“I love you, too.”

  ***

  She had been home cleaning that day.

  Alone in her apartment, she had taken the day off from work to get caught up on chores. At the time, she had worked in insurance investigations, which might explain how she was able to readily get me the information I needed so far. After the accident, she decided to go a different direction with her life…and became a sign language translator. In fact, she is the LAPD’s official translator.

  She’d always gotten the heebie-jeebies from her neighbor. There was a darkness around him. He wouldn’t look her in the eye. Late at night, she would often hear him working in his apartment, especially in those last few months before the shooting spree. Now, she understood what he was doing. Booby-trapping the place with nearly 75 different explosives, some of which went off when I had kicked in the door, especially those near the front window, where Mitch had been standing, and a handful of bigger ones that ended up blowing a hole in the wall that separated her apartment from the killer’s. A wall that led to her own adjoining kitchen, where Rachel had been doing dishes when the blast occurred.

  She had awakened in the hospital later…to discover she was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, and that a policeman had died and another was in critical condition. She would also soon learn the extent of her neighbor’s depravity and barbarism, and regretted not mentioning her concerns to someone. She was so angry with herself, even years later, and it occurs to me now that the woman I had just told I loved, the woman I had nearly killed, the woman I had blinded and deafened, blamed herself for everything. Herself.

  “All I had to do was make one call…” she signs into my hand, then stops. Her hand is heavy in mine.

  “And tell them what?” I sign. “That you have a weird neighbor who’s up at all hours of the night?”

  “Eleven people, Lee, including your partner. All dead, because I didn’t act.”

  “All dead because one man was intent on killing.”

  “All I had to do was make one call—don’t you understand?”

  “And all I had to do was wait for backup,” I sign into the air. “Or listen to my partner. Anything, but do what I did.”

  What I had done was kick the door in. I hadn’t conferred with my partner. I hadn’t told him my plans. I saw only the dead and blood—and I saw only red.

  “I knew he was dangerous, Lee. I felt it. A dozen times, I nearly called the police. A dozen times I chickened out. It’s my fault. All of this.”

  She spends the next few minutes crying hard into her hands, so hard that I thought I might have heard it. I held her close and couldn’t believe the turn of events. I had gone from blaming myself to consoling her. And her blame was real. It is something she lives with, daily.

  Jesus.

  She is deaf in one ear, blind in one eye. Her wounds are significant…perhaps even more obvious than my own. In fact, definitely more obvious than my own. As far as superficial wounds, I had escaped fairly unscathed. I had puffy scars around my eyes where shrapnel had entered my face. I had significant damage to my throat, but that is mostly hidden by collars. I don’t do scarfs or turtlenecks. First, I still need an opening to breathe; second, this is Southern California—not exactly turtleneck or scarf weather.

  We are silent, motionless, lost and found. I feel myself wanting to slip into the Winter Wind, but I resist for some reason. I want Rachel to have these quiet moments alone and unseen. Later, I will tell her about what I can do. Now does not seem the time. Or maybe it is. When is the correct time to tell someone that, yes, you’ve acquired the ability to see vibrations when in a deep trance. I’m not sure when the right time will be, but I’m pretty sure it is not now.

  And so we sit like that, knees touching, holding hands, as intimate and close as two people can get, I think. Always touching, always connected, and not just through sex. I liked that about us. I liked feeling the deep connection with another human being, especially this one…

  Finally, she leans forward and presses her forehead against my chest, and I run my hand over the wounds along her exposed cheek, reading the tragedy of her pain, her loss, her guilt.

  Each puffy bump, each jagged slash, each furrow and divot that make up the wounds, brings me closer to her, connects me deeper to her, and makes me love her more.

  As we lie back on the bed, I think about our divine matchmaker, whoever or whatever it might be. I think: God, there has to be an easier way to bring two people together.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Next day, late afternoon.

  Rachel is with Detective Hammer. She’d left early in the morning to work a gig or two, and now she is back for gig #3. As luck would have it, I’m gig #3.

