I heard myself ask, 'You can't find another star and get funding again?'
'It won't matter.' She tucked a fall of hair back behind an ear. 'We had a limited window to make this thing happen. The money's gone.'
I pictured him the last time I'd seen him alive, reclining on that teak deck chair, smoking his cloves and trying on earnestness. It's a race against time, man.
What had Jerry said? The idiot's doing some bullshit environmental documentary next. Mickelson tried to get him to wait until he had another hit under his belt, but it had to be now.
'What window?' My voice sounded far away.
At my tone she glanced up. 'Excuse me?'
'You said you had a limited window to make the movie happen. Some big rush. Why?'
'Because we needed it to hit theaters before the Senate vote.'
My heartbeat, a vibration in my ears. 'Wait a minute,' I said weakly. 'Senate?'
'Yeah. The proposal to lower limits on the decibel levels of naval sonar. To protect the whales. It's calendared for October. Which means we needed to be in production, like, now.' She frowned, checked her empty glass. 'Why are you being so weird?'
'If The Deep End comes out before October, saving the whales from sonar becomes a popular cause. Certain senators who vote a certain way wind up with egg on their face. It's an election year.'
'That is how the game is played,' she said. 'What are you, fresh out of Cub Scouts?'
'They'd feel pressure to vote to impose limits on sonar.'
'Yes, Patrick. That was the hope.'
'Unless the movie doesn't get made.'
'Right.'
'And the only thing that can shut down a production once you get a green light is . . .'
She set down her glass. 'Oh, come on, Patrick.'
'. . . the death of the star.'
For the first time, her face held fear. She got it. I'd found a new ally, someone already in the battle on a different front. A resource.
But her gaze ticked to the rear door, then back to me, and I realized with crushing chagrin that she was afraid not because she believed me and saw what I--what we were up against but because she was afraid of me. In my eagerness I'd made a mistake in rushing in, in not debriefing her. She had a limited vantage into the whole sordid mess, and so, given my wild claims, she could only think I was as paranoid and unhinged as I'd been billed in the media.
I held up a hand, desperate, pressured, trying to circumvent the argument she'd started with herself. 'You said you knew I wasn't a killer.'
'I want you to leave now.'
'It's not as crazy as it sounds. Please, just let me lay out for you what--' I took a step in from the doorway, and she lunged to her feet, breathing hard. For a loaded moment, we faced each other across the room, terror coming off her like a heat signature.
Showing her my palms, I backed away and closed the door quietly behind me.
Chapter 45
'All this time I've been asking the wrong question.' I was so agitated I was nearly shouting into the phone. 'I was asking myself who stands to benefit from Keith Conner's death.'
'Okay . . .' Julianne said. I'd reached her at the office, and she'd been appropriately oblique as I'd filled her in on my talk with Trista. 'And the right question would be?'
Accelerating up the hill, I veered into the opposing lane to dodge a cable-repair van. 'Who stands to benefit from the movie's being killed.'
'I'm with a student right now, so maybe you could . . .'
'Talk. Sure.'
But of course she didn't let me. 'Did the ingenue have any answers? To that question?'
'Trista? No. But the list is obvious. Any advocates of that sonar system. Select senators. The Department of Defense. NSA. Defense contractors.'
'Well, that narrows it down nicely. But given her role, can't she specify--'
'She thinks I'm fucking crazy--'
'Mm-hmm.'
'--threw me out.'
'Which leaves . . . ?'
'Can you look into the naval sonar and this Senate proposal?'
'I thought that might be where you were--'
'I mean specifics,' I said. 'Names, programs, how the funding works. Whoever this is, they're obviously powerful. I mean, if this is the Department of Defense or NSA? Think of their resources. The gear, the reach. People everywhere. Clearly they flipped someone in LAPD. How do you go up against a monolith like that?'
'You don't,' she said. 'And let's not get dramatic. Something like this? It's not a sanctioned deal across, you know, a whole . . .'
'Agency?'
'Exactly. You have to figure out which corrupt piece of the whole is relevant to your . . . situation.'
'Can you help me with this? Or is it too far out of your field?'
A sigh. 'The Wash Post. And The Journal. Former classmates, you know. Investigative. Plus, I'm no slouch.'
I wasn't sure whether her choppy sentences and inverted answers were any more veiled than normal speech, but I was too grateful to take issue. I gave her the Studio City address for Ridgeline, Inc., and asked her to dig up whatever she could on them and how they might hook into all this. She uh-huhed a few times and signed off without uttering my name. I pounded the steering wheel in triumph. Finally, traction.
I debated trying Ariana once more--I'd run through her numbers yet again before calling Julianne--but I was almost home. On our block, news vans waited at the curb, so I pulled a sharp right and parked behind our back fence. The minute I climbed over, I knew there was a problem. Setting one foot on the greenhouse roof, I looked down through the pane to see the shelves yanked off the walls, the pots shattered, the tulips loose in scatterings of dirt. My foot slid out from under me, and I hit the slope, hard, and was deposited on my back in the dirt.
From this angle the greenhouse looked worse. Everything had been not just broken but overturned.
Searched.
It was past four o'clock. Ariana could well have been here when they'd come. I rolled my aching head toward the house.
The back door had been left ajar.
I was on my feet instantly, running. The house looked no more ransacked than I'd left it; we'd never put it back together all the way after the cops had gotten through with it. The living room--also empty. Our framed wedding picture, leaning against the wall, peered back at me, the crack zigging the glass across our beaming faces. Calling Ari's name, I ran upstairs. She wasn't in the bedroom. I flew into my office, yanked open the desk drawer.
The FedEx envelope I'd stolen from Ridgeline was gone.
The spindle of blank DVDs remained on the shelf. I ran over, tore off the cap, and dumped the discs on the floor. All matching. They'd taken the CD, too.
I fumbled the phone out of my pocket and called Ariana. Voice mail and voice mail. Running downstairs, I threw open the door to the garage--no white pickup. That was good. Maybe she hadn't made it home yet. Maybe she'd just gotten hung up at the meeting and--
Panic rose, sweeping away the fantasy. She should've been home a half hour ago. I ripped through Ariana's address book, called her assistant.
'Patrick, what? As far as I know, her meeting wrapped up a while ag--'
Hanging up, I jogged out into the street. A few photographers had resumed their stakeouts. They half emerged from their cars and vans, puzzled and amused.
'Hi, listen, did you see . . . Did you see anyone breaking into this house? Leaving this house? My wife?'
