“Who was he?” A state police lieutenant pointed toward the body.
“Dragan Ilkovic.” Coltrane explained about Bosnia, about Daniel, Greg, and Coltrane’s grandparents.
“This guy killed an LAPD detective?”
“I hope his fingerprints are on record somewhere,” one of the medical examiner’s team said in the background. “It’s going to be hard as hell to identify him without a . . .”
Then the photographers were finished, and somebody set down planks so the investigators could get closer to Ilkovic’s body without making new tracks in the mud. Coltrane wasn’t sure when Nolan and Jennifer had arrived. As he turned from answering more questions, he suddenly saw them making their way through the glare of headlights and flashlights. He prepared to start reexplaining, but the first thing Nolan did was introduce himself to the officer in charge, and the first thing Jennifer did was peer from Coltrane toward Ilkovic’s corpse and take a shocked step backward.
At once, Nolan was gripping Coltrane’s arm, tugging him away. Nolan’s burly shoulders were rigid with anger. “Looks like you got a little lost, forgot where the house was. Where you were supposed to meet us. Just what the hell are you doing here?”
“There was a slight change of plan,” Coltrane said.
“You led Ilkovic out here to try to kill him.”
“Did I?”
“You think a grand jury’s going to believe you didn’t set this up?”
Coltrane shrugged wearily. “You’re right. I did come out here to kill him.”
“You admit it?”
“But then McCoy showed up, and we talked about it, and he convinced me I was wrong. But I never got the chance to leave—because that’s when Ilkovic shot McCoy. After that, it was self-defense.”
Nolan stared at him for the longest while. “That’s your story.”
“That’s my story.”
“You better hope McCoy pulls through to verify what you just told me.”
“I hope he pulls through, no matter what.”
“Just the right tone of sincerity. It might work. I think you might actually get away with this.”
“I’m not getting away with anything,” Coltrane said. “That son of a bitch shot McCoy. If not for me, McCoy would have died out here.”
“If not for you, my friend, McCoy wouldn’t have been here at all.”
Coltrane didn’t have an answer for that.
The state police lieutenant interrupted. “We’re going to have to take you back to headquarters and get your statement.”
Coltrane nodded. “Can I have a minute to talk to . . .” He pointed toward Jennifer, who was glancing around in dismay, totally disoriented.
The lieutenant didn’t look happy. “I don’t want you talking to anybody who isn’t associated with this investigation—not until we’re finished. If she’s involved in this, you’re not the only one who wants to talk to her.”
The next thing, Coltrane was getting into one cruiser and a policeman was escorting Jennifer to another. The vehicles, followed by Nolan’s, struggled up the muddy slope, tires slipping, drizzle glistening in the gleam of headlights.
3
A T 2:00 A . M ., after five hours of questions, the state police finally told Coltrane that he could go home. “But keep us informed about anyplace you might be, and don’t leave the Los Angeles area.”
They had replaced Coltrane’s soaked, filthy, blood-covered clothes with a pair of coveralls.
“I’ll get these back to you,” he said.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity. You’ll be seeing us often enough.”
Outside the interrogation room, Coltrane found Jennifer on a wooden bench in the hallway. Her short blond hair, still wet from the rain, was pressed against her head. Her discouraged gaze was directed toward the gray-tiled floor. She glanced up and barely nodded as he came out.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yeah, they told me it would be okay.” Dejected, Jennifer stood. “Sergeant Nolan’s around here somewhere. He said he’d give us a ride back to Los Angeles . . . Mitch . . .”
“What?”
“Why in God’s name did you . . .”
Nolan came down the hallway.
Most of the hour drive back was in silence.
“You’re lucky. They told me they’re probably going to buy what you’re selling,” Nolan finally said.
“I’m not selling anything.”
“As long as McCoy backs you up, which you’re lucky about also, because the word from the hospital is that he’s going to pull through.”
Thank heaven, Coltrane thought.
“Of course, you’ll still have to convince the grand jury,” Nolan said. “But for the time being, you’ve got a break from the state police. Not you and I, though. We’re not finished. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d take you over to the Threat Management office right now. Tomorrow, you’re going to come over and explain to me why you think you’re so damned much better than me that you can jerk me around.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Save it for tomorrow.”
“There’s something I have to do first. After that, I’m all yours.”
“Something you have to do? Put it off. Believe me, there’s nothing more important than—”
“Yes, there is. Daniel’s funeral.”
The car became silent again.
“Yeah, go to the funeral,” Nolan said. “I’ll see you there. Greg’s is the day after. I’ll see you there, too. Not that there’s anything left of Greg to bury.”
“My grandparents’ funeral will probably be the day after that.”
“Maybe we ought to give you a medal for shooting the son of a bitch.”
They drove another mile in silence.
“Where do I drop you? Your place or Packard’s?” Nolan asked.
“The airport.”
Nolan visibly tensed. “You’re not supposed to leave the area.”
“The America West parking garage. I left my car there Saturday night.”
