The Night Crew

by John Sandford

After the excitement of the prowler, she’d tried to go back to bed; not because she was sleepy, but because she felt she ought to. She never got up until noon, at the earliest.

  But she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d gone to bed too early, under the influence of the booze, and the chase had gotten her cranked up.

  So after lying awake for an hour, she got up, showered, went downstairs, ate breakfast—and got sleepy. She fought it for a while, and finally, at eight o’clock, crashed on the couch. When she got up, three hours later, she felt like her mouth was full of fungus. Off to a cranky start: and trying to figure out the funeral made her even more cranky.

  Since the case involved murder, and was believed to involve drugs, the medical examiner wanted to get tissue tests back before releasing the body for cremation. She should call back, she was told, every day or two.

  For how long?

  ‘‘Well, you know . . . whatever it takes,’’ the clerk said.

  The cops had no similar problems with Jason’s apartment. They had taken out two cardboard cartons of paper, and that was it. A sleepy Inglewood police sergeant, a fax from the Odums in his hand, gave her the keys.

  ‘‘We’re all done with it,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Are you really working hard on this?’’

  He yawned and rubbed his eyes, causing her to yawn in sympathy. ‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ he said. ‘‘We are, but it’s basically a Santa Monica case. Nothing happened down here.’’

  She borrowed the cop’s phone to call Wyatt, at Santa Monica, and as she waited for the transfer, frowned at the fax from the Odums. They had a fax? Did everybody have a fax?

  ‘‘Yeah, Wyatt . . .’’

  ‘‘I’m down in Inglewood. Are you doing anything up there?’’

  Wyatt talked for a couple of minutes, and Anna decided that he wasn’t doing much.

  ‘‘There’s nothing to go on,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything—we had a guy out on the pier all last night, talking to the fishermen, and he came up with exactly zero. We don’t have anything back from the lab yet, so we’re not even sure that’s where he was killed. And the most likely motive involves the worst anonymous ratshit dopers in the whole goddamn country. So I don’t know what more to do. Keep talking to his friends. Like your pal, Creek.’’

  ‘‘Creek’s okay,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘He did time for dope,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘He was dealing big-time, is the word.’’

  ‘‘He was smuggling, not dealing. And he quit cold. He hasn’t had anything stronger than Jack Daniel’s since he got out.’’ She could hear him yawn, and it irritated her: ‘‘Maybe you need a nap,’’ she suggested.

  Wyatt ignored the sarcasm. ‘‘Yeah, I could. And Pam backs you up on Creek, by the way. She went out to talk to him.’’

  ‘‘Pam? Your partner?’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ Anna half-smiled, and even on the phone, Wyatt picked up the vibration.

  ‘‘Why? He’s a Romeo or something?’’

  ‘‘Not exactly. He does have an effect on . . . a certain kind of woman.’’

  ‘‘What kind?’’

  ‘‘The anal, blazer-wearing, Herme`s-scarf owning, powersunglasses type, with no kids.’’

  ‘‘Huh. Like you.’’

  Anna almost started, then grinned into the phone: she’d deserved it. Wyatt continued, ‘‘Pam’s got a collection of Herme`s, but no kids.’’

  ‘‘Big surprise,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Good-bye.’’

  ‘‘Hey, wait . . .’’

  He wanted to talk more about Pamela Glass; Anna wasn’t in the mood.

  • • •

  From the Inglewood police station, Anna headed over to Jason’s apartment. The apartment was a neat, four-building complex surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence. She took the car through a narrow access gate, which a sign said would be locked at midnight; the sign had been over-painted with gang graffiti. She glanced at her watch: already three o’clock. She had to move. Creek and Louis would be at her house in two hours, ready to roll.

  She left the car in a guest parking slot, and headed into the complex. A dozen people sat in lawn chairs around a swimming pool, drinking beer, talking in the fading sunlight. Old Paul Simon tinkled from a boom box, ‘‘Still Crazy After All These Years.’’

  Get it over.

  Jason’s apartment was routine California stucco, tan, concrete steps going up to external walkways, rust stains running down from roof-edge gutters. The weather had been dry, but the walkways smelled like rain. Green, red, yellow and blue doors alternated down the walkways, an uninterested attempt at decor. Anna looked at the keys—237—found the door, a red one, looked around, waiting for somebody to object. Nobody did; she was alone on the walk. She had a little trouble with the key, finally got it to go and pushed inside.

