The Shadow Hunter (37 page)

“Before last night I would have said no. But now… well, Paul Travis saved me. He pulled me out of that car and dragged me to cover with shotgun shells flying.

He saved my life.” She emitted a short laugh like a sob.

“Howard didn’t even come out of the house.”

Abby nodded slowly. She’d heard everything she needed to hear.

“Thanks, Kris.”

“What for?”

“This talk.”

Kris shrugged, honestly bewildered.

“I’m the one who should thank you for all you’ve done. And just now… for listening.”

“I’m a good listener.” Abby smiled.

“Everybody tells me so.” They said goodbye. Abby sat on the bed and listened to Kris and her bodyguard walk away down the hall. Their footsteps faded out, and Abby was all alone.

Still she didn’t move. She thought it was possible she would never move again. Maybe she had experienced too many poundings, physical and psychological, over the past twenty hours. She was worn out. She’d thought—she had honestly thought-“I thought he loved me,” she whispered, saying the words aloud to hear them in her own voice.

She had always been wary of love and intimacy. She had protected herself from hurt. Yet it seemed all the barriers she had raised had not saved her. Or perhaps it was the barriers that had been the problem. Had she been too vigilant or not vigilant enough? Or was it wrong to blame herself when what mattered was Travis’s dishonesty, his betrayal?

Eyes shut, she wondered if she had loved Paul Travis, imagined a life with him. It seemed ridiculous to plan a future with a man who wouldn’t even kiss her in public-for fear of exposing their relationship.

Why, then, had she continued to see a man who gave her so little?

Perhaps because he demanded so little in return. It was a relationship that had seemed to suit them both. Some people had marriages of convenience.

Theirs had been a love affair of convenience.

She could see the plain truth now, but never before.

The mind was capable of phenomenal feats of self-deception.

And the heart… the lover’s heart… “The heart has its reasons,” she murmured. She had read those words someplace—where? Oh, yes. In Kris Barwood’s yearbook, in Raymond Hickle’s bedroom.

The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of. Hickle’s heart, and Kris’s, and Howard’s, and Travis’s—and hers too, she guessed. Hers too.

The doctor took his time coming to see her, but by 5 p.m. he had given Abby a clean bill of health, and at 5:30 she was in the backseat of a cab, riding toward Hollywood. She watched the streets flow past in a grainy smear. The orange sun burned through the taxi’s rear window and pressed against the back of her head.

After her talk with Kris, she had turned on the TV to follow the news coverage. Hickle had achieved the status he’d always longed for; he had become, in some sense, a celebrity. His photo, several years out of date and taken apparently from an employee identification badge he’d worn on one of his various jobs, was flashed on the screen whenever any local station interrupted its Saturday afternoon programming for another pointless news update.

Howard Barwood was no less famous. A photo of him at a charity function was broadcast with almost equal regularity. Both men were still missing. The only new development was that a car stolen last night from Malibu had been found, abandoned in the Sylmar district of the San Fernando Valley. Since the car had disappeared around the same time that Hickle made his escape, he was presumed to have taken it. How long the car had been in Sylmar, and where Hickle was now, nobody could say.

The cab dropped Abby near the Gainford Arms. Her Dodge was still parked on the side street where she and Wyatt had left it. She unlocked the door and keyed the ignition.

Home was where she wanted to go, but first she had a stop to make. She drove to Hollywood Station, arriving after 6 P.M. By now Wyatt ought to be on duty.

She hated entering a police station; the fewer cops who saw her face, the better. But she had two questions to ask, which Wyatt might be more inclined to answer if she spoke with him in person.

She left her gun and locksmith tools in the glove compartment so she wouldn’t set off the metal detector in the station house. At the entryway she paused to look again at the swollen, westering sun. Having slept for much of the day, she found it odd that the darkness was coming on so soon. She wondered what the night would bring.

In the lobby she asked for Sergeant Wyatt. The desk officer spoke into the phone, then said the sergeant would see her in a minute or two. As it turned out, she waited more than ten minutes. When Wyatt appeared, he led her into an office down the hall. He didn’t speak to her until the door was closed.

“Abby, how are you doing?”

