John Sandford - The Night Crew

Anna Batory was waiting at the dock when they came in on the Lost Dog, Creek and Glass with another couple, a pair of gay and ferociously competitive endodontists.

Creek cut the outboard when they were fifty feet from the berth, reached over the side, released the transom lock and pulled the motor out of the water. The boat's momentum carried it gracefully on, and then Creek pushed the tiller over and it turned, slowed, slowed more, and Glass stepped over the rail onto the finger pier, dropped the bow line over a cleat and snubbed the boat off.

Anna stood up, brushed off her butt. 'How'd it go?'

Glass was bubbling: 'It was amazing. These things, there was a boat, I mean.'

'Spit it out,' Creek laughed.

'Some of those boats were as big as locomotives. And they were this close,' Glass said, spreading her hands a foot apart. 'One guy got hit in a turn, and he called this other guy an asshole, and they're gonna fight when they get back.'

The beating barely showed on her anymore: when she'd gone into the hospital, the doctors were afraid that her brain had been permanently damaged. As it was, she'd been almost herself in a week, and out of the hospital in two. At four weeks, the bruising had faded, and the cuts were healed. She looked like somebody had scrubbed parts of her face with a Brillo pad, and her nose wasn't as straight as it once had been, but she no longer looked like she might die.

She still had headaches, though: the doctors said they might continue for a while. Maybe a long while. On the other hand, they might stop. Any day now. Or something like that.

Creek, a month later, was almost as good as new; was beginning to talk about the whole episode as a myth that might have happened to someone else. As a good story, to be embroidered upon, on slow nights in the truck.

Anna was the only one who still hurt.

The cuts on her face had all been minor. The cut in her scalp had been deeper, and had done something to the hair follicles: a thin, knife-edge line of hair was growing out white. The doctors said it would probably never be black again; but it might. Or something.

But her main problem was Harper.

After she'd shot Judge, she'd turned, and in the light of Judge's flash, had seen Harper crawling toward her, trying to help her. Answering her cries for help. When it had turned out that Anna had been mouse-trapping Judgewhen she'd emptied the pistol into Judge's headsomething had changed.

He loved her, he said, but he wasn't coming around. She could feel him avoiding her. She pushed, tried to talk: and only once got him going, after a two-martini dinner, and he talked about her face when she'd fired the last shots into Judge.

Anna realized that she frightened him. She didn't want to, but she did.

The endodontists helped clean up the boat, and said goodbye.

'Are we going for beer?' Anna asked Glass.

'God, I hope so. My throat is full of dust.'

'When's he gonna let you drive?' Anna asked.

'Mmm, I've got no definite commitment, but I'm thinking to myself, probably in the beer can races, next week.'

Behind her, Creek rolled his eyes, and Glass said, 'Creek.'

'What?'

'I felt your eyes rolling.'

'Aw, Jesus Christ,' Creek said.

They went down the street to a diner, and found another two dozen racers around the bar and in the dining room. Anna ordered a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke, Creek and Glass got beers. After a while, Creek and Anna began talking about the next night: they would be back on the street in twenty-four hours.

'What we gotta start doing is, we gotta start looking for more feature stuff. There's no good reason we couldn't set up a feature every day just to get the cameras rolling,' Creek said.

'Oh, bullshit, Creek, you know that half the time we can't sell.'

'Cause we haven't been concentrating on the angles. You gotta have the right angle on this kind of thing.'

'I think somebody's calling me,' Glass said after a while.

She picked up her second beer and headed for another table of boat racers, was greeted with a chorus of Heys.

'She gets along with them,' Anna said, watching her.

'Because she's a macho freak,' Creek said. 'You oughta see her out there on the foredeck. She's like a machine with the pole, going end-for-end, she never loses track. She's gonna be a good spinnaker guy.'

'What does she think about your gay endodontist pals?'

'Ah, she was sort of suspicious; you know, she's sort of a 'phobe. But those guys are so fuckin' mean that she couldn't help liking them.'

Creek laughed, and looked so basically happy that Anna laughed with him and said, 'God, Creek, you're gonna start checking out strollers, next thing.'

'Nah,' he said, looking after Glass. Then he turned back to Anna and dropped his voice: 'What's with Jake?'

'Aw, man.' Anna said. The smile died on her face. No tears, but her chin trembled, and she pushed her glasses up her nose. 'It's just. God, I don't know.'

'You still in love with him?'

'I don't even know if I ever was,' she said. 'I could have been, I think. But we never had a chance.'

'Aw, he'll straighten out.' He took a pull at his Corona, but his eyes never left Anna's.

She shook her head: 'You know what, Creek? He's not coming back. He's just not.'

'I'm sorry, Anna.'

'Man, there's only been two guys in my whole life that I ever felt quite like that about,' she said. She tried a smile. 'At least I know I can still feel like that about a guy.'

'Mmm.' Creek looked away, out the window, at the marina, and the forest of masts, waiting for the sea.

Later that night, with Glass asleep in his bed, Creek sat in his cluttered living room reading Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. He turned the last page, sighed, put the book down and his feet up. Thought about a beer, rejected the thought. Finally got a sweatshirt, let himself out, quietly, not to disturb Glass.

He took his Ford pickup out of the Marina, caught the San Diego for a couple of stops, exited on Wilshire, loafed down past UCLA.

The apartment complex was just past Westwood, one of the glittering glass towers on the south side of the street. The night crew knew most of the bigger complexesrich people died in them on a regular basis. But even if he hadn't known where it was through the night crew, he would have gone directly to it anyway: he'd cruise the place a dozen times in the past week, unable to make himself stop.

This time he did stop, walked across the parking structure in the crisp night air.

Apartment 976. The place had double doors, and just inside, a row of brass mailboxes. He found 976. Looked at it for a long ten seconds, shook his head, pressed the buzzer.

Five seconds later, a man's voice, baritone, not unlike Judge's voice.

'Who is it?'

'My name's Creek,' he said. 'Is this Clark?'

'Yes?'

'I've come to see you about a woman,' Creek said.