  Smelled carpet cleaner. He hadn’t been here long.

  The apartment was nearly dark, the only illumination coming through the open door and a back window. The room she was in, the front room, was littered with empty pizza cartons, comic books, Big Gulp plastic cups. A Playboy and a Penthouse lay in the middle of the carpet. The cops had dumped everything, and left the litter where they dumped it. She left the door open, groped for the light switch, found it, flicked it. Nothing happened. Lights out.

  ‘‘Jeez,’’ she said. Her voice didn’t quite fill the room, and she paused, and thought, What? She stepped back and looked out along the walkway, heard voices, a woman’s, then the deeper rumbling from a man.

  Coming up the stairs. Still worried about being taken for an intruder, she pushed the door shut, stood for a moment in the gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There’d be a circuit breaker somewhere, she thought. Probably in a closet or back in the kitchen.

  The apartment was almost too quiet: like the ghost of Jason had muted all the little normal sounds, the creeping subliminal pitter-patter of cockroaches, warping of wood, flaking of paint. She pushed the feeling away and headed toward the small kitchen nook: Find the light .

  He got her as she stepped into the kitchen.

  He was off to the right, next to a small dinette table.

  Anna was looking the other way, sensed him a fraction of a second before he was on her, started to turn, started to say something, to cry out . . .

  He threw a large hand over her mouth, wrapped a heavy arm around her chest, tripped her with a sweeping leg, and they lurched back into the living room and hit the floor, Anna on the bottom. The impact took her breath away for a second, and she thrashed frantically, trying to get an arm loose, trying to get her feet working, trying to kick, but he was very strong, very professional: he’d done this before.

  The arm around her chest tightened and he pulled her head back and said, close by her ear, ‘‘If you scream, I’ll punch your lights out. If you stop kicking I’ll let you breathe. C’mon . . .’’ They thrashed for another moment, but he’d wrapped a leg around her legs and she felt as though she were fighting an anaconda.

  And he said, ‘‘C’mon, goddammit, I don’t want to hurt you, I just want you to shut up. If you’ll shut up, nod.’’

  Exhausted, sweating, scared, she relaxed, involuntarily, and nodded and he said, ‘‘I swear to God, if you scream, I’m gonna bust you in the mouth.’’

  And he took his hand away from her mouth.

  She drew a breath to scream, reconsidered: ‘‘Let me go,’’ she said, trying to look at him. She started thrashing again, trying to turn, but he held her. All she could see was his chin.

  ‘‘We’re gonna go like this over to the couch, and I’m gonna sit you down. I’ll be right in front of you and if you yell I’ll hit you. I want to be clear about that.’’

  ‘‘All right, all right.’’ Not hurt yet.

  ‘‘Here we go.’’ He rolled, and pried one arm around behind her, caught her fingers in a hold, and she thought, Cop, and said, aloud, ‘‘That hurts.’’

  ‘‘Not much,’’ he said. ‘‘Not
yet, but it will if you put a move on me.’’

  ‘‘Are you a cop? You sound like a cop.’’

  ‘‘No.’’ He’d released her legs, got his knees under himself, and slowly pushed up to his feet, pulling Anna along, past a cable reel that Jason was using as a coffee table. Then he pushed her and twirled her at the same time, she found herself staggering uncontrollably backward, until the couch hit her calves and she fell back onto it. He was right there, his face obscured in the gloom, a fist an inch from her chest.

  ‘‘What’s your name?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Let me out of here.’’

  ‘‘What’s your fuckin’ name?’’

  ‘‘Fuck you.’’ He didn’t seem frightening, somehow. ‘‘Let me out of here.’’

  ‘‘In a minute. Gimme your arms.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Gimme . . .’’ He grabbed one hand, and she tried to jerk free, but he put a hand on her forehead and said, ‘‘Sit still, goddammit.’’

  ‘‘What do you want?’’

  ‘‘Needle tracks.’’

  What? She stopped fighting, and a penlight clicked on. He turned her arm wrist up, and played the beam down her forearm.

  ‘‘Other arm.’’

