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  I followed my wife and my union rep into the hall. There was mass confusion in the office behind us as they started passing her writ of mandamus around, all talking at once.

  I looked at Utley. "Can we do that?"

  "She's your division commander. If she suspended you before the Skelly, then this case is over on a technicality."

  I turned to give Alexa a hug, but when I did, I saw that she had already disappeared. I scanned the fifth floor to the elevators, but she was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter 28

  In less than a minute, I made it up to Alexa's office using the stairs. I found Ellen standing in the outer office talking to the Detective Bureau Deputy Assistant Commander, Chuck Ward, who was holding a thick case folder. Both of them turned as I bolted through the door.

  "Where's Alexa?" I blurted.

  "Gone. I think she went down to the fifth floor to see you," Ellen said. "She left her review almost twenty minutes ago. Haven't seen her since then."

  "I'll come back at a more convenient time." Chuck Ward turned and left quickly.

  "What's going on?"

  "Alexa's been replaced. Chuck's the new interim head of division now."

  "Tony relieved her?"

  Ellen looked sad, but tried to put a good face on it. "Listen, Shane. Maybe it's for the best. It's been a nightmare around here. I think she needs to work on getting better, first."

  "You don't know where she went?"

  "Home, I guess."

  I left, got in my car, and blew out of the police garage. I tried her cell. Nothing. It went straight to voice mail. I tried our house-same thing. I made it home in forty minutes, which is excellent time, even for me.

  Alexa wasn't there. I went outside and looked up the canal path, thinking that maybe she was walking around the neighborhood breathing in the ocean air and trying to calm herself down. I didn't see her.

  I called her cell again, left a second urgent message, then got in the MDX and took off for USC. She might have gone there to see Chooch.

  I arrived in record time, mostly by cheating and using my flashers and siren.

  It was a little past five by the time I arrived at Howard Jones Field. I found Chooch in a receiver and quarterback meeting of fifteen guys in the east end zone. All of them had taken a knee and were gathered around a position coach at the center of the circle. I spoke to an assistant and had Chooch pulled out of the group. We found a spot on the sidelines where we could talk.

  "Has Alexa tried to reach you?" I asked.

  "I don't know. I don't think so."

  "Where's your cell?"

  "It's… it's in… What's going on?"

  I told him that Alexa had failed her administration review and was being replaced as the head of the Detective Bureau. I told him how she came down and saved my ass in Cal's office by burying herself even deeper and admitting that she illegally suspended me before my Skelly hearing.

  "Maybe that was her plan all along," Chooch suggested. "Maybe that's why she did it, so she could use that to help you later."

  It didn't sound like Alexa to me. She was too much of a Girl Scout for that kind of blatant manipulation. Then I realized that I couldn't swear to that right now because I really didn't know her anymore. I had no idea what she would now regard as acceptable behavior.

  "Chooch, if she calls I need to talk to her. I'm worried."

  Chooch reached out and took my arm. "Dad, don't leave her."

  "Where did that come from?"

  "I know you're thinking about it. I know you."

  "I'm not thinking about it." But of course, that wasn't true.

  "I know who she is," Chooch said. "We both do. I don't believe God makes us one way, then changes who we are. I think a person's soul is given at birth. It's specific and unchangeable. Character isn't just about brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. That's not what determines who we are."

  "Sometimes I don't even recognize her anymore," I admitted.

  "I know it's hard, Dad. But you've got to give this some time- years even. If you can't do it for her, then hang on for me. Will you promise?"

  I stood looking at my son and wondering how he'd gotten so strong and so spiritual. Did that come from Alexa, or did it get passed down it genetically from his birth mother?

  "Okay," I finally said, softly. "I promise."

  "Let's go check and see if she's called my cell," Chooch said.

  He told the assistant coach that we had a personal emergency and that he'd be right back. We walked to the locker room where he pulled out his cell phone and checked it for messages.

  "Three calls from her in the last hour," he said.

  "Call her back."

  Chooch dialed Alexa back but her phone went to voice mail.

