“Why? Why is this person so special to you?”
“Please, Dad. Please. They didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t want them to be hurt.” The raspy breath she drew seemed to make her small body tremble. “I just want everything to be the way it was before.”
“That can’t happen, Emily.”
“I know it can’t,” she said, and she started to cry. Suddenly, without sound-tears leaking out of her eyes, glistening silver on her smooth cheeks. My immediate impulse was to go around the desk and take her in my arms, hold her, tell her everything would be all right. But it was the wrong thing to do; the time for comfort and reassurance was after confession, not before.
I left her alone, went and sat in my chair in the living room, and tried to make some sense of the few little snippets of information I’d gotten out of her. She’d found the box somewhere, had seen it before and knew who it belonged to, but hadn’t known what was in it until she got it home. All right. But why had she later gone to him or her and promised to keep the person’s identity secret? Why so protective?
An idea occurred to me, one I should have thought of before. I’d locked the box in the mini-safe in Kerry’s and my bedroom closet; the little plastic vial was still in it, but the cocaine was long gone down the sewer. There was a strong halogen lamp on the desk in Kerry’s home office, a twin to the one in Emily’s room; I took the box in there, shut the door, switched the lamp on, and emptied out the cotton and the plastic vial. Then I rummaged around in the desk drawer until I found her big fold-out magnifying glass.
On the first squint through the glass I couldn’t make out anything on the inside or outside of the box except scratches, wear marks, and a couple of tiny dents. I looked again, examining both sides of the lid, all four outer sides, the bottom. Nothing. One more time-
Something.
I was holding the box at an upward angle, with one lower corner in the center of the lens. What had seemed like random scratches before, one on each lower corner edge, took on a different aspect then. And I was seeing what Emily must have seen when she studied the box as I was doing now. Smart kid-smarter in some ways than her sometimes slow adoptive father.
Initials. Two of them, etched into the soft bronze-colored tin, probably a long time ago, because handling and rubbing had made them virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Z.U.
My first impulse was to go back into Emily’s room and confront her again. Wrong move; I didn’t do it. She wouldn’t tell me who Z.U. was.
There was another way to find out. Z.U. was a fairly uncommon set of initials, and whoever owned them figured to be somebody Emily knew at Whitney Middle School. As Tamara said often enough, you can find out anything on the Internet if you have a starting point-anything at all.
11
TAMARA
Deron Stewart called her cell late Thursday morning. Pretty fast response time, but she’d hoped it would be even faster-last night, before she went to bed. She hadn’t slept much. Pins and needles, waiting. Shouldn’t be this wired; the phony Lucas hadn’t hurt her that badly, not nearly as much as he could have. But she couldn’t help how she felt. Hunger for revenge can do funny things to you.
Bill was in his office, with the connecting door open as usual. She told Stewart to hold on, took her phone out through the anteroom into the hallway. Nobody out there. She moved away from the door, over toward the stairs.
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Hawkins just called,” Stewart said. “Suggested we meet for drinks tonight at six o’clock.”
“With Zeller?”
“I asked him that; he said he wasn’t sure. So I left it there. Didn’t want to push him.”
The right way to handle it. But frustration dug at her again anyway. “Where’re you meeting Doctor Easy?”
“Place called the Twilight Lounge, on Ocean near his office.”
“Twilight Lounge. Okay. Make sure you take the voice-activated recorder along.”
“No worries. I’ve got it covered.”
“Call me afterward, soon as you’re alone.”
“Right. You sure you don’t want me to follow Zeller if he shows up?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
The Twilight Lounge was in the three-block business section of Ocean Avenue that ran between 19th Avenue and Junipero Serra Boulevard. Professional offices, shops, restaurants, taverns, and the usual limited street parking.
Tamara got there a couple of minutes after five, heading west off Serra. Neither Doctor Easy’s office nor the Twilight Lounge was in the first block, and that was fine, because she lucked into a parking space close to the intersection. She was wearing her coat buttoned all the way up, a scarf, and a wool cap she’d had for years and kept in the car. Not because of the weather, although it was cold and foggy out here near the ocean. Wasn’t much chance Hawkins or the phony Lucas would be on the street this early, but when you were setting up a stakeout you never trusted to chance. Another lesson Bill had taught her.
She walked down toward Lagunitas, not dawdling, checking out the storefronts lining both sides of the street. The Twilight Lounge was mid-block on the south side near where the M line streetcar tracks crossed. Hawkins’s office would be somewhere in the next block west, down toward 19th. Over where she was on the north side, diagonally opposite the Twilight, there was a Chinese restaurant with a window overlooking the street and tables set next to it inside. Perfect.
As early as it was, there were only two customers in the restaurant, and neither of them was sitting by the window. She claimed the table with the best view of the Twilight’s entrance. A middle-aged Chinese waitress came over and Tamara ordered a pot of tea. Quarter past five now-forty-five minutes to wait. Longer, maybe a lot longer, if the phony Lucas showed up. She could linger over the tea until six, but not much past that without ordering food. Worry about that when the time came. Right now, as tense as she was, the thought of food made her stomach clench up.
Sip tea, watch the people on the street. Three men went into the Twilight Lounge, all of them white. Not too many black faces on this part of Ocean; the few that came along were easy to spot.
Five thirty.
Five forty-five.
The tea was making her feel queasy; she pushed the cup away. Here came the waitress, asking in stern tones if she wanted anything to eat. Lord. She hadn’t looked at the menu, hadn’t taken her eyes off the Twilight’s front door. “Potstickers,” she said. It was the first dish that popped into her head.
Five fifty.
She kept thinking about Lucas. If he showed, would he still be driving the five-year-old Buick? Probably. She began watching the cars that rolled by in both directions, looking for a light brown LeSabre. Dark now and hard to tell makes and colors. Streetlights, building lights, headlights helped some, but not enough. Would she recognize the Buick if it came along? Sure… if he hadn’t had that banged-up fender fixed by now.
Five fifty-five.
And here came Deron Stewart, over on the south side. Suit, tie, overcoat, and that swaggering walk of his. Don’t overdo it, man, she thought, they’ll see right through you. But then she thought, No, he’ll play it right, the way he did with Hawkins on the phone. He knows his job; he won’t screw up.
Stewart paused outside the lounge, adjusted his tie, and went on in.
Six.
The potstickers came. She didn’t even look at the plate.
