by Jan Burke
“He was a loner,” Carlson said, shrugging. “Afterward, we realized how much he had really held himself apart from others in the department.”
“So he had enemies — even before the kid’s death?”
“Not really. He was someone we were proud of,” Carlson said. “If you want to know why, take a look at his record.” He smiled smugly. “In fact, your wife seemed to be rather fond of him.”
“Is there something you’d like to come right out and say?”
“No, not at all,” Carlson said, quickly losing the smile. “She was a crime reporter then, and naturally she wrote about him. A lot. I’m sure she was devastated when you told her he was dead.”
“I haven’t told her.”
“I suppose Louise conveyed my level of concern about the sensitive—”
“Setting aside your dire warnings about discussing the case, I haven’t had the chance to talk to Irene today. She’s up in Sacramento, covering a political story. She won’t be home until tomorrow. But you were talking about Lefebvre — at least, I think that’s who you were talking about.”
Carlson went back to making his thinking noise, then abruptly said, “You don’t believe Lefebvre ever had the money. Why not?”
“He wasn’t a stupid man, right?”
“Not at all.”
“So, being a cop, he’d know you could trace his movements if he used his credit cards, right?”
“Certainly.”
“And so this man who supposedly has a half a million in cash, who knows you can put a trace on his credit cards, buys gas for a plane on one and only pulls forty-three bucks out to cover his other expenses during his great escape?”
“But if he hid the cash in Las Piernas—”
“He’s coming back here, where his face has already been on television and all over the newspapers?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“There’s no sign that he stopped off anywhere between here and that mountainside, right?”
“Right,” Carlson said. “We checked every possible landing strip in the local area. But we don’t really know when that airplane crashed, do we?”
“Not definitely, but the logbook and other indicators say it was the night he left town. No one saw him after that?”
Carlson shook his head.
“Even if he was dumb enough not to take all of the money with him,” Frank said, “he would have carried a couple hundred, don’t you think? How long can a man hide out on forty-three bucks? What’s he planning to do, write a book called How to Lie Low on Pennies a Day?”
“You mentioned the possibility of a confederate.”
“Same argument. Why does he take off with only forty-three dollars?”
“Perhaps he anticipated we would catch up with him, thought he might be questioned, and decided that this would make him appear to be innocent.”
Frank shrugged. “Even two hundred out of this rumored half-million would have looked innocent.”
Carlson had been frowning, but now a slow smile came over his face.
“What?” said Frank, mistrusting any of Carlson’s smiles.
“Read the files. The ones for Lefebvre and the Randolphs.”
“Lieutenant, just because — listen, he could have asked for a wire transfer to a foreign bank account. I’m just saying he didn’t have it with him, that’s all. After this beginning, I don’t think — I’m requesting that you put someone else on this case.”
“Your request is denied.”
“Shouldn’t this go to IAD?”
“We have discussed this with them. For the time being, this will proceed as a homicide investigation. Unfortunately, the two members of IAD who originally investigated the case have retired — and one is deceased.”
“Natural causes?”
“Yes,” Carlson said, narrowing his gaze. He apparently decided that Frank was not being flippant and continued. “Because all the current IAD investigators were involved in the Dane case, they will be assigning someone new to IAD to handle their part of the investigation — someone like yourself, who was not with the department at the time. Until then, you are in charge of investigating Detective Lefebvre’s death. Naturally, if you discover evidence implicating him — or any other member of this department — in wrongdoing, we will make that available to IAD.”
Carlson lifted the stack of files and held them out again. “Read these. If you still want someone else to take over the case — you may talk to Captain Bredloe on Monday morning with my blessing.”
“I may talk to him on Monday morning with or without it.” Frank took the files and walked out. He noticed that the other detectives had left. He sat down at his desk and locked the files away without looking at them, knowing Carlson was watching him.
Carlson stepped out of his office, locked it, and marched over to Frank, briefcase at his side, walking with his typical stiff-assed gait. What does this guy do to relax? Frank wondered. He pictured Carlson at home, practicing drills in the living room while his CD player blasted The Complete Works of John Philip Sousa.
“I don’t want to be accused of letting you walk into another situation without fair warning,” Carlson said. “So there’s something you should know before you step into the captain’s office on Monday.”
Frank stood, forcing Carlson to look up at him. “Oh?”
“There are times, Detective Harriman, when you fail to show me the level of respect you owe a superior.”
Frank didn’t answer.
“You’ve felt safe in doing so, because the captain has always been something of a protector of yours, hasn’t he? Perhaps you should know, then, that I’ve already told him you were my choice for the Lefebvre case. He said he was in complete agreement and asked me to give you the other cases as well.”
He turned on his heel and walked out.
Frank listened to the fading sound of Carlson’s soldierly footsteps on the old linoleum.
He glanced toward Bredloe’s office, sat back down at his desk, and unlocked it.
