He parked behind the Wilshire divisional station on Venice Boulevard and entered through the rear door, then quickly made his way through to the reception area in front, where he asked the desk officer for Adam Nolan. He was directed to an unused office on a side corridor. Good thing the watch commander had been smart enough not to put Nolan in an interrogation room. He didn’t want the man thinking of himself as a suspect.
He pushed open the office door and saw a man of about thirty seated in a metal chair, wearing dark chinos and a tan, zippered windbreaker.
“Mr. Nolan? I’m Detective Walsh, Robbery-Homicide.”
Walsh regretted the introduction as soon as he saw the look of cold dread pass over Nolan’s face at the mention of the word homicide . He held up a reassuring hand. “Your wife isn’t dead. That is, we believe she isn’t.”
“Ex-wife,” Nolan mumbled, rising from his chair.
“Sorry.”
“C.J.’s alive?”
“We think so, yes.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“She’s missing, Mr. Nolan.” Walsh closed the door, then took his time moving around the desk and seating himself behind it. “She’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?” Nolan echoed. He sat down, facing the desk. “Who the hell would kidnap her? She hasn’t got any money. She’s not involved in anything political.” He blinked. “Is it-could it be somebody she arrested? A revenge thing?”
“Anything’s possible at this stage. The person responsible could be anyone.” Including you, Walsh added silently.
He didn’t think Adam Nolan was implicated in this crime, but until he had more facts, he wasn’t making any assumptions.
“When did this happen?” Nolan asked.
“We’re not sure.” Walsh leaned forward, asserting himself. “Mr. Nolan, I’m afraid you’ll have to let me ask the questions.”
“Right,” Nolan said. “Of course.” He ran a hand over his blond hair, mussing it distractedly. He was a good-looking guy, Walsh noted, with crisp, regular features, a light suntan, and smoky eyes tinged with blue. Women would go for him.
“When did you and C.J. get divorced?” Walsh asked.
“A year ago, approximately. Why is that relevant?”
“I’m just getting some background information,” Walsh answered vaguely. “Have you kept in touch with her?”
“As I said over the phone, I saw her just a few hours ago.”
“It wasn’t me you talked to on the phone. It was Detective Boyle.” Walsh spread his hands apologetically and cocked his head in ingenuous humility. “Sorry if I’m covering some of the same ground.”
Nolan seemed disarmed by these overtures. “It’s all right. Ask whatever you want.”
Walsh nodded. Thank you, Lieutenant Columbo. “You saw your ex-wife today?”
Nolan said yes. “At Newton Station. She was coming off duty. We went for coffee down the street.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember the name of the place. It was run by a Filipino couple-she told me that.”
“Why did you see her?”
“To invite her out.”
“Tonight?”
“No, she does volunteer work tonight. I mean, normally she does. I mean-”
“I understand. Go on.”
“It was for Friday. I thought we might go to a club, hear some music.”
“You do that often? Get together with her?” He was fully absorbed in his Columbo persona now-polite, apologetic, gently probing.
“No, not really. We try to keep in touch. But it’s a strain, you know. The divorce wasn’t entirely amicable.”
“I guess they never are,” Walsh said, thinking of his own divorce ten years ago. “Can I ask why you split up?”
“We were just going in different directions. She became a cop. I became a lawyer.”
“Criminal law?”
“Corporate.”
“Good money in that.”
“So they tell me.” A brief, forced laugh.
“Did C.J. express any concerns about her safety?”
“Today?”
“Ever.”
Nolan thought about it. “No, I’m sure I’d remember if she had.”
“Did she mention an e-mail she’d received?”
“E-mail?”
Walsh waved off the issue. “Never mind.”
“Did someone send her-”
“I can’t go into it.” Another Columbo moment. “I’m sorry. Really.” He let his sympathy mollify Nolan, then continued. “Did you leave the coffee shop together?”
“We parted outside. She walked back to the station for her car.”
“What did you do?”
“Drove to the office. It’s Brigham and Garner in Century City.”
“What time did you leave her?”
“Four-fifteen, four-thirty.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Home, I assumed. She’d worked a full shift, or watch-whatever you call it. She’d nearly gotten herself killed. I think she was ready to chill out.”
“What do you mean, nearly got killed?”
“She told me she handled a hostage situation all by herself. Resolved it successfully. I have a feeling she was breaking a few rules-not to mention risking her neck.”
Walsh hadn’t heard about this. “You don’t seem too surprised by her heroics.”
“Why would I be? That’s C.J. I guess that’s why they gave her that nickname.”
“What nickname?”
“You don’t know? Killer. That’s what the other cops call her.”
“Killer? Why? Any special reason?”
“Oh, it’s quite a story.” Walsh heard a note of pride in Nolan’s voice. “Happened when she was new to the street-back when she was a rookie working Harbor Division. One night, on only her third week on the job, she and her training officer get a report of loud music coming from an apartment. Doesn’t seem like anything serious, so the training officer lets C.J. handle it. They go up to the apartment, and there’s rap music blasting from inside. C.J. bangs on the door, yells, ‘Police!’ And guess what happens?”
“Tell me.”
“The guy inside the apartment starts firing through the door. If he’d been using a shotgun, C.J. and her partner would’ve been killed. But it’s a handgun, and the shots miss.”
“Christ,” Walsh said. It was rare for any cop to be fired on, and rarer still for a boot fresh out of the Academy.
“The training officer pulls C.J. to cover and calls for backup, but then they hear somebody screaming for help. C.J. says they’ve got to go in. Her partner doesn’t want to. She goes in anyway-and he follows. She shamed him into it, I guess.
“They kick down the door and enter, and the guy with the gun starts firing from the bedroom, and they’re returning fire. It’s a real shootout. C.J. told me she emptied one clip and put in another. Her partner did the same. That’s, what, thirty rounds?”
“Something like that.”
“Finally the guy stops shooting. They got him. He’s been hit twice in the abdomen, and he’s lost consciousness. C.J. goes past him into the bedroom and finds another guy in there, next to the stereo, which is still booming out the rap music. This guy is tied to a chair. He was being tortured-tortured to death. The music was turned up loud to cover his screams.”
Walsh shook his head. “Why was the victim being tortured?”
“Drug dealer thing. The one guy decided to eliminate his competition.”
“Did the gunman die?”
“No, he pulled through. So C.J.’s not really a killer. But they started calling her by that name anyway. Because she had the killer instinct.”
Walsh took this in. “What’s it like, being married to a woman with a killer instinct?”
“She didn’t display it with me. I think the other cops misinterpreted it anyway. It’s not that she wants to be Dirty Harry. It’s just-well, something happened to her when she was a kid.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, exactly. She never talks about it much. But something scared her. I think she became a cop to deal with that fear. I think she went into that apartment for the same reason. She’s lived with fear for a long time, and I think this is her way of dealing with it.” Nolan shifted in his chair. “I’m not sure how helpful any of this is.”