corner.
Torn from a key ring, a glossy valet parking slip lay on the floor:
This June, Be Afraid.
This June, There's Nowhere Left to Hide.
This June . . . THEY'RE WATCHING.
I trudged to the desk. There were my things, neatly collected in the plastic tub. With trembling fingers I pocketed them. Then I dug through the mess around the in-boxes. One of the crisp manila folders fell to the floor, spilling its contents. I stared down at the fan of blank paper. Then I riffled through the other files, my consternation growing as I realized that all the folders on the desk were filled with nothing more than blank copy paper. The top drawer held stacks of unused pads and manila folders. But beneath them I found a handcuff key. With great relief I freed my wrist.
The file drawer held a revolver. I stared down at it like it was a coiled snake.
I was numb, overloaded, moving on autopilot. It was almost as though I was directing myself from outside my body. When I turned away from the drawer, the gun was shoved in my waistband.
Stumbling across the room, I opened the hatch on the paper shredder and tugged out a clear plastic bag filled with crosscut scraps. It was probably useless, but I wanted to leave with something. As the front door swung open under my unsteady hand, that brass placard flashed into view: D O NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITHOUT SIGNATURE. D O NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITH NEIGHBORING BUSINESSES.
I staggered out onto the second-floor hallway of the Starbright Plaza.
Nighttime. It seemed impossible, but all was normal in the real world. Down the unlit hallway, I could hear people working late, voices on phones, selling, selling, selling. Flatware clinked in the cafe below. In the parking lot, streetlights dropped glistening mercury onto the roofs of sleek cars. A not-quite-rain left everything dusted with dew.
Halfway down the stairs, clutching the bag of shredded paper, I stopped. Jerry's warning from last week played in my head: Printers, copiers, fax machines--everything's got a hard drive now, and people can get at 'em and know what you've been up to.
I ran back up. When they'd cleared out the place, they'd left the unwieldy copier behind. A beat-up Sharp, some years old. Nothing in the tray, nothing facedown against the glass. I swung open the plastic front and peered among the mechanical insides. There it was, an innocuous-looking beige rectangle. With a straightened paper clip, I poked the release hole and extracted the hard drive. Then I jotted down the copier's model number and fled.
What was waiting for me? Had the arrest warrant for Ariana's murder already been issued? How else had the world changed since that stun grenade had gone off in my lap?
Clearly DeWitt and Verrone and whoever else Ridgeline comprised had planned to hold me long enough to get the CD back and ensure an airtight frame for Ariana's murder. Then they'd turn me loose to whatever remained of my life, and I'd be snatched up by primed Robbery-Homicide detectives and put away for killing Keith and my wife.
No car. My wallet, empty. I'd sent them to that alley in Northridge because it was a good forty-minute drive before they'd arrive and be reminded that there was no brick wall. That left me time to drive home and get cash, a checkbook, and the list of defense attorneys Ariana had compiled for me, then disappear before the real cops closed in on me. I could regroup in a Motel 6. Watch the news, build a case to clear my name, get a lawyer, negotiate turning myself in. The revolver handle pressed into my stomach, cold and reassuring. Maybe there would be other options, too.
With the copier hard drive in my pocket, the bag of shredded documents in hand, I stumbled off the bottom stair onto ground level and out in front of a dry cleaner, the lights out, plastic-wrapped shirts shimmering on the carousel like dormant ghosts. As I hustled past the glass shop next door, the sight inside brought me up short. Lined on wooden racks and hung on the walls were endless mirrors. No doubt the one I'd shattered upstairs had been bought right here, a simple prop carried upstairs by Laurel and Hardy, the workers I'd spotted during my last visit. Ariana's words returned to me yet again, my eyes stinging at the thought of her: A misinterpretation, a white handkerchief, and a few well-placed nudges. How easily they'd knocked me off course, a tap at a time, until the world in my head no longer matched the world outside. My palm was flat against the cool window, my quick breath fogging the glass. Fragmented reflections stared back at me, bruise-faced and stupefied.
