The Night Crew

Chapter 28

Clark's apartment was in Westwood, six blocks from the music building. Halfway there, Anna said, urgently, 'We've got no time for this, no time.'

'We should have made time,' Harper said. They were halfway to Clark's apartment complex. 'And what else can we do? I mean, we could still call Wyatt, and have the cops do it.'

'No.'

Anna fell back in her seat, looked out the window: If the cops got close to Clark, they'd tear him apart. Because Clark was oddhe was a composer of classical music, probably the least likely job in America. And he actually made money at it. And he had attitudes that had driven even his friends crazy: arrogant, conceited, charming, angry.

Not violent. Not that she'd ever seen. When he got angry, he got sullen, a cool, withdrawing anger, not a hot, plate-throwing tantrum. He'd never tear her house up.

On the other hand, her house wasn't really torn up. Just the broken window. And the guy had to break a window, if he wanted to get in the house. The destruction wasn't wanton.

Except for the pot. What had he done with that pot?

Anna shook her head, pushed her glasses back up her nose: she was losing it. She was five minutes from a confrontation she dreaded as much as anything she could think of, and she was worried about a flowerpot.

'Jake.' She grabbed his arm. 'Jake: we gotta go back to my place. Now.'

Exasperated. 'Anna, we're two minutes away.'

'Jake, forget it, we gotta go back.'

'Why?'

'Something happened to my flowerpot.'

The pot had been there earlier in the day. She didn't remember seeing it, but she would have missed it. It was simply part of the landscape.

Harper trailed Anna through the house, past the crime-scene cops. Wyatt was on the telephone, said something, then put a hand over the receiver: 'Find him?'

'Yeah. It's not him,' Anna said. 'Anything here?'

Wyatt shook his head and returned to the phone.

At the back door, Anna flipped on the porch light, and went out to look at the spot where the pot had been. 'It's too big to carry anyplace,' she said. 'It probably weighs fifty pounds.'

'I can't see anything,' Harper said, scuffing around in the grass.

'I'll get a flashlight,' Anna said. She went inside, got a flashlight out of a kitchen drawer and went back out.

The depression where the pot had stood was a clear ring of raw dirt in the grass going down to the canal. And two feet toward the canal, a lump of dirt that had probably been inside the pot.

Anna pointed the light over the sea wall, into the murky canal water. The stuff looked like it might have come out of a radiator, a funny green, with gray depths to it. But down there in the water, was. something. Something that bobbed up and down, up and down. Something with a round end. A head?

She stepped back, shivered, turned and went up on the porch: 'Hey, you guys,' she yelled. 'You better come out here.'

She thought of Pam in the water, anchored by the pot; swallowed. Please don't let it be. Please.

One of the crime-scene cops came to the door. 'What?'

Anna pointed the light into the water. 'There's something that shouldn't be here. we can't tell what it is.'

The cop walked out on the porch, followed by a second one, and then Wyatt, jostling past them.

Anna said, 'Somebody moved a big flowerpot, and maybe put it over the side. I.'

Wyatt looked into the water: 'Oh, Christ,' he said, softly.

The first cop looked down into the water, then dropped face down onto the seawall, reached into the water. Couldn't quite touch whatever it is.

'I'll have to get in,' he said. 'I'll wreck my suit.'

'Put in for it,' Wyatt said.

'Fuck it.' The cop peeled off his jacket, shirt and pants, put his shoes back on, and slipped over the side in his underwear. 'Cold,' he said.

Then he reached down into the murk, and just as quickly pulled his hand back.

'What is it?' Anna said. She could barely breathe.

'Not a body,' he said. 'I don't know.'

Wyatt exhaled, glanced at Anna. Below, the cop reached carefully through the water again, then said, 'Plastic,' and lifted.

The thing came out of the water, and Anna said, 'Kayak. We were looking at the end of a kayak.'

Harper: 'A goddamned kayak. That's how he got in and out.'

Wyatt: 'Shit. He's not from here.'

'But somebody must have seen him putting it in, up by.'

And Anna looked at Harper and said, 'Steve Judge.'

'What?'

She grabbed him by the shirt, both hands, her face six inches from his: 'Remember, out at the ranch? The woman, what's her name? Daly? She said Steve Judge was up in Oregon running rivers.'

'But he was in Oregon,' Harper said.

'What's this?' Wyatt asked.

Anna took a minute to explain, and Wyatt said, 'Gotta check it.'

'He lives in Pasadena,' Anna said. 'We've got an address.'

She found an address in her book, pulled the page and handed it to Wyatt.

