Living with the Dead (18 page)

ROBYN

Robyn looked out over the multicolored haze of the fairgrounds as her Ferris wheel car climbed. Was Detective Findlay on his way? If he did come, what would he do? Quietly search for her? Or commandeer the PA system, sending Adele into a murderous panic?

She dismissed the last thought by focusing on a lighter one. Tomorrow's headline: "Double Murder Suspect Apprehended on Ferris Wheel." She tried to laugh, but the sound came out shaky, whisked away on the updraft as the car descended, the swaying setting her wounded shoulder afire.

When her car dipped to the bottom, she saw Adele in the crowd by the ride's exit gate. Robyn couldn't summon even a spark of surprise. She was beyond thinking she could outwit Adele. To get through this, she had to believe the unbelievable – that this young woman could find her wherever she went. Accept it and work around it.

So when the car descended the next time, Robyn pretended to search the crowd for Adele, as if she hadn't seen her. As it rose again, she used the cell phone and called a cab. The dispatcher said a car would be at the front gates in twenty minutes. Robyn checked her watch, calculating. She took a deep breath of chill night air. She'd been playing cat and mouse with a psychotic killer for six hours. She could survive another twenty minutes.

Robyn erased all calls from the log. If she had to hand this phone over to Adele, she wasn't taking the chance of her going after Hope when she realized she'd been duped.

Once in the cab, she'd go to the nearest police station. If Adele somehow managed to get there first, Robyn would continue on, from station to station, until she found one where the driver could drop her off right at the door. Then she'd make a run for it.

As plans went, this one sucked, as Damon would say. But it would have to do.

The Ferris wheel was unloading now. Robyn leaned over the side, making a show of searching the crowd. She'd already seen Adele slip behind a burly man at the exit.

Finally Robyn's car reached the platform. She let the operator help her out, and started toward the exit. A few steps from it, she stopped, checking her pockets, then shaking her head. She walked to the bank of cubbies where riders stashed backpacks and stuffed bears. She pretended to root around in the last cube, then darted to a nearby gap in the fencing. The attendant at the gate let out only a halfhearted "hey" as she squeezed through.

Sixteen minutes left.

Robyn didn't run – too obvious – just walked quickly, scouring the attractions for one that would whisk her out of Adele's reach for a few minutes. But the lines were now swollen with laughing, jostling teens who scared away anyone over twenty. Robyn would stick out like a sore thumb among them. What she needed was –

A profanity-laced outburst exploded behind her, and she glanced back to see Adele bowling through a knot of teens, her gaze fixed on Robyn, shouldering aside anyone who got in her path.

Okay, Bobby, browsing time is over. Pick something and hustle your ass in there.

Robyn skirted one large group. Then she saw the answer, shimmering and winking under blinding floodlights. A house of mirrors.

She jogged over, startling the dozing attendant. Clearly not one of the more popular attractions at the fair tonight. All the better. Robyn flashed her wristband, climbed the steps and dashed into the maze.

She snaked down the first few corridors, feeling her way, paying little heed to her surroundings until, deciding she was in deep enough, she slowed.

Think you can find me anywhere, Adele? Try this.

She leaned against the cool glass wall, smiling as she caught her breath. Beyond the trailer, the lights of the fair flashed, distorted bubbles of color.

Uh, Bobby... You shouldn't be able to see that. Not through mirrors.

She told herself it was an illusion, that the lights were actually inside the trailer, reflecting off the mirrors. Then she saw the distorted shape of a man carrying a child on his shoulders, the little one's white shirt glowing.

A house of mirrors? No, she was in a house of glass.

Don't panic, Bobby. You're the only one in there, right? If you can't see the faces of people outside, Adele can't see yours from out there.

But that didn't matter with Adele. She could find Robyn anywhere.

The trailer steps creaked. A figure appeared at the distant entrance. Robyn wheeled and stumbled the other way. Three strides, and she smacked into a pane of glass. Both hands shot out, feeling her way, finding glass in front and to either side, and then she understood the idea of a glass maze. You could see the exit sign, but couldn't get to it, banging around like a bird caught in a sunroom.

She kept feeling. Glass in front and beside, trapped –

Bobby? Relax. You're just caught in a dead end.

She turned and saw the other figure moving through the corridors. She could make out only a light-colored shirt and dark pants, a description that could fit half the people at the fair.

Take a deep breath... then get the hell out of there, Bobby.

