Chapter 2

By eleven o'clock in the morning Kettering had swallowed eight aspirin tablets, but the headache still lurked somewhere behind his eyes, waiting for a chance to grab his brain. When he finally went to bed the night before, he had slept only fitfully. He had waited for the dream to come. Blessedly, it had not.

Mavis had feigned sleep when he came to bed. That was fine with him. It would not be the first night they had spent lying next to each other in the queen-size bed without touching.

He could tell from Mavis's breathing that she too had slept poorly. At some time before dawn he came fully awake, feeling desperately lonely. Mavis, sleeping on her side with her face turned away from him, stirred in her sleep. Kettering waited, tense, for her to reach over and touch him. He was ready to wipe away their argument and respond by taking her into her arms. He really did love this woman. By the strength of his embrace he would reassure her of that. But Mavis kept to her own side of the bed, making no move toward him. Kettering was damned if he would be the one to reach out first.

In the morning he got up at the usual time and dragged himself into the shower. While he sluiced and soaped, Mavis got up and slipped on the grungy old terry-cloth robe he kept intending to replace. She went into the kitchen and prepared his usual weekday breakfast of grapefruit juice, one soft-boiled egg, an English muffin, and coffee. When he came in to eat it, she went off to her own bathroom. She was still in there when it was time for him to leave. He called a good-bye through the bathroom door. Her reply was muffled. Kettering shrugged, adjusted his hip holster, pulled on a jacket, and left the house.

It was a hell of a way to live, he thought. Man and woman muttering at each other through closed doors. He stomped across the lawn, climbed into the Camaro - streaked now where the dew had made rivulets through the dust - and drove the four miles from his home to the West Valley Police Building.

His partner, Alberto Diaz, was already at his desk with the Los Angeles Times sports page spread out before him. Diaz had a square brown face that was made for laughing. At the moment he was frowning down at the newspaper. Kettering dropped into the chair at the facing desk with a groan.

"Can you believe who the Dodgers are talking about trading?" Diaz said without looking up. He waited. "Well? Can you?"

"Who?" Kettering said without interest.

"Only Pedro Guerrero."

"So?"

Diaz looked up at him in astonishment. "So? So? So without Guerrero they're a fourth-place team. Tops. What they need is - "

"Al, do you mind, today I can't be really worried about what the Dodgers need or where they finish."

"Whoa, aren't we touchy."

"Can we just bag the small talk?"

"Whatever you say." Diaz folded the sports page and stuffed it into a desk drawer. "Shall we get on the road?"

"Let's."

They checked out an anonymous WVPD Plymouth and spent most of the morning driving around in silence. Now and then Diaz would slide a sideways glance at Kettering, who always managed to be looking somewhere else.

About eleven o'clock Diaz said, "What do you want to do for lunch? Feel like Mexican?"

"I don't care. Whatever you want."

"Mexican's good. Sticks with you. Or maybe lasagna at the Brick Oven. What do you think, is lasagna too heavy for this time of day?"

"I told you I don't care."

Diaz drove on for several blocks in silence.

"They've got good salads too. The Brick Oven. Big. Lots of cheese and mushrooms."

Kettering grunted a reply without looking at him.

"You're not a lot of fun today, you know that?" Diaz said.

"Nobody told me I was supposed to entertain you."

"Hey, partner, you okay?"

"I'm fine. First-rate."

"Really?"

"I'm okay, for Chrissake. Can't I just be quiet once without you interrogating me?"

"Sure. Be quiet all you want. I like quiet."

Five more minutes.

"Al."

"Yeah?"

"Don't mind me. I didn't sleep much."

"It shows."

"Yeah. Be glad you're not married to me."

"Hardly a day goes by that I don't thank my stars."

After another five minutes Diaz said, "I think just a burger. I'm not all that hungry."

"Fine," Kettering said. "Burgers are fine."

The radio crackled with their call number. Kettering and Diaz listened as the female dispatcher gave them the message in her professional monotone.

"Can you believe it?" Kettering said. "Another Screwdriver sighting."

"He's a popular sumbitch," Diaz said.

"To be all the places he's been seen, the guy would have to be fucking quintuplets."

"This one isn't far from here," Diaz said. "We can check it out then go over to Wendy's on Reseda. Or do you think the Burger King?"

"Jesus Christ, Al - "

"Okay, okay, Wendy's then."

