The Night Crew

When she stepped back to the door, Creek was going into the ambulance, his eyes staring up at the night sky. Logan stepped over: 'Blood pressure's not too bad, that's what they said.'

'Jesus, Logan.' She clutched his arm, let go.

'If he's not bleeding out, he'll be okay,' he said. Logan was watching his hands: he wanted to pat her somewhere, but wasn't sure exactly where, how she'd take the intimacy. 'Once he hits the OR, they'll handle it.'

The ambulance eased away from sight, carefully working through side-stepping neighbors, then the driver hit the siren button and the ambulance disappeared down the block and around the corner. A uniformed cop walked over to them, one hand resting casually on his pistol. 'Are you the lady who was with him?'

Anna nodded: 'Listen, there's a lot going on here. You've got to call the Santa Monica, or L.A. County.'

The cop put her in the back of his car, but left the door open while he and his partner worked the street, taking names and addresses of witnesses. Another cop car arrived, and two more cops began pushing people back toward their homes.

Anna slumped in the back seat, her mind filled with Creek. He was a big man, almost overmuscled, hardened by life. but on the ground, looking up at her, he'd seemed almost frail, baby-like, dependent. Helpless.

She turned to look out the back window and felt the cell phone in her pocket. The first two cops were down the block, and after a second's thought, she found Harper's card, took out the cell phone and punched in the number. Nobody home. She left a message and hung up, put the phone away.

And she thought of the masked shooter. He was Harper's size. but the voice? The voice hadn't been right for Harper, as far as she could tell. Of course, the shooter had been wearing the stocking. But she'd heard it before. The voice was familiar somehow: tickled something in the back of her brain.

Another cop car arrived, and after talking with the first arrivals, the two new cops came over to the car. 'You say the man ran that way.' They pointed down Dell.

'Yeah, and there's a stocking.'

She showed them the nylon, and one of the cops asked, 'You don't wear nylons like this, do you? Just curious.'

'No. I wear nylons sometimes, but not this color.'

'Okay.' A flat okay. Not skeptical, but not necessarily buying it, either. 'So you say he went that way.'

The new cops put her back in the squad car and started tracing the path of the shooter, walking down Dell with their flashlights. She watched until the phone rang. She snapped it open, and said, 'Yes?'

Harper: 'Couldn't wait to hear my voice again, huh?' He said it lightly.

'Creek's been shot.' Silence. She tried again. 'Creek's been.'

'Christ, the guy's going through a psychotic break, the shooter. How bad is he? Creek?'

'Pretty bad, I think. He couldn't talk when they put him in the ambulance.'

'Where are you?'

'In a cop car, by my house, on Linnie. We were walking up to the truck.'

'Fifteen minutes,' Harper said, and he was gone.

He was almost a half hour, not fifteen minutes, rolling up in the growing light of dawn. He spotted Anna in the cop car and started toward her, but the cops walled him away. They argued for a while, and she saw him show one of the cops a card: but this cop apparently didn't need legal advice, and shook his head.

'You've got to go back downtown,' one of the uniforms said a moment later. 'I understand you've already been there tonight.'

'Yes.' She looked past him at Harper, who was arguing with another cop, his hair flopping into his eyes as he talked. 'Why can't I talk to that man?'

'We want to get a statement from you before you talk to anyone else. You have a right to see your lawyer if you want, but they'll tell you about that downtown,' the cop said. He looked back at Harper: 'He used to be a cop.'

'Homicide,' Anna said.

'Used to be,' the cop said.

So she did it all over again: talked to cops, to a different shift, fresher, just up, three of them this time. Dictated a statement, impatient, worried about Creek. Demanded information about Creek: he was alive, they told her, should be okay. The detectives in the unit were beginning to gather around her.

'This guy is. this guy is berserk,' a detective named Samson told her.

'You remember that case down in Anaheim?' asked another cop. The guy would stalk these people for weeks, then slash them, then he started killing them? When was that? That was like this.'

'Guy's dead, though,' Samson said.

'Yeah? When did that happen?'

'I don't knowI heard it. He hung himself in prison.'

'Besides, it's more like that one over in Downey, the kid with the Taurus wagon,' said a third cop. 'Man, I couldn't believe he'd do them right in the wagon. Told his mother the blood was some kind of fertilizer for a greenhouse.'

'Yeah, I remember. Whatever happened to him? He used both a gun and a knife, didn't he?'

'Can I go?' Anna asked.

Harper was waiting in the same spot where he'd waited the night before, in the hall near the exit.

'Creek's in the OR at L.A. General,' he said. 'He's got three bullets still in him, twenty-twos. If it'd been almost anything else, he'd be dead.' They were walking at speed, heading for the door. They hit it with a bang and were into the street, side by side.

'The face isn't bad, just barely caught some skin, in and out. No nerve damage, nothing,' Harper said. 'The problem is with the chest. One tore a hole in his left lung and collapsed it; another one went between two ribs and rattled around behind his heart.'

'Oh, God.' Standing on the street, she started to cry, one hand to her face. Harper draped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head into his chest: 'Listen, the docs down there are good.'

'I had the gun in my pocket, I couldn't get it out.'

'Well, you can't.'

'He was right there,' she said, pointing at a parking meter, trying to make him see it. 'The guy was right there, he said my name. I had the gun, but I couldn't get it out.'

She started to cry again and he squeezed her head in tight: he smelled of clean sweat and deodorant, his arms felt like bricks. She let herself go for a moment, leaning into the comfort of the man, then pushed back, wiped tears with the back of her hand. 'Let's go see him.'

'You're his sister,' Harper muttered as they pushed through the emergency room door. The place smelled like all emergency rooms, a combination of alcohol and raw turkey.

Anna nodded, and five seconds later, at the desk, she said to a nurse, 'My brother was shot and they brought him here. Can you tell me where he is?'

Her distress came through: the nurse never questioned her. 'He's still in surgery,' he said, tipping his head down the hall. There's a waiting room.'

'Can anybody tell us how he is?'

The nurse shook his head: 'He should be all right, if he's in good shape, and they say he is. That's the best thing.'

'How. are they operating right now?'

The nurse glanced at the clock: 'They have been for almost two hours.'

'Oh, Jesus.' The tears started again and Harper steered her toward the waiting area.

Anna wasn't good at waiting, and Harper was worse.

While she sat, remembering the attack, and the days before itall going back to Jacob's leap, and Jason's deathhe read an aging copy of Modern Maturity, the sports section of a three-day-old USA Today, and a coverless Time.

A man with a bad hand cut came in, and Harper went over to talk about it, until a nurse shooed him away. He walked around and jingled change in his pocket, got coffee for the two of them. Three or four times, he went to the desk, came back with nothing new. He put his feet up, tried to sleep and failed.

An hour after they arrived, Pam Glass walked in, her face haggard. She was wearing one of her power suits, with an HermŠs knotted at the throat, but the rims of her eyes were red with stress and tears.

'Why didn't anybody call me?' she asked Anna. 'How is he?'