Robyn headed back the way she'd come, sweeping the sides and front, taking any turn that would bring her closer to that exit sign. The other person – she refused to think of it as Adele – kept moving, too, getting closer, then farther away as she navigated the maze.

Finally, Robyn saw the exit sign right ahead, above the glass, so close she could jump –

She smacked into the wall.

She frantically ran her hands around all three sides. The exit was
right there
. She could see the steps, the faces of passersby, just one pane of glass separating them.

She turned around. The other figure was closer now, no more than ten feet and a few glass panes away. A woman with dark blond hair and a yellow shirt. Just like –

Don't think, Bobby. Just keep moving.

But moving meant getting closer to Adele. She kept picturing the gun and her knees locked. Finally she closed her eyes and, feeling her way, took one step, then another. The junction that led to the exit couldn't be far. She'd just taken a wrong turn.

Only she hadn't. There hadn't been another route all along that back corridor. Finally she reached the end, turned, and turned again, each move bringing her closer to that searching figure.

Just keep going. If she made it to the entrance, that was good enough. Ignore Adele. It was a public place –

At a smack against the glass, Robyn jumped and even as she turned, the memory of Adele at the taxi window resurfaced and she knew –

There she was, right on the other side, her face twisted by the warped glass, pulled into something monstrous, all eyes and gaping mouth. Even through the distortion, Robyn could see her hate and felt a twinge of outrage. What had she done to deserve this girl's hatred?

She's nuts, Bobby. She doesn't need a reason. Just run –

Adele pulled out her gun.

Robyn sidestepped, unable to tear her gaze away from the weapon.

It's on the other side of the glass, Bobby. She's trying to spook you. Don't let her. Just get out of there.

Another slow step sideways. Robyn slid her hand into her pocket and took out the cell phone, then motioned throwing it over the wall. Adele nodded and lowered the gun.

Robyn reached as high as she could and dropped the phone over the wall. She didn't wait to see whether Adele caught it. She was turning to run when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Adele let the phone hit the floor, her hands rising, the gun swinging up.

Robyn dove. The bullet sliced through the glass and whizzed past her.

Holy shit. Holy shit!

Robyn scrambled up and ran, hands out, veering when she felt glass. She heard another crack behind her. Another bullet.

Wasn't anyone out there? Couldn't they hear it? Adele had a silencer on the gun, but it made a noise. An unmistakable noise, along with breaking glass. With the racket from the carnival, though, no one noticed. Robyn could scream as loud as she wanted and she'd only be mistaken for a girl on the Zipper next door.

The glass in front of her cracked into a spider web, bullet hole in the center. Robyn spun, wildly feeling for another passage, found one and took it, leading her toward the rear of the trailer.

A distorted, painted clown leered from the back wall. Something about the image wasn't right, the costume off-kilter, as if someone had put up a painted panel wrong, leaving a black line through it. Then she realized the line was the night sky, the painting masking a door, the distortion meaning it was cracked open.

She barreled toward it, hands out, expecting another glass wall, ready to smash through it. But her luck held and in three steps she was at the door, stumbling forward in her eagerness, hands hitting hard. The door flew open under her weight and she staggered, about to fall face-first off the steps when a figure caught her and slammed the door behind her.

She opened her mouth to shriek. A hand clamped over her mouth. The figure yanked her around, one hand at her waist, the other around her neck, pulling her back against him.

"Shhh," a man's voice said. "You're okay."

She struggled to turn around, managing to catch a glimpse of dark hair before he grabbed her shoulders, propelling her down the steps and into the shadows behind the trailer. Then he pulled her against him again, his hand ready to clamp over her mouth, waiting until she gave him cause.

Adele's footsteps sounded across the trailer floor.

"Karl?" Robyn whispered.

"Shhh, yes. You're okay."

"How – ?" She'd been about to ask how he found her, then remembered the phone call and Hope overhearing the background noise.

He leaned into her ear. "Count of three?" He pointed to a narrow dark strip behind the row of trailers.

He started counting. On three, she ran, with Karl behind her. She tried to glance back once, but he gave her a shove, hissing for her to keep going.

Finally they reached an exit marked Staff Only manned by a pimply teen. Still pushing her forward, Karl grabbed the gate.

The kid lowered his magazine. "Hey, are you – ?"

"Staff."

Karl prodded her through. Again, she tried to slow, to talk, to turn and look at him, but he shoved her, even less gently this time, with a gruff "move."

