“You’re sure he hasn’t tried to reach you?”
Cannon pursed her lips angrily. “I said no.”
“Would you tell me if he had?”
This time, her eyes dropped away. No, she might not tell me—which meant I couldn’t believe a word she said. “I wouldn’t want him . . . to hurt anyone else. If he did those things . . .”
“You have doubts?”
Cannon sat down in the plush editor’s chair, pushing herself away from me to a monitor farther down the counter. She looked up at me with red eyes. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal I can’t imagine, but put yourself in my place. I knew that man for ten years, and for three of them, we talked about having a baby, raising a . . . family.” She stopped herself from sobbing, pressing her fist to her mouth. “He had a temper. He yelled. He pushed me once—and we went to counseling. I never saw anything in him that matches what the FBI is saying.”
“The evidence in his boat? His laptop?”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it,” Cannon said. “I feel terrible for those women, for those families. For you. But if you had showed up here to try to convince me it was all a mistake, all lies, don’t you think I could accept that a lot better? I knew a different man. I was hoping you . . .” She didn’t finish, shaking her head. “Never mind. Are we done?”
“I understand that,” I said, purposely not answering her question. “The stories don’t match the man or the creative genius you knew.” I hoped to keep her talking.
“And he was, you know—he was a genius,” Cannon said. After hesitating, she rolled her chair back toward me to turn the monitor on so I could see Brittany’s terrified face. “What he was doing with Freaknik had never done before . . .”
She rolled the film, and Brittany’s scream filled the room as she backed herself against a Florida coral stone wall, genuinely terror-filled. If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have known she was acting. A monster in khakis lurched after her with his mouth open wide, teeth drooling blood. It took me a moment to realize that the monster was me.
“I wouldn’t try to release that.” If she did, I would sue to try to prevent it.
“Of course not. It would be in terrible taste. But I’m going to finish it with the footage we have . . . and maybe one day, people will see . . .” She shrugged and sighed. “It’s like what happened in Cuba. The walking dead? If Gus was that monster, he didn’t start out that way. Castro turned him that way. Do you know he saw his father shot to death right in front of him? His mother drowned on a raft trying to escape with him? Castro was the true monster.” Her voice shook.
I hadn’t known about Escobar’s mother. The biographies of Escobar floating on the internet had mentioned his father’s political assassination but not the drowning.
“His mother drowned?” I said.
“Yes, she drowned off of the coast of Miami trying to save him and his sister during a storm,” Cannon said. “The fiftieth anniversary of her death just passed. He was so distracted he could barely work.”
My heart sped. Despite one guest shot on Criminal Minds, I wasn’t an FBI profiler. But that did sound like a trigger for the accelerated pace of killings in Miami. “When was the anniversary?”
“About six weeks ago, on August 1. He cried in my arms like a little kid. He was very young when it happened, but he remembers. The idea that it was fifty years . . .”
“Was he in Miami on the anniversary?”
“Yes,” Cannon said. “We were doing last-minute scouting—” She stopped, as if she’d revealed something she shouldn’t have.
“You sound like you still want to protect him, Louise.”
“Actually, I was imagining him making excuses, sneaking out of our room to drown those women . . .” She rubbed her arms. “Isn’t that when the killings began?”
“It was.”
“Well, then. Stop trying to read my mind.”
I’d have cut off a finger to read her mind. Instead, I nodded. “Sorry.”
“Tell me why you’re really here.”
“A woman I knew and worked with has been murdered,” I said. “Evidence on the scene is pointing to me, and I didn’t do it. The only explanation I can think of is that someone very smart and very angry is trying to set me up. I only know one person that smart and angry, and there’s no proof he’s dead.”
“The Hollywood Madam,” Cannon said, realizing. “I heard. But I thought that was organized crime, some Russian connection.” At least Nelson had stood by his promise to keep my name out of the investigation. Temporarily.
“Serbian,” I corrected her. “It wasn’t.”
