The Night Crew

voice wasn’t the killer’s—higher than she remembered, not squeaky, but nasal, rather than full. Anna looked at Harper and shook her head, as she said, ‘‘This is Anna Batory. I stopped by the ranch to see if we might put together another piece on this animal thing.’’
    ‘‘Oh!’’ Judge said. Then: ‘‘You know, I wasn’t too happy about the way the raid thing came out, I think it made me look foolish, with the pig and all.’’
    ‘‘Well—that happens. The stations cut the tape the way they want. We didn’t have anything to do with that,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘Okay . . . I guess I’m willing to give it another shot,’’ Judge said. ‘‘We’re just finishing things up here, I was going to head back tonight. When do you want to get together?’’
    ‘‘Couple days, next week,’’ Anna said, now in no rush.
    But Judge rambled on, eager to make another movie. ‘‘The neatest thing we’ve got right now is a vet who’s made a specialty out of fixing bird wings,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re gonna start rehabilitating raptors, you know, hawks, eagles. You can’t just fix them up and let them go. You have to rehab the wings; people shoot these poor birds . . .’’
    She let him go, throwing in a couple of questions about the raid, until she was sure it was really him. When she was sure, she looked at Harper and shook her head. ‘‘Damn it, I thought he was a possibility,’’ Anna said, as they went down the road from the ranch. The afternoon was sliding into the evening.
    ‘‘Might still be—could be something tricky going on.’’
    ‘‘I suppose,’’ Anna said. But she yawned and shook her head. The morning—when she crunched down that highway cut and looked at China Lake—seemed half a lifetime back. She yawned and said, ‘‘Let’s go see Creek.’’
    ‘‘Fuckin’ vinyl cowboy boots,’’ Harper said. ‘‘You show me a woman who wears vinyl cowboy boots and I’ll show you a woman whose . . .’’ He trailed off, glanced at Anna, and then concentrated on the road ahead.
    ‘‘Whose what?’’ Anna demanded.
    ‘‘Never mind,’’ Harper said.
    Anna took the phone out of her pocket and tried it; still out of range. ‘‘Wait’ll we get over the hill,’’ Harper suggested. ‘‘Two minutes.’’
    Two minutes, and they were back in range: She had a message waiting, but called Louis and asked him to locate the other kid at the animal raid. Then she punched in the message, and got Wyatt’s voice.
    ‘‘We’ve got a proposition for you,’’ he said. ‘‘Call me.’’
    ‘‘Wyatt,’’ she said to Harper. ‘‘He’s got a proposition.’’
    Wyatt was in the office: ‘‘Things are gonna get out of control pretty soon,’’ he said, his voice tinny in the little phone. ‘‘We haven’t had an O.J. case or anything else for the media assholes.’’
    ‘‘Excuse me?’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘. . . Uh, sorry. Anyway, this whole thing is gonna leak, two days, three days, maximum,’’ he said. ‘‘So one of the task force guys came up with a proposition: We’ve got a couple of undercover guys who are pretty good with video cameras, they do a lot of surveillance. So you check one of these guys out, and then you go out on the street with him. He could fill in for your friend, Creek. And we put a net around you.’’
    ‘‘Huh. Not bad. Let me talk to Jake about it.’’
    ‘‘There’d be a chance we could spot the guy,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘We’d have an undercover video van covering you and even if nothing happens, we could analyze every face in every crowd, every place you go. If he’s tracking you, we could spot him.’’
    ‘‘Let me talk to Jake.’’
    ‘‘Okay, but we want to go tonight—four hours from now.’’ Harper was adamant: ‘‘No! No fuckin’ way. They’re so desperate they’re willing to turn you into a bull’s-eye.’’
    ‘‘When you were working homicide, did you ever use a civilian as a decoy?’’
    ‘‘Only once or twice and it didn’t do any good,’’ Harper said. ‘‘And the situations were really limited, we weren’t out roaming around trying to find a psycho.’’
    ‘‘Did you have a relationship with either of those women? Were they women?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, they were women, and of course not, I didn’t mess with people in investigations.’’
    ‘‘So you used them,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Do you think your change in attitude might have something to do with the fact that