City of Fire (47 page)

He yawned, looking at her as if she were a child. When he turned away, she followed his gaze up the table to a carton of rice and three fortune cookies.

“Maybe this will help,” he said, scratching his beard. “I don’t think I’m breaking a trust because it would be a matter of record. Rhodes was with your brother that night. He blames himself for the murder because he left early.”

As the words settled in, she tried not to show anything on her face. Tried to cushion the blow.

Now she knew why Rhodes had checked out the murder book.

She had read it from cover to cover. If the files were complete, there would have been a statement from Rhodes, along with field interview cards from witnesses who saw him at the
club. Rhodes removed them. Because the detectives working the case were retired, no one noticed.

Rhodes had been with David that night, but left early.

She looked at Bernhardt reaching for a fortune cookie, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she walked out.

SHE splashed her face with cold water, then returned to the floor. The lights had been dimmed, the TV shut down. Novak was still at his desk, talking to someone on the phone. Although Sanchez had left, she could see Rhodes in the glass room talking to Bernhardt. Even worse, the door was closed and Rhodes had seen her enter.

His hollow eyes were on her. He
knew.

She walked down the aisle to her desk thinking about how badly things had gone. She could have worked Bernhardt in a different way. She could have pulled the information out of the irritating man without revealing her point of view. Maybe it was burnout. She should have seen the warning signs. She should have kept her mouth shut.

She slung her briefcase over her shoulder. Then she picked up one of the evidence boxes, deciding to take it home.

Novak gave her a look and cupped the phone. “I’m right behind you,” he said. “I’ll take the other one. You good to call?”

“All night,” she said.

He nodded and returned to his phone call.

Then Lena headed out, keeping her eyes off the glass room. She rode the elevator to the basement, the dread following her around the corner and down the hall.

Rhodes
knew.

She could hear people talking but couldn’t see anyone. The sound of a distant television was bouncing off the walls. Someone dropping coins into a vending machine and laughing.
When she finally reached the door, she gave it a push with her hip and stepped outside.

Barrera said they might close the freeways. And it took a moment for Lena to compute exactly where she was. The parking garage was just across the street, yet lost in a blur of dust and smoke that burned her eyes. Ash was falling from the sky as if snow, the smell of fire, extremely close. Even more eerie, this was downtown Los Angeles and there wasn’t a single car on the road.

She looked up at the sky, searching for the Library Tower. After a beat, the ring of lights at the top cut a fleeting path through the clouds, throbbing like a beacon, then vanishing again.

Lena tightened her grip on the evidence carton and hurried across the street. As she entered the dilapidated garage, she could hear the Santa Ana winds whistling, the steel beams squeezing the river of air and blowing it out the other side. She could hear the music cut to the beat of her own shoe leather.

The Devil Winds.

She spotted her car in the gloom and rushed toward it. Tossing the box in the trunk, she got rid of her briefcase and slammed the lid. That’s when she saw Rhodes running across the street.

She ducked behind the car, instinctually moving away from it. When she reached an SUV five spaces down, she peered over the hood. Rhodes was standing in front of her car, searching for her in the darkness.

“We need to talk, Lena.”

She could taste the sand in her mouth. The ash and fire. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

“Why are you hiding?” he shouted. “This is crazy.”

He was moving down the aisle now, quickly checking between the cars. Lena lowered herself to the pavement and rolled beneath the SUV, her eyes glued to his feet. Although she couldn’t see the guard shack on the other side of the wall, she guessed that on a night like this the door would be closed. If she called out, no one would hear her.

“Come on, Lena. Let’s talk this out. The Blackbird’s still open. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

He was less than three feet away. When his boots disappeared behind the next car, she listened to his footsteps. She counted them and waited, then rolled out the other side and peered through the window. Rhodes was ten cars away, moving toward the ramp to the second floor. He looked nervous. Jumpy. She squeezed the keys in her fist, doubling back to her car. After taking several deep breaths she couldn’t quite catch, she gritted her teeth and made a run for it.

She heard him shouting at her. His voice raw and overloaded with panic.

She inserted the key in the lock, ripped the door open, and jumped in. She saw Rhodes running toward her as she jammed the key into the ignition and lit up the engine. He was sprinting toward her. Closing fast. She grabbed the shift and hit the door locks. As Rhodes slammed against the window, she snapped the clutch and saw him leap out of the way.

She took the corner hard, tires screeching and her eyes on the rearview mirror. Rhodes was chasing her on foot. She blew past the guard shack, pulled out onto the street, and barreled through the red light. When she checked the mirror again, Rhodes was gone. Everything was gone. All she could see was smoke.

NO music. Just the hum of the engine underneath the wind. Something to hold on to as the car sliced through endless billows of white clouds and her jumbled nerves filled the seats around her. She couldn’t see the road. Only a pair of taillights floating beyond the hood. Every half mile or so the truck she was following would appear before her eyes, then vanish again—a ghostlike object crawling through the smoke toward Hollywood with a heavy load. As she finally reached the Beachwood exit and made the slow climb into the hills, she stopped checking the rearview mirror. Five minutes later, she pulled into her driveway and cut the engine. But she couldn’t relax. Couldn’t let go.

