‘At the restaurant?’
‘At the job. She wanted to meet them there. But she couldn’t get in. Had to hang around outside.’
Maddy could imagine that easily enough. Upscale functions in LA were always like that – a movie premiere after-party or a museum opening. When she was starting, she had done her share of standing outside those events, notebook in hand, on the wrong side of the rope line, hoping some bouncer would take a shine to her and let her sneak in. Back then she had a dress she used especially for those assignments, the only one she owned that was fancy enough.
‘So she met up with them outside the house or hotel or whatever it was. And then they went out?’
‘Yeah, for something to eat.’
‘I don’t know Amici. What kind of place is that?’
‘Nothing special. Pretty basic, kind of family, Italian place. Ideal for Rosie. She didn’t like to drink, didn’t like bars. The others did, especially the waitresses. But not Rosie. I’m guessing they only went there because everything else was full. You know how it gets round there.’
‘Round where?’
‘Down there, by the port. Terminal Island. That’s where the job was, the drinks reception. At the garrison. Brief thing, over by eight. But a big hassle getting in and out. Security and all that.’
‘The event was at the garrison?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t I say that? Annual thing they do, thanking the staff and all that. A gesture for the Chinese New Year.’
Chapter 21
Leo closed his office door, something he did only rarely. It wasn’t that he didn’t like having the door closed. In an ideal world, it would be closed all the time, allowing him to get on with his day in private. But, to his great regret, that was not the world of this campaign. As mayor of LA, Richard – sometimes Rick, never Dick – Berger had been a great advocate of the open-plan office. Yes, of course, he had his own separate quarters at City Hall on the third floor but, as an obliging LA Times headline had it, ‘My door is always open.’ The accompanying picture of him at his desk was taken through … an open door. As a former reporter, Leo knew that journalism could be a very literal business.
Most of the time, he didn’t mind obeying the Berger principles at campaign HQ. He understood the PR hit they’d take if someone weibed a snap of his door firmly shut. Besides, he didn’t think it hurt if the candy girls occasionally overheard him carpeting, menacing, cajoling and otherwise handling the California press corps. It would serve a double purpose: educating the younger cadres in the ways of the world and boosting his hard-won reputation as a player of political hardball.
The drawback came at moments like this, when he needed to have a discreet conversation on the telephone. It was now impossible to do that without announcing it first with a visible or audible click of the door. He might as well put out a sign.
He swivelled his chair so that he faced away from the door, in what he imagined was an extra precaution, adding a layer of soundproofing between himself and the outer office. He glanced down at his desk, spotting a Post-it he had missed: calls from reporters at Politico, Buzzfeed and the Sacramento Bee; one from his one-time mentor, Bill Doran, suggesting a drink ‘for old times’ sake’; another from the chair of the state Democratic party, saying he’d been approached by Ted Norman, his Republican opposite number, with a ‘proposal’, please call back. Nothing from Madison Webb.
Leo pushed the Post-it to one side, looked again at his phone and brought up the name of his contact at the LAPD. He stared at it a while, wondered about leaving it for another hour. Then pressed the button.
‘Long time no speak.’ In other contexts, a friendly enough opening. In this context, from Leo Harris, it was a declaration of disappointment likely to lead to further hostility.
‘Yeah, it’s been, like, at least two hours. I missed ya.’ Ya. You can take the cop out of New York …
‘Any news?’
‘What, since we spoke, like, a hundred minutes ago? Look, Leo. This is not easy, this case. The way—’
‘If we wanted easy, we’d never have gone into this line of work, now would we?’ offered Leo, giving no quarter. ‘We just want to know what’s up. Did we ask for anything more than that?’
‘It’s the same, Leo. We’ve got people working over that bar, studying the pictures, talking to everyone there: staff, johns, everyone. It takes time.’
‘I appreciate that. But what I—’
‘I tell ya what, though. We are definitively talking about a murder, that’s for sure.’
‘I don’t think that’s news, is it? We knew that, right?’
