T. Parker: Cold Pursuit

McMichael stepped to it and looked down.

"I had to put a sheet over them," she said.

He reached down to lift it and heard the terrible crack of impact. Felt it. Then another. The sheet turned red. So did the metal tub, into which he felt himself falling, the sides reeling up past him as it swallowed him into the shiny red tunnel.

The last thing he heard was Patricia's voice.

"Do it again."

McMichael opened his eyes to two of everything: glove boxes, dashboard vents, outside temperature readouts of 51 degrees, tach and speed dials, two overlapping circles of steering wheels held at ten and two o'clock by four gloved hands. His head felt open on top, an air-dried pain over a throbbing ache inside. It felt wet and sticky. He couldn't raise it straight back, just to the left a little as his twin visions multiplied and diminished.

He looked down at his hands, bloody and cinched at the wrists by a plastic tie. He noted that his knees were spread but his feet were held together by something heavy and tight. With significant anguish he turned his head down to see his bloody shirt, then let it loll to the left again.

"Welcome back, McMichael."

The voice was high-pitched and anxious. He cocked an eye to confirm Patricia as the speaker and driver.

"How's the head?" asked someone behind him.

From some suspecting cranny of his brain McMichael processed the sound, managed to connect it to one he'd heard before. Gar. McMichael felt something hard and inhuman jab into his head from behind, three times.

"More where that came from, so don't get any giant ideas," said Garland. "Watch the goddamned road, Pat."

McMichael lolled his head to the right, felt the stickiness of blood on his neck, saw the market where Sally Rainwater had bought firewood. He let his eyes fall to the sideview mirror, wondering if Hector was by some miracle behind them. But all he could see was the flank of the vehicle he was riding in and the lights shooting back along it. By pressing the inside of his upper left arm against his side he confirmed that his weapon was gone. With the inside of his right elbow against his other side he knew his phone was gone, too.

He coughed, felt the top of his head open to the stars. He swallowed a mouthful of shaved metal and gave one experimental, cutting tug on his wrist ties.

"Too bad you drew the case," said Patricia. "I knew the chances were one in four, but I could never win a hand at blackjack either."

McMichael squinted at the buildings along Rosecrans. Triplicate now. His head felt volcanic, but he was oddly outside himself, too, detached and objective, like he was watching himself go through this. He tried to focus his vision out beyond the rearview, but all he got was blur.

"We're all going for a sail," Patricia said brightly. "In case you were wondering. Aboard Christina and this little skiff Gar never registered. But the skiff is going to blow up accidentally with only you on it. Which, on the plus side, is why Gar hasn't already shot you."

McMichael tried to digest the details of his own death, but they seemed distant and inapplicable. "Why kill Pete?" he managed.

"Tom, that's a long and very personal story. I wasn't appreciated."

Garland chuckled from the back.

"And Tom, you know nothing in the world pisses me off like not being appreciated."

"Rainwater?"

"Born to fall and very convenient. You were a minus and she was a plus and you canceled each other out. I'm good at math, remember? Gar, he's good at sneaking in and out of places, leaving things for cops to find."

"He doesn't need the details," said Garland.

"I was just showing off," said Patricia. "But my hands are shaking I'm so nervous."

"Watch the road, goddamn it."

"Don't yell, Gar."

"Watch the road, Patricia."

"I see the road."

"Good. Pat's the micromanager," said Garland, stabbing at McMichael's head again. "I'm the big-picture guy. You want an executive summary, McMikey? Here goes. The old man tried to cut us out, so he could cut the nurse in. But we were the ones putting up with his endless shit, year after year. His petty little games, his foul mouth, his whores and his tantrums. What was his wedding present to us? He threatened to disinherit Pat if we went through with it. Pat managed to talk him out of it. Stuff like that builds up, man, it fucking builds up . Pretty soon, it blows."

"It takes you over," said Patricia.

