The Deepest Cut (42 page)

The house that Li had pointed out appeared shuttered and forlorn. Thin drapes were closed over the front windows. A light that appeared to be from a table lamp glowed dimly inside. They could see a flickering television through the drapes. While most of the other houses on the street had their front doors open behind their screen doors to take advantage of the cool night air, the front door of this house was closed. An old window air conditioner at the side was cranking for all it was worth, dripping condensation onto the ground.

“Victor’s grandfather lives there,” Li said.

“That doesn’t answer my question about how you know Victor is there.” Kissick was getting tired of Marvin Li. In spite of all of Li’s and his attorney’s promises, he had yet to give them anything useful.

He thought of Nan and wondered what she was up to. He hadn’t heard from her since she’d left the station earlier that afternoon when Sergeant Early had told her to go home. He was concerned about what had happened between her and Emily that had prompted Em to rage at her mother over the phone. He recalled how edgy she’d been in Sergeant Early’s office earlier that day. He’d never seen her like that before. He was worried.

“I don’t know
absolutely
that he’s there right now,” Li said. “This is where he usually goes when he wants to hide out.”

“What does he need to hide out from?” Caspers asked. “What made him run? One minute, he’s holding his sign on Newcastle Street, the next, he’s gone. What happened from one minute to the next, Marvin?”

Kissick took out his cell phone and began typing a text message to Vining. He was going to keep it a simple “How R U?” but his fingers got carried away with him and he added, “Im w Ac and tats.” He told
her he was with Alex Caspers and Marvin Li. “M/B found chang. Call U L8r.” He pressed Send and hoped she had her cell phone turned on.

“I guess he got scared,” Li said. “If you let me go to the door, I can talk to him.”

“Did someone tip him off that you were arrested?” Kissick returned his cell phone to the holder on his belt.

“I don’t know,” Li said. “I’m telling you that if you just let me talk to him, I can convince him to turn himself in.”

“How are you going to convince him to do that, Marvin?” Caspers turned to look at Li in the backseat.

Li was looking almost forlornly at the bungalow across the street. The confrontational persona that he’d wielded in his earlier interactions with the detectives was gone. Kissick thought he looked shaken and afraid.

“What’s troubling you, Marvin?” Kissick hooked his arm around the headrest of his seat and turned toward Li. “Talk to us. We can help you.”

Li’s cuffed wrists behind his back made his muscle-bound upper body stretch the seams of his shirt. “I’m troubled because Victor needs to do the right thing. Let me call him at least.”

“So you can tell him we’re here?” Kissick’s cell phone pinged, indicating he had a text message. He looked at the display that said: Message from Nan Cell. He clicked to read it.

“Good luck w Chang. Im home. All quiet. Stay safe. Love.”

“No, so I can convince him to do the right thing,” Li replied.

Kissick smiled as he slipped his phone back onto his belt. Motion at the house across the street drew his attention. “Suspect on the move.”

He picked up the two-way radio and raised Lam while he watched Victor Chang exit a door at the side of the house, walk down two steps to the driveway, and head toward the garage.

Li lurched toward the car door and wrenched his body around, yanking the handle with his hands that were cuffed behind him. The door locks and window controls in the backseat were disabled. From the driv er’s seat, Caspers turned and grabbed Li, pulling him away from the window while Li pleaded, “Let me talk to him! I need to talk to him.”

“Stay here. Get backup,” Kissick ordered Caspers. Bolting from the car, he began running across the street.

Everything happened at once.

When the Mountaineer’s door opened, Li started yelling in Chinese.

The Chevy Caprice roared toward the driveway.

Chang rabbited.

At the wheel of the Caprice, Lam dodged dog walkers and people ambling after dinner as he drove across the lawn and came to a skidding stop across the driveway, nearly plowing into the house. The detectives spilled from the vehicle.

“Halt! Police! Freeze!”

Some people on the street stood as if stunned while others ran with their dogs and kids toward the safety of their homes.

Chang dashed across the backyard, ignoring the detectives’ commands.

Kissick reached the backyard in time to see Chang scamper over a wooden back fence. Lam, the youngest and the fastest of the cops, was quickly over the fence behind him.