‘Sure, sure, Leo. Sure. But there were some, you know, doubters, put it like that.’
Leo leaned back, recalling the fragment of intel he’d picked up about the detective in charge, Barbara something. ‘So what’s made it definitive?’
‘Well, I hear we’ve checked out the pictures from the apartment building. You know, the girl’s.’
‘You mean, the victim’s? The apartment belonging to Ms Abigail Webb?’ Jeez, these people.
‘Yeah, exactly. We had an officer on it, came back with nothing. Rewound the tape, back and forth and could see nothing, no sign of the, uh, victim arriving home.’
‘OK.’
‘So Miller goes over there, sits down with the tape and goes over the same time. Also sees nothing. It’s just dark. There’s no light by the entrance to the apartment building, just one of those security lights, you know, motion sensitive or whatever?’ Whatevuh. ‘But Miller slows it down and notices something.’
‘Yes.’ Leo was becoming exasperated. The voice on the other end of the phone was enjoying this too much.
‘Get this. She sees that it’s a different kind of dark.’
‘What the hell’s that mean?’
‘There’s a change in the picture. Real subtle. But she watches it again and can see that, for eighteen and a half minutes, from 11:50 to 12:08 and thirty seconds, the picture is showing a pure black. The rest of the time, it’s like a very dark grey.’
‘Someone had cut the camera.’
‘Yes! How’d you know that? Someone tell you this already?’
‘I took a wild guess.’
‘Well. That’s exactly what happened.’ The air was seeping from the policeman’s balloon. But he soldiered on. ‘The camera had been cut. Miller goes over there, to the entrance. Gets the super to bring a step-ladder, ’cause she’s not tall, and right there, she starts inspecting the camera. She’s expecting the glass to be shattered, but it’s much better than that.’
‘Better?’
‘Neater. The lens and all that is OK, intact. But she feels around the back and she sees the wires had been cut. Real precise, like a real classy job. And taped up afterwards. You know, with black duct tape?’
‘So the feed started up again?’
‘You bet. Straight afterwards. So later on, through the night, anyone looked at those pictures, it was all back to normal. Saw people coming in and out. No one realized the camera had been fucked up till today.’
‘And that settles it?’
‘I’d say so, wouldn’t you? Camera was taken out at the exact time of death. That ain’t a coincidence in anyone’s book.’
‘OK,’ said Leo, now biting on a thumbnail.
‘And it means we’re dealing with someone skilful. Methodical.’
‘All right,’ said Leo, keen to end the call so that he could think about it, uninterrupted.
‘So you see. We’ve not been sitting around, picking our asses.’
‘I see that. We’re very grateful. Thanks.’
‘Oh, Leo? Before you go. When you say “we’re very grateful” and “we just want to know what’s up” and all that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I ask, who exactly we are? Is “we” you and the mayor’s office – or is we just you? Because it has been noticed downtown. Your interest in this case, I mean. Your intense interest, you might call it. Always wanting to kn
ow exactly what we’re doing, how close we’re getting to the killer. Is there something we should know, Leo? Is there something – somebody – you’re worried about here, somebody we should know about? And by we, I don’t mean me personally. I mean the homicide squad of the Los Angeles Police Department.’
Chapter 22
The explosions were going off at regular intervals now, flashes of light like white phosphorus bursting every few seconds, filling the sky. She knew it was not safe to drive in this situation, when the view was obscured, when the light was so bright. Experience taught her long ago that when a migraine was rolling in, like a storm thundering your way, the only safe option was to find somewhere dark and hide.
She found a turning near Olympic and pulled over, letting her head fall onto the steering wheel. Her brain was throbbing, rhythmically pushing itself against her skull. Was that the migraine or the thought now chasing its way around her neural system, gaining strength and force with each circuit?
Two’s a coincidence, two’s a coincidence. But she couldn’t dismiss it. Both Eveline and Rosario had spent their last hours close to the Chinese garrison. It probably meant nothing. Rosario hadn’t even been inside the base and had gone on somewhere else afterwards. Eveline too might have met her fate elsewhere, hours after she’d done her cleaning shift. And none of it had anything to do with Abigail. Yet still the thought wouldn’t leave her.
