Life Sentences (27 page)

The baby was sound asleep in Daisy's
arms, exhausted from the birth experience. Whenever he yawned, she could
see the short tight band that connected his tongue to the wet floor of his
mouth. This band would stretch over time. She touched the diamond-shaped
soft spot on his skull, the one that pulsated with each beat of his heart.
If this had been a natural birth, the baby's soft spots would've allowed
his skull to compress just enough to fit through the birth canal. But unlike
most newborns, C-section babies weren't misshapen. They had round heads
and normal facial features.

Daisy glanced at the birth certificate
on the beside table. She'd already filled in the date and time, but there
was a blank space for the baby's name. She had no idea what to call him. He
stirred in her arms. His limbs seemed oddly foreshortened, but that, too,
was normal. After all, he'd just spent eight and a half months curled up inside
his mother's womb. In time, his arms and legs would uncurl from his body.
His ears were soft and floppy, but the cartilage would harden after the
first few weeks of life. He was pink all over from a profusion of red blood
vessels showing through the delicate skin. He was so helpless, so dependent
on the goodwill of others, she feared for him. She feared for herself. Daisy
had been left caretaker of this little miracle and didn't quite know
how to feel about it.

She gripped a tissue in her hand
until it was molded to the shape of her fingers. Anna hadn't mentioned
any names during the grievously brief time they'd had together. So little
time, and now she'd left Daisy with her precious infant. Poor Anna.

Exhausted and grief-stricken, Daisy
closed her eyes and could picture her sister's skirts and blouses and designer
jeans folded neatly over their hangers in that sad apartment of hers.
She saw Anna's motorcycle jacket. She saw her fuzzy bedroom slippers-lions
and monkeys and bears-some so decrepit they had to be duct-taped together.
Slippers grouped together like the passenger list of Noah's ark. Noah.
Now there was a solid name for a boy.

Daisy had a feeling of sudden,
strong empathy for her mother as she wrote Anna Hubbard beneath
"Mother" on the birth certificate, and John Doe under "Father,"
just as Lily had done twenty-five years ago. Now she understood. Sometimes
the truth was simply too painful, too hurtful, to be told. She would never
speak of Roy Gaines again. From now on, she would tell people she had no
idea who the baby's father was.

In the distance, she could hear
the newborns crying and looked at the sleeping infant in her arms. She studied
his pinched little hands. He was more than a bundle of molecules. More
than a combination of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. He was a burning
force. A vessel of raw power and pale delicacy. Looking at him was like
watching a fiddlehead fern unfurl on the forest floor. It was primal
and awe-inspiring. It was like facing the sky with your eyes closed. Like
falling awake. How was she ever going to give him up? How could she possibly
do that?

His name, she decided, was Noah.

"Hello, Noah Hubbard,"
she whispered. "Sounds good, doesn't it?"

He displayed sucking reflexes
in his sleep.

"I can't even keep a goldfish
alive," she told the baby. "How am I supposed to take care of
you?"

It was impossible. A serious
problem. She couldn't keep a baby, not with her busy schedule. What was
she going to do? She glanced at the dark green push-button phone on the
bedside table and did a quick calculation in her head. It would be
5:00 A.M. back East. That was early for Lily, but the news was grave. She cradled
the receiver in the crux of her neck and dialed her mother's number.

"Hello?" Lily answered
sleepily.

"Hi, Mom. It's me."

"Daisy? What time's it?"

"Mom?" Her stomach did
flip-flops. "I've got bad news."

Tully chased the fugitive through
the grape-colored canyons east of Los Angeles, where a forest fire was
raging. Months of low humidity and high temperatures had cured the dog
hair on the forest floor, creating the perfect fuel for these wind-driven
flames. He gripped the steering wheel of his department vehicle, a
standard-issue Ford (Fucker Only Runs Downhill), and found himself surrounded
on all sides by a ferocious, unpredictable inferno as he dogged
the Chevy Impala through the winding hills. Twenty minutes ago, witnesses
had reported a stolen vehicle and described a white male, six feet
plus, black hair, et cetera. A BOLO had been issued. Now a fire truck
came speeding toward him from the opposite direction, blasting its
horn.

"Fuck!" Tully's stomach
lurched as he swerved to avoid it The fire truck roared on by, rocking
him violently and taking with it one of his nine lives, while up ahead
the Chevy Impala left the valley bottom and climbed steadily eastward,
its taillights cutting steeply up the side of the canyon.