McMichael let his head loll right again, tried to pick up some sign of Hector. He'd left his destination on Hector's machine. But Hector was keyed to meeting Garland Hansen's plane at the airport. McMichael figured that by the time things went froggy at Lindbergh Field, he'd be ten fathoms down. When Patricia changed lanes he saw a white Crown Victoria two cars back, but the picture changed when she straightened out.

"Bland and the TJ thing?" His voice was little more than a whisper.

"Blandon the TJ thing?" asked Patricia. "Gar must have hit you harder than I thought."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Garland asked, rapping the back of McMichael's head with something hard. "Blandon who?"

McMichael checked the sideview mirror for the Crown Vic, saw nothing but the lights flickering down the side panel. He had figured by now that they were in some kind of SUV- probably a big Ford, an Excursion or Explosion or whatever they called them. He found the power window control down to his right, and the power door lock, both conveniently illuminated. He thought of Johnny in La Jolla and his father at General and his mother in the ground and Raegan at Libertad and Sally Rainwater in the Santee women's jail. Where was Hector?

"Why Angel?" McMichael heard himself ask.

"I took control of some of Grandma's possessions after she died. You know, it takes a woman to appreciate certain things. But the hooker caught me switching out Grandma's hummingbird for a fake. She said maybe I could take care of her, and Grandpa would never know. So I took care of her. We'd put in too much planning to have a whore mess it up. After her, Pete wasn't that hard. You just do what you have to do. And you? You'll be easy, McMichael. You always were."

He sat with his head bowed, smelling his blood, watching the lights do freakish things on the windshield.

"Like my divorce story?" asked Patricia. "The apartment and the boxes at our place? We're going to rent out the apartment. And tomorrow we move the boxed stuff to Pete's house. Me and Gar are going to kind of squat there, possession being nine-tenths of-"

Suddenly, flashes of red and blue lights shot through the interior. Garland cursed and Patricia's gloved hands tightened on the wheel. McMichael managed to turn his head to the right, very slowly, and from the corner of his eye he saw two Crown Victorias with two gumballs on the top, two faint faces of Hector as he drove the cars under a streetlamp.

"Goddamn it!" yelled Garland.

"You're dead," McMichael muttered.

"Bull shit ," said Patricia. She slowed for a red light, then gunned the big vehicle through it as brakes screeched and horns blared from both sides. Chrome and paint flashed past McMichael's eyes. He forced his head around again, to see Hector trapped in the intersection behind them. Ahead, an SDPD cruiser bumped from a parking lot onto the boulevard with full lights and sound. Then another right behind it.

"Can't outrun a radio," said McMichael.

Garland reached past the headrest and whacked the side of McMichael's face, up on the cheekbone. McMichael wrenched right and tried to get a finger onto the lock control but Garland yanked him back, McMichael's head slapping back against the rest.

Patricia gunned it south on Harbor Drive, a high-velocity shot past Spanish Landing and the airport. Two PD cruisers slid into the intersection at Grape but Patricia charged over the curb and onto the sidewalk. A young man, eyes wide in the headlights, pushed a woman and child to the ground and McMichael saw his legs and feet vanish under the hood. No thump. From the corner of his eye he saw a splayed tangle of family as the SUV roared by. Patricia caught greens at Ash and Broadway, but ran a red light at Pacific Coast Highway with the heel of one hand on the horn and- to McMichael's breathless stupefaction- both of her eyes closed. Garland yelled and pulled McMichael back hard by the collar of his jacket. McMichael wheeled left and brought up his cuffed hands, landing flush on Garland's jaw, which got McMichael's head a ferocious jolt back to the rest, Garland yanking him by his hair. Ahead McMichael could see two more PD cars blocking the boulevard, officers with their sidearms braced on the hoods, a cop who looked about twenty years old aiming a riot gun at the windshield as Patricia swerved to the right, crashed into the back end of one unit that moved slowly out of the way as the big SUV screeched under throttle and cops seemed to fall from the sky. She bullied past and free. Green lights at Fifth and Eighth, patrol cars howling into line behind them. McMichael's vision doubled his estimate of catastrophe as Patricia barged along at sixty miles an hour toward Crosby Street.