“That,” said Flick, “is because you’re a redundant moron.”
Suddenly his shoulders rose.
Alicia said, “What’s in your hands? Unclench them.”
Flick stiffened. Ignored the command. Sean forced his left hand open.
Nothing.
On to the right hand. Something fell to the ground.
White, a loose blossom.
Gripping a flower? No, a wadded tissue, unfurling. Alicia gloved up and tweezed it between her fingers.
Sniffed.
“Gross,” she said. “Talk about foreplay, Cammie.”
Return of the hunter’s eyes. Flick writhed and spat at her. Barely missed polluting her face.
Sean kicked Flick’s legs out from under him. Flick pitched forward and Sean guided him facedown onto the driveway.
Milo turned to Alicia.“You okay?”
She said, “Yeah. He’s good with a gun but his mouth is a joke.”
“I’ve got masks in my trunk.”
I went and fetched two.
Double-masked, cuffed, and prone, Flick seemed to wilt.
Milo called for a patrol car for transport.
Flick said, “You are all so incrediblystupid.”
Milo said, “Let’s start from the beginning. You have the right…”
“Lawyer,” said Flick.“Lawyerlawyerlawyerlawyerlawyer.”
Chapter
46
Nothing of interest was found in Flick’s car but for an amoebic stain near the front rim of the driver’s seat and several smaller speckles on theOberlinfloor mat below. All of it fluoresced blue under UV light, the way organic material does. It didn’t take long for the lab to get specific. Semen. Same for the tissue Alicia had retrieved.
Milo said, “Public bathroom, his car. What’s that, a danger thing?”
I said, “Like I said, a sexual component. Also, a mastery thing. The rules don’t apply to me.”
We were in an Italian place two blocks from the station, drinking coffee and eating almond biscotti.
I said, “Maybe that’s why he was driving slow. Timing it so he could finish in front of that house.”
He said, “Everything’s a production with this lunatic. Those people have no idea what they avoided.”
Thosepeople were a family named Streicher, who lived inthathouse. The parents, city-employed accountants, had a seventeen-year-old daughter and a fifteen-year-old son, both of whom were enrolled at a prep school in Sherman Oaks.
