Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot Part 16

It was a steep, sharp descent, the wind playing with my hair. I was going fast enough that an old man doing yard work at the edge of his property looked up and scowled, but I couldn't slow down. If Brittany got to an intersection and I didn't see which way she went, I'd lose her. I shot past lovely homes shaded by oak trees, past kids on bikes and women walking for exercise. Then the street leveled out, and up ahead I saw Brittany's silver car, turning at a traffic light onto the main street. I knew where she was heading: to the 101.

By the time she got there, I was right on her tail. I didn't care if she knew she was being followed; I could drive up her tailpipe if I wanted to. I knew her problem now: She was a coward. She had served Eastman something like tea, spiked with sedatives, and the woman had slipped away into a fog, never aware enough of what was happening to confront Brittany. After the murders she'd fled San Francisco. Now she was running again, not waiting to see if Brian had seen the news or if the young volunteer at her door would remember her face. She never faced opposition straight on. If Brittany could have, she probably would have shot Stepakoff in the back and never let him see her face at all. She felt uncomfortable without her mask-either the mask of my stolen ident.i.ty or that of the sweet girl who people like Brian seemed to take her for.

So if she looked back and realized that a motorcyclist was following her, she'd probably fear the worst: that I was someone who'd seen the news and knew who she was. In that situation Brittany would stay true to form. She'd panic and try to outrun me, and that wouldn't work. Everyone knows who wins car-versus-motorcycle chases.

We ascended the ramp onto the freeway. I stayed close as we merged. It was only about three-thirty in the afternoon, so the worst of the evening congestion was yet to come; we'd both have room to maneuver, if it came to an outright chase. Brittany didn't seem worried yet, if her speed and the way she was handling the car were any indication. She was going about seventy, which despite the posted limits is considered a sane and civil speed by L.A. motorists, when traffic allows.

We were heading north, away from the city proper, where the congestion would have been thicker. Brittany signaled and eased into the left lane, b.u.mping her speed up to seventy-five. After a second I did the same. As I did, I caught the eye of a man driving a midnight blue Saab; his eyebrows jumped at the sight of me, and I knew why: my bare head. California has a helmet law, and while there'll always be hardcore bikers who flout it, you generally don't see them on the main freeways, courting arrest.

Finding a hole in traffic, the Acura eased over into the farthest-left lane, the pa.s.sing lane. I followed, b.u.mping my speed up to eighty to match hers, keeping my eyes on her rearview mirror. As I watched, she lifted her eyes to the mirror, and then she knew.

Without signaling, Brittany cut recklessly across four lanes of traffic, toward an exit. I leaned my weight to the right and followed, hearing an angry, shrill horn behind me.

We were moving so fast that I didn't catch the sign for the exit ramp Brittany dived down. The light was green at the foot of the ramp, and she went left, me on her tail. Strip-mall businesses flashed past in the periphery of my vision; it was a shopping district, but I sensed open land ahead. Brittany was looking for a place where she could run. She gunned the Acura's engine, racing for a yellow light. It turned red as we shot under it.

Run, baby, I thought. Run baby run baby run. That was just what I wanted. Sooner or later we were going through a speed trap, and boy, were we going to set it off. At last I wasn't hiding from the police anymore. I wanted them to chase me, because I was chasing the Eastman-Stepakoff killer.

In a moment or two, the businesses and gas stations fell away and gra.s.sland opened up on the edges of my vision. I lowered my head and watched only the license plate on her car; to me it was the mechanical rabbit at the dog track. Brittany swerved left again, diving at the last minute for a side road in hopes of losing me. I leaned on the left handlebar and followed her, catching only a glimpse of the green-and-white sign on the corner: Something Canyon Road. She'd led us to about where we would have been had she gone uphill from Brian's place onto Mulholland Drive: headed into the open, chaparral-filled wilderness of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The Acura tried to pull away from me, and the needle on my speedometer twitched steadily higher: 95, 100, 105. The wind was no longer just pulling at my hair; it was pulling at my scalp and the skin of my face. Some of my hair had come loose from my ponytail and was fibrillating wildly around the lenses of my sungla.s.ses. My body shook in sympathy with the Aprilia's efforts, like amphetamine tremors. Maybe I was having those, too.

