The first time they'd taken Tyler to the park, Tim had hovered over him, righting him when he stumbled, steering him clear of metal and asphalt. Finally Dray had called him over. "The world doesn't work that way." She gestured at the playground equipment. "It has sharp edges and hard surfaces. He's gonna learn that. The longer he takes, the worse it hurts." Even as she was talking, Tim had scooped Tyler midair from a fall off a slide. Dray's grim silence on the walk home had an air of condescension to it.
Tim had been freed up by Ginny's removal from their lives to take insane-inane-risks. No human had been wholly reliant on him, in his charge. It was a kind of liberty that he'd put to use. And exploited. In the squalling calm of the past two years, he'd wondered whether he was still the deputy he'd been in the void between Ginny and Tyler; there was no doubt, his softening back into affection and concern had dulled his edge. It was just a question of how much.
Tim rose and padded down the hall. He picked up the copies of the TI security tapes from the counter and popped one into the VCR. As it rewound, a commercial was kind enough to inform him of one more pediatric disorder with which he wasn't familiar.
"An estimated one in every two thousand individuals is affected worldwide by alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency," a movie-trailer voice alerted over a slow-pan shot of a particularly pathetic little boy with a stained shirt, frown dimples, and too-big glasses.
Pointing the remote, Tim set the tape in motion. He viewed Boss's stabbing a few more times, looking for intricacies he might have missed, then switched tapes and watched LaRue's scamper across the dining hall. Matching words with image, he played the whispering scene again and again, speaking the words as LaRue did. "The left side." "The left side."
Getting up from the couch, he sat on the carpet before the TV and frame-by-framed Walker's reaction after LaRue delivered the news. Walker's head settled slightly on his neck-a split-second recoil. Tim froze it on-screen. The instant revealed a look on Walker's face Tim hadn't caught previously. A hidden expression, but one Tim recognized immediately. Grief.
Walker's mouth shifted, as if it were still working on the corn, though he'd swallowed seven frames back. Sorrow shifted to rage-an emotional logic with which Tim was intimate. Finally Walker rose and strode off camera, purpose quickening his step.
Dray's voice from behind caught Tim off guard. "How's the Need Monkey?"
Tim kept his eyes on the screen. "Down."
"The Tyrant keeps me up half the night, and now that he's soundly snoozing, I'm wide awake."
"I'll come give you Sleep Hold in ten minutes. Put you out like a stale cigarette."
"I love it when you talk dirty about sleep. Only problem is, a ten-minute estimate when you're working, based on previous findings, really means"-a pause, during which she pretended to crunch numbers-"an hour and fifty-three minutes. And we have to be awake by then."
"Twenty minutes tops."
"Do I hear thirty?"
Tim reversed a few frames, capturing the recoil again. Emotion loosened Walker's features, giving them an almost vulnerable cast. He wore the expression awkwardly; it had barely managed to slip to the surface.
Dray slid down behind Tim on the carpet, her sturdy legs on either side of him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and chest and gave him a squeeze, then rested her chin on his shoulder and watched Walker's exit from the chow hall.
"I miss it sometimes," she said. "The job. Almost as much as I don't miss it."
"It's always there. You're still your captain's favorite."
"I'd rather partake vicariously. Better hours." She waited through a moment of silence, then turned, lips brushing his cheek. "That was your cue, dummy."
He found himself re-sorting the information as he told it to her, ordering his thoughts. She listened quietly and attentively, her muscular body still enfolding him. In the intense yet comfortable silence that followed his account, he could sense her working over the facts.
"The Palmdale Station covers Littlerock, right?" Tim asked. "You still in touch with Jason Elliott up there?"
"Now and then. You're thinking as a maybe-former sheriff's deputy, I could get a fuller picture of the sister's suicide investigation?"
"More than we'll get out of the crime-scene report and a CYA phone conference."
He switched the tapes-back to the toothbrush through the carotid artery.
Dray watched, rapt, and made a noise at the back of her throat as if she'd just seen Barry Bonds send one into the Bay. "Impressive. No hesitation."
"Former military."
"You know how those boys are." She plucked the remote from Tim's hand and rewound the tape. "Look at that. Not even adrenaline. No anger, no tremor in the hand, nothing."
"He seems to be a dispassionate guy."
She paused the video, inadvertently capturing Boss's grotesquely twisted face as he sailed over the rail. "If you buy the veneer. But in the dining hall footage, your boy's working through some material. Here he's not. He doesn't even slow down to take in Boss's reaction to getting stabbed. Doesn't seem personal to me, as far as murders go."
"That's the problem. No one-not the guards, LaRue, or Freddy-came up with a motive for why Walker would whack Boss."
"Maybe there isn't one."
"There must be. If we can find it, we'll at least be on the right trail."
"Like if you could find out what the mint mouthwash was for?"
Tim shifted, regarding her across his shoulder.
She clicked "play," sending Boss to plummet into darkness. "Helluva spectacle, this murder. Blood spraying. Free fall. This wasn't no quick-and-quiet on the catwalk. Remember, Walker's a strategist. He used decoys in his cell. To sidetrack you."
"So you think he killed Boss to create a diversion?"
"I think you're looking at this backward. There's no need to pitch the guy three floors just to hear the thud. Boss's murder wasn't the reason Walker decided to escape." Dray pointed at the inmates mobbing the screen. "It created the spectacle that allowed him to escape."
Tim felt the range of possibilities crank wider, a sensation that was both exhilarating and alarming. "Okay. But we're still stuck with this one: What's a guy that close to the end of his sentence escape for?"
Dray rose, tugging Tim to his feet and leading him back to the bedroom. "Something that couldn't wait a year and a half."
Chapter 14
Walker sat on the sagging couch watching the dust filter through the slant of early-morning light that fell through the back slider. He stayed leaned over, elbows on his knees, his fingers laced to form a pouch. On the scratched glass coffee table before him lay a dish of stale potpourri, a cluster of keys linked to a blue rabbit's foot, and, enigmatically, a used electric label maker with a red gift bow on it. A few ambitious commuters whined by on the freeway, the distant sound carried into the family room almost as a vibration. A clock ticked. Somewhere up the street, a dog barked. He'd forgotten what the world sounded like.
"Get out of my house or I'll fucking shoot you!"
Calmly, he turned his head, getting a partial view of the woman behind him. She stood in the mouth of the hall, clutching a gun with trembling hands before her L.A. Clippers nightshirt.
"Safety's on," he said.
"Walker?" And again, angrily. "Walker!" Kaitlin squared her shoulders when he stood, as if to meet force with force. She'd slid on a pair of jeans, and the black box of a beeper showed at her hip. For a few moments, she was at a loss. He watched determination forming on her face, an act of will, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady. "You're bigger. New and improved." Her lips tensed. "You stopped drinking."
He nodded.
"Why?"
"Lack of supply."
She pointed at one of the crooked cabinets hanging beside the TV. "There it is. Go get it."