by P. J. Tracy
Five o’clock at Sushi Roku. Goodbye, Sam.
“We haven’t found her phone. We’re waiting on the subpoena for the records.”
“Was it a robbery, then? A home invasion?” God, he sounded so calm and rational and not remotely on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Way to go, Sam. Dr. Frolich would be so proud.
“We’re looking into everything. We do know she never made it to work.”
“She told me she had the morning off and planned to go in at noon.”
Nolan and Crawford both made notes, building their timeline. They asked dozens of more questions but never mentioned a second victim, and maybe that was by design. A test. To the cops, a dead lover would paint a dream scenario implicating him. There would be no evidence to support it, but his fingerprints were probably still all over the house, he’d been there last week to help her move an armoire. He also didn’t have an alibi for the two hours he’d spent lifting weights and running, something that pricked up Crawford’s ears. It was all just enough to make his life a living hell, more than it already was.
The truth—something he was intent on evading lately—was the only hope they would have of finding Yuki’s killer, and he really didn’t give a shit about anything else. Funny, the detectives would be the only two people he’d told at least one whole truth to in several months.
He looked at the bottle of water he was holding and tried to find a memory of where it had come from. “Do you have any leads?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Was Yuki the only victim?”
Nolan frowned. “Yes. Why are you asking?”
“Then I think I know who killed her.”
Chapter Forty-one
TEDDY WAS SCRUTINIZING THE LEMON TREES he’d finally finished pruning. According to The Plant Whisperer, it would set more and bigger fruit next crop thanks to his efforts, even if he lost some this time. The fig was next, but he still had some additional research to do before he tackled that.
Melody had left for work, but he was keeping a close eye on her place. He’d asked her about the cops and she’d dismissed the query casually, like it was no big deal. But something bad was brewing, he could feel it, as deep as he could feel the surf. He wasn’t going let his guard down. He checked the street again for the black Jeep, then jiggled her doorknob to make sure it was locked. So far, so good.
He stretched his arms over his head and lifted his face to the sun. No wind today. Just as well, he was feeling a little beat up from his session at Zuma Beach yesterday. He settled into his lawn chair, put in earbuds, and cued up some Poke while he lit a sweet, chubby joint.
Melody had laughed at him when he’d asked her if she was Roxy Codone, but he knew better. He heard her playing riffs acoustically sometimes, saw her signature red Gibson SG propped in the corner of her living room. She was an underground LA treasure, and if some hodad came looking for her or tried to get into her place again, he’d take care of business.
He’d underestimated the potency of the Alaskan Thunder Fuck weed he’d recently procured because things got real fuzzy after that last, valiant thought, and then the fuzz turned to nothingness. When he finally jolted awake, he was still high. High as the sun in the sky.
He giggled at his inspired fragment of poetry, thinking it would be a great lyric for a new Poke song. And Roxy Codone would come up with a scalding riff to accompany it, a riff that would sear the paint off the walls. She knew about being high.
He let his head loll to the side, hearing angry, beautiful music bang inside his head, but when he saw Melody’s door hanging wide open, he bolted out of his chair. He felt adrenaline sizzling through his veins, sweat popping on his forehead. Some goddamned sentinel he’d been.
“Mellie?” he called, creeping forward on rubbery legs. “Mellie?”
He reeled back and fell on his ass when a flash of blue burst out the door. “Jim,” he said, his voice trembling. “You little shit.” He pushed himself up. “Mellie? Are you home?”
No, she was at work. Which meant somebody else had been here. Might still be here. And then he heard laughter, or at least he thought he heard laughter, but he wasn’t sure because he was so fucked up. He stared at the open door and dozens of slasher films stuttered through his mind. People were always getting ripped up as soon as they investigated something or went through a door.
But that was stupid. This wasn’t a B-horror flick, and he wasn’t a coward. Steeling himself, he walked into her apartment, bold as you please, no worries here. No boogey man, no guy in a hockey mask with a knife. Nothing seemed out of place except for the piles of empty peanut shells on the kitchen floor. Jim had been partying in an epic way. Rock on, dude.
There was no sign the door had been tampered with, but it had been locked. He was sure he’d checked it before he’d baked himself into a coma.
Are you sure?
Well, no, he wasn’t entirely sure, but pretty sure. Teddy felt bad about searching the rest of the apartment without Melody here, but he was the caretaker, and what if something bad had happened when he’d been zoning out in his lawn chair? He walked quietly, cautiously, from room to room, terrified of what he might find behind the next door, but the place was empty and seemed untouched. In her bedroom were two dozen red roses in a clear vase, the ones somebody had snuck in to leave. Bad shit brewing here, no doubt.
He came back down the hall and saw the Gibson still in the corner, the only thing worth stealing. Not robbers. Who, then? Mellie needed a security system, like, right now, one with multiple cameras she could check from her phone. He was going to hook her up with one on the cheap. He knew a guy.
He ran to the window when he heard the screech of tires and saw a flash of black charging down Centinela. He hadn’t gotten a good look, but he had a bad feeling it was the Jeep Rubicon. Of course, he was paranoid as hell, maybe it was just the Alaskan Thunder Fuck messing with his mind.
