symptom onset. Very, very few.'
'Five,' said Seliah's father, Glen.
'Yes,' said Witt. 'We embarked on this protocol with both hope and awareness of risk. It has worked in the past. Sometimes it has failed. We've hoped and prayed it will work for Seliah. She is obviously loved very much and that is a great help. Now it's time.'
There was an uneasy silence during which eyes did not meet. 'How long?' asked Seliah's mother, Shivaun. 'If she's going to wake up, when will it be?'
'In the best scenario, she should be able to blink or cough within twenty-four hours. After that, the chances of her waking go down significantly. We hope that she will respond to rehabilitation. You've been through a lot. So please stay. Wait together. Talk to her. Talk to each other. Pray. We'll wait for Seliah to come back.' Deep into the first night they took turns sitting with her, waiting for her to cough, or maybe even open her eyes briefly. Sixteen hours came and went and she did not move except to breathe. Her pulse, respiration and blood pressure all registered low normal. The flesh of her face looked somewhat slack, as did her arms. Hood saw that she was pale now, beyond just fair, and with her platinum blond hair spilled back on the pillow, she was a ghostly sleeping beauty. And your prince came to kiss you, Hood thought. He heard Janet Bly's voice: We don't live in fairy tales, Charlie. She was right. But what did they live in?
Hour twenty arrived with sunrise at its back and Hood looked out at the gray morning light. Beyond a knot of freeways he could see Arrowhead Pond and Edison Field and to Hood these temples of man seemed vain and superfluous. To the northeast the purple flanks of the Santa Ana Mountains sat heavily against the lightening November sky.
Hood closed his eyes and listened to the thrum and mew of the intensive care unit. Sean's two sisters sat to his left and Seliah's two brothers on his right. He thought of his own brothers and sisters and his mother and father. They were spread across the map but they were still a family. For Hood there was some consolation in this.
When he looked at her again he saw the glimmer of Seliah's open eyes. A week later she still could not move anything but her eyes. She tracked her visitors and gave no sign of recognizing anyone except her mother, whose little finger she was able to squeeze. The others she regarded with mute but unmistakable fear.
Over the next eight days she slept in four-hour cycles and cried for hours in between. Witt said she was frustrated with her paralysis. He said she was like a baby, having to learn things again but she was in a hurry because she remembered how she used to be. She would learn patience. She would have to.
Gradually Seliah began crying less.
By the end of another week she moved her head, then her hands and feet. Her respiration tube was removed and she breathed on her own.
She began looking at people with diminished fear, except for her mother, who held her hand and brushed her hair and rubbed the lotion on her body. Seliah stared at her with love unconditional.
She whispered, then talked very softly, gibberish at first, then words, then sentences.
She sipped water and broth.
She appeared to remember some of the deep past but little of the recent.
She was sleeping less. Slowly she could concentrate on a conversation-ten seconds, then twenty.
What happened?
Why am I here?
I love you, Mom. Is that you, Dad?
It's very loud in this place.
Late one night Hood handed her a plastic cup of ice and water.
She took it and looked at him with an expression of wonder.
'Sean,' she whispered.
'I'm Charlie.'
She sipped and handed him back the cup and smiled very slightly. Then her eyes closed and she was gone again.
39
Bradley Jones met Mike Finnegan at the Bordello after his night patrol shift. Bradley had changed out of his uniform because he was welcome in this bar but his uniform was not. It was one in the morning.
'I like it better here when Erin plays that stage,' said Finnegan.
'She can't play every night.'
'Of course, I liked it better here when it was a real bordello, too. Fantastic city, Los Angeles in the eighteen hundreds.'
Bradley looked at him and shook his head. 'What can I do for you, Mike?'
'I just wanted to hear more about the Lancaster shoot-out. The headlines and pictures and news footage have all been very thorough but I wanted your insider's story. What a mess that must have been.'
'It's all old news by now. And I wasn't there.'
'But surely you've heard a thousand stories. Share some with me!' Finnegan smiled and his face flushed. To Bradley, Mike looked every one of his fifty-two years, except when he smiled. Then he looked like an eighth grader who'd just gotten away with something-delighted and eager to try it again. Bradley realized that Mike's delight was what made him so easy to talk to. It made you want to help keep that smile on his face.
So Bradley told him what he'd heard: An informant had told an unnamed LASD deputy that a gunrunner was unloading a hundred new machine pistols to L.A. Mara Salvatruchas working for the Gulf Cartel. The deputy had told his boss and his boss had put together a seven-member take-down team and a cover team of four radio cars and a helicopter.
'This must have been Commander Dez,' said Mike. 'She's the most quoted LASD officer in the papers and on TV-except for the PR people, of course. Attractive. Ambition written all over her pretty little face.'
Bradley nodded. 'None of that's a secret.'
'But who was this mystery deputy, I wonder. The one with the very good information.'
Bradley shrugged and drank his bourbon.
'Guess, Bradley. Offer up a guess.'
'We're the biggest sheriff's department in the country, Mike. What good would a guess do?'
'Just tell me if you know him.' Mike beamed and drank his scotch. He looked like a boy who had just gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
'I don't know him.'
'Well, his informant turned out to have the right stuff, didn't he?'
Bradley nodded and smiled. 'It was one hundred percent accurate, Mike.'
Finnegan rubbed his hands together and smiled up at the ceiling, then took another drink. 'Two couriers shot dead by Gravas, and another by your people. And two very fine sheriff's deputies fallen in the line of duty. Five deaths. Five.'
'Vicky Sunderland and Bob Dunn,' Bradley said, his voice lowered in respect.
'What a terrible shame. And, to add to it, the precious cargo of machine pistols vanishes with Gravas, only to be intercepted by Charlie Hood and his ATF team two days later. With quite a bit of money, also. I couldn't help but feel that the glory should have belonged to LASD.'
Bradley sipped again but said nothing. It rankled him that Hood and ATF had gotten the guns, money and glory. He could live with the rankle. But Dez had quickly handed him over to Internal Affairs for the intel that had led to two dead deputies, and IA had landed hard. IA could exonerate him, or they could discipline him, or they could take his job. Bradley understood that they had power over him even the U.S. Constitution couldn't deflect. He couldn't plead the Fifth; he couldn't hire a lawyer. Larry King could not help now. The IA discussions were secret, their findings not subject to appeal. IA was clearly suspicious of Bradley's good luck in the Stevie Carrasco kidnapping. They wanted his car-wash shoot-out informant, and they wanted him now. So far Bradley had wriggled out of it by saying his man was back down in Mexico again. He promised to produce him as soon as he returned. He'd have to produce someone. He hoped that Herredia would be able to hook him up with a convincing actor, but
