18

In his Explorer, Tom Cole adjusted the seat. The churn of the motor vibrated like a massage, reclining, reclining. He relaxed his neck so his head was against the headrest. He had to adjust his position every hour or so anyway, or surveillance would turn into torture.

With his head back, he caught in the window’s reflection a blurred image of his mustache, like a ghostly hedge. He reached up and ran his palm down the whiskers, pulling down on the skin around his mouth. His eyes were so tired, they felt like he was stretching them.

A couple walked quickly past the building. They found their car, and the man hustled his date into the passenger side and stepped around the front end as if he’d stolen something. But they were probably just nervous about the neighborhood. They should be, with Flip living here.

Without taking his eyes from the entrance, Tom worked his radio to find a better station. He found an oldie. Chicago’s horns and Terry Kath’s vocals beat out “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and Tom sang along softly.

The readout on his radio told him another twenty minutes had passed. He opened his cell phone and redialed Flip’s number. Six rings, seven, eight. He let it go on.

Eleven twenty-two and still not home.

A Jethro Tull song came on. This station was deep into the ’70’s. What was the name of this one? Tom knew the words before Ian Anderson toned them out. Here was the title. “Living in the Past.”

He tried Flip’s phone number again.

A solitary pedestrian, hunched and with his hands buried in the pockets of his steel-colored jeans, skulked up the sidewalk past Tom’s Explorer. The cigarette poking out of the corner of his mouth dripped a gray worm of ashes down the front of his T-shirt.

Tom disconnected from the incessant ringing of the phone.

Eleven twenty-five.

In the side mirror, he watched the domed back of the man receding down the sidewalk.

Commercials drove him away from the radio station. He scanned through the channels but found only classical, rap, and a religious station.

He clicked off the noise.

Eleven forty.

Redial.

Three rings, four.

A click and rustle. “Yeah.” The voice came through the lines with the texture of a shovel in rocks.

“Where’ve you been?”

Flip must have been holding the handset against a gaping mouth. His breath was a tornado through the receiver. “What are you calling me for?”

“I’m coming up.” Tom shut the cell phone before Flip could answer. He slipped the keys from the ignition and was out of the car and across the street. He buzzed Flip’s room.

He buzzed five times before the door clicked open. He struggled up the stairs.

Flip leaned in the open doorway to his apartment. He wore a sweatshirt that bore a paisley-shaped brown stain. Wrinkles were pressed into the shirt and pants in vertical and diagonal crossing patterns without connection to the angles of his joints.

He’d just changed clothes.

“You’re working late, Officer.” Flip’s forehead gleamed dully with dried sweat.

“Where’ve you been, Flip?”

“I’ve been home. Why?”

“No, you haven’t been home. I’ve been calling every twenty minutes for two hours.”

“Oh, was that you? If I knew it was you, I would’ve answered. For sure. I figured it was a telemarketer.”

The smirk made Tom want to plant the nose of his Glock against Flip’s temple. “I don’t buy that for a second. Where have you been?”

“I’m starting to get the feeling you don’t trust me.”

Tom snorted. “You’re getting that feeling. All right. Let me ask you something. What were you doing in that house?”

Flip straightened away from the jamb, and his arms uncrossed.

We’ve got something here.

“House?” The word belonged to a sentence Flip seemed unable to mouth.

“Yeah. House. It’s a building people live in.”

Flip twisted his neck. A faint pop passed through the still air. This convict might bolt. Or fight. Adrenalin pumped through Tom’s veins, flushing away the fatigue.

Flip didn’t answer.

“I know you were in there, Convict. I know it. I can see it on your face.” Tom stepped forward. “That’s your third strike. You know what that means. Prison till you die.”

Flip bent his head forward, looked past Tom to one side of the hallway, then the other. He faced Tom and sneered. It might have been meant as a grin.

Tom’s palm itched for the handle of his Glock. He angled his body to hide his right arm and unsnapped the strap locking the weapon in place and stepped toward Flip. “You cut the power and found the unlocked door. You were in her room and she knew it. The kid surprised you, didn’t he?”

Flip’s face relaxed, and laughter burst out. Tom was close enough to smell the rank sourness of his breath.

Somewhere down the hall behind a closed door, a voice called out telling them to shut up. Flip looked past Tom to see where the voice had come from.

“What’s so funny, Convict?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s funny, Officer. I just can’t figure why you keep showing up here.”

“She knew you were in there.”

He leaned against the jamb again, and his arms filled the sleeves of his sweatshirt when he crossed them. “Then where’s the LAPD? How come I’m not in a holding cell someplace?” He brought a finger out, and poked Tom’s chest. Tom slapped it away. Flip laughed again. “I’ll tell you why. Because you got nothing. You spend your night spying on me. Show up here at midnight asking your stupid questions. What do you think you’re going to get done here, Officer Cole?”

“Where were you tonight, Convict?”

Flip stood and put a hand on the edge of the door. “I was right here in my home, Officer. I was meditating, contemplating my new law-abiding life. And now I’m going to go to sleep because I have to go work at my law-abiding job in the morning. Unless you’ve got any more questions.”