Another explosion, white and glowing. She wound down the window, noticing the glances of the few people walking along this side street, where the main attraction appeared to be a liquor store with an unlit neon sign and a torn awning. She took in deep gulps of air, hoping they would chase away the firestorm in her head.
Instead they seemed to make it worse, the oxygen feeding the flames. Now there was a loud, insistent clanging sound. She lifted her eyes, wondering if a fire truck had screamed its way into the street. But there was no sign of it. No police cars with sirens wailing either.
From the corner of her eye, she identified the source of the din. The screen on her phone was lit up, flashing a name. That infernal klaxon was no more than the sound of an incoming call.
She squinted to see a single word. Quincy.
There was no way she could pick up, not now. She watched it ring and ring, then divert to voicemail. Thirty seconds, then a minute passed before the device shook with the arrival of a message. That meant it was a long one. She could hardly face it.
She took more air, then finally pressed the button. Too soon, her older sister’s voice was filling the car, sending Maddy’s fingers straight to the volume button to turn it down. But she had caught enough to know the gist. I can’t believe you still haven’t seen or spoken to Mom. I despair of you, Maddy, I really do.
Maddy tried to look out of the window, needing the safety of middle distance. But the whiteness, the brightness was still overwhelming. And now the sickness was coming, the nausea rising in her throat.
She knew Quincy was right, but that didn’t help. It made it worse. She reached for the phone, determined to tell Quincy that she could go to hell. She pressed the button, her nerve endings standing stiff and ready as she heard the ringing sound, the white explosions still there but no disturbance now. If anything they added to her energy; they could serve as the soundtrack for the bombardment she was about to unload on her older sister.
Another ring and then another. Maddy cleared her throat and sat up straight, flicking the hair out of her eyes so that she could stare straight ahead. She was primed, an explosive device ready to go off.
And then the sound of voicemail, her older sister’s voice taut and, it struck Maddy now, full of false, tense jollity, the neurotic suburban woman desperate to convey domestic perfection: Hi there! I wish I could be there to take your call, but darn it, I can’t get to …
Maddy didn’t hear the rest because she had hurled the phone at full force across the car. It bounced off the vinyl surround and onto the floor, landing among the detritus of discarded soda cans, chewed pen tops and once-crucial notebooks.
She checked her watch and began to drive, cursing the futility of the gesture she had just made, not least because she needed to call Jessica, Abigail’s friend, if only to leave yet another message. As she pulled out onto the road, she told herself that her destination owed nothing to Quincy’s message and everything to the riddle left for her by the last movements of Eveline Plaats and Rosario Padilla, two women who had no connection with her family and whom she had never met.
To her enormous relief, there was no car parked outside. It would be just her and her mother. And Paola, the Mexican carer Quincy had hired four or five months ago. Maddy used her own key to let herself in, calling out softly as she eased the door open. ‘Mom? It’s me. Maddy.’
Paola called out, ‘’Allo. We in here.’
It sounded like dinner time. Four forty-five pm. Why on earth did her mother have to eat as if she were a child? The more they treated her this way, the more she would regress, Maddy was convinced of it. She felt a surge of resentment towards Quincy, pushing her mother ever further and faster down the slope of decline. But she could hear her sister’s inevitable reply: If you think I’m doing this so badly, then why don’t you take over and do it better. Be my guest.
Maddy advanced gingerly, not wanting to give her mother any surprises. In truth, she also needed the time to adjust to the sight of the faded, frail woman who had replaced her once-vibrant mother. At last she had come far enough to see her there, in her favourite armchair, a tray on her lap, Paola hovering close by. Thank God: she was holding a fork. Madison feared deeply the day she would walk in here and see her mother being fed like a child. It was one of the reasons she hated visiting, at least one of those she could admit to herself.
