She slid into the next lane, keeping her eye on the lowrider and following its course through the traffic. When she hit the Lincoln Boulevard exit, she made a sudden hard cut across three lanes and blew up the ramp. She checked the mirror again. The darkness and the mist. She’d lost them.
She filled her lungs with air and exhaled, thinking that she needed a place to hide while she called Rhodes back and figured out what was going on. When she finally reached Navy Street, she checked her rearview mirror again and turned back.
The fog was thicker here. Billowing off the Pacific over the buildings and streets and filling in the rough edges with more gloom.
Lena cruised past the apartment and found a place to park around the corner. Then she pulled Jennifer Bloom’s keys out of her briefcase and legged it up the sidewalk and into the building.
She could hear the TV from Jones’s apartment leaking into the foyer. People laughing and buzzers going off from some game show. She hadn’t seen him in the window from the sidewalk and she was glad. She hurried up the steps, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. As she switched on the table lamp in the foyer and leaned against the door, she thought about Barrera.
She already knew what the word betrayal meant. The way it cut and chewed through your being. The way it tore everything up and burned everything down. She knew what it meant. What it felt like. The scars that it left behind. Still, she was having trouble catching her breath.
She switched on the lights in the living room and bedroom. Erasing the darkness didn’t seem to help. As she started to walk out, she sensed something and turned back. There was something going on. Something out of place. She scanned the room and checked it against her memory. When her eyes zeroed in on the bedside table, she felt a chill flicker across her shoulder blades.
The snow globe was missing.
She glanced at the floor on the other side of the bed. Looked over at the chest of drawers. Tried to remember where it was the last time that she had been here. Snowflakes falling over Las Vegas.
And that’s when she heard the noise. A floorboard creaking. Someone else was in the apartment.
Lena eased out of the bedroom, moving silently through the entry way. When she reached the French doors, she stopped and peered through the glass into the living room. It took a moment for the image to register in her brain. She could feel the rush as she stared through the glass.
It was him-wearing the leather jacket and the Dodger cap.
The lost witness-tiptoeing his way out of the kitchen toward the window and fire escape with the snow globe in his hand.
The thief with the guilty conscience who sent her the package and then tapped out the victim’s bank account with the stolen ATM card. Eighteen or nineteen with brown hair and pale skin. The thin and nervous type with dark circles under his eyes. The user loser who needed more cash for more stash and another hot load.
Lena had walked in on a robbery. The witness hadn’t overdosed and wasn’t stretched out on a gurney at the morgue. The piece of shit had waited them out and picked his night. He was cleaning out the place.
She turned the corner and stepped into the living room. When the kid spotted her, he dropped the snow globe, and made a run for the window. It was already cracked open, but appeared stuck. Lena raced across the room and grabbed him by his shoulders. Yanking him away, they tumbled back and hit the floor. The kid groaned and appeared panic-stricken. She could feel him trying to squirm out from beneath her, thrashing his arms and legs.
But he was smaller than her. Lighter. Lena gave him a hard push, then rolled him over onto his back keeping him still with the weight of her body. She grabbed his hands and pinned them to the floor over his head. Then she reached out and pulled off the Dodger cap.
A long moment passed. The two of them lying there eye to eye. Face to face.
Lena suddenly became aware of the body underneath her. The long list of things that didn’t add up. The width of his hips and the smell of his skin. His brown eyes-big and wild and staring back at her with a certain reach.
Releasing her grip, she got to her feet. The witness didn’t move, looking up at her and panting. She could still hear Cava’s voice on the phone. Still feel the wheel inside her gut turning. She had missed something and it was big.
She checked the face again. The body. The air in the room suddenly white-hot like a dirty bomb. She hadn’t found and captured the witness. Her eyes were locked on the victim.
“You’re Jennifer Bloom,” she said. “And I’m investigating your murder.”
48
The shock wave was still reverberating. The fallout still playing with her core.
Lena closed her cell phone after calling Rhodes and gazed at Bloom with utter amazement. She was thinking about the autopsy. The woman she had seen on the stainless steel gurney that had been cut up and dumped in the trash. The woman originally known as Jane Doe No. 99.
She was trying to picture her face.
The victim had been beaten. Disfigured. She remembered that her eyes had been spared, but not much else. That the sight of the decapitated head had been hard to look at. Yet, she seemed so vulnerable, it had been difficult for Lena to turn away.
Identification had been made based on a theoretical reconstruction of her face, a physical description that fit like a glove, overwhelming circumstantial evidence, and more than one eyewitness who saw her at the Cock-a-doodle-do on the night of the abduction and murder. Although the DMV confirmed that her driver’s license was legit, certification that the thumb print on the license matched the print taken from the actual dead body was still pending. Lena remembered Rhodes telling her that it would take a week before they arrived and SID could begin their examination.
“You’ll be okay,” Lena said to her. “Take my hand.”
She pulled the young woman off the floor and helped her over to the couch. Bloom was clearly frightened, and Lena’s words didn’t seem to make any difference to her. As Lena thought about the body count, Bloom had every reason to still fear for her life. Tremell had offered all his resources to help find the witness. Cava had been watching her apartment. And Chief Logan had shut down the case and made it the number one priority on his Loose End List. Everyone of them had wanted to find the witness at all costs. Now Lena understood why.
“You went out to the Cock-a-doodle-do with a friend,” she said. “Your friend was murdered. Who was she?”
Bloom lowered her eyes. “Beth Gillman,” she whispered. “She was waiting for me in my car.”
Lena heard the sound of footsteps through the door. They were moving down the hallway. She checked Bloom’s face, caught the edge, and stepped into the foyer. When she heard the tap, she peered through the peephole and unlocked the door. Rhodes hurried in and glanced at Bloom from a distance. Lena could see him making the connections. The shock as he got his first look and realized that their victim wasn’t a ghost.
“Were you followed?” he whispered under his breath.
Lena shook her head. “I lost them. A Lincoln. Who’s out there?”
“Two guys in a black Audi. I couldn’t make out their faces. But it doesn’t look good. They’re waiting for something. Who was in the Lincoln?”