3
Sunday, July 9, 12:03 A.M.
Las Piernas
He pulled into his driveway, feeling tired and depressed. He never liked working on cases involving the murders of children. Adding a police commissioner and a homicide detective into the mix made this set of cases even less appealing. The cases were all cold; memories would be hazy. Physical evidence was an even bigger problem.
He looked at his watch. Irene had probably already gone to bed in her hotel room in Sacramento. He wished he had called her earlier, from work. He wanted to hear her voice, to listen to her talk of ordinary things.
As he stood on the porch, he was surprised to hear the dogs scratching at the inside of the front door. He had left the two of them in the care of his next-door neighbor; Jack usually kept them at his house whenever Frank and his wife were away. He hadn’t told Jack that he would be coming back early; Jack would have expected both Frank and Irene to be gone overnight. He wearily wondered what sort of havoc the mutts might have wreaked in the house while he was gone.
But although they greeted him warmly, the two dogs — a shepherd and a Lab mix adopted from the pound — didn’t act as if they had been cooped up all day. The cat was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean he was hiding — Cody had probably staked out a place on the bed. Not so long ago, Frank would have come home to an empty house. He smiled to himself, thinking that these were the least complicated strays Irene had brought into his life.
As he made his way down the hall, he saw that a light was on in the living room. His steps slowed — there was no way in hell he had left that light on.
The dogs passed him, trotting back without a care. He relaxed a little, then followed them.
He saw the cat first — the gray giant blinked at him from the armchair.
Then he saw his wife, asleep on the couch, and felt the tension that had been with him since that afternoon ease a little. He quietly moved closer.
She slept on
her side, a strand of her dark, straight hair falling over her face. She wore a short, silky, dark blue kimono — if her eyes had been open, he thought the color might have come close to matching them. The kimono fell about mid-thigh on her long, slender legs. He followed their curve and smiled to himself, seeing that this enticing ensemble was completed by a pair of everyday white cotton socks — a toe peeked out of a hole in the left one.
He moved closer still, until he was next to her. He wondered if he should call her name, so as not to startle her. He stayed silent.
She must have sensed his presence, though, because she opened her eyes and smiled drowsily up at him. “Surprise,” she said sleepily.
“Yes,” he said, gently brushing the strand of hair away. “When did you get in?”
She turned her face to his palm and kissed his hand. “About nine. Caught a late flight. I was trying to wait up for you.”
“How’d you know I’d be home tonight?”
“Ben called. I asked him if he wanted to leave a message, but he said he’d talk to you on Monday.”
“Hmm,” he said, bending to taste her mouth. She reached up to pull him closer, making the kiss longer, slower. He stroked his hand along the back of her leg, down to her ankle — and took a sock off.
She pulled away and said, “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The socks.” She was blushing. “My feet got cold. Real sexy, right?”
He was already pulling the second one off. “I’m the one with too many clothes on.”
“You’re right,” she said, reaching for his belt.
Just after dawn, he awoke with a start from a nightmare in which he was trapped in a small, vine-covered Cessna, unable to get out. Not even Lefebvre had been in such a situation, he knew, but the dream had disturbed him. He tried to fall asleep again, but his thoughts continued to turn to the cases. He watched the room lighten as he debated whether he should try to catch a little more sleep or just get up.
Irene stirred next to him. “Frank? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just a dream. Go back to sleep.”
But she turned to study his face and asked again, “What’s wrong?”
He hesitated, then said, “None of this goes to the newspaper, okay?”
She nodded.
“Do you remember a man named Lefebvre?”
Her eyes widened. “Phil Lefebvre?”
“Yes. Used to work Homicide.”
“Yes! Have they found him?”
Again he hesitated, mentally kicking himself for going about this wrong.
“He’s dead,” she said, reading his silence.
“Yes.”
He saw her look of dismay and said, “I’m sorry — I didn’t know you were close.”
“Not close, really. I don’t think anyone was close to Phil — well, I shouldn’t say that. He was just — intensely private.”
“But you liked him.”
“Yes. Better than anybody else I met in the PD in those days.” She was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I guess down deep, I hoped he was still alive. What happened to him?”
“His plane crashed in the San Bernardinos.”
“I thought they looked for it.”
“They did, but the wreckage of small planes that crash in remote areas isn’t always easy to see. I was talking to the NTSB investigator about it. She said they estimate that there are over one hundred and fifty missing small aircraft in the Sierra Nevada mountains alone.”
“To think that he’s been up there all this time…”
He felt her shudder and pulled her closer. After a moment, he asked, “Did you cover the story of his disappearance?”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “Not once he was accused — in absentia — of killing Seth Randolph.” She looked up at him. “You know about that?”
“I’m learning more. Carlson has assigned the Randolph cases to me.”
“Wow. That’s—” She mentally calculated. “Ten years ago. Why do you keep getting assigned to cold cases?”