Then I heard a siren behind us.

Brittany didn't stop, so I couldn't, either. In fact, I smiled. This was another chase that individual motorists never win, trying to outrun the cops. Run, baby, I thought again. Because you've got a signed confession at every fingertip, and there's no way you're not getting arrested now, no matter how much you point at me and scream about the crazy girl chasing you.

When I dared a backward glance, the cop car behind us had multiplied into several, though they had to follow in single file.

The Acura's brake lights flashed briefly as Brittany made another last-minute turn, scaring a red-tailed hawk from a fence post, and I swung after her. The road she'd chosen was old, paved in sun-cracked particulate. Though she quickly picked up speed again, I eased back on the Aprilia's throttle. Roads this old were p.r.o.ne to gravel and loose stones. At high speed, without a helmet, being hit by a stone the Acura threw up would be almost like taking a bullet to the head.

What happened next happened too fast for me to understand right away. I no sooner saw the tumbleweed ahead of Brittany's car than she saw it, her brake lights flashed, and then sparks flew from the Acura's undercarriage as she lost control of the car. I veered left, hard, and then for a minute I didn't think of anything else as I fought for control of the skidding Aprilia, which was in a locked-rear-wheel slide. Unemotionally, I thought, I'm going down, and then I felt the bike get its footing under me again.

I braked to a standstill and swung off the saddle. And for the second time that afternoon, my legs betrayed me. I fell to hands and knees, my sungla.s.ses dropping from my face onto the road's edge.

For a moment the silence that replaced the battering of the wind around my head was all I could hear. Then I became aware of a familiar sound: a helicopter hovering overhead, its blades chopping the air. To the right, about fifty yards from me, the Acura sat in a cloud of dust in the center of a field, like a sentient thing in shock. On the shoulder of the road was a large, mangled coil of baling wire-the thing I had taken for an unlikely Southern California tumbleweed, that had thrown up sparks as the Acura dragged it at high speed along the road.

Behind me the police cars had come to a stop.

No one did anything. No doors slammed, no one shouted commands, the helicopter simply hovered. I could see the shape of Brittany's head and shoulders in the car, but it wasn't clear if she was conscious. She couldn't be dead, could she? The car had run off the road at high speed, but it hadn't hit anything. Surely she couldn't be dead. Could she?

Then the driver's-side door opened and Brittany stumbled out and began to run across the field.

I don't know how she could believe that she'd get out of this on foot, but she was trying. Running was just what she did. And chasing her had been my job up until now, so I did. I got to my feet and ran after her, ignoring the pain every time my right foot hit the ground.

She wasn't running very fast. She was wearing cowboy boots and going over rough, uneven soil, and her gait wasn't that of someone used to running. The only hard part was making up the distance she already had on me. Twenty feet, fifteen feet, ten, five ... I reached out and caught her shoulder. She shrieked and stumbled, then fell on her stomach. I dropped to my knees and then got my weight on her, straddling her lower back and keeping her arms pinned. She twisted around but couldn't dislodge me. My heart was pounding from the chase, and the stab wound in my foot was throbbing in time with my heartbeat again.

I leaned down, my mouth close to her ear.

"Brittany, I know what you did in San Francisco," I said. "After the cops fingerprint you, everyone's gonna know. And when you're on death row, I want you to remember one thing: None of these officers here actually ran you to the ground. That was me. Turn around and take a good look at my face."

When she did, when she saw my birthmark and knew who I was, Brittany Mercier began to scream.

27.

"Both of you, stay where you are. Do not move. You, on top, place your hands slowly on the back of your neck."

The cops had gotten their game plan together and had a.s.sembled in a loose ring around us, one of them giving the orders over a bullhorn. They were being careful, but I didn't get a sense of knife-edge tension off them. They didn't know exactly what the situation was, but for now it probably looked like a couple of crazy chicks with a wild hair up their a.s.ses.

