Yellow police tape ran crazy patterns around and through the abandoned rail docks. A pathway, taped about a hundred feet wide, led out toward two large buildings about six blocks away through broken fields of concrete and old asphalt. The old sun-bleached concrete shone white-hot in the late summer sun. Hooker and Manny both squinted at the intensity of the reflection. Neither man had dark glasses to wear. Neither had had any use for them, until now.
Manny and Hooker were stationary as their eyes swept the scene. Their minds moved like the two players they now knew. They knew where the kill zone was, and so now, they were mapping out the placement of the lookout. After they found placement, they could start to map the entrance and egress routes.
“Where was the lookout?”
Hooker’s head swiveled. “No real wind last night. I already called the tower at Reid-Hillview Airport. So I would go with the onshore flow off the mudflats to the north.”
He looked over the wide field to the south with the eye and mind looking for a place to hide, but where he could also see everything. He looked at three clumps of low bushes. The first one looked like it was only tall enough to hide a shoebox, and it was off to the west of the kill zone. The other two could hide Manny and him and were more to the south. He pointed to the low clump.
“Pretty small.”
“I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut there is a depression on the other side. It’s at least a foot deep, and it’s going to give up at least three good prints.”
“Go get your boy.”
Hooker walked off to find Harold, the casting expert he was positive would be there again.
Manny rolled along what was once a concrete road built to withstand the daily punishment of heavy trucks. The cracks, less than an inch wide, would not be open all the way to the dirt below. The heavy-duty roadway was eight to ten inches thick. The larger cracks yielded to brush, and the occasional tree start. However, long before the tree could do any damage to the concrete, the concrete had choked the life out of the tree’s small trunk. The stunted three-foot-tall sticks stood here and there on the roadway.
Manny remembered this area had been part of the war effort. He looked off to the northwest as he caught a glimpse of a white P-3 Orion Sub Chaser taking off from Moffett Field. He felt old to know all of this. He remembered as a young boy, his father showing him a picture of the dirigible parked in what was fondly known around the bay as Hanger One. As a young officer, he was there for an event when a small stunt plane flew in one giant door and out the other. He was close enough to know it was a feat even a new pilot could have accomplished. The plane was small, and the doorways were five stories tall and an easy hundred or more foot wide. A real pilot could have flown one of the large Orions through it.
Manny eased the second set of yellow tapes up and over his head. He kept on pushing slowly down the road. His head was on a swivel, and his eyes were scanning for any little things out of place.
He stopped.
He looked along the broken curb. Forty feet back, a small waterway had formed. It had collected mud from somewhere. Not much, but just enough. It had flowed along the road, against the low curb. The small mudflat had only grown to about eight feet wide at the widest, then dried up, and left only a quarter inch of silt mud.
In front of Manny were seven perfectly preserved prints. Three were cowboy boots. One was a knuckle and thumbprint, and two prints of bare feet, a right, and a left.
Manny stared at the boot print in front of him. He bent forward. Captured in the perfect molding clay was a size eleven men’s pointed toe cowboy boot. Along the arch were triangle notches protruding about three-eighths of an inch toward the center. They were uniform and evenly spaced. Manny counted, and his stomach rolled. There were an even eighteen. He looked at the next boot mark. It was too far away to be certain, but it looked like five notches cut into the opposite side of the opposite boot.
The white heat dimmed. All around him, clouds blocked out the sun. As the day grew dim and dark, his chest was in a vise. Each heartbeat tightened the vise. A hot brick was being pushed through his ribcage. Manny felt like he needed to throw up. He sat back and tried to call for Hooker. The breath wouldn’t come. He tried to scream, but no noise came out. He tried to raise his arm and wave, but his arms wouldn’t move. The world circled and became darker. He knew he should be able to see the coastal range of hills. In the dark, there was only the gray as it got darker. The brick stopped moving, and Manny could feel its hard edges. The edges scraped on his lungs with each shallow breath. He wondered why he couldn’t yawn. Stella was taking a long time to bring him his soup.
The siren in his head sounded wrong. He was headed to an emergency, but he should have been driving. Paul never drove. Manny should be driving. And the stupid siren needed to be fixed. It sounded like an idiotic ambulance instead of a squad car.
Someone was talking. The radio—it wasn’t Paul. The radio sounded funny. He knew the voice, but it was wrong. Hooker wasn’t a dispatcher or even a cop. Why was Hooker talking to him? He was on his way to an emergency. Couldn’t Hooker hear the siren?
