“You still there? Maybe considering that worms do turn?”
Cole grinned. Very good. He leaned close to Flaxx’s ear. “She might have a point.”
Flaxx stiffened. “Not Earl!”
Was it arrogance, or stubbornness, refusing to believe he might be losing control of Lamper?
“So keep away from him! Is that clear!”
As Flaxx broke the connection, Cole pictured Irah mockingly mimicking her brother’s words. Damn! Where was she? “If she kills another cop, I’m holding you responsible.”
Frowning, Flaxx returned the phone to its base station.
Cole wished he could read Flaxx’s thoughts. Lacking that, maybe he could add something more to think about. He moved up to Flaxx’s ear again. “She’s crazy. Earl turning on me? Impossible. Still, it won’t hurt to keep an eye on him. For damn sure I need to watch Irah. Did she even bother listening to me just now? She’s never listened to anyone…except maybe her precious Scott. Maybe I better call her back and find out exactly where she is, to make sure she isn’t her way right now to confront Earl again.”
To Cole’s frustration, this time Flaxx gave no sign of hearing. He turned away from the phone and threw himself in a chair, where he finished his cigar and drink, then shaking his head like someone trying to clear away fog, left the library.
Cole stared after him, thinking about Irah. Was it possible she might confront Lamper? In her place, he would be upset at being lied about twice. Going after Lamper would certainly help his cause. And mean the motor cop was safe.
Lamper’s address put him in Potrero. Cole ziptripped to the nearest location there he knew, San Francisco General, then worked his way to Lamper’s house. Staring up the steps from the street, he appreciated being a ghost. Any living person climbing those needed to be part mountain goat, and carry oxygen.
Inside, the house surprised him, yet seemed right for Lamper…a mixture of art deco and oriental, almost monastic in its simplicity and tidiness. Judging by the classic Eames chair, though, no expense had been spared on individual pieces. Or on his hobby. Cole counted eighteen chess sets on the glass shelves of a large art deco etagere. Which Lamper obviously did more than look at. The top shelf displayed chess trophies with dates ranging back to when he would have been in high school.
Cole found Lamper himself in the one lighted room in the house, a spare bedroom turned into an office, where a custom desk stretched along most of one wall to accommodate two computers and their peripherals. A digital chess board filled the monitor of one computer. Lamper, now wearing a Mr. Rogers cardigan over his turtleneck, gripped the mouse. Whether he played against the machine or someone online, Cole could not tell…but he saw that Lamper had more on his mind than the game. His eyes kept wandering from the monitor to a cordless phone lying beside it. Was Lamper waiting for a call…or debating calling someone? Which ever it was affected Lamper’s concentration. After agonizing over a move, he made it, then groaned almost immediately…and groaned again at the answering move.
The phone warbled. Lamper jumped. He reached for it, then hesitated. The phone rang a second time, then a third, while Lamper’s hand hovered over it.
As it started to ring a fourth time, he snatched it up. “Hello? Oh, hello, Inspector.”
Inspector? Cole moved closer.
On the other end Hamada’s voice said, “You left a message saying you have a question?”
Well, well. How interesting.
Lamper took a breath. “Yes. Have you located Miss Benay yet?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Inspector Dunavan doesn’t know where she is?”
Hamada’s voice remained even. “No. Have you thought of something that might help us?”
Wheels turned visibly behind the magnified eyes. Cole held mental breath. Could Lamper be about to say something connecting Sara to Irah?
To his disappointment, Lamper shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I just — I just wanted to see if you’d learned anything. It worries me that she’d go off and not tell someone where she is…Kenisha Hayes, at least. You — you don’t suppose something’s…happened to her?”
Hamada paused before answering. “We have no evidence of that.”
Lamper sighed. “That’s a relief. Thank you for calling back.”
Cole pictured Hamada hanging up the phone and thinking Lamper knew something he was not ready to talk about yet. At this end, now would be a perfect time for Irah to show up and wipe out that relief by dropping more dark hints about Sara. Perfect as long as the real Irah did not arrive or call.
He checked the time on the computer. It had been nearly half an hour since Flaxx talked to Irah. Cole decided that if she made no move this direction by the time he could materialize, he would risk it.
After walking out onto Lamper’s front porch and orienting it on his internal map, he zipped to the Embarcadero intersection he used this afternoon. It should still have enough traffic to let him accumulate the heat he needed in a reasonable time.
It did, and since Lamper’s place was a new destination, he crossed his fingers before trying to zip there. It worked without a hitch.
Now the question was whether Irah made contact in the meantime. In the office, the chess board remained on the one monitor, but Lamper had moved to the other computer, typing e-mail. Nothing in his expression or body language showed distress that might be attributable to a call from Irah. Great.
Cole returned to the porch and prepared to materialize and hit the door bell. Then rear vision caught a Mustang GT cruising by in the street below.
His antenna shot up. Not just because of the car’s suspiciously slow speed. The vehicle itself rang a bell. Scott Carrasco’s funeral urn was a model Mustang GT…and Irah had a photograph of that model and color car on her shrine wall.
He zipped to the street ahead of the car, where he could check out the driver as the car passed him. Irah sat behind the wheel…wearing a black turtleneck, her hair covered by a black watch cap. Cole leaped to the roof of the car and slid down through it into the passenger seat to study her. She also wore black running tights, the thin-soled shoes of rock climbers, and a black fanny pack. He smiled. This looked very interesting.
It became even more so. She drove around the block and parked one street over from Lamper’s. Cole followed as she slipped between two houses there and over the back fence into Lamper’s postage stamp yard.
Did she intend to burgle Lamper? He grinned. Perfect! Once she was inside, he would head for the Bayview Station. Materialized as Joe Citizen, he could report that a friend he was just talking to on his cell phone saw someone breaking into a house. They would catch Irah in the act. With her under arrest for burglary, they had probable cause for searching her house and car. Razor needed to be alerted so he could be on hand to recognize the Kijurian clothing and the items they found in the makeup table as evidence of another crime.
Except…the house had evidence of only arson and burglary. Even if they found the tweaker clothing and Elvis mask in her car, only Razor would recognize them as evidence, and he had no way to explain that knowledge. Nor did the presence of a Glock in her gun safe — assuming she still had the weapon and they were allowed to open the safe and find it — give them grounds to compare bullets from it to the one that killed him.
Angrily he abandoned the idea of having her arrested at Lamper’s place. If she walked on the murders, what good was nailing her for burglary and arson? Nothing else mattered if Sara went without justice.
But maybe he could still make use of the burglary.
21
Lamper was clearly visible between the vertical blinds of the office window, pausing frequently as he typed. Irah must see him, too, but she still tried the French doors opening onto the patio. Standing close behind, Cole heard her heart racing. When the handle failed to turn, she pulled a mini flashlight from her fanny pack and shone
