Seth looked at him uncertainly.
“Yes, I mean it,” he said. He was not just comforting the boy. Seth had already been more useful than many other crime victims would have been under far less traumatic circumstances.
He saw the boy was tiring, but ventured one more question. “Do you know how to use a computer?”
Yes, Seth answered, but held up his bandaged hands.
“The speech therapist and your mother want to get you one that will let you communicate without using your fingers to type — they can wire these computers now so that they will read movement from muscles in your arm, for example. We can deal with that later — for now, just concentrate on getting stronger, all right? We’ll talk again when you’ve had a little more rest.”
Seth looked toward the chair where Lefebvre had been sitting, then anxiously back at the detective.
“I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Seth mouthed the word “thanks,” then closed his eyes.
When he was sure Seth was sleeping soundly, Lefebvre called Elena Rosario.
“Are they still watching Whitey Dane’s boat?”
“Yes. And Whitey, too.”
“Has he been anywhere near the Cygnet in the last few days?”
“No.”
“Do we know what time it came into the Downtown Marina that night?”
“No, but I could ask around. Maybe one of the live-aboards will remember. You working again?”
“Sort of. Listen — I think Dane just became our prime suspect in the Randolph case.”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“Seth woke up. I asked a few questions.”
“And you got a mute witness to talk to you.”
“Yes. Come by and I’ll tell you all about it.”
A search warrant was issued, and although the Cygnet didn’t look as lovely when they finished, the crime scene unit found crucial evidence there. Whitey Dane protested that he had not been aboard the boat for days, that he never took it to the Downtown Marina, that it must have been stolen from the Marina South. While the boat had been made to look as if it had been hot-wired, the police didn’t buy his story. The boat was not far from its home, and none of its expensive gear had been taken.
The decks had been washed, but luminol tests showed bloody footprints. And although the weapon was not found, a pair of bloodstained deck shoes were discovered hidden in a footlocker. An uncommon and expensive brand of deck shoes, of a style which exactly matched — as surveillance photos showed — those worn by Whitey Dane on several occasions. Careful collection of trace evidence in the locker and shoes yielded small amounts of hair and fiber evidence as well.
Whitey Dane was arrested for the murders of Trent and Amanda Randolph and the attempted murder of Seth Randolph. The D.A. wanted him held without bail, but the defense argued that he had no criminal record, that he had business interests in the community, and that there were indications that the boat had indeed been stolen. Judge Lewis Kerr, in a move some considered uncharacteristically harsh, set bail at two million dollars. Dane made bail in less than twenty-four hours.
5
Thursday, June 21, 2:00 P.M.
Las Piernas General Hospital
The room was too crowded, and the camera lights made it overly bright and warm. Lefebvre wanted the television news crews to leave. He wanted everyone to leave. But Tory Randolph was holding court, charming the press, the captain, the members of the police commission, and the others.
He was especially uncomfortable to see Polly Logan here. The platinum blond television news reporter always managed to get herself assigned to stories about his cases. He had thought it was coincidence until she had asked him out. He had politely refused, and although she had never asked again, when she showed up to cover stories now, he often found her glancing his way, directing a camera operator to shoot footage of him, and positioning herself as close as possible to him — to an extent that gave him the creeps. She often muttered catty remarks about Irene Kelly of the Express, perhaps jealous of Irene’s closeness to him. His friendship with Irene would never be understood by someone like Polly, he knew — like many of his coworkers, Ms. Logan suspected they were more than friends.
As if his thoughts had tapped her on the shoulder, Polly Logan turned to look at him. She smiled. He nodded, then looked away. He watched Irene, who seemed tired today. Her father was ill — cancer — and she was caring for him. She did not play the martyr about this, as some might have. He tried to picture Polly Logan or Tory Randolph bearing such a burden so quietly, and could not imagine it.
Most of the other members of the media were captivated by the Tory Show, as he had started to think of this press conference. When the reporters realized that Seth still couldn’t speak, they had focused on his surviving parent, camera operators dutifully recording her as she starred in the role of concerned mother — a beautiful, tragic figure, hovering over Seth, making statements about the credit due to her brave boy, who had helped police capture the man who had killed her daughter and her husband.
“Ex-husband, correct?” Irene asked. Lefebvre suppressed an urge to smile.
Tory said — with a little catch in her voice, and lifting a tissue to a dry eye — that divorce was just a legal term, but in her heart she had never stopped loving Trent Randolph and considered herself a widow. She continued her planned speech, ending by skillfully reminding the assembled reporters that her son, heir to the Randolph Chemicals fortune, would become one of the wealthiest young men in Southern California when he reached his majority. He could almost feel her distress whenever Polly asked her camera operator to get a shot of anyone else, especially him.
Lefebvre despised Tory, but over the last three weeks he had carefully hidden that. He had not been so successful at hiding it from Seth, who he thought sensed it and sympathized with him. Seth, he had come to realize, was an excellent observer. Lefebvre was the person most often in his company, and Seth hadn’t hesitated to study him, picking up on nuances of his behavior to a degree that was at times unnerving to the detective, who was much more used to being observer than observed.
The formal portion of the conference ended, but Polly Logan and some of the others asked Tory to pose with the newly appointed Homicide Division captain — Captain Bredloe — as well as the members of the police commission.
The doctors and a few reporters left, but there was still a crowd in the room. Most were from the PD — Willis and two other lieutenants, as well as a few uniforms, a couple of guys from the crime lab, and several detectives — including Hitch and Rosario.
Something was happening between him and Rosario, he admitted to himself. Not surprisingly, Seth had picked up on that, too. Now proficient at utilizing the special equipment that allowed him to type on the computer without using his fingers, Seth had urged Lefebvre to ask her out. Maybe he would. He was not living here, in Seth’s room, as he had during those first two weeks, but he still spent many hours at a time at the young man’s bedside. He found he rarely thought of Seth as a boy now, although just this moment, while others laughed and talked around him without actually talking to him, Lefebvre thought he looked more fragile than usual.
Lefebvre had done his best to stay in the background during this press conference, but in recent days the media had made much of his role in the rescue of Seth and in the case against Whitey Dane. Some of his coworkers resented it, made a play on the sound of his name and called him “The Fave” — not in a complimentary way. Their resentment made some aspects of his work difficult, but otherwise, it didn’t bother him much. Others from the department, people who would not normally have had much to do with him, now sought him out. Most of that was, he knew, strictly political — a desire to be seen with the golden boy of the moment — and all of it sickened him.