cops, the conspirators, the press--everyone is watching you. If you get in a speck of trouble--and I do mean a speck--you're fucked. And we won't be able to help you. My advice is you go home, get quiet, and let this thing shake itself out.'
He kept on to the elevators. I studied the tips of my shoes, all too aware of Sally's presence behind the shut door across the way. My sole remaining ally? I almost didn't want to go in and find out.
But I did. No one had bothered to turn on the overheads, but an X-ray light box cast a pale glow. Sally was sitting on a gurney, her broad shoulders bowed. The creases of her shirt at the stomach were dark. 'I'm done,' she said.
Dread filled me. 'As in fired?'
She waved me off. 'Please. I'm a broad detective and a dyke, so I can't be fired. Single mother, too. Shit, talk about job security.' Her voice held no hint of levity. 'But I'm off this case. As in I will need to keep my captain advised of my location at all times.' She wiped her mouth. 'The VIN number you gave me traced to a Hertz rental. The credit card securing the vehicle was paid by a limited-liability company called Ridgeline, Inc. The desk officer glanced into the company, said it's like a Russian nesting doll. A shell within a shell within a shell. There might've been another shell in there--I kinda lost track when my cell phone cut out.'
'Why are you handing this off to me? What am I supposed to--?'
But she continued, undeterred. 'Unless that body one room over is the biggest coincidence since Martha Stewart's stock trade, these guys are covering their tracks. They probably want you living, since a dead fall guy makes everyone cry conspiracy, which--' She flared her hands. 'But clearly you're in their crosshairs, and they're waiting and watching.'
'Can I get protection?'
'Protection? Patrick, you're the lead suspect.'
'You and Valentine are the only cops who believe me. And he's walking. There could be a leak somewhere else in the department--in RHD, even. I've got no one else who can help me. No one else I can trust. Don't hang me out.'
'I don't have a choice.' Her head was tilted, the bulge of her cheek blotched with red. She'd stiffened her hand to punctuate the point, and it floated, four fingers aimed at nothing. Steady beeping from the next room was audible, and I realized with a chill that it was the cardiac monitor hooked up to Mikey Peralta.
'Will you . . . ?' I needed another moment to find my composure. My voice, after her outburst, sounded faint. 'Will you hand off the conflicting evidence to Robbery-Homicide?'
'Of course I will. But, Patrick, every case has edges that won't align, and given the preponderance of evidence, they're eager to move in one direction and entrench. If they're batting .900 against you, that's about .400 better than they usually get.'
'But there's hard evidence--'
'All evidence is not created equal.' She was growing angry again. 'And you have to understand: Pieces of evidence are building blocks, nothing more. The same ones can be shoved together to form different arguments. Counterarguments. The gas station's security tape gets you off the hook for the Conner break-in, but you might have hired someone else to do it to give you the alibi. You see? There are sides. The lines have been drawn. It's not corrupt. It's not political. It's not an agenda. It's how the system works. That's why it's a system.'
My voice rose, matching hers. 'So all Robbery-Homicide's gonna do is sit back and piece together what they already have?'
She looked at me like I was an idiot. 'Of course not. They're gonna be working day and night to shore up the case against you so they can come arrest you. For good this time.'
'What . . . what do I do, then? Go home and wait to get arrested?'
Her hands lifted from her knees, then fell. 'I wouldn't.'
The hospital air tasted bitter, medicinal, or maybe it was just me. Sally slid off the gurney, headed past me.
I said, 'I have to find my wife. Can I get a ride to my car?'
She paused with her back to me, her large shoulders shifting. 'Not from me.'
The door closed behind her. The perpetual beep of the monitor came through the wall. I stayed in the semidarkness, listening to a dead man's heart beat.
Chapter 37
Seeing my dinged-up Camry from the backseat of the cab, I breathed a sigh of relief. Since I hadn't been formally arrested, my car hadn't been impounded. Media stragglers hung on outside Hotel Angeleno, but fortunately I'd parked up the street last night, which was now beyond the fray.
As I pulled the remaining bills from my repossessed wallet, the well-mannered Punjabi taxi driver pointed and asked, in beautiful English, 'Did you hear what happened here last night?'
I nodded and slid out, ducking quickly into my car, anonymous in the thickening dusk. I kept the radio off. My hands, bloodless against the steering wheel, looked skeletal. The streets were dark and wet. Bugs pinged around streetlight orbs. Coming up the hill, I heard the thrumming of helicopters, the bass track of Los Angeles. My Sanyo was at my ear, and my father was saying, 'Give the word, we'll be on a plane.'
'I didn't do this, Dad.' My mouth was dry. 'I need you to know that.'
'Of course we know that.'
'I told him not to go to that city.'
'Ma, not now,' I said, though she was in the background, crying, and couldn't hear me.
'Didn't I tell him?'
'Right,' my dad answered her, 'because you foresaw this.'
I came around the bend and saw the news choppers circling, bright beams laid down on our front yard. I was shocked. Though I'd registered the noise, I hadn't put together that our house was the draw. I was now the sordid news beat, the pinned frog under laboratory lights. Cars and vans lined both curbs, and news crews swarmed along the sidewalks. A guy in a baseball cap was peeking into our mailbox. Ari's white pickup was slant-parked five feet from the curb, as if abandoned for a flood or an alien invasion.
I'd dropped the phone but could still make out my mom's tinny voice: 'Whatever you need, Patrick. Whatever you need.'
I hit the brakes to reverse out of there, but it was too late. They rushed me, and I caught a full frontal view of the floodwater that had forced Ari to ditch her truck. Bulbs popping, knuckles tapping, voices shouting. I nosed the car toward the driveway, nudging aside hips and legs, before the need to flee overtook me and I gave up.
Grabbing my cell, I shoved my door out into hands and elbows. A camera cracked against the window. I stood, but the swell pushed me back into the car--Give him space give him space!--and then I rose again, pressing forward. Lenses and foundation-tan faces and bundled microphones slanted in on me. What are you feeling right Does your wife know Is it true that Keith Tell us in your own words Are you--
They moved as a floating mass around me, tripping over the curb, banging into each other. When I stepped onto our property it was like crossing a magic line. Most of them stayed back, straining against an invisible fence, though a few followed me. I was too shell-shocked to protest. The helicopter spotlight glowed around me, blazing white, though I was certainly imagining the heat. Churning air blew specks of dirt into my eyes. Our porch was scattered with yellow DHL boxes, SAME DAY SERVICE written in screaming red across the sides. As I fumbled out my keys, a few names jumped out at me from the airbills-- Larry King Live, 20/20, Barbara Walters.
I jabbed the key at the lock, but then the door gave way on its own, Ariana shouting, 'I told you, off the porch or I'll call the cops aga--'
She froze, and we stared at each other across the threshold, dumbstruck, her strained face flickering beneath a cascade of camera flashes that matched the crescendo of my heartbeat. How 'bout a homecoming hug Are you upset with your Can we get a moment between What you must be feeling--
Ari grabbed my hand and tugged me inside, and the door flew shut, and I was home.
She said, 'Dead bolt,' and I complied. She wouldn't let go of my hand. We walked together to the couch and sat next to each other, almost calmly. On the muted plasma, Fox News showed the angle from the sky, the angle I'd just been on the receiving end of. I watched myself, a puzzled dot emerging from the crush of the crowd and working its way clumsily up the front walk.
The doorbell chimed, and Ariana's sweaty hand tightened around mine. The home phone rang. Then Ari's cell phone. Then mine. The home phone. The home phone. Someone knocked politely on the front door. Ari's cell phone.
