Do No Harm

It was David's turn to smile. Dalton took a sip of coffee, his face showing he'd forgotten to refill the cup since yesterday. David emitted a monstrous yawn.

"When the last time you slept?" Yale asked.

"I'm fine."

"I'm not asking if you're fine. I'm asking the last time you've strung together more than a few hours of sleep."

"I don't know. Five, six days. I can handle it. During internship, I was on call every other day and every other weekend."

"You were a young buck then. I'd guess you didn't look this shitty."

"No," David said. "Probably not."

"I'm gonna take you home to get a few z's. You're no good to us blurry."

Dalton drew his hand down the front of his face wearily, distorting his features. "We have our own world of shit to get back to. Combing evidence from Clyde's apartment. Car tips. Ex-foster home kids. Drugstores. Trying to press something useful from Forensics."

David's pager went off, beeping loudly. It was Sandy. His watch read 9:23. He'd missed his appearance before the board. "I have to return this," he said. "Sorry."

He withdrew his cell phone from the pocket of his white coat, and walked a few paces off so he could have a semiprivate conversation.

Sandy picked up the phone after a half ring. "Where the hell are you?"

Two cops led a heavily drugged prostitute into a nearby interrogation room. She twisted in their grips and tried to bite them. "Things are… complicated right now."

"Well, you've succeeded in making them more complicated. The board is rightly pissed off that you're not here. The meeting is progressing, whether you're here to defend yourself or not. And you're being depicted in even less flattering fashion than you deserve. And this morning's Times photo isn't exactly salve on our PR wounds." An angry pause. "You're doing an excellent job sabotaging what was shaping up to be a great career."

"I appreciate your keeping me in the loop," he heard himself say. His voice was cold, clinical, detached. Sandy hung up without saying good-bye.

He nodded to Yale and followed him down the stairs. The irritable black desk officer looked at David, then elbowed her counterpart-an obese man with a Wilford Brimley mustache-in the ribs.

"Ask him," she said. When the man shook his head, it set his jowls jiggling.

David and Yale passed the counter.

The woman elbowed her partner again. "Ask him," she repeated.

Wilford Brimley looked up with what David imagined was uncharacteristic shyness. "I got this heart murmur… " he said.

David slid his stethoscope into place and leaned over the counter.

David sat quietly in the passenger seat of Yale's car as they headed back to his house. Dalton had stayed at the station, running down leads on the phone. The sky was gray-brown, the clouds overhead indistinguishable from the haze of pollution. David tried to imagine his life if the Board voted for him to step down as division chief. He'd always lived with a presumption of irreproachability, probably a flaw he'd inherited from his mother. Events of the past week had knocked him from his armor, and dressed him in the trappings of visible failure. Maybe this was a good place from which to start over. To pick up the fragments and build something new from them.

Not surprisingly, he next felt a mentor's pull to get Carson put back together.

Yale said something, pulling David from his reverie.

"Excuse me?" David asked.

"I said, don't worry. We are gonna nail him. We have the whole department on the lookout for him and his vehicle. Ninety-eight hundred officers. He must have the vehicle hidden away, but every time he takes a drive or steps out in public, he's playing Russian roulette with five bullets."

David's mind slowly caught up to Yale's words, taking a moment to awaken. "You're more confident than Dalton."

"Dalton is accustomed to fate, chance, and the world conspiring to fuck him. I'm not. Clyde is no longer an unknown suspect. He's now an identified, wanted, violent felon, and he's starting to unravel. He's taking bigger and bigger risks, like going to your house. He's playing an endgame now. There's no question we'll nail him, and in my mind, there's no question we'll nail him soon." His hands fisted the wheel, then loosened. "There's really only one major uncertainty."

David rested his head against the glass. "What's that?"

"How bloody it gets before it's over."

They rode in silence the rest of the way to Brentwood. As they turned onto Marlboro, David recognized Ed's red Pathfinder across the street. The police cars had all left. "Want me to come in?" Yale asked. "Check for alkali throwers under the bed?"

David glanced at Ed's Pathfinder warily. "Thank you, I'll be fine."

"Do you have a weapon?"

"No," David said, opening his door. "No."

Yale leaned over so he could see David's face. "Keep your doors and windows locked. See about an alarm system. Call me with any sign of anything out of the ordinary. I'll check in with you every few hours. We'll have a car on you by nightfall."

"Thank you," David said.