City of Fire (8 page)

Novak smiled as he measured the man. “I understand all that. But let’s get back to tricky.”

Plashett sank into his chair and sighed. “They’ve been on the same schedule for the past ten days. I checked when you called. Last night he let his assistants go home early.”

“What time was that?” Lena asked.

Plashett hesitated again, then lowered his eyes. “Around ten,” he said.

TRICKY …

Lena thought about it as she acclimated herself to the RHD car’s loose, pinball steering.

The trick to a decent interview was to start off slowly and work your way to the big moment. That moment came when Plashett called Brant’s assistants into his office and both employees admitted that they were the last to leave the building and couldn’t really explain why they had been given the night off. Brant told them that they looked tired, that it was only Thursday and they would have to work over the weekend. Brant seemed troubled last night, as if he wanted to be alone.

Tricky.

Because the company was an extension of Plashett’s work on campus, security was lax and offered no indication of when Brant had left the office and headed home. Even worse, when they checked Brant’s computer, the last saved file matched the time the two employees had left for the night: 10:00 p.m., not five in the morning.

James Brant didn’t have an alibi. The story he’d told Tito Sanchez couldn’t be verified.

But then the real trick was to somehow find a way to keep an open mind. Follow the evidence and not ricochet off any one of its parts. Maintain your direction. Stay away from the fork in the road or risk being deflected off course.

Lena glanced at her partner, then back at the freeway as she exited off the 134 at Linda Vista. The college where
Nikki Brant taught art history was just on the other side of Glendale in the hills overlooking the Rose Bowl. Novak was sipping another Diet Coke from a cooler he kept in the trunk and pretending to read one of his retirement brochures. She thought he might be pretending because the brochure covered a tract of land in Idaho, the graveyard state of choice for L.A. cops. Within a week of their first meeting, Lena had managed to talk Novak out of Idaho. He liked to fish but enjoyed the taste of salmon better than trout. Besides, he was only fifty-three years old, had successfully quit drinking and smoking, and still had at least a third of his life ahead of him. If he was going to make the great escape, the Northwest seemed like a better place to go. Ever since Lena mentioned her frequent trips to Seattle with her brother’s band and described the way the water met the land, Novak became excited and ran new places by her as if he needed her approval now.

“Don’t tell me you’re reconsidering Idaho,” she said.

Novak dropped the brochure and held up one of his fishing magazines, already opened to the feature article. Then he pointed to a picture of a flounder set on a bed of tomatoes rather than ice.

Lena shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why did they put the fish on the tomatoes?”

“Tomatoes have a short growing season. They’re sensitive to frost. But a flounder can survive in ice-cold water because it has a gene that enables it to. Once they found the gene in the fish, they put it into a tomato.”

“Em,” Lena said. “An antifreeze gene. That must be why the tomatoes I buy at the store taste so good. What’s all this got to do with Idaho?”

“Exactly what you said. Tomatoes don’t taste good anymore. I can’t remember buying one that had any taste at all. Maybe they’ve already added the flounder gene and we don’t know about it yet.”

“Where are you going with this, Hank?”

“At least in Idaho you might be able to buy enough land and grow your own.”

“Maybe. But my guess is you can grow your own tomatoes anywhere.”

“What about the growing season? It’s gotta be pretty short in Seattle. It’s cold up there. What if I get started and realize I need that fucking antifreeze gene?”

She gave him a long look, saw the glint in his eye, the corners of his mouth bending into his cheeks.

“How many tomatoes do you plan on eating, Hank?”

“Plenty,” he said. “As long as I’m not thinking about flounder when I take the first bite.”

He started laughing. It was a game. A short break after a long morning spent with a dead body and a view of the world they were paid to see. When they arrived at the college, it would mean another notification. More sadness as the day slipped back into the grim, and darkness sank its heels in.