The Screwdriver was the police nickname for a rapist operating in Los Angeles and West Valley. The name derived from the sharpened tool he used to force his victims into compliance. Since the first of the year he had run up a total of some twenty victims in the two cities - young women living alone, generally in poor neighborhoods. So far nobody had been killed. The police figured it was only a matter of time.

Two weeks earlier a composite drawing of the rapist - early twenties, Latino, stocky build, long greasy hair - had been published locally and shown on the nightly newscasts. Since then L.A. and West Valley Police departments had received more than a hundred reports from people who were sure they had seen him. Each report had to be checked out. So far none had proved accurate. This one was sighting number eight for the team of Kettering and Diaz.

A woman had called in to say, in some agitation, that a man who looked like the Screwdriver was living in the same building as her mother. An address in the 14700 block of Saticoy. He was in apartment 212 with a young woman, and the caller reported strange sounds coming from inside.

"Guy's probably having a beef with an ex-wife or a girlfriend," Diaz guessed. He did not say it lightly. Both men knew how dangerous it could be answering a domestic dispute. The honor roll of dead cops down at the Police Building would attest to it.

Diaz pulled the Plymouth to the curb across the street from the apartment building, checked the address, and nodded to Kettering. It was a rundown section of the Valley separated from the rest of Los Angeles by the Ventura Freeway. The neighborhood was one of auto-repair shops, used-furniture stores, dingy bars, taco stands, and crumbling apartment buildings. Graffiti in the spiky letters of the local street gangs soiled all available wall surfaces like bird droppings.

There was no need for talk now between the detectives. From this point on, training and experience took over.

The building was two floors of flaking gray stucco in a square U shape with a swimming pool between the legs. Standard Southern California 1950s, style. Kettering and Diaz entered the courtyard through a broken iron gate. Dead leaves floated on the pool. Beer cans and fast-food wrappers littered the deck.

A dark, heavy woman sat in a beach chair beside the pool drinking a Pepsi while two children splashed in the shallow end and argued in high-pitched Spanish. The woman's eyes followed the detectives as they entered and climbed the crumbling steps to the second floor.

The apartments on the second floor opened onto a walkway that ran around the inside of the U. Diaz and Kettering made their way around from the stairway and stopped at number 212. They positioned themselves at each side of the door. At a nod from Kettering, Diaz pushed the door-bell button, waited a moment, then knocked.

A voice from inside called, "Who is it?"

"We'd like to talk to you," Diaz said.

"Fuck off."

Diaz and Kettering exchanged a weary look.

"Police," Kettering said through the door. "Open up."

A woman's voice began to shout from within the apartment and was immediately muffled. The detectives drew their guns. Diaz stood to one side. Kettering planted his left foot on the walkway and slammed the bottom of his right size-twelve triple-E into the door just below the knob. The cheap hollow panel splintered and the door slammed open against the inside wall.

Kettering dropped into a combat stance, the S&W Centennial locked in both hands, pointed dead at the two people standing in the center of the living room. Diaz moved quickly in after him and stepped off to one side.

A thin blond man of twenty or so in a tank-top undershirt held a chubby young Latin woman clamped in a choke hold. Sweat pasted the pale hair to his scalp. His eyes had an unnatural glitter. His free hand gripped the handle of a spring-blade knife. The point pricked a spot on the woman's brown neck, bringing a bright bead of blood.

"Drop it," Kettering ordered. "Let the woman go."

"Fuck you, motherfucker."

"Put the knife away, asshole, or you're dead meat."

Diaz edged back toward the doorway. "Come on, Brian." Procedure was clear in this situation. Get out, secure the area, call for backup, wait it out.

"Motherfuckers, get out of my way or I slice up the bitch."

The woman started whimpering. "Don' let him hurt me. I din' know he was crazy. Make him lemme go."

The man twisted the knife, gouging a chunk out of the woman's plump brown neck. She squealed. A rivulet of blood crawled down over her collarbone.

Kettering thumbed back the hammer of his piece.

"Brian, come on," Diaz said.

"I'll cut her, man. I mean it."

"He means it," Diaz said, muscles tense, his eyes on Kettering.

Nerves jumped in Kettering's jaw. His fingers whitened as he gripped the revolver.

"I'm going to blow this asshole away."

The knife dug in a little deeper. The woman's eyes popped.

