Page 41 of Hero

She concentrated on the downward motion. Stepping down put people in the position where she wanted them. The ones in front were looking away from her, and the ones behind could only see the back of her. The one place where she had to look away was on each landing, when everyone had to walk in a semicircle to the next flight down.

One of the things that puzzled her was that she wasn’t noticing anything she had expected in a fire—hearing an alarm sound, people coughing. She didn’t smell any smoke. She was glad, of course. Maybe all of these people could get out before things got ugly and life-threatening. Her mind searched for an explanation—they had found an electrical fire right away and ended it, but had to be sure it was the only one, or there had never been a fire. Were they allowed to run fire drills in a hotel with real, paying guests? She’d never thought of it before, but it didn’t seem possible. A more likely story might be that the fire had been real, butsmall, and they had decided to avert a panic by getting everyone out instantly. None of these ideas satisfied her.

She had been avoiding an idea that had been nagging to be recognized. The cops had said “emergency,” not “fire.” The emergency could be a man seen on the premises with a gun, an active shooter. This idea was now seeming the most likely, and the probable suspect would be her killer. Marina Obermaier had warned Justine that somebody would figure out she was staying here, but she had been speaking about a reporter, not a killer. Justine’s next thought was that it didn’t matter what anyone talked about. What mattered was what happened.

This was Justine’s fault. She had been trying to stay ahead of the killer for three days, but she was the only one who knew how tenacious and skillful this guy was. She had tried to get Sergeant Kunkel to understand how urgent it was that the police go after him, but they’d already known, and then she’d realized she’d blown their sympathy by having called a lawyer instead of waiting to reassert her rights.

She looked at the number “2” stenciled on the wall by the door on the next landing. She was elated because she was almost to the ground, and then she felt frustrated, because she was almost to the ground and had spent her time thinking in the present instead of planning. In one more flight she was going to be out of the stairwell and in the open. She kept up the pace because she had to. There were people behind her who were terrified and descending faster to escape what they probably thought was a fire.

When she reached the concrete floor at ground level the door marked “1” was propped open and she heard a deep, authoritative male voice saying, “… bomb threat. The call has been deemed credible, so please keep moving. Don’t stop until you and your party are on the far side of the yellow police tape.”

It had not occurred to Justine that the rush down the stairwell could have taken more than a few minutes, but apparently the cops had been here long enough to cordon the place off. During the evacuation descent she had never been near anything but solid windowless walls, but as soon as she stepped out into the lobby, she faced the glass side wall, where she saw the rotating blue and red lights atop police cars; red, white, and yellow flashing lights on fire engines and ambulances; spotlights sweeping the street and the grounds of the hotel. She could see vehicles of several sorts moving around at the periphery. Staring made her move too slowly, so the flow of people from the stairwell engulfed her and swept her through the brass-framed doors onto the sidewalk.

Once people were outside, there were more police officers and firefighters to direct them away from the building, but most people went a hundred feet, stopped, and began to coagulate into thick crowds. They seemed assured that the emergency—at least for them—was over.

A few times, Ben Spengler had included visits from members of the police bomb squad in his training curriculum, because events involving people like Spengler-Nash clients—concerts, galas, awards ceremonies—were possible targets. The bit that came back to her now was that when there was a chance of high explosives, they had advised that a bodyguard move everybody at least five hundred feet from the probable device. She reminded herself that what she’d heard was that this was a bomb threat, not necessarily a bomb. One of the bomb techs had mentioned that only about a third of LA bomb calls resulted in a device that could even cause an explosion. That had seemed like few at the time, but tonight a third seemed like a lot. And the man who was after her wasn’t some nut or prankster; he was a pro.

She began scanning the crowd, looking for her killer. She saw knots of people who were obviously hotel guests roused from sleep—couples, some middle-aged and some young, clinging together, while others seemed to see this as a social occasion, talking with animation about what they’d heard, seen, or felt. There were children, some so young that their parents were trying frantically to keep them in hand, or at least in sight as they strayed among the taller adults. The older ones seemed deeply bored and put out by the experience, but the attitude was a pose, because in spite of their flat expressions, their eyes were always moving, flicking from one sight to another.

Justine had trained herself to expect the threatening person to be less than obvious, and tonight he’d have to be very careful, because these cops would know enough to look for the man who had made the call, expecting him to show up. She raised her eyes to the tops of the nearby buildings, then the darkened windows, trying to spot an open one or a balcony that had anything on it that could be a man or hide one. She knew a professional killer must be good enough to pick her out in this crowd and make a head shot.

