The Blue Hour (50 page)

He got out, put on his hat
and walked toward the doors. That set off the guard dogs, a whole pack of them
from the sound of it, their voices shrieking all around Hess in the warm summer
air. He could hear the clink and rattle of the fences.

The convenience doors wouldn't move. Neither would
the big sliders. Locked from the inside, as he'd expected.

And if there was
anyone inside, they'd heard him.

He went around the
building to the front. No van. There were five spaces in front of the store, a
patch of brown grass and ivy up by the windows, a break area with some patio
furniture on it. He was breathing hard by the time he rounded the corner and he
wished his heart would just settle down but it was thumping away. It felt like
something was slipping in there. Hess told himself not to worry about it. When
was the last time his heart did something he asked it to, anyway?

Up close to the building
and bent low under the windows, he crept along. The chipped letters spelling
out Pratt Automotive went past over his head. The ivy he stepped on was
threadbare and almost leafless. He squeezed behind a rusted wrought-iron bench
surrounded by cigarette butts. His back hurt and it was hard to ignore the pain
when he was bent over like that. The front doors were mesh-reinforced glass and
they were locked, too. He cupped his hands to the dirty scarred glass and saw
the dark wood paneling of the front office, the counter with the computer on
it, the rows of shelves. At the end of one row Hess could see a door with a square
window.

The front of the shop sat
in darkness but light showed through the window to the high bay. An orange rope
swayed very slightly, hung in the cavernous bay beyond the glass.

His vision went sharp and
his heart kicked in strong and fast. He ran over to the wrought-iron chair and
dragged it away from the building. The legs caught on the moribund ivy, leaving
furrows in the hard dry earth.

It took him two tries
to get it up and balanced over his head. He swayed, feet planted in the
cigarette butts.

The window exploded
just under "Pratt," carrying most of the name with it. Jagged
triangles rimmed the frame. Hess I pulled his .45 and knocked some of them out
with the butt. Then he swung one foot onto the bottom of the window frame and
hauled the rest of himself up. He crunched heavily to the floor inside, slicing
open his left finger on the way down. Swaying in the broken glass, Hess tried
to keep his balance. He found the hatch in the counter and slammed it up and
open.

Then he was running
the aisle between the high stacked shelves, left arm reaching for the high bay
door, the window getting bigger as he approached.

He grabbed the door
handle, jerked down and pushed through. The sound of the door closing behind
him echoed faintly in the high ceiling.

Over his gun sights
now: a silver van. Yellow racecar. Orange rope. Merci curled on the floor below
the rope, naked but moving. She lifted her head and shook it when she saw him.
Her face was taped and Hess could hear her scream against it.

Then a small long-haired
man popped up from behind the race car and shot him in the stomach.

Hess fired
fractionally later and the man blew backward against the van. He looked like
Kamala Petersen's guy, and he wore a thick black vest over a bright shirt.
Hess's next two shots seemed to pin his target to the metal. But two more
blasts quickly came back at him. Hess ducked into a shooter's crouch, hearing
the bullets careening around the bay. When he went to fire again he saw nothing
but silver vehicle. He looked to the floor by the van, unable to believe that
there was no body lying on it. Then one of the bay doors flew open and the
sunlight charged in and the little man charged out.

He was back to Merci in
five steps. Her eyes were clear and focused and her neck muscles strained
against the tape. She was still trying to speak.

"It's okay," he
said. His voice didn't sound believable to him. "Here."

He used his pocketknife to
cut the tape from her wrists. It was hard to get the blade out because both his
hands were covered with blood. He'd told himself not to look at the hole and
not to touch it, but apparently he'd done just that. So he glanced down at his
abdomen as he slid the knife back into his pocket, not seeing much but a bloody
shirt and belt. A bullet made no bigger hole going in than a sharp pencil, but
going out was different.

Right now it felt like
someone had swung an oar into his gut, maybe an oar with a big nail in it. And
it felt like his body was trying to gather around where that nail had gone in
and out again, trying to fill the gap. His flesh was confused. He popped the
little .32 from his ankle holster and held it up to her, then set it on the
blanket.

Seconds later Hess was in
the sunlight behind Pratt Automotive, surrounded by the barking of dogs,
looking down the alley to his left where the Purse Snatcher ran with his long
blond hair shining in the sun. He had a hundred yards. No more. A cold shiver
of nausea went up through Hess, even as the warm blood drenched his underwear
and ran down into his shoes.

He ran.

Hess's legs pumped in
rhythm with his lungs. He could feel his body trying to writhe away from what
had gone in him—or through him, more likely.

He wished he hadn't
worn his black wingtips, wished he could trade them for a set of body armor.
But he'd had that opportunity before he left home this morning, deciding
against it, looking for the damned fedora instead.

Dogs bounced off the
fences on either side of him. He was close enough to hear their teeth snap.
Hess tried to keep his legs working on the same beat as his lungs but he was
gulping and spitting out air twice per step now and that funny red outline had
come back and it made him feel like he was dreaming.

The important thing
was to keep the legs moving, keep those wingtips aimed at the Purse Snatcher
and keep him in sight. Keep him
in sight.
Hess was only sixty yards
back. Sixty yards back and closing. Half of that, and he could try to take him
out. Half of
that
and he could take him out with certainty, aim for his
butt, below the armor. The pain in his gut made him squint.

So Hess squinted
ahead through the red world and kept his vision riveted on his prey. His
footfalls were the sound of wet socks in wet shoes. The Colt was slick and
heavy and he thought he might change hands but he also thought he might drop
it. He thought he must be slowing down because Colesceau seemed further out. So
he really dug in and tried to get his knees up, get some better speed going.

