The Dark Room(77)

“You put out a notice to all the hospitals?”

“Of course.”

Fischer was looking at the blood below the wainscoting on the dining room wall. He must have stumbled into it. Judging from how high up the wall it was, the wound was above his knee. Maybe it had nicked his femoral artery and he’d hole up in someone’s backyard and bleed to death. That would be the best thing, even if it meant they couldn’t sit him down in a windowless room and ask him questions. Better that he die with his secrets than spend another hour on his feet with a pair of police-issue guns and nothing on his mind but murder.

“We need a safe house,” Cain said to Fischer. “Somewhere Lucy and I can stay until this is over.”

“I called as soon as I heard, and they’re setting them up,” she said. “Two apartments, side by side.”

“We just need one.”

“I’ll be next door,” Fischer said. “If they came for you, they could come for me.”

He wasn’t thinking straight, and it was showing. Nagata hadn’t said anything about taking him off the case, but it might still be coming. She couldn’t pull him until she talked to the new mayor, and she didn’t have an open channel the way she used to. Now there was a chain of command to work through, and that gave him a day or two of leeway before anything changed. That could be enough, if he pushed hard enough. And if he stayed on track right now, she might not even go to the mayor.

He turned to Nagata.

“Lucy saw him, when he came in. Not his face, but his body. He’s tall, like the guy Chun and I chased. Caucasian. And he was here less than ten minutes ago.”

In the kitchen, the china cabinet began to rattle, and overhead, the chandelier’s dangling crystals started to shiver. The CHP helicopter was hovering directly above the house. The pilot switched on his spotlight and suddenly the garden was lit up like home plate on a game night.

“If he came in the front and left over the back fence, he might’ve ditched his car. Or someone else drove him here from Grassley’s place,” he said. “If that person was waiting—”

But Nagata stopped him, shaking her head.

“He didn’t get a ride—he came in Grassley’s car. It’s parked out front. Three spots down from yours. The driver’s seat is covered in blood.”

“Then we’ll find him,” Frank Lee said. Above them, the helicopter veered off and began to sweep the backyards. The rattling stopped in the kitchen, but the chandelier was still moving, making the shadows dance. “He’s on foot, with a bullet in his leg.”

“Ten minutes ago he was on foot,” Cain said. “But now he’s got two guns, a knife, and nothing to lose. He just killed a cop—two cops, as far as he knows. He’s got to have found a car to use, which means he’s either got a hostage or there’s another dead body.”

Frank looked at the table, then nodded.

“Lieutenant, you need to get on the radio,” Frank said. He slid a handheld unit across to her. “Throw up some roadblocks, lock up this neighborhood. And we’ve got to watch the bridges—these guys, once they get wheels, they always head for the bridges.”



Half an hour passed and they hadn’t heard anything, and by then Cain knew they wouldn’t. The officers in the backyard followed the blood over the garden fence, and then through a series of yards. They called out each find over the radio, and Cain and Fischer leaned close to Nagata’s handheld unit on the dining table.

Dark blood dribbled along a neighbor’s steppingstone path. In the white beams of the officers’ flashlights, the icy petals of chamomile flowers were spattered. Red streaks and shoeprints ran up the face of a mossy redwood fence and into the next yard. They hopped that fence and found more of the same, and they followed the trail until it brought them out between two houses on Cabrillo. They crossed the sidewalk, following blood between two parked cars at the curb. And then, in the middle of the street, as if their quarry had simply evaporated, there was nothing.

Cain looked up from the radio. The tall kid had a car, and he was gone.





28


Karen Fischer’s people came in a line of three unmarked SUVs that picked their way through the parked patrol cars and stopped directly in front of the house. Cain carried Lucy’s suitcase down the steps as she walked alongside him. Including their trip to the courthouse for her testimony in the Ashbury Heights trial, it was only the second time they’d been outside the house together. They climbed into the back of the middle vehicle. Fischer took the front seat, next to the driver. When they were moving, going up the hill and through the SFPD roadblock at the top of Twenty-Second Avenue, she turned around.

“The apartments are secure—nothing safer in the city, unless we stayed in Alcatraz,” she said. She waited until Lucy was looking at her. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“What about Gavin? The man was looking for him, not me. The apartment’s safe, but he’s not going to be there the whole time, is he?”

“We’ll be careful,” Fischer said. “We’ll work together, Gavin and me. Like partners. We’ll have each other’s backs.”

Lucy reached over and took Cain’s hand but didn’t look at him. Her head was turned to the left. She was watching the helicopter carve a grid pattern through the sky north of Fulton. Its searchlight probed downward, lighting the tiny drops of windblown rain.