Lena sat in her car, still parked on the shoulder of the Hollywood Freeway in Echo Park. She had pulled over as soon as she realized that it was Cava on the phone. Not because of the shock. She could handle that. She had pulled over because she wanted to hear his voice. Wanted to listen to him and concentrate on the moment.
She gazed over the concrete divider at the cars moving up and down Glendale Boulevard below the freeway. Echo Lake was almost invisible. The mariner layer had pushed east from the coast, the cool mist hugging the ground and beginning to fill the basin like concrete rising to the lip of a mold.
Cava had said that she missed something. Something big.
And she had no doubt that he was telling her the truth. She had heard it in his voice. And now she could feel it in her gut. The main wheel that guided her internal compass. The thing she relied on that made it all work.
Something remained hidden. Something essential to the case.
Her cell started vibrating on the passenger seat. She read Barrera’s name on the display and pried open the phone.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Echo Park,” she said. “Heading home.”
“Don’t go home, Lena.”
The tone of his voice spooked her. “What is it,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t go home,” he repeated. “I’m in Hollywood. We need to talk.”
“Where?”
“How ’bout the parking lot outside Capitol Records in ten minutes?”
That main wheel in her gut was talking to her again. “I’ll see you then,” she said.
She closed the phone with an unsteady hand. Lit a cigarette and pulled onto the freeway. The traffic was moving smooth and steady through the gloom toward the Cahuenga Pass. Almost too steady. Her imagination was playing tricks with her. Feeding on something she couldn’t place. Connecting dots that might not be there. When she pulled into the lot, she spotted a Lincoln Town Car parked all the way back against the chainlink fence. On the other side of the fence was Vista Del Mar-a small road tucked away from downtown Hollywood and the exact spot where she had found her brother’s dead body so many years ago.
Couldn’t be good.
She got rid of the cigarette and climbed out of her car. As she crossed the empty lot and walked toward the Town Car, the rear door swung open and the interior lights switched on. Barrera was behind the wheel sitting beside a man she had never seen before. When her eyes flicked to the backseat, she froze.
It was the chief. All three were waiting for her.
She kept her eyes on them and started backing away. Then she finally turned and made a run for it. Barrera jerked the Town Car forward. Lena jammed her key into the ignition, fired up the engine, and floored it. When she hit Vine Street, she made a hard left and pointed the hood downhill into the congestion. But the Town Car was right behind her-tires screeching and pushing fast.
She blew through the light at Hollywood Boulevard and gunned it, then checked the mirror. Barrera was closing in. She tried to think. Come up with a plan. She grabbed her phone and hit Rhodes’s speed dial number, waiting for him to pick up. It felt like an eternity. And she could hear the phone beeping through the ring. Someone else trying to break through. Her Honda was a stick shift. At this speed she couldn’t hold the phone and work the road at the same time. Rhodes finally picked up.
“Where are you?” she said.
“Venice.”
“Stay there. Keep your cell on.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll call as soon as I get there.”
She threw the phone onto the passenger seat and grabbed the gear shift. The Town Car could easily outrun her on a straight track. Zigzagging her way over to La Brea, she finally hit the Santa Monica Freeway but lost sight of Barrera in the rearview mirror. There were too many headlights. Too much traffic and glare. She brought the car up to a hard ninety. As she wove through the lanes, she checked the mirror searching for a pair of headlights following her path. After a mile she thought she spotted them. But when the car rocketed past her doing a hot one hundred and twenty, it was another Honda, a lowrider with neon lights along the floorboards and a straight pipe out the back.
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.”