Jack picked it up, held it to the light. About the size of a silver dollar, it was a rough-edged, silvery medallion stamped on one side with the image of a haloed woman in a long dress, holding a fistful of lightning bolts.
Pete said, 'What's that?'
Jack said, 'I don't know. It must have meant something to Paz, though. He was reaching for it when I called him out.'
'A good luck piece, maybe.'
'Not for him.'
Jack eyed the medallion, turning it over in his hand, unsure of what to do with it. An odd trinket, yet it didn't seem right, somehow, to toss it away. Might turn out to be evidence, or a clue, though he didn't see just how yet. He pocketed it; he'd decide what to do with it later.
18. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Belle Reve was a side street down by the riverside. At the waterfront end of it, at right angles to it, stood a waist-high guardrail, its horizontal post painted in black-and-white stripes. Beyond it lay an embankment sloping down for about twenty yards before ending at the shoreline. The river was a choppy black mirror reflecting the landward lights.
Belle Reve was a cul-de-sac, dead-ending on the waterfront. A quiet little street, lined on either side by a few bungalow-type houses. Not the low-rent district, but nothing fancy, either. Far from it.
And far from quiet, too, with an unmarked police car parked in front of it, facing it, with Sergeant Floyd Dooley speaking through the car's public address system. His partner, Buck Buttrick, stood on the passenger side of the car, leaning a hip against the front fender.
The car, a late model, dark-colored Crown Victoria sedan, stood at right angles to the curbside, its high-beam headlights pointed at the front of the house, bathing it in white light.
Nearby, parked along the curbside, was the SUV that Jack Bauer and Pete Malo had been using. Its engine was off, its lights dark. Jack and Pete were nowhere to be seen.
The one-story house was raised on support poles, leaving about eighteen inches of crawl space between the bottom floor planks of the house and the sandy ground below. The front windows were curtained and the house was dark inside, no lights showing.
Floyd Dooley stood on the driver's side of the sedan. The door was open, and stretching out from where it was plugged into the dashboard was a long, coiled cable wire, at the end of which was a microphone clutched in the lawman's hand.
Dooley spoke in a normal, conversational tone into the mic, his words being amplified through the loudspeaker of the car's PA system.
He said,
Inside the house, Vikki Valence stood to one side of the front window, flattened against the wall. The high- beam headlights shone through the window curtains, illuminating much of the interior, leaving dark squares and patches in the areas where the light did not reach.
Vikki was sweating. Much of the look of a trapped animal showed on her face, a contorted mask of fear. Her hair was a tangled mess, strands falling across her face. A sweat-soaked black dress clung to her body.
She held a butcher knife in one hand, clutching it with the blade pointed downward. It was the only weapon she could find in the house and she'd kept it close to her for most of the long hours of the day and night she'd spent hiding out. She wasn't about to let it go now.
She knew him, all right. Knew that Dooley and his partner, Buttrick, were the two crookedest cops on Bourbon Street. Making them two of the crookedest cops in New Orleans, which qualified them as contenders for the title of crookedest cops in the world.
She had no doubt that they'd sell her to Marty Paz, or Beltran, or whoever made them the best offer. She had no intention of finding out their intentions.
Dooley's voice came over the PA system:
It was starting to rain, that rain which the storm clouds had been promising all day but which had been so long delayed. It fell in big, fat drops that made plopping noises as they struck the Crown Victoria and the crown of Dooley's soft, small-brimmed fishing hat.
Vikki got down on her hands and knees, crawling away in the opposite direction from the front door. It wasn't so easy to crawl holding the butcher knife but she managed it.
The front room was a kind of living room, with two armchairs and a couch that pulled out to become a bed. It was folded up now. She crawled into the back room, which was much larger, a studio space. The rear wall had a set of French doors that opened onto an outdoor wooden deck. Now they were closed.
The space was an artist's studio, smelling of paint and turpentine and canvas. A wooden easel stood in the middle of the floor space, a square of stretched, framed canvas mounted on it.
Outside, the pace of the rainfall was quickening. Raindrops rustled the leaves of the small, shrublike frees in the front yard and made silver streaks where they fell in the path of the headlight beams.
Dooley said,
Vikki crawled behind a head-high partition, which screened her from the headlights shining into the house. She got ready to make her break. Not wanting to give herself away by the clip-clop of her sandals on the wooden deck, she took them off.
Holding them by the ankle straps in one hand, and the butcher knife in the other, she tip-toed barefoot to the French doors, keeping the partition between her and the headlights to avoid casting shadows.
She reached for the door handle with the hand holding the sandals by the straps, not wanting to let go of the butcher knife for a second. Holding her breath, she turned the handle, easing the door open to the width it took for her to slip through it, stepping outside onto the deck.
Raindrops pattered on the deck planks. The backyard was dark, except where the headlights shone through the house and through the section of the French doors that wasn't screened by the partition.
She planned to make a run for it, climbing over the back fence into a neighbor's backyard, and making her way away from Belle Reve Street.
It was good to be out of the house where she'd been cooped up for most of the day and night, the thick, humid air of the oncoming storm feeling positively fresh and refreshing after the atmosphere inside the house.
A shadowy figure stepped around the corner of the house on her right, looming into view. He said her name, 'Vikki Valence.'
A little shriek escaped her as she reflexively raised the butcher knife high.
A deck plank creaked behind her, and before she could react, a strong hand reached around her to clench the wrist that held the knife. A strong arm encircled her wasp waist, lifting her up and raising her bare feet off the ground.
The man who stood behind her, holding her, gave her wrist a little twist in a direction in which it wasn't designed to go. Gasping, white-faced, she let go of the knife, which fell clattering to the deck planking.
The man holding her said, 'Easy does it, Miss Valence. We're CTU. You contacted us, remember? Well, here we are.'
The speaker was Jack Bauer; the other figure, the one at the far end of the deck, was Pete Malo.
She said, 'I'll scream… '
Jack said, 'Save your voice for talking. You're going to be doing a lot of it, because we want to know all about your friend Colonel Paz and his friend Beltran.' No point in telling her they were both dead, not yet.