Maddy leaned in, gradually entering her mother’s field of vision: no sudden shocks. The older woman looked up slowly, her eyes taking in the visitor, assessing her clothes, her limbs, her face. The two of them shared a long moment of mutual panic, the mother fretting as she tried to place the child born to her some three decades earlier – and the daughter fearing that, this time, the task would prove beyond her.
‘Madison!’ she said at last, her face brightening as a wide, childlike smile spread. She was still lovely to look at, even now, dressed in her old-lady cardigan. Her skin was soft, her features elegant, her hair a well-maintained blend of ash, silver and blondes – credit to Quincy for that. Was that smile born of pleasure at seeing her or relief that she’d been able to place the name? Maddy could not be certain, but the smile warmed her all the same.
‘Hello, Mom,’ she said, bending down to kiss her cheek. It was soft, though missing the fragrance Maddy had expected and, frankly, wanted. If her mother couldn’t be the way she used to be, at least she might smell the same. She would have a word with Paola.
‘You want private time?’
Paola moved a chair, gestured for Maddy to take off her coat, to sit a while. ‘You have private time.’
Madison did as she was told, watching as Paola made herself busy elsewhere, wielding a cloth, popping in and out.
‘So how are you, Mom?’ She realized she had no idea what to say or what tone to strike. How aware was her mother of Abigail’s death? ‘You look good.’
‘You don’t,’ her mother replied, not unkindly. It was a statement of fact. The doctors had warned her about this. We find disinhibition is one of the most common signs … ‘You look tired.’
‘I am tired, Mom. I’m real tired.’
‘You should sleep more.’
‘I know. But it’s hard. Especially now.’
Her mother let her fork idle on the plate. ‘It’s hard. Hard for you.’
‘Why is it hard for me, Mom?’ A small grenade of white light exploded in the rear of her brain, somewhere behind her left ear.
Her mother took a while to answer, as if considering the question from all angles. Her eyes stayed fixed on the plate, the fork skating around, gliding through the gravy, leavin
g a trail that vanished almost immediately. ‘Because … you know,’ she said eventually.
Another explosion of phosphorus. ‘Harder for you, Mom. All of it.’
‘No,’ her mother said, looking up at last. ‘Harder for you.’
Maddy met her mother’s gaze, unsure what to say. The three words lingered in the air, like a trace of old perfume. Was her mom just echoing back what Maddy had said, making the sounds without understanding their meaning? The doctors said that could happen. Or had her mother dredged up a memory, pulling it out of the swamp of her dementia, a rare moment of clarity induced – who knows – by the shock of losing her youngest daughter? And if it was a memory, was she referring to something specific? If so, was it the obvious? Because … you know.
Her mother spoke again, with a sentence that seemed to break through Maddy’s hide, the thick layer of exhaustion and experience that had accreted over the years, and pierce her heart. ‘You’re the best of them,’ she said plainly, as if it were a simple statement of fact. ‘You’re the best. You’re the strongest. You always were.’
At that, perhaps the most coherent sentence her mother had managed in months, Maddy felt a pricking behind her eyes. An instant later, she realized her cheeks were wet and her nose was running. She was finding it hard to see, her eyes blurred by tears, like a camera lens in the rain.
Her mother spoke again. Or rather she made to speak, readying her mouth for words, but then stopped herself. She placed a single finger over her lips. ‘Shhhh.’ She smiled and repeated the action. ‘Shhhh.’ Another smile. ‘You see, “Never tell a secret.”’
‘What secret, Mama?’ Maddy asked, her voice tremulous.
Her mother hushed herself once more. ‘Shhhh.’
‘That’s good,’ Maddy said. ‘We’ll never tell, will we?’ With Abigail gone, the question had gained a new intensity.
Her mother repeated the sound. ‘Shhhh.’
Maddy wanted to say more, but she couldn’t. Her voice wouldn’t let her; her shoulders were shaking. So she reached for her mother’s free hand and held it. It was warm and soft, the skin thinner than she remembered, but still so familiar.
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