Eleventh Hour

how it would feel to have your own son trying to kill you. She didn’t know what Captain DeLoach had meant with all that talk about the yells and screams. It made no sense.
    She straightened, looked around the large room. It was nice and warm in there. She shrugged out of her parka, walked around a bit, getting acquainted with everything. It was like a junior suite in a hotel, only it was personalized with some photos on the end table—none of Weldon, but she and Dane had already remarked on that. Maybe she’d ask Captain DeLoach if he had any pictures of his only son stashed somewhere. Beside his bed were a few more photos—of a baby, and then that baby as a toddler. Weldon? She didn’t know. But wait—that couldn’t be. There was a car in the background, and the car wasn’t forty years old. It was around the mid-1980s. Okay, so it wasn’t Weldon. Another family member had a little kid, that had to be it.
    Nick turned away from the photo, realized that Nurse Carla or anyone who worked there, for God’s sake, could come tromping through the door. Where could she hide?
    There was a big walk-in closet six feet from the double bed. The wood doors were slatted so she could see Captain DeLoach clearly. She spread her parka on the carpeted floor and made herself comfortable.
    She’d bought taco dip, a small box of Wheat Thins, and a Diet Dr Pepper—her favorites—in the small food market inside the filling station, using up four dollars and eight cents of her twelve dollars. Before she fell asleep, her stomach happy, she wondered how long it would take Dane to track her down.

    At ten o’clock in the morning, Delion, Savich, Sherlock, and Dane were seated around Detective Flynn’s desk in the detectives’ room on the second floor of the West Los Angeles Police Department. Linda, today’s volunteer receptionist, had given them all homemade cookies when they’d come in. “I’ve always admired the FBI,” she’d said, patting Savich’s bicep. “And you’re so nice, too.”
    Sherlock had said, “What about me, Linda?”
    “I think of you as their mascot, cute as a button with that red hair flying all over the place. As for you,” she said to Dane, “you look a bit on the edge. The cookie will help get things in perspective, sugar always does.”
    “Thank you, Linda,” Dane said. “That’s what we’ve been hearing about, sugar.”
    The detectives’ room was, as usual, a madhouse, which didn’t appear to bother anyone. Savich settled down in a side chair next to Detective Flynn’s desk, MAX on his lap. He looked up after ten minutes and said, “No indication that she’s used the AmEx yet, either that, or folks are just too lazy to check. Since the card’s in your name, Dane, and not hers, I can’t imagine anyone not checking. We just wait, nothing else to do.”
    Sherlock said, “You know the deal you made with her not to delve into her past? Well, we’ve got to find her and protect her, we’ve got to find out who she is. The time has come. Dillon, can you have MAX find out who she is?”
    “Yes,” Savich said. “We know her name’s Nicola, she’s twenty-eight, she’s got a Ph.D., and she’s a college professor. This won’t be anything for MAX. Everyone on board with this?”
    Delion said, “Do it. Now isn’t the time for irrelevant promises.”
    “Yeah,” Dane said. “That’s what I figured.”
    While Savich worked, Detective Flynn was sitting back in his chair, his hands laced over his belly, a basketball on the floor beside him. He said, “I just don’t understand why she took off like this. She’s pulling us away from the really important stuff—you know, multiple murders, silly things like that. I’d like to get in her face when we catch up with her.”
    Sherlock said, “Do you think she headed back up to San Francisco? To hide herself in the homeless population again?”
    Dane shook his head. “No. And I don’t think she’s gone back home either, wherever home is.”
    “Then where did she go?” Flynn asked, sipped at the god-awful coffee. His phone rang. He picked it up, barked, “Yeah? Detective Flynn here.”
    He wrote something on a pad. When he set the receiver back into its cradle, he was grinning. “How’s this for a bit of luck? Our girl hitched a ride with a trucker. He said he always listens to the police reports on his CB. Said when he heard the APB, he knew he’d given our girl a ride.”
    “Where?” Sherlock said.
    “Up in Ventura