I laced my hands on the back of my neck, as the guy in charge had said. It didn't seem like they'd seen the outline of the Beretta; the tail of my T-shirt covered it up.

They closed in. I heard footsteps crunching, then a voice behind me, a voice unaided by a megaphone. "You are under arrest. Lower your hands slowly behind your back so I can cuff you. Miss, be quiet." That was to Brittany, who was still shrieking. She gulped and took a breath.

The cop behind me started doing the Miranda thing. He got as far as "to remain silent" before Brittany realized the weapon she had at her disposal and used it.

"She's Hailey Cain!" she yelled. "She killed those people in San Francisco! She killed a cop!"

Holy s.h.i.t, I heard one of the cops say, and they all stiffened, as though they'd walked up on a rattlesnake in the gra.s.s.

"She killed two people! She just told me she did! Get her off me!"

"I didn't kill anyone, but I am Hailey Cain," I said clearly to the ring of raised weapons around me. "I'm not running anymore, and I won't resist arrest."

"She confessed to me! She wants to kill me because I know what she did!"

"Miss, be quiet," the voice behind me said. "I'm going to cuff you now, Miss Cain. You so much as twitch and I will shoot you."

"I'm carrying a piece on my lower back; you'll feel it when you cuff me," I said, still speaking loudly and enunciating clearly to be heard over Brittany's accusations "Stay very still. You on the ground, please be quiet."

I felt his hands on my back, moving, finding the gun and disarming me. The helicopter was directly over us, and the downdraft was making my hair blow crazily; probably less than half of it was still in its ponytail. Underneath me, Brittany's heartbeat was so forceful I could feel it in my legs.

"Are you carrying any other weapons?"

"No."

I shut my eyes while he searched me to find out. He wasn't gentle. Eyes still closed, I said, "She was the one who killed the cop and Violet Eastman."

"Liar!"

The cop: "You should stay quiet."

"Get her fingerprints and you'll see," I said.

He took one of my wrists in his hand, clicked the steel bracelet of his handcuffs around it, then pulled my other wrist down and did the same. Then he ratcheted them tight. Really, really tight. Then he started the Miranda rights again. "You have the right to remain silent!" he yelled over the helicopter's noise. "If you give up the right to-Will someone get on the blower and call off that d.a.m.n chopper already!"

"It's not us, it's probably news," said another officer.

The arresting officer decided he needed to preserve his vocal cords more than I needed to hear my last two rights, and he hauled me to my feet, his grip tight on my arm. I saw him for the first time: white guy, short brown hair, neatly trimmed mustache. That guy you see on Cops all the time. Deputy Newton, his name tag read. He was with the L.A. Sheriff's Office.

As soon as my weight was off Brittany, she jumped to her feet, surprisingly quick for everything she'd been through. She almost laughed in relief. "Oh, thank G.o.d," she said. "I was so scared."

The circle of police officers was all men, a fact not lost on Brittany. She gave them a breathless, tentative smile.

"I'm sorry, miss," another officer said, "but we're going to have to take you in, too. You were operating that vehicle with reckless disregard for-"

"I didn't mean to! She was chasing me!" Brittany interrupted. "I didn't mean to, it wasn't my fault! Oh, please, can't you just-"

One of them moved in, reading Brittany her Miranda rights. She glanced around the circle, as if seeking the most sympathetic pair of eyes. Then she said, "I think I need to go to the hospital."

"-in a court of law," the cop continued.

"I hit my head on the dashboard, really hard, I'm seeing double."

"There's a nurse who can do an a.s.sessment at jail intake," he told her, and then took out his handcuffs.

When it sank in that she was really going to jail, Brittany began to cry.

28.

Deputy Newton took both of us to a prisoner-transport van and shackled us to opposite benches, out of reach of each other. He said, "I'll be right back. You girls just stay there and don't move a muscle," and jumped down to the ground.

