Hood was reaching for his weapon when the machine gun rattled and the windshield shattered and Laws screamed. Hood shouldered open the door and rolled into the street as the bullets whapped into metal and flesh. Then he heard a metallic clang and a pause in the volley, so he rose into a shooter’s crouch just as another spray of bullets cracked into the door right in front of him and something hot hit his face. He scrambled around the back of the car and came up again with his sidearm in both hands but the shooter was already midair, vaulting a fence into someone’s backyard. Behind the shooter Hood saw a house light go on and a face in the window and he held fire, cursing as he ran around to the driver’s side of the cruiser.
He pulled Terry flat to the seat and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. A car engine came to life one block over. Hood looked down at Terry’s ragged body then grabbed the radio handset and called in the officer down.
Then he broke out the shotgun and ran to the street corner, just fifty yards away. But the car was gone and there was only wind whistling against a light pole, and the lights coming on in the houses, and the deafening report of his heart.
Hood ran back to the cruiser and hit the flashers. He stood looking down at Laws, then covered him with his duty jacket. He made a promise. The cold hit his back and he felt the sharp pain in his right cheek. He wiped away the blood and looked in the sideview mirror and saw the dark shard of metal, or perhaps lead, hooked into his skin.
By then the residents were gathering in the street, wrapped in jackets and robes. Hood told them a deputy had been shot to death and the gunman was still out there, go back inside and stay safe. A few of them did this, but most of them stood staring at the bullet-riddled radio car as if hypnotized by the flashing lights. Hood saw the steam coming from their mouths and noses and he kept them away from the car and his dead partner, shivering as he waited for help.
2
Hood tried to talk to the homicide detectives at the scene, but two men emerged from the darkness, badged the dicks and said they were part of the Internal Affairs “shoot unit” and this was theirs.
The detectives cursed and the IA men cursed back. But the bald black IA man in a sharp suit guided Hood away from the detectives, and the other, a white man in a beaten bomber jacket, fell in behind them. Half a block down the street, in a dark patch midway between two street lamps, a black plainwrap Mercury waited by the curb.
Sharp Suit got into the driver’s seat and Bomber held open the rear driver’s-side door. In the faint dome light Hood saw a big craggy-faced man with a graying buzz cut and round, wire-rimmed glasses. Late fifties, high mileage, thought Hood. He wore cowboy boots and jeans and a white shirt with a leather vest.
“I’m Warren,” he said. “Get in.”
Hood sat and Bomber shut the door then went around and got in the front passenger seat.
No one spoke until they were out on Twentieth Street, headed toward Edwards Air Force Base. The air conditioner was turned up high and Hood felt his muscles shuddering against the cold. He thought of his duty jacket, soon to be riding away in the coroner’s van with Terry.
“Talk to me,” said Warren. His voice was rough and low. He set a small recorder on the seat and turned it on.
It took Hood twenty minutes. By then they were north of the city limits, paralleling the base on Avenue E. Through the cold air Hood could still smell the faint sweet odor of coming snow. The Joshua trees flickered in the wind.
“Describe the shooter again. Carefully. Everything about him.”
“Black male, six feet tall, medium-to-slender build. Sunglasses and a red bandana worn pirate-style. His face was narrow, not wide. His nose and mouth were unremarkable. His skin was very dark. His hoodie was black with the Detroit Tigers logo on it. He used an M249 squad assault weapon. He fired it right-handed, with the butt jammed into his middle and his left hand pushing down on the stock to keep the muzzle down. I recognized the gunner’s stance from my months in Iraq. Then he was gone. He could have been sixteen years old or forty. I’d guess young, by how easily he jumped the fence.”
Warren nodded but Hood saw that he was looking past him. “Not bad, Hood, for a guy with a machine gun firing at him.”
“I think it jammed.”
“God and his mysterious ways?”
“I don’t know anything about God. But my life was on his finger and I don’t know why I’m alive.”
“Tell me if you get any ideas about that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long have you been up here in the desert?”
“Six months.”
“L.A. Internal Affairs speaks highly of you. I think highly of them. Some of them.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Bomber turned and looked at Hood, then back at the road.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir. IA is all I know.”
They turned south on 110th Street, back toward Lancaster.
“What did you promise Laws, Hood?” asked Warren. “Before he died.”
“He was dead by the time I could form a thought.”
“Then what did you promise him when you saw he was dead?”
“That I’d find who killed him.”
“Do you believe that, Hood?”
“Without question.”
“Good. You are assigned to this case as an officer of Internal Affairs. The fewer who know that, the better for everyone. Your superiors will be advised and tomorrow someone will e-mail you an IA charge number for your time card.”
Hood thought about this. From his tours in Iraq assigned to NCIS he knew what it was to be hated. And not just by the enemy, but by his own men. “Mr. Warren, I don’t want to work for Internal Affairs.”
“You made a promise and this is the only way for you to keep it.”
“You have more experienced investigators.”
“None with his partner’s blood on his shirt.”
Someone in front pushed a button, and an overhead light came on. Hood looked at the front of his winter-weight wool-blend shirt and at his shield and he knew it was more blood than could have come from the shrapnel still caught in his cheek.
“I respect what you did in L.A.,” said Warren.
“The last thing I wanted to do was take down a fellow deputy.”
“It was unavoidable for anyone with a functioning moral compass. Hood, I want you with us. I want you watching the watchers, protecting the protectors. There’s no higher calling in law enforcement-you will learn this with time. I’ll have Laws’s package on your desk tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t have a desk,” said Hood.
“You do now. It’s at the prison. In a place we unjokingly call the Hole. Report to the warden’s office at seven a.m. His secretary is named Yolanda.”
Hood watched the dark desert march past the windows, sand blowing upon sand, Joshua trees stiff against the wind.
“You can say no, Hood. But you can only say it once, and that time is now.”
Hood was not a planner. He was a man of the present, used to following his heart, which had gotten him mixed results.
“I’m in.”
“Know the target and you’ll find the shooter. They meet-beach and wave. I want you to bring me the beach. Bring me Terry Laws. Bring me everything he ever did at this department. He’s ours. He’s mine.”
Ia dropped Hood off at the substation, where two of the homicide detectives were waiting at the main entrance. One was big and white and the other was big and black.
“I’m Craig Orr and this is Oliver Bentley,” said Big White. “We’ve got lots of questions and a fresh pot on.”
“Lead the way, Bulldogs.” Hood used the nickname for LASD homicide because he’d worked with them in L.A. for a few weeks, and he had wanted badly to be a Bulldog.
“Want to clean up that face, Hood? Looks nasty.”
“Later.”
Sitting in a small conference room he told them what happened, then told them again. Orr used a digital recorder and Bentley wrote notes. The coffee was bad and they drank a lot of it.