The Samaritan (38 page)
The Samaritan had a head start on me, and there was no way to know how big of a head start. All I knew was that he had Kimberley Frank, and she was going to die if I didn’t stop him. I was pinning everything on Crozier heading back to his hideout in the mountains. Allen had said that she and Mazzucco had narrowed down the location of the abandoned set in the photograph and had given me rough directions, but I was glad we’d arranged to meet en route.
Not for the first time, I worried that the abandoned set was a red herring. Basic geographical profiling dictated that his hideout would be in that vicinity—the relative proximity of the burial site of the original three victims made that likely. But that didn’t mean the Samaritan had definitely picked that specific location.
Nevertheless, it was all we had to go on, because of the photograph. Crozier had held on to that one photograph across two decades and God knows how many conflict zones. That told me the site would have significance for him. The photograph looked like it had been taken on a carefree teenage jaunt into the mountains—a hike, or a mountain biking expedition, perhaps. They’d found a forgotten piece of Hollywood and spent some time there.
It didn’t take much more of a leap of logic to arrive at the fact that the photograph itself was talismanic. He’d kept the image close to him all these years, probably memorized every color and line and detail. The place in the hills would have remained in his mind all this time. The location made practical sense, too: it was a remote, forgotten place that provided shelter and privacy for the dark work he was planning. I didn’t think anyone alive really knew Dean Crozier, not anymore, but the time I’d spent with him in Winterlong probably gave me as good an insight into his psyche as anyone. That was how I knew the movie set was where he was headed.
I kept within five miles an hour of the speed limit as I traveled along Mulholland once again, the pinpricks of light beginning to appear in the vast carpet of the city as the sun sank ahead of me toward the western horizon, streaking the sky with swathes of purple. Someone once said LA is the most beautiful city in the world, if viewed at night and from a distance. I thought that was about right. The movie star dream palaces began to get fewer and farther between as I put more and more miles between myself and LA, until the road opened up and I felt I had really left the city behind.
I thought about the origin of the Samaritan’s name. The parable of the Good Samaritan told of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; a route so fraught with danger from bandits that it was known as the Way of Blood. It was there that the Good Samaritan had saved the stricken traveler. This time, the Samaritan had created his own way of blood. I let my foot down harder on the gas pedal as I guided the car through the twists and turns.
A couple of oncoming cars passed me, and at one point I passed a green pickup truck that had stopped by the roadside. I could see two people inside. I didn’t think to look closely at them. Later on, I would wonder how things would have gone had I taken more of an interest in the green pickup.
I kept my eyes peeled for the landmark Allen had talked about, and soon it came into view: a mushroom-shaped structure built into the hillside by the road, about thirty feet tall. Like our intended destination, it was an abandoned relic of the past; one of sixteen air defense locations set up around the city during the cold war. The site was a cylindrical tower topped with a wide, overhanging platform. The approach off the main road led you through the remains of a checkpoint. The pillbox was still there, as were the stern warnings against unauthorized personnel. But there was no one manning the checkpoint, and there were no gates to enforce the signs. I pulled into the access road and followed it up a slope, past the tower to the parking lot at the top. Unauthorized personnel were encouraged these days—the more recent signs welcomed tourists and advised them to ascend to the platform to take in the stunning 360-degree views of the mountains and the Los Angeles Basin.
To my surprise, the lot was empty. I had expected Allen, with her head start, to be here by now. It had been her idea to meet up before going any further, and I had concurred. I was all too aware of whom we were going up against, and I wanted as much backup as was available.
I pulled into one of the parking spots and left the engine running. I took my phone out and dialed Allen’s number again. No answer. Not a good sign. I cast my eyes back toward the main road, looking for approaching vehicles, but saw nothing. I couldn’t wait much longer—not while the Samaritan had a prisoner. A prisoner that I hoped was alive for now. It would probably take me longer to find the old movie set by myself, but it was better than twiddling my thumbs waiting for Allen to get here.
