In those first weeks, Brendan Malik’s eyes watched him from every shadow. He saw the light in them die over and over, dimming like a television with its plug pulled, the spark that had been Brendan Malik growing smaller, falling away until it was gone. After a while, Talley felt nothing, watching the dying eyes the same way he would watch Wheel of Fortune: because it was there.
Talley resigned from the LAPD, then sat on his couch for almost a year, first in his home and later in the cheap apartment he had rented in Silver Lake after Jane threw him out. Talley told himself that he had left his job and his family because he couldn’t stand having them witness his own self-destruction, but after a while he grew to believe that his reasons were simpler, and less noble: He believed that his former life was killing him, and he was scared. The incorporated township of Bristo Camino was looking for a chief of police for their fourteen-member police force, and they were glad to have him. They liked it that he was SWAT, even though the job was no more demanding than writing traffic citations and speaking at local schools. He told himself that it was a good place to heal. Jane had been willing to wait for the healing, but the healing never quite seemed to happen. Talley believed that it never would.
Talley started the car and eased off the hard-packed soil of the orchard onto a gravel road, following it down to the state highway that ran the length of the Santa Clarita Valley. When he reached the highway, he turned up his radio and heard Sarah Weinman, the BCPD dispatch officer, shouting frantically over the link.
“… Welch is down. We have a man down in York Estates …”
Other voices were crackling back at her, Officers Larry Anders and Kenn Jorgenson talking over each other in a mad rush.
Talley punched the command freq button that linked him to dispatch on a dedicated frequency.
“Sarah, one. What do you mean, Mike’s down?”
“Chief?”
“What about Mike?”
“He’s been shot. The paramedics from Sierra Rock Fire are on the way. Jorgy and Larry are rolling from the east.”
In the nine months that Talley had been in Bristo, there had been only three felonies, two for nonviolent burglaries and once when a woman had tried to run down her husband with the family car.
“Are you saying that he was intentionally shot?”
“Junior Kim’s been shot, too! Three white males driving a red Nissan pickup. Mike called in the truck, then called a forty-one fourteen at one-eight Castle Way in York Estates, and the next thing I know he said he’d been shot. I haven’t been able to raise him since then.”
Forty-one fourteen. Welch had intended to approach the residence.
Talley punched the button that turned on his lights and siren. York Estates was six minutes away.
“What’s the status of Mr. Kim?”
“Unknown at this time.”
“Do we have an ID on the suspects?”
“Not at this time.”
“I’m six out and rolling. Fill me in on the way.”
Talley had spent the last year believing that the day he became a crisis negotiator for the Los Angeles Police Department had forever changed his life for the worse.
His life was about to change again.
JENNIFER
Jennifer had never heard anything as loud as their guns; not the cherry bombs that Thomas popped in their backyard or the crowd at the Forum when the Lakers slammed home a game-winning dunkenstein. The gunfire in movies didn’t come close. When Mars and Dennis started shooting, the sound rocked through her head and deafened her.
Jennifer screamed. Dennis slammed the front door, pulled her backward to the office, then pushed her down. She grabbed Thomas and held tight. Her father wrapped them in his arms. Layers of gun smoke hung in shafts of light that burned through the shutters; the smell of it stung her nose.
When the shooting was done, Dennis sucked air like a bellows, stalking back and forth between the entry and office, his face white.
“We’re fucked! That cop is down!”
Mars went to the entry. He didn’t hurry or seem scared; he strolled.
“Let’s get the car before more of them get here.”
Kevin was on the floor beside her father’s desk, shaking. His face was milky.
“You shot a cop. You shot a cop, Dennis!”
Dennis grabbed his brother by the shirt.
“Didn’t you hear Mars? He was going for his gun!”
Jennifer heard a siren approaching behind the shouting. Then Dennis heard it, too, and ran back to the windows.
“Oh, man, they’re coming!”
Jennifer’s father pulled her closer, almost as if he was trying to squeeze her into himself.
“Take the keys and go. The keys are on the wall by the garage. It’s a Jaguar. Take it while you still can.”
Dennis stared through the open shutters like prison bars, watching the street with fearful expectation. Jennifer wanted them to run, to go, to get out of her life, but Dennis stood frozen at the windows as if he were waiting for something.
Mars spoke from the entry, his voice as calm as still water.
“Let’s take the man’s car, Dennis. We have to go.”
Then the siren suddenly seemed to be in the house, and it was too late. Tires screeched outside. Dennis ran to the front door. The shooting started again.
TALLEY
York Estates was a walled development that had been named for the legendary walled city of York in England, a village that was protected from the world by a great stone wall. The developers built twenty-eight homes on one- to three-acre sites in a pattern of winding streets and cul-de-sacs with names like Lancelot Lane, Queen Anne Way, and King John Place, then surrounded it by a stone wall that was more decorative than protective. Talley cut his siren as he entered from the north, but kept the lights flashing. Jorgenson and Anders were shouting that they were under fire. Talley heard the pop of a gunshot over the radio.
When he turned into Castle Way, Talley saw Jorgenson and Anders crouched behind their car with their weapons out. Two women were in the open door of the house behind them and a teenaged boy was standing near the cul-de-sac’s mouth. Talley hit the public address key on his mike as he sped up the street.
“You people take cover. Get inside your homes!”
Jorgenson and Anders turned to watch him approach. The two women looked confused and the boy stood without moving. Talley burped his siren, and shouted at them again.
“Get inside now! You people move!”
Talley hit the brakes hard, stopping behind Jorgenson’s unit. Two shots pinged from the house, one snapping past overhead, the other thumping dully into Talley’s windshield. He rolled out the door and pulled himself into a tight ball behind the front wheel, using the hub as cover. Mike Welch lay crumpled on the front lawn of a large Tudor home less than forty feet away.
Anders shouted, “Welch is down! They shot him!”
“Are all three subjects inside?”
“I don’t know! We haven’t seen anyone!”
“Are civilians in the house?”
“I don’t know!”
More sirens were coming from the east. Talley knew that would be Dreyer and Mikkelson in unit six with the ambulance. The shooting had stopped, but he could hear shouts and screaming inside the house. He flattened on the street and called to Welch from under the car.
“Mike! Can you hear me?”
Welch didn’t respond.
Anders shouted, his voice frantic.
“I think he’s dead!”
“Calm down, Larry. I can hear you.”
Talley had to take in the scene and make decisions without knowing who or what he was dealing with. Welch was in the middle of the front lawn, unmoving and unprotected. Talley had to act.
“Does this house back up on Flanders Road?”