Michael Prescott: In Dark Places

"Call an RA," Hammond snapped to the man next to him, the one named Lewinsky, who'd been hostile to Wolper. "Call twoone for Dr. Cameron, one for him." His curt gesture indicated Gray. "What happened here, Doctor?"

She ignored the question. "I need to find Meg," Robin said.

"Is she here?"

"I sent her"she waved toward the offices and hallways"sent her to hide."

"Banner," Hammond said.

"I'm on it, Chief." The man named Banner left the room, following the glow of his flashlight down the hall.

Robin stepped past Gray and the two officers kneeling beside him on the landing. They seemed to be checking his vitals. As a doctor, she was in the best position to offer medical assistance, but she had no strength for it and, at the moment, no concern whether Justin Gray lived or died.

"What happened?" Hammond asked again.

"How did you find me?"

"Traced your phone call."

So hitting redial had worked. She stooped and retrieved her purse from the floor, then ended the call, breaking the connection.

"Doctor?" That was Hammond again.

"I shot him," she said, finally answering his question. "I shot Justin Gray."

"I can see that. Where's the gun you used?"

"In the cellar. Along with a dead man, Detective Tomlinson."

Hammond was bewildered. "You shot him too?"

"Gray did."

"What was Tomlinson doing here?"

"He came to kill Meg."

"This isn't making sense, Doctor."

"It will. I can't explain it all now. Wolper was part of it"

"Wolper?"

"And Tomlinson and probably others."

"What possible connection could Tomlinson or Wolper have with Gray?"

"No connection. That's why they used him. He was the fall guy." She looked at the bleeding man. "He likes to play games, you know. This time, somebody tried playing a game on him."

Hammond shook his head. "I don't understand."

"It will all make sense. Later."

He seemed to accept this. She knew she should say more, but she was tired, very tired amp;

Her cell phone rang. She wondered who it could be, and if she should even answer. Out of habit she fished the phone out of her purse and took the call. "Yes?"

"Dr. Cameron? This is Gaines." The criminalist. She'd forgotten about him. "Farber got through to the ITA administrator. We traced those e-mails to a specific terminal. Gabe is a police officer, I'm afraid."

Tomlinson, she thought. Or Brand.

"He works in the office of Deputy Chief Hammond. A lieutenant, name of Banner."

Robin stared at the phone, and then it had fallen from her hand, and she was running for the hallway, pausing only to grab the flashlight from the landing. She aimed the beam at the shoe prints stamped on the dust-coated floor. Two sets of tracks. Meg'sand Banner's.

Hammond and the other cops sprinted behind her, yelling questions she ignored.

This part of the factory had housed the administrative offices. She passed rows of doorless entry ways. No skylight in here, but each office had a narrow window that let in ambient light from outside. Maybe Meg had found a way out through one of those windows. Maybe Banner hadn't found her.

But she knew this was an idle hope. The windows were too small to allow escape. Even if she had gotten out, Banner would follow.

He had to kill Meg. She could identify him as her kidnapper. He didn't know about the e-mail trace, didn't know he'd already been caught.

To save himself, he would kill Meg and make it look as if Gray had found her before tangling with Robin. Robin's testimony would contradict this version of events, but no one would listen to her. They would say that her memory had been altered by stress and trauma.

She could never prove otherwise. Memory, as she knew too well, was a tricky thing.

The trail curved into an intersecting corridor, ending at an office straight ahead. Robin ran to it, not caring that she was unarmed and unprotected.

In the office she found Meg huddled in a corner, staring. And Bannersprawled on the floor, half-conscious, awash in his own blood. Imbedded in his neck was something slender and shiny.

A syringe.

"Little whore," Banner wheezed.

Robin slipped past him and knelt by her daughter. "Better watch yourself, Lieutenant. I shot the last man who called her that."

She hugged Meg and stroked her hair, while Hammond called for another ambulance.

"Granola bars. Yum."

Robin studied her daughter for signs of sarcasm but found none. Meg seemed honestly contented as she sat at the kitchen table before a plate occupied by two unwrapped honey-oat granola bars.

"I seem to recall your showing a certain aversion to all things granola," Robin observed suspiciously.

Meg shrugged. "I've grown to love them."

"Since when?"

"It's an acquired taste."

Robin sat down opposite her. "So you ready for your triumphal return?"

"Definitely."

"There will be questions. And stares."

"I know."

Robin nodded. Although Meg's name had been kept out of the media, her friends knew what had happened, and friends always talked. In the six weeks Meg had been out of schoolfirst recuperating in the hospital, then visiting her father in Santa Barbara, then traveling with Robin on an extended getaway to northern California the word would have spread throughout the small social circle of the Gainesburg School.

For much of that time the school, which was on a year-round schedule, had been out of sessionsummer recess, they called it, though it lasted only a month. Still, nearly all the kids lived on the Westside, and they would have stayed in touch.

Now, with classes resuming and Meg's return expected, the entire student population would be waiting for her. Robin pictured them as vultures in gray-and-white uniforms. The image, she admitted, was probably unfair.

Meg saw her mother watching her. She smiled. "Don't worry, Mom. I can handle it."

Of course she could. She'd proven she could handle anything.

"Sorry," Robin said. "You're right. You'll be fine."

"Better believe it. Everything's copawell, you know."

"Copacetic. You can say it."

"Even though it's his word?"

"He doesn't have a monopoly on it."

Meg finished the first granola bar and started on the second. "Any plans for today after you drop me off?"

"Nothing special." She hated lying to Meg, but she didn't want to talk about it.

"No patients?"

"In the afternoon. Morning's free."

Meg seemed to sense that this topic was going nowhere. "Happy with the new office?"

"It's a big improvement. Working there, I feel almost like an actual urban professional."

"You may need to start carrying a briefcase."

"Let's not get carried away."

The fire had rendered Robin's previous office unusable. She had no desire to remain there anyway. She had relocated to a building in the mid-Wilshire district, a safer neighborhood, but still within reach of downtown.

Downtown. The prison, she meant. The population of convicts who had served as her test subjects.

She wasn't treating any of them now. The loss of her MBI gear in the fire had given her an excuse to suspend her experimental program. But new equipment was being made to order and would arrive soon. Then she would have to decide what to do with it. It could be used for purposes more prosaic than rehabilitationfighting phobias, for instance. She wasn't sure if she would be satisfied with curing people's fear of spiders when millions of prisoners remained warehoused in jails.

Still, maybe the jails were where they belonged. All of them, forever. Lock them up, throw away the key.

She wasn't sure. Her old certainties had died on the night of Gray's rampage. She hadn't found any new truths to replace them. Not yet.

"Better get a move on," she told Meg. "Don't want to be late for your first day back. How would that reflect on me, your doting mother and unpaid chauffeur?"