In Dark Places

Chapter Thirty-six

Wolper snapped off the car radio as Hammond finished his announcement. "That's something, anyway," he said.

Robin wished she could be optimistic, but she knew that finding the car was unimportant. She'd never expected Gray to hang on to the Saab. "They won't find him by looking for a car," she said quietly from the passenger seat. "There are ten million cars in this city."

"With every patrol unit in the county looking for that Firebird, there's a chance it'll be spotted."

"Long shot."

"Not as long a shot as this snipe hunt you've got going. No way this is going to pan out."

"Thanks for the prognostication."

"If Gray has your daughter, he's in the desert. If he doesn't, he's probably already made his way out of town. The farther he gets from LA, the less heat there'll be."

"That's if he's thinking logically. I'm guessing he's scared, rattled."

"Sociopaths are cool customers. Ice-cold, in fact. They don't get scared and desperate."

"They're not human, you mean?"

He squeezed the steering wheel as if it were a substitute for his rubber ball. "Technically they're human. Just barely. They don't have the normal range of emotions. You know that. No empathy, no compassion."

She threw his own words back at him. "Then I guess they're realists, aren't they? They're practical." She took a breath. "Sorry. That was unfair. It's just amp; I hate it when anybody's humanity is denied. It's wrong. It's demeaning."

"Demeaning to them or to us?"

"To them and to us."

"You haven't seen what I've seen, Doctor. You haven't seen a body dumped in a trash bin with its arms and legs missing." She stiffened, fear flashing through her. He noticed. "Damn," he said. "I forgot for a minuteabout your daughter."

"It's okay." She fought for self-control. She could not think about Meg now. Thinking about Meg would make her crazy. "And I know you've seen a lot. You've been aroundisn't that how you put it last night?"

"Sounds like something I would say."

"But the thing is, I've been around, too, believe it or not. And I know there's more to these people than a rap sheet. Every one of them, even the worst, is somebody's son or husband or amp; father." She did her best not to stumble on the last word.

"Their victims were also somebody's loved ones," Wolper said.

"I know. It's wrong to lose sight of that. We have to keep all of it in our field of vision. We have to see the whole picture, all sides." But all she could see now was Meg. Meg in danger amp; in pain amp;

"We can't be omniscient," Wolper said.

"We can't be unfeeling, either."

He grunted, noncommittal. She decided not to pursue the subject. She had no strength to argue right now. It took all her focus to keep herself from screaming aloud.

"We're lucky Hammond's running the show," Wolper said. "As the brass go, he's not too bad."

"I had the impression he's a bit of a showboater."

"He likes getting his picture taken; that's for sure."

"Then why are we lucky to have him?"

"Because he can snap his fingers and make people jump. Hammond's on a fast track to the top of the department. He might be chief in a few years if he plays his cards rightand he's sure as hell played 'em right so far."

"I wish Deputy Chief Wagner were in charge."

"Your angel. Your sponsor."

"My liaison with the department," she corrected.

"Wagner wouldn't go near this case. He avoids risk. Stays away from anything messy. And if he was running things, he'd be too cautious to get anything done."

"Caution might be better than recklessness."

"Hammond isn't reckless. He's just ambitious and not afraid to show it. Joined the force at nineteen. Went to night school to earn his college degree, then got himself a master's. Worked his way up the ladderNarcotics, undercover work, patrol, the whole nine yards. He's the same age as me, and he's sitting in the catbird seat. Makes me wonder what I did wrong."

"You're not doing anything wrong. You're doing your job."

Wolper gave the steering wheel another squeeze. "Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough."

"Is it you saying thator your ex-wife?"

"Oh, no, you don't. You're not putting me on the couch."

"Occupational hazard. Sorry." She didn't want an impromptu therapy session with him anyway. She had other things on her mind.

"When I showed up for our appointment," Wolper said, "the Rampart guys thought I was there to get my head shrunk. The news will probably be all over the department by tomorrow."

Their appointment. Robin had forgotten about that. She forced herself to focus. "What did you come to tell me, anyhow?"

"About Brand?" He shrugged. "I looked at the file. The shooting looks clean to me. The review was thorough, no whitewash as far as I can tell. Brand's story was consistent with the physical evidence."

"But he told me a different story."

"Don't people say all kinds of things under hypnosis?"

"MBI isn't hypnosis."

"It's an altered state of consciousness. Can't the mind play tricks on a personpower of suggestionlike in all those child abuse cases that turned out to be bullshit?"

"It can happen," she admitted.

"Happens all the time, as I understand it. People are hypnotized and start talking about their past lives. How they used to stuff mummies or got their head chopped off in the French Revolution."

"Brand wasn't talking about a past life. He was talking about Eddie Valdez. And if he killed Valdez the way he said he did amp;" She stopped. A new thought occurred to her, a thought powerful enough to shut out the clamor of fear for her daughter.

"Yes?" Wolper prompted.

"Then he might have a motive to come after me."

"After you?"

"Gray said there was another man. Mr. Cool."

"Give me a break. You know that story of his was bullshit."

"Of course it was." She looked at Wolper. "Except amp; what if it wasn't?"

