In My Dark Dreams (23 page)

“So will you,” I respond, trying to sound as positive about his mission as he does about mine. “So will you.”

M
Y RACE GOES SWIMMINGLY,
right from the beginning. The start was insane—the Tokyo subway system at rush hour cubed—but I expected that, so I was mentally prepared to go with the flow. Even though they use a staggered start, depending on your self-predicted time to finish (I had confidently written three hours and fifty-three minutes on my entry form, but I was hoping to go a few minutes under that), it takes a couple of miles with all those bodies tightly packed together before the sea of humanity begins to break up and we are all able to run at our individual paces.

I’m not very buttoned-up (except when it comes to work), but the tactics I laid out for this race were as precise and controlled as a mathematical formula. My two longest training runs had been twenty miles, and my times for both of them were within a minute of each other, even though I had run them over separate routes: two hours and fifty minutes, a rock-steady eight-and-a-half-minute mile. I was tired at the end of both of those runs, but I wasn’t exhausted; I could have kept going. And my legs felt okay. They were sore, and I didn’t run for a couple of days afterward, but there wasn’t any bad cramping, no muscles turning either to jelly or concrete. I stretched, iced, took hot tubs, iced some more, gobbled Advil, and on the third day after each long run I was doing my usual ten miles again.

So here was my plan: I would run the first twenty-one miles at my usual pace, which would take three hours, plus four or five minutes extra because of the bunching up at the beginning. I knew the last five miles would take their toll. Everyone I talked to—runners who had done it, trainers, coaches—all told me the same thing: a marathon is two races, the first one twenty or twenty-one miles, and the second one, five or six miles that can feel like another twenty. You run the last fifth of the race on guts and determination. And unless you are an elite runner, you run it slower. So if you have set a time you want to make, you have to be under your average when you hit mile twenty-one.

Which is exactly how my race unfolds. At the end of the first hour, I have run six and a half miles. At hour two, I’m up to thirteen and a half. I have more than half the race under my belt and I’m cruising, clicking off those 8:30 miles as if I have a metronome in my head. The first half of the race was advertised as being harder than the second, because there are more hills and inclines, so although I know I will be in for pain later on, I feel great.

On the stroke of hour three, I am halfway between the twenty- and twenty-one-mile markers. By now, I’m passing other runners who had started way ahead of me. Most of them are really hurting—I can see the pain in their faces as I glance at them in passing. Poor bastards, I think, trying not to feel too smug and self-satisfied. Probably didn’t train hard enough. Not like me—I’ve trained harder than Oscar de la Hoya trains for a championship fight.

Half a mile later, when I hit the twenty-one-mile sign, my watch reads three hours, five minutes, and a handful of seconds. I’m home free. I can run the last five miles and change to a ten-and-a-half-minute pace and still break four hours. I hope I don’t slow down that much, but even if my pace drops a full minute, I’ll achieve my goal with time to spare. I begin imagining myself spreading my arms wide as the finish line draws close, and smiling for the camera as my toe hits the magic line.

My muscles have been tightening gradually, and I am beginning to feel fatigued, but I know that feeling—it isn’t that different from how I feel at the end of a thirteen-mile training run, or even the twenty-milers. There’s no panic in my mind, just the realization that here it comes, the race within the race: suck it up and keep pushing. Maintain your form. Five miles is nothing. I can run five miles backward, I can hop five miles on one leg, I can …

Hit the wall. At twenty-two and a quarter miles, the gods of hubris wrap my legs in steel bands so tightly it feels as if I’m losing the circulation in them. I’ve had clients complain that the police handcuffed them so tightly any feeling was gone from their hands. That’s what this feels like.

I don’t totally stop running, thankfully. If I do, I might not be able to start up again. All around me, casualties are falling by the wayside like dead leaves off autumnal trees. I don’t want to be one of them. I will not allow that. I am going to complete this race, even if I have to crawl to the finish line.

Luckily, this catastrophe happens at a relief station, so I have an excuse to slow down (I know no one is watching me, but I am mortifyingly self-conscious anyway). Moving at a snail’s pace (the slowest snail in the world), I grab a cup of water and drink it in one swallow. Then another, another. I pour water on my head, down my back, on my legs, which by now are beginning to feel as if they are two blocks of cement.

