Someone was helping him up, a guy wearing a motorcycle helmet with the visor down. He stood, shaken, and the guy took him toward the van that had hit him. The world started spinning. “I’m going to be sick,” he said, but he wasn’t.
“We’ll take care of you,” the motorcycle guy said, and gave him a shot, which he thought was kind of strange, but now Chase could see that it wasn’t a van but an ambulance, or something like that, because it already had another patient in it.
He was lying down on a mat, then, next to the other patient. A girl, he realized, but she was dressed like a boy. She lay without moving, except that her eyes briefly fluttered open. There was a bruise on her jaw, and her wrists and ankles were tied.
Why would you tie up a patient? He was feeling more and more drowsy. Nothing made sense.
The motorcycle guy shut the doors and it was dark and they were moving.
Just before he gave in to the unyielding tide that rushed him away from awareness, he wondered who would save Rusty now.
43
LASD Homicide Bureau
Commerce, California
Thursday, May 22, 11:25 A.M.
“I’m on my way out to Seminole Hot Springs,” Alex said. “Tell whoever it is-”
“Her name is Vanessa Przbyslaw,” the desk sergeant said. “She claims-”
“I’ll be right there. Don’t let her leave.”
He watched her for a moment before approaching her. She was pacing. Her eyes were red and a little puffy, her face a little tear-swollen. But if she had cried earlier, she was past that for now-the look on her face was one of determination and anger. Her arms were folded in the manner of someone who is resisting an urge to strike out at anything that might come his or her way, and her stride was long and sure. Her features were delicate, but there was strength in her, and Alex wondered if Frederick Whitfield IV had been drawn to that quality, too.
He introduced himself and ushered her into an interview room. He gestured toward a seat on the other side of the scuffed wooden table. If he had more time, he would have left her sitting there alone for a while. Instead, using standard interrogation procedures, he sat between her and the door. The concealed camera was already running.
An hour later, he thought the videotape was unlikely to be of use. As strange as her tale was, he believed her. She could also easily account for her movements during the past forty-eight hours. He talked to her long enough to establish that Frederick Whitfield IV could not have been the person who hung the body over the cliffs on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but learned little more.
“I know you’re busy,” she said. “That’s why I came here before meeting with Mr. Blaine. It’s why I came to Los Angeles in the first place. I just don’t believe Frederick killed himself, and I want to make sure his murder is investigated. It might be easier for the sheriff’s department to call it a suicide, but-”
“I don’t believe it was suicide, either,” he told her.
She looked bewildered. “But the news-”
“Isn’t written by the sheriff’s department. We’ve had doubts from the beginning. Sorry if that takes the wind out of your sails.”
She frowned, and he wondered what he had said to upset her.
“Do you know who killed him?” she asked after a moment.
“Not yet. Who were his enemies?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I didn’t even spend twenty-four hours with him.”
He thought of how dangerous that one evening might have ended up being.
She seemed to read the look. “I won’t say I knew him-I thought he was practically homeless until I got the call from Mr. Blaine. But the side of him I saw-or the side he chose to show me-wasn’t cruel. He tried to be slick, tried to put on a Mr. Big Shot act, and it didn’t work. By the end of the evening, he was just another lonely guy. I have a hard time believing that he had anything to do with anything as awful as murder, but…”
Her voice broke off, and he watched her struggle with her emotions, seeing anger and sadness and disappointment cross her face.
After a moment, she said, “You must see this often. I suppose most criminals have a mother or a sister or a girlfriend who can’t believe the person they care about has done anything wrong. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry he let you down.”
She shook her head and said, “He didn’t. Not really. Perhaps my story makes me sound cheap to you, but…we just took a little comfort in each other. It’s not so easy to find, you know?”
“No,” he said, “not easy at all.”
She looked down at her hands folded on the table before her. When she looked up, it was with calm resolution. “What happened to him is wrong, Detective Brandon. Doesn’t anyone care about that?”
“That’s why I’m investigating it. I think it’s wrong, too.”
“But I mean-Mr. Blaine has told me something about his parents. But what about his friends?”
“His friends may be the ones who killed him, Ms. Przbyslaw.”
She stared at him for a moment, then said, “If I’m the only one who feels sorry that he died, Detective Brandon, then I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I had only known him for five minutes. It should make a difference to someone when a person dies, shouldn’t it? What can I do to help you find his killers?”
At his request, she left information on how best to reach her while she was in Los Angeles. “I’ll be going home tomorrow afternoon, though.”
“With this new wealth,” he asked, “are you planning to move?”
“I’m not so sure I’m going to be wealthy. But I’ll still be in Albuquerque for a little while yet.” She told him about her mother. “I’d never take her from that hospice-she’s comfortable there and likes the staff. They tell me it’s probably a matter of a few weeks now. It would be cruel to make a change at this stage.”
He gave her his card, then said, “I don’t think money was the motivation for murder in this case. But with this amount at stake, it would be unwise to ignore it as a possibility. That said, I hope you’ll be cautious and report anything unusual both to us and the police in Albuquerque.”
She thanked him. She began to leave, then paused in the doorway.
“Detective Brandon, do you know of a place where I can rent a sailboat for the afternoon?”
44
UCLA Medical Center
Los Angeles, California
Thursday, May 22, 1:08 P.M.
Kit was asleep when he got the call about Moriarty and Spooky. Meghan was driving-later, he was thankful for that-and Gabe was with them, hidden in the back of the Jeep. They were on the freeway, near Riverside, and he was in the passenger seat, dreaming of one of Jerome’s victims, the one who had tried to comfort him. In his dream, she was escaping.
The cell phone rang and he came fully awake, immediately knowing something was wrong.
He was told that Moriarty’s team was scrambling to learn what had happened, while still leaving some men to guard the house. They would do all they could to keep Kit’s name out of this, but if at some point he wanted to bring law enforcement in to look for Spooky, that might not be possible.
Kit knew he need not worry about the security team’s coverage, even if Moriarty was not there to lead them. Still, the fact that they had lost contact with Moriarty made Kit fear for both Spooky’s and Moriarty’s lives.
The rest of the drive was nearly unbearable.
Kit took out his rabbit’s foot, stared at it for a moment, then put it away.
Gabe, who sat on the floor of the backseat of the Jeep, concealed from view beneath a blanket, tried to offer encouragement but grew quiet when Kit seemed not to respond.