The Night Crew

scene.’’
    ‘‘Oh, Jesus, look at the window.’’ Harper looked at the window by the door. The plywood plug had been forced in, and only partly pushed back in place. ‘‘He’s got her,’’ Anna said. She grabbed Harper’s jacket sleeve: ‘‘He’s got her, Jake. He thought she was me.’’
    ‘‘Gotta call Wyatt, and gimme the gun,’’ Harper grunted. Harper started going through the house, opening doors, checking everything, Anna trailing behind. As they went, Anna ran through the phone’s memory, found Wyatt’s home number, pushed the call button. Wyatt answered, sleepily: ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘This is Anna: have you seen Pam?’’
    Wyatt was instantly alert, picking up the vibration in her voice: ‘‘No. What happened?’’
    ‘‘We came home, expecting to meet her here, but she wasn’t here. But it looks like somebody broke in through the back, and there’s blood on the kitchen floor.’’
    ‘‘Oh, Jesus Christ, you stay right there. Stay there!’’
    And he was gone.
    Anna punched in Creek’s number at the hospital. Creek was awake, but hadn’t seen Pam: ‘‘What’s happening, Anna?’’
    Anna explained, and Creek groaned, ‘‘Goddammit, I can’t move, I’m wired in here, I’m gonna get . . .’’
    ‘‘No,’’ Anna shouted. ‘‘You stay there. Maybe she’ll turn up. We gotta have somebody there . . . that’s where she’ll come.’’ Two minutes later, a minivan screeched to a stop outside, and five seconds after that, a second one. Two plainclothes cops climbed out of each, milled for a second, then started for the door. Harper and Anna met them on the front porch: ‘‘You’re sure it’s blood?’’ the first man asked.
    ‘‘Pretty sure,’’ Harper said.
    ‘‘She left here a half hour ago, ten minutes after they got back,’’ the cop said. He looked at Anna. ‘‘She was driving your car, we figured it was all right—actually, we thought it was you.’’
    Another cop was kneeling in the kitchen. He sniffed the stain on the floor, and looked back at them: ‘‘It’s blood.’’
    ‘‘And there’s the window,’’ Anna said. She’d gone to the garage door, opened it. The garage was empty.
    ‘‘Maybe she’s okay, maybe she went out for something,’’ Anna said; but she didn’t believe it. She simply wanted someone else to believe.
    Harper looked at her and shook his head.
    ‘‘He didn’t get in here,’’ one of the other cops said, defensively. ‘‘We watched every goddamned car that came in here, and the only one that turned down the street was that Korean guy.’’
    ‘‘He didn’t come in a car,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He took my car, and there’s no other car out here. He snuck in.’’
    ‘‘How? We were watching people on the street; and how in the hell are you gonna sneak around in this place? All the houses are jammed asshole-to-elbow and everybody’s nervous about burglars and there’s no place to sneak from.’’
    They were still arguing when Wyatt arrived. He was wearing suit pants and a jacket over a striped pajama shirt, and carried a rumpled dress shirt and tie in his fist.
    He listened for two minutes, then said to Anna, ‘‘I thought about this on the way over. It’s gotta be somebody on the inside. Somebody here in Venice, probably on your street.’’
    ‘‘Inside?’’
    ‘‘Gotta be,’’ he said. He ticked off the points: ‘‘He killed a guy who claimed to be having a romance with you. Okay: that could come from simply following you around. But then he came here, and he just vanished. Then he went after your friend Creek, right down the street, and he got away again.’’
    ‘‘He went into his house,’’ Harper said.
    Wyatt nodded. ‘‘That would explain a lot,’’ Harper said.
    Anna was thinking furiously: God knows there were enough strange and troubled people in Venice; that was almost a qualification to owning a home there. But who?
    ‘‘So you mean the whole thing was a coincidence?’’ Harper asked. ‘‘That because it happened on the night my son died, and everything else . . . the animal raid and everything . . . we just made it up?’’
    Wyatt nodded. ‘‘It’s possible—or maybe he was following her that night, and something he saw set him off.’’
    Harper said, ‘‘So have your guys check the logs and find out who came out of here after Anna . . .’’
    They worked through it, but Anna kept hearing Harper’s word, ‘‘coincidence.’’ None of it