'Long shot,' Wyatt muttered, as he hurried back into the house.

Another car arrived out front, and as they moved back inside, Anna called information, got the number for the Full Heart Ranch, dialed it. No answer. Dialed again. Still nothing.

'If Steve's the guy, we oughta go out to the ranch,' Anna told Harper.

'Let the cops do it,' Harper said. 'And it's really a long shot.'

'What, send a deputy who doesn't know what's going on? He'd get lost out there, at night. The cops can surround his house in Pasadena, no problem, but if Steve's the guy, and he's up at the ranch, he'd see them coming a million miles away,' Anna said. 'We know the road. We can go out there and park by the gate and walk in.'

'Anna, that's crazy.'

'Well, what're we gonna do?' she shouted at him. 'He's got Pam. He's gonna kill her. We can't just hang around here with two hundred cops. He's not gonna be here, whoever he is.'

Harper looked at her, and the cops working in the house, and all the lights and cars, and said, 'I'll need a gun. We can stop at my place. It's on the way.'

They took the San Diego over the hill, moving fast. Anna said, 'The name of the ranch in Oregon. Was it Cut River Canyon?'

'Don't remember. That sounds good.'

Anna punched in the information number for Oregon, got an operator: 'I don't show a Cut River Canyon, but I show a Cut Canyon.'

'That's it.' Anna muttered the number to herself as she redialed. The phone rang eight times, Anna muttering, 'C'mon, c'mon,' and on the ninth ring, was answered by an irritated woman, who snapped: 'Hello?'

'Yes. My name is Anna Batory, from Los Angeles. I talked to someone at the Cut Canyon Ranch who connected me to a man named Steven Judge. Are you the woman who connected me?'

'Yes. Do you know what time it is? Steven isn't here.'

Anna interrupted: 'Ma'am, somebody in Los Angeles has murdered at least three people in the last week and now has kidnapped a woman. And this is somehow tied to me. The police say he is stalking me. Mr Judge's name has come up a couple of times in the course of the investigation, but if he was really up at Cut Canyon when I called, then he can't have anything to do with it.'

There was a long hesitation, and then the woman asked, 'Are you with the police?'

'I can have the office in charge of the L. A. County serial-murder task force call you in five minutes, if you have something to say,' Anna said.

Another pause. 'And this isn't a joke. We didn't receive anything like this information. before.'

'You mean from Mr Judge?'

'Yes, from Steve. The stalking, I mean, he suggested it might be somewhat the other way around, that's why we.'

'Ma'am, I'm going to have Lieutenant Wyatt from the Santa Monica police departmenthe's the head of the task force for this series of crimesI'm going to have him call you in the next five minutes. Please tell him everything you know.'

'How do I know this isn't some kind of, of, arrangement? That he's a policeman?'

'If you would like, you could call the Santa Monica Police Department on your own. I'll give you the area code, you can get the number from informationand they will transfer you to Lieutenant Wyatt.'

'Oh, God. Okay, I'll call Santa Monica.'

'Wait five minutes,' Anna said. 'I've got to tell Lieutenant Wyatt that you'll be calling.'

Anna gave the woman the area code for Santa Monica, rang off, said to Harper, 'I think he's the one, all right, Steve Judge,' and punched in the Santa Monica police department number. A woman answered, and Anna told her that she needed to speak to Wyatt immediately, and spent a minute filling the woman in. She rang off again and Harper said, 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'

She said, 'Jake, I know you do. But he's probably in Pasadena, anyway. This is just something that we can cover better than the cops could. If the cops even decide to go up to the ranch, it'll take them three or four hours to get a SWAT team over there. trying to talk to Ventura, trying to figure out where it is and how to get there. They'll have to get maps and all that stuff. There's no way Pam'll get out alive: he's nuts, he's itching to kill her. There's no way they'll even find him, until it's too late. And if he gets out, where's the evidence that he was even there?'

'There'd be some prints in your car, his behavior.'

'But that won't get Pam out.'

The phone rang in her lap and she picked it up, ready to switch it on, already hearing Wyatt's voice, when Harper swatted it out of her hand. 'No, no,' he said urgently. 'What if it's him?'

But there was no second ring. Then five seconds later, it rang again. She didn't wait for the third time, but said, 'Hello?'

Wyatt said, 'You were supposed to wait for the third ring.'

'No time,' Anna said.

'What's happening? Where are you?'

'We're running up to Ventura to check on something. just in case,' Anna said. 'Listen, a woman's going to call you from a place called Cut Canyon Ranch, up in Oregon.'

She explained the circumstances, and Wyatt said, 'You think they did something weird with the call?'

