Robert Crais - Stalking the Angel

Mimi dropped the gun and climbed into the Firebird and screeched away. I jumped the curve and revved the Corvette across the island’s rough ground. Bradley stayed on his hands and knees for the time it took me to cross the ridge top and get out of the car, then he keeled sideways onto his side and began to make flapping movements with his arms, trying to get up. “She shot me,” he said. “My God, she shot me.”

“Stop trying to get up. Let me see it.”

“It hurts!”

I put him on his back and looked at him. There was pink froth at the corner of his mouth and when he spoke his voice was wet the way it gets when you’ve a bad cold and the mucus fills your throat and sputters when you try to breathe. There was a red spot about as big around as a medium-sized orange just to the right of the center of his chest. It was growing.

I took out my handkerchief and put it on the spot and pressed hard. “I have to get you to a hospital,” I said.

Bradley nodded, then blew a large red bubble and threw up blood. His eyes rolled back in his head and he shuddered violently and then his heart stopped.

“God damn you, Bradley!” I was yelling.

I pulled off my shirt and his belt. I bundled my shirt, put it over the red spot, then wrapped the belt around his chest to maintain some pressure. When there is arterial bleeding you are not supposed to use CPR, but when there is no pulse, there’s not much choice. I cleared his throat and breathed into his mouth and then pressed hard on his chest twice. I repeated the sequence five times and then I checked for a pulse but there was none.

A single hawk floated high above, looking for mice or other small living things. Out on Mulholland cars passed. None of them saw, and none stopped to help. Somewhere a motorcycle with no muffler made sounds that echoed through the canyons.

I breathed and pressed and breathed and pressed and breathed and pressed, and that’s what I did until the cops that Lou Poitras sent found us and pulled me off. All the breathing and pressing hadn’t done any good. Bradley Warren was dead.

Six copmobiles came and two wagons from the Crime Scene Unit and a van from the coroner’s office and a couple of Staties and a woman from the district attorney’s office. The Crime Scene people outlined the body and the gun and measured a lot of tire tracks. The coroner’s people took pictures and examined the body and pronounced Bradley Warren officially dead. Bradley was probably glad to hear that. Being unofficially dead must be a drag.

The woman from the DA’s office and a tall blond detective I didn’t know talked to the Crime Scene guys and then came over and talked to me. The detective had sculptured, air-blown hair that was out of style ten years ago. The woman was short with a big nose and big eyes. I was looking good with blood on my pants and my hands and my shirt and my face. The blond said, “What happened?”

I told it for the millionth time. I told them where Bradley Warren had stood and where Mimi had stood and where Mimi’s car had been parked and how she had taken the gun from her purse and fired one shot point-blank and killed her father.

The blond dick said, “She drops the gun after she pulls the trigger?”

“Yeah.”

“A sixteen-year-old kid with no gun and you couldn’t stop her.”

“I was busy trying to keep her father alive.” Asshole.

A dark cop with a cookie-duster mustache came over with the gun in a plastic bag. He showed it to the woman. “Gun’s a Ruger Blackhawk. Twenty-two caliber revolver. Loaded with twenty-two long rifle ammo. One shot fired.”

The woman looked at the gun, gave it back, and said, “Okay.” The dark cop left and took the blond cop with him. The woman said, “What kind of car was she driving?”

“Dark green Pontiac Firebird. Couple of years old. I didn’t get the plate.”

“Anyone else in the car?”

“No.”

The woman took out her handkerchief and gave it to me. “Wipe your face,” she said. “You look like hell.”

Just before ten, Poitras and Griggs and Terry Ito pulled up in a blue sedan. Griggs was in the back seat. They talked to the woman from the DA’s office and then the Crime Scene people and then they got to me. Nobody looked happy. Lou Poitras said, “Half the cops and Feds in L.A. looking for this kid, Hound Dog, how’d you happen to be up here with her and her old man?”

I told him. As I said it, Ito’s face darkened and you could tell he wasn’t liking it. Hard to blame him. I wasn’t liking it, either. Midway through the telling Jillian Becker’s white BMW nosed up to the ridge top and stopped by one of the coroner’s vans. Jillian Becker and a short man in a tweed sport coat got out. One of the dicks and the woman from the district attorney’s office went over to them. Jillian Becker looked at me. Her face was drawn. Terry Ito said, “You found the girl, and followed her to Kira Asano’s and you decided not to tell anyone.”

“Yeah.”

“Even though you knew the police and the Feds were searching for her.”

I said, “She looked safe at Asano’s so I let her sit until I knew what was going on and then I talked with her. She was a mess, Ito. She had run away and couldn’t go home because her father was sexually molesting her.”

Poitras said, “Jesus Christ.”

Ito took a breath, let it out, and shook his head. He looked out off the ridge toward the valley. The hawk was gone.

I said, “I wanted to get the kid some help before she’d have to deal with you people.”

Across the ridge top, the woman from the district attorney’s office opened the coroner’s van and showed Jillian Becker and the short man what was inside. Jillian stood stiff and nodded, then turned and quickly walked back to her BMW. The short man went with her. VP from the company, no doubt.

Poitras said, “Why’d she kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

Griggs was staring at his hands. “Maybe she just had to,” he said, quietly.

Ito looked at Griggs, then took off his sunglasses and stared at them as if there was a bad smudge on the lense. He put the sunglasses back on. Poitras said, “As far as you know, she still staying at Asano’s?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go get her.”

We got into the blue sedan, Poitras driving, me and Griggs riding in back. I told Poitras to go west on Mulholland toward Beverly Glen. He did. The cop sedan with its heavy-duty suspension rolled easily along Mulholland’s curves. Poitras had the windows up and the air conditioning on and no one said anything. All you could hear in the car was the hiss and chatter of the radio. I couldn’t understand what the radio voices said, but Poitras and Griggs and Ito could. Cops get special ears for that.

When we got to Kira Asano’s, Griggs said, “Man, this guy must be loaded.”

The gate was open. We went up the drive without announcing ourselves and stopped about halfway to the house. We had to stop because Frank was lying facedown in the drive. His legs were bent and his right arm was under his body and the left half of his head was missing. Poitras and Griggs both leaned to the side to free their guns and Ito called in a request for backup. I said, “There were about a dozen kids here. Some of them were wearing gray uniforms. There was another guy like the one on the drive named Bobby, and Asano, and Bobby probably has a gun.”

Poitras steered the car out onto the lawn around Frank’s body and stopped by the front door. The front door was open.

Poitras and Griggs went around the side past the garage, and Ito and I went in through the front. No one tried to shoot us. There wasn’t anyone around to try.

Cabinets had been emptied and furniture upended and Asano’s paintings torn from the walls in every room. Poitras and Griggs came in from the back and said they’d found a guy who was probably Bobby with two bullets in his chest out by the little fruit trees. They’d seen no sign of the girl or anyone else.