with more disappointment than horror. There wasn’t much that shocked her.
She looked at Parker with flat eyes, giving away nothing, then looked at Kyle and seemed offended at the sight of him.
“Parker is the detective of record,” she announced. “Until I hear differently from someone more important than you, Bradley, I talk to Parker.”
She didn’t wait for a response from Kyle. What he might have to say was of no interest or consequence to her. She worked for the coroner’s office. The coroner might jump to the bark of big dogs in Parker Center; Diane Nicholson did not.
She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt down to begin her examination of the body.
Lenny Lowell’s pants pockets yielded forty-three cents, a Chiclet, and a laminated, faded, dog-eared pari- mutuel ticket from a horse race at Santa Anita.
“He carried it for luck.”
The voice that had been so strong and forceful earlier was now barely audible. Parker looked at Abby Lowell, watched her eyes fill again as she stared at the small piece of red cardstock in Nicholson’s hand. She didn’t try to blink the tears back this time. They spilled over her lashes and down her cheeks, one fat drop at a time. Her face was white; the skin appeared nearly translucent, like fine porcelain. Parker thought she might faint, and brushed past Kyle to go to her.
“The ticket,” she said. She tried to force a sardonic smile at some private joke, but her mouth was trembling. “He carried it for luck.”
Parker touched her arm gently. “Is there a friend you can stay with, Ms. Lowell? I’ll have an officer drive you. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set up a time for you to come into the station and talk more about your father.”
Abby Lowell jerked her arm away without looking at him, her gaze nailed to the floor, to her father’s wingtips. “Don’t pretend concern for me, Detective,” she said bitterly. “I don’t want your phony sympathy. I’ll drive myself home.”
No one said anything as she walked away and hurried down the hall and out the back door.
Nicholson broke the silence, slipping Lenny Lowell’s good-luck charm into an envelope in case it might turn out to be relevant later on. “I guess he should have cashed it in while he had the chance.”
6
Jace worked his way back to Lenny Lowell’s neighborhood through alleys and between buildings, avoiding streetlights and open spaces, his heart racing every time a car crossed his field of vision. He had no way of knowing where Predator had gone. He had no way of knowing whether or not the son of a bitch was half a block away, parked at the curb, rifling through the messenger bag for the packet that had to have been his objective in the attack—and discovering that it wasn’t there, that he hadn’t finished his job.
It seemed to take for-fucking-ever to walk The Beast back to familiar territory. He tried to balance the mangled bike up on its good front wheel and at the same time balance his own weight against the bike like a crutch. His wrenched ankle was throbbing. He had at least recovered his boot, but the swelling in his ankle prevented him from tying the laces tight. If he were a gazelle, like on those nature shows Tyler soaked up from the Discovery Channel, the next lion to come hunting would take him down.
He came to the 76 station from the alley, propped The Beast up against the back wall of the building, then leaned around the corner and peered out of the darkness toward the island of fluorescent light surrounding the gas pumps. No one was buying gas. There were few cars on the street. Those that drove past went with purpose, going somewhere and determined to get there on what was in their tank.
It was still raining. Jace was shaking with cold and fear, adrenaline and exhaustion. He felt weak and faint and on edge, all at once. Home was still a long walk away. As soon as he could find a pay phone that worked, he would call the Chens and ask to speak to Tyler. There was no phone in the Damons’ three rooms above the fish market. Jace couldn’t afford one, and had no one to call on a regular basis anyway.
He wished that wasn’t true tonight. It would have been a damn good night to call a friend for a ride. But he had no friends, only acquaintances, and it seemed best not to drag anyone into the mess in which he found himself. Instinctively, he thought in terms of isolation, keeping his life as uncomplicated by other people as was possible. He sure as hell could have done without knowing Lenny Lowell tonight.
His stomach rumbled and started to cramp. He needed to put something in it, needed fuel for what the rest of the night might bring. Lenny Lowell’s twenty-dollar tip was in his pocket. He could buy himself a soda and a candy bar. Unlike a lot of the messengers, Jace never stored money or anything of personal value in his messenger bag. He knew too well that anything could be taken from him at any time.
An overhang along the front of the booth offered shelter from the rain. A thin, dark guy in an orange turban sat in the booth behind the bulletproof glass. He startled at Jace’s sudden appearance, grabbed his microphone, and said with a crisp British accent: “The police are just down the block.”
As if he had already called them in anticipation of being robbed.
“A Snickers and a Mountain Dew.” Jace dug two damp, crumpled bills out of his pocket and stuck them in the pay tray.
“I have no more than fifty dollars in the till,” the man went on, his voice sounding tinny and distant through the cheap speaker. He pointed to the sign stuck to the window among the many warning stickers. Exposure to gas fumes could cause birth defects. Cigarettes caused cancer but if a person didn’t care and wanted them anyway, 76 stations would ask for an ID, in accordance with the law. The night clerk had no more than fifty bucks in the cash register.
“And I have a gun.”
He pulled a big-ass handgun out from under the cluttered counter and pointed it at Jace’s face, even as he snagged the two dollars from the tray with his other hand.
“Isn’t that glass bulletproof?” Jace asked.
The clerk scowled. “Yes, you cannot shoot me.”
“I don’t have a gun,” Jace said. “And if you try to shoot me, the glass will stop your bullet, maybe even bounce it back into your face. Did you ever think of that?”
Jace spread his hands where the clerk could see them. “I’m not robbing you anyway. I just want a Snickers and a Mountain Dew. Come on, man. It’s raining.”
From the corner of his eye Jace caught the watery red intermittent flash of a police strobe down the street, and his pulse kicked up a beat. The car wasn’t moving. Nor were any of its companions parked around the same small chunk of real estate.
“What’s going on down there?”
Maybe Lenny had called the cops when he figured out the package hadn’t been delivered. Maybe the envelope was stuffed with cash and everyone assumed the bike messenger had taken off with it. Maybe there was even now, as Jace stood trying to buy a candy bar from a guy in an orange turban who pointed a gun at him, an APB out on him, and LAPD cruisers were trolling the streets in search of him.
The clerk put his gun down on the counter, as casually as if he were putting a cigarette on the lip of an ashtray. “A murder,” he said. “I listen to the scanner.”
Jace felt the blood rush out of his head.
“Who?” he asked, still staring at the congregation of vehicles the next block down, on the other side of the street.
“Maybe you,” the clerk said.
Jace looked at him, a weird current of deja vu going through him. Maybe he had been murdered? Maybe he was dead. Maybe he hadn’t gotten away. Maybe Predator’s bullet had gone through him, and this surreality he found himself in was the afterlife. Maybe this guy was the guardian at the gate.
“Maybe you are the killer,” the clerk said, then laughed as if he hadn’t three minutes ago assumed Jace was there to rob him.
“Who was killed?” Jace asked again. The shaking he had in part attributed to hunger was growing stronger, but he’d already forgotten his empty belly.
“They call no names, only codes,” the clerk said. “Codes and the address.”
He repeated the address aloud. Jace’s mouth moved along like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, the words and