“I’m going to search your cell.”

“Knock yourself out.” Flip stepped into the hallway and Tom locked him out.

The kitchen was no cleaner than it was the last time Tom was here. The bed was still unmade.

Tom kept seeing the mother’s face—Kathy Russell’s. Minding her own business, trying to raise a son with a few problems, and this convict busts into her house and kills him. The certainty that it was Flip made Tom want to take him in and let him sweat in jail until he got around to scheduling a parole hearing. But he had nothing on him, and Flip would be out again in a few weeks.

It was maddening. All his training, all his experience told him to stay professional, not to take this personally, but Tom felt his own inability to do anything about the kid’s murder like an accusation.

He went to the chest of drawers and drew out the top drawer. He dumped its contents on the bed. Clots of socks and underwear rolled out. He dropped the drawer on the floor. The next one held a couple of T-shirts. Those went on the bed too, and the second drawer clattered on the floor.

Finding nothing only made him angrier.

The last two drawers were empty, but he pulled them out anyway and ran his hand along the inside of the cabinet. Nothing. He leaned it away from the wall and let it fall to the floor.

Someone in the apartment downstairs pounded on the ceiling, and a muffled shout came through the floorboards.

Tom went to the bed. He lifted the mattress away from the box springs. Nothing hidden; he tossed it up against the wall anyway. Clothes and blankets jumbled away from the edges. Nothing was under the box spring either.

He went to the bathroom, reached behind the toilet, felt the cool, vacant porcelain of the tank and lifted the lid to peek inside. The medicine chest was nearly empty.

In the kitchen, he rifled through the dishes piled in the sink, ran his hands over all the cabinet surfaces inside and out, and scooted the refrigerator away from the wall to search the space behind.

Nothing.

Back in the living room, Tom unzipped the sofa cushions and felt inside, threw each of them to the floor, and overturned the sofa. He ignored the thumping from the unit downstairs.

The television was the only thing left. Letterman was interviewing some actor. Tom pulled it screen-down onto the floor. The plug yanked out of the wall.

Nothing back there. Tom turned to the door. He opened it.

Flip leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Tom told him, “Get in here.”

Flip walked inside and stared at the way Tom had thrown the television facedown. “The TV? I might have to bill you for that.”

“Sit down.”

“I like standing.”

Tom pulled the ankle monitor out of his back pocket. “I’m putting you on a tether.”

Flip’s face leveled. “That’s going to mess up my social life.”

“Tough. I’m sick of you lying to me. Sit down, Convict.”

He didn’t move. Those doll eyes held fast on Tom’s.

“I don’t have all night. Here’s how this is going to work. You sit down and put this on, or I violate you right now and take you downtown.” He drew his weapon.

Flip’s jaw flexed. “Violate me for what? Not answering my phone?”

“You think I need probable cause or something? This isn’t the first time you’ve been on parole. You know how it works. Now I’m going to give you three seconds to sit down and ankle up, or we can take a drive and get you processed.”

He grinned. “You don’t need to get excited, Officer. I’m law-abiding. I got nothing to hide.” Flip went to the sofa.

Tom stood over him. “Put it on.” He tossed the monitor in Flip’s lap and stepped back.

Unfastened, the curved black band gaped on top of Flip’s sweats like a plastic trap, the rectangular transmitter on one side the size of a box of cartridges. It was expensive, and it had taken Tom half an hour of wrangling to get departmental permission, but he couldn’t surveil Flip all the time. This way he could do it from the computer in his office.

Flip’s grin was long gone. He lifted up the device and examined it.

“Just put it on.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You’ve got ten seconds to figure it out, Einstein.”

Flip bent over and peeled up the leg of his sweats to reveal his left ankle. He slipped the band around and found the slot to insert the tip of the band. It clicked through but left a gap between his ankle and the strap.

The weight of the Glock felt like the handshake of an old friend in Tom’s fist. “Tighter.”

Flip looked up at him. Black eyes fixed, he snapped it one more notch.

“Now put your hands behind your back.”

Flip sat back and tucked his hands between the sofa and the small of his back.

Tom came to him and, not taking his eyes off him, kept the nose of the Glock pointed at Flip’s chest. He reached down with his left hand to the floor so his aching knees didn’t have to take the strain of kneeling. “You want to sit very still right now, Convict.”

Flip only stared at him.

Tom tugged at the monitor. Firm.

Now, to rise. Tom used his left hand for leverage. But his knees betrayed him. A sharp pain, the deepest in months, pierced his kneecap. Both hands instinctively went to the ground. The Glock pointed away from Flip for an instant.

Tom knew what was about to happen.

The convict snapped away from the sofa. His hands cleared out from behind him.

Flip’s close-cropped head flew at him.

The Glock clattered to the carpet. Flip was on top of him.

Flip’s fist eclipsed the ceiling lamp. The impact was a thunderbolt exploding inside Tom’s brain.

Another.

Blackness.