The Shadow Hunter (11 page)

“Search his apartment?”

“Yeah, he gave permission, but there was no acid, nothing that would tie him to the crime.”

“Still, it had to be him.”

“I don’t know, Abby. This is Hollywood, remember.

Lots of random craziness. Hickle’s not the only nutcase.

Anyway, Jill was rattled. That’s why she left LA.

She was gone the next day.” “Wise move,” Abby said.

“And she’s still okay?”

“Far as I know.”

“And Hickle was never charged.”

Wyatt shrugged.

“No way the DA could file with what we had. Nobody could prove a thing. Even so, whether Hickle did it or not, he could have done it.

You know what I’m saying? He’s capable of it. He’s sick enough.”

She was silent.

“Abby.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table.

“If you’re mixed up in any way with this son of a bitch, you’re taking a hell of a risk.”

“What makes you think I’m mixed up with him? I’m doing—”

“Research. I know. Just be careful, whatever you’re up to.”

“I always am. Vie. Don’t worry about me.”

Wyatt picked up the check. Abby wanted to split the tab, but for reasons of masculine pride he insisted on paying. Outside, he offered to walk her to her car, but she said it wasn’t necessary.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Lots of bad guys out there.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I got that impression. But you know, there’s a reason why patrol cops work in pairs. Sometimes you need a person to cover your back.”

“I haven’t needed one so far.”

“Maybe you’ve been lucky.”

“Well, let’s hope my luck holds.

“Night, Vie. Thanks for everything.”

He watched her walk away. His car, an ancient Camaro with a rebuilt engine, was waiting for him around the corner, but he didn’t go it to yet. He lingered in the shadow of the coffee shop’s awning, screened from the glare of the neon sign. Abby’s footsteps faded with distance, and then there was the faint pop of a car door opening and a louder thump as it closed. A motor revved.

She’d made it safely to her vehicle. It looked as if she really could take care of herself, not that he’d had any doubts.

Something made him wait a minute longer in the dark. He heard her car pull away from the curb. Headlights flared into view, and a white subcompact shot past. He glimpsed Abby at the wheel, illuminated by the dashboard glow. She was driving a Dodge Colt, square and boxy, far from new. It had a dent in one side panel. The motor sounded peppy enough, but the Colt had seen some serious use. It must have racked up a hundred thousand miles.

His Camaro wasn’t any newer, but it had been kept in perfect condition.

It was a classic. There was nothing classic about Abby’s rattletrap set of wheels.

Strange. Last night she’d told him she lived in the Wilshire Royal.

Luxury building, where the parking garage was lined with Porsches. If Abby could afford that lifestyle, why was she driving a junkyard clunker?

He shook his head slowly, walking away. Something didn’t fit, or if it did, he couldn’t see it.

Or maybe he didn’t want to see.

Abby parked in her assigned space under a carport at the Gainford Arms. When she killed the ignition, the little hatchback shuddered all over like a big wet dog.

The car, a Dodge Colt that she had bought from a used car dealer for two thousand dollars, was used strictly for undercover work. At home she kept her real car, a snazzy little Miata that let her negotiate the twists and curves of Mulholland Drive with the wind in her hair.

Whenever she took that drive, she imagined herself back in the foothills south of Phoenix, riding one of her father’s Appaloosas on the high, steep trails.

But she couldn’t drive the Miata in this neighborhood without calling attention to herself, so the Dodge was her vehicle of choice at the moment. She locked it up and crossed the parking lot.

Music and laughter drew her attention. She followed the noise to the far corner of the lot, where she found a small concrete platform enclosed by an iron fence. The platform was the setting for an outdoor Jacuzzi, bubbling busily. A few young people were hanging out in the tub, drinking beer out of long necked bottles, while a portable radio played a Shania Twain song.

The landlord had mentioned the spa area, the apartment building’s only luxury feature. She hadn’t quite believed him, though in retrospect there was no reason for doubt; this was LA, after all, where swimming pools and hot tubs were not unknown in even the least desirable neighborhoods.