  "She's smart, Dad. She knows you'd come here. She obviously doesn't want to discuss this yet."

  "Next time she calls, try and get her to talk with me."

  "Okay."

  I left Howard Jones Field and returned home. It was after seven when I got there. The first thing I did was check our home phone for messages again. There were three. One was from Secada asking me to call her. One was from Jeb Callaway-same message. The last one was from Alexa.

  "Shane, it's me." Her voice sounded guarded. "Listen, I know you want to talk, but I need some time to myself right now. Don't chase after me. Don't make any demands. I'm in a place where I can think. I need to find out who I am and who I'm going to be. I love you, darling. Hang on and say a prayer for us."

  Chapter 29

  I sat in the living room making more entries into my journal. I remembered Alexa striding into Cal's office, laying that writ of mandamus on Lieutenant Sheppard, telling him she'd drop-kick him out a window if he gave her any trouble. It was magnificent, just like the old days. But just when I thought she was back, she ran off, refusing to talk to me. Preferring to be alone.

  I finally finished writing and closed the journal, then turned off the lights and lay on the sofa listening to the distant surf thunder two blocks away. The marine layer must have been rolling in because I heard the long, mournful wail of a foghorn. My thoughts turned inward.

  I've never taken good fortune for granted. From an early age, my life as an orphan was a series of fistfights, manipulations, and lies. Like a wolf hovering at the edge of a campfire, I was always waiting for any sign of weakness so I could sweep in and take advantage. Cynicism was my armor, violence a reaction to loneliness, sex a physical release performed mostly with strangers. In all of this, I was only trying to survive.

  After I met Alexa and Chooch, I let my guard down. I soon learned that I needed different things to survive. Respect, redemption, and love. I found myself on a new eye-opening path where good deeds were performed for no selfish reason. And finally, in the end, I developed the ability to become vulnerable to others. The next thing that happened was I began to accept love, and then even take it for granted. I never expected to experience the old emptiness, or deal again with the dark creatures that once crawled on the floor of my mind.

  But now I was back where I started. All of it courtesy of one sixteen-gram hollow point round that scrambled Alexa's brain, causing a chain reaction that ended up changing everything.

  I closed my eyes and wished that I could escape from all of this. Then, mercifully, I fell asleep.

  The ringing of the telephone jolted me awake. I scrambled up off the sofa and snatched the receiver out of its cradle.

  "Yes?" I was hoping for Alexa, but got Secada instead.

  "Sorry it's so late," she said.

  "What time is it?"

  "Midnight."

  "What's up?"

  "Somebody got to Tru Hickman right after chow tonight. It happened in the cafeteria. Shanked. I just got a call from the prison hospital because my name's in his letter file. He's in ICU. It's critical."

  "Who did him?"

  "Gang-bangers from his car."

  "Fuck!" I shouted at the walls. We'd been too slow, too predictable.


  "I'm going up there now," Scout said.

  "Okay. Me, too."

  "Want me to pick you up?"

  "Where are you?"

  "Just leaving downtown. No traffic at this hour. I can be at your place in twenty."

  She made it in eighteen. I was waiting out front and jumped into her green Suburban, and we roared out.

  It was past one by the time we hit California 1-99 to Bakers-field. Big, empty, sixteen-wheel produce trucks churned relentlessly up the Grapevine, grinding through their gears heading over the San Gabriel Mountains into the Central Valley. As Secada drove she filled me in on a few things she'd learned while I'd been in my supervisor review and chasing after Alexa.

  "I ran through Mike Church's background this afternoon looking for recent deaths. His father, Juan Iglesia, died in his shower eighteen months ago. There'd been bad blood between them since Mike got jumped into the Vanowen Street Locos at age fifteen. It got worse when he changed his name to Church. After Juan's death, Mike inherited the old man's auto body shop and tow service."

  I looked over at her. "You sure Church didn't kill him?"

  "I'm having the investigators' report and the M. E.'s statement faxed over to us. According to the coroner's assistant I talked to over at North Mission Road, it was a pinpoint injury. A heavy blow, but only a few centimeters in diameter. His skull was hit with such force it exploded some blood vessels inside his head. A single, massive stroke ensued."