"Brian," Diaz growled between clenched teeth.

After a long, agonizing moment Kettering relaxed a notch and backed toward the open doorway. With an audible sigh Diaz followed him out. The man inside kicked the broken door shut in their face. A chain lock rattled into place.

"I could have taken him," Kettering said.

"Oh, shit yes. He would have cut her throat before he died. The asshole was stoned out of his mind. You could see that."

"He's going to kill her anyway. He has the look."

"It's not the Screwdriver."

"Not unless he's bleached his hair, lost twenty pounds, and traded his tool for a switchblade."

"I'll cover up here while you call in."

"You call," Kettering said. "I'll cover."

Diaz met his partner's gaze. He opened his mouth to say something more, then changed his mind. He turned and hurried back down the steps.

From where he stood, Kettering could see the Plymouth parked on the street below. He saw Diaz jog across to the car, reach in for the radio hand mike. He looked up toward Kettering as he spoke into the mike.

There were sounds of movement inside the apartment. Kettering flattened himself close to the door to listen. The woman whimpered once. Kettering ground his teeth and held his position.

Down in the street Diaz stood beside the car. In a couple of minutes the black van of the Special Weapons Assault Team skidded to a stop. Almost immediately behind it came a gaudy blue-and-white mobile unit with CHANNEL 6 HOTLINE NEWS lettered on the side.

"What the fuck?" Kettering muttered. Even if they were monitoring the police frequency, the television people could not have got here this fast. Somebody here in the apartment building must have called them.

Fucking reporters. In Kettering's personal list of worthless creatures, reporters rated somewhere below liberal judges. The Times was bad enough in its anti-police bias, but Channel 6 was not far behind.

The SWAT team piled out of the truck in their battle gear and deployed toward the apartment building. A woman with cropped red hair got out of the mobile unit and started arguing with the SWAT leader. A cameraman and technician behind her began taping the scene.

"Goddamn carnival," Kettering said to no one.

The curtains across the apartment window moved. The asshole inside would now have seen the SWAT truck. Shit.

The woman screamed. Not fear this time. Pain. Real Pain.

"Fuck it," Kettering said. He stepped back and put his foot to the broken door again, easily knocking out the screws that held the chain lock in place.

The side of the woman's face was sliced open, showing teeth and jawbone. She was pale and shivering, in shock. The man with the knife held her in front of himself, the point of the blade at her left eyeball.

"Stay away from me, motherfucker!" His voice was shrill and out of control.

Kettering covered the distance from the doorway in two long strides. He jabbed the muzzle of the .38 toward the man's face to hold his attention and simultaneously clamped his fingers onto the wrist of his knife hand. As the man clawed at the gun, Kettering pivoted. There was a loud snap as the man's elbow joint popped.

He screamed. The knife thumped to the carpet.

Kettering had the blond young man facedown with his hands cuffed behind his back when Diaz and members of the SWAT team burst into the room. For a moment everyone stood in silent tableau. Then the wounded woman began to wail and everybody moved at once.

Kettering stood up and eased out of the apartment while the SWAT team and paramedics entered.

The red-haired female reporter came up the stairs and stood beside him on the walkway.

"Anybody dead inside?" she asked.

Kettering looked her up and down. She had a good face, supple body. Tiny crinkles around the eyes would probably keep her from making it as an anchorwoman.

"Not that I noticed," he said. "Disappointed?"

"Why would I be?"

"A body bag being carried out makes a good picture for the eleven o'clock news."

"That's not fair, Sergeant."

"Life isn't fair."

"I just wanted to tell you that was a nice piece of work you did in there."

"How would you know?"

"Your partner told me."

"He talks too much."

Kettering took a better look at her. She was tall, would go about five-eight barefoot, he figured, looked like a swimmer. Good cheekbones. Wild green eyes that could grab you. Her hands, he saw, were empty.

"No microphones?"

"Come on, Sergeant, we have some ethics, you know."

"No, I didn't know."

"This wasn't the Screwdriver in there, was it?"

"Damned if I know."

"You don't like me, do you?"

"I don't like what you do for a living."

"Some people would say that about your job too."

"Yeah, like Channel Six news for instance."

"Not all of us follow the party line."

"I'll tune in for details at eleven."

"Try eight o'clock. We're the 'prime-time news channel,' remember?"

