Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

“Joe.”

He turned back to the lights on the horizon.

“Pleased to meet you, Joe. I'm running away, too.”

He considered her briefly again, wondering why she had chosen those words, then returned to the ships.

Trudy leaned against the rail, trying to see over the edge of the bluff to Palisades Beach Road. She gave no indication of leaving. Pike thought that he might start running again.

She said, “Are you real?”

“No.”

“No kidding, now. I want to know.”

He held out his hand.

Trudy touched him with a finger, then gripped his wrist, as if she didn't trust her first touch.

“Well, you might've been a vision or something. I have them, you know. Sometimes I imagine things.”

When Pike didn't respond, she said, “I've changed my mind. I don't think you're running away. I think you're running toward.”

“Is that a vision? Or something you imagined?”

She stared up at him as if she had to consider which it might be, then shook her head. “An observation.”

“Look.”

Three coyotes had appeared at the edge of the light, having worked their way up the bluff from the Palisades. Two of them sniffed at one of the garbage cans that dotted the park, the third trotted across Ocean Avenue and disappeared in an alley. They looked like thin gray dogs. Scavengers.

Trudy said, “It's so amazing that wild things can live here in the city, isn't it?”

“Wild things are everywhere.”

Trudy grinned at him again. “Well. That's certainly deep.”

The two coyotes suddenly came alert, looking north toward the Palisades an instant before Pike heard the coyote pack's song. Their singing rode down on the breeze coming out of the hills, and Pike guessed their number at between eight and twelve. The two coyotes by the garbage cans looked at each other, then lifted their snouts to test the air. You're safe enough , Pike thought. The others were at least three miles away, well up in the canyons of the Palisades.

The girl said, “That's such a terrible sound.”

“It means they have food.”

She hitched her backpack. “They eat people's pets. They'll bait a dog away from its home, then surround it and rip it to pieces.”

Pike knew that to be true, but still. “They have to live.”

The singing grew to a higher pitch. The two coyotes by the garbage can stood frozen.

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 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 gone. 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 M1 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 Hawaii Five-O reruns every night on Nick-at-Nite, feeling that Jack Lord was the finest police officer who ever lived, and Hawaii Five-O the finest cop 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 M1 lovingly. Her second husband had brought the M1 home from fighting the Japs a million years ago and stuck it under the bed. Or was it her first husband? The M1 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.

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 TV, then dragged the big M1 back to the window, thinking that she just might scream holy hell at the bastards, keeping her up like this, only it wasn't the two cops.