Dray said, "I got Elliott. He said he'd be happy to. He's working a P.M., so I'll meet him at Palmdale Station, walk through the files with him to get the skinny on the sister's suicide, and bring copies by your office tonight." Before Tim could thank her, her attention shifted to the Typhoon. "Did he get up the steps and down the slide by himself?"
"I worry about that slide. It gets his head stuck."
"He gets his head stuck. And he'll learn how to get it unstuck. That's what playground equipment is for."
Tim followed Dray's sharp stare to Tyler, who was standing with his knees pressed together, cupping his crotch.
Tim hoisted him up by his armpits, swept him down the hall, and deposited him on the kiddy toilet. In solidarity Tim followed suit once Tyler was done, without the aid of the red plastic booster.
As Tim flushed, Ty applauded clumsily. "Good job, Daddy."
"Thanks, pal. I been at this awhile, so it actually no longer constitutes a big accomplishment."
As Tyler toddled back to his markers, Tim heard him sneeze a couple times. Holstering his. 357 as he came back into the living room, Tim asked, "You're gonna take him to the doctor today, right? Check out his cold?"
Dray toed the carpeted hearth. "You don't want to keep doing this to him."
At her tone he straightened. "Doing what?"
"The plastic railing and a doctor's trip after three sneezes. You'll make him a sick kid. You're teaching him that's how to live in the world."
Capitalizing on the distraction, Tyler had his shirt off and Ernie and Bert negotiating a fine domestic matter at too-loud volume.
"What's your biggest fear?" Tim asked.
"Having the hiccups indefinitely?"
"Dray."
"Going to jail for a crime I didn't commit? Speculums?" Eyebrows raised, she studied his irritated expression. "Okay, I give up."
"Mine is having something happen to him that we could have prevented."
"Okay." Dray took a few steps forward, arms folded so her firm biceps showed against her cutoff academy T-shirt. "I don't have a 'biggest' fear. I gave them up with best friends. But here's one of my bigger ones: raising a timid, shy boy who's terrified of adventure and risk and regards the world as a dangerous place. And right up there with that is the fear of being a parent who'd do that to him."
"The world is a dangerous place."
"Right. But that's not just a fact of life, it's one of the facts that gives life meaning and excitement. Even a kid can learn enough anxiety to lose sight of that."
Tim looked at Tyler, nakedly scribbling with a stunt helmet on. "I don't see that in him."
Dray's gaze shifted, then caught. Tyler was studying his feet intently, holding the uncapped yellow marker like a wand. "Ty, what are you doing?"
In response he leapt up and spun in circles.
"Okay," Tim said, "I'll work on it."
"Do more than that. Work on your head, sure. But act differently in the meantime. Now, finish your toast and go catch Walker Ja-" Dray stiffened.
A trail of tiny yellow footprints across the white carpet betrayed Tyler's escape route. The markers were kicked in all directions, food spilled across the sheet. Dray studied the scene, her jaw tensed. She drew a deep breath, closing her eyes and exhaling slowly as if to decelerate her temper. Finally she took a few steps over and studied the sticky TV. Orange juice had been splashed right into Elmo's hapless face.
"Field analysis would indicate the absence of a sippy cup," she said, "an open container being the only reasonable explanation for the spatter on the television screen."
Tim worked on keeping a straight face. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Crumb distribution suggests that the UNSUB ate his muffin imitating the Cookie Monster, not realizing that he actually has an esophagus, while said puppet does not." She assessed the stained fibers seriously. "The footprints, which are thankfully rendered in fluorescent yellow"-a brief pause as she pretended to regain her composure-"show the UNSUB headed west down the hall…"
Blinding Yellow proved surprisingly robust as they followed the splotches.
"Preliminary evidence points to UNSUB coloring his feet bottoms with Magic Marker. Permanent Magic Marker." Dray shoved their bedroom door the rest of the way open, revealing the Typhoon jumping on their mattress, giggling at the sight of them, a puddle of jaundiced comforter at his feet.
Tim waited for Tyler to draw a breath between screeches. "What was that you were saying about timid?"
Chapter 18
Within the hour, when their stretches get stuck in traffic, I'm gonna have calls from the mayor and from Sutter's Fort or wherever the hell the governor lives. To ask what they can do to help. To inquire politely what we need. We need this guy nailed. Nothing shakes consumer confidence like a prison break." Sitting sideways on Tim's flimsy desk, hands laced across his knee in his trademark pose of paternal authority, Marshal Tannino flashed an ironic grin at Tim, Bear, and Guerrera. "Go restore order."
One of the few of the ninety-four U.S. marshals who'd risen through the ranks, Tannino preferred sweating over case files to the more prestigious-and dull-responsibilities of his appointment. He was supposed to be attending a fund-raising breakfast in Long Beach, but he liked to spend Monday mornings reviewing cases with his deputies in the squad room. The Service's central district warrant teams occupied the Roybal Building's Garden Level, so named because a bank of windows overlooked a spotty lawn and a few tired trees drooping under exhaust from Temple Street traffic. The desks were laden with laptops and red-markered maps. Crime-scene flyers, faxes, and booking photos flew back and forth over the waist-high partitions as the deputies waged an endless war of attrition against a horde of escape, parole, and drug cases.
The City of Angels also happens to be the nation's fugitive capital. Sleaze, after all, is just glamour that falls short of the mark. For every Hollywood release, there were five skin flicks staining their way into existence on a Van Nuys bedsheet; for each set of celebrity handprints pressed into pavement on the Boulevard, there was a crimson spatter across glass-strewn asphalt.
Alongside LAPD's Parker Center, the federal courthouse, City Hall, and a variety of seventies-style landscape sculptures of questionable appeal, Roybal sits on Fletcher Bowron Square, which honors a brief but valiant stab at wresting city government from rackets and vice taken by L.A.'s forty-second mayor. Bowron's campaign met with far less success than did his subsequent effort to root out, dispossess, and intern Japanese-Americans, but his later apology stands as the sole capitulation by a major political leader in the postwar years. Tim, perhaps unnervingly early in his own career, identified closely with a man whose good intentions were overshadowed by recklessness and regret.
This morning Tannino looked uncharacteristically casual, salt-and-pepper stubble darkening his handsome Italian face. Rumors of retirement had been floating through the federal corridors, and he'd been complaining more often, confiding to Tim last week that his age-a youthful fifty-seven-already had him pissing in Morse code. But Tim couldn't see Tannino relinquishing his hold on his beloved Arrest Response Team, the Service's SWAT-like strike force composed of various warrant-squad deputies. Tannino oversaw tactical operations more closely than his predecessors, though Supervisory Deputy Brian Miller headed up ART in title. Thomas, the one colleague who continued to give Tim friction over past transgressions, had risen to team leader, spending so much time at the side of the supervisory deputy that the others had dubbed him "Miller Lite." Thomas and his partner, Freed, an independently wealthy deputy with a knack for unraveling shady finances, had proved themselves invaluable resources. Though Tim was technically a rank-and-file Escape Team deputy and ART member, his Spec Ops training bought him point-man status when they were pursuing a fugitive with Walker's expertise.