Hammond understood that part, too. "She was bending low."
"Keeping out of sight?"
"Giving him head."
Banner took this in. "During the chase? That's pretty impressive. I mean, you've got to admire that kind of focus."
"Shut up, Phil."
The driver and his passenger were on the pavement, being patted down and handcuffed by patrol officers. The hooker was laughing. The John looked like he was about to throw up.
"It's not a problem, Chief," Lewinsky said. "We're not any worse off than we were before."
The KNBC news van bearing Susy Chen turned the corner at that moment. There would be others.
"We're not, are we?" Hammond shook his head in gathering fury. "Every station will lead with this. Cops let a serial killer slip through their fingers while they nab a perv with a party girl."
"It's a setback, is all," Lewinsky said with exasperating optimism.
"It's a fuckup. And I'm the one who has to take the blame." He caught Banner flashing an I-told-you-so look and answered it with a cold glare. "Phil, start working the Channel Four crew. Put the best spin on this. I'll make a statement once the rest of the TV assholes show up."
Only TV mattered. Radio and newspapers were strictly minor-league ball.
"Got it, Chief. Meanwhile, you gonna get some background on the driver?"
"Fuck the driver. I want to talk to Wolper. I want to know what in Christ's name went on here."
Hammond stalked toward Wolper's Sable, Lewinsky trailing him like an eager puppy.
Chapter Forty-five
Robin got out of the car along with Wolper and Brand as the deputy chief approached. By now it was obvious that the pursuit had been a mistake. The wrong car had been followed. Gray had slipped away. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. She ought to want him apprehendedbut part of her, oddly, was relieved.
Her worst fear had been that Gray would die in a shoot-out resisting arrest. Then she might never find Meg, never know what had really happened today. That possibility was too painful to consider.
"All right," Hammond said to Wolper and Brand, while Robin lingered close by. "I want to know what the hell happened here."
"We spotted Gray in a video arcade," Wolper began.
Hammond interrupted. "I know the fucking chronology. What exactly were you two men doing there in the first place?"
"Sergeant Brand just happened to be in the area on personal business," Wolper said. "We ran into him on the street. He had nothing to do with this. I take full responsibility."
Robin had to admire Wolper for loyalty to his subordinate, even if she still didn't trust Brand or buy his story.
Hammond seemed unimpressed. "Fine. Then I'll direct my questions to Lieutenant Wolper. You were in the arcade with Dr. Cameron?"
"Yes, sir."
"I assume you had a good reason for bringing a civilian into danger."
Robin started to answer, but Wolper waved her silent. "It was an error of judgment on my part."
"Do you really think so?" Hammond asked with heavy sarcasm. "You're paid to exercise good judgment, Lieutenant."
"I'm aware of that, sir."
"If you thought Gray was in this area, you should have passed on the information to me. Investigating on your own initiative is bad enough. It's cowboy stuff."
"Yes, sir." Robin noticed the deputy chief's adjutant, whose badge identified him as Lewinsky, smirking at Wolper, enjoying his humiliation.
"Allowing a civilian to accompany you," Hammond went on, "especially a civilian who has already been victimized and who is personally known to the fugitive, was more than an error in judgment. It was potentially a catastrophe. If something had happened to Dr. Cameron while she was in our protective custody amp;"
Robin felt sure that Hammond was thinking about how it would have played in the media. His definition of a catastrophe was unfavorable news coverage.
"I understand, sir," Wolper said humbly.
"I hope you do. We'll have a fuller discussion of this matter when there's more time."
"Yes, sir."
"Meanwhile, you are to have no further connection with this investigation. Is that clear?"
"It's clear."
"I hope so, Lieutenant. I really do."
Robin spoke up at last. "Excuse me, Chief. Aren't you forgetting something?"
Hammond turned a cold eye on her. "What would that be?"
"We did find Gray."
"And lost him."
"We tracked him down," Robin persisted. "I had an idea of where he might go. Lieutenant Wolper helped me check it out. And we were right. Isn't that what's important?"
"What's important is following proper procedure. Without organization there is chaos."
"Did you hear that in a management seminar?"
Hammond straightened his shoulders. "Under the circumstances. Dr. Cameron, I would think you'd be less concerned with LAPD policy and more concerned with the recovery of your daughter." He cocked his head at a politely quizzical angle. "Or had you forgotten about her?"
Anger lashed her. She said the first thing she could think of. "You fucking pogue."
Wolper laughed. Lewinsky looked stricken. Hammond simmered, searching for a reply, found none, and spun on his heel to stride off, pursued by his adjutant.
"Nice use of the lingo," Wolper said.
Robin sighed. "I probably just got you in more trouble."
"Oh, yeah." Wolper smiled. "But it was worth it."
Wolper drove Brand back to the arcade, where he'd left his car. Robin sat in the backseat. No one said anything. The silence between them was thick and close, almost tangible.
Her cell phone rang. Gray again? Hurriedly she dug it out of her purse. "Hello?"
"Dr. Cameron?" It wasn't Gray. It was the criminalist, Gaines. "Your daughter had set up a password to protect her e-mail cache. I brought in someone from the computer crime unit to hack into the files. It turns out she was corresponding with this man Gabe, as her diary indicated. It's not clear if she actually met him or if it was just an Internet thing."
She kept her voice low, not wanting Brand, in the front seat, to hear. "Can you find out who he is? Trace the e-mails?"
"Let me have you talk to Pete Farber. He's our computer guy."
The phone was handed over to Farber, who started in on a technical explanation without any social preamble. "We have twenty-six e-mails generated by Novell's GroupWise software. The routing info indicates that the point of origin was the Los Angeles municipal WAN." He pronounced it like ban. "The IP address assigned to the user's computer is within a range reserved for the LAPD WAN"
"Wait a minute." She lowered her voice still further. "LAPD?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What is a WAN, exactly?"
"Wide-area network. Computers can be connected into a network of any size. If the network is smallsay, all the computers in one office or one buildingit's a local-area network, a LAN. If you start linking up LANs from different offices or buildings, you've got a WAN."
"And the LAPD has one of these WAN networks?"
"That's right. There are more than thirty-five hundred workstations in the LAPD, running the Novell NetWare operating system. Each LAPD station is a local-area net. The stations are linked together in a wide-area net, using highspeed T-one lines, mainly."
"And these e-mails were sent from within that system?"
"Right. GroupWise e-mail is used primarily for interoffice communication throughout the WAN, but the network does have Internet egress pointsmeaning it's possible for a user to send a message to someone outside the municipal net. That's what happened here."