Hood’s reaction surprised him: he was proud of her, too, and wanted her to be safely alive to mother her children, teach her students, drive her Corvette fast and maybe spend some quality time with Los Angeles County’s most recently minted homicide detective. Nice guy, bright future. For a moment he was able to see her like everyone else saw her and it was good.
He told himself it was possible that both he and Madeline were wrong about Allison Murrieta, even though he knew they weren’t. It didn’t matter that no one else on Earth could see what they had seen. What they saw was true. He had told Marlon but Marlon was skeptical because the two women didn’t look enough alike, in his opinion. Wyte had agreed. Hood felt like an unwanted witness-alone, unheard, doomed. Which is exactly how he figured Suzanne felt, running for her life.
“I think my kid had her in eighth grade,” said a reporter near Hood. “U.S. history.”
“Good teacher?”
“Beats me,” said the reporter.
“They say she is. The awards and all.”
“What’s the tattooed pygmy want with her?”
“I think she just stumbled across a crime scene,” said Hood.
“And now he’s after her? That’s a story.”
“Write it up. Run the pictures real big. It could help.”
When Patmore opened up for questions, they came fast and loud.
Hood drifted out with his cell phone throbbing against his hip.
“Why?” she asked.
“We had to.”
“I will not be hunted. And don’t tell me some story about a good night’s sleep in the hotel of your choice. Everybody in Southern California is going to be looking for me and it’s your fault.”
“There’s nothing else we can do, Suzanne. We can’t help you if we can’t find you.”
Hood suddenly felt a sharp and unexpected sorrow for Suzanne Jones. Had she invented the Murrieta guise as a joke, or out of boredom, or because of competition with her mother, then been seduced by the action and the notoriety? Was she simply insane? He came close to telling her what he knew-that she was Allison Murrieta-and what he almost knew-that she had taken the diamonds from Miracle Auto Body after picking Melissa’s vengeful brain. But he didn’t, because that way he’d never see her again except in a hospital or in a morgue.
And because it was his duty to arrest her.
“Okay, say you’ve found me. Say I’m sitting right across from you. What the hell are you gonna do with me?”
“We’ve got safe houses.”
“Where?”
“Desert, mountains, beach. Take your pick. We’d have two deputies there, twenty-four/seven.”
“Hood, I can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“He would have hacked Mom and Grandma to pieces.”
Hood couldn’t get Jackson and Ruiz out of his mind, his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his dreams. “Yes.”
“He killed two cops.”
“Suzanne. Come in. I want you safe. The best thing you can do for them is stay with us for a while.”
“What’s a while, Hood? Two days? A year? What if Lupercio decides to wait me out, just lets me go back to work and bides his time?”
“He’ll kill you for sure is what.”
“I’m not going to be run off my job. I’m walking into my classroom in September. I’m going to teach those thick-headed kids whether they want to be taught or not.”
Earlier Wyte had suggested that if Suzanne would come in they could stage a video “statement” in a good location, subtly reveal her whereabouts, televise it and wait for Lupercio.
“Help us set a trap,” said Hood. “You come in. We help you video a statement where you refuse to come in for questioning out of fear. But you want your family and friends to know you’re okay, safe right where you are. You send it to the newspeople and they run with it. We’ll make sure it gives Lupercio an idea of where you are. Just a touch, just enough to get him to come around. Then you’re free to go. Or you can take a safe house. Up to you.”
“You do remember my last safe house?
“Do you have a better idea?”
“You’re unimaginative, Hood.”
“I’m trying to save your ass.”
“Why bother?”
“So I can enjoy it.”
Suzanne was silent for a long moment. Hood slipped outside the headquarters building into the heat of the evening. Again he almost told her what he knew, but he could not.
“You have to help me help you. Come in.”
“Okay,” she said. “You work out the details. You get the location set up and figure the clues and get the video camera ready. Then I’ll do it. But no safe houses. No protective custody. No cages of any kind. None of that. I’ll tape a statement then I’m splitting. Deal?”
“Deal. There will be at least two more of us, a sergeant and a captain. They’ve done this before.”
“Comforting.”
“I want you to be okay, Suzanne.”
“You busy tonight, Charlie?”
He hesitated. If she was with him she was safer. Suzanne and Allison were safer. He would protect them and bring them to justice.
He couldn’t think of any meaning of the word idiot that didn’t apply to himself. “I hope so.”
26
Which leaves me three hours to boost a better ride because I can’t entertain Hood in a Sentra. And I need to hit the Burger King on Reseda Boulevard, which I cased last week and looks very good.
I take a taxi to a long-term parking lot by LAX where I’ve got an arrangement with one of the shuttle drivers who has a nice black GTO in a private corner. I pull out the door lock with the slide-hammer, grab the ignition assembly and go to work on the wires. My heart is not steady but my fingers are.
When I’m done I check my time on the Rolex I bought from Carl Cavore for a grand. It’s got ten diamonds on the dial and a rare mother-of-pearl face that tells me I’m gone in seventy-five seconds, not bad for a history teacher who steals cars only as a hobby.
Ten minutes later I’m at the Pep Boys in San Fernando, where another associate of mine replaces the GTO door lock with an off-the-shelf universal that looks fine. And he pulls what’s left of the old ignition and installs an aftermarket imitation that operates on a regular key. Which means I don’t need a key with a microchip to start my new beauty, just a freshly cut key that costs me next to nothing. The work and parts run me six bills but I’m out in less than fifty minutes because this guy doesn’t fool around.
Then to work. I park on a quiet residential street not far from the BK and I get suited up for the job: wig, gloves, pepper spray on my belt, Cañonita in the satchel, mask in my pocket. I’m already wearing the loose trousers and blouse and vest that allow for unrestricted movement in the event I need to run for miles and climb fences to get away from a homicidal maniac. The clothes help disguise me, too. I think a very quick prayer of thanks that the only person in the world who has recognized Allison as me is my own mother. I think I put some doubt in her, however, by questioning the agility of her mind. A little doubt goes a long way.
One of the things that Joaquin liked to do was to work fast, hit three or four remote ranches in one night, steal the good horses and run them up north into the mother lode because that’s where the miners and the money were. Three-Fingered Jack, who rode with Joaquin, used to complain about the thirty-six-hour runs to steal and sell the horses-no sleep, no time to drink or whore or gamble until they’d sold off the horseflesh. In his journal Joaquin admitted to drinking “many gallons of powerful coffee” on his three-day crime binges. He brewed the coffee and carried it in cloth-covered canteens wrapped in serapes to keep it hot and protect the horses.
Jack’s real name was Manuel Garcia. His hand got mangled in a roping accident when he was a boy, thus the finger loss. He was killed alongside Joaquin by Harry Love and his “California Rangers,” and they cut Jack’s three-fingered hand off for ID. The hand was purportedly displayed in the same jar as Joaquin’s severed head, and I’ve seen posters advertising the exhibition of the “HEAD OF JOAQUIN! And the HAND OF THREE-FINGERED JACK!” but there was no hand in the jar I was given by my great-uncle Jack and now keep in the barn down in Valley Center. I miss Valley Center.