When we were alone, no cops in earshot, no audience to play to, Brittany looked at me and said, "Why are you doing this to me?"

At that moment I gave up on ever truly trying to understand her. Because on some level she considered that to be a legitimate question. Somewhere in her mind, she was the victim; I'd made this happen.

Then movement outside the van caught my eye, a little bit of commotion, a raised voice. I looked over to see Joel Kelleher approaching. He had changed out of his college-volunteer clothes and was recognizably a cop again in a dark blue LAPD T-shirt, black jeans, and boots, a badge on a chain around his neck. His wasn't the raised voice. That was my friend Deputy Newton. "-without a compelling reason. Hey, are you listening?" he was saying, trailing behind with a reddening, frustrated face. He couldn't keep up, and Joel wasn't slowing down for him any. He vaulted up easily into the back of the van. Brittany stared at him, her mouth slightly open, recognizing the "volunteer" who'd rung her doorbell earlier and understanding the extent to which she'd been fooled. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said, and started to cry again.

Joel looked at me without any sign that we'd ever met. "Hailey Cain, I'm Officer Joel Kelleher with the Los Angeles Police Department. I'm here to take you into custody."

"You can't do this," Newton said, still outside the van.

"Actually, I can," Joel said. "They gave me the authority to transport prisoners when they swore me in."

Newton said, "You know what I'm saying. We've arrested her, we've Mirandized her-"

"Not completely," I said helpfully.

"-and we've arranged for transport to the jail. There's absolutely no reason for this."

"None except that I'm the only officer here I know for sure won't have her fall down a flight of stairs in handcuffs as soon as she's out of sight of reporters," Joel said.

"That's offensive."

"And painful, which is why I want to keep it from happening," Joel said. "Look, if you have any more questions, talk to Magnus Ford, under whose authority I'm doing this. You have heard of Ford, I a.s.sume?"

Newton closed his mouth, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Joel knelt down by my side.

Newton found his voice. "No matter whose authority, I'm reporting you for this."

"For taking a prisoner to custody?" Joel said. "That'll excite IAD. Listen, I'm not stealing your collar. I'm only taking her in." He nudged his chin at me. "That woman"-looking over his shoulder at Brittany-"is the one you really want to be photographed perp-walking into central lockup. That's the AP photo you'll show your grandkids. When all this shakes out, you'll thank me."

Though the big game was finished, the turnstiles kept rolling over: More official-looking vehicles had arrived, and there were several knots of uniformed and plainclothes officers around, plus a few in suits who could have been pretty high up the command chain. Joel walked me through a gauntlet of hostile gazes to the unmarked white sedan I'd seen him driving earlier.

Once I was in the backseat, still handcuffed, and he was behind the wheel, he said, "You're not going to central lockup. I'm taking you to a sheriff's substation until all this settles down. I know the guy in charge. He's a good man. No one's going to mess with you."

"Okay," I'd said. "Thank you" wasn't right here. He wasn't doing it as a favor for me personally. It was just a practical concern.

Then I said, "Do you always talk like that to other officers, like you did to Newton? In the Army someone with your kind of mouth would constantly be losing privileges and working chickens.h.i.t details."

"He wasn't my superior." Joel glanced at me in the rearview. "I have a hard time remembering you were at West Point. It just doesn't seem very you."

"Things were a lot different then. I was different."

Joel didn't pursue that. He was looking out the window at the ongoing mop-up of the scene and said, "I'd better get us out of here."

He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine rumbled to life. Then, rather than make a U-turn, Joel c.o.c.ked his chin over his shoulder and reversed all the way to the road under the malevolent eyes of his peers.

29.

Dry east-county landscape rolled past outside the windows of Joel's car, and I watched it with a placid feeling, as if it were something on film, a peaceful interlude in an otherwise chaotic movie. I didn't know where we were headed and didn't care.

I leaned forward. "Joel?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you allowed to talk about the case at all?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Was Brittany's student-ID picture on the news? Is that what made her run?"