In Dark Places

Chapter Fifty-one

Gray steered the Crown Vic onto the Santa Monica Freeway, eastbound, keeping one hand on the wheel. The other hand held the gun pointing at Sergeant Brand in the passenger seat. He was pretty sure Brand had been whipped into total submission, but it didn't hurt to be careful. A guy like him could come up with a surprise or two, especially if he had nothing to lose.

"Your file says you got, what is it, post-dramatic stress?" Gray asked over the hiss of the road surface.

"Post-traumatic. How the hell did you see my file?"

"I'm everywhere. I see everything. I'm like Santa Claus or God. I see when you are sleeping; I see when you're awake amp; You never had no post-trauma stress, did you, Sarge?"

"I had the symptoms."

"Symptoms. Like what, as a for-instance?"

"Insomnia, anxiety, fatigue."

Gray glanced at him, then looked away. The guy was tough to look at, what with the circular scar of the lighter on his cheek and the oozing mess of his left ear. The right side of his face was untouched, but the left was a horror show. He was like that Batman comic book bad guy, Two-Face.

"Sounds like a case of the shakes to me," Gray said. "You were shitting your diapers 'cause you thought you might get found out or maybe turned in by your good buddy Wolper."

"I was scared, yeah. I knew about what he was up to for a long time, but I was never, you know, directly involved."

"Till recently."

"Yeah."

"So it wasn't no post-traumatic whatchacallit. It was plain old fear."

"And maybe guilt."

"Ooh, your conscience doing a number on you, huh? You mean to say you ain't a complete scumbag?"

"I'm not sure what I am. At the arcade, if Wolper hadn't been there"

"Yeah, you said something about that before. What would've happened if the lieutenant hadn't been hanging with the doc?"

That face of his was sort of fascinating, Gray decided. Two-Face wasn't precisely the right reference, though. It was more like Brand had partially melted. The Incredible Melting Man, that was it.

"I followed her and Wolper over there," Brand was saying. "I thought that maybe I'd come clean with her."

Gray smirked. "Maybe?"

"I'm not sure what I would've done. I mean, the thing is, they've got her kid, you know? I don't want that on my conscience. Not a kid."

"Who took the kid? Wolper?"

"No, I don't think so."

"So there's other cops in on this?"

"There are others, yeah. I don't know how many. I don't know how far it goes."

"This is a big fucking deal you got yourself mixed up in, Sarge. You really think you're smart enough to outfox all these other players?"

"No. I don't. I'm not smart."

"Gotta agree with you on that one."

Come to think of it, he wasn't sure there was an Incredible Melting Man. It was the shrinking man, right? Not melting. So maybe Brand was Darth Vader with the helmet off. Or the Phantom of the fucking Opera.

"I tried to stay clear of it," Brand said. "I never wanted to be part of the action. I'm still not really part of it. I mean, Wolper figures I won't sell him out, but that doesn't mean he lets me in on all the details."

"Did you know what was going down today?"

"Snatching the kid? No. I'm not even sure they knew. It might've been improvised."

"How about the hit on Doc Robin?"

"I didn't know for sure."

"But you kinda knew, am I right? Be straight with me, Sarge."

"I suspected."

"And you let it happen."

The scarred head turned in Gray's direction. "What, are you lecturing me, for Christ's sake? I don't need any goddamn lessons from a guy who snuffs high school girls"

Gray lifted the gun in his right hand, just enough to remind Brand of its existence. "How about from a guy who snuffs cops? You willing to hear a lecture from him?"

Brand settled down, cowed once more. "Fuck."

"So you were gonna come clean to the docmaybe."

"I knew they still wanted to hit her. Wolper even called me at home, tried to get me to do it. I let him think I might play ball. But like I said, what I really wanted to do was"

"Confess. Bare your soul. I got that. But you didn't."

"Cameron and Wolper saw me. I ran. I didn't want to face Wolper. But he chased me down. He frisked me, found my off-duty piece but no throwdown. So he knew I wasn't there to whack her. I couldn't use a traceable gun for that job. He must've figured I was gonna double-cross him."

"Which you were."

"Yeah, maybe. If Cameron and Wolper had separated. And if I could've figured a way to do it so that I could warn her and amp; well amp;"

"Save your own ass." This guy was a piece of work; he really was.

Brand seemed to hear the contempt in Gray's voice. "Survival is what it's all about," he said belligerently.

Gray almost smiled. Yeah, Sarge, he wanted to say. Just look at you, with your Frankenstein face and your scared-rabbit heart. You're surviving real good. But he let it pass.

"I hear you," he said. "How'd Wolper take it when he tumbled to you changing teams?"

"Told me not to even think about trying anything. Said if I tried to rat him out, he would see that the whole mess was pinned on me. Said there was already enough evidence to put me away if Robbery-Homicide ever decided to look at me close. I would take the fall."

"He planted some shit."

"That's what he told me. I didn't know if it was true."

Gray figured it probably was. That was the way he himself would have played it if he'd had to keep a weak link like Brand in line.

"Anyway," Brand said, "I had to assume he wasn't bluffing. I went to the Newton station house, checked my locker. Nothing there. Next place to look"

"Was home sweet home. You would've torn the place apart looking for the stuff he planted. Wouldn't have found it, neither. Whatever Wolper laid on you was hidden too good for you to find. He wouldn't have told you about it if he thought you could sniff it out."

"Yeah, maybe."

No "maybe" about it, Gray thought. This Wolper is smarter than you. He sees two steps ahead.