  We are sitting around the coffee table. This morning, with Rachel gone, I had slipped deeply into meditation and into the Winter Wind, practicing my movements. I was almost—almost—able to raise my arm all the way up while in deep meditation—and to maintain the Winter Wind, too. As in, I could see myself move. My goal, if possible, is to someday move around with sight, and to slip in and out of the Wind on cue.

  Don’t break the wind, I kept thinking this morning, and cracked myself up enough to, indeed, slip out of the Wind, and back into the darkness of my reality.

  Now, in the living room, all is dark and quiet. I might as well have been in the vacuum of deep space. A vacuum with the slightest of ringing.

  Ignore the ringing, I tell myself again. And again.

  My hand is open and resting lightly on Rachel’s thigh, waiting for her communication. It is all I can do to not pull her into me and kiss her deeply. After all, it is easy to imagine we are sitting here alone. That we are, in fact, the last two people alive.

  In the past, I often convinced myself that I was dead, and this is the afterlife. Eternal blackness. Eternal silence. Sometimes, I long for real death—just on the off chance that I might hear birds sing again. Or, listen to some Nirvana again. Or Jimmy Buffet. Or, once and for all, listen to my first Lady Gaga and see what all the fuss is about.

  Usually, I don’t think I am dead. Usually, I am aware enough to know that I am alive—but when one sits for days and weeks and years in darkness and in silence, it is easy to forget one is among the living. It is easy to forget that there is a world of beauty and of sounds and interaction and living. It is easy to think that I am dead, actually. Or, worse, that I am nothing at all. Just a memory. Just an echo. Just pure thought.

  Or even worse, that I never existed. That hell is, in fact, believing I had once been alive and lived and loved and laughed.

  Shitty thoughts for sure. Luckily, when I am in these dark moments, when the darkness feels like a living thing, heavy and suffocating and all-consuming—when I beg for some semblance of light, a spark, a flash, anything—I will feel a wet tongue on my hand or arm or cheek, or wherever Betsie can reach me. Perhaps she senses my hopelessness, and she’s always there to bring me back. Always.

  I squeeze Rachel’s hand. She squeezes back. I am alive. This is real. She is real. Love is real.

  I sense her nodding and speaking and I wonder what Detective Hammer thinks of the two disfigured freaks sitting in front of him, now that I know Rachel is a fellow freak. That is, until I realize that I don’t care what Hammer thinks—or what anyone thinks. Rachel might care. She had done a helluva job hiding her injuries from me, guiding my hands subtly as we explored each other. I wonder when she was planning on telling me. Probably soon. It was only a matter of time before my hand slid to the right side of her face. She had probably spent the past five years with men looking at her funny, with children openly staring at her. Five years feeling less than the woman I knew she was. All because of me.

  No matter what the hell she says.

  When Hammer is done speaking, Rachel begins signing into my hand, her touch as soft as ever, if not a little more urgent.

  “He and his team served the zoo a search warrant early this morning, before it was open. They searched the buildings in question and found nothing. They searched similar abandoned buildings around the zoo. They searched janitor buildings and storage buildings and anything they could think of. They even headed out to the Old Zoo and took a look around there, too. They found nothing, but he appreciates the tip. So far, it’s the only lead they have…at least, the only lead that was worth getting a search warrant for. Too bad it didn’t pan out. Hammer thinks the doctor sounds like a nut job, and just crazy enough to pull something like this. They’ll keep investigating that lead.”

  She says all this over many minutes, with many pauses, and when she stops, I unconsciously rub her fingers, which are, no doubt, tired from all the signing. At least, mine would be.

  I feel their eyes on me after she is done signing. Rachel isn’t nodding her head, isn’t moving. Both are looking, no doubt, at me. Waiting for me. I was a senior investigator at the LAPD. I had many, many years under my belt, many closed files, and many still-open files, too. I was used to people waiting for me, waiting for me to lead. Hammer may not be used to deferring. He was a good detective in his own right, but, undoubtedly, overworked, and this Big Case is a thorn in everyone’s side. Not really my side, but I can imagine it is taking a lot of resources and time and manpower to get a handle on this one. The search warrant today has probably been a nightmare of logistics and timing, too.

