The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(30)

At the sound of his voice, her heart started pounding. His voice, and his way of talking to her—the solicitousness, the gentleness. It was good when they were together. Why couldn’t she just accept that and not overthink it? Why did it always also make her so afraid?

“Where are you?” she said.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. You see—”

Fifty feet ahead, the elevator doors opened. Chief of Police Charmaine Best emerged and turned left. She saw Livia and nodded. The nod felt like more than a greeting. It felt like an I want to talk to you.

Livia barely had time to think Shit. She returned the nod and said softly into the phone, “Call me back in fifteen. And fifteen after that, if I don’t answer. Keep trying.” Then, louder, “Okay, good talking to you. Bye.”

She clicked off and pocketed the phone. “Chief Best. Hi.”

Best gave her a quick once-over, as though she might spot some incriminating evidence. “How was the briefing?”

Ordinarily, the chief summoned people she wanted to see. If she had come to talk to Livia—and Livia sensed she had—it would be in the nature of an ambush, an attempt to deny Livia time to prepare.

But prepare for what?

Livia shrugged. “The usual. Other than a big shooting in Freeway Park.”

“Yes, the preliminary findings are certainly unusual. Six victims, five men and a woman. All carrying untraceable firearms and none carrying ID. Phones all burners, used only to call other burners.”

“We were briefed on the same. Not gangs. Likely some sort of professional operation.”

“That had the misfortune of running into someone even more professional. What do you think, Detective Lone? Was this really aimed at AUSA Diaz?”

“I was just briefed myself,” Livia said. “I don’t know.”

“Of course. Still, I was hoping you might have some insight.”

“Insight?”

“Well,” Best said, with a smile she might have intended to be disarming, but that for Livia had the opposite effect. “That attempt on you at the martial arts academy. Those snipers across the river from your apartment. And those operators who came at you in Utah, and the ones shot to death at the Salton Sea, before your heroic rescue of Sherrie Dobbs. You just seem to have a nose for this kind of trouble.”

Livia realized she should have seen this coming. She had been mixed up in too many messes, had too many convenient excuses, and had emerged with too many medals. Best was a good cop and respected her results, Livia knew that. But a chief was at least fifty percent politician, and the politician in Best was perennially troubled by Livia’s mysteries and determined to solve them. The problem was, what the woman thought she knew was bad enough. What she didn’t know was significantly worse. And if she ever grabbed on to a thread and started pulling, the entire tapestry could come apart, leaving Livia exposed beneath it.

“Do you want me assigned to this?” Livia said. “I know Alondra. She takes my women’s self-defense class. If she’s at risk, I’d like to—”

“No, I don’t want you assigned to this. That would be Lieutenant Strangeland’s call, in any event. And besides, I don’t imagine you need to be formally assigned to be involved.”

Livia didn’t mind the passive-aggressive jibes. She recognized them as a pressure release, an outlet for Best’s frustrations. The real worry would be if they stopped.

An elevator opened and several detectives got off. They nodded nonchalantly to the chief while doubtless gleaning whatever they could from the fact of her corridor conversation with another cop. Instinctively, Livia waited to say anything until they were out of earshot.

“Well, do you want me to—”

“What I want,” Best said, “is that nothing should happen to AUSA Diaz, do you understand me? What I want is for that predator Schrader to not be able to bribe or bully or God knows what his way out of justice. That is what I want. And I’m not particularly concerned about how. So if you know more than you’re letting on here, and of course you do, that’s fine. By now I’m used to it. I just want to know we’re on the same page.”

For a moment, Livia was taken aback. Had she misread Best’s intentions? Was this . . . détente?

“I . . . want those things, too.”

Best nodded. “Then do what you do, Livia. I don’t need to know the details.” She paused, then added, “And maybe I don’t want to.”





chapter

twenty-three





DELILAH


Delilah was with John in Little Red Door, a bar they liked in the Marais. Like so many things in their life these days, it was a compromise, though not a bad one. They spent part of the year in Kamakura, and part in Paris. They frequented places that were lively, for her, and more serene, for him. She preferred dinner late, so evenings out often began with a cocktail on the earlier side. Which was fine because early meant uncrowded, and uncrowded meant a seat facing the entrance—one of the areas about which she knew John would never compromise, not even for her.

But facing the door was fine. It was no more than common sense, really. The other habits—the ones that had been gradually waning—were much more extreme. The insistence on varying routes and times. Never making a reservation. Always reconnoitering the exterior of a place before going in—and then doing a thorough scan inside, as well. There were still vestiges that would occasionally reappear, moments when the old John would seem to startle awake before realizing that all was well and it was safe to return to sleep. And while she knew that some of his newfound demeanor was an organic consequence of increasing distance from the life—obsolete reflexes growing dull from lack of stimulation, old neural pathways being rerouted, replaced, rewired by new ones—she also understood that some of it was deliberate. A thing he did for her.