I begin to run again, but now my gait is unfamiliar to me; it’s as if I have been transformed by some devilish alchemy into a tree stump. An eighty-year-old dowager could run circles around me, a toddler has a longer stride than mine has become. My body is begging me to stop, but my mind, that stubborn muscle, won’t let me. It rants at me, mocking my feebleness—weakling, wuss,
loser.

Mind over matter. I have never understood the profundity of what I had always thought was a sophomoric aphorism, until this moment in time. My goal now is simple: one foot after the other, then another.

Mile twenty-three approaches. I pass the marker like the tortoise who will never catch the hare. Now I am the runner who is being passed by the others, I am the one whose face registers her agony, the one to feel sorry for and be happy that you trained hard enough, because she didn’t. Push, I rail at myself, you’ve come so far. Only three miles to go. You can do this. Thousands of others are doing it—so can you. Don’t quit, you’ll never forgive yourself.

Three miles. I can hop three miles, I can run three miles carrying a piano on my back. Which is what this feels like.

At mile twenty-four, I look at my watch and almost throw up. I have slowed to a crawl. I am now running at a twelve-minute-mile pace, which won’t get me close to my goal of breaking four hours. At this rate I’ll be lucky to finish by sundown, I think, as I further indulge my self-pity.

And then, miraculously, I catch my second wind. I thought that only applied to breathing, but I discover it can pertain to muscles rebounding as well. I am still in a world of pain, but now it’s bearable—just.

By mile twenty-five, I am feeling better. The sensation is relative, of course, I still feel awful, but the end is in sight. I steal a glance at my watch. I’ve picked up my pace—my time is three hours, forty-nine minutes. I am running through my pain, and coming out the other side.

Push. Push like you’ve never pushed before. You took a bullet and lived. You can run a mile and a fifth in eleven minutes. Forget the pain, it’s going to be there whether you run fast or slow. So run fast.

I run as fast as I can. I cannot run one second faster. I’ve done my absolute best. But on this day, my best isn’t good enough. It takes me twelve and a half excruciating minutes to run the last mile and a fifth. I still throw my arms out and force a smile for the camera as I cross the line, but inside I am grief-stricken.

A cheery volunteer rushes up to me and throws a thermal blanket over my shoulders. “Congratulations,” she says with a big, wide smile. “Great run.”

“Thanks,” I gasp. And then I collapse into a pile of bodies, alongside hundreds of other sufferers.

My official time is four hours, one minute, fourteen seconds. If I had run each mile three seconds faster, I would have broken four hours. Three measly seconds. But it might as well have been three minutes. I wasn’t going to make it. Not this day.

But: I finished. And I fought through the pain, a triumph in itself. When I undertake a marathon again, which I have already decided I will do, one of my training runs will be a full four hours, so my body can undergo the experience before the actual race. That is a cardinal rule in training and I paid the price by neglecting it. It’s similar to trying a case: preparation is critical. The next time, I’ll be better prepared.

I was going to go home this afternoon, but there is no way I can be immobile in a car for the drive to L.A. in the Sunday evening freeway traffic. I would freeze up like a statue, so I extend my stay until tomorrow. I have sick time coming; in the morning I’ll call in and take the day off. I don’t have a court appearance or client meetings scheduled, so I won’t be missed.

The bathtub at my hotel has Jacuzzi jets, so I’m up to my neck in a hot-tub bubble bath. The crisp, dry white wine I’m sipping is helping to leech the pain as well. Later, I’ll treat myself to a massage. My room-service dinner will be a New York filet, charred medium rare, a baked potato smothered with butter, crisp-fried onion rings, creamed spinach, and a good bottle of Syrah. Topped off with a hot-fudge sundae, followed by another hot soak.

I’m not in training anymore.

“W
E’VE FOUND ANOTHER VICTIM.
”

This must be how it feels to be hit by lightning. “Where?”

The experienced detective, trained to be calm, is rattled; Cordova can hear the tremor in his voice. “Off one of the service roads that leads into Brentwood Country Club, where Montana meets Yale. In the bushes.”

“Who called it in?”

