Stalking The Angel

Chapter 36

The mountain cops were pretty good about it. The sheriff was a guy in his forties who had put in some time with the Staties and knew he was in over his head when he saw the mess. His partner was a jumpy kid maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, and after enough gun-waving the sheriff told him to put it away and go get an extra pair of cuffs out of the cruiser.

They found some clothes for Mimi, then cuffed us and drove us down to the State Police substation in Crestline, about a thousand feet lower on the mountain. The Crestline doc got pulled out of bed to check us over and tape Pike's ribs. Mostly, he looked at Mimi and shook his head.

When the doctor was finished, a state cop named Clemmons took Pike's statement first, and then mine, all the while sucking on Pall Mall cigarettes and saying, "Then what?" as if he'd heard it a million times.

After I had gone through it, Clemmons sucked a double lungful of Pall Mall and blew it at me. "You knew the girl was in there, how come you didn't just call us?"

"Phone line was busy," I said.

He sucked more Pall Mall and blew that at me, too.

The jail was a very small building with two tiny holding cells, one for men and one for women, and from Clemmons's desk I watched Mimi. She sat and she stared and I wondered if she'd do that the rest of her life.

Clemmons called L.A. and got Charlie Griggs pulling a late tour. They stayed on the phone about twenty minutes, Clemmons giving Griggs a lot of detail. One of the Statics brought in the Hagakure and Clemmons waved him to put it on a stack of Field amp; Stream in the corner. Evidence. When Clemmons hung up he came over and took the cuffs off me and then went to the holding cell and did the same for Pike. "You guys sit tight for a while and have some coffee. We got some people coming up."

"What about the girl?" I said. Clemmons hadn't taken the cuffs off her.

"Let's just let her sit." He went back to his desk and got on the phone and called the San Bernardino County coroner.

I went over to the coffee urn and poured two cups and brought them to Mimi's cell. I said, "How about it?" I held out the cup but she did not look at me nor in any way respond, so I put it on the crossbar and stood there until long after the coffee was cold.

More Staties came and a couple of Feds from the San Bernardino office and they gave back our guns and let us go at a quarter after two that morning. I said, "What about the girl?"

Clemmons said, "A couple of our people are going to drive her back to L.A. in the morning. She's going to be arraigned for the murder of her father."

"Maybe I should stay," I said.

"Bubba," Clemmons said, "that ain't one of the options. Get your ass outta here."

A young kid with a double-starched uniform and a baleful stare drove us back up to Arrowhead Village and dropped us off by Pike's Jeep. It was cool in the high mountain air, and quiet, and very very dark, the way no city can ever know dark.

The McDonald's was lit from inside, but that was the only light in the village, and the Jeep was the only car in the parking lot. We stood beside it for a while, breathing the good air. Pike took off his glasses and looked up. It was too dark to see his eyes. "Milky Way," he said. "Can't see it from L.A."

There were crickets from the edge of the forest and sounds from the lake lapping at the boat slips.

Pike said, "What's wrong?"

"It wasn't the way I thought it was. Eddie loved her."

"Uh-huh."

"She wanted to stay with him. She hadn't been kidnapped. She wasn't going to be killed."

He nodded.

Something splashed near the shore. I took a deep slow breath and felt empty. "I assumed a lot of things that were wrong. I needed her to be a victim, so that's the way I saw her." I looked at Joe. "Maybe she wasn't." I'm such a liar.

Pike slipped on the glasses. "Bradley."

My throat was tight and raw and the empty place burned. "She made up so damn much. Maybe she made that part up, too. Maybe he never touched her. I needed a reason for it all, and she gave me that. Maybe I helped her kill him."

Joe Pike thought about that for a long time. Centuries. Then he said, "Someone had to bring her back."

"Sure."

"Whatever she did, she did because she's sick. That hasn't changed. She needs help."

I nodded. "Joe. Once you had the gun you could have wounded him."

"No."

"Why not?"

He didn't move for a time, as if the answer required a complete deliberation, then he went to the Jeep. When he came back he had the translation of the Hagakure. He held it respectfully. "This isn't just a book, Elvis. It's a way of life."

Tashiro had said that.

Pike said, "Eddie Tang was yakuza, but he killed Ishida for the girl. He committed himself to getting her to Japan, but we stopped him. He loved her, yet he was going to lose her. He had failed the yakuza and he had failed the girl and he had failed himself. He had nothing left."

I remembered the way Eddie Tang had looked at Joe Pike. Pike, and not me. "The way of the warrior is death."

A cool breeze came in off the lake. Something moved in the water and a light plane appeared in the sky past the McDonald's roofline, its red anti-collision light flashing. Pike put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "You got her," he said. "You got her safe. Don't think about anything else."

We climbed into the Jeep and took the long drive back to Los Angeles.