'It's not weird, if you're wired right,' Anna said. 'You just push a button. No big deal. But if they were faking it, then there's a lot better chance that he's the guy.'

'All right, I'll talk to her.'

'Are you heading for Pasadena?'

'We're on the way, but we're still getting people together.'

'Good luck. And gimme your number.'

Wyatt dictated a number; Anna rang off and said to Harper, 'Still getting people together. Damn, damn, damn, there's no time for that.'

Anna sat in the car while Harper ran inside his house. He was back a minute later, carrying a short rifle, fumbling with a box of shells. 'Gimme,' Anna said. 'You drive, I'll load.'

'You know how?'

'I can figure it out.'

'Just feed them in the bottom, there's a release just in front of the trigger guard.'

'Think it's enough gun?' Anna asked, looking at the magazine mechanism.

'It's an old Ruger forty-four,' Harper said. 'It'll do the job.'

They slewed out the end of his driveway, Jake driving with both hands as Anna fed the short fat shells into the rifle. The rifle was short, with a smooth walnut stock: comfortable. And then the phone rang. Once, twice, three times: not Wyatt.

Anna passed it to Jake, who listened, said, 'She's not here. Yeah, but she just left it in the car. Who is this? Well, probably about a half hour, I'm on my way to pick her up. Okay. Message from Pam. Do you have a number? Okay. Yeah, half an hour, you know, give or take.'

He rang off, looked at Anna and nodded: 'Message from Pam.'

'That was him.'

'Yeah. No number.'

'Shoot.'

'Call Wyatt, tell him, see if they got a record of it.'

Anna nodded, but asked, 'How long to the ranch, do you think?'

He glanced at the car clock, then said, 'Half an hour, maybe.'

'Got to be a few minutes faster than that,' Anna said.

He nodded, and Anna took the phone to call Wyatt. But as she was about to punch in the number, it rang again. 'Give it to me,' Harper said. Anna handed it to him.

'Hello? Hello?' He shook his head, clicked off, handed it back. 'Check up call,' he said. 'He was calling to see if the phone was busy. To see if we turned right around to call somebody.'

'No dummy,' Anna said.

'Crazy as a loon, but not stupid,' Harper said.

'Drive faster,' Anna said. She sat with the gun upright, the butt of the little gun resting on the seat between her thighs, looking out the window.

'Most likely a wild-goose chase,' Harper said.

'Most likely,' she said.

She waited another minute, then tapped Wyatt's phone number in. 'Yeah?'

'We just got a call from the guy, within the last minute or so, if you're doing a trace.'

'Nothing's working, but I'll check,' he said. 'The woman from Oregon called: you were set up. He was somewhere down here when you called for him.'

'All right. We're building a picture, and he fits,' Anna said.

'Better'n that. I just talked. Jesus watch out.' Wyatt broke away, speaking to somebody else. 'Just missed a goddamn truck by about an inch,' he said, talking to Anna again. 'Listen, a woman named Daly called about three minutes after the Oregon woman, wanted to know what was going on. She said you screwed them on that animal rights protest, and you might be out to frame Judge for some reason.'

'Bullshit.'

'Yeah, I know. Anyway, I asked her when she'd last seen him, and she said she saw him this morning. And I asked if he showed any signs of injury from a fight.'

'His cheek,' Anna said, remembering the fight in the parking lot.

'Exactly,' Wyatt said. 'She said there was something wrong with his cheek and she looked at it and he got madshe said there was a bruise covered with makeup. He told her he'd been bitten by a cat that he supposedly was trying to pick up.'

'Goddamn, he's the guy,' Anna said.

'He looks good: and we're getting some people together up in Ventura, heading out to that ranch. We'll be ready in a couple of hours.'

'Right,' Anna said. She pulled her face back from the phone, and started rubbing her hand across the mouthpiece. 'We're on the way there, now. If you don't get something from Pasadena.'

'Anna, you're breaking up.'

'Can't hear you,' Anna said, blocking most of what she said with her fingers. 'Can't.'

She punched the 'end' button: she would not be told at this point to wait for a few hours.

'What?' Harper asked.

'He's the guy,' Anna said.

'But he might not be at the ranch.'

'Oh, he's there,' Anna said. 'He's there, all right. I can smell him.'

She bared her teeth, and Harper stared at her for a second, then jerked his eyes back to the dark road. Anna felt like she did on those nights when she and the crew were really operating, when everything was turning in their favor: like the night of the raid, and Jacob's leap. She was on, and she could feel the attraction of the ranch.

The ranch was pulling her in.