The drawer contained a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that looked as though they had been bought at a yard sale. They were all in poor condition and were several years old. Still, he flew the pages on every one of them in case there was a note or maybe a hidden address. He found nothing and dropped the last magazine back in the drawer and kicked it closed.
The bottom drawer of the table was empty except for a little net bundle containing cedarwood shavings and dried rosemary. He slammed that drawer closed and came around the bed to the other night table.
Before he opened the drawer he had a feeling he would have good luck here. This table had a lamp on it and the pillow on this side of the bed had an indentation from someone sleeping on it. He knew this was her side of the bed.
Karch sat down on the bed and put his gun down next to his thigh. With both hands he picked up the pillow and brought it to his face. He could smell her. Her hair. He wasn't good at identifying fragrances but he thought he could smell tea leaves, like when you first open a box of tea bags. He wasn't sure about it and put the pillow back down.
He opened the top drawer of the bed table and hit pay dirt. The drawer was crammed with personal items. There were books and hair bands and photograph albums. There was a still camera with a long lens and a video camera as well. Placed on top of everything was a small framed photograph. Karch picked it up and studied it. It showed Cassidy Black sitting on the lap of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. She was holding a pinkish-orange drink with a paper umbrella in it. Karch almost didn't recognize her because the smile on her face was so wide and bright.
However, he easily recognized the man in the photo. His was a face Karch would never forget. Max Freeling, the man who had permanently altered Karch's entire life in one moment of time. Karch knew he wouldn't be where he now sat if it had not been for Max Freeling and the decision he had made at the top of that hotel six years before. All these years, he had been under Grimaldi's thumb because of what happened in that room with Max Freeling.
He turned the picture over and hit the frame's glass harshly on the corner of the bed table. He heard the glass crack. He noticed something written on the cardboard backing of the frame. It said, I looked up and saw the outline of Tahiti and I realized this was the place I had been looking for all my life.
– W. Somerset Maugham Karch turned the frame over and looked at the photo again. A spiderweb crack started on Cassidy Black's face and branched across the photograph. Karch tossed the frame into a wastebasket that was next to the bed table.
From the drawer he removed a thick photo album with a soft brown leather binding. As he opened it he expected to find more photos of Max Freeling but instead got a surprise. The album was full of photographs of a young girl. Almost all of them were taken from a distance – he glanced at the long-range camera in the drawer – and at the same location, a schoolyard.
He leafed through the book and found one picture of the girl dribbling a basketball. Painted on the wall of a building behind the playing area was the name Wonderland School.
He closed the album and pulled out another. It contained more photos of the girl, though these were not taken at the school. They depicted the girl playing in a yard in front of a house. In some she was pulling a wagon or kicking a ball, in others she was going down a sliding board or laughing on a swing. A grouping of photos in the back of the book but not yet placed in plastic windows showed the girl on a trip to Disneyland. One of the shots, again taken from afar, showed her embracing Mickey Mouse.
Karch realized something and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out the two passports and opened the top one to the ID photo. It was the same girl from the photos in the albums. Jodie Davis, the name said.
Karch put the passports back in his pocket and let the photo album drop to the floor. He was having an epiphany, a moment when seemingly disparate memories and new pieces of information coalesced into a new truth. He now understood something that had tortured him for six years.
An idea started coming together, a plan for getting the money and Cassie Black, all at the same time. He closed the top drawer and opened the bottom. This one was less crowded. There was an electric hair dryer that didn't look as though it was ever used and a few old pieces of mail from inmates at High Desert Correctional Institution for Women. Karch opened one of the letters and saw it was just a howyadoin' from a former cellmate named Letitia Granville. Karch also threw these into the wastebasket and reached back into the drawer and underneath the hair dryer for a manila envelope that was address side down.
He turned it over and saw that it was addressed to Cassidy Black at High Desert Correctional. Whatever was in the envelope was something she had taken with her from prison. He ran his thumb under the return address and saw the preprinted envelope had been sent from Renaissance Investigations of Paradise Road, Las Vegas. Karch was familiar with the agency. It was mid-size, five or six investigators and an equal number of supposed specialties. He competed with them for the referrals from the Metro missing persons unit. Karch opened the envelope and pulled out a well-thumbed investigation summary. He was about to start reading the particulars when he was jarred by the screaming voice of someone in the doorway behind him.
"FREEZEITUPFUCKHEAD!"
Karch dropped the report and held his hands out in front of him. He slowly started to turn his head. What he saw further shocked him. Just inside the doorway of the bedroom was an enormous black woman. She stood in the classic Weaver stance taught at every law enforcement academy in the country. Feet spread, weight equally distributed, both hands up holding and bracing the gun, elbows slightly bent and pointed outward. Around her neck was a chain with a badge on it. She looked like no cop Karch had ever seen, but the 9 mm Beretta pointed at him won the debate.
"Take it easy now," he said calmly. "I'm on your side."
34
SINCE getting the news at the dealership Cassie Black had felt as though she were underwater, in some kind of surrealistic otherworld that had no bearing on her life. Deep down she knew it was an instinctive defense mechanism. It allowed her to continue, to move and do what needed to be done.
She now stood in the backyard of Leo's house staring at the dried blood streaking the jagged piece of glass standing in the bottom frame of the sliding door. Just seeing the glass confirmed what Karch had told her. She knew now that Leo was dead. If she went into the house she would find his body. And whatever way she found it would constitute an image she would never be able to remove from her memory.
She looked down into the pool at the vacuum standing motionless at the bottom. But almost immediately her eyes were drawn back to the door with the jagged glass. She knew she had to go in. Finally, she nodded once to herself and walked up to the door. And immediately she could see his body on the floor of the office. An eighteen-wheeler going by on the freeway behind the property drowned out the awful sighing sound that came involuntarily from her throat. She stepped over the glass and into the house.
Leo's body was sprawled face up to the side of the door. Blood seemed to be everywhere. Despite the horrible tableau the scene created, her eyes were drawn to what unmistakably appeared to be, if not a smile on his face, a look of satisfaction. Cassie crouched next to him and touched his cold cheek.
"Oh, Leo," she said. "What did I do?"
The tears started coming again. She tried to pinch them off by tightly closing her eyes and balling her fists.
Finally, when she opened her eyes again, she tried to study the body and the surroundings as maybe a detective would. She wanted to know what had happened. The fact that Karch had come to her and demanded the money meant Leo had stood up. She looked at the bloody drag marks on the tile floor and put it together. Leo had done it. He had gone to the glass. He had done it for her.