Suddenly the girl’s eyes were wet. Rachel watched as she pushed her hand upward a little more, and a dark drop welled up around the point of the knife jabbing into her throat. Saw the girl’s hand tighten as she prepared to shove the blade up. Knew that she wasn’t going to stop.
“Please,” the girl said, her voice quiet and very afraid and not the way it had sounded moments before. “Help me. I’m not doing this.”
“Jesus,” Rachel said quickly, holding her hands out. “Okay. You win. Just don’t…do that.”
The girl took a step forward. This brought her into the light, and for a second she looked less crazy, as if the blade had gotten into her hand by accident, Mommy not paying attention while they cooked together, and it would be put down with ostentatious care at any second.
“Promise?”
“You bet,” Rachel said. “I promise.”
The girl slowly moved the knife away. She smiled tentatively. It was a nice smile, and Rachel allowed herself to relax just a little bit. A child who had that inside her could not be all bad. Hopefully.
“Okay,” she said, in the same calm and friendly voice. “So we’re cool. Why don’t you tell me your name?”
The girl’s face changed. “Why do you want to know?”
“Well, how else am I going to know what to call you, honey? I’m Rachel. See? No big deal.”
The girl was holding the knife loosely now, as if she’d forgotten about it.
“My name is Madison,” she said. “Mainly.”
“Great.” Rachel smiled. “That’s a real pretty name. Madison and Rachel. Friends, right?”
The girl was silent for a moment, motionless. Then she blinked. “I already knew your name,” she said.
She smiled again, but something had changed. It was as if everything about the girl—her face, body, clothing—were irrelevant. Only her eyes told the truth. Rachel’s stomach turned. She tried to look away but could not.
“Time,” the girl said, looking Rachel over, “is not kind. You were perfect, so much my kind of thing. I even found myself prey to a little crush, would you believe it? Oh, well. That was then, and this is now. Understand something, not-so-little Rachel. You’re too old, and we’re not friends, and even if we were, it wouldn’t stop me from cutting you up. So it would be a very good idea for you to do what you’re told.”
Rachel nodded. She didn’t know what else to do.
“Good,” the girl said. “We’re going to make a phone call now. You should find it interesting. Instructive, at least.”
The girl was holding the knife more tightly again now. This realization distracted Rachel, and she did not notice the girl’s other hand swinging toward her head until it was too late.
“Excellent,” Madison said brightly, when Rachel lay unconscious on the floor. “Now let’s find out just how much the great Todd Crane loves his daughter.”
chapter
THIRTY-THREE
I have been here before. Many times has this scene replayed in my head, but never has it been so much like it was when it was real.
I am in Los Angeles. I am sitting in a cramped armchair, in the dark, surrounded by the smell of other people’s debris. I am waiting for two men whose identities I have determined through the closest thing I will ever do to detective work. Men who have been places that were not theirs to enter, and in which they stole, committed at least two rapes and a murder. I have come to believe that being human is most of all to be a social animal and that if you do not understand that you are not allowed into other people’s places without their permission, then while you may be a Homo sapiens, you are not a human being.
I am aware I am committing the same crime as they, and as the men who killed my father, many years ago and hundreds of miles away. I am not allowed to be in this house. Even if I had a warrant, I should not be here. I should be at home with Amy, who is close to broken and needs me with her. Instead I am here. I cannot help Amy’s grief, or my own, and have run out of ways to try. So I sit in the rambling ruin of a house at the back end of a canyon, where all the windows are shut and there is no air. What do I really think I’m doing here? Am I waiting to arrest two people whose identities I have established or instead for two unknown men from long ago, whose names I can never know and whom I can never catch?
I am not thinking about this. I am not thinking about anything. Thinking means remembering the face of the prenatal technician as she stared at the images on the ultrasound for a beat too long, before quietly summoning a supervisor. It involves the sight of my wife moving slowly around our house, waiting in vain for the thing inside her to go away. It culminates in a spray of fine dust, thrown back in my face by the wind at the end of Santa Monica Pier, just two days before this night, as if all creation wanted to make sure I understood that this event was something that would never, ever go away. The material that came out and was cremated and dispersed was not him. Our son never made it to the outside world. He got stuck inside, still wanders those interior halls, affecting the world only through his shadowy presence in our minds. Those who share their lives with someone dead know that there is nothing as loud as the recounting of all the things that now can never be said, or the memories of events that will never take place.
Cut off from the generations in both directions now, I have nowhere else to go. And so I sit here, and wait. Someone can be held responsible for something. Somebody, somewhere, has to pay. Finally I hear the door of the house open. I hear loud voices and the heavy thud of footsteps, and I sense that more than two people have entered. The sound of their voices is harsh, alien, and jagged with a frustration as toxic as my own.
Within three minutes of this moment, I will have shot four men to death.
I do not want to experience this again. When I finally fight my way up from the dream, I scare the life out of the person stuck next to me on the morning flight up to Seattle; and as I cry out, I realize that it is not the sound of footsteps I have heard but the plane’s wheels being lowered, ready to land.
We touched down just before midday, and I turned my phone on immediately. It buzzed thirty seconds later. The message was not from Amy, as I’d hoped. It was from Gary. An address.
His hotel was on the west side of downtown, close to the canyon of Interstate 5 as it cuts through the center. It looked to be around the same price point as the last one. After the conversation with Blanchard the previous morning, this made sense. Fisher was paying his own way, not charging it off to some deep-pocketed client. I parked the car under the hotel and went around to the trunk. Then headed inside.
Gary had said he’d come down to the lobby to meet me. Instead I got his room number from reception and went up. I knocked on his door. A muffled voice answered.
“Honor bar,” I said, facing the other way.
“I don’t need anything.”
“I have to check stock, sir.”
As soon as the door opened, I kicked it straight at him, catching him in the face. I slammed the door shut again behind me as I strode in.
“Jack, what the—”
I shoved him hard in the chest, sending him stumbling. He fell onto his back, and I put my knee in the middle of his ribs, pulling out the gun and pushing it hard into the middle of his forehead.
“Shut up,” I said. “Do not say anything at all.”
He still started to open his mouth.
“I mean it, Gary,” I said, pushing down harder. “I really do. I am done being fucked around by you and everyone else. Do you understand?”
This time he just blinked.
“Did you get Anderson killed?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“Only three people knew where we were going to meet. You, me, him. I didn’t tell anyone else. I’m assuming
