The Night Crew

The first cop looked down into the water, then dropped face down onto the seawall, reached into the water. Couldn't quite touch whatever it is.

'I'll have to get in,' he said. 'I'll wreck my suit.'

'Put in for it,' Wyatt said.

'Fuck it.' The cop peeled off his jacket, shirt and pants, put his shoes back on, and slipped over the side in his underwear. 'Cold,' he said.

Then he reached down into the murk, and just as quickly pulled his hand back.

'What is it?' Anna said. She could barely breathe.

'Not a body,' he said. 'I don't know.'

Wyatt exhaled, glanced at Anna. Below, the cop reached carefully through the water again, then said, 'Plastic,' and lifted.

The thing came out of the water, and Anna said, 'Kayak. We were looking at the end of a kayak.'

Harper: 'A goddamned kayak. That's how he got in and out.'

Wyatt: 'Shit. He's not from here.'

'But somebody must have seen him putting it in, up by.'

And Anna looked at Harper and said, 'Steve Judge.'

'What?'

She grabbed him by the shirt, both hands, her face six inches from his: 'Remember, out at the ranch? The woman, what's her name? Daly? She said Steve Judge was up in Oregon running rivers.'

'But he was in Oregon,' Harper said.

'What's this?' Wyatt asked.

Anna took a minute to explain, and Wyatt said, 'Gotta check it.'

'He lives in Pasadena,' Anna said. 'We've got an address.'

She found an address in her book, pulled the page and handed it to Wyatt.

'Long shot,' Wyatt muttered, as he hurried back into the house.

Another car arrived out front, and as they moved back inside, Anna called information, got the number for the Full Heart Ranch, dialed it. No answer. Dialed again. Still nothing.

'If Steve's the guy, we oughta go out to the ranch,' Anna told Harper.

'Let the cops do it,' Harper said. 'And it's really a long shot.'

'What, send a deputy who doesn't know what's going on? He'd get lost out there, at night. The cops can surround his house in Pasadena, no problem, but if Steve's the guy, and he's up at the ranch, he'd see them coming a million miles away,' Anna said. 'We know the road. We can go out there and park by the gate and walk in.'

'Anna, that's crazy.'

'Well, what're we gonna do?' she shouted at him. 'He's got Pam. He's gonna kill her. We can't just hang around here with two hundred cops. He's not gonna be here, whoever he is.'

Harper looked at her, and the cops working in the house, and all the lights and cars, and said, 'I'll need a gun. We can stop at my place. It's on the way.'

They took the San Diego over the hill, moving fast. Anna said, 'The name of the ranch in Oregon. Was it Cut River Canyon?'

'Don't remember. That sounds good.'

Anna punched in the information number for Oregon, got an operator: 'I don't show a Cut River Canyon, but I show a Cut Canyon.'

'That's it.' Anna muttered the number to herself as she redialed. The phone rang eight times, Anna muttering, 'C'mon, c'mon,' and on the ninth ring, was answered by an irritated woman, who snapped: 'Hello?'

'Yes. My name is Anna Batory, from Los Angeles. I talked to someone at the Cut Canyon Ranch who connected me to a man named Steven Judge. Are you the woman who connected me?'

'Yes. Do you know what time it is? Steven isn't here.'

Anna interrupted: 'Ma'am, somebody in Los Angeles has murdered at least three people in the last week and now has kidnapped a woman. And this is somehow tied to me. The police say he is stalking me. Mr Judge's name has come up a couple of times in the course of the investigation, but if he was really up at Cut Canyon when I called, then he can't have anything to do with it.'

There was a long hesitation, and then the woman asked, 'Are you with the police?'

'I can have the office in charge of the L. A. County serial-murder task force call you in five minutes, if you have something to say,' Anna said.

Another pause. 'And this isn't a joke. We didn't receive anything like this information. before.'

'You mean from Mr Judge?'

'Yes, from Steve. The stalking, I mean, he suggested it might be somewhat the other way around, that's why we.'

'Ma'am, I'm going to have Lieutenant Wyatt from the Santa Monica police departmenthe's the head of the task force for this series of crimesI'm going to have him call you in the next five minutes. Please tell him everything you know.'

'How do I know this isn't some kind of, of, arrangement? That he's a policeman?'

'If you would like, you could call the Santa Monica Police Department on your own. I'll give you the area code, you can get the number from informationand they will transfer you to Lieutenant Wyatt.'

'Oh, God. Okay, I'll call Santa Monica.'

'Wait five minutes,' Anna said. 'I've got to tell Lieutenant Wyatt that you'll be calling.'

Anna gave the woman the area code for Santa Monica, rang off, said to Harper, 'I think he's the one, all right, Steve Judge,' and punched in the Santa Monica police department number. A woman answered, and Anna told her that she needed to speak to Wyatt immediately, and spent a minute filling the woman in. She rang off again and Harper said, 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'

She said, 'Jake, I know you do. But he's probably in Pasadena, anyway. This is just something that we can cover better than the cops could. If the cops even decide to go up to the ranch, it'll take them three or four hours to get a SWAT team over there. trying to talk to Ventura, trying to figure out where it is and how to get there. They'll have to get maps and all that stuff. There's no way Pam'll get out alive: he's nuts, he's itching to kill her. There's no way they'll even find him, until it's too late. And if he gets out, where's the evidence that he was even there?'

'There'd be some prints in your car, his behavior.'

'But that won't get Pam out.'

The phone rang in her lap and she picked it up, ready to switch it on, already hearing Wyatt's voice, when Harper swatted it out of her hand. 'No, no,' he said urgently. 'What if it's him?'

But there was no second ring. Then five seconds later, it rang again. She didn't wait for the third time, but said, 'Hello?'

Wyatt said, 'You were supposed to wait for the third ring.'

'No time,' Anna said.

'What's happening? Where are you?'

'We're running up to Ventura to check on something. just in case,' Anna said. 'Listen, a woman's going to call you from a place called Cut Canyon Ranch, up in Oregon.'

She explained the circumstances, and Wyatt said, 'You think they did something weird with the call?'

'It's not weird, if you're wired right,' Anna said. 'You just push a button. No big deal. But if they were faking it, then there's a lot better chance that he's the guy.'

'All right, I'll talk to her.'

'Are you heading for Pasadena?'

'We're on the way, but we're still getting people together.'

'Good luck. And gimme your number.'

Wyatt dictated a number; Anna rang off and said to Harper, 'Still getting people together. Damn, damn, damn, there's no time for that.'

Anna sat in the car while Harper ran inside his house. He was back a minute later, carrying a short rifle, fumbling with a box of shells. 'Gimme,' Anna said. 'You drive, I'll load.'

'You know how?'

'I can figure it out.'

'Just feed them in the bottom, there's a release just in front of the trigger guard.'

'Think it's enough gun?' Anna asked, looking at the magazine mechanism.

'It's an old Ruger forty-four,' Harper said. 'It'll do the job.'

They slewed out the end of his driveway, Jake driving with both hands as Anna fed the short fat shells into the rifle. The rifle was short, with a smooth walnut stock: comfortable. And then the phone rang. Once, twice, three times: not Wyatt.

Anna passed it to Jake, who listened, said, 'She's not here. Yeah, but she just left it in the car. Who is this? Well, probably about a half hour, I'm on my way to pick her up. Okay. Message from Pam. Do you have a number? Okay. Yeah, half an hour, you know, give or take.'