thighs and his shoulders, and he slowed still more. The certainty that had been in his eyes began to fade. It made me think of King Kong, fighting the little men for the woman he loved.
Far away, maybe on the other side of the lake, there were sirens. Something flickered on Eddie's face when he heard them, and he glanced at the girl. When the cops got here, she would go back, and he would go back, but they wouldn't go back together. He made a deep grunt and he tried to end it. He turned his back to Joe Pike and came at me. I backpedaled and Pike came in fast. Eddie ran me back against the doorjamb. He snapped a fist out and the fist hit the jamb and shattered wood and plaster. I rammed the heel of my hand up into the base of his nose and something cracked and blood spurted out and he grabbed me. Pike wrapped his hands around Eddie's face and dug his fingers into his eyes and pulled. Eddie let go and jerked an elbow back and you could hear Pike's ribs snap. I hit Eddie with two quick punches to the ear and followed them with another roundhouse kick that again snapped his head to the side. He staggered, but stayed up, and I said, 'Shit.'
The sirens howled closer and closer until the sound seemed to come from every direction, and then they were at the front of the house. Eddie was in the middle of the room, sucking air, with Pike and me on either side. Back where we started. Only now there was sweat and blood and cops at the door. Eddie looked from me to Pike to the girl, then lowered his hands and stood up out of his crouch as if someone had called time out. The girl said, 'Eddie?'
He shook his head. There were tears coming down his face, working into the blood. He had given it his best, but it hadn't been enough.
I said, 'It's over, Eddie.'
Eddie looked at me. 'Not yet.' When he said it, he looked old.
Eddie Tang stepped over the fat guy and pulled Joe's shotgun from beneath the Mustache Man. He looked at it and then he looked at Joe Pike. There were more voices outside and somebody yelled for somebody else to watch himself. Mimi said, 'Shoot them, Eddie. Shoot them now.'
Eddie said, 'I love her, man.' Then he tossed the gun to Joe, bared his teeth like something crazed and primal, and charged straight ahead with a series of power kicks that could knock down a wall. Joe Pike fired four rounds so quickly they might have been one. The 12-gauge blasts in the small room made my ears ring and the buckshot load carried Eddie Tang backward through the French doors and out into the night. The four spent shells bounced off the ceiling and hit the floor and spun like little tops, and outside a cop voice shouted, 'Holy shit!'
When the shell casings stopped spinning there was silence.
For the longest time, Mimi Warren did not move, then she looked at me and said, 'I don't feel anything.'
I said, 'Kid, you've had so much done to you that the part that feels went dead a long time ago.' Maybe Carol Hillegas could fix it.
Mimi cocked her head the way a bird will, as if I'd said something curious, and smiled. 'Is that what you think?'
I didn't move.
She said, 'I'm such a liar. I make up stuff all the time.'
I went to her, then, and put my arms around her, and she started to scream, flailing and thrashing and trying to get to Eddie, or maybe just trying to get away from me. I held on tight, and said, 'It's all right. It's going to be all right.'
I said it softly, and many times, but I don't think she heard me.
Chapter 36
The mountain cops were pretty good about it. The sheriff was a guy in his forties who had put in some time with the Staties and knew he was in over his head when he saw the mess. His partner was a jumpy kid maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, and after enough gun-waving the sheriff told him to put it away and go get an extra pair of cuffs out of the cruiser.
They found some clothes for Mimi, then cuffed us and drove us down to the State Police substation in Crestline, about a thousand feet lower on the mountain. The Crestline doc got pulled out of bed to check us over and tape Pike's ribs. Mostly, he looked at Mimi and shook his head.
When the doctor was finished, a state cop named Clemmons took Pike's statement first, and then mine, all the while sucking on Pall Mall cigarettes and saying, 'Then what?' as if he'd heard it a million times.
After I had gone through it, Clemmons sucked a double lungful of Pall Mall and blew it at me. 'You knew the girl was in there, how come you didn't just call us?'
'Phone line was busy,' I said.
He sucked more Pall Mall and blew that at me, too.
The jail was a very small building with two tiny holding cells, one for men and one for women, and from Clemmons's desk I watched Mimi. She sat and she stared and I wondered if she'd do that the rest of her life.
Clemmons called L.A. and got Charlie Griggs pulling a late tour. They stayed on the phone about twenty minutes, Clemmons giving Griggs a lot of detail. One of the Statics brought in the Hagakure and Clemmons waved him to put it on a stack of
'What about the girl?' I said. Clemmons hadn't taken the cuffs off her.
'Let's just let her sit.' He went back to his desk and got on the phone and called the San Bernardino County coroner.
I went over to the coffee urn and poured two cups and brought them to Mimi's cell. I said, 'How about it?' I held out the cup but she did not look at me nor in any way respond, so I put it on the crossbar and stood there until long after the coffee was cold.
More Staties came and a couple of Feds from the San Bernardino office and they gave back our guns and let us go at a quarter after two that morning. I said, 'What about the girl?'
Clemmons said, 'A couple of our people are going to drive her back to L.A. in the morning. She's going to be arraigned for the murder of her father.'
'Maybe I should stay,' I said.
'Bubba,' Clemmons said, 'that ain't one of the options. Get your ass outta here.'
A young kid with a double-starched uniform and a baleful stare drove us back up to Arrowhead Village and dropped us off by Pike's Jeep. It was cool in the high mountain air, and quiet, and very very dark, the way no city can ever know dark.
The McDonald's was lit from inside, but that was the only light in the village, and the Jeep was the only car in the parking lot. We stood beside it for a while, breathing the good air. Pike took off his glasses and looked up. It was too dark to see his eyes. 'Milky Way,' he said. 'Can't see it from L.A.'
There were crickets from the edge of the forest and sounds from the lake lapping at the boat slips.
Pike said, 'What's wrong?'
'It wasn't the way I thought it was. Eddie loved her.'
'Uh-huh.'
'She wanted to stay with him. She hadn't been kidnapped. She wasn't going to be killed.'
He nodded.
Something splashed near the shore. I took a deep slow breath and felt empty. 'I assumed a lot of things that were wrong. I needed her to be a victim, so that's the way I saw her.' I looked at Joe. 'Maybe she wasn't.'
Pike slipped on the glasses. 'Bradley.'
My throat was tight and raw and the empty place burned. 'She made up so damn much. Maybe she made that part up, too. Maybe he never touched her. I needed a reason for it all, and she gave me that. Maybe I helped her kill him.'
Joe Pike thought about that for a long time. Centuries. Then he said, 'Someone had to bring her back.'
'Sure.'
'Whatever she did, she did because she's sick. That hasn't changed. She needs help.'
