The Blue Nowhere

homicide. I’m in John Milliken Park, Palo Alto, southeast corner.”
    “Copy, four three eight,” the man replied. “Is suspect armed?”
    “I see a knife. I don’t know about any firearms.”
    “Is he in a vehicle?”
    “Negative,” Anderson said. “He’s on foot at the moment.”
    The dispatcher asked him to hold on. Anderson stared at the killer, squinting hard, as if that would keep him frozen in place. He whispered to central, “What’s the ETA of that backup?”
    “One moment, four three eight. . . . Okay, be advised, they’ll be there in twelve minutes.”
    “Can’t you get somebody here faster than that?”
    “Negative, four three eight. Can you stay with him?”
    “I’ll try.”
    But just then the man began walking again. He left the bridge and started down the sidewalk.
    “He’s on the move, central. He’s heading west through the middle of the park toward some university buildings. I’ll stay with him and keep you posted on his location.”
    “Copy that, four three eight. CAU is on its way.”
    CAU? he wondered. What the hell was that again? Oh, right: closest available unit.
    Hugging the trees and brush, Anderson moved closer to the bridge, keeping out of the killer’s sight. What had he come back here for? To find another victim? To cover up some traces of the earlier crime? To buy more weapons from Peter Fowler?
    He glanced at his watch. Less than a minute had passed. Should he call back and tell the unit to roll up silently? He didn’t know. There were probably procedures for handling this sort of situation—procedures that cops like Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton would surely know well. Anderson was used to a very different kind of police work. His stakeouts were conducted sitting in vans, staring at the screen of a Toshiba laptop connected to a Cellscope radio directional-finding system. He didn’t believe he’d had either his weapon or his handcuffs out of their respective leather holsters in a year.
    Which reminded him: weapon . . .
    He looked down at the chunky butt of the Glock. He pulled it off his hip and pointed it downward, finger outside the trigger, as he vaguely remembered he ought to do.
    Then, through the mist, he heard a faint electronic trill.
    The killer had gotten a phone call. He pulled a cell phone off his belt and held it to his ear. He glanced at his watch, spoke a few words. Then he put the phone away and turned back the way he’d come.
    Hell, he’s going back to his car, the detective thought. I’m going to lose him. . . .
    Ten minutes till the backup gets here. Jesus. . . .
    Andy Anderson decided he had no choice. He was going to do something he’d never done: make an arrest alone.

CHAPTER 00001001 / NINE
    A nderson moved next to a low bush.
    The killer was walking quickly along the path, hands in his pockets.
    That was good, Anderson decided—the hands encumbered, which would make it more difficult to get to the knife.
    But wait, he wondered: What if he was hiding a pistol in his pocket?
    Okay, keep that in mind.
    And remember too that he might have Mace or pepper spray or tear gas.
    And remember that he might simply turn and sprint away. The cop wondered what he’d do then. What were the fleeing felon rules? Could he shoot the killer in the back?
    He’d busted dozens of criminals but he’d always been backed up by cops like Frank Bishop, for whom guns and high-risk arrests were as routine as compiling a program in C++ was for Anderson.
    The detective now moved closer to the killer, thankful the rain was obscuring the sound of his footsteps. They were paralleling each other now on opposite sides of a row of tall boxwood. Anderson kept low and squinted through the rain. He got a good look at the killer’s face. An intense curiosity coursed through him: What made this young man commit the terrible crimes he was responsible for? This curiosity was similar to what he felt when examining software code or puzzling over the crimes CCU investigated—but it was stronger now because, though he understood the principles of computer science and thecrimes that that science made possible, a criminal like this was a pure enigma to Andy Anderson.
    Except for the knife, except for the gun he might or might not be clutching in his hidden hand, the man looked benign, almost friendly.
    The detective wiped his hand on his shirt to dry some of the rain and gripped the pistol firmly once more. He continued on. This’s a hell of a lot different