10

I’d left the Aprilia parked near the Slaughterhouse last night, thinking it too much a risk to be on the roads on something with a license number traceable to me. Now I wished I had it, as I slung my bag over my shoulder and locked my apartment behind me. The helmet would have been ideal to hide my features behind. Or I wished that I lived back east, where in early April the weather was probably still cold enough to justify hiding under a cap, behind a scarf. Instead I was in L.A., where the mercury was climbing steadily toward a hundred degrees at midday. I touched my fake bruise for reassurance as I headed down the sidewalk, much as I used to touch my birthmark out of self-consciousness in my younger years.

A tall woman, addict-thin and with acne scars under her chestnut-colored skin, was doing some kind of personal business on the pay phone four blocks from my house, and she glared at me when I lingered too close, waiting for her to be finished. It was nearly fifteen minutes before she finally hung up and walked off without a backward glance at me.

The handset of the phone was warm and almost slippery where she’d been holding it. Ford answered on the first ring. Instead of hello, he said, “I’m not trying to track you, Hailey.”

He was showing me he’d known that any unidentified pay-phone number was going to be me. All right, you’re clever, we knew that, I thought. I also didn’t believe him and knew I couldn’t extend this conversation too long. Pay phones could be traced, too.

“Are you there?” he said.

“I’m here.”

“I’m being up front with you, because I meant what I said about thinking you might be innocent. That doesn’t mean I’m sure. It’s a working hypothesis.”

“How’d you come up with it?” I asked.

“You’ve been seen on several occasions in East Los Angeles, most recently the day after the Eastman and Stepakoff murders.”

“By you?” I said. “Have we met and I don’t know it?”

“No,” Ford said. “This was an associate of mine.”

I am a goddamn idiot. “The blind guy in the park, Joe Keller,” I said. “He’s one of yours.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s obviously not blind.”

He laughed, a short, rusty sound. “Are you kidding? Joel Kelleher was the best shooter in his academy class. Kid could hit the ten ring standing on a water-bed mattress.”

That explained why he’d reacted so quickly to the prospect that I might reach for his sunglasses and try to look at his eyes. Even an experienced actor would have difficulty faking the sightless gaze of a blind person; a young cop would have known that it was beyond his skills.

It also explained how Ford had gotten my cell number: I’d written it right on the skin of a police officer.

“So it was your little joke,” I said. “Your ‘eyes’ in the field, faking blindness.”

“Not a joke,” Ford said, “a tactic. Of course, we were looking for drug and gang activity—we never expected to net a suspect in a high-profile double homicide. But when the APB on you came in, Joel took one look at it and said, ‘I was just talking to her in the park this morning. Something’s not right here.’ He said he’d spoken to you on two prior occasions within less than two weeks. Then your fingerprints came over the wire, and Joel said, ‘This is screwy, too. There’s ten fingerprints here, but this girl has only nine fingers.’ I suggested maybe you were just one of those rare flukes, a dead ringer for someone else, but Joel said no. He’d seen your birthmark. And he said you’d told him that your name was Hailey.” He paused. “Of course, that doesn’t mean you weren’t dividing your time between San Francisco and L.A.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “Mr. Ford, if you’re serious about believing I’m innocent, try this: My DNA’s in the Pentagon’s battlefield registry. Ask the SF forensics guys if they found a single piece of DNA that matches mine. They won’t have.”

“What about the thumbprint on the casing?”

“It was a stolen gun,” I said. “I should go. I’ll call you again.”

“No. No more game playing. You want my help, come in.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Hailey, do you want some nervous rookie cop to smoke you on the street? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you stay out there.”

I hung up and stood a moment, thinking.

Magnus Ford, the Shadow Man, had a guy in the field doing his spying and his legwork. I needed someone like that on my side. I went to another pay phone and made a second call.

“Hello?” Serena said, cautious as always when the readout on her cell said UNKNOWN CALLER.

“It’s me,” I said, “and I can’t talk long. I think I know how I got set up. You want to ride on a mission with me?”

“I’m in.”

“Wait, you need to understand what I’m asking. Yeah, I need you, but I don’t like it. This could get dangerous. Remember last year?”

“How could I forget that shit?”

“This might come down to the same stuff: some surveillance, some lawbreaking, possibly a throwdown or two.”

“I’m good with that,” she said. “Warchild and Insula, kicking ass again. It’ll be fun.”