“Couple of kids looking for a secluded place to do something they didn’t want their parents to know about.”

“No mistake? Not a random killing, or a copycat?”

“No, sir. It’s our man.” An uncomfortable cough. “He left the same signature.”

Which no one but the selected members of this task force are privy to, under strict confidentiality.

Here we go. “Secure the area, but don’t do anything until I get there. Except cover her. Don’t let anyone near that body. And keep those kids under wraps until I can talk to them. Any media show up yet?”

“No, sir. We’re on secure channel, like you instructed.”

A small victory. Maybe the only one. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He hangs up. Sonofabitch!

It is Monday morning, one-thirty. The last night of the full moon. In a few hours, the sun will come up. The ordeal would have been over. Now it isn’t.

Cordova stands next to the murdered woman’s body. The ligature marks around her neck are already beginning to darken. Her shorts—culottes, technically—have been pulled off, revealing her vagina, buttocks, and thighs.

He hunches down to confirm his detective’s quick analysis. Forced penetration is not what he’s looking for; that will be for the medical examiner to determine. It’s what is not there.

Same MO as the others. Cordova feels bile rising in his throat, swallows to keep it down. He pulls the blanket over her, to preserve her modesty. It’s the least he can do. Find her killer—that is what he has to do.

He conference-calls the entire task force, all one hundred of them. He tells them: “You know what you’re looking for.”

Three
AM.
The medical examiner arrives and checks out the crime scene. The victim’s wallet is still on her, in a pocket of her shorts. He hands it over to Cordova, who has not touched the victim, because LAPD policy stipulates that no one touches the body until the coroner has inspected it.

The coroner finishes his work and the body is taken away. The woman’s next of kin have to be notified, always a horrible assignment. Some high-ranking official, maybe even the mayor, will do the honors this time.

The press, rapacious vultures, have already found out there was a killing—they always do—but the details are withheld from them. There will be a public skewering for that later, but for a few hours they have to keep a tight lid on this. That killer is out there, and they don’t want to blow whatever slim chance they have of finding him because the crime was blabbed publicly. By this afternoon, though, the decibel level of the talk-radio shows will be deafening.

A few false leads about possible suspects come in, but they are all quickly checked out and dismissed. It’s like trying to hold water in a sieve, Cordova thinks morosely; they’ve lost him. The fallout is going to be brutal.

Six-fifteen. The sun has been up for more than half an hour. It’s over—he’s slipped through their fingers.

His phone rings. He snaps it open. “Cordova.”

“Just got an anonymous tip,” the detective on the other end says. “Don’t know how credible it is. Fits the profile, kind of.”

The profile being a description they got from an eighty-year-old man, what he saw from a block away, in the middle of the night. Cordova thinks: I should have had the old codger’s vision checked. Might have saved them some grief. But it’s all they have. “Where?”

“Saltair, a couple blocks north of San Vicente. The tipster says there’s a Chicano-looking guy in work clothes sitting in a dark blue Nissan pickup.”

A working-class Latino in that neighborhood at this hour of the morning—that’s funky. Still, he could have a perfectly valid reason.

“Want us to check it out?” the detective asks. “We’re right nearby.”

“Hell, yes. Call me back.”

Cordova hangs up and waits. Christ, this is nerve-racking. A minute later, his cell rings again. “Anything?” he barks out.

“It’s like the caller said,” the detective tells him. “Male Chicano. Looks to be in his early to mid-thirties, in a truck.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Just sitting there.”

“Where are you now?”

“Around the corner. He hasn’t spotted us.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Good morning.”

Roberto Salazar, reading
La Opinion,
L.A.’s major Spanish-language newspaper, looks up with a startled expression; he didn’t hear anyone approaching. A big man is standing outside his truck, looking at him through the driver’s-side window, which is rolled down. He’s trying to appear friendly, but he’s a cop, you can smell it on him even though he’s dressed casually. A
hermano,
but still a cop.

Having recently been on the wrong end of an encounter with the police, Salazar is immediately on guard. He replaces the lid on his half-drunk cup of McDonald’s coffee and puts the cup in a cup holder. The wrapper from his Egg McMuffin is crumpled up on the passenger-side floor.