I sighed and put the parking brake on. I had a lot to think about, but it wasn’t much of an excuse for not having any idea someone was approaching the car until I heard the voice.
“Get out of the car, Blake.”
Slowly, I raised my hands. I turned my head to the left to look out the open window. There was a nine-millimeter Kimber Solo pistol pointed at me. I recognized the owner.
“McCall, right?”
The bulky cop was wearing a Kevlar vest over a black T-shirt and was doing a professional job of covering me with the pistol: two-handed grip, steady aim, not close enough for me to reach. He answered me by jerking his head, wordlessly repeating his initial command. I kept my eyes on the muzzle of the gun as I slowly reached down with one hand and opened the door. He took a half step back, anticipating that I might try to slam the door into his legs. I hadn’t planned on doing anything of the sort, but it was interesting to note his precautions. I wondered how he’d found me, and for a brief moment considered the possibility that Allen had given me up. I dismissed that thought a nanosecond later. Leaving everything else aside, I got the impression she and McCall hated each other with a fierce purity. He’d be the last person on the planet she’d help out like this. At least, not intentionally.
“Keep ’em high. Step out of the car slowly and put your hands on your head.”
I did as instructed. As I got out of the car, I risked taking my eyes off McCall and the gun long enough to glance around the lot. It was still empty. I could see no one on the road, no one on the observation platform above us. No backup, no marksmen.
“Where’s the rest of the party?”
McCall smiled. “I’ll call them soon. You don’t need to worry about that.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. But as long as McCall seemed to be willing to converse with me, I thought it would be a good idea to keep that going.
“You know, I didn’t kill the girl in the warehouse. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Sure, Blake. You just happened to be there. Ray Falco says hi, by the way. He’s the cop you sucker punched.”
Looking at him, I knew McCall didn’t give a shit whether I was the Samaritan or not. He didn’t care because he knew the only thing he needed to know about me: that I’d punched out one of his guys and I’d gotten away from his team. Humiliated him in front of the feds. He had no intention of bringing me in. He was going to shoot me in cold blood and claim I’d resisted arrest. And there was nothing to stop him. He was a cop, I was a wanted fugitive, and the nearest witness was probably a mile away. If it turned out I really was the Samaritan, he’d be a hero. If I wasn’t? No big deal. I was a regrettable victim of circumstance.
I considered my options. They were not numerous. So I asked him another question, partly to buy time and partly because I wanted the answer.
“How’d you find me?”
“You can thank your buddy Detective Allen. We call her the Fixer downtown. Did you know that?”
“I guess you have to call her something. Besides twice the cop you’ll ever be.”
McCall’s eyes narrowed. Not the response he’d been expecting. “Don’t you want to know how she gave you up?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think she did.”
“Think again.”
“I think somebody hacked her phone. We set up this meet over our cells. Never a good decision if you can avoid it, but in this case we couldn’t.”
“You’re a smart guy, Blake. You know what happens to smart guys?”
“Yeah. They use dumb guys to do their dirty work. Hacking Allen’s phone in case she was in contact with me was an intelligent move. Too intelligent for you. Who’s pulling your strings, McCall?” I already had a pretty good idea. Agent Channing—he’d suspected Allen was harboring me and had used McCall to spy on her. He’d miscalculated, though, because McCall had no intention of including anyone else in this.
McCall tightened his grip on the gun and gritted his teeth. “You are so fucking dead. You know that? I’m gonna put a bullet in your fucking brain and they’ll pin a medal on me. I’ll . . .”
“Of course you’re going to shoot me, McCall. It’s not like you have any other option. I mean, I beat the crap out of Falco, and he wasn’t ten pounds overweight and twenty years past his prime.”
It was a life-or-death gamble with fifty-fifty odds. Like betting everything on red at the roulette table. McCall was either going to do the smart thing and put a bullet between my eyes, or he was going to rise to the bait. His finger tightened on the trigger and his nostrils flared, and then he slowly lowered the gun, sliding it into the holster.