  "Do they know what caused the head trauma?"

  "They think he just slipped in his shower and went down, hitting the faucet handle. At least, that's what the primary and the M. E. wrote. Death by accidental causes."

  "But as a result, Church inherits his father's tow service and bus company," I mused. "I'm not going for it."

  "Apparently, Juan Iglesia was 'El Corazon Oro,' " she said. "A friend with a heart of gold. I checked around. People loved this old man. He was the exact opposite of his deadbeat son. He started that little bus company and ran it as a nonprofit because he wanted to help the elderly and disabled. Kind of his way of giving back to America."

  We rode in silence for a minute and then I said, "Okay, so what's the story on the Transit Authority Police Department then? Whose idea was that?"

  "Probably Mike's. He inherited this little bus company with only one van that his father originally obtained by trading three broken motorcycles. Mike also inherited Iglesia Auto Body, which he promptly renamed the Church of Destruction. Then in September of last year the bus company bought four new Metro Coach fifty-seven passenger buses-big ones. A month later they form a transit police department and buy all kinds of topflight security to go inside the buses-elaborate, infrared cameras and state-of-the-art satellite GPS units to locate a bus if it's hijacked. Except, who's gonna hijack a bunch of disabled senior citizens?"

  I looked over at her. "You've been busy. That's a lot of good info."

  "Yeah, looks like a lot. But if you want the real truth, I was relieved of duty. I'm still getting paid, but Sasso put me on the rack. Apparently my undercarriage is getting checked for wet spots. Her words, not mine. That left me with an afternoon to kill. Most of this stuff I got off the NVNTA Web site."

  I nodded.

  "How 'bout you? How'd your supervisor's review go?" she asked.

  "Pretty good. I'm off the hook."

  "Get outta here." She turned and looked over at me, then almost hit a slow-moving truck before swerving at the last minute and powering on.

  "That was good thinking, getting Alexa to be my defense rep."

  Then I told her what had happened and how Alexa had saved my ass. After I was finished, Secada nodded her head in approval.

  "Awesome."

  "Alexa was removed from command by Chief Filosiani, so technically, after that happened she became eligible to represent me," I concluded.

  Secada drove in silence for almost ten minutes and then we transitioned onto California 137 heading toward Corcoran. Another ten minutes passed before she spoke again.

  "Want to hear something strange?"

  "Sure."

  "Ever since Doug and I got divorced, I've been looking to fill a huge hole in my life. I thought I would do it with work. I didn't want to start a new relationship. But sometimes we can't control our emotions or the events that produce them." She looked over at me. "You happened to be exactly the right guy at exactly the wrong time and now I feel very lost and lonely."

  "Let's wait and see what happens."

  "No, I won't do that," her voice firm, almost angry. "I told you already, I won't take what's not mine."

  When we got to the hospital ward at Corcoran, we were greeted by an old warhorse, assistant warden who led us into the ICU. The unit was half prison, half hospital. Bars and electric doors with white painted walls. The orderlies wore green medical scrubs with matching prison ink tattoos.

  We looked through a glass window at an unconscious Tru Hickman. Fluids dripped into his arm from hanging IV bags. Two pounds of surgical tape and gauze encased his skinny chest.

  "Got him twenty-three times in six seconds," the assistant warden told us. He was a big, gray, overweight guy with hair growing out of his ears.

  "This is my fault," I whispered, as I looked at Tru's inert form. "This one's on me."

  Chapter 30

  The prison surveillance tape showed Tru Hickman shuffling across the cafeteria, carrying an empty metal tray, moving like a man on Thorazine. Two muscled Hispanics with gang tatts trailed him innocently. Once Tru put his tray on the conveyor they made their move. One grabbed his arms while the other started shanking him. The blade flashed over twenty times, in and out, underhanded and quick, prison style. In seconds, Tru slumped to the floor. The two inmates turned and, as if they'd had nothing to do with it, walked calmly away. The assistant warden, who I had just learned was named Jack Slater, shut off the tape.

