“Besides, being here in California gives me the chance to keep an eye on you and Lien-hua.” A wink. “Keep you two kids in check.
Know what I mean?” “No,” said one voice from the elevator.
“Why don’t you tell us?” said the other.
First voice: Lien-hua.
Second voice: Tessa.
“Oh.” Ralph’s voice shrank to the size of a mouse. “Good morning, Lien-hua. Hi, Tessa.”
Lien-hua’s arms were folded. “Hello, Ralph. What a surprise.”
An unreadable expression crossed Tessa’s face. “Nice to see you, Uncle Ralph.”
Ralph patted Lien-hua’s shoulder and gave Tessa a quick shoulder hug. “I better go track down those suitcases,” he muttered.
“You boys and girls have fun now.” Then he ambled through the uncomfortable silence and left me alone with the two women and their four raised eyebrows.
I looked from Lien-hua to Tessa. “OK,” I said, “so, who’s hungry? I know I am. Famished. Let’s get in line before they run out of quiche.” Then I hurried off to the hotel’s restaurant, wondering how I’d ever come to the point in my life where I would’ve actually been willing to eat quiche if necessary.
While Creighton watched Cassandra through the video cameras, he thought of spiders crawling across his face and of the videos he’d taken of the women over the years, and he thought of Shade.
Creighton had met some elusive characters over the last ten years, but this guy, Shade, was like a ghost. Every time Creighton thought he might be able to catch a glimpse of him-nothing. Even though Creighton had no idea what it was like to feel fear, he suspected that the growing discomfort he felt whenever he talked to Shade was close to what other humans felt when they were afraid.
A few times over the last two months, Creighton had thought about taking off, just slipping away into the shadows. But two things kept him here: he knew Shade would find him, and Project Rukh really did exist. All the Department of Defense documents that Shade had sent him regarding the project checked out. The device was real. And from everything Creighton had been able to uncover, the prototype really did what Shade said it would.
Building B-14. That was the key to everything.
Freedom or pain?
Pain.
And as Creighton thought of that word, he imagined the meeting he would have with the FBI agent later in the week, and he thought once again of the closure Shade offered.
Everything coming full circle. Yes. Creighton was the perfect one for the job after all.
Shade wanted to keep their communications to a minimum, and Creighton wasn’t expecting to hear from him until three o’clock, so after leaving Cassandra alone again, Creighton pulled out a pair of handcuffs and practiced escaping from them just in case he needed to do so in the next couple days.
Yes. He was the perfect one for the job after all.
26
In line for the brunch buffet, I tried to guide the conversation away from Ralph’s comments as quickly as I could. “So what took you two so long to get downstairs?”
“Shower,” said Tessa.
“I was on the phone with Aina,” said Lien-hua. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She told me Austin Hunter wasn’t home, but MAST managed to get a warrant. Aina wants to talk to you.
She said to give her a call as soon as you can. They found gasoline and a professional makeup kit in his spare bedroom.”
I began ticking through the possibilities. Gasoline? I thought we’d eliminated that as the accelerant for the earlier fires. Unless… my mind flashed back to previous arson cases I’d worked over the years
…
Unless…
I saw Tessa grab her plate and I remembered that even though I’d already had a full morning, the last thing she probably remembered was the bloody pork tenderloin and John Doe’s suicide last night.
The arsonist could have mixed it with something to make it burn longer. That would do it.
I was torn; the biggest parts of who I am were wrestling with each other again: the FBI agent part and the dad part. I knew the dad part was supposed to win, and I wanted it to, but I didn’t know exactly what that was supposed to look like in real life. Tessa was busy lifting the metal lids off the chafing dishes to see what was for breakfast.
Sausage links. “Ew.” Then bacon. “You have got to be kidding me.” And finally breakfast patties. “I am so done with this.” She clomped to a nearby spread of fruit and pastries.
Well, she seemed to be acting normal enough. I decided it would be OK to return Aina’s call. I loaded a bowl with oatmeal, and dialed her number.
“Dr. Bowers. Gracias.”
“What do you have, Aina?”
I piled a plate with hash browns and followed my nose to the coffee carafes.
“No sign of Hunter,” she said. “But, it looks like someone broke into his apartment. His dresser drawers were disturbed, but his checkbook is sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter, so I don’t think it was a robbery. And, even though his cell phone and laptop are gone, he left the cords here.”
“Car keys?”
“Gone.”
“So, Hunter left in a hurry.”
“Si. And you were right about the gloves. We lifted a partial. It’s not Hunter. But-”
He would have pulled off the first glove with his dominant hand, and then left the print with his non-dominant one. “Which glove had the print?”
“The left. But I need to tell you — ” So, the arsonist from last night is most likely left-handed. Then she finished her sentence by saying, “It’s the print of one of our officers.”
“What? He contaminated the evidence?”
“Si.”
Why didn’t that surprise me.
“Just a minute.” Exasperated, I balanced the phone on my plate. One of the restaurant staff was standing beside the coffee carafes.
“We proudly serve Starbucks coffee,” she told me with a smile.
I didn’t say the words aloud, only thought them: Starbucks is to coffee what McDonald’s is to steak.
The woman was still smiling at me. “Oh,” I told her as cordially as I could. “Actually, I’m just looking for the juice bar.”
“Right over there, sir.”
“Thank you.” I headed over to get a glass of OJ. Maybe later in the morning I could track down a cup of coffee that had actually been roasted within the last two months.
Wait a minute.
Juice.
Yes.
Orange juice.
I grabbed the phone. “Aina. Check Hunter’s freezer.”
“His freezer?”
“Give it a shot.”
By the time I’d found my seat she’d finished her search. “Mr.
Hunter must be a juice lover.”
“So, he’s got the juice,” I said softly. “Have one of your officers check the nearest dumpster to his apartment. Look for empty boxes of laundry detergent.”
“Concentrated orange juice and powdered laundry detergent,” she said. I could hear agitation in her voice. “ Claro. I should have thought of that earlier. Mix them together with low-octane gasoline, make a paste. Burns hot enough to create full room involvement-”
“But slow enough to sustain sufficient oxygen in the room for the fire to spread.”
“So, you have worked arson cases before,” she said.
“A few.”
“Between the two of us we should have thought of it earlier.”
“Well, without any suspects I’m not sure it would have done us any good.” I downed some of my juice. “So, if he’s got his laptop and his cell phone, what does that leave us? Any snail mail there?
Return addresses, postcards we can check on?”
I heard her shuffling through some letters. “All bills. That would have been too easy anyway.”
“OK, GPS. Track his cell phone or his car.”
“We tried. Nothing. Older models.”
“Ex-wife, fiancee, girlfriend? Someone he might have gone to stay with?”
“We’re working on it. He has a photo on the wall of him on the beach with an attractive young woman, late twenties, scuba gear beside them. Her hand is resting on his thigh so I think they’re more than just friends. We checked his phone records, found his favorite number to call, and sent some cars to her place. She’s a shark researcher. Works for the Sherrod Aquarium. Cassandra Lillo.”