Do No Harm

Squinting into the bright light reflecting off the white quartz gravel, he peered down the row of boxy, garage-style units with bright orange metal doors. The strip of storage spaces terminated in the back of a 7-Eleven. A large cracked sign set up on posts-poppy's self-storage-angled toward the road to entice drivers-by. Across the street, cars crammed into lines at the Chevron station's pumps.

The loose skin of Clyde's face drew up around his eyes in a half squint, half scowl when he spotted the olive Mercedes, ashole lettered on the side. Right on schedule. It pulled over into the lot and Clyde watched it, his mouth pulsing slowly as if working a cud of tobacco, his hand tightening around the Beretta's stock.

David stepped out of his car and headed toward the 7-Eleven. He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping across the storage units. Clyde bounced slightly with excitement. A family of four pulled into the parking lot about fifteen feet away from Clyde's hiding place and noisily began loading items into the storage unit next door. Clyde's bouncing slowed. Stopped. His meaty hand sneaked through the gap in the roll-up door and snatched the incriminating broken lock from the hasp. He eased the rolling door down until it tapped the concrete, then gripped the inside handle and set all his weight down against it.

He waited in the darkness.

David exited the 7-Eleven, peeved at the teenager behind the counter with a faceful of pierces. The kid had barely bothered to look at the photograph before saying he'd never seen Clyde before. The Chevron worker across the street had been equally unhelpful-he'd recognized Clyde's photograph only from the news. David's heart had quickened when he'd spotted a dilapidated Crown Vic at the curb, but closer examination had revealed it was not Clyde's.

POPPY'S SELF-STORAGE sign drew David's eye again. His feet crunched on the quartz rock as he made his way across the lot. A man struggled to unload an antique bureau from a Jeep, his family watching with concern. David offered to help, but the man waved him off, his face red and sweaty. A manly man. See you in the ER with a slipped disk.

At the bottom of each unit was a hasp, and each hasp housed a lock. Except one. David walked over to the empty hasp and crouched before the roll-up door. Some of the paint was chipped behind the hasp, as if it had been struck by a blunt object.

David grabbed the door handle and yanked upward, but it barely gave. He crouched so as to get his legs into it and pulled, but again, it scarcely moved. Probably jammed.

He headed back to his car, squinting to cut the glare coming off the ground.

The drive to the Pearson Home took only a few minutes. Walking distance for Clyde, as David had estimated. He pulled over to the curb and got out. Up the street, a few kids clicked bright yellow spray cans and further assaulted the beat-to-shit phone booth.

David's feet crunched across the gravel and broken glass of the abandoned lot beside the building. A figure moved in the upstairs window, behind a rippling curtain. Wide and dancing. Layla.

David came to the scorched car and, on an impulse, climbed in. When he slammed the door, the glove box fell open. Inside was a heap of cigarette butts, filling the interior. Mashed together in twos-the way Clyde smoked them. A quickening of David's heart.

David looked up at Layla's shadow dancing awkwardly behind the curtains. 'Ometimes he ooks at me from his car, she'd said. Kind and controlling Rhonda Decker had misunderstood, misdirected. This car. This broken car. It hadn't been chance that Clyde had hidden here the night David pursued him from Healton's. It was his hideout.

What dark thoughts rushed through Clyde's head when he sat here and stared at his childhood home? Coveting. Watching girls dance in the very bedroom where he'd once strung up boys and relished their fright.

The reek of stale nicotine filled the car. David reached over and felt a cigarette butt on the top of the mound. The cotton filters were soft and spongy. He picked one out from deeper in the pile, knowing the smell would taint his fingers and not caring. Dry and brittle. It crumbled under pressure from his thumb. His heartbeat quickened with excitement.

The top cigarettes were newer. Though David was no smoker, he'd guess they'd been smoked within the past day or two. Yale and Forensics could figure that out. Clyde had stayed in the area, in his hideout, smoking and watching, despite the great risk of getting caught. His pull back to his childhood home must have been stronger than David imagined.

His pager vibrated, startling him. The telephone number to Diane's room at the hospital, with 911 punched in after it.