Free L. A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker Page B

dead faint. She said “Shit” quietly, then straddled the kid and tried to slap him awake. The video shooter actually stepped forward to the counter to get the shot, and Allison wheeled and aimed the cavernous barrel of the derringer straight at the camera.
    For just a second Hood clearly saw the imminent death and destruction that nobody in these videos except the big boy seemed to be aware of. Even Allison Murrieta looked like she was acting out a part. The clerks were supporting cast.
    But Hood knew how quickly things could happen. That was the first lesson you learned in Anbar province. So you had to change the way you drew conclusions. You had to see every moment of silence as an explosion or a burst of gunfire, every quiet alley as an ambush, every piece of roadside clutter as an improvised explosive device, every helpful citizen as a suicide bomber. Allison Murrieta didn’t know any of that. The clerks didn’t either, except maybe the boy who fainted. Which was why, Hood thought, somebody was due to get killed at one of her stickups. It was a wonder it hadn’t happened yet. Then, Allison Murrieta would turn from a popular televised news bite into a murderer, and some outraged citizen or off-duty cop would take her down in the middle of one of these performances. Or try to. Hood figured the derringer was at least .40-caliber by the diameter of the twin barrels.
    Patmore explained that she’d driven a different vehicle for almost every stickup—all stolen and quickly dumped. Of course they’d dusted them for prints and gone through them for hair and fiber, but no prints because of the gloves, and plenty of random hair and fiber that might or might not relate to her.
    “I’m going to just let some video run here,” said Patmore. “It’s all pretty much the same. Some is taken off security cameras, some from cell phone cameras. I think what it mainly shows is that this dingbat is going to end up shooting somebody if we don’t get to her first, and the whole deal is going to turn sour.”
    Amen to that, thought Hood.
    Allison robbed a Pizza Hut. Allison robbed a Starbucks. Allison robbed a Burger King, another Taco Bell, a Subway, a Payless Shoes, a Circuit City and a Radio Shack. She hardly said a word, Hood noted. All you needed was a gun and a mask and people instinctively knew what to do.
    Then Patmore cued up a map of greater Los Angeles. It went as far north as Fillmore and as far south as Temecula, and all the way from San Bernardino to the Pacific Ocean. There were red triangles marking the armed robberies and black squares marking the boosted cars.
    Hood heard the low murmur rise up from the audience—they were impressed by Allison’s success, by the sheer numbers she had run up. Hood noticed that Marlon was shaking his head in wonder.
    “That’s a lot of activity,” said Marlon.
    “Maybe you can see a pattern,” said the captain. “Shelly, you do these radius plots for bank jobs, don’t you?”
    Hood watched the FBI woman nod. “There’s nothing directional in this one,” she said. “Nothing that looks like a pattern of entry or exit. It’s more round, which usually makes us look at the center. That would be, what, Pomona, Fullerton?”
    “Yeah, about that,” said Patmore.
    “Did you plot time of day?”
    “Right here,” said Patmore. “You’re dealing with the big boys, Shelly.”
    Chuckles, scattered applause, one “eee-haw.”
    The time-of-day map was just like the first one, but above each red triangle or black square was a date and time.
    The roomful of law enforcers went quiet for a moment.
    Hood saw patterns, general as they were. The jobs were pulled close to freeways—not hard in greater L.A. Almost nothing at rush hour. Heavy on Saturdays and Sundays, light on Mondays, hardly a Friday at all.
    “She knows the traffic,” said Shelly. “She avoids rush hour and likes the weekends.”
    “Easier getaways,” said Patmore.
    “Look at all the three o’clocks and eight