The cops were now making progress in herding the evacuees across the wide pavement of the boulevard to the opposite sidewalk and the recesses in front of the buildings there, and the lanes of the street were filling with emergency vehicles. She saw the fire engines with the long extension ladders were moving closer in case there was any need to fight a fire, but the ambulances were a bit farther away. She spotted the big rectangular bomb squad vehicle near the side of the building and the round steel containment vessel on a tow rig behind it. They were taking this bomb threat very seriously. As she had the thought, she realized that she wasn’t—not the bomb, anyway.

She was almost certain that the caller had been the man who was hunting her, trying to flush her out of her hiding place in the hotel so he could get at her. She had stayed in the crowd as much as possible since she’d been awakened, trying not to be alone or to present a clear target. This had given her time and opportunity to study the evacuees and the nearby buildings. The people she’d ignored were the first responders.

There were dozens of cops at the fringes of the crowd. Most people—including Justine—thought of them as protectors. What if her killer had come dressed as a cop? She was sure that anybody who killed for a living must have at least considered using that disguise. Maybe her killer had done it tonight. She looked hard at each cop she could see, trying to find the man. As she looked at face after face, the idea seemed more likely. There were about ten thousand cops in the LAPD, and they couldn’t possibly all recognize each other, especially when there were so many brought together in an emergency. And why not a fireman? There were dozens of them here too, most wearing helmets and turnout coats.

She noticed that an increasing number of the other evacuees were looking at their phones. She took her phone out of her purse and slowly turned around, making a video of the scene. Then she repeated it in reverse, taking a still snapshot every few degrees. If the killer managed to get her this time, maybe he would be recorded on her phone. She knew the police took pictures of bystanders watching arson fires. She assumed they did it on bomb threats too—better photos than hers—but at least she was doing something.

Some people were talking on their phones. She wouldn’t stand out if she called someone. Who could she call? She looked at the time onher phone: 1:10A.M.The people from the Spengler-Nash office had been warned that if they spoke to her, they would be fired. She knew that there were plenty who would ignore that if she asked. This was a tough choice. She was sure she was vulnerable; she was sure she was defenseless. But was she positive that this threat call was the work of her killer? She felt that it was likely, but it could easily not be.

Most of the Spengler-Nash agents had worked there longer than she had and were older than she was, meaning that they were likely to have people they were supporting and were less likely than she was to find new jobs. The older they were, the higher up they were, meaning the jobs they would lose were mostly supervisory. She couldn’t throw somebody’s career away because of a suspicion.

She admitted to herself that there was only one person she could use to get herself out of this. She pressed the picture of a telephone on the little screen.

28

“Hello?” Joe Alston’s voice sounded dry, almost a croak.

She almost pressed the red circle to hang up, but thought ahead to the emptiness she would feel afterward, and spoke. “Hi, cutie,” she said. “It’s me, Anna. I’m sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye yesterday morning, but I had to go before you were awake. I absolutely couldn’t help it.”

He seemed to collect his thoughts quickly. “Did you just wake me up to apologize for not waking me up yesterday morning?”

“I guess I did,” she said. “But I’m also in need. I have to ask you for another really big favor. Then I promise I’ll take my time and thank you properly for all the favors at once.”

“What’s the new favor?”

“I’m standing across the street from the Chateau d’Or hotel on the Wilshire side of it with all the other guests. They had a bomb threat called in, so the police woke us all up and evacuated us. What I want is for you to zoom in and drive me to your house. I hate to ask you, but—”

“Are you in danger?”

“I think I am, but only if I stay here. This area is jammed with police and fire trucks, so you can’t get to the hotel. I’d like to meet you somewhere a block or two away, and I think that will keep us both safe.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be in my car heading in your direction within a couple of minutes. Call me as soon as you’ve found a place where I can pick you up.”

“Okay,” she said. “Goodbye.” She began to make her way through the crowd, staying within it for protection. She chose the direction of the side of the hotel where the bomb squad truck was parked. There were several cops nearby in coverall versions of police uniforms, each with a badge embossed or embroidered over the left breast pocket instead of a metal badge. She supposed those guys wouldn’t want any extra metal on them to conduct stray voltage or a spark.

She was judging the flows and currents within the crowd of people and moving with them instead of against them. She was able to move toward the bomb squad because a stream of evacuees was drifting in that direction, drawn by the universal human urge to get close enough to witness anything and everything that might be important. It didn’t have to be safe or even easy to identify or interpret. It only had to be what was happening at the moment.

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