In the middle of the night, the access to the airport was almost deserted. Nolan stopped outside the parking garage.
Coltrane opened his door. “I’ll meet you at your office at four.”
“I know you will.”
Coltrane waited for Jennifer to get out with him.
She didn’t.
“Something the matter?” Coltrane asked.
“Sergeant, since we’re in the neighborhood, would you take me to my apartment in Marina del Rey?”
Nolan frowned toward her and then at Coltrane.
4
A T ALMOST 4:00 A . M ., Coltrane’s street was quiet, his Westwood town house in darkness. His headlights reflected off puddles. Reluctant to be closed in by the garage, he parked at the curb and climbed the wet steps to his concrete patio. The air was cool enough to make him shiver. He kept telling himself that Ilkovic was really dead, that the police had checked his town house for explosives, that he had nothing to be afraid of. All the same, as he inserted his key in the front door, he felt uneasy.
He reached inside and flicked a light switch, illuminating the living room before he entered. The furniture was in disarray from the bomb squad’s search, but the disorder that troubled him was the empty bottle of chardonnay on the coffee table, as well as three wineglasses, two of them half-full, on the counter next to the telephone. They were from Saturday afternoon, when he had celebrated with Jennifer and Daniel, showing them his photographs—just before Ilkovic’s phone call had forced them to set down their glasses. Saturday afternoon. It seemed impossible that Daniel had been killed since then.
Coltrane locked the door and stepped hesitantly toward one of the wineglasses, the one that was empty, remembering that Daniel had finished his before he and Jennifer finished theirs. The once-sparkly glass had a film of dried liquid. Reverentially, Coltrane picked it up, careful not to touch Daniel’s faintly visible fingerprints. He stared at them for the l
ongest time. At last, he set down the glass, went to a cupboard in the kitchen, pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey, and drank three long swallows straight from the bottle’s mouth. Gasping, he set it down, the fire in his throat and stomach not strong enough to distract him from his emotions.
He climbed the stairs to his bedroom, which was also in disarray because of the bomb squad. After stripping off the coveralls, he went into the bathroom and took the longest shower he could ever recall, repeatedly soaping his hair and body, rinsing, soaping, scouring himself, trying to rid himself of the lingering feel of death. Despite the bruises on his legs, chest, and arms, he toweled himself roughly until his skin was raw. He had come here to get extra clothes and other things he would need for Packard’s house. But all of a sudden he felt too exhausted to go there. He stripped the covers from the bed, intensely aware that Ilkovic had been in this room and touched them. He dragged a sheet and blanket from a hallway closet and spread them over the bare mattress. He programmed his bedside clock to wake him at 9:00 A . M ., turned off the lights, crawled wearily between the sheet and the blanket, and tried to sleep.
5
T HE JANGLE OF THE TELEPHONE ROUSED HIM FROM A RESTLESS , anxious semiconsciousness in which arms seemed to squeeze his chest and rain had the color of blood. Dazed, he directed his bleary vision toward the bedside clock. A little after six. He decided it must be Jennifer or Nolan or the state police.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Coltrane?”
Coltrane didn’t recognize the voice. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m a reporter for the L.A. Times. I’d like to—”
No sooner had Coltrane hung up than the phone rang again.
The next reporter was from the Associated Press. Coltrane unplugged the phone in the bedroom, but the phone downstairs rang almost immediately, and by the time Coltrane got downstairs to unplug that one, he heard a man’s voice on the answering machine identifying himself as a reporter for Newsweek, asking him to describe details about—
Coltrane pulled the plug.
He knew what was coming. Fighting his cramped muscles and his exhaustion, he hurried upstairs, put on a navy blazer and gray slacks, packed two suitcases with clothes, slung a camera bag over his shoulder, and managed to get outside, to drive away a few seconds before a TV news truck sped past him. In his rearview mirror, he saw it pull up in front of his town house.
There were three TV news trucks at the church in Burbank when he got there a little before one. Keeping a distance from each other, identical-looking, attractive, stern-eyed women wearing business suits spoke into microphones, their backs to the church while cameramen recorded the mourners filing in. Coltrane couldn’t help wondering if any photographs he had taken had ever interfered with someone’s grief. Now he knew what it felt like to be on the other side. After parking his car in a lot behind the church, he debated whether to risk going in, then decided that the TV news team couldn’t know what he looked like—to the best of his knowledge, no photograph of him had ever been published.
So he took the chance. Jennifer was already in the church when he entered. She wore a black dress and veil. The latter didn’t quite conceal how weary her features were. Sitting next to her, apparently surprising her, Coltrane nodded. She nodded somberly back, looked as if she was about to say something, then turned toward the pallbearers carrying Daniel’s coffin down the center aisle toward the altar. Daniel’s ex-wife, supported by an elderly man who might have been her father, sobbed and followed the coffin, her footsteps unsteady. After the coffin was set on a bier and Daniel’s ex-wife took her place in a front pew, a priest accompanied by altar boys came out to begin the Mass for the Dead. Coltrane couldn’t help remembering the mournful classical music that Ilkovic had repeatedly left on his answering machine: Verdi’s Requiem.
