Michael Prescott: In Dark Places

"I'm not going to get pregnant or take drugs just because I go to a public school. You don't trust me. That's what this is really all about."

"Meg, you'll have a better chance of getting into a good college if you have Gainesburg on your application."

"I'll get into a good college anyway."

"You have friends at Gainesburg."

"I can make friends anyplace. Will you at least consider a magnet school?"

It would be easy to lie and put the issue to rest, at least temporarily. But Robin made a conscious effort never to lie to her daughter. She had not lied during the divorce or the painful months of relocation and readjustment that followed, and she wouldn't start now.

"I feel better having you in Gainesburg," she said. "Sorry."

"It's for my own good, right?"

"Partly. It's also for my own good. My peace of mind."

Meg showed a sly smile. "You know, even Gainesburg students get into trouble sometimes."

"But you won't. Will you?"

She deflated. "I'll never get the chance."

That's the way I like it , Robin thought. "Get your book-bag, and I'll set the alarm."

Their two-story, three-bedroom condo had come equipped with a security system, a major selling point in Robin's estimation. Meg chided her for her obsession with the alarm, but Robin was taking no chances.

West Los Angeles was a safe neighborhood by local standards, but within the last month there had been a break-in down the street, an armed robbery at a jewelry store two blocks away, and shots fired from a moving car on a Saturday night.

It wasn't that safe, no matter what people believed.

No place in this city was safe.

That thought stayed with Robin as she picked up Meg's friend Jamie, who carpooled with Meg, then drove them both to the private school on Barrington Avenue. She waved good-bye and hit the freeway, her Saab speeding east toward downtown, the CD player on. The disk on the tray was Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, the rich tones pumping through the dashboard speakers.

She wondered if she was too hard on Meg. But exiting the freeway, entering the wasteland of a burned-out neighborhood, she saw the ugliness and desperation of the city. It might seem exotic to her daughter, like the backdrop to a music video on MTV, but there was nothing exotic about drive-bys and drug deals. Nothing exotic about the patients she treated or their life stories, many of which had gone wrong in their teenage years when they'd fallen in with bad company and started making bad choices. She intended to shield Meg from that. And if her daughter thought she was overprotective amp; well, too bad.

Although the day was mild, with highs expected only in the seventiesseasonable for LA in the middle of Mayshe kept her windows up, the AC on. The closed windows, like the enveloping cocoon of music, were her way of holding the outside world at bay.

She had spent the last two years in Los Angeles, a city of transients, a place of people lingering nowhere, always on the move. But in the neighborhoods around her now, there was no place to go. The people here were transients who stayed put, or maybe it would be less paradoxical to say that their travels had been circumscribed by the narrow dimensions of their livesfrom slum apartment to prison cell, from motel room to abortion clinic, from desolation to degradation. There were people here, less than twenty miles inland, who had never seen the ocean. There were people here, a bus ride away from downtown LA and one of the largest public libraries in the country, who had never read a book.

She passed from the remains of a residential district into an industrial section, largely deserted, the businesses gone. Around her stood bleak commercial structureswarehouses and windowless brick buildings bearing faded signs with words like Packing and Processing .

Idling at a stoplight, she noticed two teenagers staring at her from a street corner. She'd seen hundreds of young men like them on the streets of LA. Even the details were familiarthe baseball caps pulled low over their foreheads, the black sweatshirts, the oversize baggy pants. Every day, after leaving the comparative safety of the freeway, she drove past these young men or others like them. It wasn't just this part of town. They were everywhere in this city.

She looked away, afraid that her gaze might be misconstrued as a challenge. The music continued, but she couldn't focus on itnot when her first session with Alan Brand was scheduled for one o'clock. It was an appointment she'd been anticipating all week, ever since she'd received the go-ahead from Deputy Chief Wagner, her liaison with the LAPD.

She remembered Wagner asking why she was so gung ho to poke around in a cop's psyche.

"What I'm gung ho about," she'd explained, "is the chance to show how effective my method of treatment can be. But I need a more diverse pool of patients than the inmates of the county jail."

It hadn't been easy to get the LAPD on board. She had put months of effort into securing a police officer as a patient, invested hundreds of hours in writing and rewriting proposals, meeting with the police brass, working her way through the tiers of bureaucracy. She had lost nights and weekends. She had lost sleep.

And now everything was signed and delivered, and she finally had the approval she needed. She had permission to use one police officer, just one, as a test subject. If she didn't get results with Sergeant Brand, she wouldn't be given a second chance. So she would get results, starting today.

It was taking a long time for the light to change. Maybe she should just run the red. The intersection was empty of traffic. She didn't like to break the law, but

A heavy thump, a crunching sound.

Glass pellets sprayed her lap.

She whirled in her seat in time to see the crowbar's second impact against the window on the driver's side. The remaining fringe of safety glass was swept away in a shower of glittering crumbs, and then a hand reached through the window frame and unlocked the door.

It was the two young men she'd seen a moment ago. The nearer one had the crowbar.

The CD kept playing, the concerto bursting from the speakers.

A sharp rap on the windshield. Her eyes cut in the direction of the noise. She saw a gun, a large steel-frame pistol, held sideways, movie-style.

"Outta the car, bitch!" the one with the crowbar screamed over the music.

His voice was higher than she'd expected, almost a girl's voice. Distantly she wondered how young he really was.

"Okay," she said. "You can have it. You can have the car."

"Get out !"

"I am." But she wasn't, because she couldn't seem to unhook her seat belt, couldn't get her shaking fingers around the buckle.

"Get the fuck out!"

Finally she popped open the buckle, and the lap belt and shoulder belt slid away, freeing her.

"I'm coming," she said, "I'm coming."

Something hit the windshield. The spot in front of her face shivered into a meshwork of fractures, bending inward but not crumbling, held in place by the thin layer of plastic embedded in the safety glass.

It was the second thug, the one with the pistol. He'd delivered a hard swat to the glass with the gun barrel.

The first one grabbed her by the shoulder, hauled her out of her seat. She looked into his face, his eyes. Wild eyeshe was high on somethingpupils dilated, the whites bloodshot.

His voice was a whisper. "Gonna mess you up, kitty cat."

In that moment she knew they didn't want only the car. They wanted her. They were going to hurt her, kill her.

She bent her left leg at the knee and kicked at the one with the crowbar, catching him in the stomach, surprising him. He let go of her, and she ducked back into her seat, bending low, and slammed her foot on the gas.