The Purse Snatcher
vanished right. Hess followed seconds later. Through a yard of hay bales with
archery targets tacked to them, no archers in sight at this early hour, then
around a yellow stucco clubhouse of some kind. Hess could just make out the
bright shirt and flowing hair turning the corner away from him.

Then across an empty
street and into the grounds of a commercial nursery. Hess saw a stout Japanese
man staring first at Colesceau then at him with set, stoic eyes. He held a flat
of flowers.

Beyond the nursery was the
slough of the Santa Ana River, a thicket of bamboo and weeds inhabited by feral
cats and human beings too poor to afford a place to sleep. Hess watched
Colesceau scamper between the deep rows of five-gallon trees and potting soil,
look back just once, then climb the chain-link fence and drop over. He seemed
about a mile away by now, but Hess figured it was just the pain that made his
eyes tight, made things look farther out.

Then his legs faltered.
His balance began to abandon him and he had to put both hands out like a
tightrope walker to keep himself steady, but the gun was heavy and this threw
him off even more. Still, he didn't fall. He realized with disappointment that
his hat was still on: how fast was he really moving, anyway?

Colesceau was headed
for the jungle, a hundred yards away.

Then Hess sensed something
behind him and Merci stretched past. She seemed to be eating up the ground ten
feet at a time and there was something small and silver in her hand.

On her way by she
said, "I got him."

And there she went.

Hess felt his feet slow
down, felt the big trunk of his body swaying for balance as it tried to slow
down too, then saw the ground coming up at him and turned his face to the side
so he wouldn't break his nose.

This he accomplished. With
his head in the dirt he looked toward the river in time to see Merci's body
pitch over the chain-link fence.

Hess was pleased to see
his hat had finally fallen off. He was pleased to see that he still had control
of the big automatic .45 in his right hand. Forty-plus years and he'd never
lost his sidearm to anyone.

He worked himself up to
his knees, gathered his hat and stood. He holstered the gun, which in the
nursery seemed to be an absurd, almost shameful possession. He looked for a
place to sit and found a wooden bench beside the path by the potted roses.
There were a million of them, it seemed, reds and yellows and whites and
purples and even a fountain with a dolphin spraying water from its blowhole.

The bench had a back and
he leaned against it. He put on the hat and adjusted the brim. He didn't even
bother to look down at himself. It felt like someone had burned a hole through
his middle with a cigarette the size of a fire log.

He was still breathing
fast and shallow. Couldn't get quite enough air. Just not enough to go around.

He could see the Japanese
man coming toward him down the pathway, with the flat of flowers still in his
hands.

Hess didn't really feel
like talking. But he knew he should have something to say, some accounting of
himself. After all, he was armed and trespassing and taking up space on a perfectly
good bench. He could hear the slow pitter-patter of liquid hitting the ground
below that bench, like night fog spilling off an eave.

Hess straightened himself
and looked up. He folded his hands in his lap and it was like putting them into
a pan of something hot and wet. He tried to figure out what he should say. But
his thoughts came slow like thoughts in a dream, and he couldn't tell if they
were really good or not.

Hello.
I'm
Tim Hess . . .

It seemed to him that the
nurseryman was studying him from a rather long distance. His lips moved. No
sound. Earnestly, Hess tried to read them. Then he remembered that there were
words, too. Always words. You just had to wait for them.

"Are you the
good guy or the bad guy?"

Very slowly, because he
could not do it any other way, Hess removed his hat. Something here demanded
manners. He set it on his lap and looked at the nurseryman. It took a long time
and a lot of strength to formulate his reply. He wanted to get it right. And in
the end he got it out in what he hoped was a strong and resonant voice.

"I'm an Orange County
Sheriff Department. . . detective. You put the creeps away. They come back
again. Over and over. I've done small. Things. Only a small number of people...
care about. A few people will remember me. I wish I had children to . . . give
things to. I did save three lives. Three. Those are sure saves. Maybe a few
by ...
accident. So those . . . three lives
are my best contribution to. Things. What I wanted to be was. Useful. In a way
you could. See. Like a trash man or a bricklayer. Or a doctor. That's all I
have to say."

The nurseryman hovered
above a mirage on a distant horizon. His flat of flowers threw colored beams of
light into the sky.

"Sounds like you
do all right, old man."

"I guess I'm
ready."

"Don't talk. I'll
call someone."

The trail led through the tall bamboo and she could
only see him in flashes, out ahead, in the small clearings, looking back over
his shoulder before vanishing back into the pale yellow thickness. Cats
slithered through the stalks. In an opening she leapt over a small campfire
surrounded by three stupefied men in rags who just stared at her, mouths hung
in dirty beards, wordless as she flew past.

She wasn't fully aware of
how she had gotten here. The haze of the chloroform hadn't fully cleared when
she saw Hess, tried to warn him off, heard the shots boom, then saw the
sunshine flood through the door as Colesceau made his escape.

Her instincts had made her
pull on her clothes and take Hess's backup gun, upend her purse, then stumble
into the bright summer morning. She saw Hess lumbering down the alley and the
Purse Snatcher skittering out ahead. And she willed her legs to carry her where
she needed to go. While she ran she tore the tape from around her face,
unreeling it in big rasping circles that left her skin burning but free.

Now she was deep in the
thicket and Colesceau was thirty yards away. She felt the air piercing deep
into her lungs and every step seemed to push more of the poisonous gas out of
her. If he stopped and hid and waited, he could shoot her on her way by. She
knew this and tried to watch the bamboo in font. And every time she saw him she
thought of Hess and dug deeper and tried to close the distance. He looked
wobbly. She wished she had her nine.