"So you didn't say nothing to the doc?"

"I said what Wolper had told me to saythis bullshit story he fed me about how I was trying to redeem myself by assisting with your arrest. I'm not sure she bought it."

"She didn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's still trying to remember who conked her on the noggin. Which means she thinks it might've been you. She's over at her office right now getting her brain dry-cleaned in that space helmet of hers."

"Alone?"

"Wolper's with her."

The melted-candle face turned toward Gray again. "If she remembers it was him"

"He'll waste her." Gray nodded. "That's why we're riding to the rescue."

"So you're on her side?"

"I'm on my side."

There was a pause, and Gray figured Pumpkinhead was out of conversation. He was wrong.

"I don't get it," Brand said. "Why do you care about any of this?"

"Two reasons. One, I don't like being set up by any goddamn gangsta cops. And two, you assholes got the doc's daughter. You got Meg."

"You're worried about Cameron's kid? After you amp; I mean"

"After I wasted five perfectly healthy teenagers with their whole lives ahead of 'em? I guess that's right."

"Doesn't make sense."

"I am a mystery and a conundrum, Sarge. I got layers. It's what makes me so goddamn fascinating. Now I don't suppose you know where Meg's been hid away."

"I don't."

" 'Course not. They don't tell you shit, right, small fry?"

Brand stared into the darkness. "Never thought they'd take the kid. Fuck, that's low. Should've expected it, though. It's like the fights."

This baffled Gray. "Fights? What fights?"

"The dogfights." Brand's voice was a low drone. "She probably thinks I go there for entertainment. That wasn't it. I went because that's what this city is. Whole fucking city's one big dogpit, and we're all caught in it."

Gray had no idea what Scarface was jacking his jaws about. He skirted a Cadillac that was traveling too slowly in the fast lane.

"You're going to kill me," Brand said in the same low monotone. "Right?"

"What little birdie whispered that in your ear?"

"You're a killer. It's what you do."

"Maybe I'll go easy on you."

"You won't. You can't. You're the big dog in the ring. All you know is kill or be killed."

Leaving the Caddy behind, Gray eased back into the fast lane. "You might have a point there, Sarge."

"Kill or be killed amp;" Brand's voice trailed away.

"As mottos go, it ain't half-bad." Gray smiled, warming to his theme. "The way I see it"

He had no time to finish. Beside him, Brand's right hand came up fast, and in it was a gun, a little snub-nosed job that had appeared out of nowhere like a magic trick.

Gray spun the wheel hard to the left, slamming the Crown Vic up against the guardrail. The car made a grinding noise and slewed across two lanes. Every horn in the world started blasting, headlights flying everywhere as the vehicles behind the Vic peeled around the car, some of them scraping the rear end and throwing new shudders through the chassis.

Brand, flung half-out of his seat by the collision, twisted around and fired the gun, and even though there was no way he could miss at a distance of two feet, somehow he missed anyway. He had time for only one shot, and then Gray squeezed the trigger of his Beretta.

He didn't miss.

Blood splashed him. He blinked it out of his eyes. Brand flopped and spasmed in the passenger seat, his butt-ugly face shredded like a Halloween mask. Gray snatched Brand's gun away before the cop fired it again in some kind of death twitch.

"You was right, Sarge!" he yelled over the ringing in his ears. "You ain't smart!"

He floored the brake pedal, stopping the car. A moment later, the engine died. Smoke rose from under the hood.

By now he'd conned what had happened. Brand carried an extra gun in his personal car. Kept it under the seat, it seemed. He'd been waiting for Gray to let down his guard. Nearly scored on that play, too. If Gray had been a split second slower, he would be the one barfing up his own brains right now. But he'd come through. He was alive, and the shit-eating, dick-stroking son of a black-eyed whore was dead.

"You hear me, Sergeant Fuck?" he screamed at the pale, shaking, faceless thing bleeding all over the other seat. "You're dead!"

Gray exploded out of the car. The freeway was backed up in the two lanes blocked by the slant-parked car. A frozen chain of headlights stretched for a half mile. The other lanes were clear, traffic whizzing past, leaving red comet tails of taillights.

Directly behind the ruined Crown Vic, some asshole in a green Volkswagen Beetle was tooting his horn and making faces through the windshield, pissed about the delay but too chickenshit to risk nosing around the obstruction.

Gray had never liked Volkswagenshe still thought of them as hippie carsbut he wasn't in a position to be choosy. He ran up to the door on the driver's side and rapped his gun against the glass.

"Out, motherfucker! Outta your clown car now!"

The jerkoff had stopped honking. He stared at Gray through the glass, not resisting, just plain paralyzed with fear. Gray knocked out the window with a swipe of the gun barrel, dusting the moron with crumbs of safety glass. "Out!"

It registered. The guy got out, Gray assisting with a tug that sent him tumbling to the asphalt. He jumped behind the wheel and swerved into the next lane, not giving a shit about the high speed of traffic or the flurry of horns and squealing brakes behind him.

With his foot stamping the gas pedal, he crossed the remaining lanes and took the next exit to the surface streets. Freeway would've been faster, but he couldn't stay on that road after jacking a ride and fleeing an accident. The Chippies and the city cops would all be after his ass, especially if Joe Volkswagen had made him as the city's most wanted fugitive.

He wasn't far from Doc Robin's digs anyway. He could make it there in another three, four minutes, even on surface streets.

He wondered what he would find when he got thereand whether the doc would still be alive.