BLOOD ON THE MOON
199
With Lloyd still missing and no clues to his whereabouts, he found that he didn’t care. Blood was in the air, and nihilist rectitude was the night’s prevailing logic. He had gone through cartons of Lloyd’s arrest records from his Hollywood Division days, finding no indicators pointing to trauma that might have festered to the point of combustion; he had telephoned every one of Lloyd’s girlfriends whose name he could recall. Nothing. Lloyd was guilty or Lloyd was innocent and Lloyd was nowhere. And if Lloyd was nowhere, then he, Captain Arthur F. Peltz, was a spiritual seeker who had gone to Mecca and had come away with unimpeachable evidence that life was shit.
Dutch walked back inside the station. He was halfway up the stairs to his office when the desk officer ran up to him. “I got a response to your A.P.B., Captain. Vehicle only. I wrote down the address.” Dutch grabbed at the paper the officer was holding, then ran downstairs to the front desk and ran frenzied eyes over Lloyd’s interview list. When 1893 N. Alvarado screamed out from both pieces of paper, he yelled, “Call the officers who called in the bulletin and tell them to resume patrol; this is mine!”
The desk officer nodded. Dutch ran up to his office and got his Ithaca pump. Lloyd was innocent and there was a monster to slay. 19
Awinding two-lane access road led up to the Power Plant. It terminated at the base of a scrub-bush dotted hillside that rose steeply to the tall barbed-wire fence that enclosed the generator facility. There was a dirt parking lot off the left of the road, next to a tool shack sandwiched between two stanchions hung with high powered spotlights. Another spotlight housing was stationed directly across the blacktop, with feeder wires connecting to the Silverlake Reservoir a quarter of a mile north. At 11:30, Lloyd walked up from the playground, staking out the territory as he trudged uphill, the 30.06 resting on his shoulder, the .44 magnum pressed to his leg. He knew only that since assuming his position on the street side of the playground at eight-thirty, six cars had driven northbound 200
L.A. NOIR
on the access road. Two were official Water and Power Department vehicles, presumably headed for the plant’s administration offices. The four remaining cars had returned within an hour, meaning that the occupants had gotten stoned or laid on the hillside and had retreated back to L.A. proper. Which meant that Teddy Verplanck had arrived on foot or was in the process of driving up.
Lloyd walked north on the dirt shoulder, hugging the embankment that branched into Power Plant Hill. When he reached the last turn in the road he saw that he was correct. Two cars were parked next to the fence beside the tool shack; both were Water and Power vehicles. The embankment ended, and Lloyd had to walk a stretch of pavement before he could scale the hill and establish a killing ground. He treaded lightly, his eyes constantly scanning his blind side. If Verplanck was nearby, he was probably hiding in the clump of trees adjoining the parked cars. He checked his watch: eleven forty-four. At precisely midnight he would blow that clump of trees to kingdom come.
The pavement ended, and Lloyd began to climb uphill, pushing forward slowly, dirt mounds breaking at his feet. He saw a tall scattering of scrub bushes looming in front of him and smiled as he realized that it was the perfect vantage point. He stopped and unslung his 30.06, checking the clip and flipping off the safeties. Everything was operative and set to go at a split second’s notice.
Lloyd was within a yard of his objective when a shot rang out. He hesitated for a brief instant, then hurled himself head first into the dirt just as a second shot grazed his shoulder. He screamed and burrowed into the ground, waiting for a third shot to give him a direction to fire in. The only sound was the pounding of his own chest.
An electrically amplified voice cut the air: “Hopkins, I have Kathy. She has to choose.”
Lloyd rolled into a sitting position and aimed his 30.06 at the sound of the voice. He knew that Verplanck was a conjuror who could assume shapes and voices and that Kathleen was safe somewhere in her web of fantasies. Clenching his bloodied shoulder into a huge ache to allow for the recoil, he fired off a full clip. When the shattering echoes died out, a laughing voice answered them. “You don’t believe me, so I’ll make you believe me.”
A series of hellish shrieks followed, noises that no conjuror could artifice. Lloyd muttered “No, no, no,” until the electronic voice called out, “Throw down your weapons and come out to meet me or she dies.”