps of time. The last rush was like the final drop of a roller coaster, faster and faster until it ended with the abruptness of hitting a wall, and I was thrown violently back into the world.

  I raised my head. I was sitting upright in a chair. My eyes were covered with a blindfold, my hands and legs bound tightly to the chair. I felt his cold hand touch the side of my face and I pulled away.

  “Good,” Gabriel said.

  The odor of his cheap aftershave clung to him as he moved behind me. I tried to orient myself, walk the events back to the first step that had brought me to this room. A flash of light in the darkness. The shotgun. The gravel on the pavement, the taste of oil on my lips. My shirt was dry, no blood.

  “You shot me with a stun round?” I said.

  Where the round had struck me felt as if a hot piece of charcoal was burning into my flesh.

  “I could have killed you.”

  But he didn’t, and wouldn’t until I had played my role in his drama properly. It was my only advantage, if you could consider knowing how you are supposed to die in the next few hours a point of leverage.

  “Where’s my daughter?” I asked.

  He slapped the side of my head, cupping my ear, sending a wave of pain through me like I had hit a live wire.

  “I could have killed you!” he repeated angrily, as if I didn’t fully understand the gravity of my situation or his ability t
o control my fate.

  I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck and I stiffened.

  “You’re very lucky,” he whispered in my ear.

  His breath held the sweet taste of cinnamon and the bitterness of burned garlic. His hand slipped over the top of my shoulder and pressed on the welt where the round had struck me. I gasped, and all the air left my lungs. It felt as if his hand had reached in and taken hold of my heart.

  “Tender?”

  I tried to speak but couldn’t get enough air to form even a single word. His hand traveled up to my throat. The sharp nail of his index finger began to follow the outline of my chin. The pain in my chest began to subside, and I drew a breath.

  “You pathetic bastard,” I said.

  His hand withdrew, and I braced myself for another slap across the face, but none came. In my darkness I could sense him pull away from me like a snake retreating to its hole.

  I tried to remember what I had seen in his eyes, what quality told me those eyes didn’t belong to the drawing of Gabriel. They were light, piercing, like diamonds. They had looked at me with menace, but I could picture them differently. I could imagine them softer, pleading, possibly holding love or shedding tears, or even celebrating joy.

  “A face designed to not be forgotten,” was how Father Paul had described the drawing of Gabriel. His were not those eyes. His were a chameleon’s eyes . . . an actor’s eyes. Eyes that could be anything, go anywhere. Everyman’s eyes. Then I understood. It was so simple, perfect.

  “You’re not Gabriel, are you,” I said. “There is no Gabriel. You’ve created him to hide behind so you can go out in the light.”

  Only silence came back.

  “Who are you?”

  In the darkness I heard him move. He seemed to be circling me like an animal, studying, deciding where to strike.