Kissick ordered Jones and Sproul to drive the Caprice around the block. Kissick clambered over the fence. He heard sirens in the distance and the pop of gunfire. Dropping to the ground and rolling, he was grateful there weren’t rosebushes on the other side. He spotted Lam crouched behind a tree, returning fire, as Chang ran along a side yard. Kissick drew his gun and remembered he wasn’t wearing his Kevlar vest. He hadn’t even brought it. They had been going to look at the house and get the exact address, not get out of the car. He felt stupid not to have taken this simple precaution.

“Stay inside!” Kissick shouted when he saw faces appear in the windows of the house. “Get down!”

Kissick followed Lam through the side yard. Kissick saw Chang cross the front yard and run into the street as Jones in the Caprice pulled across it, blocking it. Citizens scattered, yelling and crying as they ran into homes and locked doors. PPD black-and-whites filled the street in both directions. A field sergeant shouted to the citizens to stay inside and away from the windows.

Younger, faster officers pursued Chang in his crazy effort to escape as he vaulted over hedges and fences, going from yard to yard.

Kissick kept up, buoyed by adrenaline, hating to lose a fight.

Above, a PPD helicopter was making a tremendous racket, bathing Chang in white light. Still, he ran, splashing through a child’s plastic wading pool.

A large mongrel dog joined in the chase, grabbing onto Chang’s pant leg and slowing him down as he scaled a chain-link fence. Officers moved in, cutting off his escape route, dropping into firing position beside the house and behind trees in the yard where he had intended to run. Other officers blocked his return through the yard he had just traversed. Kissick and Lam were in position there.

Chang was stuck on top of the chain-link fence, his gun in his hand, illuminated by the spotlight from the helicopter churning the air above. He might have been on stage as he considered the most important decision of his life.

A voice amplified by a bullhorn came from the shadows. “Drop your weapon. You are surrounded. You cannot escape.”

Kissick was crouched behind a steel storage shed. He was talking to the field sergeant on the two-way, holding it in his left hand while he held his gun up in his right. He explained to the sergeant that they might try getting Marvin Li to see if he could talk Chang into surrendering.

While the sergeant sent someone to retrieve Li, Kissick moved slightly forward from the flimsy protection of the storage shed and shouted, “Victor, this is Detective Kissick. Move very slowly and drop the gun. You have your whole life ahead of you. We’re bringing Marvin Li to talk to you.”

Literally on the fence, Chang wavered, looking disoriented as he blinked in the bright light from the helicopter. At Kissick’s last words, he defiantly drew himself straight, shoulders back, chest out. “I’m not taking the fall for China Dog.”

Kissick moved a little farther out to get a better look at Chang. “Victor, there’s no way to escape.”

“Yes there is.” Chang took a shot at Kissick, sending his radio flying from his hand and sending him backward into rotting leaves piled behind the shed.

By the time the gunfire had stopped, Victor Chang was no longer on the fence.

LAM FLEW TO THE SIDE OF HIS FALLEN COMRADE. “JIM, YOU ALL RIGHT? YOU
hit?”

“I’m okay. I don’t think I’m hit.” Kissick was bent backward over the hill of leaves. He tried to get traction to stand.

Lam offered his hand.

Kissick took it and got to his feet. “Is Chang dead?”

“Oh yeah.”

Kissick felt something on his left hand. Looking at it, he saw blood.

“You’re hit,” Lam said.

Kissick worked his fingers. He stepped from behind the shed to get better light. He saw Chang’s bullet-ridden body on the far side of the fence with scads of cops surrounding it. The police helicopter spotlighted the gore. Farther up in the sky was a TV news copter.

“The bullet just grazed me. I was holding my radio. I wonder if it took the hit. I just need a Band-Aid.”

“You were lucky.”

He heard the two-way radio scratch to life, broadcasting Sergeant Early’s voice. He followed the sound in the darkness and found the radio against a fence behind the shed. He brought her up-to-date.

“Sarge, it’s nothing. It’s just a scratch. I don’t want to take the time to go to the E.R.” He knew he was going to lose that battle. He reflex-ively felt for his cell phone and discovered it was not in the holder on his belt.

