Page 31

Midafternoon in Los Angeles.

Luke and his partner, Nick Hernandez, are in uniform, in a marked black-and-white LAPD SUV on patrol.

The shift has been quiet so far when they pick up a broadcast, alerting patrols to a suspect vehicle. The plate and description: a 2019 blue Chevrolet Silverado with a smashed right taillight. Lone occupant, driver is a white female in her thirties, possibly armed with a gun. Extreme caution advised: vehicle is related to a fatal shooting.

Minutes later, an LAPD helicopter broadcasts, “Eyes on the vehicle, high speed, eastbound.”

The officer continues updating coordinates.

The vehicle then enters Luke and Nick’s division.

The helicopter broadcasts: “We’ll get other units to respond, Code Three.”

Nick, at the wheel, spots it. Luke grabs the radio, identifying their unit and location.

“We’ve got a visual on the vehicle. She’s moving.”

The officer in the chopper responds: “Watch your traffic, driver reportedly armed.”

Nick activates their siren and lights. The Silverado accelerates, clips vehicles. It weaves to the wrong side of the road, racing through red lights and stop signs.

Nick and Luke are the primary unit, but second and third units, lights and sirens going, join the pursuit. It lasts for three miles before the Silverado slides, brakes screeching into the rear of a dump truck loaded with gravel.

Airbags deploy.

Luke radios updates. He and Nick, weapons drawn, hurry to the pickup. Nick takes the driver’s side, Luke the passenger side. There’s movement from the sole occupant, a female. Nick shouts: “Get out of the vehicle! Get on the ground!”

The woman springs out, brandishing a semiautomatic rifle, and opens fire, hitting Nick, putting him down and instantly swinging to Luke, shooting and missing as he returns fire. He strikes her, sending her to the ground, her gun sliding away.

Luke restrains the suspect and secures her weapon, radios updates, rushes to Nick. He’s groaning, but alive. His new body armor stopped the rounds that hit him; he indicates through clenched teeth that he’s okay.

Luke goes to the suspect, staring at the woman lying on the street, plastic cuffs on her wrists, blood oozing from her wound…brilliant puddles growing on the pavement. The whomp-whomp-whomp of the chopper above—radio transmissions, distant sirens—everything is muffled, like he’s underwater. People on the street, faces contorted…phones pointing like accusations… Looking down at her…dropping to his knees…his hands on her chest…applying compressions… Her eyes open wide, her head nodding like a rag doll, but he doesn’t stop. Paramedics take over…but he knows…standing over her, his hands dripping with her blood…he knows…she’s dead…

It emerged that the woman, a thirty-five-year-old mother of a little boy and a little girl, was struggling with addiction. Upon learning that her husband was cheating on her with her best friend, the woman went to her friend’s home and caught them in the act. She shot them both dead before fleeing. While driving, she phoned her brother, telling him what she’d done and that she wanted to die. He alerted police; he’d tried to convince her to surrender.

It was futile. She refused to stop.

Later, the LAPD’s investigation had cleared Luke, finding that the suspect was ultimately responsible for her own death.

But official exoneration would never erase the fact that he had killed a woman, leaving her two children orphaned.

Nothing could diminish his anguish at taking a life.

Now, in his living room, past 3 a.m., rocking in the darkness with his sleeping daughter on his chest, the woman’s face haunted him again…

…her head nodding like a rag doll…eyes open wide…eyes that smiled on her wedding day…at her children at Christmas, at birthdays…

Then Luke saw the woman he’d struck on River Road, her face blurring in the rain over his windshield.

Another life.

Careful not to wake Emily, Luke got his phone from his pocket. He replayed the construction site video he’d copied. In the brief flicker, he saw the rain-streaked blip of pink, a figure rising from the roadside before disappearing. The construction guys had no idea what they’d seen.

But Luke knew.

He’d struck a woman.

Why don’t I report it? Am I so traumatized I can’t think straight?

Luke shut his eyes and winced. How long had it been now?

No victim had been found.

But the evidence hammered at him like the beating of a telltale heart. The damage to his car. The fabric he’d tossed. The video.

Is the woman alive?

I need to find out what happened to her. Then I’ll turn myself in.

Luke thought of Hyde’s execution, knowing that he’d confessed, ending the nightmare.

Luke considered Carrie and Vern, all they’d suffered, all they’d endured over the years. Carrie’s torment, folks turning against her, suspecting her. And people turning against Vern, with the ugly rumor about how his wife died. Then Vern’s diagnosis— his death sentence .

Even Hyde had cleared his conscience.

Admitted his guilt.

“Luke?”

At the edge of the ambient light, Carrie’s face appeared.

She looked at him holding their sleeping daughter, stepped closer and touched his shoulder.

“What is it?”

He remained silent.

“Honey,” she said, “you’re acting like you did right after the shooting, when things were so bad, when you were not okay. Are you okay?”

He tensed and for an instant he wanted to bare his soul. He wanted to tell Carrie what he did on that rainy night they talked on the phone, tell her what he was hiding.

But all he could do was utter: “Hyde’s execution just drove home the truth for me.”

“The truth?”

“I’m a killer, too, Carrie.”

She stared at him for a moment, then said: “It’s the shooting again.”

He nodded.

“Honey.” Carrie stroked his hair. “You were defending yourself, keeping people safe, doing your job.”

Luke shook his head.

“I’m as guilty as Hyde for what I’ve done.”