He fumbled for his phone and called Melody, but she didn’t answer. Same with Sam. He thought about calling the cops, but he didn’t know what kind of business Melody had with them already. Maybe cops at her place again was the last thing she needed. Besides, in his condition, they wouldn’t take anything he said seriously.
But this was an emergency, wasn’t it?
He looked up Pearl Club’s number and called the main line. A woman who identified herself as Ashley answered. Before he could speak, he felt something hard come down on the back of his head. Stars blossomed behind his eyelids and then slowly faded.
Chapter Forty-two
SAM WAS STARING AT HIS COMPUTER monitor, feeling claustrophobic with Nolan and Crawford breathing down his neck. He was paging through the website of Deaton Graphics in Seattle, the place where Yuki’s dream job was. Now it would become somebody else’s dream job.
The employees all had professional head shots and brief bios under the About Us tab. The detectives had been intrigued by his idea that her dream job might also include a dream man, arguably the last person to see her alive, but they were getting impatient. At least Crawford was.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No, but there are a lot of employees.”
“Are you sure you saw somebody, Mr. Easton? It was early and, personally, I don’t think or see so straight at five forty-five myself. It was also dark.”
Sam hesitated, thinking of the hallucinations, the paranoia, the dreams, the interactions between alcohol and medication that Dr. Frolich was always warning him about. “I’m positive, Detective Crawford,” he finally said. “The porch light was on and I can identify him.”
“You’re focused on somebody out of Seattle, but the man you saw could have been anyone. Someone local makes more sense.”
Sam ignored his subtle assaults on his mental competency and kept scrolling down the column of smiling faces that constituted one of the brightest young design firms in the country. “To you, maybe, but I knew her better than either of you. It was the way Yuki talked about the job and how she cried
when she told me about it.”
“So you suspected something at that time.”
“No.”
“Subconsciously, maybe? You just said her reaction was strange.”
“I never suspected Yuki of infidelity, but I saw a man on her porch this morning, and now she’s dead and I didn’t do it.”
Nolan spoke quietly to her partner. “Go check in, see where Crime Scene is at with things.”
Crawford grunted and left the room, and Sam decided there was no better time to start asking more of his own questions now that he was alone with the good cop. But he couldn’t look at her because she’d witness his pain, and that seemed unbearable. “I need to see her. When can I see her?”
“Let me speak with the medical examiner and see when he’s planning the autopsy.”
He closed his eyes. Of course there would be an autopsy. The thought sent bile crawling up his throat, but he had nothing left to vomit.
Identifying her body would make this real. Right now, he could cling to the faint hope that this was another nightmare and soon he would wake up. Another unhealthy delusion to add to the others accumulating like dust in the crawl space of his psyche. “Do you think Yuki’s murder and Ryan’s are connected?”
“Is there a reason they might be?”
“I can’t think of one, but I’m a common denominator in both.”
“By that line of reasoning, so is Ms. Traeger.”
“Right. But I’m a terrific suspect in Yuki’s murder, I have to be. I was her husband and I just found out she was unfaithful.”
“You’re a person of interest. Mr. Easton, this is a homicide investigation. Everybody is on our radar until they’re not. We look at everything.”
“Detective Crawford wants me for this, and maybe you do, too. It’s fundamental logic, isn’t it? Cheating wives get killed by their husbands. I know the statistics.”
“Facts are the only things that matter.”
“Why kill the person you love instead of the person who took them away from you?”
“That happens, too.”
“I didn’t kill my wife, Detective. After two tours in battle, I won’t even kill a spider. But somebody else who doesn’t have the same reverence for life I have murdered my wife. Find him. Please find him.”
“We will find him.”
Sam finally risked a glance at her. She was looking at him sympathetically but without pity, and it seemed strange to Sam that eyes so cold in color could impart emotion. “I’ve been in her house. I helped her move some furniture last week. My fingerprints are probably everywhere.”
Nolan shifted on her feet. He noticed she was wearing very sensible shoes, just in case she had to chase after a fleeing suspect or scale the Hollywood sign in hot pursuit of a killer. “Let us focus on the details of the crime scene. You focus on this man you saw.”
Sam nodded and returned his attention to his monitor, scrolling through unfamiliar faces on the Deaton website. The wall clock ticked away the passage of time. Nolan’s busy phone occupied her. His finger froze on his mouse when he saw the headshot of Dawson Lightner. A pretty boy with an East Coast pedigree and education. Vice President of the Art Department and Chief Cuckold Maker. “That’s him. That’s the man I saw.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Nolan’s demeanor changed from grave to anxious, eager to follow a new lead. She scrawled down some notes. “We’ll check him out.”
“Did you notify Yuki’s mother yet?”
“We’ll be going there next.”
“She’s her only living relative. In this country.”
“Thanks for letting me know. Would you like to call her first?”
