The Night Crew

'Are you trying to scare me?' A

'Yes. 'Cause you should be scared. Now what I'm suggesting is, we get a little proactive.'

'Proactive? You sound like the Long Beach chamber of commerce.'

'What I'm saying is, you talk to me: about your friends, about Creek's friends, about the dopers you've known, about weird shit you've seen the last couple of months. Creek must know some dopers, living where he does, there's dope coming through the Marina all the time, and with your job

'You've been down to look at Creek's place?' Glass asked.

'Sure. Looked at his boat, looked at his house.' He turned back to A

A

He spread his hands, then touched her knee: 'So maybe it doesn't. I'd like to find out for sure, though. That's the only thing I've gotI want to know what the dope was about.'

'If you find the dealer, what're you go

'I don't know,' he said.

'Kill him?' asked A

He looked away from them, down the hall. 'I don't know. I doubt it. But I won't know for sure until I get there.'

They were still talking when a doctor came down the hall, surgery gown showing a half-dozen blood spots, his mask pulled down under his chin. He pulled off his cap as he came up, looked at A

A

'You don't look like sisters.'

'Different mom,' A

Again, their intensity banished doubt about the co

'Oh, thank God,' A

'But he's hurt badly,' the surgeon continued. 'The lung will repair itself fairly quickly, but there's muscle damage in the chest wall and the back muscles, and that'll take a while.'

'When's he go

'Tomorrow, probably. He's going to be pretty sleepy for a couple of days, at least. Then he's going to hurtbut I doubt he'll be in here a week.'

'Did the police tell you about the circumstances of the shooting?' Harper asked.

The doc nodded: 'Yes. We'll list him under an aliaswe do it all the time in battering cases. If somebody doesn't know exactly where to find him, they won't.'

'Aw, that's great,' A

Glass started sniffing again, and then turned to A

A

They stayed until Creek had gone to the recovery room, then Glass left in a hurry: 'I'm moving in here,' she declared. 'I've got to get some stuff together, and get some time off.'

'Moving in?' A

'The guy may be stalking you, but he's killing the people around you,' Glass said. 'I'm go

When she was gone, Harper and A

'Try to get some sleep,' A

'Think of some names?'

'Yeah. I'm go

'What's that?'

'When you go looking for this guy,' A

Chapter 12

A

She slept, exhausted, but her brain made lists, the crazies, the dopers, the men who'd come on to her in the past six months, anyone who might have fixated on her.

She dreamed, twisting in the percale sheets, of the man at the truck, the shooter: a big man, with something familiar to him, a way of holding his shoulders. And the voice: he'd said only one word, her name, but he'd spoken it before, in her hearing. She knew this man.

But who was it? She found herself paying attention to Harper, when he spoke her name. Was the voice the same? She didn't think sobut now she was confusing her memories of the shooting with other moments, with other people calling her name.

She made lists.

A thumpa human soundfrom downstairs. She rose out of her sleep like a diver coming to the surface, breaking through, gasping, looking around, thinking, gun. But she had no gun, the gun was in the truck.

Then another thump, ru

Harper. He'd been sleeping on the couch. He wouldn't go away. She pushed herself up, glanced at the bedroom door. Closed, not locked.

Harper? No. She knew why Harper was here.

When she came down from the bedroom, hair still wet from the shower, Harper was putting at a paper circle on the living room carpet. 'Your floor breaks about an inch toward the back wall, on a fifteen-foot putt,' he said.

'Do tell.' She went on past and picked up the phone in the kitchen.

'He was awake for an hour about noon, but he's sleeping again. He's doing fine and without complications, he could be out this week.' Harper said. He was squatting, looking over a ball at the paper circle.

She put the phone back on the hook: 'How is that possible? This week?'

'They push them out in a hurry,' Harper said. He stood up, and hovered over the ball, then looked at A

'No.'

'I'd hate to have you say something right in the middle of my backswing.'

'No, go ahead.'

He moved the putter head back an inch, and A

'Are we go

They walked out to Jerry's, into the sun, A

'You're not scared enough,' Harper said, as they walked.

'What?'

'Most people, if a madman was stalking them, they couldn't move,' he said.

She thought about it as they crossed the street, and said, 'Maybe I'm burned out on being scared. Going out every night, we see all kinds of stuff, people shot and stabbed and squashed in cars and burned to death. When you see enough of it, you've got to assume it won't happen to you. You must've felt like that when you were a cop.'

'Nope. Never did. I was scared shitless all the time.'

Logan had parked the truck in the restaurant lot after the shooting, and now A

'I thought you kept the gun at home,' Harper said, gri

'I do, but I had it last night when Creek got shot, and I didn't want the cops to take it.'

Jerry's was A

'Looks like it,' A