The Night Crew

'I think it's too late for that,' Anna said. 'He turned some kind of corner with that phone call. He's gotta know you'll be all over him now.'

'We still need to talk with you.'

'I'll call you; I'd really appreciate it if you'd tell me if you shake anything out of these people,' she said, gesturing UP the stairs. 'And China: if you hear anything.'

Wyatt looked at Harper. 'Jake, can you control her a little? She's gonna wind up dead.'

Jake said, 'I'll try.'

'You wouldn't hold anything back on us?'

Jake shook his head: 'No. We're not playing games: we just want somebody to get him. I don't think there's anything. Well, we thought for a while that he might be a little older, white-haired, but that's gone up in smoke. Anna thinks he's young.'

Wyatt turned to Anna, whose eyes seemed to have unfocused, staring at a spot on the other side of Wyatt's face. Wyatt said, 'Anna? Anna?'

Her eyes snapped back and a small, uncertain smile crinkled her face. 'Yeah. I heard you. He's young, I'm sure of it. Forget white hair. That was a wild-goose chase.' And to Jake: 'Let's go.'

Jake's eyebrows went up, but he nodded and said to Wyatt, 'Talk to you tomorrow.'

Norden was waiting out on the sidewalk: she didn't like cops, and now she was leaning against a fire hydrant, smoking, watching the light bars on the cop cars.

'We all done?' she asked.

'Yeah, for tonight,' Anna said.

'Drop me at my place; I want to get Harnett's files out of the car,' Norden said.

They dropped her at an apartment off La Brea, waited until I she was inside, then Jake turned to Anna and said, 'What I was that about the white-haired guy and the wild-goose chase? Harnett was a pretty hot possibility an hour ago. He might not be the killer, but he's involved somewhere.'

Anna shook her head and said, 'Aw, he might have known Jason or something, just a coincidence, but he's not the white-haired man. I know who the white-haired man is.'

Jake did a comic double-take: 'Yeah? Well, speak up.'

'It's Wyatt.'

'What?' He grinned, expecting a punchline.

'Yeah, an older guy with white hair. You were talking about it and I was looking at him, and all of a sudden, I realized it washim. We were thinking the white-haired guy was after Creek or me, but reallyit was Wyatt checking up on Pam Glass, and what was happening with her and Creek, and he didn't want us to know it. That's why he took off. He's hung up on Pam, and he didn't want Pam to know he was hanging around.'

Harper thought it over for a few seconds, then sighed: 'Are you positive?'

'Ninety-nine percent. Next time we see Wyatt, take a good look at him. He's the guy.'

Harper nodded. 'All right. Christ, we commit a felony, we break into somebody's office and fuck him up and he's an innocent bystander.'

'Not especially innocent,' Anna said. 'But we do have a few felonies behind us.'

Harper said, 'Yeah, we do. And if we're not very careful, they're gonna start catching up with us.' He fed the car into a U-turn, and started back toward the hills.

Anna sat up that night; took her gun out of her pocket and spun the cylinder, dumped the shells, dry-fired it at the TV, when the TV was on. Reloaded, looked at it. Waited, for something, not knowing what.

Jake sat up with her for an hour or two, then went to bed. 'You've got to get some sleep,' he said.

'How?'

He looked at her, shrugged. 'If you decide to go out, wake me up. I want to come along. If he's identified me, he could know we're out here. So we've got to take it easy.'

'Okay.'

He pointed a finger at her: 'I swear to God, if you leave without waking me up, I'll kick your ass.'

The dawn came slowly, first a false lightening, then a darkness again, then the real dawn, a great, unhappy light, like an old piece of newsprint being pushed over the mountains to the east.

Anna was sitting in an easy chair, maybe asleep, the gun in her lap, when Jake came out and called her: 'Anna?'

Her eyes either opened, or were already openshe didn't know, it didn't seem like her mind had ever stopped. 'Yeah?'

'Jesus, did you get any sleep at all?'

'I don't know,' she said. She felt wooden. She pushed herself out of the chair, went out to the kitchen, with Harper trailing behind. 'Coffee?'

'I'm gonna try to get a couple more hours. Why don't you come in and lay down?'

'Jake, jeez.'

'Give me ten minutes to put you to sleep. Just come on in.'

She followed him back to the bedroom, pulled off her shirt and jeans and bra, pulled on one of his T-shirts and lay down. He snuggled behind her, said, 'Close your eyes.'

'Jake.'

'Just close them, okay? Ten minutes.'

She could feel his arm around her waist, the tops of his thighs on the bottom of hers. She opened her eyes briefly, with difficulty, to look at the clock, and saw the glint of the gun on the nightstand; and closed her eyes again.

The phone woke her.

She startled upright, felt Jake's arm come off her, looked at the clock: She'd been down for four hours. Her mouth tasted like old features taken off a tar road.

Jake was saying, 'Yah. Aw, man, where. all right.'

When he hung up, she rolled over on her back and looked at him, caught his eyes trying to look away. 'China?'

'Yeah. She's dead. They found her body out in Glendale. That was Wyatt, and.'

'What?'

'She's pretty cut up.'

Anna jumped out of bed: 'Let's get over there.'

'Anna.'

'I need to see this,' she insisted.

'Why?' he asked, exasperated.

'Because. So get dressed.' Because she was storing it up. Because she was holding on to these crimes, all these insults, squeezing them into herself.

She drove: Jake was so reluctant that she finally got the keys and climbed into the front seat, and he caught up and piled into the passenger side, and she took them over the hills and east into Glendale. On the way, she called Wyatt, got switched around, and was finally left with a promise that he'd call her. He did, five minutes later:

'Where are you?'

'On the way.'

'I don't think you should.'

'I can identify her,' Anna said. 'I saw her twelve hours ago. Are you there?' she asked.

'On the way.'

'See you there.' And she rang off, before he could object.

'There', was a cluster of vehicles with light bars, a half-dozen men looking down a highway embankment: something she saw every night, now harsher in the light of day.

Wyatt hadn't arrived yetshe didn't recognize any of the cops at the scene. They waved her on down the road, but she stopped, and when the cop came up, she said, 'We're supposed to meet Detective Wyatt here, from Santa Monica. He's on the task force: I talked to China last night, the woman you think is down there. He wanted me to see if I could identify her.'

'Okay. just pull up to the head of the line.'

She drove up past the last car and turned to Harper: 'Are you coming?' she asked.

'Yeah. You better leave the gun in the car, though. They'll spot it and take it away from you.'

'Good thought.' She took the gun out of her jacket pocket and pushed it under the front seat. 'Let's go.'

China was halfway down the embankment, wrapped in the dress she'd been wearing the night before. She'd landed on her face, apparently, but the gravel on the embankment hadn't done any real damage. It'd cut, but there was no blood to run; the cuts looked like scratches in beeswax.

Anna and Harper dropped carefully down the embankment, escorted by a young uniformed cop who watched their faces as they went down, down past the foot with a sockwhat used to be called an ankletand the foot without one, with the thighs impolitely apart, unguarded by underwear, the trails of dark pubic hair, down to the face that had bitten into the gravel.