Jennifer said, "Damn it, Mark, please. We have to wait for the ambulance."

Mark Thurman stumbled sideways. I caught him and helped him stay up. He said, "You gotta help me." He had lost a lot of blood.

Jennifer Sheridan said, "Make him lie down."

"He's okay."

I helped Mark Thurman lurch across the concession stand to Eric Dees. Mark Thurman dug a slim billfold out of his back pocket, opened it, and held it out. It was his LAPD badge. He said, "Do you see this?"

"What in hell are you doing?" Little bubbles of blood came out of Dees's nose when he said it and I wasn't sure if he was seeing the badge or not.

Mark Thurman breathed hard and sort of wobbled to the side but he kept his feet. His shirt and his pants were wet with his own blood. He said, "I'm doing something that I should've done a long time ago, you sonofabitch. I am an LAPD officer, and I am placing you under arrest. You are under arrest for murder, and conspiracy to commit murder, and because you're a lousy goddamned officer." Then Mark Thurman fainted.

Eric Dees was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.

CHAPTER 34

Jennifer Sheridan rode in the back of the ambulance J when they brought Mark Thurman and Pete Garcia to the Lancaster City Hospital. Pike and I followed behind in Mark Thurman's Mustang.

The Lancaster cops assumed that something bad had gone down between a group of gangbangers and a group of LAPD officers, and neither Joe nor I told them different. The Lancaster police, as might be expected, assumed that the police officers on the scene had been there as the representatives of Truth and Justice. We didn't tell them different about that, either. Joe Pike got one of the Lancaster cops to give him a lift back to his Jeep.

The emergency room staff tried to keep Jennifer Sheridan out of the ER, but Mark Thurman woke up enough to say that he wanted her with him, and they relented. I went with him, too. Because of the nature of the bleeding, the ER staff prepared to take Mark Thurman into the operating room. One of the doctors grumbled about having no X rays, but I guess nobody wanted to wait. Pete Garcia was already on the table, and it didn't look good for him.

Jennifer and I stood beside Mark in a green tile hallway and waited for the orderlies to wheel him into the OR. Jennifer held his hand. Mark Thurman smiled at her, then his eyes moved to me. It was a sleepy smile. They had pumped him full of Demerol. "What do you think will happen now?"

I made a little shrug. "It'll come out. No way to keep it in."

Mark looked lost and maybe a little fretful. "The tape's gone. There's no more proof of what happened that night. They catch Pinkworth, all he's going to do is deny everything. Akeem D'Muere isn't going to offer anything."

"There's Garcia."

Mark Thurman sighed. "If he makes it."

"There's me and there's Pike."

"Yeah. But that's just words. You weren't there that night."

"No. But we'll offer what we can. If no one believes, then there it is."

A nurse came and told Mark that it would be just a minute more.

I said, "What do you want to do, Mark?"

He looked at Jennifer, and she nodded, and then he looked at me. "I don't care about the tape. I want to go forward. I want to tell them what happened to Charles Lewis Washington. Can you set that up?"

I patted his shoulder and the orderlies came and took him away.

Jennifer Sheridan and I went into the little waiting room they have there and I bought her a cup of coffee. Then I went to the pay phone and called Lou Poitras. It was eighteen minutes after six, and he wasn't happy to hear from me. "You're late. I got half a dozen people sitting here waiting for you and your boy Thurman. You getting cold feet?"

"The tape's gone, Lou. Dees burned it."

Lou Poitras put me on hold. A couple of minutes later he picked up again. "I had to change phones. I didn't want those people to see me have an aneurism."

"Dees is dead. So is Riggens. Garcia and Thurman are under the knife now, and Pinkworth ran. I'd guess he'll go home. He'll think about it for an hour, then call in with a story."

Lou Poitras said, "Jesus Christ."

"Thurman wants to come in, Lou. Tape or no tape. He wants to make a statement about what happened in the pawnshop, and what's been happening since, and he's willing to testify."

Lou Poitras made a soft sound, but said nothing for several seconds. "There's no deal without the tape, Hound Dog. None of these people will make a promise on verbal testimony. If he comes forward, he takes his chances."

"He knows that. He wants to step forward anyway. If Garcia makes it, he'll probably be willing to corroborate."

"That would help."

"But even if Garcia doesn't, Thurman comes forward."

"I understand." There was maybe just a little bit more respect in Lou Poitras's voice than mere had been. "We're going to have to bring you in. Tell me where you are."

I told him.

When I hung up, Joe Pike was sitting beside Jennifer Sheridan. He was holding her hand. I sat on the other side of her and took her free hand. She didn't look happy. She said, "I can't believe I killed a man. I just shot him."

"Yes."

"A man I've known and talked to. Before they were divorced, the four of us had dinner once. We ate at the Sizzler." She was staring at a point in the middle space, somewhere very far from here.

I said, "You shot a man who was going to murder Mark Thurman. If you hadn't shot him, Mark would be dead. Do you see that?"

She nodded.

"It's what you have, and you must use it. You're going to hurt. You're going to miss sleep, and you're going to feel guilty, and it's going to get worse before it gets better, but you can survive it. You helped Mark survive, and now he will help you. He is alive because of you. When you hear him breathe, when you see him smile, it is because of you. Tell yourself that and know that it's true. Tell it to yourself as often as you need. If you forget, call me and I will tell you."

She leaned her head against my shoulder and we sat like that. A few minutes later I told them about the call to Lou Poitras and the way it was going to be.

When I finished, Jennifer Sheridan said, "I don't want to leave Mark."

I rubbed her hand. Joe still had the other. "You'll be fine. They're going to want to talk to you, and to Mark, but probably not until later. Joe and I will go now."

She looked down at our hands, then up again. "What will I say?"

"The truth."

"Will they put him in jail?"

"I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know. A lot of people out there are going to want his head."

She nodded again, and this time smiled sort of sadly. "He just wanted to be a police officer."

"Yes. But now he'll have to move on, and so will you."

"It's going to be such a big change. What will he do?"

"Something."

"Well, we still have each other. We can make it."

"Yes," I said. "If you want to make it, you can."

She smiled again, and this time the smile didn't seem so sad. "Thanks for sticking it out with me."

"Jennifer, you're worth it."

Twenty-two minutes later a couple of California Highway Patrol cops in khaki uniforms came into the waiting room. The shorter of the two said, "Who's Cole?"

"Me." I stood, and Pike stood with me. Jennifer got up with Pike and took my hand.

The same cop said, "We're supposed to take you down to L.A. Is this guy Pike?"

Pike said, "Yeah."

"Okay. The both of you."

The taller guy began to dig out his cuffs, but the shorter guy waved them away. "We don't need that."

Jennifer's grip on my hand tightened. I gave her the smile and squeezed her hand back and said, "Everything's going to be fine." Mr. Confidence.