He took a moment to reply. When he did, his question surprised her. "You were hurt worse than you let on, weren't you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Don't play dumb. You lost consciousness when he hit you."

She gave in. "How did you know?"

"If you hadn't, you'd know for sure if there was one man or two."

"Okay, you caught me. I didn't want to be sent to the ER, so I fibbed a little."

"A concussion is nothing to fool around withas you ought to know, Doctor. How long were you out?"

"Long enough for Gray to kill the deputy and put on the dead man's pants, I guess."

"That could be a couple minutes. I'm taking you to Cedars-Sinai."

"No, you're not."

"God damn it, you're a doctor. You know how serious a head trauma can be."

"Yes, I do know. And I don't give a damn."

"Robin"

"I don't care if I have a subdural hematoma. I don't care if I'm getting ready to throw a clot and stroke out. Meg is out there alone and in trouble, and until she's safe, I don't care what happens to me. It doesn't matter."

"All right, all right."

Robin pulled herself together. She could not afford to become hystericalor to be seen that way. "Look," she said almost calmly, "suppose Gray was telling the truth. Suppose it was Brand who broke into my office, killed the deputy in the waiting room"

"You saw blood on Gray's screwdriver, remember?"

"Even so, just suppose amp;"

"First we have a mystery man who just happens to abduct your daughter fifteen minutes after Gray escapes. Now we have Sergeant Brand killing a deputy and assaulting you and, what, trying to frame Gray for it? Are you aware of how insane this sounds?"

"I don't know. I amp;" She rubbed her head. "I guess it does."

"Brand was nowhere near your office. He's not a rogue cop, not a killer. I've worked with the guy for almost twenty years."

"But you still don't know him. No one does. Right?"

"Let's just concentrate on locating Gray. He's the one person we know we have to find."

Robin couldn't argue with that.

Her cell phone rang. Irrationally she imagined it was Meg, but the voice that greeted her belonged to the SID criminalist, Gaines.

"Dr. Cameron? I've reviewed the diary. Does the name Gabe mean anything to you?"

She searched her memory. "No, I don't think so."

"In her diary, your daughter makes reference to someone by that name."

"Just Gabe? No last name?"

"I'm afraid not. But there may be a way to obtain more information. There are allusions to communicating with Gabe via e-mail. What I'd like to do, with your permission, is examine the computer in her room. She may have left the e-mails on her hard drive."

"Go ahead. Do whatever you have to do."

"I'll let you know if anything turns up."

He was gone. She pocketed the phone.

"What was that all about?" Wolper asked.

"Crime-scene investigator. He wants to access Meg's computer."

"Who's Gabe? Your mystery man?"

"Someone Meg mentioned in her diary."

"A boy she's got a crush on. A friend from school."

"Probably." She didn't want to discuss it, and she didn't have to, because they were turning onto Hollywood Boulevard.

Periodic attempts were made to revive Hollywood, but the improvements never seemed to take hold. Robin stared out at porno theaters, strip clubs, bars, and knots of street people eyeing each other warily. The sun had vanished behind the buildings and billboards, and the streets were deep in shadow under the darkening sky.

She hated to think of Meg in a place like thisor in someplace worse. And there were worse places in this city. There were shadow lands everywhere.

"There's the tattoo parlor." Wolper pointed at the garish sign over the storefront of Wild Ink. "Now where will he be?"

"Just keep cruising."

They crawled in slow traffic down the boulevard, heading west. When they passed Highland, the area perked up a little, becoming more of a tourist center, albeit a dingy one.

"You know," she said, "if we do find him"

"We won't."

"But if we do amp; well, he's armed."

"So am I."

"Even off duty?"

"A cop in this town is never off duty." He opened his jacket briefly to give her a glimpse of a handgun holstered to his belt in the cross-draw position. "Feel better?"

"I do, actually. But I think we've gone too far. Let's go back. We need to travel farther east."

The area got worse in that direction. Robin thought Gray would gravitate toward the seediest stretch of the boulevard.

Wolper turned around, executing an illegal U at an intersection, cutting off a driver who gave him a long blast of horn.

"One advantage of being a cop," Wolper said. "You never worry about traffic tickets."

She didn't answer. She was studying the crowded sidewalks, the shop windows, the side streets.

They passed Wild Ink again and kept going, east of Las Palmas. Robin leaned forward in her seat. "Wait a minute. Here's a possibility."

She was looking at the flashing lights of a video arcade.

"Those places are for kids," Wolper said.

"Gray isn't much more than a kid himself. Arrested emotional and sexual and social development. Fixation on high school girls." The words came by rote. "But that's not the only reason to look inside. He used to hang out in arcades when he was growing up."

"He told you that?"

"When he got away from his folks, he would play pool or Pac-Man. Games." She heard the bitterness in that word. "He's always enjoyed games." She looked again at the arcade. "He could be in there."

"We'll give it a shot." Wolper steered the car into a red zone and put his badge on the dashboard, insurance against a ticket.

They got out. As she stood up, Robin was briefly dizzy with a rush of blood. She caught Wolper watching her as he locked the car.

"Must've been one hell of a shot to the cranium," he said.

"I'll live."

"Probably. But, Doctordon't lie to me again. I don't like it."

He led her inside the arcade before she could answer.