Someone had turned her outdoor lights on. The windows were dark, but the outside lights were on.

A chill rolled up her spine as she stared at her house shrouded in the gloom. She could see a tarp stretched over the roof, but wondered if it would last the night. Her bedroom shutters had broken loose from their clasps and were beating against the window frame. When she noticed the crime scene tape wrapped around the entire first floor, she got out of the car.

For several moments she watched and listened without moving.

She had buried the thought of coming home ever since seeing Martin Fellows’s collection of photographs. She had made every effort to keep busy working the case with the assurance that he’d never touched her. But as she stared at
her broken house, she realized exactly what she had been hiding from herself.

Fellows had found a way to get inside. What she thought had only been a vivid nightmare was a reality. She had seen Fellows standing in her bedroom. Seen the madman through her sleep.

She turned to the street and listened for Rhodes’s car. She tried to get a grip on herself. Tried to chill.

Someone had jammed a business card into the front door. Moving out of the shadows, she grabbed the card and held it to the light. The card had been left by her old partner, Pete Sweeney, out of Hollywood. A note was written across the top. Two simple words.
Call me.

She slipped the card into her pocket, brushing her hand over her gun because she needed to know that it was there. Easing her way into the backyard, her eyes swept across the pool and up the steps to the chaise longue. It was empty—the towels still hidden behind the planter. Martin Fellows was not here. She didn’t expect to find him here, yet she needed to be sure.

She walked around the house, checking the windows and doors. Everything appeared secure. Returning to the front steps, she slashed the crime scene tape with her key and opened the door.

A fly was knocking against the ceiling. For a split second she thought about that hole in her bedroom window screen that needed to be replaced.

She turned on the lights in the kitchen. When she looked at the trash, she saw a roll of discarded paper towels soiled with fingerprint powder. Sweeney had obviously been inside, along with SID, and they took the unusual step of cleaning up. She entered her bedroom, checked the closets and bath, then moved upstairs for a quick look at the second bedroom. No one was here. Just that fly following her through the house.

She took a deep breath, her nerves slowing down as she returned to the kitchen. She understood why her home was a crime scene. Martin Fellows had been here. What she didn’t get was why no one had said anything. She grabbed the
phone and punched in Sweeney’s cell. He must have been waiting for the call because it was after midnight and he picked up on the first ring.

“You okay, Lena?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t sound so good.”

She shook it off. “Who gave you the order?”

“Your boss, Barrera. He called us after the SIS guys were found in West Hollywood. He said he needed a favor. Me and Banks volunteered.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“He told us not to. You already had enough on your plate.”

“Why did you tape around the house?”

“Barrera ordered us not to call, but I thought it sounded like bullshit. I wanted you to know we were there. I wanted everybody to know we were there. Who’s gonna break into a crime scene?”

His voice trailed off. Sweeney was worried about her. She could hear it.

“You sure you’re good?” he repeated.

She realized that she was pacing. Grabbing a stool, she forced herself to sit down.

“Did you find anything, Pete?”

“A lot of smudged prints that are probably yours. But I think I know how he got in. A window lock on the second floor was broken. We didn’t have time to hit Home Depot, so I nailed it to the frame. I’d be happy to stop by and fix it anytime you say.”

She heard the sound of road noise in the background. Sweeney was in his car.

“You headed home?”

“Only in my dreams, Lena. We’re working tonight. Someone spotted a body in Griffith Park and we can’t find it. We can’t even find the fuckin’ road. Guess we’ll keep looking till we do.”

His easy manner felt something like reaching an oasis. She thanked him and switched off the phone. Glancing at the
clock on the microwave, she hoped Novak got home all right and wondered if she should call. But her briefcase and the evidence box were still in her car. And that sound of the shutters banging against the house had become unnerving. She set the phone down and walked into the bedroom.

The shutters were authentic. She had never used them because they were on the other side of the window screens. Getting to them wasn’t easy and she had never had any interest in blocking the view. As she stepped around the bed, she could see the wind drawing the heavy wooden panels open, then slamming them shut again. She switched on the table lamp, released the lock, and raised the window. Glancing at the hole in the screen, she pried the frame out, awkwardly fished it through the window, and leaned it against the wall. Then she reached outside into the darkness, digging her fingers into the slats as the shutters rushed toward her.

For a split second, she knew something was wrong but couldn’t place it. Something flashed in the darkness. Something shiny in the wood.

She pulled the shutter against the window frame, holding it in place as she reached for the table lamp. When her eyes drilled through the hole and locked on the metallic object burrowed inside the wood, she lost her grip and watched the shutter sway into the darkness, then swing back through time.

Her body shut down, her ticket on the night train punched.

The hole in the screen matched the location of the hole in the wooden shutter. She had looked at that screen for five years and never replaced it. Now she could hear something in the wind. Something that sounded a lot like her brother’s voice, and he was weeping.