It was only nine thirty, but I needed a break. I gathered up the photographs and autopsy report and stacked them on my desk. Ordinarily this would be when I’d call Graden, or vice versa. We’d hash out our day, talk through our cases, and generally unwind together. I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t miss him. But there was Daniel, in a condo just minutes away. It’d be easy to call him, maybe meet for drinks-hang out like old friends. But I knew that’s not all it would be. The awareness of what we’d been to each other and the possibility that we could go there again would still be lurking on the fringes, like a melody playing in the distance, too faint to be able to distinguish the song but too loud to ignore.
I stood at the window and looked out at the night. Wispy, translucent clouds drifted across the sky. The moon glowed like a neon orb, surrounded by sharp pin dots of starlight. A soft breeze made the trees sway like wraiths, their bare branches floating like ghostly tendrils.
I saw myself reflected in the balcony window, standing alone in a hotel room. Would I always end up this way? Alone and wondering why this one hadn’t worked out? And then the next one? My eyes fell on the street below, and I saw one of our investigators sitting in a car at the curb. The sight of my security detail hit me like a bucket of icy water.
I was standing in a lit window that faced the street-like a perfectly framed and backlit sitting duck. A really dumb sitting duck. I abruptly stepped back and drew the curtains.
Depressed, I took a long, hot shower, put on my pajamas, and slipped in a Miles Davis CD. I was in the mood for Kind of Blue. I curled up on a chair in my bedroom, poured myself a tall glass of Russian Standard Platinum, and pondered the accuracy of the phrase drowning one’s sorrows. This seemed like the night to find out if that was possible. Scientist Rachel Knight conducts a groundbreaking new experiment.
I’d hoped to wait up for Bailey. But I fell asleep early with the lights on, the music playing, and an empty glass beside me.
I woke up at seven, full of energy and ideas. Really good ones, like: Find Lilah! Find Simon’s killer! Find the evidence that’ll nail Lilah for Tran’s killing! Morning never has been my best time of day. I dressed in slacks and a sweater and went out to the living room to see if I’d managed to get up before Bailey.
“Hey, sunshine, you’re up early,” she said.
Clearly not. “Did you order breakfast?”
“Yep.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee from my mini-coffeemaker while I waited for room service to bring the big pot. Seconds later, the waiter, Alejandro, was ushered in by DA investigators Gary and Stephen. He looked a little unnerved by his unexpected welcoming committee.
We made fast work of breakfast and headed out.
“I’d like to see Rick Meyer today, if you don’t mind,” I said.
She looked like she did mind, but she nodded.
“I got us lined up to talk to an expert about the watch on our stabber’s wrist,” she said.
Our watch expert was downtown in the Jewelry Mart area. The mart is a huge building with about a hundred different businesses devoted to all aspects of jewelry sales, design, and acquisition. Our man was in one of the little shops across the street from the main building-a bright space filled with watches in lit stands that crowded the floor, and in glass cases on the walls. Herman Rozen, a plump man with tufts of gray hair that floated around the periphery of his head like a baby bird, was dressed in suspenders and wire-rimmed glasses.
After making our introductions, Bailey handed him the blowup of the stabber’s wrist. He looked at it with a large magnifying glass.
“Hmph,” he said. He snorted twice, then swallowed and gave a disturbingly long, wet cough that just couldn’t have been healthy. Or normal. Or tolerable.
“TAG Heuer Monaco Calibre Chronograph,” Herman said. “It’s worth about three thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” I said, referring to the watch, and his cough.
“It’s no Patek Philippe, but it’s nice, I suppose,” Herman sniffed. Then he snorted and swallowed again. I wondered how long it would take the CDC to come and get him.
“Where’s it likely to be sold?” Bailey asked.
Herman looked at her as if she’d just asked where she could find the Pacific Ocean.
“In stores that sell watches,” he said. “Or on the Internet, or at an estate sale, or-”
Bailey favored him with one of her “don’t fuck with me” looks. “I get the picture. Thanks.”
“Sure,” Herman said.
He snorted again, but this time I walked out before I had to witness the whole stomach-turning routine. Bailey followed close behind.
We stood on the sidewalk. Our investigators were a few paces away, watching in all directions.
“I’m thinking he might not be our A material for the witness stand,” I said.
Bailey made a face. “I’ve got Purell in the glove box,” she said as we headed for her car. “Use it.”
72
We caught up with Duncan during a lull at the diner. He confirmed what we’d suspected about Tran’s eyesight.
“Tran couldn’t see his own hand without his glasses,” Duncan said. “He couldn’t have driven more than ten feet without running into…something.”
Tran’s glasses should have been recovered at the scene, but they weren’t. If they were among the evidence Zack found near La Poubelle and then stashed, as we suspected, those glasses would likely be one of the items he’d hidden. But in order to be able to prove the hit-and-run, I’d need to link each item to Tran or to the scene itself. The glasses were a distinctive item because they were prescription lenses, so if we could link them to Tran, it would be strong evidence of a hit-and-run and subsequent cover-up.
“You know how long he was in this country?” I asked.
Duncan thought. “At least two years,” he said. “That’s how long I knew him.”
“You met here?” I asked.
“At the diner,” he replied. “Why?”
“I’m hoping to find the doctor who prescribed the glasses for him,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d know who that was?”
“No, but it had to be someplace cheap,” Duncan remarked.
It was a neighborhood diner. No single tip amounted to much, and even in volume, the tips would barely pay rent on a studio apartment-split with another roommate.
“Where did Tran live?” I asked.
“Depended on how…things were going,” Duncan replied carefully.
In other words, it depended on where his drug habit took him.
Duncan continued, “But he liked Venice. He liked the beach.”
Venice, a beach community that was formerly a hippie enclave/run-down semislum, was now enjoying a resurgence as artistic types with money moved in and gentrified the area. But it was still a patchwork where the very poor and homeless lived just steps away from designer rebuilds on the canals. Duncan gave me a couple of addresses, and I wrote them down.
We bid him farewell and got back on the freeway, heading west to the Pacific Coast Highway.
“Can you get someone to check out the free clinics in the area?” I asked Bailey.
“How about the Hardy Boys back there,” she replied, referring to our security detail. “Maybe they can spare a few minutes out of their very busy day to make a few house calls.”
A testy remark, and it seemed gratuitous since the guys were pretty decent at the gig. “What’s your problem? They’ve been staying on top of it.”
Bailey shrugged. Her nasty ’tude looked to me like a classic case of what shrinks call “misdirecting.” I was something of a practitioner myself, and so I knew that what was really bugging her was our upcoming meeting with Rick Meyer, and it was spilling out all over the place.