Unlike the police, Cannon didn’t ask me why Escobar would target Mother. She understood right away. “That’s horrible. But like I said, I haven’t heard from him.”
“I hope you’ll let me know if you do. My family might be in danger. My daughter.”
Cannon nodded, accepting. “Yes, they would be,” she said. “He held grudges. If it’s Gus . . . I don’t have to tell you there’s no end to his creativity. He was a practical joker, always surprising people. I would be very careful if I were you. You would never see him coming.”
Her voice was so dispassionate that it chilled me, as much a threat as a warning. Her eyes didn’t blink as she gazed at me. I saw a glimmer of madness.
I’d gained everything I could from Louise Cannon, the woman who might have known Gustavo Escobar best, so I thanked her and left her to the editing bay. After I closed the door, I heard Brittany Summers’s frantic scream as Cannon edited Escobar’s scene.
I usually pride myself on how well I read people. Cannon might not have known anything about Escobar’s violent past or his whereabouts, or she could have been harboring him right under her desk.
For once, I had no idea.
BY SIX O’CLOCK, Chela was sorry she’d stayed at the house by herself. The sun was still bright through the windows, but the day’s colors were shifting. The idea of night took Chela back to Miami Beach, flashing her images of Maria’s smile and Escobar’s horrible disguise.
Chela was ashamed of her panic, but she scurried from the doors to the windows to make sure they were locked. In the living room, she peeked through the blinds to see if the paparazzi vans were still outside, and she was disappointed to find the street empty. Ten had installed a new video camera to monitor the front door, but that wouldn’t protect her from Escobar.
Chela moved away from the window. A loud click when she walked past the kitchen made her jump. Her hand brushed against the Glock’s lump in the back of her jeans, ready to draw. She stood frozen in the hall until she remembered that the fridge was getting loud and cranky with age. When the fridge’s familiar whirring began, she exhaled and felt silly for her pulse pattering in her neck.
For the third time in ninety minutes, Chela pulled out her cell phone to call Bernard. He was still at work at Lionsgate, where he had an internship, but maybe his schedule had changed.
“Are you sure you can’t get off early?” she said when he answered, her voice hushed.
“What happened?” he said, instantly concerned.
I’m a loony jumping at my own shadow, she thought. “Nothing. I just . . .”
“Chela, I already told you—there’s a meeting tonight. I might not get out until seven or seven thirty, and then there’s the traffic from Santa Monica.” He didn’t sound irritated, exactly, but he’d told her he could get in trouble with his boss if she kept calling. “What about Ten?”
Her eyes swept the room for movement or shadows. Nothing stirred.
“He’s still with Little Miss Innocent, that freak’s girlfriend,” she said, disgusted anew by the idea of Louise Cannon letting Escobar touch her and tell her God knows what. A bad taste furred her tongue. “Never mind. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Bernard said. “Maybe you could call Ten’s girlfriend or—”
Chela rolled her eyes. “Thanks, but I’ll talk to you later,�
� she said, and clicked off.
She felt her temper rising—that anger phase again—and she didn’t want to take out her frustrations on Bernard. April wasn’t all bad, but what could that clueless princess do to help her against Escobar?
It was as though Gustavo Escobar had been chasing her through her whole life. Chela remembered having vivid nightmares after her mother left, when she was alone with Nana Bessie and her grandmother got sicker and sicker, coughing through the night. Nana Bessie’s wet coughs had sounded like death, growling to life in her room’s dark corners as if to claim them both. Chela had dreamed about the coughing and the shadowy death for years after she left Minnesota—until she moved into Mother’s.
Last night, for the first time in years, she’d had the dream again: a shapeless mass spilling from the shadows, reaching out to touch her. Ten had called to tell her Mother was dead when she was barely awake, as if it were a part of her dream. No wonder she was spooked. Even the living room looked ominous to her, with its walls covered in old movie posters and a parade of dead stars. Everywhere she looked, she saw dead faces.
Everyone died. Everyone. Life was a lie. A joke.