  The problem is…

  Well, the problem is, I know they are wrong. I know there is something there, even if they didn’t find it.

  Everything in me—call it instinct, intuition, sixth sense, whatever—knows there is something still going on behind the scenes at the L.A. Zoo, hidden from public consumption, and hidden from even a search warrant.

  Or not. Maybe my instincts are shot to hell. Except, I could feel the electricity of it, the knowing of it, the power of it. This knowing is real in me, more so than ever. Except…

  Except I will not be able to convince Hammer of this. Not after he and the other investigators turned the zoo inside and out.

  Finally, I nod and sign: “We did our best. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

  He pats my hand once, and I feel him rise. I sense him patting Rachel, perhaps lightly on the shoulder. And then he is gone.

  Rachel takes my hand to sign to me, “He did mention one more thing, Lee.”

  I nod and wait.

  “The department’s cyber guys scoured what Hammer called the Dark Net, and found no solid evidence of anyone advertising to help people disappear in the Los Angeles area.”

  “Solid evidence?” I sign. “But they found something?”

  “Just a single post on a forgotten message board, buried deep in the hidden net and nearly impossible to find. Someone had posted something with the keywords, ‘Los Angeles Zoo.’”

  “What did they post?”

  “Someone had asked: ‘But is it safe?’”

  “And?” I sign.

  “There was no answer.” She pats my hand, then signs into it: “You did your best, Lee.”

  I nod and wonder if I have, and sit back with her as she rests her head on my shoulder and I rub her neck, slowly, thinking.

  Thinking…

  Chapter Forty-nine

  It is late.

  Rachel is gone, and I am thinking of my brother and the missing victims, and the disgraced veterinarian, and Jesse, who had been found dead and infected with tuberculosis. I think of my brother’s cryptic words in parting, words about getting past the testing.

  I don’t drink much, but I’m drinking now, on my balcony. Drinking hard, actually. Being buzzed, I note, hinders my ability to enter the Winter Wind. Still, as I sit there quietly, the blue-green Wind flashes through my thoughts, but the images are staticy, unclear. I see amorphous trees before me. Amorphous cars parked on the street. All crackling with energy, coming in and out of focus, and then sometimes disappearing altogether.

  I wonder if it will always be like this—the Winter Wind coming and going, seemingly at random—or if I will truly gain mastery over it. I don’t know about mastery, but I do think someday I will gain more control of it. Already I have been able to slip into it with more and more regularity. It’s just the drinking that’s causing the frenetic energy.

  And so I let it, and watch the world before me appear and disappear—electric, bright, sometimes dull, sometimes clear, but mostly amorphous, fuzzy. Certainly as fuzzy as my own brain.

  Betsie is lying over my feet, breathing fast and steady. Sound asleep, no doubt. I wonder if she can see the Winter Wind, too.

  I consider all that I have learned of the Big Case. The improbability of ten—now eleven—people going missing in exactly the same way. No, that’s not true. There were some variations. Jesse, who showed up dead later. And my brother, who indicated to me that he would be leaving, once he passed the test. I considered the improbability of one of the missing—the first, in fact—living and working in the same general area of the missing. A rogue veterinarian who experimented in his lab on critically endangered possums…and who had been found to mistreat his animal subjects, and subsequently fired.

  You can fire the researcher, but can you stop his research?

  I doubted it. And the crazy bastard might even fake his own disappearance—to hide in plain sight—all while continuing his research on the unsuspecting. But this time he ditches the possums, and instead goes after…

  I swallow.

  Crazy. All of it is just nuts.