  She turned her other arm up, and he looked it over, then shined the light into her eyes, dazzling her.

  ‘‘What’s your name?’’ he asked again.

  ‘‘Fuck you. Who are you? What the hell are you doing here?’’

  ‘‘You oughta watch your mouth,’’ he said. ‘‘And it’s none of your business. You sit right there. If you start to get up . . .’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I know, you’ll beat me up.’’

  He sounded embarrassed: ‘‘Yeah.’’

  He was groping around on the floor, keeping his eyes on her, but not until he moved back to her did she see that he’d picked up her purse. He popped it open and dumped it on the wire-reel table, shined the penlight on it and stirred through it.

  Anna’s purse was small, and there wasn’t much: a billfold, a comb, a lipstick, a roll of Clorets, a handful of change, a couple of ripped-in-half movie tickets. He opened the billfold and looked at her driver’s license. She still couldn’t see his face, and the light, held chest high, made it more difficult.

  ‘‘Anna Batory,’’ he said. He looked up from the license. ‘‘You were with the TV crew.’’

  She wasn’t going to be raped, she decided; probably not beaten up. The guy had a hard force about him, but not the hyped energy that produced an attack. And he knew about her: ‘‘Yeah, I’m with a video crew.’’

  ‘‘You shot the video on Jacob Harper.’’

  ‘‘Who?’’ Now she was confused.

  ‘‘Jacob Harper—the kid who tried to fly off the Shamrock.’’

  ‘‘Oh. Yeah, we were there.’’ What did the jumper have to do with Jason’s apartment?

  ‘‘Where’d Jason O’Brien get his dope?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know . . .’’

  ‘‘C’mon, he worked for you, you’ve got a key to his apartment.’’

  ‘‘He didn’t work for me; he was a part-time guy, like once a month. And the cops gave me the key.’’

  ‘‘The cops.’’ After a moment’s silence, he asked, ‘‘Why would they do that?’’

  ‘‘Because nobody wants his body. I’m supposed to take care of funeral arrangements and there’s nothing more here that the cops want.’’

  ‘‘Huh.’’ He stood up, looked around in the gloom and said, ‘‘Damn it.’’

  ‘‘You hurt me,’’ Anna said. She was getting a feel for him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. ‘‘You could have broken my arm.’’

  ‘‘Ah, shut up,’’ he said. ‘‘You’re not hurt and we both know it.’’ Then: ‘‘Your boyfriend’s a doper.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘This guy Creek.’’

  ‘‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my partner. He hasn’t done any dope for ten years.’’

  ‘‘Bullshit. He’s got no job, he lives in a nice apartment at the Marina and he’s got a yacht.’’

  ‘‘No job? I’ll tell you what, pal, we’re out there two hundred and fifty nights a year . . .’’

  ‘‘Yeah, some Tinkertoy fuckin’ movie wannabees with cameras, for Christ’s sake.’’

  Now she was getting hot: ‘‘Yeah? We grossed better than three hundred and fifty thousand last year. Me’n Creek and Louis took home better than ninety apiece, after expenses. How much’d you make?’’

  ‘‘That much? Ninety?’’ Surprise.

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ She would have sulked, if she thought she could have afforded to. But she had to stay on top of him.

  Another moment of silence, then he was moving away from her. Over his shoulder he said, ‘‘Fuckin’ L.A., you goddamn people are a bunch of ghouls, you know that?

  Making a buck off of snuff films.’’

  She kept her mouth shut: she was about to get out of this, and didn’t want to argue. A step or two later, he added, ‘‘Don’t scream after me. It’d just piss me off and I’d have to run and I’m probably gonna come back and see you again.’’

  Anna was on her feet: ‘‘About what?’’

  ‘‘I need to know about O’Brien. I’m not done with him yet, and you’re the only connection I’ve got.’’

  ‘‘Listen, if you think Jason had anything to do with the jumper, you’re wrong.’’

  ‘‘No. You’re wrong,’’ he said. He hesitated, then said, ‘‘I came down on you a little hard, when we went to the floor. You oughta take a couple ibuprofen. Hot bath, or something. You could have pulled something.’’

  ‘‘You’re so thoughtful.’’

  ‘‘I bit my lip when we hit.’’

