deteriorating, and he’d petitioned to be tested periodically for
syphilis, diabetes, and other diseases that, untreated, could result in
blindness. When not in prison-and he had been there twice-he had a
standing, monthly appointment with an ophthalmologist in Costa Mesa.
Still squatting in front of Rasmussen, Julie took hold of his chin. He
flinched. She twisted his head toward her. She thrust two fingers of
her other hand at him, raked them down his cheek, making red welts on
his wan skin, but not hard enough to draw blood.
He squealed and tried to strike her with his cuffed hands, but he was
inhibited by both his fear and the chain that tethered his wrists to his
ankles.
“What the hell you think you’ doing?”
She spread the same two fingers with which she’d scratched him, and now
she poked them at him, stopping just two inches short of his eyes.
He winced, made a mewling sound, and tried to pull loose of her, but she
held him fast by the chin, forcing a confrontation.
“Me and Bobby have been together eight years, more than seven, and
they’ve been the best years of my life but you come along and think you
can just squash him the way you’d squash a bug.”
She slowly brought her fingertips closer to his eyes. An inch and a
half. One inch.
Rasmussen tried to pull back. His head was against the wall He had
nowhere to go.
The sharp tips of her manicured fingernails were less than half an inch
from his eyes.
“This is police brutality,” Rasmussen said.
“I’m not a cop,” Julie said.
“They are,” he said, rolling his eyes at Sampson and Burdock. “Better
get this bitch away from me, I’ll sue your ass off.”
With her fingernails she flicked his eyelashes.
His attention snapped back to her. He was breathing fast and suddenly
he was sweating too.
She flicked his lashes again, and smiled.
The dark pupils in his yellow-brown eyes were open wide.
“You bastards better hear me, I swear, I’ll sue, they’ll kick you off
the force-”
She flicked his lashes again.
He closed his eyes tight.
“-they’ll take away your god damned uniforms and badges, they’ll throw
you in prison, an you know what happens to ex-cops in prison, they get
the shit kicked out of them, broken, killed, raped!” His voice spiraled
up, cracked on the last word, like the voice of an adolescent boy.
Glancing at Sampson to be sure she had his tacit if not active approval
to carry this just a little further, glancing also at Burdock and seeing
that he was not as placid as Sampson but would probably stay out of it
for a while yet, Julie pressed her fingernails against Rasmussen’s
eyelids.
He attempted to squeeze his eyes even more tightly shut.
She pressed harder.
“You tried to take Bobby away from me, so I’ll take your eyes away from
you.”
“You’re nuts!”
She pressed still harder.
“Make her stop,” Rasmussen demanded of the two cops.
“If you didn’t want me to have my Bobby to look at, why should I let you
look at anything ever again?”
“What do you want?”
Perspiration poured down Rasmussen’s face; he looked like a candle in a
bonfire, melting fast.
“Who gave you permission to kill Bobby?”
“Permission? What do you mean? Nobody. I don’t need-”
“You wouldn’t have tried to touch him if your employer hadn’t told you
to do it.”
“I knew he was on to me,” Rasmussen said frantically, and because she
had not let up the pressure with her nails, thin tears flowed from under
his eyelids.
“I knew he was out there, tumbled to him five or six days ago, even
though he used different vans, trucks, even that orange van with the
county seal on it. So I had to do something, didn’t I? I couldn’t walk
away from the job, too much money at stake. I couldn’t just let him
nail me when I finally got Wizard, so I had to do something. Listen,
Jesus, it was as simple as that.”
“You’re just a computer freak, a hired hacker-morally bent, sleazy, but
you’re no tough guy. You’re soft, squishy-soft. You wouldn’t plan a