Survival Of The Fittest

5

The Observer

They hadn't paid him any attention, he was sure of that.

Waiting until the unmarked car had been gone for twenty minutes, he got off the mower, tied off the last of the leaf bags, got back on, and coasted down toward the park entrance. Stopping a short distance behind the yellow gates, he pushed the machine back to the side of the road. The park service had never missed it. Loose procedures.

Very loose. The girl's misfortune.

Good find, the mower a bonus added to the uniform.

As always, the uniform worked perfectly: Do manual labor in official garb and no one notices you.

His car, a gray Toyota Cressida with false plates and a handicapped placard in the glove compartment, was parked three blocks down. A nine-millimeter semiautomatic was concealed in a box under the driver's seat.

He was lean and light and walked quickly. Ten feet from the vehicle, he disarmed the security system with his remote, looked around without appearing to, got in, and sped off toward Sunset, turning east when he got there.

Same direction they'd gone.

A detective and a psychologist and neither had given him a second's notice.

The detective was bulky, with heavy limbs and sloping shoulders, the lumbering trudge of an overfed bull. The baggy, gnarled face of a bull- no, a rhinoceros.

A depressed rhinoceros. He looked discouraged already.

How did that kind of pessimism square with his reputation?

Maybe it fit. The guy was a pro, he had to know the chance of learning the truth was slim.

Did that make him the sensible one?

The psychologist was a different story. Hyperalert, eyes everywhere.

Focused.

Quicker and smaller than the detective- five ten or so, which still put him three inches above the dark man. Restless, he moved with a certain grace. A cat.

He'd gotten out of the car before the detective turned the engine off.

Eager- achievement-oriented?

Unlike the detective, the psychologist appeared to take care of himself. Solidly built, curly dark hair, a little long but trimmed neatly. Clear, fair skin, square jaw. The eyes very pale, very wide.

Such active eyes.

If he was that way with patients how could he calm them down?

Maybe he didn't see many patients.

Fancied himself a detective.

With his blue sportcoat, white shirt, and pressed khaki pants, he looked like one of those professors trying to come across casual.

That type often faked casual, pretending everyone was equal, but maintaining a clear sense of rank and position.

The dark man wondered if the psychologist was like that.

As he drove toward Brentwood, he thought again of the man's rapid, forward walk.

Lots of energy, that one.

All this time and no one had even gotten close to figuring out what had happened to Irit.

But the psychologist had forged forward- maybe the guy was an optimist.

Or just an amateur, too ignorant to know better.