The Shadow Hunter

he’s dead, and the client too.”
    “Kris Barwood,” Wyatt said. So he had noticed the photos.
    Abby nodded. This time her head did not reel from the effort, and she took some comfort from that.
    They left the apartment together and rode the elevator to ground level. Wyatt said he would drive her in his squad car, and she said, “Yes, of course.” In her present state she was unfit to sit behind the wheel of an automobile. If she had suffered any serious craniocerebral trauma, she could black out at any time. “But,” she added, “we have to move my Dodge out of the parking lot so your pals in blue don’t find it.”
    “Why?”
    “So if I’m interviewed, I can say I drove myself to the hospital.” As he walked her to the Dodge, she explained more fully. Talking was good. It kept her alert. “See, I’m trying to keep all my options open until I know how things work out. I’d prefer to have Abby Gallagher disappear forever, like Connie Hammond. But if Hickle or someone else identifies me to the police, I’ll have to come clean. At least, reasonably clean.”
    “How clean, exactly?”
    “I won’t admit to any illegalities. No electronic surveillance, no breaking and entering. I was hired to move in next door to Hickle and keep an eye on him, that’s all. He found me out and attacked me. When I came to, I was confused and disoriented. I drove myself to the hospital in a daze and didn’t remember my obligation to talk to the cops until my memories came back at a convenient time.”
    “Weak.”
    “But undisprovable.”
    “That’s not a word.”
    “It is now.”
    “Hickle will tell them about the bugs in his apartment. How are you going to explain that?”
    “Explain what? The paranoid ravings of a homicidal stalker?”
    “And if Hickle is never caught and your cover isn’t blown?”
    “Then farewell, Abby Gallagher, wherever you are.”
    He looked at her with admiration. “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?”
    “This is nothing. You should see me in action when my brain hasn’t been batted around like a beach ball.”
    Wyatt moved the Dodge to a side street, then escorted her to his cruiser. He asked which hospital she wanted. She ran through the options in her mind and decided that on a Friday night any emergency room in this part of town would be a war zone. “I don’t suppose you could chauffeur me all the way to Cedars-Sinai,” she said. It was in West Hollywood, a better neighborhood.
    “No problem.”
    “It might be a problem for you if the watch commander starts to wonder where you’ve been for so long.”
    “I’ll tell him I stopped at a donut shop. That’s always plausible for a cop, right?”
    Abby smiled. “No comment.”
    Three blocks from the Gainford Arms, Wyatt detoured into an alley and discarded the trash bag in a Dumpster. As he pulled onto Santa Monica Boulevard, heading west, Abby fished her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed Travis’s number. Still no answer.
    “It’ll be all right,” Wyatt said quietly.
    “Sure. I know. The good guys always win, don’t they?” She sank back wearily in the passenger seat and shut her eyes, repeating the words as a mantra. “The good guys always win.”

39
    “Are you really him?” Hickle breathed. “Are you JackBNimble?”
    “I’m him. You still thinking about using that twelve-gauge?”
    The tension eased out of Hickle in a shaky expulsion of breath. “Guess not.”
    “Glad to hear it.” Travis stepped back, lowering the Walther. “You can turn around. No reason we can’t talk face to face. We’re partners, after all.”
    Hickle turned, the water rippling around him. Overhead a burst of crosstalk sounded from the squad car’s radio, the volume high. The flashlight winked on again, and the spotlight resumed probing the creek waters. The two cops had returned to their task.
    “We’re both trapped in here now,” Hickle whispered.
    “No, I’ll get us out. You’ll go inland while I distract the two Smokies on the bridge.”
    “Distract them how?”
    “Don’t worry about that. We have a lot to discuss and not much time. Do you know who I am?”
    Hickle studied him in the gloom. Travis took the opportunity to assess Hickle’s face. He had never seen the man in person. He had small, suspicious eyes, a rodent’s eyes. His skin was pasty, his hair greasy and wild. He belonged here under the bridge in the fetid water, amid the flotsam of fast-food containers and cigarette