The girl looked away from the sound. 'They have something now. They're killing it right now.'
The girl's eyes were vacant. Pike thought she didn't seem to be within herself, and wondered if she was with the pack.
'They'll pull it to pieces, and sometimes, if too much blood gets on one of their own, the others will mistake it for the prey and kill their own kind.'
Pike nodded. People could be like that, too.
The singing abruptly stopped, and the girl came back to herself. 'You don't say very much, do you?'
'You were saying enough for both of us.'
The girl laughed. 'Yeah, I guess I was. Hope I didn't weird you out, Joe. I do that to people sometimes.'
Joe shook his head. 'Not yet.'
A black minivan turned off Wilshire and came along Ocean Avenue, washing them with its headlights. It stopped in the middle of the street near where the coyote had crossed.
Trudy said, 'Gotta be Matt. It was nice talking with you, Running Man.'
She hitched the backpack, then trotted to the van. Trudy
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spoke to someone through the passenger's window, then the door opened, and Trudy climbed in. The van had no plates, and no dealer card, though it gleamed with the newness of a vehicle just driven off the lot. In seconds, it was gone.
Pike said, 'Goodbye, Running Girl.'
Pike glanced toward the garbage cans, but the coyotes were gome. Back to their own place in the hills. Wild things lost in the dark.
Pike leaned against the rail to stretch his calves, then ran inland up Wilshire.
He ran in the darkness, away from cars and people, enjoying the solitude.
Amanda Kimmel said, 'Good riddance!'
Seventy-eight years old, loosely wrapped in skin that made her look like a pale raisin, and with a left leg that tingled as if bugs were creeping in all the little wrinkle troughs, Amanda Kimmel watched the two detectives sneak out of the house they were using to spy on Eugene Dersh and drive away. She shook her head with disgust. 'Those two turds stand out like warts on a baby's ass, don't they, Jack?'
Jack didn't answer.
'Wouldn't cut the mustard in Five-O, I'll bet. You'd have their sorry asses back on the mainland faster than rats can fuck.'
Amanda Kimmel dragged the heavy Ml Garand rifle back to the TV and settled in her BarcaLounger. The TV was the only light she allowed herself these days, living like a mole in the goddamned darkness so she could keep an eye on all the cops and reporters and nutcase lookieloos who had been crashing around outside since they'd learned her neighbor, Mr. Dersh, was a maniac. Just her goddamned luck, to live right behind the next fuckin' Son of Sam.
Amanda said, 'This is the shits, ain't it, Jack?'
Jack didn't answer because she had the sound off.
Amanda Kimmel watched
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show that had ever been made. You could have your Chuck Norris and Jimmy Smits. She'd take Jack Lord-any day.
Amanda settled back, had a healthy sip of scotch, and patted the Ml lovingly. Her second husband had brought the Ml home from fighting the Japs a million years ago and stuck it under the bed. Or was it her first husband? The Ml was as big as a telephone pole, and Amanda could barely lift the damned thing, but what with all the strangers creeping around outside these days as well as her living next to a maniac, well, a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
'Right, Jack?'
Jack grinned, and she just knew that he'd agree.
The first few days, armies of people poured through her neighborhood. Cars filled with rubberneckers and mouth breathers. Numbskulls who wanted their picture taken standing in Dersh's yard. (Get a goddamned life!) Reporters with cameras and microphones, making God's own noise and not giving two hoots and a damn who they disturbed. She'd even caught one reporter, that horrible little man on Channel 2, tromping through her roses as he tried to get into Dersh's yard. She'd cursed him a blue streak, but he'd gone ahead anyway, so she turned on her sprinklers and hosed the weaselly sonofabitch down good.
After that first few days, the crush of reporters and numbskulls had slacked off because the cops ran out of places to search, so there wasn't much for the TV people to tape. The cops pretty much stayed on the street in front of Dersh's house, leaving when he left and coming when he came, except for the cops who sucked around the empty house next door at four-hour intervals. Amanda suspected that the reporters didn't know about the cops in the house, which was fine by her because the cops made enough noise by themselves, managing to wake her each time the shifts changed, because she slept so poorly what with the leg and all.
'Being old is hell, isn't it, Jack? Can't sleep, can't shit, and you don't get laid.'
Jack Lord punched a fat Hawaiian on the nose. Yeah, Jack knew that being old was hell.
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Amanda drained the rest of her scotch and eyed the bottle, thinking maybe it was time for a little refill when a car door slammed, and she thought, 'Those goddamned cops with their noise again.' Probably forgot their cigarettes up in the house.
Amanda shut the
Between the half-moon and the streetlamp, she could see the man pretty well, even with seventy-eight-year-old eyes and a belly full of scotch. He was walking from the street down along the alley toward Dersh's house, and he certainly wasn't a cop or a reporter. He was a large man, dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt without sleeves, and something stuck out about him right away. Here it was the middle of the night, dark as the inside of a cat's butt, and this asshole was wearing sunglasses.
Her first thought was that he must be a criminal of some kind—a burglar or a rapist—so she hefted up the Ml to draw
'Goddamnit! C'mon back here, you sonofabitch!'
She waited.
Nothing.
'Damn!'
Amanda Kimmel propped the M1 against the window, then went back to her chair, poured a fresh slug of scotch, and took a taste. Maybe the guy was some friend of Dersh's (he had male friends visit at all hours, and she certainly knew what
The short, sharp
Amanda had never in her life heard that sound, but she knew without doubt what it was.
A gunshot.
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