Shaken, I staggered on my way, cutting behind the valet stand into the cafe. The patrons regarded me with polite unease, and the waiters made eye contact with one another. I could only imagine what I looked like.
The place was emptying out for the night. The bartender was putting the well bottles to bed. And yet the clock upstairs had shown eight-thirty when I'd left.
'What time is it?' I asked a silver-haired gentleman in a booth.
A glance at his weighty watch. 'Eleven-fifteen.'
They'd kept me unconscious for hours longer than I'd been led to believe. Had they needed the extra time to put the final touches on the fake interrogation room? To find an opening to transport my unconscious body from the rear alley, up the fire-escape stairs, and through that metal back door with the shiny new dead bolt? Or to drag Ariana to Fryman Canyon? Maybe they'd killed her before I'd even regained consciousness.
Whatever that disc held, it couldn't be worth the price I'd paid for taking it.
My head still felt thick from whatever drugs had been shot into me. I realized I was still standing there, interrupting the couple's dinner. I searched for words, for more grounding: 'What . . . what day is it?'
The man's wife rested a hand nervously on his forearm, but he offered me a consoling grin. 'Thursday.'
'Good,' I muttered, backing up, nearly colliding with a busboy. 'That's what it's supposed to be.'
I ducked from their stares into the bathroom, dumped the throwaway cell phone into the trash, and cleaned up as best I could. Flashing on Ari's gray face, I came apart a little and had to clamp down. I had to hold it together long enough to get out of there.
Walking out, I grabbed a twenty someone had left on a table as a tip. The coatrack by the door had a black windbreaker, which I lifted and pulled on as I approached the valet stand, tucking the bag of shredded paper under my arm. The hood, protection against the wet breeze, obscured my fucked-up face.
The valet hopped up off his director's chair. I gestured at a BMW four spots over and said, 'That's me right there.' I pointed the twenty at him. 'I can get it myself.'
He tossed me the keys.
Chapter 48
I screeched up behind our back fence, leaving the Beemer a few feet off the curb. But I didn't hear the tires, didn't feel the fence biting me in the stomach, didn't smell the mulch beneath our sumacs. Suspended in grief, I'd come unmoored from my senses. There were a thousand impressions of her and nothing else.
It's bizarre what sticks in your brain. Ariana sitting on the kitchen floor, digging in a bottom cabinet, a carton of eggs waiting on the counter. Home from a night run, she wore a sports bra and had a sheen of dried sweat across her forehead, four pots pulled into her lap and twice as many spread on the floor around her. Her heel poked through a hole in her sock. She looked up, biting her lip, playing embarrassed, as if I'd caught her at something. Behind her hair band, a thick lock had bunched unevenly, and the light halved her face in shadow. She said, 'What?' but I just shook my head and took in the sight of her. They talk about it like it's all jukebox slow dances and sweaty lovemaking and princess-cut diamonds. But sometimes it's just your wife sitting frog style on the kitchen floor after a workout, looking for an omelet pan.
Dazed, I floated through the side gate, keys in hand, heading for the front of our house. The dark sedan creeping into view ahead brought me crashing back into my body. The bag of crosscut documents slapped the concrete at my feet. It couldn't be the real cops yet--it seemed unlikely that they'd have found out about Ariana's body already. It had to be DeWitt and Verrone, coming to take their interrogation to another level.
The driver eased into the darkness beyond our mailbox and killed the engine. The first thing to hit was fear, compounded by everything that had come before. But then, cutting through my paralysis, came something else. Rage.
I headed for the car, my hand diving beneath my shirt, seizing the handle of the revolver. Just as I was about to pull and aim, the door cracked, the interior light illuminating Detective Gable. I jerked to a halt.
'You have one job right now,' he said, climbing out. 'And that is to stay reachable. Where the hell have you been all--'
We were close enough now that he caught sight of my face. Should I run? But my will had evaporated.
