Backfire

happened.

She looked down at her watch. It was an hour and a half short of midnight on Thanksgiving night.

Skyline Motel

El Cerrito, California

Friday, one minute after midnight

Eve looked at the cluster of cop cars surrounding the motel office, parked at all angles throughout the lot. The few motel guests were grouped together, talking, probably trying to figure out what had happened. They knew enough, Eve thought, looking at the M.E.’s white van. They just didn’t know who had shot Jerol.

After they’d spoken to Mrs. Idling, Eve and Harry had come outside, primarily to get out of the way of the El Cerrito forensic team and the M.E. She said to Harry, “I hate this. That young man is dead because he must have recognized Xu on TV. But what I don’t understand is why Xu came back to the office and shot him. Why not simply leave? Why even come to the office in the first place?”

Harry said, “Maybe Xu couldn’t be sure about him, didn’t want to chance him making a phone call. The kid was another loose end.” He watched them wheel young Jerol Idling out, already zipped into a green body bag. Savich and Sherlock and Cheney followed. They were speaking to the El Cerrito police chief, Glenis Sayers.

Eve said to Harry, “When Chief Sayers’s detectives arrived at the scene, they found the name Joe Cribbs with the license plate number that Jerol had written down for him next to it. When they matched it to the blue Honda that was stolen in Sausalito on Tuesday, they called her. Bless her, she called Cheney right away, so it’s thanks to her we’re in the mix at all.”

They watched El Cerrito police officers crowding around the chief, one of them with his arm around Mrs. Idling’s shoulders. She was plastered against him. They could hear her sobs from where they stood. Life can be snuffed out from one moment to the next, Eve thought. It was horrible and scary, and true for each and every human being on this earth.

Harry nodded. “There isn’t any doubt it was Xu. Everything fits. Mrs. Idling never saw him, but she knew a guy had paid cash to check into room two-seventeen on Tuesday. Jerol told her the guy seemed sick, favoring his arm when he checked in, said the guy seemed really out of it. The Joe Cribbs signature in the ledger is pretty illegible, as if written with the wrong hand. Remember Xu is left-handed, and he was shot in that arm. I’ll bet ballistics matches the bullet to the gun that killed Dr. Chu.”

Eve said, “But that doesn’t help us tonight. Maybe Xu doesn’t know we’ve got him made, doesn’t know we’re looking for that blue Honda he’s driving. I wish Mrs. Idling hadn’t dismissed the shot she heard as a backfire for those precious minutes before she came over to investigate.”

Harry said, “The corker is she saw two cars skidding out of the parking lot, with the door to Mr. Cribbs’s room standing wide open.”

Eve said, “It means he was too sick to ditch the Honda, but he wasn’t too sick to call someone to the motel to help him. He’s been here a day and a half. He could have called the Chinese for help. You think that second car was driven by a Chinese connection?”

Harry shook his head. “That doesn’t sit right with me, doesn’t feel right. But you know, if not the Chinese, then who? And was that other person the one who shot Jerol?” He thought about that, but no answer stepped up. He said, “That second car, Mrs. Idling is sure it’s an older Corolla. Since there was no license plate matching it in the register, it wasn’t anyone who was staying here, legally, at the motel. If they’re smart, they’ll leave the Honda somewhere and we’ll have no way to trace them.”

Eve said on a sigh, “Whoever it is, it’s a game changer. With help, Xu can go anywhere he wants now.”

Cheney called out, “Harry, we need you over here.”

Harry Christoff’s house

Laurel Heights, San Francisco

Saturday morning

Eve kicked back, put her booted feet on the ottoman. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, and she felt grungy. She leaned her head back against the sofa back and said, “My head hurts.”

Harry stood over her, a cup of coffee in his hand. “You ate breakfast an hour ago so it’s okay to drink another cup of this fine brew. Then we’ll talk.”

Talk? That opened her eyes. What did he mean, talk? Eve didn’t want to talk—a guy talk about two adults enjoying sex and no commitment? No, that wasn’t Harry. Harry was honorable to his feet. Like big statue-of-David feet. No, Harry felt guilty because he’d made love to her and now it was morning and somewhere along the line he’d realized she expected more from him, and so he regretted ever pulling down her blue bikini panties. How was he ever going to explain that to her so she didn’t shoot him?

She stared at him, unblinking. He hadn’t said a word while he’d chowed down on his cereal, one of those health-food brands she’d never heard of, while she’d slathered strawberry jam on her toast. Not a single word about how incredible she was and it was the best night of his life, and how about now let’s get naked right here, on the table? Would she climb up on the table? Yes, she would.

She continued to stare at him. To her eye, Harry radiated guilt.

Eve drank a bit of coffee and watched Harry walk to the chair opposite and sit down. He looked indolent and loose, his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and he steepled his fingertips together. Tap, tap, tap.

Maybe she was wrong, maybe he didn’t feel guilt about having sex with her, wanting now to shoulder the blame, to claim all the fault. Maybe she was wrong. Instead, maybe he was feeling cocky he’d scored with her. Was that better than his feeling guilty about seducing her? Seducing her? What had happened between them—what was it last night, three times? Talk about a busy two-way street.

Harry said in a brooding voice, “You’re so pretty, it drives me nuts.”

Pretty? He was beginning his guilt speech by telling her she was pretty and it drove him nuts? No, what she was was a mess. She needed a shower, she needed a couple of multivitamins, she needed to have Harry tell her it wasn’t just because she was pretty that he was attracted to her; what she wanted him to say was something very different, like it was her insides that turned him on, and he didn’t for a single instant feel guilty about making love with her, and he wanted more, he wanted—Eve pulled out her cell. “I want to speak to my dad.”

“Why now?” His left eyebrow shot up. He still looked, she thought, loose and relaxed, indolent as a lizard, and she wanted to smack him.

She managed a credible sneer. “What do you care? Oh, I see, if Daddy asks me where I am, I’ll have to confess to him I’m currently only twenty feet from a guy’s bedroom, wherein lies a rumpled bed, and the guy’s name is Harry Christoff, and sorry, Dad, he’s not in the U.S. Marshals Service, he’s a dippy FBI agent.”

Harry grinned at her. “I love to listen to you spit out a hundred words without taking a breath. Actually I’d like to speak to your dad. Don’t you think it’s about time? He really doesn’t like FBI agents?”

About time? To apologize to him for seducing his daughter, but, hey, it happened, so let’s move on? She studied his face, took another slug of her coffee, and carefully set the cup down on a magazine to spare the shiny wood surface. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he was holding himself very quiet, his eyes focused on her face. No way was she going to let him speak to her dad. She said between seamed lips, “I was thinking you don’t really like women except to sleep with them to add another notch to your belt. But that’s not it—