The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [43]
I jumped behind a parked car, ready to catch the license plate. Hollywood employed a hefty police force, and I decided to call the van’s license in, and let the Hollywood cops do the rest.
To my horror, Buster darted out from between the cars, and started trotting toward me, his tail wagging furiously. I’d forgotten all about him.
“No, boy, no!” I shouted.
Buster ignored my pleas, and kept coming forward. The day I’d gotten Buster from the pound, he was going to be given the needle. Somehow, I think he knew this; a more loyal animal I was never going to find.
I jumped out from behind the car. Buster let out a joyful bark. My eyes shifted to the van. There was more than enough room for Mouse to have driven around Buster, and avoid hitting him. It said something about the man that he bore down on my dog instead.
CHAPTER 22
he hippie van’s front bumper was twenty feet from sending Buster to doggie heaven. I was too far away to save him. All I could do was watch.
Then I had a thought; maybe Buster could save himself.
I clapped my hands and yelled his name like we were playing a game of fetch. We did that every night on the deserted stretch of beach outside the Sunset; it was Buster’s favorite thing to do.
His upper lip curled up in a doggie smile, Buster’s back legs accelerated just as the van was about to take him out. I extended my arms and kept yelling encouragement. I was going to end up getting killed if I wasn’t careful. Yet it felt like the right thing to do. Then Buster did something I’d never seen him do before: He jumped off the ground, and flew through the air like a Frisbee dog on Animal Planet, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. I caught him in midflight, his body knocking the air out of mine. The van was right behind him. I dove between a pair of cars, my dog in my arms.
“Good boy,” I said.
Buster licked my face. Mouse angrily blared his horn as he flew past.
I rushed into the aisle with my dog still cradled in my arms. Mouse had driven through the exit and was burning down A1A toward the city of Hallandale. Sara Long was in the back of that van, and it tore at me to think I’d gotten this close, and hadn’t saved her. I pulled out my cell phone and punched in 911.
“This is nine-one-one,” an operator said. “What is the nature and location of your emergency?”
The operator’s voice sounded familiar. Back when I was a cop, I’d made it a point to know all the operators, and to send them small gifts on their birthdays.
“This is Jack Carpenter. Who is this?”
“Well, hello Jack. This is Edie Burgess. It’s been a while. What’s wrong?”
Edie had been with the department over twenty years, and there wasn’t much she hadn’t seen. I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of everything that had happened.
“My, haven’t we been busy,” she said.
Hollywood was God’s waiting room, and there were always ambulances on call. EMS showed up a few minutes later, and a pair of medics attended to Officer Georgian before loading him into an ambulance. I stood nearby with Buster still in my arms.
One of the medics asked me if I’d seen Georgian’s assailant. I started to tell him that a sociopathic giant was responsible, then realized the medic might want to take me away for a psychiatric evaluation. Instead, I shook my head like I didn’t know.
Georgian was loaded into the ambulance. His eyes were shut, and I said a silent prayer for him. I’d been hospitalized several times as a cop, and more than once I’d seen a dark, ethereal figure hovering over me while in an emergency room. It was the kind of experience that forever changed a person. I knew that it had changed me.
I lowered Buster to the ground and went to the curb. Fluid still trickled out of the soda machine. I wrenched the door open, and removed an unexploded can of Coke. As I sucked it down, a siren broke the stillness, and a police cruiser raced across Hollywood Bridge and down the exit ramp. Trailing the cruiser was a black Toyota 4Runner with tinted windows and Virginia license plates. Linderman.
The cavalry had arrived.