The water looked inviting, but she had no desire to join the crowd. She was turning to go when one of the partygoers noticed her.

“Hey, you got a bathing suit?” he called out.

She smiled.

“I’m not in the mood, thanks.”

“We can put you in the mood,” another guy yelled.

He was drunk.

“Somehow I doubt that. Have fun. And try not to pass out in there, okay?”

She walked away. Behind her, the two men pled their case and, when that tactic failed, switched to wolf whistles and sexually suggestive grunts. Subtlety evidently was not their preferred method of romantic conquest.

She rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Outside Hickle’s door she paused to listen, pressing her ear against the wood. She heard the TV in his living room.

The time was nine o’clock, too early for the news.

Maybe he kept the TV on just for the illusion of companionship it provided.

She unlocked her apartment and entered, deflating a little when she breathed in the musty smell and saw the cheap, worn furniture and the dingy walls. She had spent a great deal of time in places like this over the past few years.

Lying on the couch, she dictated what she had learned from Wyatt into her micro recorder Then she fixed herself a cup of herbal tea and drank it slowly, sitting on the fire escape and watching the night sky.

Once, she saw a shooting star that traced a pale arc above the distant rooftops. It might be an omen—good or bad, she couldn’t say.

Loud voices echoed through the parking lot below.

The party crowd was leaving the spa area. She heard inebriated laughter, fading out.

The hot tub must be empty now. She decided to try it. She could use some R ‘n’ R. Among the items of clothing she had packed, there was a one-piece swimsuit. She changed into the suit and took a large bath towel with her as she went downstairs to the lobby. She crossed the parking lot to the spa area. The gate was closed, but she discovered that the lock was broken, and she didn’t need to use her apartment key.

A sign warned that the Jacuzzi was to be used only by residents of the Gainford Arms and only between the hours of 8 am. and 10 p.m. She checked her watch. The time was 10:15. Well, there was nobody around to complain that she was breaking the rules.

The kids who’d partied here had left the place a mess. Empty beer bottles ringed the tub. Potato chips and pretzels were scattered around, and near one of the cheap lounge chairs lay the uneaten remnant of a Twinkie.

“Slobs,” Abby murmured. She set down her purse and the towel on the lounge chair, then took off her wristwatch and her sneakers. Finally she eased herself into the tub. The water was still frothing and gurgling;

the kids had neglected to turn off the jets when they left.

Eyes shut, she rested her head against the concrete rim of the tub and let the hot bubbling water massage the small of her back.

She had not rested, really rested, in much too long.

The New Jersey case had been tricky, and then Travis had called her back to LA as soon as it had ended.

There had been almost no downtime.

She wondered if she had been wrong to accept the TPS case. True, she desperately wanted to prove herself to Travis, make amends for the Devin Corbal disaster, if she possibly could—but she might be driving herself too hard. Fatigue was the real enemy in a profession like hers. Fatigue could be fatal.

After this one, she promised, she would take a vacation.

Maybe head over to Phoenix and look up some old friends. Hike in the Superstition Mountains, ride a horse on a dusty trail, be a kid again.

Yes, she would do all those things… when this job was over… She felt herself drifting into the alpha state on the threshold of sleep.

Her thoughts fuzzed out and grew distant. All tension left her, and there was only a humming meditative sense of calm.

Then a sudden lurch forward, water over her head, the hot jets stinging her neck-She was submerged in the tub, the surface only inches away but out of reach, because she couldn’t rise.

Someone was holding her down with a strong hand clutching the top of her head, gripping her hair in tangled bunches.

She tried to grab the hand that-held her, knowing she could inflict instant pain by bending back one of his fingers or squeezing the tender ball of flesh below his thumb, but with his free hand he deflected her attack.

If she could only see him-But she couldn’t, she was underwater, blinded by the lights ringing the interior of the tub, and above her was only darkness and she couldn’t see anything, and there was no air.

She struggled to duck lower, pull free, but he had her by the hair and wouldn’t yield. She braced both feet against the bottom of the tub and pushed hard, fighting to overcome the downward pressure that kept her submerged, but he had the advantage of leverage.