“Pulse is 140 and thready. His blood pressure is 154 over 110. His heart sounds good, and the monitor says he has a great beat. Lungs are clear. Pupils are responsive.”
“10-4, 2-7-5. Continue to monitor and fluids. We’ll see you in five. Valley Medical out.”
The medic tapped the microphone key twice in a fast double-tap as he turned to hang it back up.
“So it’s not a heart attack, not a stroke, so what?” Hooker watched Manny with the oxygen mask and a needle in his arm. He hadn’t seen him when the Cowboy Picasso had snapped a .22 slug through his spine, but Hooker’s imagination drifted toward the time and thinking this was what it had looked like.
The medic kept reading the numbers as he rechecked the blood pressure. He took the stethoscope from his ears and hung them around his neck. Looking up at Hooker, he shrugged. “Hard to say. If I were a doctor, I might suggest a panic attack had caused some hysterical paralysis.”
“If you were a doctor…” Hooker grimaced.
The man nodded. He leaned over. “Sir? Can you hear me?”
“His name is Manny.”
The medic didn’t even acknowledge Hooker’s contribution. It just fed smoothly into the drill. “Sir? Manny, can you hear me? Manny?” He patted Manny on the cheek. “Manny, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
Manny grunted. “Where’s Hooker?”
“Right here, Manny.”
“Prints in the mud.”
“I saw them, Manny. I got Harold on all of them before the medical pukes got there.” He didn’t even have to look up to know the medic didn’t care. He knew the drill between departments. Only your department was the best. Everybody else was lazy and over-stuffed on donuts.
“There were more.”
“I saw them.
“There were eighteen on the one, five more on the other. The guy has been busy.”
“Shush,” Hooker hissed.
“But...”
“Manny. Shut up before I make this poor medic knock you out.”
The ambulance wallowed into the driveway, slowed, and then backed up to the doors.
Hooker got out and could only watch helplessly.
“Jeezus, Hooker. First, you go stabbing kids in the hand with forks. What now, a spoon through the heart?”
Hooker didn’t need to turn around to know it was the receptionist who always looked like she just rode up on a horse, her blond hair long enough to sit on. The tight jeans flared on the sides of the thighs, with the special horse rider’s muscle.
The rest of the package was sexy in a horsey sort of way. Hooker had tried to get a date for several years, but they were just acquaintances with some history of flirting. Hooker was in no mood for her scalpel between the ribs crap today. “Well, if it isn’t old Cynthia Eye Candy. How are you doing, Cyn?”
The slow burn with her never took long. She spun on the toe of her ubiquitous shit-kickers, before speaking. “This best not be any of your doing, Hooker.”
Hooker followed her into the maw of the large door. Thankfully, the Sunday and time of day provided an almost empty emergency room—it was one of the few times Hooker had ever seen it this way. Even with the empty waiting room, there was a certain hum in the air of moaning and a low tide ebb and flow of the sounds of people in pain.
Connie came down out of her glass booth. “How is he?”
Hooker shrugged. “He was talking. But we don’t know why he keeled over like that. One of the cops just happened to look down the way. He was almost a hundred yards outside of the search area. He was lucky.”
“I saw it was Jeff Kowalsky who brought him in. What did he think?”
“Maybe hysterical paralysis combined with a spike of blood pressure from a panic attack.”
The older nurse pursed her lips and looked down as she thought. “Sounds about right.” She looked around as if someone had more authority than she did. She pushed Hooker toward the doors leading back to the emergency area. “Go ahead. You’re as close to a son as the man has. I’ll go call Stella and talk her down from the tree Dolly probably talked her up.”
“Thanks, Connie.”
“Just take care of the man.”
“Trying, Connie, trying.”
By the time Dolly tracked Stella down at the grocery store, they had moved Manny up to a room.
Fortunately, or unfortunately for Manny, it was the third floor—old home week. Thankfully, it was Valley Medical instead of Good Sam and Nurse Cutter.
The older nurse spun around and glared at the man. “Gosh damn it, Manny Romero, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to intubate you and then start pumping Thorazine down your IV.”
He closed his mouth.
Hooker snickered. Nurse Petite spun on him, only to find a deadpan look on his face.
Stella walked through the door. “I’ve got this, Lydia.” The nurse frowned and left.
Stella sat down next to Hooker. She softly took his hand. Hooker knew it wasn’t a good sign.
