The master bedroom was what he was looking for—90 percent of what you wanted was always in there. He mounted the stairs slowly — they made a turn on a wide, carpeted landing — and at the top he played the flashlight beam around. Again, there were several doors, but the master bedroom, he figured, would be in back, overlooking the pool and the yard. The walls had mounted, glass-covered photos on them, glamour shots of old movie stars — this Dr. Hugo guy had to be a fag — and at the end double doors stood open to what had to be the master suite.
As Greer approached it, he could see a dresser, with what was unmistakably a digital camera sitting on top. He’d been wanting one of those! The bed, against the far wall, was one of those canopied jobs, with heaps of bolsters and pillows. He was already dropping the camera into the plastic bag when a dog barked.
Not a loud bark — just a yip, really. But it was in the room, very close.
It yipped again, and Greer turned the flashlight beam to the corner. A sleepy old cocker spaniel was sitting up on a dog bed.
Not a problem, Greer thought with relief.
“Brian?”
He flicked off the light and froze in place. This could be a problem.
“Bri?” It was a girl’s voice; she was in the bed. He heard the covers rustle. “You up?”
Shit. He gauged the distance to the door.
“What are you doing?”
Greer didn’t answer. Was she looking at him, or just mumbling from her pillow?
Could he manage to get out? he was wondering, when the bathroom door swung open and a white kid with his hair in dreads came out, in an open robe.
“You say something?”
Greer turned the flashlight on, and shone it right into the kid’s face. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The kid didn’t answer, or move.
“Who are you?” the girl asked. She was sitting up now, with a sheet in front of her.
“Security,” Greer declared. “Silver Bear. Now, answer me!”
“I’m Julia,” the girl said, terror in her voice. “The dog-sitter.”
Greer wasn’t sure what to say next. “Nobody’s supposed to be here.”
“Sometimes I stay over,” the girl said. “Dr. Hugo knows.”
And then she turned on the bedside light. And Greer found himself standing there, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, with the Hefty bag in one hand, the flashlight in the other, between the two of them. There could be no mistaking what was really up.
“You,” he said, waving at the kid — Brian — with the flashlight. “Get on the floor, on your stomach! Now!”
The kid got down on the floor. “And you,” he said to Julia. “Lie down on the bed.”
“Don’t hurt us,” she said, very softly. She was about eighteen, in a football jersey.
The dog yipped again, but didn’t move from the corner.
Greer was thinking fast. He dropped the sack, put one foot on the small of Brian’s back, and yanked the cotton belt free from the robe. Then he went over to the bed and told Julia to put her hands together, behind her.
“Please don’t hurt us.”
“Shut up.” God damn, he thought. What a fuck-up this was. God damn that Sadowski.
He looped the belt around her hands, a couple of times, then, dropping the flashlight on the bed, knotted it.
And that’s when Brian made his move; the kid was fast, up on his feet and running for the door.
Greer lunged for him, but missed. He caught just the end of the flapping robe, which burned through his fingers.
He grabbed the flashlight and raced after him, his bad leg juiced by all the adrenaline. The kid didn’t know the house any better than he did, and flew past the stairs, before having to whip around and tumble down them. Greer was just a couple of steps behind.
The kid wheeled at the bottom and made not for the front door but the back, down the hall, through the kitchen, into the addition. At the French doors he had to stop and fumble with the knobs, and just as he got them open, Greer was able to grab him by the collar, spin him around, and club him in the face with the heavy-duty flashlight.
The kid fell backward, into the yard, but he didn’t fall. There was blood all over his lips. He kept back-pedaling, toward the lap pool, and Greer smacked him again. The kid kept going.
Christ, Greer thought, wasn’t he ever gonna stay down?
The grass was slick, and the kid started to slip. Greer saw his chance and shoved him toward the pool. Just before he toppled over, Greer hit him again, hard, across the cheek.
The kid went in, with a huge splash, and Greer, panting, stood by the side of the lighted pool, waiting. The kid floated, a cloud of blood seeping into the water. Greer waited. Was he dead? Was he faking? The blood began to disperse in the water.
Christ almighty, was he going to have to get into the goddamned pool?
The girl was screaming now; he could hear her even out here.
Greer knelt down and snagged the kid by the collar of his robe, pulled him over to the side. With one huge tug, he had him levered onto the grass again… where he left him, sputtering but alive, before snapping off the rubber gloves in disgust, stashing them in his pocket, and heading back to his car.
Sadowski was going to hear about this.
And his leg, he just knew, was going to give him hell later that night.
CHAPTER FIVE
Beth was so deeply into her work, studying an ancient parchment page through a magnifying glass, that at first she didn’t even hear the phone ring. It didn’t help that she’d accidentally laid a sheaf of reports from the Getty conservation lab on top of it.
When she unearthed it, on the fifth or sixth ring, she was happy to hear it was Carter — until he said, “What are you doing there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Shouldn’t you be at the press party?”
She glanced up at the wall clock. He was right.
“I was just going to leave a message for you,” he said.
“Saying what?”
“That I’m stuck on Wilshire, going nowhere. Start drinking without me.”
“Okay, I will,” she said. “But you’re right — I’ve got to run.”
“Run,” he said, and she could hear several car horns honking in the background before she hung up.
She dropped the magnifying glass, replaced it with a hairbrush from her bottom drawer, and, using the mirror on the back of her office door, did a quick once-over. She pulled the clasp off her ponytail — it was easier to do close work with nothing hanging down in your eyes — and brushed her thick, dark hair out and onto her shoulders. Then she touched up her makeup, or what little of it she wore, grabbed the jacket that went with her skirt, slipped out of her flats and into her heels, and hurried out. Her boss, Berenice Cabot, would be livid if she was any later than she already was.
Especially as the reception was in honor of an exhibition—“The Genius of the Cloister: Illuminated Manuscripts of the Eleventh Century”—that Beth had been the chief curator on.
Tonight was the press reception, designed to introduce some of the local art critics, connoisseurs, and friends of the museum to the new exhibition, drawn from the voluminous holdings of the Getty Center. Beth had spent countless hours poring over the exquisite and rare manuscripts in the museum collections and culling the precise examples that would best illustrate her thesis and story. An exhibition couldn’t just be a random sampling of things, however related; it had to have a point of view, and a point. That was one of the first things they had taught her at the Courtauld Institute, where she’d done her graduate work after Barnard.