Sam thought about the charming Mrs. Saito, her husband long gone and now her only child. He didn’t know her well. The language barrier had always been an impediment to forming any substantive bond. But she had respect for authority figures—maybe not a lot for him anymore because he’d come back from war all fucked up and made her daughter’s life so impossible that she’d had to move out. “It’s probably best you talk to her first. She’ll have a lot of questions I can’t answer. You probably can’t answer them either, but … well, she’d appreciate an official visit from the police.”
Nolan’s face softened and she tipped her head in understanding. The sunlight from the living room window exposed streaks of brown in her right eye. “Of course. Do you have someone you can call, Mr. Easton, someone who can be here for you?”
Melody? His mother? Dr. Frolich? Rolf? He had a veritable rogue’s gallery of support. “I do.”
“Take care. We’ll be in touch. You have my card. Contact me immediately if you think of anything else or just need to talk. Nobody should be alone at a time like this.”
“Thank you.”
“And please stay local for the time being.”
“As in don’t leave the state or the country?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds incredibly ominous.”
“It’s not. This is an active investigation, and we’d like you to be available to answer any questions that may come up, that’s all.” She stood and walked toward the door, then turned back. “Mr. Easton, if you did have something to do with your wife’s murder…”
“I didn’t.”
“Things would be better for you if you told me about it now.”
“I did not kill my wife.”
She fixed her gray eyes on him, then nodded and turned away. Sam accompanied her to the door, but she didn’t linger this time, didn’t even look back. The sun glanced off her hair, highlighting the strawberry in the blond.
He locked the door behind her, then went to the bedroom and opened the nightstand drawer—the Colt was lying there, just where he’d left it, an innocent piece of metal, meek and mild. Guns didn’t kill people, people killed people.
He took a deep, shaking breath and picked it up. His hands were slimy with sweat as he raised the muzzle to his nose. No smell of cordite from a freshly fired weapon, just the pungent scent of gun oil. He collapsed on the bed, his thoughts circumnavigating the suppressed fear and uncertainty that had driven him to examine his firearm.
I did not kill my wife.
Chapter Forty-three
“CHRIST ON A CRUTCH, IT’S LIKE a kiln in here,” Crawford grumbled as he cranked the sedan’s air-conditioning on high. “You could have parked in the shade—under that tree with the camouflage bark would have been good.”
Nolan looked at the pepper tree, its delicate silver leaves shimmying in the breeze. The branches draped and swayed gracefully, reminding her of ballerinas. With camouflage tights. “There was no shade when we got here, so stop grousing.”
“Like it or not, we have a double homicide now, even if they’re not connected in the end, and that’s plenty of reason to grouse.”
“Easton asked me if we thought they were.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, I just asked him another question. Do you really think they’re connected, Al?”
“They have to be. Things are looking pretty horseshit for Sam Easton right now. He’s still not clear for Gallagher now that one of his alibis is dead, and the unfaithful wife’s murder moves the needle in his direction big time.”
Nolan thought about what they knew now. Easton had been watching his wife’s house on the morning of her murder. He’d just discovered she was unfaithful, or maybe he’d known about it for a while. One of his witnesses for Gallagher’s murder was dead, and he had no one to alibi him for the time he’d been lifting weights at home today. All circumstantial, useless without physical evidence to connect him to the crime. But Crawford was right, things looked horseshit for Easton. “We don’t have any evidence on him yet, so it doesn’t matter how it looks.”
“Melody Traeger is supposedly his alibi for at least part of the morning.” Crawford let out a half-grunt, half-wheeze, heralding an allergy attack. “Funny how people they love end up dead and
they’re each other’s alibis.”
“How is that funny?”
“Not funny, funny. Funny, convenient.”
Nolan appreciated her partner’s suspicious mind, but it also annoyed her sometimes. He could go from zero to full-blown conspiracy faster than a Formula One car, and she sometimes wondered if he did it intentionally, just to see if he could get her legendary ire up. Long fuse, fast burn, he called it. But she wasn’t taking the bait this morning. “We’ll see. Did you take something for your allergies?”
“No.”
“You sound like a sick moose, take something.”
“An LA girl like you knows moose sounds?”
“I watch nature shows when I can’t sleep. You want a Benadryl? I have some in my purse.”
Crawford sighed morosely. “Can’t, it’ll put me to sleep. I’m wondering about this mystery man, too, Mags.”
“What are you wondering about him?”
“Like maybe he doesn’t exist. You saw Easton pause when I pushed him on it. He could have made up a perfect suspect to deflect attention. While we chase down a cipher, he’s going to bolt.”
“You were pushing him to confess he suspected an affair to support your assumption of guilt—and now suddenly you think there was no affair, no lover, and he killed his wife for … what? Fun? Make up your mind.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. There was an affair, and I think he knew about it before this morning. But I’m not sure he saw anybody.”
She tossed her notebook on his lap. “He says he saw this guy, Dawson Lightner, he ID’d him from the website. Check him out and we’ll go from there.”
Chapter Forty-four
DAWSON LIGHTNER WAS SLUMPED IN A chair in his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey, struggling to hold it together. Nolan was genuinely worried he was going to regurgitate his room service all over the nice carpet. From the looks of the remainders on the trolley, it had been salmon with some sort of vegetable medley, and she didn’t want to see it twice.