Chela considered camping in the living room to watch TV, but a glance toward the Captain’s half-open room door swamped her with sadness. She missed the sound of the news playing or the judge shows he’d liked so much. The living-room TV had been his, not hers. She could watch TV in her room with the door locked.
But as Chela walked toward the stairs, a sound above her froze her with her hand on the banister as soon as she clutched the polished wooden globe. It had sounded like a groan or a squeak, the sound of weight on wooden floorboards. Was someone upstairs?
Ten’s house had seemed like the perfect playland in the beginning, with its hidden rooms and custom-built doorways that were too tall or too short, like a funhouse. Ten said that the actress who owned the house was eccentric and had built it a piece at a time whenever she got money. But now, all Chela could think about was how some of the walk-in closets upstairs had entrances on two sides and how much room there was to crouch and hide in the linen closet and the vast space in the unexplored attic upstairs. The house felt like a trap.
Screw it.
Chela rushed to the wine racks and pulled open the narrow door to the safe room. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t be a baby and hide in there the whole time Ten was gone, especially since she’d been stuck in there for hours when she first met Ten because the cops searched his house. Cops always hassled Ten.
But they had never found her in the safe room, so Escobar might not, either. By the time Chela had locked the deadbolt, she was breathing fast, with tears in her eyes. She never used to cry, and now she cried all the time. Her whole face hurt. Everything hurt.
Was that a sound outside the door? Footsteps? Chela smothered a gasp in her throat.
Chela was about to dial Ten’s number when her iPhone vibrated in her hand. The screen said PRIVATE NUMBER, but she knew it was Ten’s new phone.
“What’s wrong?” Ten said. He must have heard her tears in her breathing.
“I’m—” Chela stopped, struggling with the pain of a simple word. Her sudden sob sounded like a Chihuahua’s pathetic bark. “I’m scared. I keep thinking I hear noises.”
“I’m ten minutes away. Are you hidden?”
“Yes.”
“Then stay that way. Don’t worry, Chela. I’m almost there.”
When Chela hung up, her sobs came harder and faster.
The depression stage had arrived, right on schedule.
WHEN I RETURNED home, an unmarked gray sedan was parked halfway down the block with two men inside pretending to read the newspaper. Classic stakeout pose. If I’d been tailed through the day, I’d missed the signs. I waved to the cops as I walked up my cactus-lined driveway, and the driver stuck his arm out the window to flip me his middle finger.
Fuck you, too, I thought in Mother’s voice. The extra eyes meant I was still a suspect in her murder, but I was glad those cops were there, if only for Chela’s sake. Until those detectives banged on my door to arrest me, I wasn’t in a position to be picky.
While Chela cooked up frozen Chinese stir-fry, I sat on the living-room sofa and stared at the blank TV screen, a mirror for my empty head. I couldn’t wait for Escobar’s next move—I had to plan mine—but I didn’t know where to begin. I’ve rarely felt paralysis like it.
I found myself thinking about one of my last outings with Alice, when she’d insisted on going whitewater rafting on the Rogue River outside of Portland. I didn’t know it then, but the excursion was probably on her bucket list. She never told me she was sick.
We’d had separate rafts, following the river’s powerful whims, and Alice had screamed with laughter at first. But as the afternoon wore on, each of us paddling furiously to steer clear of towering boulders while our guide shouted warnings, I noticed that Alice wasn’t smiling anymore. Her screams came without laughter. She wasn’t having fun, but there was no turning back. The river’s current only ran one way.
“Almost done!” I’d called to her, and she’d nodded like a little girl.
I had never been rafting, but I kept paddling even through the unexpected jolts by the current. As I’d watched Alice’s energy drain, I’d remembered how much older she was, and I’d wished I could paddle for her.
We turned one last bend, and the rushing water and bubbling white foam signaled strong currents ahead. I turned to glance beside my raft, and I’ll never forget the defeated, helpless look on Alice’s face. She’d pressed on with the promise of rest soon, but she hadn’t expected such a challenge before the end. Instead of digging in for the fight, she’d stopped paddling.
