there for her as her demons raked her with their claws.
53
Parker left the building and just stood for a while in the night air. It was closer to morning than to midnight. The empty streets were shiny black, wet with sea mist. No one was around. He wondered what would happen if he just walked away and never came back.
The thought was fleeting. He wasn’t the type to walk away from anything, God help him. He could only be thankful that for now all he could feel was numbness.
Andi Kelly was curled in the passenger seat of his car, huddled in a microfleece jacket he kept in the backseat. She jumped awake like a jack-in-the-box as Parker unlocked the doors and let himself in.
“As a car thief,” he said, “you’re a very good writer.”
“I stole your little plastic emergency key earlier. It let me in the door, but it wouldn’t start the engine.”
She turned sideways on the seat and just stared at him for a moment. Parker started the engine and turned on the heater. The dash lights glowed green.
“How are you doing, Kev?”
“No comment.”
“Off the record.”
“No comment. I can’t talk about this, Andi. Not now. It’s too raw.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I just wanted to offer. I’m a good listener.”
“How can that be?” he teased gently. “You never shut up.”
“I’m multitalented. I can juggle a little bit too.”
“Well, you’ll always have something to fall back on.”
“Diane Nicholson is a friend?” she asked carefully.
Parker nodded. He focused his stare on the odometer—something mundane, unimportant—in the hopes that the tide of emotion rising inside him would recede a bit. He hurt. For Diane, and because of her.
“I’m really sorry, Kev.”
He nodded again, a pressure building in his head, behind his eyes.
Andi picked up her bag from the floor of the car, rummaged through it, pulled out a flask, and offered it to him. “Have a wee nip, as my grandfather used to say to us as children. Hell of a baby-sitter, Granddad. He taught us how to play poker so he could cheat us out of our allowance money.”
Parker managed a chuckle, took the flask, and poured a shot of very good scotch down his throat.
“Eddie Davis is conscious and talking,” Andi said. “Your pal Metheny was right—he really wasn’t using that frontal lobe after all. Brains are miraculous little globs of gross, disgusting goo. Unnamed hospital sources say he’ll be released in a matter of days.”
“That sucks,” Parker said. “He’s not worth the powder to blow him up, and he walks away from getting shot in the head. Rob Cole fucks up people’s lives right and left, and he’ll walk out of jail tomorrow, a free man.”
“Well, it turns out he didn’t kill anybody,” Andi said.
That wasn’t exactly true, Parker thought, but he didn’t say it.
“You know he’ll sell his story for a movie of the week and insist on playing himself.”
“Stop. You’re making me wish
“She’s stable. They won’t know until the swelling goes down around the spinal cord whether she has any permanent damage. A day or two.”
They were quiet for a moment. Diana Krall’s smoky voice drifted from the stereo speakers, reflective and sad. The perfect sound track for the night.
“I feel like the whole damn world has blown apart, and we’ll each drift on our own little rock and scatter like dust in the wind,” Parker said.
“That’s not true. You’re not alone, Kev,” Andi said. “None of us is.”
“I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.”
“You’re done in. Go home. Sleep for a couple of days. Call if you decide you want company,” she said, and waggled her eyebrows.
Parker smiled reluctantly. “I’m glad we found each other again, Andi.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
“I’m right here,” she said, gesturing to a silver Miata, the next car down.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, and gave him a hug around the shoulders. “Take care of yourself, Kevin.”
He nodded. But as he drove the deserted streets home to Chinatown, he found himself thinking that he wished he didn’t have to take care of himself. He had won the battle and lost the war. This was a night for a soft place to fall, but the person he most wanted to share his victory with was gone. Lost to him. Lost to herself. Forever. And there was nothing to do but mourn.
54
Another gorgeous Southern California morning. Sunshine, traffic jams, and sensationalism.
Every early news show of every television station in the city was running footage of “Peril in Pershing Square,” followed by “Shootout on Olvera Street.” Much of the Pershing Square fiasco had been caught on videotape by a USC film student, who had been in the park to make a documentary about the movie crew that had been setting up for a shoot on the site.
Every station had reporters live at the scenes, where absolutely nothing was happening at six in the morning, and no one had anything of any real value to say.
“Regurgitating and rehashing sketchy facts and supposition—live at [crime scene of choice] this is [reporter’s name here] for channel whatever news.”
Television journalism in the new millennium.
Parker watched TV with the sound muted, reading the closed- captioning for Diane’s name, which appeared again and again. Every cop and SID tech and paramedic at the scene knew her. There had been no shortage of people willing to step into the glare of the lights and make some comment, or express their shock. The upper- right-hand corner of the screen on every channel had her booking photo already.
It hurt to see it, to see the emptiness in her eyes, the pallor of her skin. The vibrant, strong woman he knew was not there. This was some other Diane. This was the Diane she had spoken of, a stranger even to herself. In this Diane lived fear and fury, and the kind of raw pain that drove otherwise good people to cross lines they otherwise would not. This Diane had committed murder by proxy. This Diane had shot a man in the head. This Diane had planned and executed the plan to frame a man for a capital crime punishable by death.
In this Diane lived the need for love, the hunger for connection, the vulnerability of a child. This Diane had been used and abused by a sexual sociopath in a cruel and heartless game.
Parker walked away from the plasma-screen TV and went up onto the roof to stretch, to close everything out of his mind and walk through the movements that had helped to calm and center him every day for the past few years. Today the dance was tense with anger, the energy—the chi—blocked by the strength of his emotions.
When the frustration had tried his patience long enough, he gave up and just stood there for a long time, looking out over Chinatown, listening to the sounds of the city awakening and beginning the day.
One of the things he loved most about LA was the overriding sense that every day was new, brimming with the possibility of dreams coming true. Today, all he could feel was the opposite of hope. Today, he would in all likelihood lose the career he had fought so hard to resurrect. Today, a woman he loved would be charged with murder, and a morally bankrupt, emotional rapist would be set free with an unspoken endorsement to go on with his life as if nothing had ever happened.
Parker released a heavy sigh and went back inside to prepare to face it all. The best thing to do with a bad day: get through it and end it, and hope the next day would somehow be better.
Parker made his first stop of the day the hospital. One, because it was early, and he had a better chance of