Now she could see why the fair had been crammed into one end of the park. The other was hilly and wooded. When she squinted, she could make out a sign telling cyclists to stay off the footpath. That was where Karl took her, onto that path and into the woods.

They'd gone about fifteen feet when his steps slowed to a walk.

"This looks like a good place," he said. "Suitably nondescript. She won't find you here."

The voice, no longer distorted by whispering, was not Karl's.

Robyn turned. Behind her stood the young man she'd followed that afternoon. The one who'd attacked Karl.

FINN

If this partnership was going to work out, Finn needed to be a lot more careful what he let Damon overhear.

After Officer Kendall's body was removed, Damon had circled behind Finn, trying to eavesdrop, and he'd gotten into earshot at the worst possible moment.

"So... a shoulder shot," Damon said – again – as Finn drove toward the fairgrounds.

"It's one of the safest places to be shot. The bullet usually passes through – "

"You said that. But this
usually
part. What if it doesn't pass through? Is it only safe if it does? Can something go wrong?"

"It's usually nonfatal – " Finn caught the qualifier even before seeing Damon's wince. "It's nonfatal."

Damon leaned over to check the speedometer, clearly no happier with what he saw there than he'd been with Finn's answer.

"She said she was okay," Finn said.

"Bobby would say that if she'd been run over by a truck and could still crawl from the scene. Did she sound – ?" He broke off with a disgusted snort. "You wouldn't know."

He meant Finn didn't know Peltier, but Finn didn't imagine that clip of annoyance in Damon's words. His wife had been shot and Finn was moseying along, having deemed her life unworthy of sirens and an ambulance.

Explaining why he was proceeding cautiously would mean telling Damon what Peltier said, that her shooter was still hot on her trail. Whoever was following Peltier had already proven himself ready to kill her and anyone who got in his way. So Finn wasn't about to tear in there with a full squad car escort. He'd called his lieutenant, who'd coordinated it from there. A backup team would cover exits discreetly while Finn searched inside for Peltier.

Had Finn made the right call? He hoped so. Peltier had sounded calm and rational on the phone and, from everything Damon had said, this was normal – she wasn't in shock. Finn trusted she could keep herself safe, whether it took him ten minutes to get there or fifteen.

And if he was worried about why the line disconnected? And who'd been that voice in the background? More things Damon didn't need to know.

"Promise me you'll get her to a hospital?" Damon said.

"That would be standard procedure."

Damon watched the light pass, then looked back at Finn. "She might argue. She'll want medical attention – she doesn't take risks like that – but she'll downplay the injury and try to get the interview over with first. That's how she prioritizes."

"I'll tell her we can conduct the interview at the hospital."

"Good. Efficient. She'll like that."

Damon turned back to the window. Finn thought about what it must be like for him, wandering alone in limbo for six months. Then, when he did find someone who could hear him, he had to talk about his wife without really talking
about
her, to a stranger who didn't know her, whose only interest in her was as a subject in a case.

It was different where Finn had come from. There, you were part of the community. You knew Bobby Miller was having a tough time with his parents' divorce and it would be enough to give him a stern lecture and make him pay for the broken window. Just like you knew that Ray Thomas, bawling in the drunk tank, might very well be telling the truth when he said he was sorry, but if you let him get away with it, next time the Sooners lost a game, he'd take it out on his wife's face again.

Then Finn came to Los Angeles.

To survive here, Finn had to squelch that part of himself and emulate Joe Friday. Just the facts, ma'am.

Now, riding with Damon, Finn realized how much he hated this, how much happier he'd been back on that small-town force. It wasn't in his nature to be cold and clinical, and it was gnawing away at him like frostbite. But there was little need for his gift back home, where more than one homicide a year would be a crime wave. If Finn was going to make proper use of his abilities he had to stay in L.A. and dream of the day he'd be back home, driving his squad car, asking his passenger "so how's your wife?" and knowing the answer mattered.

"Flashing lights ahead," Damon said. "Either that's the mother of all accidents or we've got ourselves a carnival."

Finn followed his gaze to colored lights twinkling beyond the next block.

"Something tells me I'm about to do a disappearing act." Damon's fingers silently drummed the armrest. "If I do, when you find her, don't tell – " He inhaled sharply.

"Don't tell her about you."

"Yeah."

Finn turned at a hand-drawn parking sign.

"It wouldn't be right," Damon said finally. "She'll have a lot on her mind and that would just freak her out."

"I need her to trust me – and telling her I see ghosts, even yours, isn't going to help."

A tight laugh. "Yeah."

