J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Some people,” he says, “if they saw the emperor strutting around with no clothes, all they’d do is laugh. You and me, we’re not like that.”

“I hear you, sir. No, we’re not.”

He puts one of his big hands on my shoulder blade, resting it there a moment, then he goes to work rounding up all the stray officers.

Down the elevator and back on the pavement, Nix leans against the wheel well of a cruiser, arms crossed.

“You’re batting zero for two this evening, March.”

“At least I’m still swinging, right?”

Behind the wheel again, making my way north toward home. Carter Robb picks up the phone and gets an earful from me about not being a bystander. I don’t like my words being used against me.

“You should’ve listened to what Charlotte said. There’s a dangerous man out there, and he knows where we live. Until he’s in custody, I’d just as soon not have you playing the cowboy over there. He already cut you once.”

“Like I said, I’ve had worse. And if he does show up, somebody needs to be here to welcome him, right?”

“You mean you? What happened to turning the other cheek?”

“Jesus preached love,” he says, “not stupidity. You’re twisting that verse out of context.”

“You can lecture me on the fine points later. Right now I’d appreciate it if you’d get in your car and go. Ann would be more than happy to have you over there. Just don’t try any public prayer or she’ll call the ACLU. Hey, better yet, maybe you can convert her. If anybody needs it-”

“Roland,” he says. “You wanna cut it out. When you start up like this, I do have to turn the other cheek. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Then do what I say. I’m serious, son. This is no joke.”

I cross under the Southwest Freeway, retracing my route from an hour before. I roll to a stop at the light on Richmond. A guy in a Santa suit stands on the corner with a restaurant sandwich board over his shoulders.

“I’m not afraid,” Carter tells me. “And anyway, we do have one thing in common. I’m not gonna stand by and let bad things happen. How did you put it? I’m one of the braves.”

The edge in his voice is enough to cut. Hearing that term on his lips. The two of us are always locking horns, always picking up on the same unfinished conversation.

“Sure you are,” I say. “You don’t have to prove it, either. You already have. Now get over there, all right? While you’re standing on principle, Charlotte and Gina are all on their own, with nothing but a chain-smoking pathologist to protect them. Bridger’s got no cardio. Are you really gonna put your trust in him?”

He laughs, but it’s not the easygoing humor of earlier days. We were on a roll for a while when they first moved in, glossing over our differences, and I’m afraid we’ll never get that back. For one thing, he’s always pulling stuff like this, second-guessing when it’s clear I know better. Barking back at the alpha dog.

“Carter,” I say. “Please do this.”

A pause. “I’ll tell you something. Maybe you were right the other night, when we were driving back from dinner. All that stuff about evil and free will. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. That’s what I do when we have our little talks: think a lot. I get the feeling you don’t. I think you forget as soon as they’re done. But what you said stuck with me, and I feel like I gave you talking points instead of what I really think.”

“Carter-”

“What I really think,” he says, “is that I don’t know why there’s evil in the world. I believe God is loving, and I believe nothing can happen without his say-so. But there’s more to him than those two things. He has reasons for what he does, and for what he allows.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Impenetrable reasons,” he says. “For evil and suffering. All I know is, those things don’t mean to him what they mean to us. Not that he doesn’t care, but for him, just staying alive isn’t the highest good. There are things more important than living, more important than being happy, more important than never feeling pain.”

In the rearview mirror, a pair of headlights dip. I glance back. I’m passing the Huntington on my right, approaching the intersection of San Felipe. The car behind me looks familiar.

“Let’s continue this another time,” I say.

“Like always. Listen, I’m staying.”

“I’ve gotta go, Carter. I’ll talk to you later.”

He’s already off the line. I look in my mirror again to be sure. I only got a flash of it before, when I had to slam on the brakes to keep from getting hit. On the curb in front of Mainz’s house, just down the street from the Bayards’. Is it the same car? I think so. I slow down a little, hoping to close the distance. The driver adjusts for my speed. I accelerate quickly, not wanting to let on I’ve spotted him.

Nix said 0 for 2, and I’m reluctant to make it 0 for 3.

But I remember Ann’s throwaway question: Would it be so hard to tail you around? Yeah, it would. At least that’s what I’ve always assumed. Why should it be any harder for Bayard to follow me, though, than it was for me and Aguilar to tail Jason Young. Surveillance works not because it’s impossible to detect but because most people aren’t even looking for it.

A memory flashes. This happened before. I was pulling out with Carter in the passenger seat, and a car whizzed around me, like it had to veer to keep from hitting me. Just like what happened in front of Mainz’s house. That’s no coincidence. It was David Bayard. Trying to work up the nerve for a confrontation.

I call Bascombe, keeping an eye on the lights in my rearview.

“Are you positive?” he says.

“I’m not a hundred percent. I think it’s the same car, and if it is, then it makes sense it would be him. That’s probably how he found my house in the first place. I led him there.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I want to bushwhack him.”

A pause. “Keep him busy, and I’ll call you right back.”

The gas station Bascombe chooses occupies the block between Shepherd and Durham, across from a fried chicken joint and a barbed-wired used car lot. All I have to do is turn into the parking lot and roll up to one of the gas pumps, like I’m filling my tank before heading home. Bascombe will be there in his black Ford Expedition. Some officers from the tac team in an unmarked van. Aguilar too, in his pickup. An ad hoc welcoming committee assembled from the leftovers of our last gig, sketchily briefed by phone, armed with my description of the car. I’ve called the plates in and had them run. The car is registered to David Bayard Sr.

His father pays for everything.

He tags along a few car lengths behind me, still taking pains not to be seen. That’s a good sign. The ambush will catch him by surprise.

No traffic. Just a few cars on the road. We move from the orbit of one streetlight to another, getting closer and closer to the end of the road.

If I kept traveling along this route, I’d reach the church where I rousted Jason Young the morning after Simone Walker’s murder. It’s too bad we couldn’t arrest Bayard there.

Poetic justice.

But driving into a gas station full of cars is one thing. He won’t suspect a trap. A church parking lot at ten o’clock would look a little suspicious.

I cross the intersection and see the gas station up ahead. I drift over into the left-hand lane to make the turn. In my rearview I see him moving over.

I hit my blinker. He doesn’t signal.

Bascombe’s car is right near the entrance, parked in the rightmost space in front of the convenience store. We’ll both have to pass him to reach the pumps. The tac van is in the same position on the opposite side of the store. Once he’s in, Bayard can’t get out without going through them. When Bascombe and the van reverse into the lane, he’ll be boxed in. Cops in front of him and behind him, the store on his right and the pumps on his left.