Tully tore after Roy Gaines, pressing
pedal to the metal. He pierced a wall of rolling black smoke and found
himself on a hairy S-curve. The drop was steep. He veered up the side of
the canyon while high overhead, fixed-wing tankers and local news helicopters
circled and buzzed, tracking the fire's progress through the sparsely
populated area. The LAPD air unit had an infrared tracking device that
could locate heat sources on the ground-people in vehicles or on foot.
It was great for hunting down fugitives. The city was laid out on a grid
pattern, making it relatively easy to pursue a vehicle from a thousand
feet in the air, but Tully worried that the fire and smoke might be interfering
with that.

He reached the crest of the ridge,
where the road grew suddenly long and straight. The ridge was covered
with unearthly rock formations, and the full moon cast crazy shadows over
the landscape. Freak gusts of wind fanned the flames, making torches
out of the crowns of the Douglas firs as the fugitive sped along the ridgeline,
then took a hard right after the water tank and disappeared. Tully followed
suit, turning sharply at the water tank and experiencing a slow-rolling
wave of terror as his tires began to lose their traction. He sat bolt
upright in his seat, tires locking as he hit the brakes.

The car skidded all over the road.
"Oh shit!" He practically stood on the brakes, gravel pinging
against the wheel wells as the car came to a hair-raising stop a few feet
short of the precipice. His stomach clenched. The Ford shuddered frighteningly.

Across the valley, he could see columns
of smoke rising up from the distant hills. He'd lost sight of the air unit.
Where the hell were they? They were supposed to be tracking the Chevy for
him, but in places the fire had become so intense they'd had to bank
away. Now Tully wrenched the Ford into reverse, eased away from the drop
and pulled back onto the road again. He accelerated hard down the
canyonside
.

These fire roads were loosely
packed with gravel and rock and made for a bumpy ride. Choppy. Noisy. He
clutched the steering wheel while all around him, trees swayed in the
heat-stoked winds and intermittent bursts of sparks shot across the hood
of his car. The fire crews were out there in droves tonight, cutting fire
lines and struggling to contain the volatile flames into controllable
stretches of rugged terrain. A choking smoke hung in the air. It made
Tully shudder to think about
bis
partner's fate.
He loved Jack like a brother. Sometimes he hated Jack the way brothers
hated one another-in a jealous, competitive way. He hated Jack's ability
to charm the pants off everyone he met. He hated that he sometimes used
his father's old cop show to his advantage. Jack was slightly arrogant,
slightly smug; he'd always been that way. He was born with a certitude about
who he was, and nobody and nothing could shake it from him.

Burned beyond recognition.
Tully had seen charred bodies before, their arms raised in front of
them like a boxer's. Flexion of the limbs, it was called. The human body,
when exposed to intense heat, assumed a pugilistic attitude. Poor
Jack. When they found him tomorrow or the next day, his muscles would be
exposed, the seared skin split open, and the flesh of his hands would be
completely burned away, leaving no fingers to take prints off of, just
the crumbling bone.

The next couple of miles were excruciating.
Tully's hands grew rigid on the wheel as the shock of the rough road migrated
up his arms. By the time he'd caught up with the Chevy, a sick fury had risen
in him. He could make out the back of Gaines's head through the charred
pine needles lacing the windshield and wanted to put a bullet through
that ignorant skull. Detective William Tully wanted his kill shot. Now.
His rage was quiet, but it would express itself soon enough.

The road became even more winding
and dangerous. He passed several Department of Transportation
signs warning him to watch out for falling rocks and chased Gaines around
the next corner. He reached for his revolver and set it on the seat beside
him. Here the road abruptly turned to dirt, and the Chevy's wheels kicked
up so much dust Gaines vanished in a fog of dancing particles.

Dust swam before Tully's high beams.
He was dripping with sweat, delirious with adrenaline. He tried to
avoid the worst of the holes and rocks in the road and felt like a man in a
minefield. As he rounded the next curve, the rabid squeal of brakes
reached his ears. He could see the red glow of the Chevy's taillights turning
sharply and then disappearing into a cloud of dust.

"Shit!" A massive oak
tree materialized out of nowhere like a mirage. Tully hit the brakes
and tried to swerve out of its way, but the tree had fallen across the road,
dragging several power lines down with it. Dull shock hit him as he slammed
into the tree with a bang, the impact propelling him forward and nearly
knocking his eyeballs out. The front end of the Ford collapsed in a shower
of sparks while his chest hit the steering wheel and the air bag exploded.
All the oxygen evacuated his lungs, and he was plunged into a world of
darkness and hissing steam.