He took a step forward and swung his right fist into my stomach. I had already decided to let him get in a couple of good blows: I would give him confidence, stop him from reconsidering the decision. I tightened my stomach muscles but still, it felt like being slammed in the chest by a fencepost. My goading of McCall had been designed to produce this reaction, but he really was a lot stronger than he looked. I anticipated his follow-up move and rolled with the punch that came from his left. His third blow came a split second faster than I’d anticipated, and he managed to land a solid punch just above my left eyebrow. I fell back a step and wiped blood out of my eye. Three solid hits in less time than it takes to tell it. McCall knew it, too. The smile was back on his face.
“Not so talkative now, huh? You got more smart comebacks for me, Blake? Let’s hear ’em.”
I shook my head. “My mother always told me to be nice to the elderly.”
Wham. Another hammer blow to the stomach. I tensed again and my stomach muscles absorbed a lot of the force, but I didn’t want to take another one like that if I could avoid it. I dropped to the ground, doubled over. I hoped he wasn’t a Marquess of Queensberry guy; it would screw up my next move. McCall didn’t disappoint me. Instead of offering a hand to get me back on my feet, he took a step back and aimed a hard kick at the side of my head. I blocked it with a forearm and then blocked a second, keeping my eyes locked on his feet and timing the moves. When the third kick came at me, I was ready. I grabbed his boot with both hands and twisted it around hard, yanking him off his feet. The Kevlar he was wearing meant it was useless to hit him on the upper body, so I chose a lower target. I summoned up all the anger I’d suppressed during the last few blows I’d taken and channeled it all into my right arm as I punched him in the balls. McCall screamed and kicked out again. I dodged backward and launched myself at him, landing on top of him and nailing him straight across the bridge of his nose with a right.
His hand went down to the holster and came back up with the pistol. One problem: he wasn’t out of my reach anymore. I grabbed his hand at the wrist and pushed it back as he squeezed the trigger and the gun went off between us. I smashed my forehead into his nose again and brought my other hand up to join the first one, smashing his hand off the ground until I felt a couple of bones break and the pistol slipped uselessly from his hand. The fight wasn’t out of him yet, though. He slammed his left fist against the side of my head, hard enough to make me see a white starburst that temporarily obscured his twisted, hate-filled face. I still had a pretty good idea of our respective positions. I squeezed his broken hand with my left hand. As he screamed out, I let go with my right, brought my arm up, and slammed my elbow into his face. Once, twice, three times.
I blinked the vision back into my eyes and saw that McCall had stopped fighting. He was still breathing, although it came out of the bloody hole where his mouth was with a rasping sound.
I kept ahold of the gun and carefully got to my feet, watching him the whole time in case he was playing possum. He wasn’t. The second or third of my elbows to his head had sent him deep into dreamland. I wiped some more blood out of my left eye and looked around. Still no one around, still no Allen.
I certainly didn’t want to risk McCall coming to and following me, so I took a few seconds to pat him down. I found his backup piece—a compact Ruger .380—strapped to his ankle and put it in my pocket. I found a set of car keys. He’d probably parked down the road a little, out of sight. I bunched them up and threw them off the top of the hillside in the direction of the San Fernando Valley. Then I unlaced his boots, removed them, along with his socks, and tossed them as far as I could in opposite directions.
Before I left, I did my good deed for the day. I put the bastard in the recovery position so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood. As I headed back to the Camaro, I wondered how McCall would explain this situation. I decided that he probably wouldn’t mention it to anyone ever again.
The man Jessica Allen knew as Eddie Smith listened as she told him where she wanted to go and then nodded. “Yeah, I know where it is. You’re meeting somebody up there?”
“My partner,” Allen said flatly. She was looking straight ahead as they followed the course of the road.
The Samaritan smiled and kept driving. Not too fast, not too slow. There was no need to rush. She’d asked him to drive her in the very direction he wanted to go. Although, of course, he wouldn’t be dropping her off at her requested destination. The place he had in mind was a little farther away, a little more secluded. The dusk was closing in on them now. He clicked on his full headlights.