Full of life? A cruel slip of the tongue. Dead at twenty-nine – the same age Finn had been when he'd come to L.A., when he'd felt like he was just starting his life, leaving home and heading out to the big city. What if, on that trip, he'd seen someone pulled to the side of the road? He would have stopped, like Damon. That was how he'd been raised. What might a woman like Damon's killer have thought, seeing a guy Finn's size bearing down on her on a dark, empty road?
"It should be there now."
"What?"
Damon pointed at the computer. "The file should have arrived by now."
"Right."
He spoke too loudly both times and the other detectives in the room – Vanderveer and Scala – looked over, then shared an eye roll.
"You okay, Finn?" called Vanderveer, a burly detective approaching retirement, his pitch-black hair screaming dye job.
"Yeah. Just trying to open a photo Portia Kane sent Robyn Peltier. Computers aren't my thing."
"The Kane murder?" Scala was around Finn's age, recently transferred from vice at the insistence of his third wife.
Both detectives rose from their desks. Neither was any more computer literate than Finn, but his task sounded more interesting than the paperwork they'd been trudging through.
"Holy Mother of God," Vanderveer said as Finn opened the photo. "Is that one of those altered pictures or did that girl's parents actually let her out of the house dressed like that?"
"That girl does what she wants, when she wants," Scala said. "And she can do it at my place anytime."
"You know her?" Finn asked.
"I wish. I'd give my right nut to enjoy what that girl's got."
Vanderveer shook his head. "Well, you can see it all in that picture."
"I meant her more liquid assets." He rubbed his fingers together.
"She's rich?"
"Wouldn't know it from that outfit. I've seen twenty-dollar whores with better fashion sense. But that's Jasmine Wills, your vic's frenemy."
"Her what?"
"They pretend to be friends but really they can't stand each other. Frenemy, get it?"
"No," Vanderveer said. "We don't. But we don't read the tabs."
"You just chat with their reporters, huh, Finn? So how'd that go? Did that True News chick promise you an exclusive? Hell, if she'd promise me an exclusive, I'd put on fangs and go bite a neck. Preferably hers. She was one sweet little – "
Vanderveer waved the younger detective to silence. "So what's Portia Kane doing with that picture?"
"She wanted her PR rep to send it to the tabloids."
"Seems the tabs are right – that frenemy thing had slid into full-blown enemy." Scala slapped Finn on the shoulder. "Well, the good news is we just solved your case. Jasmine Wills killed Kane to keep that photo out of the papers. I know I would." He started back to his desk, then stopped. "Oh, could you pass a copy my way? For safekeeping?"
"Sounds nuts, but maybe what started as a simple catfight turned lethal," Damon said as Vanderveer returned to his paperwork. "If people carry guns, it becomes too easy to use them. I know all about that."
Before Finn could respond, the phone rang.
"Detective Findlay?" a man's voice said. "This is, uh, Officer Alec Weston. My, uh, sergeant wanted me to, call you. I'm sure it's nothing, but he, uh, insisted…"
A recent recruit. Finn could tell by the hesitation. Still new enough to view the homicide squad the way freshmen did the senior class. Finn encouraged him with an "um-hmm."
"I think I might have, uh, seen that woman you're looking for. From the Kane case. Robyn Peltier."
Finn's gaze shot to Damon. "You saw – "
"I'm probably wrong," Weston hurried on. "But my sergeant insisted I call."
"Where'd you see her?"
"Well, that's the thing that doesn't make sense, sir. She was in the coffee shop across from our station."
ROBYN
Miss? You wanted out here?"
"J-just a sec," Robyn said.
She stared at the police station steps. Another precinct, ten miles from the last, chosen at random from a phone book when she stopped to catch her breath, certain she'd finally lost Adele.
As it turned out, she'd only temporarily misplaced her. When Robyn tried to hail a cab, she'd seen Adele step from a side street. She'd changed course then, taking another route into a busier commercial area, cutting through such a crowd she even stopped saying "excuse me" as she shouldered her way past people.
She'd lost Adele then. She was certain of it. There'd been no sign of her for two blocks. Then, seeing people pouring from a matinee, she'd merged with the crowd and jumped into one of the cabs waiting at the curb.
It was then, after she'd given the police station address to the cabbie, that she'd finally relaxed, resting her cheek against the cool window and closing her eyes as her heart slowed.
Adele Morrissey, at the police station, asking to use her cell phone. The cell phone with the photo Hope thought was responsible for Portia's murder. A photo of Adele Morrissey.
How had Adele found her at the station, when no one knew she'd been going to that one? Impossible… and therefore the first sign of Robyn's mental collapse. The second had been Adele Morrissey, paparazzo, chasing her with a gun. Both, however, paled in comparison to this – absolute proof that she had gone mad.
After losing Adele in the crowd, after watching for anyone following the cab, after sending the poor driver on a roundabout route, who was standing there on the steps of the police station even before she got there?
Adele Morrissey.
Robyn squeezed her eyes shut and prayed she'd open them to see only a young blond woman who resembled Adele Morrissey by a trick of the light and a panicked mind.
A bang on the window sent Robyn jumping, bills falling from her fingers. There stood Adele, reaching for the handle.
Robyn smacked the lock shut and dropped two twenties over the seat. "Drive. Please, just drive."
He looked at her in the mirror. Then his gaze lifted to the rearview mirror as Adele circled behind the car.
"Please. She's got a gun. Drive!"
He spun from the curb.
While the cabbie had been quite willing to take her away from the armed girl yanking on his car door, his sympathy meter expired after a couple of blocks. He pulled to the curb with, "You get out now," and jabbed his finger at the sidewalk, to which Robyn had responded by reaching over the seat and taking back one of the twenties.
"Crazy bitch," were his parting words as she closed the door.
There had to be a logical explanation for what had happened. She hadn't imagined Adele – the cabbie had seen her, too.
Obviously Adele had been following Robyn to get that photo. She'd killed Portia for her phone. Then she'd discovered Portia had sent the picture to Robyn… and Robyn took another photo of her near the murder scene. So she'd followed Robyn to Judd's house. As for how she'd found Robyn today, obviously it had something to do with that young man who'd hurt Karl. A partner, maybe Judd's killer.
As for how he'd found Robyn, she wasn't dwelling on that, no more than she'd dwelled on how Karl found her the day before. It happened.
Adele and her partner must have seen Robyn get into the cab and Adele followed her. After the incident at the first police station, Adele figured out that Robyn was trying to turn herself in. Once she'd realized which precinct Robyn was heading to, she'd gotten there first to stop Robyn from surrendering while she still had that cell phone.
Problem was, Robyn didn't have the phone. Otherwise, she'd have tossed it to Adele, gotten to the police safely and told her story. Somehow she doubted telling Adele she'd lost the phone would solve the problem.