She leaned over as if she were going to take comfort by resting her head on his shoulder. He did not turn his head. He knew the look in her eyes.
Her mouth was only inches from his face. The whisper probably didn’t carry past a few feet. But there were large pieces of metal in the hall Hooker knew bent from the intensity.
“What... in sweet biscuits were you thinking when you left my man out there alone?”
Hooker tried the deadpan delivery. “There were sixty other cops…”
“How dare you talk back to me!” The tip of her finger flashed an inch from his eye.
“He sent me to do something else.”
“What?”
“Get castings of the other footprints.”
“Did you?” Her voice was pure glacial ice.
“I found Harold and got him started, then went looking for Manny. That’s when the cop saw him.”
“How long was he lying there—alone—on the ground?”
“Seconds.”
She waited. He turned and looked at her. “Stella. I swear. It was only seconds. The officer saw him go down. We thought he had been shot. We ran. We all ran.” He searched her hard eyes.
“Leave him alone.” The croak was a whisper from the bed.
She rose. Her index finger and hard stare pointed at Hooker. She wasn’t finished with him. She turned to her man.
The knock at the doorway saved Hooker. He rose and walked out to Uncle Willie. “How...?” Hooker took him by the arm and walked down the hall. “He seems okay. But nobody will let him talk. I think when he saw the fresh boot tracks, something just snapped. I think all the crap from his dance with the asshole just came rushing back.”
The man with plenty of experience with bad memories and events nodded his head as he also ignored the swearing. “Sometimes it can be those stupid things like the way the string beans are arranged at the market or the smell of hot gasoline on a muggy day. You just never know.”
“How did...?” Hooker frowned. His face cleared and he rolled his eyes and head on his neck in the zombie act of attrition. “Dolly.”
Willie laughed at Hooker. “Wow, the boy takes a few days off and blam-o, he forgets the reach and power of his girlfriend.”
“Which reminds me—she wants me back at the table on Wednesday.” He looked at his adoptive uncle. “I need wheels. I can’t have you and Stella schlepping me all over the place.”
“I think Don’s new truck just got out of paint. I’ll call him in the morning.”
Hooker looked hard at the man.
“Okay, okay... I’ll call him tonight.” The man pushed on Hooker’s chest. “Just for you.” A hint of the man’s Nancy slipped out. Hooker knew he was relaxing.
“Thanks, Willie.”
Willie nudged his chin back toward the door to the room. “So what did you guys find?”
Hooker looked down the hall. “We’ll know in about sixty seconds. Did you ever meet Manny’s old partner Paul?”
Willie turned. “Of course, I know Paul. How are you doing, young man?”
“Mr. Knight, great to see you again! You look younger than when I last saw you.” Paul spoke as he approached.
“Well, it was with all the fretting and worrying over young Hooker and his boy Squirt. Paul, it just wears a person down. It just gets right in and grinds the soul to grist. I don’t know why I worry so about this little ingrate, but I do.”
Hooker rolled his eyes as Paul, and he both tugged up their pant legs. “Holy Cap’n Crunch on scrambled eggs, Willie, can you get it any deeper?”
The mock horror of suffering washed over Willie.
Paul stopped him. “Can it, William. I caught the act the first time.” They all laughed.
Hooker pointed to the envelope in the commissioner’s hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
The man nodded.
Hooker put his finger up for the signal for one minute. He turned and stuck his head in the door to the room. “Stella, Willie is here. We’re just going downstairs for some coffee. We’ll be back.”
She nodded, never taking her eyes off Manny.
Hooker faced the two men. “Let’s go see Walt.”
“Walt?” The commissioner frowned, his freckles turned into wrinkles.
Willie slapped his arm around the man’s shoulders. “The janitor—he’s in the basement. He happens to be a coffee snob—so much so he roasts his own beans.”
The aroma was still intoxicating twenty minutes later as they looked over the photos.
“Holy crap! I would have had a seizure too if I had seen this boot mark. This guy has been busy is an understatement. We go from five to eighteen in six years?”
“No—we go from five to twenty-three in six years. You forgot the other boot. But even that is wrong. He still gets to carve another in the boot after today.” Hooker leaned his head into his hand.
“He has to have been somewhere else.” The commissioner sipped on his coffee as he thought.
“Have you called around yet?”
“Started. I got five of the counties. They should have gotten back to me by this time.” He turned around to look down the long room. “Hey, Walt, do you have a phone I can use?”
“Hooker can show you, sir,” the man called back from the workbench with a small TV over it. Perry Mason was addressing the jury.