I shouted encouragement, but Alice’s raft whirled toward the first pair of large rocks as if she’d been tethered to them. By the time she started paddling with fervor, her raft had flipped.
One of the guides jumped in to help her before I could steer my raft anywhere close to her. The water was shallow, and we were wearing life preservers, so Alice only suffered plugged ears and a scraped elbow. But whatever lesson she’d hoped to learn on the rapids that day, the rocks had won the battle. The rocks had convinced her that she was too old, or that she wasn’t strong enough, or some other unspoken message. I saw Alice only two or three times after that incident. She was never the same. Two years later, I heard she was dead.
Maybe we all meet a boulder with our name on it one day. I knew the name on mine.
As Chela filled my house with thin smoke from her overcooked stir-fry, I understood why Alice’s shoulders had slumped and her face had lost its light. While Chela sat next to me on the sofa, flipping through TV channels, I dozed off, dreaming about the Rogue River rapids.
Dad was the person in the doomed raft beside me, so shrunken and frail.
Then Dad turned into April.
I woke up with a jolt. The room was dark except for the blue light from the TV screen showing a reality show I didn’t recognize. Chela was still sitting next to me, head bent as she played Angry Birds on her iPad.
“What?” she said, not looking up.
I checked the old-fashioned, silenced grandfather clock Alice had left standing in the corner. It was eight thirty. I’d slept for nearly ninety minutes, my longest stretch of sleep in a while, but I felt more tired than before.
Had I asked April to call me when she got home? I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t heard from her since I dropped her off at her car at Whole Foods. I’d been so busy trying to track down Louise Cannon that I hadn’t checked on April.
“Have you talked to April?” I asked Chela.
“Not since we dropped her off.”
I sat up and grabbed my phone from the coffee table. My call to April’s number went to voice mail without ringing. Her phone wasn’t on; that wasn’t like April at all. I told myself she was only on another call, probably for work, but I was considering other possibilities.
“It’s me,” I said to her vo
ice mail. “Call me as soon as you get this.”
My heart was pounding to life, and adrenaline drove sleep from my brain. Why had I sent her back home? Maybe I had been pushing her away.
I pulled my original cell phone out of the drawer where I’d buried it, plugging it in to charge. My voice mailbox had filled up two weeks before. My world had narrowed to only six people I wanted to hear from or talk to. I searched through the contacts on my old phone until I found the number for Nia, April’s roommate.
I held my breath until Nia picked up the phone on the fourth ring.
“Is April around?”
“I thought she was with you. I was about to remind her she’s supposed to give me a ride to work tomorrow,” Nia said, already wary. “What’s going on?”
I remembered racing up the stairs at the Fontainebleau. My heart pumped ice, but I kept my voice calm and told her to ask April to call me if she heard from her.
I went to my front stoop to check my mailbox, and I was relieved when I found only the usual junk. No cryptic message. I checked the video camera I’d mounted the day before to monitor the door and the the mailbox, and it had not been tampered with. Down the street, the unmarked car still spied on me.
I dialed April again. Nothing. I called her workplace extension, but that went to voice mail, too. April might be a dozen places. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. She might have decided to see a movie or to go out to dinner with someone. Chill, man, I told myself.
But I couldn’t.
“Come on,” I called to Chela. “I have to go out.” Cops outside or not, I wouldn’t leave Chela in the house alone after dark.
“Where are we going?”
“April’s house.”
Chela didn’t complain or ask me why. She looked up at me with perceptive eyes, grabbing her sweatshirt to face the cool night.
Chela usually commandeered the radio as soon as we climbed into any vehicle, breaking my Driver Is Deejay rule, but she made no move to turn on any music. I checked my rearview mirror; the gray sedan eased behind me, flipping on the headlights to follow at a leisurely distance. Chela turned to look over her shoulder, nervous when she noticed our tail.
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