12th of Never

Chapter 96

FISH HADN’T GIVEN me anything, but by humming “The Twelfth of Never,” he’d let me know that the map to his dump sites was inside the record sleeve.

I felt a flutter of hope, even elation. Good, Randy. Prove to yourself that you can change.

But now, Fish was laughing. Had he taken us on another flier into his twisted mind? Was he screwing with me again?

I asked him, “What’s the joke, Randy?”

“I’m just enjoying myself,” he said. “It’s okay for me to have a few laughs, isn’t it, Lindsay? You don’t have to play bad cop with me. I’m your pal.”

Parker hauled the killer to his feet, and he wasn’t too gentle about it. Since Parker was doing a perfect bad cop, he’d left me free to wonder what that 1950s love song meant to Fish. “The Twelfth of Never” was about a man’s love for a woman. I remembered one of the first lines.

I need you, oh my darling, like roses need rain.

Did Fish love an actual person? Or was this psycho-killer love? Did Randy Fish “love” women so much that he had to be the last man to touch them, talk to them, own them …

I straightened out the map Fish had drawn on the back of the receipt. Conklin came up behind me and said, “So let’s take a look at the latest bullshit.”

Parker handed Fish off to one of the uniformed cops and joined us in the huddle. We scrutinized the x’s and tiny handwritten notations. I was pointing out previously unknown locations where bodies might have been dumped—when something inexplicable happened.

I was thrown to the ground, as if I’d been hit by a bus.

Everything went dark and silent and my brain flickered with a single thought: What had happened? I got onto my hands and knees, started crawling, bumping into things, like the deaf and blind thing I was.

A couple of long minutes later, someone shook my arm. I saw a blurry uniformed cop. His name was Mooney. Or Rooney. I wasn’t sure.

“Are you all right, Sergeant?”

Stars were popping behind my eyes. I could hardly breathe. I was gagging, but somehow managed to ask, “Is anyone hurt?”

“Can you see me, Sergeant?”

I fought nausea, said, “I can see you. I hear you.”

Conklin and Parker were on their feet. Conklin came over to me and said, “You okay? You okay, Lindsay?”

I grabbed his arm and stood.

Officer Michael Rooney was saying, “It was a flashbang. I saw this uniform pull the pin and lob it toward the locker. I couldn’t get to him in time.”

“Flashbang” was a descriptive nickname for a stun grenade, a nonlethal military weapon designed to knock down the occupants of a room to give the shooter the upper hand. The effective range is a five-foot radius from the point of impact, and the stunning effect lasts only a minute or two, but you still would not want to be in a room with one.

As it was, I was still dazed, but I could see.

“Tell it again, from the beginning,” I told the cop.

Rooney said, “One of ours fired that grenade. I didn’t know him. He was five six or five seven, young guy.”

“You didn’t know him? How did you know he was a cop?”

“He was in uniform. Drove a cruiser. After he threw the grenade, he grabbed Fish and pushed him into the passenger side. Then he took off.”

“It was an abduction?” Parker asked. “Or a getaway?”

“Hard to say. Fish was very wobbly.”

“When did the grenade go off?” I asked.

“It’s only been a couple of minutes,” the cop said. “The cruiser is headed west on Amador. Two of our cars are in pursuit.”

“Call dispatch and clear a channel,” I said.

Parker was moving through the semicircle of headlights toward his vehicle. I started toward ours. Conklin gave me an arm to lean on.

He dangled the keys. “I’m driving,” he said.