"Robin"
"I don't care if I have a subdural hematoma. I don't care if I'm getting ready to throw a clot and stroke out. Meg is out there alone and in trouble, and until she's safe, I don't care what happens to me. It doesn't matter."
"All right, all right."
Robin pulled herself together. She could not afford to become hystericalor to be seen that way. "Look," she said almost calmly, "suppose Gray was telling the truth. Suppose it was Brand who broke into my office, killed the deputy in the waiting room"
"You saw blood on Gray's screwdriver, remember?"
"Even so, just suppose amp;"
"First we have a mystery man who just happens to abduct your daughter fifteen minutes after Gray escapes. Now we have Sergeant Brand killing a deputy and assaulting you and, what, trying to frame Gray for it? Are you aware of how insane this sounds?"
"I don't know. I amp;" She rubbed her head. "I guess it does."
"Brand was nowhere near your office. He's not a rogue cop, not a killer. I've worked with the guy for almost twenty years."
"But you still don't know him. No one does. Right?"
"Let's just concentrate on locating Gray. He's the one person we know we have to find."
Robin couldn't argue with that.
Her cell phone rang. Irrationally she imagined it was Meg, but the voice that greeted her belonged to the SID criminalist, Gaines.
"Dr. Cameron? I've reviewed the diary. Does the name Gabe mean anything to you?"
She searched her memory. "No, I don't think so."
"In her diary, your daughter makes reference to someone by that name."
"Just Gabe? No last name?"
"I'm afraid not. But there may be a way to obtain more information. There are allusions to communicating with Gabe via e-mail. What I'd like to do, with your permission, is examine the computer in her room. She may have left the e-mails on her hard drive."
"Go ahead. Do whatever you have to do."
"I'll let you know if anything turns up."
He was gone. She pocketed the phone.
"What was that all about?" Wolper asked.
"Crime-scene investigator. He wants to access Meg's computer."
"Who's Gabe? Your mystery man?"
"Someone Meg mentioned in her diary."
"A boy she's got a crush on. A friend from school."
"Probably." She didn't want to discuss it, and she didn't have to, because they were turning onto Hollywood Boulevard.
Periodic attempts were made to revive Hollywood, but the improvements never seemed to take hold. Robin stared out at porno theaters, strip clubs, bars, and knots of street people eyeing each other warily. The sun had vanished behind the buildings and billboards, and the streets were deep in shadow under the darkening sky.
She hated to think of Meg in a place like thisor in someplace worse. And there were worse places in this city. There were shadow lands everywhere.
"There's the tattoo parlor." Wolper pointed at the garish sign over the storefront of Wild Ink. "Now where will he be?"
"Just keep cruising."
They crawled in slow traffic down the boulevard, heading west. When they passed Highland, the area perked up a little, becoming more of a tourist center, albeit a dingy one.
"You know," she said, "if we do find him"
"We won't."
"But if we do amp; well, he's armed."
"So am I."
"Even off duty?"
"A cop in this town is never off duty." He opened his jacket briefly to give her a glimpse of a handgun holstered to his belt in the cross-draw position. "Feel better?"
"I do, actually. But I think we've gone too far. Let's go back. We need to travel farther east."
The area got worse in that direction. Robin thought Gray would gravitate toward the seediest stretch of the boulevard.
Wolper turned around, executing an illegal U at an intersection, cutting off a driver who gave him a long blast of horn.
"One advantage of being a cop," Wolper said. "You never worry about traffic tickets."
She didn't answer. She was studying the crowded sidewalks, the shop windows, the side streets.
They passed Wild Ink again and kept going, east of Las Palmas. Robin leaned forward in her seat. "Wait a minute. Here's a possibility."
She was looking at the flashing lights of a video arcade.
"Those places are for kids," Wolper said.
"Gray isn't much more than a kid himself. Arrested emotional and sexual and social development. Fixation on high school girls." The words came by rote. "But that's not the only reason to look inside. He used to hang out in arcades when he was growing up."
"He told you that?"
"When he got away from his folks, he would play pool or Pac-Man. Games." She heard the bitterness in that word. "He's always enjoyed games." She looked again at the arcade. "He could be in there."
"We'll give it a shot." Wolper steered the car into a red zone and put his badge on the dashboard, insurance against a ticket.
They got out. As she stood up, Robin was briefly dizzy with a rush of blood. She caught Wolper watching her as he locked the car.
"Must've been one hell of a shot to the cranium," he said.
"I'll live."
"Probably. But, Doctordon't lie to me again. I don't like it."
He led her inside the arcade before she could answer.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Brand couldn't figure out what the hell they were up to. It hadn't been easy following Wolper and Cameron when they left Parker Center. He'd been parked across the street from the building's underground garage, watching official and unofficial vehicles go in and out, when his beeper chirped with an SOS. Even so, he hadn't expected Cameron to be with Wolper, and he'd nearly missed seeing her in the passenger seat of Wolper's Mercury. He'd had to pull away from the curb to catch up with Wolper in the dense downtown traffic, staying two or three cars behind to avoid detection.
He thought maybe Wolper was taking Cameron to the hospital or to her home. Instead the car wended into Hollywood, cruising the boulevard and doubling back, as if in search of something.
Now the two of them had gone into a video arcade. Didn't make much sense, unless Cameron had decided that Justin Gray might be hanging out there. Gray was the target, after all. Cameron obviously hadn't seen or didn't remember who had knocked her out, so Gray was taking the blame.
It was funny, in a waya serial killer getting pinned for a bum rap. As if the dumb son of a bitch didn't have enough on his resume already. And even if he was taken alive and swore up and down that he hadn't done it, who would believe him?
Cameron had probably gotten it in her head that Gray would visit this arcade. She'd treated the guy and must think she had some kind of insight into his psyche.
Personally, Brand didn't buy the idea that anybody could understand Justin Gray. Some people were just freaks, plain and simple. There was no more point in trying to understand them than there would be in analyzing the motivations of a school of piranha. That was how he looked at it, anyway.
He shook his head, amused at himself as he locked up his Crown Victoria, parked down the street from Wolper's Mercury Sable. Look at him, Alan Brand, philosopher. Like he knew what the fuck he was talking about. And like any of it mattered anyhow.
What mattered was getting Robin Cameron alone.
It would be tricky. The problem was Wolper. He would be right at her side. Most likely the two of them wouldn't split upnot if they thought Gray might be in the vicinity.
Well, maybe he could arrange a diversion, something to draw Wolper away, if only for a few minutes. Or maybe he would just get lucky. Hell, he was due.
Brand approached the arcade, fingering the off-duty gun under his nylon windbreaker. A Beretta 9mm, identical to his duty pistol. He didn't believe in trying to adjust to a different weapon. In an emergency he would depend on instinct and reflex, and he needed a gun that felt like it was part of him, an extension of his own arm.