  If this guy had been advertising his services on the Dark Net, his site is down now. Or, perhaps, the police didn’t know where to look. My brother was a computer geek. He could have figured out the Dark Net, if motivated enough. He would have found his answer…and I suspected the doctor’s pitch might have been too good for my brother to resist. Apparently, my brother wanted out—out of my life, that is—very badly.

  Of course, I’m certain the good doc mentioned nothing about the tuberculosis research, and had no intention of ever allowing his test subjects to leave his experiments.

  But one had left. Or had he escaped?

  Crazy. I continue to sip on my now warm beer. My fourth, I think. Enough for one night. Especially when I have work to do.

  I stand, and Betsie stands, too. I fetch my light jacket, my phone and Betsie’s harness.

  After all, Hammer and the boys might not have found anything at the new zoo…but there’s still the Old Zoo. I wonder how thoroughly they had searched it, and decide probably not very thoroughly at all.

  That is about to change.

  Chapter Fifty

  The Uber driver is particularly attentive.

  He helps me into the car, spreads a blanket for Betsie, and soon, we are off into the night. There is a slight chance I have a buzz. Okay, more than a slight one, but it’s only a buzz and it will wear off soon.

  I’d written on my notepad where we are going, and the driver had patted my shoulder. He understands. And where we are going is not very far at all. So, I sit back and enjoy the ride and try to imagine all the landmarks we are passing: the apartment and condo buildings, the street corners, the bridges, the streetlights…

  We turn a corner, and another, and now, I am thinking we have entered the long curving road that will take us, eventually, to the Los Angeles Zoo. After all, I had just been here, and I remembered the route…the gentle curve around the base of the small mountain range that spines the center of the park, the range that, on the south side, sports the Hollywood Sign, Griffith Observatory, and the Greek Theatre; and on the north, the L.A. Zoo. The closer we get, the harder my heart pounds.

  A good sign.

  A sign for what, exactly, I do not entirely know, but it tells me I am on the right path for answers. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m not on any path at all, other than getting lost in Griffith Park, to wander aimlessly until I dehydrate or starve or break an ankle. At least Betsie will eat well.

  Dark thoughts, for sure.

  I have no intention of getting lost in the woods. After all, there is always the Winter Wind, and, if used correctly, I should be able to find my way around the park. With luck, I might even find some answers, too.

  As we continue around the bend, as I feel the small force of the turn press against me, I note that my buzz is mostly worn off. Betsie is pressed up against me. She has been staring at me, I think, the entire time. If the hint of doggie breath was any indication.

  She is wondering where we are going. She has noted that the midnight drive is out of character for us. Way, way, way out of character. She is concerned. Maybe I should be, too.

  Then again, she is just a dog.

  No, I think, recalling Jack’s words. An angel.

  I’m not used to being concerned. I’m used to finding answers. I’m used to following leads all the way to the end, all the way to the bad guy. Some cases don’t have ends. Some stay open forever. But I cannot sleep well at night until I know that I have exhausted every lead.

  The Old Zoo lead has not been exhausted, and my brother is still missing. And just because the initial search at the new zoo turned up nothing, I’ll be damned if I was going to sit back and do nothing.

  Of course, I don’t have to go alone in the middle of the night. Except the middle of the night feels right. The middle of the night is when the Old Zoo might give up its secrets, or when others have let down their guard. Did I have to go alone? Probably not. Had I not enjoyed the benefits of the Winter Wind, I would have waited for Rachel, or tried to convince Hammer to join me.

  But I don’t want to put Rachel in harm’s way, or to try to convince a busy homicide detective that I’m not crazy. Now, thanks to my newfound gifts, I could indeed venture out alone, into the night. Looking for answers.

  Soon, I feel the car roll to a stop. Kind of hard to tell these days with these newfangled electric cars, cars that hardly even vibrate, let alone spew telltale carbon monoxide. Virtually invisible, so to speak, to someone like me. Anyway, Betsie is sitting up and alert and panting, drool dripping onto my arm, all good indicators that something exciting is about to happen. At least, exciting to a dog.