Captain Ron Tupman hitched back in his chair and snapped, “Just about that much.”
Alan gave him about half a grin. “Yeah, been a crazy couple of days, hasn’t it?” Captain Tupman was in charge of both the gang and homicide units, among others. “If you’d rather not-”
“Already got my attention, don’t wimp out now.” The captain tossed a pen onto the mess of paperwork on his desk. “What’s on your mind, Detective Cameron?”
Alan filled him in, beginning with Lindsey Merrill’s visit and ending with the results of the background search on Richard and Susan Merrill. The captain listened without interrupting, a habit that was one of the things Alan liked and respected about the man, and no doubt at least part of the reason why he was currently occupying an office with a nameplate on the door.
“Now that things have settled down a bit, if you can spare me, I’d like to take a couple of days to follow up on it,” Alan concluded. “See where it goes.”
Captain Tupman stuck out his lower lip and contemplated the mess on his desk for a full ten seconds. Then he leaned forward and picked up the pen. “This mess is Gang Unit’s headache, they’re coordinating with the feds, so yeah, unless any more bodies turn up, might as well go with it.” He looked up and leveled his patented black stare at Alan. “If this thing grows legs, I want to know about it.”
“Sure-you bet. Thanks.” Alan was on his way out the door when his cell phone vibrated against his side. He waved an apology and a farewell to his captain and exited, glancing at the caller ID as he thumbed the talk button. He didn’t recognize the number immediately, but somehow knew it was Lindsey, and was surprised by the little zap of electricity that shot through him. Not adrenaline-he got enough of that in his job and it wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed, not like some thrill junkies he knew. This was different-and entirely pleasant.
“Hey,” he said, after she’d identified herself in a hushed and breathless voice, as if she were doing something illicit, “I was just going to call you.”
Lindsey felt quivery inside. “Oh,” she said, and laughed. She took the phone away from her ear to check. But the hand holding it appeared to be steady. She cleared her throat, and when she spoke, so did he.
They both said together, “Did you find something?” And Lindsey laughed and said, “You first.”
“Uh-uh,” Alan said, “you called me. You go first.”
Her heart was pounding. She thought, This is silly. I’m being silly. “I don’t know if it’s any help. It probably isn’t.”
“Why don’t you tell me and let me decide?”
She took a breath, closed her eyes and said, “Snow.”
“Snow?”
“I told you. It’s probably nothing. My mother says she remembers Jimmy liked to play in the snow. At first, I thought, at least that tells us it wasn’t in San Diego. But then I realized, you can drive a couple of hours from here and be in snow. I’ve played in the snow. So maybe…”
“Yeah,” he said. He sounded distracted, and again Lindsey thought, Stupid, stupid. I’m wasting his time. Then he said, “Look, I need to talk to you. How about if I meet you somewhere?”
A breath gusted through her like a freshening wind off the ocean, chilling her, but at the same time filling her with what could only be described as joy. She tried to believe the cause was the thought that he must have found some information on her mother’s memories, but she knew it wasn’t only that. She wasn’t in the habit of kidding herself. This thing she was feeling, this junior high school excitement, or whatever it was, was because she was going to see Alan again.
Demoralizing, she thought, for a forty-year-old businesswoman who should certainly know better. She was being ridiculous and in grave danger of making a fool of herself. She had to get a grip, now.
The silence on the phone had lasted no more than a moment. “Tell you what,” she said, and was pleased and a little surprised at how calm and adult her voice sounded. “I’m about to go for a run. Why don’t you meet me at Sunset Cliffs Park? By the time you get there I should be about finished.” There, she thought. That should demonstrate that she wasn’t falling all over herself to accommodate him.
And, she thought, a brisk run along the cliffs should give her a chance to expend some nervous energy and get her head on straight. A good dose of endorphins was just what she needed.
Her heart lurched into her throat as she realized he’d said something that hadn’t registered. “What?” she asked, feeling rattled again.
“Where, exactly? That’s a mile and a half of cliffs.”
“Uh, okay, how about the little parking lot just north of the rock where the peace sign used to be. Do you know the one-”
“I know it well,” Alan said. “I’m on my way.”
The sun was setting when Alan pulled into the postage stamp of a parking lot wedged between Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and the cliff’s edge. After parking and turning off the motor, for a few moments he just sat in his car, taking in the spectacle of the sun setting into the Pacific Ocean, missing the dark silhouette of the peace sign that had once-briefly-graced the top of the forty-foot rock formation, before mysteriously disappearing one January night. Too bad, he thought. Somehow, maybe, that universal symbol of peace and brotherhood would have helped to cancel out some of the ugliness of his weekend.
He got out of his car, then realized the ocean breeze had grown chilly with the going of the sun and took his jacket out of the backseat and put it on. Leaning against the car with his back to the fading sunset, he watched joggers chugging past on the dirt pathway that wound along the cliffs. Anticipation raced under his skin, ebbing and flowing like the waves beating against the rocks far below as each runner hove into view, then drew close enough for him to see it wasn’t the one he was waiting for. When he did finally see the lone figure bobbing toward him, coming from the south, he knew her instantly, even in silhouette against the lavender sky.
She was wearing sweats and a tank top, and had a warmup jacket tied around her waist by its arms. She was also wearing a sun visor, which she took off as she veered into the parking lot, leaving a sweatband in place, stark white against her dark hair.
She slowed to a walk and her face broke into a smile. “Hi-been waiting long?”
The smile had accomplished, it seemed, what the sunset and the missing peace sign hadn’t been able to, because he found himself wearing a smile, too, and there was a lightness in his heart for no particular reason he could think of.
He shook his head, then nodded toward the two other cars in the lot. “Which one’s yours?”
“Neither.” She wiped sweat from her face with a dangling sleeve of the warm-up jacket, seemingly only a little winded from her run. “I live about half a mile north of here. I usually run down to the stairs at the southern end of the park and back, which is about three miles. If I want a longer run, I go to Pacific Beach or Mission Bay.”
“Lucky you,” Alan said. He nodded toward the darkening cliffs, and the sea still gilded with the remains of the sunset. “This is one of my favorite places. I bring Chelse here sometimes. You know-to explore the caves and tidepools.”
She untied the warm-up jacket, then gave him a startled look when he took it from her and held it for her so she could slip her arms into the sleeves. So close to her he could feel the moist heat rising from her body, he felt her shiver suddenly.
“Why don’t we sit in the car out of the wind,” he said. “You don’t want to get chilled.”
She nodded, and he opened the passenger-side door, waited for her to settle into the seat, then closed the door and went around and got behind the wheel. He closed the door and the dusk and the quiet and an unexpected sense of intimacy enveloped them. And for a moment, for some reason, he couldn’t think what he’d come to say.