  ‘‘Well, that’s just too bad.’’ She couldn’t believe the gall: he seemed to be looking for sympathy. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  ‘‘Well, it stings like hell,’’ he said. Then he was out the door, slamming it behind him. As he went through, she got a better look at him in the late afternoon: an impression of sandy-brown hair, very white teeth. Probably blue eyes, she thought. Athletic, but not stripped down to muscle and bone: maybe a few extra pounds, in fact. Big shoulders. And gone.

  She went to the door after him, thought about screaming, jerked the door open and stepped outside . . . and saw the top of his head disappearing down the stairwell. Opened her mouth, shut it again. She was safe enough, unhurt and still alone—maybe she didn’t want to piss him off.

  The circuit-breaker box was in the kitchen, the door open. She threw the switch and two lights came up. She went back through the living room, shut the door, and then took out the cell phone, found Wyatt’s card in the pile of purse litter and dialed him. A clerk answered the phone, and she asked that Wyatt be called at home and that he call her back; he called back two minutes later.

  ‘‘What?’’ he asked without preamble, when Anna picked up the phone.

  ‘‘I just got to Jason’s apartment and there was somebody here. He jumped me.’’

  ‘‘You hurt?’’ He sounded cautious, nervous. Why?

  ‘‘No, he just tripped me and held me down and then he pushed me on the couch and then he left. I thought he might be a cop, but he said he wasn’t.’’

  ‘‘White guy?’’ The odd tone still in his voice.

  ‘‘Yeah . . . Hey, you know him?’’

  ‘‘Probably another doper.’’ But he was lying; and he wasn’t good at it. ‘‘As long as you’re not hurt . . .’’

  ‘‘The door was locked and he was inside. How’d he do that?’’

  ‘‘He’s probably a friend of O’Brien,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘Look, do you want a car to come around? I can call Inglewood.’’

  She thought about it for a moment. ‘‘No, I guess not. I mean, unless you wanted to look for fingerprints. You know, detect something.’’

  Wyatt sighed and said, ‘‘We got thirty sets of fingerprints out of th
e ShotShop, and we could probably get thirty more.’’

  Anna said, ‘‘Tell me the truth about something. You know, instead of lying.’’

  ‘‘Sure.’’

  ‘‘Do you think Jason might be connected to the jumper we filmed?’’

  Wyatt hesitated before he answered, and Anna read it: ‘‘You do!’’ she said. ‘‘So’d the guy here. Tell me why.’’

  ‘‘Look, Miss—Anna—goddammit, you’re not a police officer, okay? Just clean up the apartment, pack up his stuff and get out of there.’’

  ‘‘Maybe you better call Inglewood,’’ she said. ‘‘I better file a complaint: the guy was trying to rape me.’’

  Silence.

  ‘‘Okay, I’ll do the call,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I know where his prints are, too. They’re all over my purse and billfold. I’ll mention to the Inglewood cops that you might have some idea about who it is.’’

  ‘‘Jesus, you’re a hardass. You’re just like Pam, bustin’ my balls all day, now I gotta deal with you. I’m tired of it.’’

  ‘‘Life sucks and then you die,’’ Anna said.

  More silence. Then: ‘‘The kid who jumped off the building was tripping on wizards.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know that brand,’’ Anna said, breaking in.

  ‘‘Acid and speed. Maybe a lick of PCP.’’

  ‘‘Okay. Like rattlers.’’

  ‘‘Rattlers were last year,’’ he said. ‘‘But yeah—like that. A little heavier on the acid. Anyway, he popped a couple and decided the ledge was a runway and that he could fly.’’

  ‘‘So . . .’’

  ‘‘So the wizards are little pink extruded dots on strips of wax paper.’’

  ‘‘I’ve seen them,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘When you buy them, the dealer just rips off however many dots you can pay for,’’ Wyatt explained. ‘‘So the kid had a strip of dots in his jacket pocket. When we rolled your friend over, so did he; what was left of them, anyway, coming out of the water.’’

  ‘‘Huh. That’s weird.’’ ‘‘

  That’s not weird,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘That’s just a coincidence: these fuckin’ wizards are all over the place. But I get this wild idea, and put the two strips together, and guess what? The two papers matched up. Your friend’s strip had been ripped off the jumper’s.’’