He shrugged. “Everybody in Homicide has been handling old investigations lately. The murder rate is down.”
“I know, I know. We’ve run stories on it. Everyone’s arguing over where the credit for that should go.”
“I’m just saying that the department has more time to reinvestigate the old ones and we have more tools now — new technologies to help solve them.”
“But there are new cases — you and Pete just seem to be getting more than your fair share of the old ones.”
“You can probably guess why.”
“You’re getting them because you’ve been clearing them — you’re good at it.”
“We’ve been lucky with the DNA on a couple of them.”
“Save the humility for your speech at the department awards banquet.”
He laughed.
Her brows drew together. “You don’t get these cases because you’re good at them, right? You get them because Carlson wants you to fail.”
“If that’s true, this time he’ll get what he wants. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be working a ten-year-old case in which all the physical evidence has been stolen — and apparently ninety percent of the department has a personal ax to grind with the alleged thief.”
“Lefebvre didn’t steal it.”
“I’m not saying he did — but what makes you so sure he didn’t?”
“It wasn’t like him. Totally unlike him. Except for flying that plane, the guy had no life outside of the department.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know him that well.”
“That’s not what I meant. We were friends, and I knew things about him, but I didn’t know him. No — don’t give me that look. What I mean is, Phil was one of those guys you could never really get to know. If you followed him around all day, day after day, you might get some idea of how his mind worked, and know that he was absolutely devoted to his job, or begin to see this — this sort of quiet sense of humor he had. But you would never get a word out of him about his past, or learn if he had the hots for someone, or much of anything else about the man underneath all of that.”
He was silent, thinking over what she had said, when she added, “There were two times when he seemed really happy to me and when I actually thought, ‘He does think of me as a friend, because he’s letting me in on this.’ Once, when he took me flying.”
“Oh, Christ — you went up in that little Cessna with him?” He thought of the wreckage he had seen — of both pilot and plane — and felt his stomach clench.
She bristled at his tone, then seemed to realize the direction of his thoughts. “I know you’ve just seen the worst possible results of being in that plane, but, Frank, I swear to you, he was a terrific pilot. He flew in the military and had lots of hours flying solo in that Cessna. He was careful, and safety conscious. He wasn’t a hot dog.” She paused, then said, “I got to know Phil when I was caring for my dad — when I was first starting to realize that my dad wasn’t going to recover from the cancer. I had some really rough days with that, and on one of those, I ran into Phil. It was one of his rare days off. He took one look at me and said, ‘Meet me at the airport.’ And he took me up. It was great. He was so in love with flying, it was contagious.”
“So — do I want to know about the other time you saw him happy?”
She hit him with her pillow. “You’re as bad as Vince Adams and those other clowns in Homicide.”
“I am one of the other ‘clowns,’ remember?”
“No, you are not. Vince was always so sure that I had something going on with Phil. He made remarks. It was bullshit, but it pissed me off — you know what I think Vince’s problem is?”
“Forget about Vince. Tell me about this other time Lefebvre was happy.”
She fell silent, all the fight of the moment before draining away. “The only other time,” she said quietly, “was at the hospital. He had waited there for hours while they operated
on Seth Randolph. After that, he kept waiting — the doctors weren’t sure the kid was going to pull through, but Phil never left his side. At first I thought it was Phil’s dedication to the job. You know — if Seth came around, he wanted to be there to ask questions. Anyway, I was there when the doctor told him that he thought Seth was going to live. He was so happy — I was there, Frank, and I saw his face. I saw how he looked when the doctor said that. Lefebvre didn’t want that boy to die, and he never could have murdered him. Whoever says that is full of crap.”
“Maybe something changed—”
“I was there,” she repeated. “I don’t know why Seth was so important to him, but if you had seen them together, you’d be as certain as I am that Phil Lefebvre would never have hurt him, let alone kill him.”
“Is that the position the Express took?” he asked.
“No. I was pulled off those stories. John Walters was news editor then, and he thought I was too close to Phil to be objective. It made me madder than hell, but around that same time my dad took a turn for the worse — to be honest, I was too busy with him to think of anything else.”
“When was the last time you saw Lefebvre?”
“The day he left town.” She frowned. “Was that the day his plane crashed?”
“Probably.” He watched the play of emotions on her face, then asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It will be in the reports you have. I was interviewed — some might say grilled — by the LPPD about my last conversation with him.”
He sighed with impatience.
“All right, all right. He seemed upset. But not so agitated that I thought he was about to kill the kid whose life he saved! And I just remembered something else — something I told Vince Adams about a dozen times, and he ignored me. Phil said he would meet me for lunch the next day, which shows he planned to come back right away, right?”
“Yes, but he told other people he was flying out to see Matt Arden for a few days.”
“What did Arden say?”
“He said Lefebvre had called him, but just to talk about old times and to ask how he was doing. He said Lefebvre hadn’t mentioned any plans to see him.”