He knew that someday his reason would leave him and he had hoped it wouldn’t get someone killed. He always knew it was going to feel bad. He had imagined looking foolish and old and useless and spent in front of his partner and himself. But he would manage this because it would mean one part of his life was over and he could feel good about that. It would just mean he was too old, was all. He had imagined that this would be the day he’d turn in his badge and gun, head out to the acreage in Idaho or Oregon with his wife, start fishing, let the grandkids visit and stay as long as they wanted. Yes, he had told himself, he was going to feel okay about it all when he finally slowed down.
But that moment was here right now, and what he felt was shame. He was thankful for the darkness that hid his face from her.
“Okay, blow up the pictures, Tim. But wait on the interrogation. That’s a half-day setup and a half day of bracing him and I don’t want to spend that kind of time right now. I got the art people to meet with Kamala Petersen today so they could colorize the sketch. Let’s hope it came out well. We’ll hit the county with it tomorrow, plaster it everywhere there’s a space, shove it into every face at every mall he’s struck and every one he hasn’t. We’ll say our prayers tonight that Bart Young’s list will hit a match for us. Or the tire-kickers find a mismatched set of tires on a silver panel van and don’t lose another kid’s life.”
“Okay. Solid.”
She set a hand on his shoulder. “Help me find him, Hess. I need you to help me find him.”
“I’m doing everything I can.”
“I know you are.”
Colesceau came to his porch. Hess watched him, bathed in the yellow bug light to his right, looking passively out at the crowd of six. He was wearing a green robe and a pair of white socks, and he held a tray of steaming mugs in front of him.
The protesters got to their feet and the signs came up. The CNB shooter moved in.
“We ought to pop him just for being such a dweeb,” said Merci. “What’s he got, hot chocolate?”
Hess watched as Colesceau walked toward his tormentors, set the tray down before them, then straightened and looked at them. He looked over their heads toward Merci’s car but Hess saw no recognition in the dark. The cameraman stayed low and tight for a good shot of his subject.
Colesceau spoke with his neighbors but Hess couldn’t hear a word of it. Then the small dark-haired man gave the crowd a little bow and walked slowly back into his apartment.
A while later the downstairs lights went off and an upstairs light went on. Hess could see through the half-drawn curtain upstairs the faintest of figures, the shadow of a shadow, moving on the ceiling. For a brief second someone looked out.
Then the upstairs window darkened and the living room blinds were illuminated again by the blue light of a TV screen.
“He watches TV all the goddamn time,” said Merci. “What a life. Hess, don’t do what I think you’re going to do.”
But he pushed out the door and plodded across the street to the living room window. The evening had cooled and there was a faint smell of citrus and smog in the air. His legs felt wrong. For Jerry Kirby, he thought.
He looked through a crack in the blinds and saw what Rick Hjorth’s camera had seen the night before. Colesceau was slumped down in the couch, his back to Hess, just his head visible, tuned into CNB’s “Rape Watch: Irvine,” which showed a live shot of the front of Colesceau’s apartment, a real-time clock running in the lower right corner and Hess at the window.
He watched Colesceau turn just a little and look over his shoulder, then again to the TV. On his way back Hess waved to the camera then stopped at the little crowd and asked them what Colesceau had said to them.
“He said, tell Tim and Merci they can have some hot cider, too. There it is, if that’s who you are.”
Thirty-Three
Eight minutes later Big Bill Wayne backed the silver van out of the garage and accelerated crisply down the street. He was breathing fast and perspiring heavily. This was a record time for getting out. What a help, to watch the cops come and go at Colesceau’s, live on TV!
He drove steadily and within the speed limit. He hit the serene darkness of the Ortega and followed the moonlit highway through the hills. He thought of his favorite poem. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moorland the highwayman came riding, riding, riding/The highwayman came riding/Up to the old inn door.
He found LaLonde’s place. It was what you’d expect for an ex-con inventor with no job — a commercial space, rented cheap. Someone began raising the door after three knocks. Up it went, like it was letting him into a castle. Except the door was blue steel and Lee LaLonde was no nobleman. Bill stood there in his black suit and western tie and his golden hair, with Pandora’s Box in his shopping bag, sniffing the inside of LaLonde’s cave for danger or opportunity.
“Hi, Bill,” said Lee LaLonde.
“Fix this, partner.”
The toothy young man nodded and smiled. Bill could tell he’d been asleep. So he swept in without an invitation, turned on his boot heels and stared at LaLonde.
“It failed. I figured you’d know why.”
“Okay, sure. Wanna beer or something?”
“Nope. I’m in a hurry.”
“Not a problem. I’ll check it out.”
Bill gave the kid the bag and watched him go to one of his workbenches. LaLonde pulled the string and an overhead fluorescent light flickered on.
“You can sit down if you want. I wondered if I’d see you again. How’s it hanging?”
“How’s what hanging?”
Bill didn’t like the furtive look that LaLonde gave him, or the seemingly genial talk. He didn’t feel like sitting on LaLonde’s couch.
He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and toured the place: meaningless inventions, organized tools, posters of girls. Beautiful women, made in America. Before him was a shoebox of identical metal rings, ten of them, maybe, big enough to fit around the wrist of a small woman. From each ring protruded a thin arm. Each arm widened into a flat, thin, shiny leaf of metal about the size of a quarter. They looked to Bill like they could be used for scooping something out of something else.
“What are these?” Bill demanded, slapping the back of the box with his hand.
“Flashlight Friends.”
“For what?”
“You put the ring around the end of your flashlight and adjust the deflector end into the beam. It sends some of the light to your feet. That’s if you’re aiming the light straight ahead, I mean. So you can see where you’re walking but see what you’re looking at, too.”
“Shoots the light to your feet while you walk in the dark?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do they work?”
“Not really. I don’t think you can divide light that way. Or not enough of it, maybe. The second beam’s too weak. But, you know, three bucks is all I wanted.”
Bill liked the idea. Some of the things he’d seen at LaLonde’s table at the Lake Elsinore Marina swap meet had been better, though. And, of course, the electronic alarm override he’d commissioned was the best thing he could imagine, short of a device you could turn on a person to make them just do whatever you said from then out. Like a gun, but unthreatening and legal. Something small and secret, they couldn’t even see. Maybe someday.