She lifted her arms to demonstrate that all her parts still worked.

“Made a full recovery.”

“You ought to be home resting.”

“I’m on my way home now. Did you just come on duty?”

“Yeah, that’s why you had to wait awhile. I conduct a briefing at the start of the watch.”

“You mean like on Hill Street Blues7 “Be careful out there’?”

He smiled.

“I just tell’em to watch their ass.” The smile faded.

“Maybe I should start telling you the same thing.”

“I can take care—” She stopped.

“Of yourself? I know you can, most of the time.”

“Okay, last night was an exception. I couldn’t have made it without you. And I guess if you want to tell me to watch my ass, I can’t argue, since you already saved it for me. That fair enough?”

“Fair enough.” Wyatt dropped into a chair.

“So why are you here, Abby? I have a feeling you don’t pay a visit to your local police department very often.”

“I want to know something.”

“Why am I not surprised? Go on, ask.”

“Hickle apparently stole a car in Malibu and ditched it in Sylmar. That much is public knowledge. What isn’t public is the make, model, and plate number of the car he replaced it with.”

“What makes you think we know what car he’s driving now?”

“I’m not saying you know anything for certain. But come on. Vie, we’re talking Sylmar on Friday night.

Auto thefts aren’t exactly uncommon in that district.

My guess is, you’ve got at least a couple of grand theft autos that’ occurred in the appropriate time frame-say, one to three a.m.”

“Okay, we do. Three of them, in fact.”

“I want info on those vehicles. One of them is probably Hickle’s new set of wheels.”

Wyatt studied her with narrowed eyes for a long moment.

“You don’t plan to go looking for him, I hope.”

“No.”

“Then why do you need that information?”

“He tried to kill me once. He may try again. If he’s looking for me, I’ll stand a better chance of spotting him if I know what vehicles to watch out for.”

“How could he come after you? He knows only your Hollywood address, and you’re not going back there.”

Abby shrugged.

“Haven’t you been watching the news? Howard Barwood is suspected as Hickle’s accomplice.

Don’t you think Howard could find my home address if he wanted to? He knows my name.

He used to be in real estate.”

Wyatt looked away, his face pained.

“I never thought of that. Which makes me feel pretty goddamned stupid.”

“You’ve probably had a few other things on your mind. So can I have the info?”

“Yeah, hold on, I’ll get it.”

He left the office and returned with a BOLO sheet.

“Until we can nail down which vehicle he lifted; we’re not releasing these details to the media. We don’t want some hothead opening fire on a teenager who took one of these cars for a joyride.”

“I don’t intend to open fire on anybody.” Abby copied the details from the Be on Lookout form into her notepad. The stolen vehicles were a ‘96 Civic, an ‘87 Mustang, and a ‘92 Impala.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Wyatt said, not sounding sure at all.

“But if you see any of these cars, call me. No heroics, please. Not this time.”

“I hear you.” She flipped her pad shut and handed back the sheet.

“One other thing. Do you know if Culver City PD is watching Howard Barwood’s bungalow?”

“They’ve put an unmarked car across the street. If Barwood shows, they’ll grab him. Did you tip them off?” “Travis did. I asked him to, if Howard fled.”

“How’d you—” Wyatt dismissed his own question.

“No, don’t tell me how you knew about the bungalow.

I don’t want to know. So it sounds like you anticipated he’d run.”

“It occurred to me. He’s weak, I think. Like a kid who’s never grown up. A crisis would shake him.

He’d panic. That’s my reading of him.”

Wyatt nodded.

“It comes back to what we were talking about in that bar the other night—how there aren’t too many grownups in LA. Except I don’t know too many overgrown kids who try to have their wives knocked off by a stalker.”

“People are complicated,” Abby said softly, thinking of Travis and his attempted seduction of Kris.

“They can always surprise you. Even the ones you think you know best.”

It was fully dark, nearly 7:30 p.m.” when Abby reached Westwood. A block from the Wilshire Royal she turned onto a side street and cruised through the hilly residential neighborhood, looking for any of the three stolen cars. Nonresident parking was prohibited on most of the streets, and there weren’t many vehicles for her to look at. None matched any entry on the list.

