The Night Crew

she reached up to scratch, and felt the stitches.
    Jeez. The guy had done a number on her.
    She went to the bathroom, read the label on an ibuprofen that warned against taking more than two, took four, steamed herself out in the shower again, and, as an afterthought—a Harper thought?—shaved her legs. The hot water felt good, and as it poured down on her neck and back, she thought about what had happened so far.
    Jacob was connected to Jason only through coincidence: Jason’s dealer hadn’t sold to Jacob Harper, and was apparently hostile to the people who had. So what did that leave?
    The white-haired man? The white-haired man who’d run from them at the hospital was out of keeping with last night’s attack, and the attack on Creek—so much so that she nearly dismissed him as part of the problem: she didn’t know what was going on there, but the white-haired man simply did not fit.
    Last night’s attacker had been young and strong. Younger than she was, she thought. He liked cologne, and though he was stronger than she was, he wasn’t nearly as strong as Jake. What else? He’d been coming to court her? Could that be right? He’d tried to talk to her . . .
    She finished showering, tiptoed around the bedroom getting dressed, found her running shoes and a pair of socks and carried them downstairs. She wouldn’t be running, but the shoes were quiet. She went to the front door and saw that Harper had piled Coke cans next to it. She unstacked them quietly, unlocked the door, looked out, spotted the paper, reached out and grabbed it. Relocked the door, feeling virtuous.
    She ate cold cereal with milk, read the comics, pulled on a pair of socks, got a yellow legal pad and a No. 2 pencil from her office, sat at the kitchen table and tried to untangle the maze . . .
    White-haired guy. Dead end.
    Courting her. He must’ve met her; he expected her to know him—but maybe not by name or face; maybe he expected only a kind of cosmic connection. Something he said hinted at that; that they were fated together.
    And that fit with the killings, and the attack on Creek: if Anna was at the center of a sex triangle, a three-way, or even a four-way, maybe he’d concluded that he had to eliminate his competitors.
    He must’ve heard the story—which meant that anyone who knew all of them—Jason, Sean, Creek and herself— was a possibility. And that was not many people. On the other hand, anyone who knew them at all knew that she wasn’t sleeping with either Jason or Sean: the idea was ludicrous. They might suspect Creek, because they worked so closely together . . . but Creek was the last one attacked. Why? Because he was the most dangerous? The hardest to get at?
    Huh. They really needed to get to BJ’s.
    She was still struggling with the list when Harper bumbled out of the guest room, unshaven, wearing last night’s pants and a t-shirt.
    ‘‘How are you?’’ he asked.
    ‘‘Creaky,’’ she said.
    ‘‘I’m gonna get cleaned up, then we gotta run up to my place so I can get some clothes.’’
    ‘‘All right, and I want to get up in the hills and try out the gun. It’s been a while.’’
    He looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘‘Best thing you could do is go back to your dad’s place for a visit. This guy is freaking out: he’ll be dead meat in two weeks, whether you’re here or not.’’
    ‘‘If I believed that, I might go, but I’m looking at the cops and I’m not seeing much. So . . . I’m gonna stay.’’
    He sighed, scratched his prickly face: ‘‘All right. You can shoot out back of my place.’’
    ‘‘Really?’’ Didn’t sound like the valley.
    • • •
    And it wasn’t. He lived on a dirt road off Mulholland Highway, halfway down a hill a few miles west of Topanga. Anna laughed when she saw the place, a rambling collection of white-stucco blocks with deep green eaves and red-tiled roof, something that a skilled hippie might have put together in the sixties.
    ‘‘What?’’ he asked, when she laughed. His eyes crinkled, amused, at the sound of her.
    ‘‘It’s great,’’ she said. ‘‘How much land?’’
    ‘‘Twenty acres.’’
    She was amazed: ‘‘How can you afford it?’’
    ‘‘Bought it fifteen years ago,’’ he said. ‘‘Built it a few pieces at a time.’’
    ‘‘You built it?’’ Amazed again.
    ‘‘Yup. Took some classes at the vo-tech on block-work; made friends with a guy who had some heavy equipment, helped him build his