S Huang - Zero Sum Game

He headed through the foyer and into Leena’s kitchen, trying to get a word in edgewise. He didn’t close the door, however, instead leaning against the counter still in sight of the living room. I wondered if he was keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t punch anyone else.

The rest of us stood uncomfortably. I tried not to think about Dawna Polk and what she might have done to Leena Kingsley.

What she might have done to me.

Fuck. My head pounded like someone had driven an ice pick through the back of it.

Finch was still bleeding on Kingsley’s carpeting. “Can I get him a towel?” she asked hesitantly.

“No,” I said.

Dr. Kingsley went over to the window and peeked around the blinds. “It looks like the police are leaving.”

I studied her. She was walking and talking and functioning like a normal human being. But then, I had been, too. “Are you going to call them back after we leave?” I asked.

She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “Just don’t bother me again. I want to be done with this.”

Pithica never wants an investigation, I remembered.

Leena Kingsley couldn’t be threatened into submission. Killing her to keep her quiet might have made people look more closely at her husband’s death. So someone had done something else to silence her. Something that had made it seem like she’d changed her mind on her own.

Something that Dawna Polk had also done to me in the coffee shop, when she’d asked me where I would be.

Drugs? Hypnosis? Was I still under her influence? I had a feeling Finch knew, and he was going to tell me or I would beat it out of him.

The fact that Pithica had acted now scared the shit out of me. Kingsley had been on this crusade for months, and today they had suddenly decided to kill the PI she’d hired and convince her to give it all up? Sure, maybe Tresting’s investigation had started to close in on something important, but Tresting was right: this was all happening right after they had hooked up with me. Dawna had targeted me to go in after Courtney and had targeted me on the road to Camarito, and I was a fool if I didn’t assume she was targeting me now. I just didn’t know why.

Tresting came back into the room, hanging up his mobile and tossing a roll of paper towels at Finch, who caught it clumsily and started mopping up his face.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Trouble.” Tresting hesitated and glanced at Finch before continuing, but probably decided that this guy had enough connections to find out everything on his own anyway. “Turns out the neighbors ain’t seen our hostage dance. The cops who was here earlier got back to the station and saw composites of two people suspected in a brutal multiple homicide at an office building. Happened they recalled noticing two suspicious characters who looked mighty similar to the sketches in a truck outside an address they just reported to. Told you not to flinch,” he added to me.

“Wait, so this is my fault, Mr. Let’s Report Everything to the Proper Authorities?”

He shot me an expression of thinly veiled disgust. “Good news is they ain’t ID’d us, just got composites from the lobby guy at the building.” He turned to Leena. “Doc…”

“I told your new friend already, I won’t tell anyone anything.” She sounded exhausted. “Just make this go away, please.”

He hesitated, then nodded. I supposed there wasn’t much else he could do but trust her. “Guess we better get while the getting’s good,” he said to Finch and me. “They going to find out you’re not a real FBI agent and come back?”

It was Tresting’s turn to get a baleful glare.

“I’ll take that as a ‘maybe,’” the PI said, unperturbed. He reached out and touched Leena on the shoulder. “Doc. If you need anything, anything at all, or if anything starts to seem…I don’t know, strange, or something frightens you—you call me, okay?”

She appeared to pull herself together slightly. “I…thank you. For sticking with me as long as you did. Maybe you can relax now, too.”

Fat chance of that, I thought. Tresting was never going to give up this case, whether he had an active client or not. He looked like he wanted to say something else to Leena Kingsley, but finally he just nodded at her once before moving away. He checked out the window to make sure the coast was clear and then pulled open the front door.

“Okay, folks, let’s all walk all normal-like,” he murmured as we followed him out. Considering that we’d now all been punched in the face recently, we would have been a sight to see, but any gawking neighbors had gone back inside already. Tresting led the way, and I lagged behind, watching Finch for any sudden moves. He was busy shoving a clump of paper towels against his nose, however, and didn’t seem inclined to try anything.

“We’ll take my truck,” said Tresting.

“It’s two-hour parking,” Finch protested in a muffled voice. “Let me—”

“Oh, Lordy, a parking ticket. Won’t kill you,” said Tresting, officially making him my new favorite person. “Now get in.”

We crammed Finch and his blood-covered suit in between us. “Understand something,” I said to him as Tresting shoved the truck into gear. “You are to keep your hands in sight at all times. I am faster than you, I am stronger than you, and the hand you see under my coat is on a gun that is pointed at you. If you try anything—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the message,” he groused.

“Good. As long as we’re all on the same page.”

As we drove, Tresting directed Finch to dial his superiors on the burner phone and put them on speaker. “I’ll do the talking,” the PI instructed, in a tone that brooked no argument.

The voice that emanated from the mobile was a calm, charismatic basso, and I recognized it immediately as Finch’s boss from the sack of Courtney’s place. “May I ask with whom I am speaking?” the voice inquired.

“No, you may not,” said Tresting, and he went on to give detailed directions to a picnic area in Griffith Park.

“It may take me some time to get there,” the man warned.

“Shame,” said Tresting, “seeing as we’ll only wait half an hour. See you soon.” He nodded at me, and I reached over and hit the button to end the call. We were turning onto the streets adjacent to the park by then, and Tresting pulled off and swung into a parking area. “Let’s walk from here.”

He led the way up a winding road into the park. Cheerful hikers and joggers passed us frequently, half of them with energetic dogs and most of them in the dreadfully fashionable athletic gear that seemed to be the uniform of choice for active Southern Californians. Our current state got a few double-takes, particularly Finch’s obvious nosebleed, but like true Angelenos, they all decided to mind their own business.

We reached a large picnic area with red stone tables, sparsely populated with only the odd family fighting over snacks and sandwiches. Tresting led the way to a table a ways away from anyone else and gestured for us to sit. Finch sat on the bench; I perched on the table to face the opposite way as Tresting and look out over their heads to scan the wooded area behind the picnic area, my hand under my jacket. The icepick in my head hadn’t gone away, but I forcefully ignored it.

About twenty minutes after we arrived, Finch cleared his throat. “There he is.”

I tried to keep my gaze as wide as possible while I turned to catch the guy in my peripheral vision. I wouldn’t have recognized him right away from my glimpse at Polk’s house—he had dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt this time, and didn’t seem at all out of place in the park. Combined with his appearance as a fifty-ish clean-cut white guy, in good shape but not attractive enough to turn anyone’s head, he was in all ways most emphatically someone who would go entirely unnoticed.