Restoration
Chapter 20
The words Rosalind whispered to him pound in Samuelson's brain. "Nolan is a boy scout. He can't stop himself from trying to help. That's how you pull him in." Samuelson planned every step with exquisite care. He knows just how to build what he needs and has his bait ready. He won't fail like Hernandez. He can't fail.
Samuelson stares across the browning grass of the lot with disdain. Imagine families having so little ambition as to be willing to live in their cars. It's disgusting, but it's the kind of scene that's a siren song for Nolan. The drug activity a few feet away also merits police presence. Samuelson will appear as the vilest of the unwashed hoard, but he has some building to do first. His contrivance will be perfection, but with a deadly purpose that no police officer would perceive. Not until it's too late.
"Did you see that?" Nolan exclaims. "That guy's drunk or texting. He almost ran up on the sidewalk. He could kill someone." He reaches for the loudspeaker as Harper activates the lights and a short burst of the siren. "Sir, pull over," Nolan commands.
The weaving car in skids sideways, metal grinding as it impacts the curb. The driver slumps over the wheel. Nolan bounds out of the shop, calling for medical help as he approaches the crashed vehicle. He shouts to the driver and pulls at the door before using his window punch tool to shatter the window and feel for a pulse. "He's alive and breathing," Nolan calls to Harper. "I hope he stays that way. I smell acetone, not alcohol. He's probably in a diabetic coma."
Nyla nods. "The paramedics can test his blood and give him what he needs. Their E.T.A. is two minutes."
"Good. I'll call Grace later to check on how he's doing."
Nyla almost gives in to a smile. "Of course you will, Five Percent. And I suppose you want to make sure that as soon as we're finished here, we check on those homeless families."
"Yeah," John admits, "I do."
Preparing for the next step of his plan. Samuelson moves his car to a parking spot in front of a strip mall two blocks away. Curious cops won't I.D. him by his license plate. Returning to the lot, Samuelson fights his urge to recoil from the dumpster contents he piles all over himself. Can't bring in the rat without the cheese. The structure he's erected above him will be stable — until he decides it shouldn't be. Doom will fall on Nolan, and Rosalind will be pleased.
"Someone new for you to worry about," Harper notes, pointing at Samuelson's hastily constructed shelter. "Look at all that crap."
"Whoever is under all of that has to be mentally ill," Nolan concludes. "Who knows what condition they're in? I'm going to check it out."
Nolan regards the structure over the garbage blanketed man. It took some work to put that up, but even before he became a cop, he met some troubled people who still had a talent for building things. He gave a couple of them work when he could. But the man who erected what Nolan is looking at might not have that kind of skill. Something looks…
Samuelson lets out a loud groan as he presses his foot against a loosely attached brace, setting up for the kill. Nolan rushes forward. Bending over the man beneath the trash, he hears a creak, the kind he always dreaded hearing on a construction site. Instinctively, he pulls back the split-second before Samuelson kicks the brace loose and rolls out of the way. Lumber rains down, pelting John's shoulders and back and knocking him to the ground.
Harper sprints toward the collapse. "Nolan!"
John forces himself to his knees as Samuelson takes off. "I'm OK. Get him, Harper!"
Nyla tackles a fleeing Samuelson to the ground. "Damn, Boot! Beneath all this sh*t, he fits the description Armstrong put out on Samuelson."
Grace gently examines the bruises blooming on Nolan's skin. "Your x-rays are negative, but you're going to be sore for a while. And the man who crashed his car is going to be all right. You could use a couple of days off, John."
Nolan winces as he shakes his head. "I can't take them."
"If you need a doctor's note, I can write you one," Grace offers.
"That's very generous, but that's not why I want to stay on the job. Samuelson's attack on me gives us a direct connection to Rosalind Dyer, and she doesn't know it yet. Armstrong is going to drag everything out of him that he can. I appear to be Rosalind's focus. They may need me."
Grace pales. "John, you're willingly making yourself the target of a psychopath."
"I'm already a target, Grace. Armstrong's trying to eliminate her reach beyond the prison once and for all. I might not even be able to help, but if I can, I need to do it."
"Take care of yourself, John, and for the next couple of days, ice those bruises. After that, put some heat on them."
"Thanks, Grace. I will," John promises.
Arms wrapped around his knees, Samuelson rocks back and forth on the bench in his holding cell. "You can't do anything to me. I failed Rosalind. I'm dead anyway."
"You don't have to be," Nick Armstrong suggests. "You haven't killed anyone yet. You help us out, and the A.D.A. will ask the judge for leniency for you. Believe me; he's good at it. Too good. Rosalind has no way yet of knowing that you didn't succeed. We can convince her that you did."
"And Rosalind will love me again?" Samuelson hopes.
Armstrong closes his eyes, shaking his head. "Rosalind isn't capable of loving anyone, but she will still consider you useful, which will stop her from activating another apprentice while we keep her from carrying out her plans through you."
Samuelson stills. "How the hell do you think you'll do that?"
"We'll need some help from John Nolan."
Nolan looks up from the autopsy table. "I never realized how uncomfortable these things are, but then anyone they normally accommodate is beyond caring."
Armstrong studies Nolan's face. "The job that makeup artist Sterling Freeman sent over did is very convincing. If you don't talk or breathe, you'll look dead."
"How long can you hold your breath?" the L.A.P.D. photographer Armstrong tagged for the operation asks.
"I don't know," John confesses, "a minute, maybe."
The shutterbug raises his camera. "That should be enough."
"Did you get the results of your evaluation yet?" Jackson asks Lucy as she emerges from her room.
"I'm supposed to go back to B.S.S. tomorrow morning so the doctor can discuss them with me."
"Is that good or bad?" Jackson wonders.
"I don't know, I asked my mother, and she said that it could go either way. So, I guess I'll have to make it through another night. I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I find out if I can go back to work."
"I can stay up with you," Jackson offers.
"No, you have to be fully alert when you go on duty. I'm going to be online with Nolan. He has to stay out of sight for Armstrong's operation, so he's not going in to work tomorrow, at least not until they call him. He'll probably spend the day spackling. Well, at least he gets something useful done."
"So will you, Lucy," Jackson asserts. "After tomorrow, you'll be back on the street with Bradford."
Lucy rummages in a cabinet for a package of Oreos. "I hope so."
