Mortal Pursuit

4

The blue-and-white Chevy Caprice was parked at the rear of the police station under a bank of sodium-vapor lamps. Trish slid in on the passenger side, and Pete Wald climbed behind the wheel.

Trish was silent, her heart still pumping hard. With peculiar vividness she recalled a visit to the principal’s office when she was in the first grade. The specific offense that had occasioned the reprimand was long forgotten, but the awful mixture of embarrassment and guilt still clung to her memory, tenacious as a barnacle.

Had the principal used the same tone of voice she’d heard from Edinger Probably.

Wald cranked the ignition key and steered the cruiser onto Adams Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare. Though it was only eight o’clock on a Saturday night, the street was empty of traffic, void of activity. Cardboard signs reading CLOSED were propped in shop windows. No cars lined the curbs.

The police scanner under the dashboard cycled between the two main frequencies used by the department. Both were quiet. Slow night. As usual.

“Ed gave it to you pretty good,” Wald said over the engine’s drone.

Trish wasn’t sure if Ed was really Sergeant Edinger’s first name or only a nickname. Somehow she hadn’t had the nerve to ask.

She frowned. “I was late.”

“You didn’t miss anything. No serial killers or terrorists in the area, at least as far as we know. Incidentally, Officer, your shirttail needs a little work.”

“Oh, God.” She groped behind her and felt a flap of fabric overhanging her waistband like a panting tongue. Hastily she tucked it in. “You mean I was running around the station like that” She wanted to die.

“I’m sure nobody noticed.”

Trish thought she saw a grin tucked away at the corner of Wald’s mouth. She couldn’t be certain, but the odds favored it. Pete Wald seemed characteristically amused by her.

Perhaps it was his prerogative to feel that way, a privilege of age and experience. He was a veteran officer, a twenty-year man, two decades her senior-big and gray-headed and molasses-voiced like some frontier patriarch.

She remembered his exaggerated astonishment upon learning that Reagan was the first president she distinctly recalled. “I watched Kennedy debate Nixon,” he’d said, chuckling.

“I saw a kinescope of that on PBS,” Trish had offered, but the comment merely elicited another, heartier laugh.

Smiles and laughter and lightly stressed superiority-that was Pete Wald. Trish almost preferred the screaming insults of her drill instructor at the academy.

The car cruised north on Sullivan. The lighted marquee of a movie theater glided past. Double feature, both films six months old, one of them already available on video.

A week ago, feeling restless and lonely on her first night in town, Trish had gone by herself to the movies. The screen sagged, and the picture had been projected out of focus. Fewer than a dozen patrons had occupied the wheezing straightback chairs. She left before the start of the second feature.

She watched the marquee shrink in the sideview mirror, a rectangle of light diminishing to a postage stamp, gone, and then there was only darkness again.

“He read you the L.A. speech,” Wald said, “didn’t he”

“Speech”

She saw his cheek dimple as the threatened grin was realized. “Every boot on his watch gets to hear it. Ed waits for the first mistake, then launches into his routine.”

Trish felt a little better.

“Of course,” Wald added, “he could be right.”

She flushed, her momentary relief fading. “About me”

“About L.A.-and here. A lot more happens in the city, you know.”

“I realize that.”

“Out here you’re a hundred miles from the nearest riot zone. Even Santa Barbara doesn’t have all that much going on, and when you get this far inland-well, it’s rural America. Strictly small-town.”

“I knew that when I signed up. But …” Trish looked away into the dark. “Sometimes bad things happen-even in small towns.”

For a moment she forgot the humiliation of roll call, the flush of shame, her beating heart. She was wrapped in old memories, memories that melted into half-remembered fragments of dreams.

Then she realized Wald was studying her, eyes narrowed and thoughtful.

She shrugged, as if the thought had been safely philosophical. “Or so I’ve been told.”