"Later, though, we could... figure something out."

Damon nodded. After a few seconds of silence he said, "Sure. If it works out. That would be good."

Five minutes later, Finn was flashing his badge at the ticket girl and stepping inside the fairgrounds. The backup team hadn't arrived, but Damon was still at his side.

"Maybe whatever power decided to let you help me is going to let you see her," Finn said.

"Or maybe it means she isn't here." Damon shook his head. "Damn, I'm a regular ray of sunshine tonight, aren't I?"

But as they walked to the midway, Damon's mood did grow sunnier. The bounce returned to his step. He started singing along to a song playing at the rides. His gaze scoured the crowd, hope sparking in his eyes every time he caught sight of a blond head.

"So where are you supposed to meet her?" Damon asked.

"Here."

"I meant
where
here."

"She didn't specify."

Damon stopped walking. Finn slowed, waiting for him to catch up. He didn't.

"Either you think I'm a complete idiot or you're hoping I'm too worried to think straight. This is my wife we're talking about, Finn. She'd never hang up without giving you a meeting place, complete with a description, the nearest entrance and optimal parking. Hell, the fact she didn't offer to send MapQuest directions to your cell phone already told me she's worse off than she's letting on."

Finn had resumed walking, scanning faces. "We got disconnected."

"What?" Damon strode up beside him.

"I was having trouble hearing her, then we were disconnected. I thought I heard a woman in the background. Maybe Adams. I couldn't make out what she said."

A passing boy turned to stare up at Finn. "Who's that man talking – ?"

His mother shushed him, then tugged him closer, arm going around him as she cast a nervous glance at Finn, stopping well short of making eye contact. At a place like this, people talking to themselves wouldn't be that uncommon. Still, he should be more careful or he'd find himself explaining the situation to security.

"Did she call back?" Damon asked.

Finn shook his head.

"Did you call her?"

He nodded.

"And?" Damon prompted.

"Her phone's turned off."

"When's the last time you tried?"

Finn motioned for Damon to keep looking as he took out his cell. This time, he didn't get the message that the customer was "unavailable." It just rang and rang.

"So?" Damon said when Finn hung up.

"Nothing."

Damon nodded, presuming that meant the phone was still turned off. Finn started to pocket it.

"Shouldn't you keep that out?" Damon said. "You can use it when you're talking to me instead of scaring the kiddies."

Finn wasn't comfortable with the subterfuge – which explained why he kept forgetting to do it – but it had to be better than talking to himself in public.

Still scouring the crowds, they passed a row of games.

"Hey," Damon said. "Ring toss. I remember Bobby..."

He let the sentence fade.

The cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID.

"It's her," he said.

He retreated into a quieter spot between two booths, then answered. For a moment, he heard only the noise of the fair through the phone, a tinny stereo to the commotion around him.

"Hello?" she said, her voice tentative, as if he'd called her.

"Robyn?"

"Yes. You called?"

"It's Detective Findlay. I'm at the fair. Where are you?"

A longer pause now. Damon had climbed onto a game booth and was scanning the crowd.

"Robyn?" Finn said.

"Sorry, I..." Another pause. Then, "He's here, Detective. I'm – "a sharp breath. "I – I'm just so scared. I thought I was safe, calling you, and then he was right there, coming for me, so I had to hang up and run, and then I tried phoning back but my phone wasn't working and – "

"Slow down, Robyn."

Hearing that, Damon glanced over.

"He's here, Detective. He's here, somewhere, and I can't see him and I – "

"Slow down, Robyn. Who's there? Who's following you?"

Damon jumped off the counter, the alarm in his eyes tempered by confusion.

"I-I need to get out of here, Detective. I can't stay. He'll find me and then he'll kill me. I know he will. Just like he killed that poor cop and – "

"Robyn, I need you to take a deep breath and calm down."

Damon stepped close enough to listen in.

Finn continued, "The man who's following you. He's the one who shot Officer Kendall?"

"Right. And the other one, Portia's bodyguard. I went to his house – "

"Judd Archer."

"Right."

"Are you sure it's the same man?"

"Of course I'm sure. He was right there. On that street and at Judd's house. He's tall with dark hair and a scar under his eye. I'm not sure if it's the left or right eye. Left, I think. He's wearing a green jacket. He's here somewhere, at the fair. I can't stay. I have to get out of here. Will you find him for me? Stop him?"

"I'll do my best."

The line went dead.

"That – " Damon began.

" – wasn't Robyn. I know."