A cry of frustration burst out of her in an explosion of bubbles, blending with the jets of churning water.

The cry cost nearly the last of her oxygen. She would black out at any moment, and then he would simply have to hold her down until her lungs flooded with water in a final instinctive breath.

But she couldn’t die this way, facedown in a Jacuzzi, surrounded by empty beer bottles and trash-Beer bottles.

A weapon.

With her last strength she raised her arm out of the water and groped behind her, along the rim of the spa.

Her hand closed over the neck of a bottle.

She tilted it, smashed it against the concrete, then jabbed upward with the broken, jagged end.

Instantly the hand holding her down withdrew.

She stabbed again, blindly, not sure if she had made contact the first time—then surfaced with a hoarse, spluttering gasp.

Sucking air into her lungs, she spun in the tub, looking everywhere for her assailant, but all she saw was the gate clanging shut.

In the parking lot—running footsteps, fading out.

She leaned against the side of the tub, fighting to control her breathing, then noticed that she still held the beer bottle in her hand.

She examined the jagged end for blood, found none.

She saw no red droplets on the concrete surface of the spa area.

The bottle had merely scared him. She hadn’t inflicted a wound. Too bad. Blood could be tested and matched to an eventual suspect.

Besides, she would have liked to hurt the bastard after what he put her through.

She set down the bottle and climbed out of the spa, shivering in the cool air. With a towel wrapped around her, she considered the big question.

Who the hell was he?

She was quite certain her attacker had been male.

Those hands had been decidedly masculine in their size and strength.

But whose hands had they been?

Hickle’s? Was he on to her somehow, or had he simply equated her in his mind with Jill Dahlbeck, his earlier obsession?

He had asked if she was an actress, as Jill had been.

Maybe there was something about her that had triggered the same feelings that might have led him to splash Jill with battery acid on a dark side street, in Hollywood years ago.

Or maybe the assault had no connection with Hickle or this case. She remembered Wyatt saying, This is Hollywood, remember. Lots of random craziness. Hickle’s not the only nutcase.

Then an absurd thought occurred to her. How well did she really know Vie Wyatt?

“Oh, come on,” she said under her breath, “that’s paranoid.”

Of course it was paranoid. She was in a paranoid business. She was trained to be hyper vigilant But the fact was, somebody had just tried to kill her, less than two hours after her meeting with Wyatt—and she didn’t know Wyatt all that well.

He had bumped into her last night at the bar in Westwood. Suppose it wasn’t a coincidence. Suppose he had been following her. Stalking her She knew all about that kind of behavior, didn’t she?

And suppose that tonight, after dinner, he had followed her to this building, and when he saw her enter the tub… “Tried to kill me?” she asked herself aloud.

“Why would he?”

She couldn’t say, but she had to admit it was at least possible. The lock on the gate was broken; anyone could have entered the spa area.

She still didn’t believe it. Wyatt had never struck her as the slightest bit unstable or hostile or obsessive.

Anyhow, there might be a way to eliminate him from suspicion.

She took the cell phone out of her purse and called Wyatt’s home number. He lived in the mid-city district near La Brea and Washington.

If he’d fled this location just minutes earlier, he wouldn’t have had time to get home yet.

She waited through three rings, a small knot of worry forming in her stomach. She didn’t want to suspect Wyatt. She didn’t want the assailant to be anyone she knew and liked.

Four rings-And the phone was answered.

“Wyatt.”

“Oh.” She caught her breath.

“Hi, Vie, it’s me. Hope I’m not calling too late.”

“No problem. I’m kind of a night owl, with the schedule I’m working lately. What’s up?”

She couldn’t very well tell him that she was calling to remove him from suspicion of attempted murder.

But she hadn’t had time to think of a cover story. She improvised.

“I realized I forgot to ask if there were any other women Hickle went after. You know, in addition to Jill Dahlbeck. Anything in his past, any other reports, before or since.”

“Not that I’m aware of. But I have a feeling you might know about somebody.”

“Me?”

“Why else would a security firm be taking a fresh look at him?”