“Okay, I’ll have it checked out.” He signed off. He drew his hand through his hair as he looked around. “Where the hell is my cell phone? Oh,
man …”

FORTY-FIVE

V
INING WENT HOME AFTER HER MEETING WITH BETSY GILROY.
Alone and too rattled to sit still, she cleaned the house, dusting and vacuuming the remotest nooks and crannies. It was after eleven and she was still going. When she’d arrived home, she’d intended to put on her pajamas and robe, curl up in the La-Z-Boy with the TV remote, and take it easy, like everyone was admonishing her to do. Problem was, she couldn’t do it.

The office of the security firm where the creepy guard had worked wouldn’t be open until nine o’clock in the morning. So Vining cleaned, hoping she’d exhaust herself and be able to collapse into bed and succumb to deep, dreamless sleep. She thought of Kissick. Since she hadn’t heard from him again, she wondered if he’d successfully apprehended Victor Chang and was busy interrogating him.

She picked up her cell phone from the dinette table where she’d left it and sent him a text message: “All Ok? Good here. Restless! Love.”

She smiled as she pressed Send. She got a kick out of signing off with “Love.” It made her feel as giddy as a teenager.

Realizing she was hungry, she foraged in the refrigerator. There was a lot of leftover crock pot beef stew, but she’d already had some
when she was home earlier before Em’s dad had picked her up. She felt like having something more indulgent. In the freezer she found a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Em had thrown it into the shopping cart. Among other changes in Em, adolescence had brought on a sweet tooth.

She grabbed the ice-cream container. It felt light. She took off the lid and saw a few spoonfuls left.

Walking into the TV room, she picked up the remote control and turned on the television. Seeking something lively and distracting, she found
The Tonight Show.
Jay Leno was interviewing a lithesome young actress whom Vining had never heard of. They were laughing. Vining had wanted something lively, but found their too-animated laughter grating, so she turned off the television.

Feeling the air in the house was stuffy, she undid the locks on the sliding glass door and walked onto the terrace. She half expected to see the ghost of Frankie Lynde standing there, which would pretty much make her trying day complete. Happily, she saw no otherworldly being and the wind chimes were silent. She was grateful. She had enough ghosts to deal with right now. Other dead women would not let her rest: Marilu Feathers, Johnna Alwin, and Cookie Silva.

Her meeting with Betsy Gilroy gnawed at her, especially the chief’s cutting comments, which had hit their mark. Vining knew that no investigator likes to have how she’s handled a case questioned, especially a closed case and especially by an outsider. Still, she felt that Gilroy’s attack had been particularly venomous and shockingly personal, especially coming from the chief.

Vining had to admit that in her worst moments, she felt much as Gilroy had portrayed her. She sometimes felt that she hadn’t fully returned from that place— the other side. She wondered if the different pieces of herself would ever be rejoined. She feared she would forever remain fractured.

Did she have to wait until she was dead before she would feel complete?

She dragged the spoon around the melting edges of the ice cream and ate it as she leaned against the railing and looked at her forgotten
corner of the city. Across the night sky, a TV news helicopter tore past, heading in the direction of Pasadena.

She heard her cell phone ringing. Her heart skipped a beat as she bolted into the house to answer the phone that she’d left in the kitchen. It had to be Jim.

She frowned as she looked at the display. The area code was local, but she didn’t recognize the number.

She answered, “Nan Vining.”

“Detective Vining, this is Chief Betsy Gilroy I apologize for calling so late.”

Disappointed the call wasn’t from Kissick, Vining was bewildered: Gilroy was the last person she expected to hear from. “No problem, Chief. I’m up. What can I do for you?”

She heard Gilroy take a long breath before speaking. “Look, Detective, I wasn’t completely up-front with you today.”

From Vining’s brief exposure to Gilroy and what she’d heard about her, she thought the chief sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.

The chief explained. “I … ahh … want to come clean with you. You deserve that. I have information about that other person of interest you spoke of. The … um … security guard.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“The thing is, Detective, given the delicate nature of what I’m going to tell you, I don’t want to meet in my office.”

“Okay. Whatever works for you, Chief.”

“I want you to come to the Foothill Museum, uh, now.”