Weir slipped it out: Ann climbing into the backseat of the limousine on that cold March night. “What was this one called?”
“Joyride — March 21.”
Weir stared down at it. “She’s real pleased to be seeing this guy. Look at her dress, the shine on her shoes.”
“What about him?”
“He’s got money for a car and a driver.”
“How do you know it’s his driver, not a limo service?”
“By the way he’s looking away. He’s letting his boss know how confidential this all is.”
Raymond nodded. “That’s what I figured when I first saw it. Innelman ran an ownership listing for every home within three hundred feet of Annie’s Toyota. I picked it up first thing this morning. It’s under the pictures. Check the second page, halfway down, and see if you can put the name together with Cheverton Sewer and Septic.”
Weir found the listing and turned to the second page. C. David Cantrell’s name was in the middle.
“He owns Cheverton Sewer and Septic.”
“Exactly. And a guy that Cheverton’s people say doesn’t work there is the one who sent the roses and wrote to Ann. Mr. Night — Dave Smith. You do the arithmetic.”
“Dave Cantrell.”
Raymond’s expression was a little pale, and a great deal agitated. “Two days ago, Innelman got the credit card receipts for Ann’s last night at the Whale’s Tale. I found them in a pile of field reports about a foot high. Cantrell ate there, alone. Paid thirty-six bucks for dinner and left fourteen for Ann. I didn’t think anything of it, until I saw the listing. Now I can’t get all this out of my head.”
Jim let the possibilities sink in. No matter how he turned them, they wouldn’t fit. “Cantrell stands for everything Annie was against. I don’t think so.”
Ray nodded, then cleared his throat. “Jim — let’s be honest about something here, okay? Ann was a great woman, she was bright and beautiful and good, but she was sick to death of our life together, sick of me, sick of that cold little house, sick of it all. I think we can assume that much. Say you were her, what would you want? What would your antidote be to all that?”
“Something different. Someone completely different.”
“Mine, too.”
Jim sat back as Raymond answered Dispatch — disturbing the peace complaint up on Fifty-sixth Street. Lt. Cruz told her to let Unit 5 take the call.
“Too bad that garage-door opener is in evidence,” said Jim. “We could run a little experiment.”
Raymond looked at him, grinned, opened the glove compartment, and took out the controller and two new AA batteries. “Checked it back out an hour ago. It’s mine until noon.”
They cruised back down to Cantrell’s beachfront address. From a distance, Weir could see that it was a large but standard 1950s job — stucco, clean angles, a flat roof. It was painted white. Raymond was heading up the alley toward the garage door when he cursed and slowed. “Down in front, partner,” he said. “All the way down in front.”
Weir slipped off the seat and into the foot space, hunkering with his head against the shotgun clipped to the dash. “Company?”
“Umm-hmm. Cantrell’s got security all over the place. I see one in the alley by the house, and another on the street. I’ll bet there’s someone out front, too, keeping an eye on the door.”
“Patrol cars?”
“No way. Dark sedans with cool dudes sitting in them. They look like FBI. I think I’ll just run a little test, then keep on going.”
Jim watched as Raymond lifted the controller, pushed the button, then pushed it twice again.
“Up, stop, and down,” said Ray. “It works. It’s his.”
Weir felt the patrol unit start to move again. “Why’d he leave it in her car?”
“He forgot. Like he forgot and left a hair under the stamp, like he forgot to get that car the hell out of his neighborhood. If he’d just stabbed her twenty-seven times — God only knows what was going through his mind.”
“I think our next stop should be the PacifiCo Security yard, down by the airport.”
“You haven’t lost your chops, Jim. I was thinking the same thing. Maybe you should have taken up Brian on that job offer.”
Weir felt the car engine working beneath his knees, felt Raymond accelerate out of the alley and head for the boulevard. When Ray completed the turn, he pulled himself back up.
Raymond looked at him from behind his shades. “Most innocent citizens I know have their houses patrolled by private security goons.”
“Everyone I know,” said Weir.
Raymond told Dispatch where they were headed, then guided the car back up Balboa Boulevard.
Ten minutes later, they sat outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the PacifiCo Security yard near the airport. In the middle of the yard stood a newish building with a wooden sign that read PACIFICO SECURITY SERVICES. Surrounding the building were a handful of jeeps, two dark Buick sedans, and a dozen or so patrol cars with PacifiCo emblems on the front doors.
“Mackie Ruff’s cop car,” said Ray.
“I’d say so.”
Weir felt his scalp tighten. The circle is drawing itself now, he thought: purple roses to Dave Smith, Dave Smith to Cheverton, Cheverton to Cantrell Development, Cantrell Development to PacifiCo, PacifiCo to Cantrell himself. Annie, what have you done? Where do Marge Buzzard, Dale Blodgett, and Louis Braga fit in?
“Play it,” said Ray.
“They had a thing. She met him after work to tell him she was pregnant and it was over between them. Remember the letter? About how talented and important Mr. Night is? It fits, Ray. Maybe they’d walked the Back Bay before. He took her down there for one last night, positive he could keep her close. He’d sent flowers — Mother’s Day. It was his way of saying that pregnant or not, he wanted her. Then it was just like in the letter — he wanted to own her, but Ann wasn’t for sale. He went over the top.”
Raymond was nodding slowly. “Ann’s car was jimmied open, right? Her purse is still missing, right? She left it in his car. When he got back home, he had to get her car out of the garage. But Ann had locked it. So he broke in and used her keys to move it a few blocks away.”
Jim felt another little dose of adrenaline move through him. “No. She couldn’t get into the garage because the opener batteries were gone. He took them. Ann parked a block and a half away because that was as close as she could get. That’s what he wanted — Ann not able to use the garage that night. He jimmied the door to make it look like a stranger took her. But he forgot to ditch the opener.”
Raymond’s face was pale and sweaty.
Neither spoke for a long while.
“Well,” Raymond said quietly. “There you have it. C. David Cantrell. He’s handsome, isn’t he? Rich. A rich, handsome, powerful man who took my wife and used her like a toy. God, wait until Dennison hears this. He’s going to hate the good news.”
“Dennison won’t do anything but get in our way right now. What we’ve got is all circumstance, Ray. We need to put Cantrell at the crime scene. We need to connect him to the Back Bay that night, with Annie. Sit tight. Don’t spill anything to Brian yet. We need more.”
“We need to cancel him.” Raymond guided the car down MacArthur toward Coast Highway. He looked out to the PacifiCo Towers looming in the west.
“Ray, let’s take this one step at a time. We don’t know anything yet. We’re not sure. When we are — then we’ll move.”
Raymond wiped the sweat off his face. His skin hadn’t lost its pallor. “I’m going to take him.”
“That’s what Francisco thought a hundred years ago, but he didn’t do it right. Patience, Ray. We’ll get him.”