She Wondered if she was being paranoid about this.

Hickle might not know her home address. Even if he did, he might have higher priorities at this moment than revenge. His survival was at stake. He was a hunted animal. By now he could be across the border or holed up in a motel in the desert.

Then she shook her head, recognizing this train of thought for what it was—a dangerous rationalization.

She was tired and wanted to rest. She was trying to convince herself that it was safe to let down her guard, safe to go home and curl up on her sofa and listen to soft music. It was what she badly wanted to do, but what she wanted and what she needed were not necessarily the same thing. Intuition had saved her life on other occasions. She could not afford to ignore it now.

Her intuition insisted that Hickle had not forgotten her. He had learned where she lived. He was close.

The condominium board of the Wilshire Royal had been displeased when plans were announced to raise a sixteen-story office tower directly across the street. The building, the board members correctly prophesied, would be an eyesore. It would block the views from all the units facing Wilshire. It would reduce property values.

Their petitions and protests had been ignored. The building had gone up, a charm less monolith with dull black walls and narrow slits of windows. The Black Tower, people had inevitably called it. Then when the building was nearly completed, the developers had unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy. Work had halted.

And those residents of the Wilshire Royal with northern exposures had been left to stare at a lightless, lifeless hulk.

But tonight the Black Tower was not lifeless. There was body heat inside. There was breathing. There was the slow beat of a patient heart.

Hickle waited, caressing the hammer-forged barrel and walnut stock of his Heckler & Koch 770.

He had arrived at the building last night. In the trunk of the stolen Impala, he’d found a tire iron, with which he’d pried open the locked gate at the construction site. He had climbed nine flights of stairs, guided by his flashlight, lugging his duffel with the shotgun and rifle inside. On the tenth floor he had made his way along a dark hallway to the front of the tower, where bands of plate glass windows overlooked the rushing traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Directly across the street was the Wilshire Royal. Travis had told him that Abby’s apartment was number 1015, fourth from the Royal’s western end. Hickle had taken up a position opposite her window. Her lights were off, the curtains shut. But she would be home eventually.

Among the scattered tools left by the workmen were a glass cutter and a straightedge. With them, Hickle had cut a rectangular hole in the plate glass window.

Through it, when the time came, he could fire.

To pass the hours, he had tested the rifle’s laser sighting system, throwing a long beam of reddish orange light along the target-acquisition line. Its glowing pinpoint was brilliant in the variable-power scope.

He could direct the beam at any spot on Abby’s balcony or on the curtains behind the glass. And where the beam alighted, a bullet would be sure to follow, racing at twenty-two hundred feet per second across a distance of thirty-five yards.

Periodically he had checked the flags in the Royal’s forecourt. He didn’t think windage would be a serious factor at this distance, but he was prepared to adjust his aim by a few inches if a strong gust kicked up. The flags had been limp throughout the day and evening.

There was no breeze.

Most of his time was spent simply waiting. He never rested, never shut his eyes. Now and then he shifted his position, easing the strain on his muscles. He tried standing and squatting, then sitting on a rough work table he’d dragged close to the window. Reluctant to leave his post even for a minute, he had ignored hunger and thirst and the need to urinate. After a while these bodily urges had faded. Now it was eight o’clock on Saturday night, and he felt nothing. He was numb.

The only thing that still worried him was a flare-up of his nerves. He would have to hold the rifle steady, and he wondered if his body would betray him at the critical moment. He didn’t think so. He had failed to kill Abby once. By a miracle he had been offered a second chance.

He did not intend to squander it.

Abby checked the area north of Wilshire. There were more parked cars here. Many, belonging to UCLA students, were older models. Several times she thought she spotted one of the wanted vehicles, but always the license plate proved her wrong.

Passing a house with dark windows and a for sale sign on the lawn, she noticed a car in the carport. The car might be a Chevy Impala; at a distance it was hard to be sure. She parked down the street and returned on foot, carrying her purse with the gun inside. At the foot of the driveway she studied the car. It was parked facing out, which meant the driver had backed into the carport, an awkward procedure. And the front license plate frame was empty. California drivers were issued two plates and usually mounted both.