surfaces of every piece of furniture. It was a quicker, more efficient process now than before, because now she was used to doing it. She never hesitated, never needed to stop or decide. Her manic restlessness kept her working. When she had finished, she made one last stop. She went to the mailboxes in the lobby, opened hers, wiped it off inside and outside, then relocked it.
She returned to her apartment, slipped her suitcases into a plastic trash bag so anyone who saw her would think she was taking out the garbage, locked the door, and hurried down the back stairs to the parking garage below the building. She had to search for a minute to find the Honda. Mary’s car was hidden by two elephantine sport-utility vehicles that couldn’t fit into their own spaces and overlapped Mary’s.
Nancy put her bag in the trunk of the car, started it, and listened to the engine for a minute while she located the various controls and adjusted the seat and mirrors to fit her taller body. The engine sounded good, and the gas tank was full.
Nancy backed up to get out of the space, and drove up the ramp onto the street. She turned right onto Topanga Canyon and headed for the freeway. She took the southbound entrance because heading into the city would bring her to the tangle of interchanges onto other freeways. She brought her new Honda’s speed up to merge into the moving river of cars, then glanced down at the tote bag beside her that held her new wallet, her change purse full of money, and her new gun.
16
Catherine Hobbes sat in the unmarked blue police car beside Detective James Spengler, watching the streets of the San Fernando Valley slide past her window. It was early morning but it was already hot, and the traffic coming eastward toward them was virtually stopped. The sun reflected off the windshields, so that she kept seeing flashes and then a lingering green glow on her retina. When she thought of the West Coast, she thought of her part of it—Portland, Washington, California as far south as San Francisco. Los Angeles was hard to get used to.
“You seem pretty calm about this,” said Spengler.
“It’s an act I developed to keep male cops from thinking I’m emotional.”
“Right.”
“I promise I’ll get excited when this woman is in custody and I know for sure she’s Tanya Starling,” she said. “You’ll think you’ve won a football game. I’ll be running around high-fiving you guys and slapping you on the butt.”
“You spotted the picture as soon as you got off the plane. She sure looks like the same one.”
“Your picture of a girl looks like my pictures of a girl. But we don’t know if the apartment where we’re going belongs to her. And whenever you put out a picture to the public, it strikes a lot of people as the spitting image of somebody who doesn’t look that way at all.”
“Three calls tipping you on the same person don’t usually turn out to be nothing.”
“That’s why I’m nervous,” she said. “I’ve been gritting my teeth for an hour hoping this is Tanya. But I’ve learned not to be too quick to assume anything about her. When we began this investigation, we all thought she was probably a kidnap victim. I’m still not sure whether some guy killed Dennis Poole because he was jealous over her and she’s still running from him, or she’s running because she killed him herself.”
“You want a prediction?”
“Sure.”
“Your first version is right.”
“Which one is that? I forgot.”
“The killing will turn out to be about her, but she didn’t kill the guy. After you get her, you’ll find out she was a drug mule who took off with somebody’s shipment. Or she’s a hooker who had a particularly possessive pimp, who wasn’t about to let her go off with a client.”
“One of those was
“I’m just going with the odds. You said before that they met at a hotel in Aspen and she came to visit, but nobody at home ever saw them together. That sounds like there was something about her that kept him from showing her off. And women don’t usually do a gunshot murder on a guy unless they’re married to him.”
“If you want to kill somebody bigger than you are, and you’ve got a gun, you use it—no matter who you are.”
“Maybe. But then there’s the death of Brian Corey in the Hilton. They met in a bar, had dinner in Beverly Hills, and went up to his room and had sex. Afterward, she leaves alone, and so do his wallet and his rental car. What does that sound like?”
“It sounds like a hooker.”
“Right. And there was no gun, so she couldn’t have done the murder. The girl I saw in the picture didn’t throw a full-grown man off a balcony. It had to be a man, or maybe two men—somebody like the pimp. In fact, it would have to be a really uneven match, somebody who could completely overpower and silence him. There were no signs of a struggle in the room, and nobody on the floor heard a fight.”
“You can push an elephant off a balcony if he’s off balance and you give him a shove at the right time.”
“Joe Pitt agrees with me.”
It took an effort to hide her surprise. “Joe Pitt? When did you talk to him?”
“He gave me a call when he saw the picture in the paper. He told me he had been working on this with you, and the girl looked like the one on your tapes. He also asked us to give you our best cooperation.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. He’s very complimentary about you. But when we were talking about the Brian Corey thing, he figured there was no way she could have done it herself.”
“Let’s concentrate on getting her into custody,” she said. “Then we’ll find out.” Catherine looked away. She had been thinking hard about Tanya Starling, but the mention of Joe Pitt was distracting her now. She wasn’t sure what to think. She’d had a pleasant sensation when she had heard that he had complimented her, but then there was a suspicion that maybe the compliment had not been about her police work. He and Spengler were men, and they talked like men. And after all, he had told Spengler he disagreed with her theory. She was irritated at Pitt for calling Spengler and talking about her at all. What business did he have interfering with her investigation? No, that wasn’t fair either: he had recognized Tanya’s picture in the newspaper, and it was his duty to call the cops. But why hadn’t he called her?
“Here’s the street. The apartment is coming right up.” They glided up the street and a moment later the other two unmarked cars turned off Topanga Canyon after them. Spengler pulled the car into a parking space near the front steps, the next car drove around the back of the building, and the third pulled in beside Spengler.
“Well, let’s see if we can scoop her up quick,” he said. “Then, while she’s telling us who killed those two men, you’ll have plenty of time to congratulate me on being right.”
“Just don’t assume she’s not dangerous until she’s handcuffed,” said Hobbes.
Spengler got out and conferred for a moment with the two officers in the car beside them, then joined Hobbes on the front steps.
The two officers stationed themselves at the building exits while Spengler and Hobbes stepped into the lobby. Hobbes stopped to check the names on the mailboxes. “Mills” with no first name was on box 5. They went up two steps into the hallway on the right, and knocked on the door to apartment 5. They waited a few seconds, listening. Then Spengler knocked again, harder. After a minute, he knocked a third time. There was no answering call, no sound of movement in the apartment.
“Let’s try across the hall,” said Hobbes. She knocked on the door across the hall, waited, then knocked again. “Nobody’s home in number four, either.”
Spengler said, “Let’s hunt down the manager.”
“Apartment one. I checked the mailboxes.”
They walked back to the lobby and into the opposite hallway, and knocked on the door. There was a small sign taped to it that said R. NORRIS, MANAGER. R. Norris was an unshaven man about forty years old who seemed to have been awakened by the knock.
Catherine Hobbes stood back and waited while Spengler said, “Mr. Norris, I’m Detective Spengler, Los Angeles Police.” He held his identification up so that Norris could compare the photograph with his face. “I’m very
