Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

We played cat and mouse among the cars in the lot, then he broke into the open and jackrabbited down a side residential street. He opened a lead, stretching fifteen yards to twenty before I turned it on some more. I wanted to keep him in sight, but I didn’t want to catch him. I hadn’t seen him drop his razor.

He was already breathing hard. My strength is endurance, not speed. So I kept a space between us and let him wear himself out. As long as I didn’t lose sight of him before he ran out of gas, I knew I could run him down.

He sidestepped a convention of tricycles on the sidewalk. I vaulted over them, gaining maybe six yards on him. He looked back a couple of times, but I was too busy to catch his face.

I had my bag slung in front. As I ran, I attached a long zoom lens to my Nikon. Focus is tricky with telephoto lenses. You need to be very steady, because the exposure has to be relatively slow. When I had a clear stretch of sidewalk in front of me – no lawn mowers, no Rollerbladers – I said a Hail Mary in atonement, never knowing how much help I might need, and raised the camera to my eye.

I whistled my Candlestick Park earsplitter. Startled, he turned, and I snapped. To make sure he had seen what he saw, he looked again, the jerk. And I got him again.

By then I was gaining on him. I had to drop back, because the only way I wanted to catch him was on film. I slowed to keep the distance between us at a safe fifteen yards. I photographed his back, zoomed in on the Dodger jacket, got the label on his jeans. When he turned into an alley, he gave me a beautiful profile. Barrymore couldn’t have been more cooperative.

I got to the mouth of the alley, and I stopped. There had been people on the street watching us, gawking. Some of them had talked to me, but I was too involved to hear them. As long as we were in the open, I felt sufficiently safe. The alley was a different equation.

With the camera in front of my face, holding my breath, holding my hand steady, I finished the roll on his retreating back. He looked back at least one more time for me. Bless his heart.

By the time he got halfway down the alley, he was really puffing, dragging his left leg a little. He ducked between two houses and I let him disappear. I had what I needed: smoking gun, smoking camera, same thing.

On my way back to the parking lot, I rewound the film, took it out of the camera, and reloaded. I felt good. I wasn’t even breathing hard. There were a few sticky details waiting for me in the parking lot, but overall, I thought things were looking up.

I know how to change a tire. My father taught me before I got my driver’s license. There really is nothing to it, once you get the spare out of the trunk and figure out which part is the jack and which is the handle. I have changed a few tires since. One time in a jungle in Honduras. At night. No big deal.

When I looked at Mike’s car, though, changing a tire was not the problem. The problem was, where did I begin when I had one spare and four flats?

I called the Long Beach police. Then I paged Mike.

“I think it’s a sex thing with this guy,” I said when Mike returned the call. I was at a public phone next to a dry cleaner’s, watching the police hoist Mike’s Blazer with its slashed tires onto a flatbed tow truck. “He’s impotent, so he has to deflate anything that’s blown up bigger and harder than he is. Rafts, tires, whatever.”

“Uh huh,” Mike growled. “I think it’s your balloon he wants to burst.”

“He just wants to scare me.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s doing just fine. I’m scared. He was so close to me, Mike. If I hadn’t seen his hat, I might have tripped over him. Now I’m afraid for Lacy. He followed me. He must know I talked to her.”

“Stay with the local cops until I come and get you.”

“Don’t come. Everything’s under control. The helicopters are still circling overhead, the neighborhood is sealed off. Maybe they won’t catch him this time, but they’ll force him to lie low for a while.”

“How will you get home?”

“Sergeant Mahakian from last night? He told me about a cheapy car-rental place just up Pacific Coast Highway. He’ll drop me by there as soon as they’ve finished tagging and loading your car. Then he’s taking Lacy to the airport. She’s really shaken.” I paused.

“Do me a favor?” I asked.

“What?”

“Find out what George Metrano does for a living.”

“He’s a restaurateur. As in he has a couple of Bingo Burgers franchises.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

“Why should you care?”

“It might be worth your while to find out where he got the money to buy his franchises. And when.”

“Maggie,” Mike sighed. “Enough, all right? Stay out of it. Let the police do their job.”

“Mike, I’m only doing my job.” I felt stung.

“Yeah? Your job is anything you want to make it.”

“I know. That’s what I like about it.”

“Go home, Maggie.” His voice broke. “If I lost you…”

I couldn’t let him say it.

“Listen to this,” I said. “The film opens with Pisces on the street. That whole clip only lasts a few minutes, but it will run through the entire piece, intercut with footage of kids raised in privileged circumstances, like her. I think there are some beautiful insights there. I’ll slip in pictures of her murderer in full retreat, among brief interviews with the Ramsdales’ friends and neighbors about how charmed her life seemed. We’ll end with the autopsy stills. What do you think?”

“Whose autopsy? Hillary’s or yours?”

“Mike, all I am trying to do is come to some clear understanding of why this dear child ended up as she did. I’m not looking for her killer. I’m not interfering with the investigation.”

“You already said he’s following you.” Mike sounded like my father when he lectured me. “He saw you on the street with the kid. And now he sees you all over town. You couldn’t have done a better job of baiting him if you had put a hook in your mouth and tossed him the line.”

“He never got near me,” I said, defensive. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“Right. Like you’ve done such a good job so far? Maybe you should run an ad in the local paper. ‘Dear Mr. Killer, I got your ugly face on film twice now, but don’t worry about me. I’m only doing my job. Love, Miz Maggie MacGowen.’ Jesus Christ, Maggie. Get out of it.”

“I’m sorry about your car, Mike. I’m having the bills sent to me. I’ll be by later for my things.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. I hung up, hurting in the general region of my heart.

Before the tow truck left, I retrieved Sly’s stuff from Mike’s front seat.

For fourteen dollars, including fifty free miles a day, I got a used Toyota with eighty-five thousand miles on it. All I asked was that it be in running order. And that’s all they delivered.

Martha had told me she planned to go stay with a daughter in Scottsdale until things cooled down next door. She had a reservation on a late flight out of John Wayne Airport. I buckled Sly’s stuff into the front passenger seat of the rented car and drove back over the bridge to check on her. I was afraid for her to be alone.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be seen out here with me,” I said to Martha when we were settling into chaise lounges on her front terrace. “Seems I’m being followed by a mad slasher.”

“Seems you are, indeed,” she said, her eyes bright, excited. “The man does have an affinity for rubber, doesn’t he? Were you frightened?”

“I didn’t have time to be frightened.” I laughed, but my hand covered the thin skin of my neck.

Martha had poured me a tall glass of iced tea from a big pitcher. I took a gulp and nearly gagged. She hadn’t warned me she was serving Long Island iced tea, not Lipton’s. I managed to keep it down, but my eyes watered and my throat closed up.