  "They're both predicate felons up here on third strikes, so killing Hickman doesn't add anything to their sentences. Those two are here for the duration. They'll get charged with murder one, cop to second degree, and when it's all done, the sentences will run concurrently."

  "Van Owen Street Locos?" I asked.

  "The baddest of the bad," he answered with a put-upon sigh.

  "These guys are in Mike Church's crew," I said softly, looking at Secada who had remained silent throughout the video. Her only reaction had been a sharp intake of breath when the stabbing started.

  "I want to talk to them," I said.

  "They've already lawyered up," Assistant Warden Slater said. "I've been warned that they're not to be interviewed without counsel present. They're hard targets. Nobody's gonna get nada outta either one of these shitbirds."

  "Let me try," Secada said.

  "Besides the obvious, you don't have anything to trade." The sentence allowed an unattractive leer to stain his already fleshy features.

  Hickman was in critical condition and being kept under heavy sedation so we couldn't talk to him, either. With nothing else to do, an hour later we were back in Secada's SUV heading to Los Angeles. The sun was just coming up over the low hills and there was no traffic on the highway.

  "All we can do is pray he comes out of this," Secada said. "But even if he makes it, he'll be in ICU for at least a week. I don't think he's safe, even in that hospital. There's a number that buys almost anything on the inside."

  I agreed with her. But unless the California Department of Corrections threw in with us, we didn't have the juice it would take to get Tru a transfer to a secure prison hospital like USC in Los Angeles. The situation seemed hopeless.

  "This is my fault," I muttered again.

  "It's not your fault," she answered sharply. "Why do you keep saying that?"

  "This happened because of my dumb-ass move with that BlackBerry. I was so target locked on Wade Wyatt, I ignored everything else. I pushed so hard those guys figured their only move was to kill Tru."

  "How does killing him change any of this?"
she asked.

  "Because as long as he's alive and yelling foul, we might have eventually gathered enough pieces to pressure the D. A.'s office downtown to go over Morales's head and give us a writ for a new trial. A new trial puts Mike Church back in the grease because no legitimate investigation would ever look past him the way Lieutenant Devine did. But if Hickman's dead, it's kinda over. The city's not gonna run this mess back through the system and eat a ton of bad press just to salvage some dead tweaker's reputation. I didn't think it through. I should have realized they could end this by simply eliminating the problem."

  We drove on in silence while my spirits plunged. Tru's fate pressed down hard on my conscious. We were heading south on 1-99, on a short stretch of road that had narrowed to a divided three-lane highway, when about a mile ahead, we came upon half a dozen squad cars and a tow rig parked in a disorganized cluster with their flashers on. We saw that beyond the flashing vehicles, an ancient six-wheel farm truck was tipped over, blocking all three lanes.

  Secada slowed to a stop. The old stake-bed rested on its left side with its load of artichokes spread across all three lanes. An elderly Mexican man with a young boy at his side was talking to the officers, gesturing with both hands. Secada waited until a highway patrolman came over.

  "Sorry, road's closed," the cop said.

  She showed him her badge. "Can't we get around?"

  "How do you think you're gonna do that?" He had a point. The truck was across all three lanes and the heavy concrete abutment didn't allow us any room to slide past on either side.

  "We need to get back to L. A.," Secada said.

  "Make a U, go back about half a mile, and take Mountain Crest Road. It's a little narrow and winding but it will take you up in the hills around all this. Hooks back up to I-Ninety-nine near East Bridge."

  Secada thanked him and glanced over at me. "There's a California map book in the glove compartment."

  I pulled the book out as she made a U and headed back the way we'd just come. After about six-tenths of a mile we spotted the Mountain Crest exit and turned off. While I was studying the map she negotiated the washed-out, badly potholed two-lane. As we climbed up into the low hills, the road quickly became a series of blind switchbacks. It was treacherous, but the countryside was beautiful with big, sprawling oaks throwing uneven shadows on rolling green meadows.