The Shadow Hunter

the same time she mocked him with her sweet smile and her evasions. She was polite about it, good company, very charming, but he couldn’t trust her to level with him, ever.
    After the waitress took their orders, Wyatt folded his hands and asked, “Who’s the guy you want to ask me about this time?”
    “His name is Raymond Hickle. He lives on Gainford. I’ll give you his address. I don’t think he has a record, but maybe you could ask around, see if any patrol guys have had run-ins with him or…” She trailed off, seeing his face. “You know something about him already, don’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So give.”
    He didn’t respond right away, and when he did, it was with a question. “How did you get mixed up with Hickle?”
    “It’s a case. I can’t go into details.”
    “This is dangerous, Abby.”
    “I’m just doing some background research—”
    “Shut up. Quit telling me that bullshit. It’s getting on my nerves.”
    She was silent, chastened for the first time in their relationship.
    “I’ve met Hickle,” Wyatt said after a moment. “Back when I was riding patrol, I went to his apartment twice, some low-rent place on La Brea.”
    “The La Brea Palms,” Abby said. “South of Hollywood Boulevard. He lived there from 1989 to 1993.”
    “Sounds like you’ve done some checking on him already.”
    “Not me. The firm I’m consulting to. Employment history, residential addresses, things like that. But they didn’t find anything about a criminal case.”
    “There was no case. Hickle was never charged. He doesn’t have a rap sheet. It never got that far.”
    “How far did it get?”
    “Like I said, I went to his apartment twice. Me and my partner, together. We were sent over there for a little intimidation session with Hickle. First time it didn’t take, so we went back for an instant replay a couple weeks later. It still didn’t take, but it did get Hickle evicted. The landlord didn’t like having a tenant who was in trouble with the police.”
    “Why was it necessary to confront him at all?”
    “Because he was harassing a woman who lived in the building. He was stalking her.”
    “What woman?”
    “Her name was Jill Dahlbeck. She was in her early twenties, and she’d moved to LA from Wisconsin, planning, naturally, to be a movie star.”
    “An actress,” Abby said.
    Wyatt thought he heard a special emphasis in her voice but couldn’t decipher its meaning. “She got a few small roles in TV shows, infomercials, and she did a lot of Equity-waiver theater work. Typical story. She was a nice kid. That was her problem. She was too nice.”
    “How so?”
    “She made the mistake of smiling at Hickle, treating him like a human being. He misinterpreted it, or over-interpreted. Whatever. He decided she was meant for him. She had zero interest in the guy. I mean, they say men are from Mars, women are from Venus? Well, Hickle’s from Pluto, and I don’t mean the Disney version.”
    Abby nodded, unsmiling. In the darkness outside the coffee shop a kid sauntered by, rocking on his heels, shouldering a boombox that cranked out an obscene rap number. Abby waited until the noise had receded before asking, “What form did the harassment take?”
    “Following her, sending letters, waiting outside her apartment. Finally she moved to a different address. He tracked her down. He was persistent. He kept saying she had to give him a chance.”
    “So she complained to the police…”
    “And a couple of us—Todd Belvedere and me—were dispatched to have a talk with Hickle. Put a scare in him, make him back down.”
    He saw Abby shake her head slowly in disapproval.
    “Not the way to handle it?” he asked.
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “Yeah. Well, we found that out. You have to understand, we were treading on new territory here. The LAPD had established the Threat Management Unit only the previous year, and it was still limited to high-profile celebrity cases. And Jill, regardless of her movie-star ambitions, was definitely no celebrity, so we were pretty much on our own.”
    “I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying that a direct confrontation generally makes things worse. What Hickle wanted was some response from Jill. Your showing up qualified as a response—not the kind he was hoping for, but at least it showed he’d gotten through to her; he was on her mind. It cemented the connection between them.”
    Wyatt nodded. “And it made him mad. Subsequently he became a lot more