"Given the chance, I'd kill him in a heartbeat."
"Why?"
"Because I've known the others. I've looked in their eyes and know what's back there in the darkness. If I could kill them all I think I would."
I waited for her to continue but she didn't. She pulled the car to a stop next to two other matching Caprices behind one of the old motels.
"You didn't answer the second question."
"No, I've never killed anyone."
We went in through a back door into a hallway painted in two tones; dingy lime to about eye level, dingy white the rest of the way up. Rachel went to the first door on the left and knocked and we were let in. It was a motel room, one that would have passed as a kitchenette in the sixties, when it was last refurbished. Backus and Thorson were there waiting, sitting at an old Formica table against the wall. There were two phones on the table that looked as if they had just been added to the room. There was also a three-foot-high aluminum trunk standing on one end with its lid open to reveal a bank of three video monitors. Wires ran out the back of the trunk, along the floor and out the window, which was opened just enough to allow them through.
"Jack, I can't say I'm happy to see you," Backus said.
But he said it with a wry smile on his face and he stood up and shook my hand.
"Sorry," I said, not really knowing why. Then, looking at Thorson, I added, "I didn't mean to blunder into your setup but I was given some bad information."
The thought of the phone records went through my mind again but I dismissed it. It was not the right time.
"Well," Backus said, "I have to admit we were trying a little misdirection there. We just thought it would be best if we could work this out without any distractions."
"I'll try not to be a distraction."
"You already are," Thorson said.
I ignored him and kept my eyes on Backus.
"Have a seat," he said.
Rachel and I took the two remaining chairs at the table.
"I assume you know what is happening," Backus said.
"I assume you're watching Thomas."
I turned so I could see the video monitors and for the first time studied the view each one had. The top monitor showed a hallway not unlike the one outside the room we were in. Several doors going down both sides. All of them closed and with numbers on them. The next tube showed the exterior of a motel front. In the blue-gray haze of the video I could just make out the words on the sign above the door. HOTEL MARK TWAIN. The bottom monitor showed an alley-side view of what I assumed was the same hotel.
"Is this where we are?" I asked, pointing at the display.
"No," Backus said. "That is where Detective Thomas is. We're about a block away."
"Doesn't look very nice. What are they paying these days in this town?"
"It is not his home. But the detectives at Hollywood Station often use the hotel to stash witnesses or sleep over if they're working twenty-hour days on a case. Detective Thomas chose to stay there rather than at home. He has a wife and three children at home."
"Well, that answers my next question. I'm glad you told him he was being used as bait."
"You seem measurably more cynical than when we last met this morning, Jack."
"I guess that's because I am."
I looked away from him and checked out the video setup again. Backus spoke to my back.
"We have three-point camera surveillance beamed to a mobile dish on our roof here. We also have the field office's critical response unit and LAPD's top surveillance squad watching Thomas around the clock. No one can get near him. Even at the station. He's perfectly safe."
"Wait until it's over and then tell me that."
"I will. But in the meantime, you have to step aside, Jack."
I turned back to him, my best puzzled look on my face.
"You understand what I'm telling you," Backus said, not buying the face. "We are at the most critical stage. He is in our sights and, frankly, Jack, you have to get out of the way."
"I am out of the way and I'll stay out of the way. The same deal, nothing I see goes into the paper until you okay it. But I'm not going back to Denver to wait. I'm too close, too… This means too much. You've got to let me back inside."
"This could take weeks. Remember the fax. All it said was that he had his next man in sight. It didn't say when it would happen. There was no time frame. We have no idea when he'll try to hit Thomas."
I shook my head.
"I don't care. Whatever it takes, I want to be part of the investigation. I've kept up my end of the deal."
An uneasy silence settled over the room, during which Backus stood up and began pacing on the carpet behind my chair. I looked over at Rachel. She was looking down at the table in a contemplative way. I threw my last chip into the pile.
"I have to write a story tomorrow, Bob. My editor's expecting it. If you don't want it written, bring me in. That's the only way I can convince him to back off. That's the bottom line."
Thorson made a derisive sound and shook his head.
"This is trouble," he said. "Bob, you give in to this guy again and where does it end?"
"The only time there's been trouble," I said, "is when I've been lied to or kept out of the investigation, which, by the way, I started."
Backus looked over at Rachel.
"What do you think?"
"Don't ask her," Thorson interjected. "I can tell you right now what she's going to say."
"If you have something to say about me, say it," Rachel demanded.
"All right, enough," Backus said, holding his hands out like a referee. "You two don't quit, do you? Jack, you're in. For the time being. Same deal as before. That means no story tomorrow. Understood?"
I nodded. I looked over at Thorson, who had already stood up and was heading out the door, defeated.
36
The Wilcox Hotel, as I learned it was called, had room for one more-especially when the night clerk learned I was with the government people already staying there and was willing to pay the top price, thirty-five dollars a night. It was the only hotel I'd ever checked into where I felt a nervous sense of foreboding about giving the man behind the front counter my credit card number. This one looked like he was halfway through a bottle on this shift alone. It also appeared as though he had decided on the last four successive mornings that he wasn't quite ready for a shave yet. He never looked at me during the entire check-in-process-which took an unusually long five minutes as he hunted for a pen and then accepted a loan of one from me.
"What're you people doin', anyway?" he said as he slid a key with the stamped room number almost worn off it across the equally worn Formica counter.
"They didn't tell you?" I asked, feigning surprise.
"Nope, I'm just checkin' people in is all."
"It's a credit card fraud investigation. A lot of it going on around here."
"Oh."
"By the way, which room is Agent Walling in?"
It took him a half minute to interpret his own records.
"That'd be seventeen."
My room was small and when I sat on the edge of the bed it sank at least a half foot, the other side rising by an equal amount with the accompanying protest of old springs. It was a ground-floor room with spare but neat furnishings and the stale smell of cigarettes. The yellowed blinds were up and I could see a metal grate over the one window. If there was a fire, I'd be trapped like a lobster in a cage if I didn't get out the door fast enough.
I took the travel-size toothpaste tube and folding toothbrush I had bought out of the pillowcase and went into the bathroom. I could still taste the Bloody Mary from the plane and wanted to get rid of it. I also wanted to be ready for all eventualities with Rachel.
The bathrooms in old hotel rooms are always the most depressing. This one was slightly larger than the phone booths I used to see at every gas station when I was growing up. Sink, toilet and portable shower stall all complete with matching rust stains were set in a crowded configuration. If you were ever sitting on the toilet when somebody came in, you'd lose your kneecaps. When I was finished and had returned to the comparative spaciousness of the room, I looked at the bed and knew I didn't want to sit back down there. I didn't even want to sleep there. I decided to risk leaving the computer and my pillowcase full of clothes and left the room.