So, chancy as it was, it was a chance Eddi was going to take.
She held her conviction. She held on to her new gun. She watched Raddatz. She clocked him on duty, his comings and goings. Clocked what time he hit DMT on watch and what time he left. When he was working a watch, he was punctual. Same time in. Same time out. Every time. Raddatz was almost military-like with his adherence. Good for her. When Eddi finally figured the right moment to do things, Raddatz would most likely keep his appointment in Samarra.
Occasionally, after work and before going home Raddatz would stop to take a drink alone at a sports bar in the Valley. An actual sports bar. Not a strip club sports bar. Eddi didn't go in.
Besides not wanting to make herself obvious, she couldn't watch him in the act of consumption. She had no interest in taking a read on what kind of solitary drinker Raddatz was. If he needed a little something to help him unwind, or a boost to help him through what remained of the day. She didn't know if it was a happy drink or one laced with bitterness. If the booze in the glass was really just a reflecting pool- something for Raddatz to look down into and see what stared back.
Eddi watched Raddatz at home. What Eddi found out, what she figured but wasn't previously sure of: Raddatz had family. Wife and two boys.
The first time Eddi got any kind of conscience about what she was planning was when she learned that about Raddatz, learned he had family. Was she really going to make a woman a widow, take away some kids' dad? Probably, at some point on some call she'd already done as much to the family of a freak. But under the circumstances she had the law backing her. She had the reasoning that the freak could've chosen to turn itself in, but did things a different way. A family had ended up husband-less, fatherless for the choice it'd made.
This time there was no law backing Eddi's play. Still, what she was doing was purely predicated on Raddatz's choices. He'd decided to set himself aside from the law. Jeopardize the war against the freaks. He'd put himself in this place.
That his family would suffer… well, would they? Honest, Eddi thought, they'd be better off without him.
Yeah. Right. Like she was better off without her dad.
She was comparing Raddatz to her own father?
She wouldn't have that. Not even from her own conscience.
Conviction was good, conscience was unacceptable.
Sundays.
Sundays, early evenings-at least three of them running-Raddatz took himself a walk to the newsstand on Laurel Canyon blvd. It was a couple miles there and back. A little exercise, a little air. The streets were mostly quiet, mostly residential. But there was an alleyway, a shortcut behind a block of shops. Two hundred yards. Maybe. But back there, there were few eyes. Back there, there was less light, more shadow and a better op for Eddi to shoot a guy and escape conviction for it. Back there, the alley behind the block of shops, was where justice would get put into the back of Raddatz's head at 111 feet per second.
The waiting. That was the part that cut. From the Sunday she decided when and how to kill Raddatz to the Sunday she would do it were seven days in which she would pull three watches with Raddatz. With him. Watch by watch she knew what he did not. That he was a dead man. Seeing him, seeing him go through the motions of living not knowing that the time and place of his death had been stamped… for Eddi it was like watching a documentary of a life famously lost. King or Lennon or pretty much all the Kennedys. You see some footage of them at some innocuous moment laughing or smiling. Living, with no idea there was a bullet milled and waiting for them in Dallas or Memphis or just outside the Dakota. It was like watching a slasher flick and wanting to scream at the screen, useless as it was. Even with Raddatz, even knowing why she was doing what she was doing, Eddi nearly wanted to tell the man to get out of the way of the badness coming.
She had to avoid him. Three watches out of seven days a guy she previously barely crossed paths with on the job Eddi had to work at avoiding for fear Raddatz'd be able to decipher the look in her eyes, gain warning from it. But she wouldn't let herself avoid him too much, paranoid he could read her evasion as well.
One watch down. Another watch down. The third watch down.
She kept way clear of him on that last watch. Totally. She felt like a bride giving distance to her groom. She felt like she was dodging some kind of ill karma. They'd meet up later. Sunday evening. Sunday evening they'd consummate things.
Friday night. Saturday. Saturday night. Eddi had no idea what navigating those hours would be like. Rough. Anxious. Full of impatience. Reality was, it wasn't any of that. Eddi was less, much less keyed than she thought she'd be.
She also drank more than she usually did. Easy to do as she mostly never drank. But she was home, alone. It gave her an activity.
She thought about calling Vin. If she was going to drink, you know, why drink solo? Why let some other guy be an alcoholic by himself? But weak boozer that she was, what she didn't need was to put down one too many, get weak with her mouth and start spewing her plans. Much as Vin loved Soledad, as much as he regarded the struggle against the freaks, Eddi didn't figure he'd get with the idea of killing Raddatz. He wouldn't rat her out. out what Eddi could live free of was hours and hours of Vin throwing liquored reasoning against her plans. A waste.
She'd worked.herself up. She was ready for the kill. There was no going any other way.
Sunday. It felt like Christmas was coming. Not a child's Christmas with the static electricity of excitement permeating every single element of life. It was an adult's Christmas. Everything seemed rushed, harried, and no matter all the preparations Eddi felt horribly unprepared. Incredibly, though she slept poorly, she woke up late and felt as if even with taking a life the only thing on her calendar, she was running behind all day.
Then the day was gone.
It was getting on evening.
Eddi got in her car and drove to the Valley and parked a short distance from the alley off Laurel.
Shoot him in the head, walk to the car, go.
That was the plan. What little there was. What little was needed.
Shoot him in the head. Walk to the car. Go.
More waiting. Close now. Eddi could feel, could feel the passing of each second. No need to look at her watch. The sweep of her internal second hand was a razor to flesh, hacking off the time. Literally keeping score. Raddatz would come. Just wait. Be patient. He'd come.
Shoot him in the head, walk to the car. go.
The scent of arriving moonlight. The sound of clouds in the air. The laugh of a child who wasn' t even born yet. In her journal Soledad had written about her sense of death: an elevated level of perception that made the world hyperreal. As many calls as Eddi had been on, as many times as she'd walked with mortality- hers, other operators', freaks'-Soledad's words were, to Eddi, just inflated talk. Eddi'd never felt anything of the kind. But now things beyond the normal senses were coming real and real clearly to Eddi.
What she did not sense was Raddatz at the newsstand. Her essence spread across the city, Eddi hadn't seen him arriving. Didn't notice when he started thumbing a copy of Road & Track. She'd only caught him as he picked up a copy of Evo, flipped through it, put it aside knowing there was nothing in there for him.
He shared some friendly talk with another browser, got a copy of In Style magazine. It was probably for the wife, but that purchase alone of glamorized vogue-trash wrapped around the cult of celebrity was enough to remove any qualms Eddi had about what was to come.