It was big enough now. Go.
She hoisted herself through the window as a memory of entering Ramon Sanchez’s converted garage flashed in her mind. How long ago was that? Ten hours? It seemed as if weeks had passed, and the scared man with the baby in one hand and the gun in the other was only a half-forgotten dream.
She dropped into a dark space-a room or stairwell or hallway-then risked a glance outside.
Headlights. The car was approaching.
If Adam saw the litter of glass, he would know where she was. She had to go deeper into the building, find a hiding place near an exit. If he searched the place, she would hunker down as long as possible, reserving the option to escape if necessary.
She turned and took a step forward into the darkness, and then somebody was screaming.
No. Not a scream. An alarm. Shrill and piercing, a hundred-decibel siren inside the building.
The place was equipped with a security system, and she had triggered it-not by breaking the window but by moving forward.
Motion sensor, probably mounted on the wall or ceiling, with at least a twenty-foot range…
Wasn’t important. What mattered was that the siren could be heard from outside. Through the window the glare of Adam’s headlights brightened.
She took off down a stretch of blackness that revealed itself as a corridor, then stumbled against a wall and groped her way to a doorway and went through into a large open space that would be a work area when it was finished. Now it was only bare walls and empty floor. The building was a shell. There was no place to hide. And still the alarm was reverberating throughout the hollow interior.
It occurred to her that now she knew why the power had been left on. The whole complex must be protected by a security system, which had been installed early in construction, so the wires could run inside the walls.
If the system was monitored by an outside agency, then a patrol unit would be dispatched to investigate the ringing alarm.
She could hope so. But no patrol unit’s response time would be fast enough to save her if she didn’t find a way out.
She crossed yards of emptiness and blundered into another wall, then crabbed along it, seeking a doorway. Her hip smacked against something that rattled-a worktable. She groped among a selection of tools and closed her hand over a large claw hammer. A weapon.
Finally she discovered a doorway and scrambled into a hallway that glowed with ambient light at its far end. She ran for the light and found herself in what must be the lobby. Windows flanked a central door. She got the door open and burst outside, shutting it behind her, muffling the alarm.
Let Adam waste time searching the building. Meanwhile she would find another, safer place to hide.
She was sprinting across the street when the BMW rounded the corner at full speed.
He hadn’t pursued her into the building. He had known she would escape out the front.
She flung herself sideways even as the car veered to mow her down.
A patch of scraggly weeds flew up into her face, and then she was rolling down a short incline while the car overshot its mark, screamed to a halt, and reversed.
At the bottom of the slope lay another office building, outwardly identical to the one she had just left. She tumbled up against the foundation as the car plowed down the slope. In the headlights’ dazzle she saw an opening between the foundation and the first floor.
Crawl space.
A shiver of fear eddied through her, but she fought it off and bellied inside. Fans of bright light wavered past her to illumine a low, claustrophobic passageway interspersed with lumber posts and knots of copper plumbing pipes.
She wriggled into the center of the crawl space and peered around in the glare of the headlights, looking for another way out.
There wasn’t any. The building, erected on uneven ground, allowed access to the crawl space only from one side. The other walls were flush against the foundation blocks.
The car eased to a stop. The headlights snapped off.
She was in total darkness now. Huddled, waiting, a hammer in her hand.
A child again.
Only back then she’d had a knife-a better weapon.
Maybe I was meant to die this way, C.J. thought. In a crawl space, in the dark.
She waited for whatever Adam would do next.
49
Adam Nolan resided in a two-bedroom condo in Brentwood, not far from the infamous spot where two of the most famous homicides in LA history had occurred a few years earlier. As the whole world knew, it was a neighborhood where, even after dark, people liked to go out for a stroll or walk their dogs.
Tonight, however, Brentwood seemed empty. There were no pedestrians on Nolan’s side street. No dogs barked. No traffic passed by.
Walsh found the stillness spooky. He glanced at Donna Cellini, riding beside him in his department-issue sedan, and wondered if she felt the same way.
Probably not. Cellini was remarkably levelheaded about most things. More levelheaded than Walsh himself. But then, she was young. She hadn’t seen as much.
He parked at the curb, making no effort to conceal the car, even though it screamed police with its boxy contours, its DARE bumper sticker, its outsized antenna protruding from the trunk.
There was no need for stealth. Nolan wasn’t home. The garage reserved for his unit had already been checked by two West LA cops, who found it empty. The same cops then buzzed Nolan’s condo for five minutes, getting no reply.
He was someplace else. And so, no doubt, was C.J. Osborn.
Another woman as the victim of an obsessed ex-husband. What the hell was it about this part of town?
“So how’d Nolan strike you in the interview?” Cellini asked as they got out.
“Very fucking sincere.”
“Good liar, then.”
“The best.”
“You do your Columbo impression?” Cellini knew his methods.
“Yeah.” Walsh grunted. “Thought I was so slick, and all the time he was playing me. The bastard.”
“He’s a lawyer,” Cellini said, as if that explained something-his slickness or his being a bastard. Maybe both.
Another unmarked car pulled up, and Boyle and Lopez got out. “This the place?” Boyle asked unnecessarily. Nobody answered.
A minute later a patrol car parked behind the two unmarked vehicles, and a pair of West LA officers emerged. Walsh asked if they were the ones who checked out the garage and buzzed the intercom.
“Yes, sir,” answered one cop, whose nametag read “JOHNSON.”
“Where the hell did you go? Doughnut run?” Sarcasm was unusual for Walsh, but he was peeved at having to wait.
Johnson was unruffled. “No, sir. Saw a BMW cruise past and thought it might be the suspect’s car. Followed it up to San Vicente and got a look at the tag. False alarm.”
“Lotta BMWs in this neighborhood,” his partner added pointlessly.
Walsh accepted the explanation. He wasn’t really angry at the patrol cops anyway, or even at Adam Nolan. He was angry at himself. He’d been in the same room with the son of a bitch and, good liar or not, the guy should not have been able to fool him.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s go in.”
“Wait.” Cellini held up her hand. “There’s one more in our party.”
Another sedan, clearly official, pulled up behind the patrol car. Its markings were obscured behind the glare of its headlights.
“I didn’t contact anybody else,” Walsh said.
Cellini looked away. “I did.”
The headlights switched off, and Walsh saw that the car was a Sheriff’s cruiser, and the man stepping out was Deputy Tanner.
“I called him at the hospital,” Cellini said. “He was looking after his men. I told him we had a lead. A chance to save her.”