Moments later, Tully emerged from
deep shock with his ears ringing. The car horn wouldn't stop blaring. He
turned with slow scrutiny to assess the damage. The front seat had buckled
forward. There was broken glass everywhere. He could smell the gasoline.
Drip, drip, drip. That couldn't be good.

Soon the car was filled with a
thick, caustic smoke. He tried not to panic, but the door was jammed
shut. He slammed against it with his shoulder, then realized he would need
to use more force than that. Turning sideways, he gave the door a swift
kick. The locking mechanism rattled, but nothing happened. He was trapped
inside the wreck, and the gas tank was leaking. Drip, drip, drip. The interior
of the car was becoming as hot as the mouth of a furnace.

"Jesus help me." Rummaging
frantically through the glove compartment, Tully found a screwdriver
and aimed it at the window, then threw a well-placed punch that shattered
the glass. He wriggled his way out through the broken window-
oof
, he was fat. Since when had he gotten so fat? Tully
squeezed himself out like a thick squirt of toothpaste and landed in
the dirt, then crawled away on his hands and knees, screaming for his life.

The gas tank erupted behind him. A
huge blast ripped through the air, and an enormous shock wave hurtled
him headlong into a pine tree. "Shit!" The soft-needled branches
cushioned his fall, and he landed on the ground and stayed low. He couldn't
see a damn thing. He was choking on smoke. The blast had ignited a fireball
almost twenty feet high, and every window in his car had shattered, setting
off the car alarm.

There was a change in air pressure
as the air got sucked back inside the vehicle due to a partial vacuum
created by the blast, then another explosion buckled the carriage.
Tully ducked and rolled while the car rose up in the air, then plunged
back down to the ground with a sonic boom. A series of gritty rollovers
propelled him into a ditch. He unlocked his fingers and looked up just
as the vehicle
pancaked
with a whoosh and a dance
of embers. He shielded his face from the intense heat while fiery fragments
showered down from the sky.

"Oh God… oh my God…" His
car was totaled. Gone. The department car was on fire. The heat was so
intense the tears dried almost instantly on his face.

He looked around as embers the size
of marbles came whirling out of the sky. Burning embers struck his face
and arms. "Ouch," he said, stumbling to his feet. "Ouch,
ouch!" He couldn't stop coughing. The burning car sent plumes of
thick black smoke billowing in all directions, and he tried to outrun
it.

There was a series of small explosions.
Pop, pop, pop. It was his service revolver going off. He had left it inside
the car. He crouched in a defensive posture and covered his head,
trying to make himself less of a target. A stray bullet flew past his head,
and he dove for the ground.

Pop,
pop, pop.

Silence.

Dazed but okay, he stumbled to his
feet. He brushed himself off, shook the glass out of his hair, then realized
he was bleeding. His scalp and arms were cut. Now he heard a whirring sound
.
Rrr
,
rrrr
.

It was coming from somewhere behind
him.

Rrr
,
rrrr
.

Tully turned around.

The Chevy Impala had fishtailed
into a culvert, narrowly averting disaster, and now Roy Gaines was
trying to get away. He sat behind the wheel of his stolen vehicle and keyed
the stalled-out engine, his face lit by the green dashboard lights.

Rrr
,
rrrr
.

Tully reached down into his leg
holster for his off-duty weapon. His hands were shaking. Keeping his.38
aimed at the fugitive's head, he slowly approached the car.

Behind the glass, Gaines's face
was fish-belly pale, and his eyes watered in the hazy heat. He keyed the
ignition one more time, and the engine turned over.

"Stay right where you
are," Tully said hoarsely. "Get out of the vehicle. Now!"

Gaines stomped on the gas, and the
car jolted forward, pinning Tully in its high beams. Blinded by the glare,
the detective fired. The windshield fractured.

The car screamed forward and hit
Tully as he tried to roll out of the way.

He landed hard on the ground, then
twisted around and fired at the fleeing vehicle, unloading three wild
rounds into the dancing taillights. The Chevy was a squid, escaping in
a cloud of ink.

Tully lay on the ground, his breathing
shallow and fast. He tried to increase its depth and slow its rate, to
breathe from the abdomen, not the chest. He wanted to prevent himself
from hyperventilating. He couldn't believe he'd lost control of the situation
like that. Everything in the vicinity was catching fire-trees, underbrush,
weeds. He had to get out of there.

A single-engine plane buzzed
aimlessly overhead, and he listened to its mosquito whine as he assessed
the damage-two broken fingers, a cracked rib, possible wrist fracture,
sprained ankle. He limped down the sloping road, then reached for his
portable unit and called it in. He was beyond sick now. He'd let the fugitive
get away.