All these crime scenes later, the best thing she had ever done in her life was not to do something.
Now Laura let the car idle and stared at the remains of Mrs. Ramsey’s stables.
She remembered the way it was: Everything in its place. The raked breezeway, the whitewashed tack room, the stable colors. Everything was in green or in a combination of yellow and green: the horse blankets, coolers, saddle blankets, buckets, leg wraps, even the rub rags. Everything. Yellow and green.
Now it looked as if the stables had been torn limb from limb like an animal. Ripped apart by a hungry beast and left to rot in the baking sun.
Sadness seeped down into a place she had thought was sealed up tight.
She was sorry she’d come.
She drove on, turning in at the house. The one-story California mission style home built in the twenties looked the same, except there were bars on the doors and ramps and railings for a wheelchair. The grounds were neatly trimmed, the lawn as green and groomed as a billiard table. Bougainvillea, hibiscus, bird of paradise, royal palm, and agave grew in profusion. Mission cactus forming a tall border around the lawn.
Beautiful.
The cars out front were different. Instead of Mercedes, BMWs, and Jay’s Range Rover, there was a large half- van half-SUV that Laura assumed Jay drove and an ancient Honda Civic.
This time she went to the front door.
She wondered what Ramsey looked like now. Seventeen years was a long time, and she knew just from what she’d read on the Internet last night that quadriplegics suffered from many side effects, many of them life- threatening. She had thought that being paralyzed meant you couldn’t walk, couldn’t move certain parts of the body. Thought of it as dead wood, but reading the articles made her realize that the body was still living tissue, and because it could not do what it was meant to do, there were grave repercussions.
What was he like now? She remembered him whacking a tennis ball, the sun shining on his blond hair, his lean, muscular body darkly tanned against his white shorts. The few times he looked at her, she thought she saw a spark of interest. Flattering herself that a college boy might be attracted to her.
Laura assumed that after all this time the quadriplegia would have taken its toll. Jay Ramsey was in his late thirties now. Galaz had told her he was a C6-7 quadriplegic, having suffered a break between the C6 vertebra and the C7. According to Galaz, Ramsey had pretty good control of most over his upper body, including use of his hands. His life expectancy wasn’t much shorter than the life expectancy for anyone.
She knew, though, that there were many dangers: dysreflexia, which could lead to stroke, respiratory problems, kidney and bladder problems, muscle spasms, skin breakdown, pneumonia. According to Galaz, Jay Ramsey’s disabilities had not stopped him from starting and building one of the top Internet security businesses in the country.
“He started out as a hacker,” Galaz told her. “Got himself into trouble with the wrong people. After the shooting, he straightened himself out and never looked back. Even if his family didn’t own J.J. Brown, he would have made it big-time. Unbelievable intellect.”
J.J. Brown was a discount department store with high-end products, much like the outlets today, started in the 1920s. The Ramseys had been the beneficiaries of that wealth ever since.
She rang the bell, thinking how much she didn’t want to be here. I’ll make an idiot of myself. I won’t know how to talk to him, I’ll stare …
She heard a stirring inside. The door opened and Laura was hit by a blast of refrigerated air. The man in the doorway wore a white knit shirt, chinos, and bedroom slippers. He reminded her of a plump, soft dove.
“Detective Cardinal?” he asked. He looked vaguely disappointed. What was a lifesaver supposed to look like? Superwoman? He pushed open the door and held it as she walked in. “Jay has been waiting—he’s quite excited. He’s in his study.”
Laura followed him into the hallway that led off the kitchen.
She prepared herself. With all the dangers, all the bad things that could happen—muscle spasms, cord pain, bedsores, bladder problems—she expected he would already be a ruin of a man.
Freddy opened the door to the room.
The sun spilled in shuttered stripes across the Berber carpet. Laura could barely see through the dust motes. A massive cherrywood desk, a large computer monitor, a horse statue from the Tang dynasty. And the shape in the wheelchair.
Hitting the ball backhand, flaxen hair catching the sun—
Her eyes adjusted to the light.
He looked exactly the same.
In a strange moment of deja vu, she was a kid again with a crush on the privileged, older son of a wealthy family. Suddenly she was that tongue-tied girl, mouth dry and heart beating fast.
Jesus. You’re a grown woman. You have a boyfriend and everything. Grow up.
His hair was the same vibrant pale gold. His face would be angelic if it weren’t for the amusement in his eyes.
The same look he gave me when I was fourteen.
He had the same lean, handsome face, elegant nose, and penetrating blue-green eyes. He wore very expensive, but casual clothing, and it fit his lithe body well. Pushing forty, but he didn’t look it. It was as if he’d been frozen in amber.
Aware she was staring.
“Laura,” he said warmly. “It’s good to see you again.” Not the voice of a sick man.
