When the gauze was wrapped, he pressed the metal clip into the fabric to hold it in place. But the blood kept coming, in little pumps, as though the policeman’s bullet had tapped the muscle of his heart. In the garage, he found duct tape and he wrapped the gauze until the blood stopped running down his elbow. He found a crowbar and sledgehammer hanging from hooks on the wall, and he threw those on the passenger seat of the car. On a pegboard, he found the keys to the car—a Rabbit, the car was called a Rabbit—climbed into the driver’s seat, and fired up the engine. Music blared from the radio, Wake me up before you go go!, and he slammed the dial off with the heel of his hand.
It was nearly dark now, a ribbon of pink in the western sky. Across the freeway, he could see the police helicopter spotlighting the rooftops dotting the hills. He drove down the road, out of the hills to the main street that led to the freeway. The police were still there in the on-ramp circles. He could see their lights spinning blues and reds. The traffic slowed and he watched two policemen walking between cars, showing the drivers pieces of paper. His picture was on those papers, he knew it. He edged the car to the left, into a turn lane that led to the twenty-four-hour grocery store. There he drove slowly across the parking lot and back out the other side, where he climbed the road back into the neighborhood and followed it as it curved up into the hills, past the neat little homes, past the backyard pools and parks with the tire swings, past the greenbelts and their electric lights coming to life. He drove until he came to the top of the hill where the pavement turned to rutted dirt, and he drove that road until it dead-ended at a metal gate. He had found the gate the second night he was here, but it was chained and locked and his crowbar was still in the trunk of his Toyota. Beyond the gate, the dirt road climbed a ridge into the hills and disappeared in darkness. One of the helicopters floated across the freeway now, its spotlight exploding across the rooftops below, the rotors chopping the air. Grabbing the crowbar, he wedged the metal between the gate and lock. It took three times, the helicopter floating closer, his head spinning with pain, but it finally snapped, and he drove the Rabbit through the gate and into the deep darkness of the hills.
17
THE CALL CAME IN OVER the scanner at 9:37 P.M.
Ben had been in the barn since Hernandez left, sitting in the dark to save his eye, putting away the rest of the Coors, trying to figure out how much Hernandez knew—and what to do about it. The lieutenant had made some connections, sure, but had he added them up? Whom had he spoken to? Had Natasha given him away? Regardless, Hernandez was putting him on alert; that was for sure. “Let’s talk when you sign off on that suicide.”
The call was out of Anaheim, East Station. “Possible 187. 14667 Sky Line Drive.”
Ben flipped on the desk lamp to check the address, his vision blurring with the light. He turned it to spotlight the topographic map he’d tacked to the wall. He ran his finger down the map, following the 55 Freeway out to the 91, the exact route the serial had taken the night Ben had shot him.
The scanner squawked again. They’d found a black BMW parked across the street from the victim’s house. Plates didn’t match, but the steering wheel was covered in blood.
The night the serial escaped, the CHP had shut down the 91 Freeway for three hours, checking each car before letting them drive on: nothing. Just disappeared. Ben found the spot on the map where they had set up the roadblock. Just two exit ramps between the 55 junction and the CHP roadblock: Imperial Highway and Weir Canyon. Just two ways in and two ways out.
Scanner: The Anaheim police were shutting down the on-ramps to the freeway.
Ben found the victim’s house and pinned it. It was in the hills, hemmed in between the freeway on one side and the open land of the Santa Ana Mountains on the other. Unless he slipped through before they closed the on-ramps, the serial was cornered.
No, that was too easy. He’d have a way out, if he was going to kill again. Ben ran his finger over the serpentine roads as they climbed through the residential streets. The roads curved back onto one another, a labyrinth of expensive homes pushing the edge of the wilderness.
There, he found it, the route that could get him out: Black Star Canyon Road. Ben knew the road, a graded dirt path that snaked the backbone ridge of the mountains down into Limestone Canyon and beyond. Ben followed the road with his fingers, tracing the ridgeline—three miles, four back into the wilderness, five miles, six, and the serial could go out the other side, right back into Rancho Santa Elena.
He called Hernandez at home.
“This better be good.”
“We gotta get Anaheim on the horn,” Ben said. “I think I know where he is.”
—
NATASHA DROVE UP to the house midmorning and found Ben in the barn. She hadn’t told him about the photos yet. She had covered them in tissue paper and placed them in a file folder and let them sit on her kitchen table, vibrating something ugly. She had decided to give him a few days to heal. This wasn’t the kind of thing you hit a man with when his guard was down.
“You been out here all night?” she said when she saw him, sitting, elbows up on the makeshift desk.
He gave her a guilty glance. His left eye socket was still mean-looking, purple with yellow splotches on the edges, a little dried blood around the stitches of a zigzagging laceration.
“You on scene last night?”
“No,” she said. “Mendenhall took this one.”
“Thought he didn’t like the field.”
“He doesn’t. But there’s a lot of press on it now. He sees it as good exposure.”
“Bastard,” Ben said, half-joking.
“Political animal,” she said. “I needed a break anyway.”
A helicopter flew low over the barn. Outside the window, they both watched it head east toward the Santa Ana Mountains.
“I almost had him,” Ben said. “If I had gotten him, that girl would be alive.” She had been a college student, the one killed last night, a twenty-year-old back at her parents’ place for a visit. “Now all I can do is sit on my ass doing nothing.”
She looked at him, wondering if he heard his own words.
“Take a ride with me,” she said.
—
THEY GOT IN her Z and rode across town in silence. Cruisers were out everywhere, the city like a police state. Cops in grocery store parking lots. Cops guarding the dirt roads that led out of the hills. The yellow tape was still up at Puente Madera, and police cruisers were there, too, blocking the entrance to the complex. Everything else was back in order, though—the stoplight replaced, the skid marks and oil slick cleaned up.
“Hernandez paid me a visit,” Ben said. “He seemed to know a lot about my recent activities.”
She glanced at him, hearing the implication in his voice.
“I haven’t said a word to him,” she said. A light turned red; she hit the brakes and glared at him. “You know me better than that.”
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, and then nodded and turned away. It took five minutes and two cigarettes to reach the high school, all three hundred seconds ticking off in silence.
“You know this is the last place I want to be,” he said, when he saw where they were headed.