Hooker held one eye almost closed as he raised his eyebrows. “You don’t mess with Walt’s Perry Mason, even if you are a county commissioner.” He laughed and pulled out a drawer of the workbench next to where they were sitting. “It keeps the phone from getting stuff on it or broken from falling tools.”
Hooker could see him make a note to himself. “Willie can tell you nothing will protect a phone when you throw a three-pound piston at it.” The two laughed about an incident when the phone kept ringing because Moffett Field Naval base kept looking for their construction crew. They were only supposed to assemble the former hanger—Willie’s new garage—and leave. The facts of there were no end walls and Willie had a great swimming pool combined with plenty of beer and a barbecue after four in the afternoon had nothing to do with the work dragging on until the end of summer. Of course, having twenty buff young men around the place didn’t exactly upset Willie either. Three phones in the shop never survived the summer.
They watched the commissioner who was rapidly running out of paper to write on. Hooker reached over and opened another drawer and pulled out a pad of yellow legal paper.
The commissioner eagerly waved it over. “Uh-huh... yeah... the date again was... okay. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. We had one of the investigators end up in the hospital this afternoon.” He listened. “Yeah, Romero, Mansfield Romero—pull his file. He’s retired, but we are using him as a consultant, so the department should be picking up the hospital tab on him. Also, while you’re running things to ground, open a folder for the other consultant.” He looked at Hooker for his real name. He just got a glare. “Just put it under ‘A’ period Hooker. Right. Just like the working girl.” He rolled his eyes. “Right—I’ll finish this when I get in.”
He hung up the phone. He suspected he wasn’t going to win the staring contest, but he had to try.
Willie saw what was happening and started to laugh. “Paul, you are never going to get it that way.”
Hooker smiled but didn’t blink. Paul finally slid his eyes over to the older man.
“Hieronymus as in Bosch the painter who painted Dante’s Hell, and it couldn’t have been more apropos. Octavius, as in Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, and then the name runs off the rails with O’Keller. Now, what would you call the kid—Harry or Tavi?” He looked at Hooker, who was busy trying to ignore the conversation. “What did you tell me your name was that day?”
Hooker looked at the man he loved deeply, and whom he knew every day he owed his life to this man. He thought back to the day Willie had returned to his prized convertible to find a scrawny butt in worn jeans peeking up from where Hooker was experimenting at trying to steal a car. Willie had smacked him on the butt and told him to scoot over—they were going to lunch. When Hooker had just stared at him, he had told him he was certain Hooker was starving, because he had just spent five minutes trying to hotwire the car’s radio.
“Ralph.”
Willie held his look for a moment then slid his eyes back to Paul with the see what I must put up with look. “Ralph.”
Paul chuckled and eyed Hooker calmly. “Well, Ralph, you’re now on the payroll for a while. Keep all the receipts if you talk to anyone over a meal or coffee.”
Willie laughed. “Hooker knows where all the free coffee and meals are.”
Paul stood. “Well, it looks like our boy was busy up and down the Central Valley. We even got a call from Reno. So I have some long phone calls to make.” He turned and finished with, “Thanks for the coffee, Walt.”
The man raised a distracted hand. There were six minutes left of Perry Mason. “Just leave a dime on the counter.”
Paul looked at Hooker, who was shrugging.
“He never charged me.”
The man heard more than they thought. “You weren’t on an expense account like Mr. Commissioner there.”
Paul laughed. “Man’s got a point.” He laid a ten-spot on the counter. It was always good to know where good coffee was available and better to make sure it stayed available.
They walked out to the elevator. “I wouldn’t tell Manny tonight. Let him sleep.”
“We’ll just check-in, but since I need to talk to Dolly, I’ll stay out at Willie’s tonight—just to keep him honest. If you know anything before noon, that’s where I’ll be. If I’m on the move, Dolly or dispatch will know how to get ahold of me.”
They parted at the first floor, and Hooker and Willie rode to the third. Manny was sleeping, and Stella was passed out in the chair next to him. They were still holding hands. Hooker grabbed a blanket out of the closet and covered her.
The young black-haired nurse who came on shift a little earlier, walked past as they were leaving the room. She whispered in a hushed nurse’s voice. “Is she still asleep?”
Hooker nodded, knowing his voice would wake Stella.
“We’ll wheel a spare bed in there in about an hour. She isn’t going anywhere tonight.”
Hooker took her hand and mouthed thanks.