“But you said he ought to charge admission.”
“What he’s done here is harmless. Interesting, even. But who knows what he might do next?”
“You mean violence?” Hirst frowned. “That’s rare among schizophrenics.”
“So I’ve been told. You handle a lot of street people in Pinal?”
“Not really. Rural area, you know. Illegals camping out in the woods…”
“Mental patients? Deinstitutionalized? Mainstreamed?”
“Hardly ever.” She lifted her chin. “But I’ve read up on it. I know—”
“You don’t know a fucking thing,” Shepherd said without emphasis. “Now let’s get out of here.”
There was silence on the drive back, except for Mitch, who hummed an unmelodic time and stared at distant visions only he could see.
Elizabeth had eaten nothing in twenty hours. Her last meal had been a couple of granola bars consumed while she staked out Cray’s residence late on Monday afternoon.
She had not realized how utterly famished she was until she opened the menu at the coffee shop and read the list of selections. She wanted one of everything. She wanted breakfast, lunch, and dinner all at once.
The bored waitress drifted back to Elizabeth’s corner table after serving a tray of steaming dishes to a boisterous group of utility workers across the room. “Decided yet?” she said without interest.
Elizabeth, who had waited tables in a coffee shop not very different from this one, appraised the woman’s technique as poor. You got better tips with a cheery welcome and a smile.
She ordered two eggs, scrambled, with hash browns and sausage links and toast with jam and a large orange juice and coffee with cream and sugar and a cinnamon roll on the side.
“Did I remember to say hash browns?” she asked.
The waitress jotted down a few scribbles. “Sweetie, you remembered to say every darn thing on the menu. How do you keep your figure?”
“I run marathons.”
It was true, in a sense. She’d been running for twelve years, and that had to be some kind of record.
She shifted anxiously in the leatherette bench seat, awaiting the food’s arrival. Her hunger, now that she had permitted herself to notice it, was like a living thing inside her, a restless animal clawing and twisting in her belly. She felt weak and faint.
But it didn’t matter. The discomfort was only physical, and it couldn’t compete with the sheer elation lifting her like a concentrated adrenaline hit.
She’d done it.
Called the police.
Left the satchel.
The 911 operator hadn’t believed her, but so what? The package would prove her story.
She just hoped the patrol cops didn’t paw through the contents and smear any fingerprints Cray might have left.
Even now the satchel would be on the desk of some homicide detective at Tucson PD’s downtown headquarters. Or maybe it was in the criminalistics lab, its contents being photographed and measured by careful people with gloved hands. How long would it take before they realized this was the real thing? The knife would surely confirm it. Probably they could match the blade to nicks on Sharon Andrews’ skull.
Even if they weren’t absolutely convinced, they would have to delve deeper. Their next step would be to talk with Cray.
There were two possibilities. Either he had already fled, hoping to lose himself across the border or in another state, or he was waiting for them, intending to brazen out their interrogation.
If he’d fled, his guilt would be established by that fact alone. If he tried to match wits with the investigators, he would be hard-pressed to explain the key to his Lexus in the satchel, or the damage to the vehicle itself.
He was finished, either way. The turnaround was so complete, so perfect, as to leave her almost disoriented. She felt as if she had been spun in circles.
By all rights she should have been Cray’s victim. She should be dead now, a body in the desert, perhaps buried, perhaps merely kicked into the mesquite brush, a meal for scavengers that would come in the night to tease apart her bones.
And her face…
Reflexively she touched the skin of her cheek, her forehead. She knew what Cray would have done with her face.
Instead, she’d beaten him. She’d put him on the defensive, boxed him in, and he would never escape.
The waitress returned with a high hill of food. “Dig in,” she said grumpily.
Eggs had never tasted so fine. Elizabeth ate them all in a sustained ravenous burst, then turned her attention to the side dishes and beverages.
She was halfway through the meal when chairs scraped the floor at the table next to her. Glancing up, she saw two men in blue uniforms seating themselves.
Cops.
Fear froze her. For a moment she lost the ability to breathe. All she could think of was that they had seen her leave the pay phone, they had followed her, they had tracked her to the coffee shop, and now they were playing a game with her, a sadistic game.
No, that wasn’t what had happened, of course not.
They were just two patrol cops on a break. The coffee shop, not far from downtown, seemed to cater to city employees. The utility workers across the room, for instance.
The waitress said hello to the cops, her attitude improving noticeably around them. These guys were regulars. They called her by her first name, Lois. They made jokes about the menu.
So everything was okay, and Elizabeth could stop shaking.
Except she couldn’t.
Fear of cops was not a rational thing with her anymore. It was a habit of mind, a way of being. She had spent too many years avoiding blue uniforms and two-tone sedans with light bars. Even a businessman in a blue suit could spook her, or a car with a ski rack that looked, in silhouette, like a patrol unit’s dome light.
The cops were wearing their portable radios, the volume dialed low. She heard the soft crackle of police codes. She hated that sound. She would rather hear the whine of a dentist’s drill, the yowl of an alley cat, anything but the cross talk of prowl cars on the hunt.
Stop this.
She had lost her appetite. Half her meal remained before her, uneaten. She had to finish it. To leave now, so soon after the police had appeared, would look suspicious.
She drank her orange juice. The pulp felt slimy in her mouth, and when she swallowed, she experienced a momentary thrust of nausea.