hear the van pull away. His mom came in to comfort him. She told him the horse was going to a farm, but Landry had seen the van on the backstretch before. He’d heard people talking. The horse wasn’t going to a farm.
Like the horse, Matteen Wahidi was taken away. The horse’s death had been horrifying but short. Wahidi would dwell in the terrible twilight between life and death, sanity and insanity, desperation and hope. They would break him. No ifs, ands, or buts. He would eventually talk—be eager to talk—and tell them what they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. The disciplined one, the well-mannered one, would babble about anything and everything to get some respite.
Landry couldn’t have done anything, and anyway, he had long ago hardened himself to injustice. People lived and people died, and nothing in life was fair. Wahidi would have to find his reward in paradise.
Landry shifted through the channels and landed on E! There was more on Brienne Cross, six weeks after her death. They interviewed her sister, who looked exactly like her. Sabrina. He spread a towel on the bed and ate there, watching television. This was something he’d never do at home, eating on his bed. But he was in a hotel, so anything went.
After eating, he powered up the Hewlett Packard laptop to see what he could find. The answers could be on Holloway’s computer. Nick himself had been disappointing. He really didn’t know who had spared him.
As expected, the security was minimal. You just needed a password to get in—the family pet, your sister’s name, your favorite baseball team. From the suitcase crammed full of records and written correspondence he’d brought with him, he’d mined a list of words. He tried one after the other, and got in on the third try.
He loaded Outlook Express. Landry knew what to look for. He’d downloaded a list of names and numbers from the cell phone, but he didn’t see any that would tell him what he wanted to know. But looking through the e- mails, he recognized one name immediately. The man had been all over the TV in the last couple of years. He fit the criteria—the only real link Landry could see. There were two e-mails. He read them both. Reread them. Read the responses. He selected “Reply” to the original message, wrote his own response, and hit “Send.”
Then he went to Orbitz.com to make his reservations. He spread the plastic out on the bed. Visa Card, Discover Card, Amex, driver’s license—an old picture, unflattering in the way driver’s license photos usually are. It looked nothing like him. Amazing how people changed in looks from age thirty to age forty. He could write a thesis about it.
He selected the Visa card and typed in the numbers. Expiration date, 3/13. Hooked up the portable printer, printed up his ticket, folded it in eighths, and put it in his wallet. He heard thumping sounds outside his window, kids running on the walkway.
He would miss this place, but there was always another room, another adventure.
24
By the time Jolie got home, it was going on dark. She fed the cat, made a sandwich, and took Madeleine Akers’s case file out onto the porch.
The pond was out there in the darkness, but she couldn’t see it—the moon wasn’t up yet. There was a nice breeze tonight, cutting the sticky heat.
Jolie had a decision to make. Either she took over surveillance on Maddy Akers herself, or gave up on the idea entirely. She was sure Amy would come for her money—if she hadn’t already.
Jolie’s first instinct was to ask Skeet if she could continue watching Maddy Akers on her own, off the clock. But she knew he would turn her down.
Skeet didn’t have a suggestion box on his door.
Another option: ask for time off for personal reasons and do it on her own. But if Skeet found out what she was doing, she’d be fired. Sheriff Johnson would stand for a lot of things, but that kind of insubordination wasn’t one of them.
Chief Akers might have been a bad guy. He might have mistreated his wife, although the jury was out on that. But Jolie had taken his case, and she was dedicated to finding his killer.
So there was no other option.
She’d keep tabs on Maddy herself.
She reread the two surveillance log sheets. Maddy’s actions were about what you’d expect in the aftermath of a loved one’s death. She went to the grocery store twice and the Gardenia Police Department once, stopping to gas up the car on the way home. She went once to Babbitt’s Funeral Home and once to the Royal Court Apartments, working in the office for about twenty-five minutes. Jolie supposed Maddy could have met up with Amy there, but Deputy Wade didn’t see her. A few neighbors dropped by Maddy’s house with covered dishes. One daughter spent the night. Two delivery vans dropped off flowers.
Jolie was beginning to doubt the hit man theory. She’d checked out James Dooley. He had a record, but it was small stuff. There was an outstanding warrant, which she made note of—she might want to use it sometime. It did cross her mind that someone delivering flowers could have gotten up close enough to deliver the coup de grace.
She didn’t think a guy like James Dooley could pull it off, though.
As Jolie went into the bedroom to change clothes, she found herself looking at Danny’s official portrait.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t actually
Jolie set the portrait back on the dresser. Carrying her clothes, she turned away, then back. Dumped the clothes on the bed. She took the photo off the dresser, folded the cardboard stand against the frame, opened the bottom drawer, and put the photograph inside.
Jolie drove into Gardenia just past ten p.m. Ed, her next door neighbor, had lent her his Dodge Ram. Ed was a veteran of the Korean War—a tough old bird. He’d lived next door to her father for twenty years, spent most of that time arguing politics on her dad’s porch over a couple of beers. When Danny died, Jolie took her dad’s house off the market and sold the house she had with Danny. It had been a good move.
Ed’s Ram was hardly unobtrusive, but there were a lot of Dodge Rams in Gardenia. Plenty of working men, hunters, and fishermen lived out here.
An added bonus: Ed’s truck had dark tinted windows.
One the way out of town, she stopped at the grocery store and bought energy bars, nuts, and juice. She took along plenty of water and a pot to piss in, just in case.
Then she settled in for the duration.
Nothing happened.
Back in the office by eight a.m., she picked up a message from Judge Sharpe’s clerk, asking her to call him. After a short wait, the clerk put her through to the judge.
“I’m sorry,” Judge Sharpe said. “I’m denying a search warrant at this time. You just don’t have probable cause. I’ll need more than the word of an alcoholic paranoid like Royce Brady.”
The second night showed a steep decrease in her enthusiasm. At least she’d squeezed in a nap before driving out to Maddy’s just before dark.
The Akers house was halfway down Jackson Street, which dead-ended at a park. A narrow alley fronted the park and ran perpendicular to Jackson, forming a T. An all-night convenience store sat on the west corner of Kelso and Jackson, separated from the neighborhood by a low fence and some weedy elms. It was an ideal place for Jolie to watch Maddy’s house. She could see every car that turned onto Jackson from Kelso. And she had a clear shot of Maddy’s front door.
So she glassed Maddy Akers’s front porch. Like watching a pot boil. There was nothing—just the street, the streetlamps, the house with a light on in back.
She switched from binoculars to her camera with the telephoto lens. Started to drift off, catching herself. The camera, suspended by a strap around her neck, rested on her chest.
She woke to the sound of a whining transmission as it accelerated out of the corner—