"Oh, sure."

"Seriously, give us a chance. You might be surprised."

"I'll need some convincing about that."

She took a card from the pocket of her jacket and handed it to him. "If you've got time one day, I'd like to give it a try."

He took the card and read:

When he looked up, she was heading back down the steps.

"Hey."

She turned to look back at him.

"It isn't the Screwdriver."

She grinned at him. A real grin, not a coy little smile. "Thanks."

He watched her go on down and take charge of the camera crew. She moved over in front of the building with a microphone and the cameraman began shooting. When the camera tilted up in his direction, Kettering stepped out of range.

***

Lt. Nathan Ivory was fifty-one years old. His hair was white and his face was deeply lined. He had been a policeman for twenty-seven years. He was looking forward with great anticipation to his retirement with all the perks of a thirty-year man. His kids were out of the house now and on their own, he enjoyed good health, he and his wife were still in love. He had the Winnebago picked out in which they would tour the uncrowded parts of the country where crime was something you watched on television. Lieutenant Ivory figured he just about had it made.

What Lieutenant Ivory did not need in the final years of his tenure was problems. Detective Sgt. Brian Kettering was becoming a problem. The lieutenant did not ask him to sit down as he faced Kettering across his battered desk.

"Brian," he said tiredly, "you do know, I presume, the procedures we follow in a hostage situation."

Kettering spread his hands. "Sure, Nate, but - "

"And what you and Diaz had this morning was a hostage situation, am I right?"

"In the strict sense, I suppose - "

"A situation that clearly called for strict adherence to the procedures?"

"Basically yes, but - "

"Basically, my ass. You flat ignored the hostage procedure, is what you did."

"We brought the asshole in."

"Sure you did. Somewhat damaged."

"Is he claiming police brutality?"

"Not yet, but he hasn't talked to a lawyer. As I was saying, in apprehending the suspect you endangered the life of the hostage, the life of your fellow police officers, your partner, and your own miserable life."

"The guy was stoned. He was already starting to cut the woman."

"All the more reason for you to stay the hell out of there. SWAT personnel were already on the scene, I understand."

"By the time they got organized and up there, the woman could have been sliced into cold cuts."

Lieutenant Ivory sighed deeply. "Brian, you're a good cop. Your record is one of the best. I could always count on you not to lose control in a tight spot. What I am saying is, you are not the kind of cop I expect to go cowboying in and take a chance on really messing up."

"Yeah, well ..."

"I remind you that this is not a television show where the hero cop operates like a lone gun and the lieutenant sits in his office grinding his teeth. This is real life, where the lieutenant tells the hero cop what to do and the cop does it. Got that?"

"Got it."

"Good." Ivory stood up and came around the desk. "How are things at home, Brian?"

"Home?"

"You know. The place you stop off between shifts. There's a woman there, I believe. And a teenage boy."

"Things are fine."

Lieutenant Ivory gave him a long, level stare. "Okay, Brian, that's all. Just bag the Dirty Harry stuff, okay?"

Kettering nodded and walked out of the room without saying good-bye.

With the lieutenant's door closed behind him, he took out a wrinkled pack of Marlboros, stuck one in his mouth and lit it. He inhaled deeply and coughed.

"I thought you quit using those things."

Kettering looked up to see Dr. Edmund Protius, the psychiatrist assigned to the West Valley Police, leaning in the doorway of his own office. Protius was thin, balding, with a sharp, shiny nose. He wore a sweater under a tweed jacket winter and summer.

"So I started again. You're not going to lecture me too, are you, Doc?"

Protius hated being called Doc, which was why all the men did it. He dug a pack of Salems out of a jacket pocket and held it up. "I don't think I'm the right man to deliver that lecture."

"Nobody's perfect," Kettering said.

Protius's eyes narrowed. "I hear you had a little action this morning."

"A little."

"Everything okay?"

"Sure. All in the line of duty."

"At home too?"

"People keep asking me that."

"So?"

"Everything's fine. Beautiful."

"Seriously, Brian, any time you want to talk, I'm here."

"What would I want to talk about?"

"How would I know? I'm just saying if you do - "

"I know where to find you."

"Good. Say hello to Mavis for me."

"See you, Doc."

The psychiatrist watched as Kettering clumped on through the bull pen and out toward the street. He shook out a Salem, lit it, and walked off in the other direction.