The day of wrath, the day of anger,
will dissolve the world in ashes. . . .
How horrid a trembling there will be
when the judge appears
and all things are scattered.
Well, Ilkovic, damn you, you’re the one being judged now.
The priest gave a eulogy in which he alluded to Milton’s Paradise Lost and how one of the hardest acts of faith was to justify God’s ways to human beings. “When something this incomprehensible occurs, we find ourselves powerless and adrift. What kind of God would permit such savagery? What kind of universe presents the conditions in which something this horrid can happen? We are tested to our utmost limits. Tested,” the priest emphasized. “If we are to persevere, we must not turn our backs on God. We must not turn our backs on the world. What we must hate and turn our backs on is the evil that we were put on earth to overcome.”
Turn our backs? Coltrane thought. I don’t think so. Daniel, I got even for you.
After the service, Coltrane accompanied Jennifer from the church. “Can you wait here a minute?” He went over to Daniel’s ex-wife, embraced her, and explained how sorry he was. Perhaps on medication, she didn’t seem to hear. Nolan, who evidently had been in the back of the church, watched from the side of the steps. After exchanging glances with him, Coltrane made his way back through the mourners, most of whom he recognized from various times when he had visited Daniel at the hospital.
“Are you okay?” he asked Jennifer.
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” Coltrane said.
“For what? You didn’t kill Daniel.”
“For what you had to go through.”
“What I’m sorry about,” Jennifer said, “is that you didn’t tell me what you were planning to do. You shut me out.”
“I didn’t want to put you in danger.”
“You still shut me out. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me what you were doing. You treated me like a stranger. But you’re a stranger. I would never have believed you were capable of . . .”
Coltrane glanced away, self-conscious.
“I’m a stranger to myself,” Jennifer said.
“What do you mean?”
“That argument we had about guns. Now that Ilkovic is dead, I feel like a coward.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wish I’d had the chance to blow the bastard’s head off.”
Coltrane was shocked.
“I’ve never been this confused,” Jennifer said.
Coltrane touched her arm. “After we go to the grave site, do you want to get some lunch and talk about it?”
“No.”
“You want a little time alone?”
“Yes. These past few days, we’ve been together a lot. Sometimes it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Different, huh? Me wanting to be alone?”
Coltrane spread his hands in a gesture of futility. Abruptly he was distracted by a commotion at the edge of the crowd. Evidently someone had identified him to the news teams, because they were swarming in his direction.
Pursued by cameramen, he barely reached the parking lot ahead of them.
6
F IFTEEN MINUTES FROM THE CEMETERY , Coltrane swerved into yet another narrow alley, checking his rearview mirror, satisfying himself that the TV news trucks no longer followed him.
He drove to where he had waited throughout the morning until it was time to go to Daniel’s funeral, to where he felt confident that the news teams wouldn’t be able to find him—because Ilkovic hadn’t been able to find him there. In the maze of streets in the Hollywood Hills, cresting a tree-lined slope, he peered down at his sanctuary. After everything he had been through, the house’s castlelike appearance made him feel secure. The green-tinted copper on the garage door reminded him even more of a fortress, as did the two upper levels, each with a parapet.
Because the garage door’s remote control was in the disabled rental car that he had abandoned the night before, he parked at the curb. It was an odd sensation to feel free to leave his vehicle in the open and not be afraid that someone would try to kill him. Exhausted, he secured the front door behind him, peered
up the stairs toward the sun-bright living room, then moved in the opposite direction, down toward the vault.
It was where he had gone when he had arrived earlier, where he had spent the morning waiting to go to Daniel’s funeral. After what he had been through, the vault no longer seemed repellent. Indeed, he wondered why it had ever seemed that way to begin with. Needing something to occupy him, he knew without doubt what that something would be. Determined to shut out his nightmares, he unlocked the vault and passed the gray metal shelves, reaching the far left corner. The glaring overhead lights no longer seemed harsh. The fifty-five-degree air no longer made him shiver. The concrete walls no longer seemed to close in on him. He reached toward the back of the shelving, freed the catches on each side, and pulled out the wall.
Again, the incredibly beautiful face gazed out at him. The vault’s light spilled into the hidden chamber, casting a glow over the picture, making the woman seem alive. He stepped closer, admiring the perfect geometry of her face, the elegant chin, curved lips, high cheeks, and almond-shaped eyes. Her lush black hair framed her features alluringly. Her brilliant white shawl made her dark eyes magical.
His mouth dry, Coltrane picked up one of the boxes and carried it out to the shelves. After removing the lid, he carefully took out one eight-by-ten photograph after another, studying them, setting them along the shelves, picking up new ones. He lingered over a close-up in which her eyes gazed so directly into his that she gave the allusion of being in the present. He couldn’t tell what filled him with greater awe: Packard’s genius or his subject. He had never seen any woman so entrancing.
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