Lena passed the Rose Bowl and made a left at the light, cutting through another quiet neighborhood burrowed in the hills beneath lush vegetation. About a half mile up, the hill steepened and the real estate gave way to open land, the tall grasses a muted gold swaying in the breeze. As she turned into the entrance and started down the driveway, the San Gabriel Mountains on the other side of the valley appeared to rise up before her eyes. To the east several peaks remained snowcapped in spite of the late season. The view at this height was magnificent.

Lena heard Novak drop the magazine onto the floor and turned back to the driveway, the car rolling over a speed bump. As she glided around the curve, she saw an enormous black building begin to take shape behind the trees. The structure crested the tops of two hills, the road passing beneath it. Lena wasn’t sure if it looked like a twenty-five-story building that had flopped down on its side, or a bridge made of black steel and black glass joining the peaks of both hills. All she knew was that she liked it. That the architecture stirred deep-seated memories from her past—who she thought she would be and what she wanted to become a long time ago.

She shook it off, pulling underneath the structure and
parking in the visitor lot on the other side. But as they climbed out of the car, she couldn’t help taking another look. The entire campus was composed of this single building, balanced on top of the world.

ELVIRA GISH DIDN’T
take well to losing her colleague. They were sitting at a table in the cafeteria. They had given her the bad news fifteen minutes ago, a first-draft sketch of the horror without much detail, and she still appeared shaken to the bone.

“Are you all right?” Novak asked.

Gish looked up from an unopened bottle of spring water, trying to compose herself. “Give me another minute, please.”

Lena remained silent for now, studying the middle-aged woman’s reaction. Everything about it was the way it should have been, except for the faint glow of anger hidden in her crystalline green eyes.

“Tell me what happened again,” Gish said.

Novak lowered his voice. “We’ve told you everything we can. You worked with Nikki Brant for what—two years?”

“Two years,” Gish repeated.

Lena noticed a group of six or seven students watching them from the other side of the room. The recognition in their faces that the news was bad and that the messengers were cops. She turned back to Gish, who couldn’t stop fidgeting in her chair. Her hair was a light brown, streaked with gray and drawn behind her back in a loose ponytail. Her face was soft and round, her skin etched with laugh lines around the eyes and mouth. When Lena glanced at Novak, he nodded slowly and reached into his pocket for his notebook and pen.

“The student at the front desk,” Lena said. “He told us that you were more than a colleague to Ms. Brant. He told us that you were friends.”

“Yes, we were,” Gish said.

“Did she ever mention having any trouble with a student or faculty member?”

“Everyone liked Nikki. She was one of the most popular members of our staff.”

“And the two of you were close,” Lena said. “She confided in you.”

“Yes.”

“What did you talk about?”

Gish turned toward her, the anger more visible now. “Her husband,” she said. “Most of the time we talked about him.”

“Was there a problem? Her husband described their marriage as perfect.”

“Is that your word or his?”

“His,” Lena said. “It’s a direct quote.”

Gish shifted her weight in the chair as she thought about it. She was tossing something over. Trying to make a decision.

“Nikki wanted to have a family and he didn’t,” she said finally.

“So they argued about it.”

Gish nodded. “Nikki was an orphan and wanted children. She needed to be a mother. It was important to her.”

“Lots of people argue. What are you trying to say?”

“I’ve been married for ten years,” Gish said. “This was more than that. He scared her. Nikki was afraid of him.”

“Was he abusive? Did he ever hit her?”

“I’m not really sure. About three months ago I saw a bruise. It was on her arm just above the elbow. When I asked her about it, she told me that she fell.”

“Did you believe her?”

“At the time I didn’t think anything of it. But now I do. Their marriage was about him, not her. At least that’s the way it seemed to me.”

“Did you ever see any other bruises?”

“The way she dressed. They could’ve been there and I never would’ve noticed.”

“What about sick days?”

“She loved teaching. I can’t remember Nikki ever missing a class.”

Lena glanced at Novak, then pulled a card out of her pocket, wrote her name and number down, and handed it to Gish.

“They can’t afford to give detectives business cards?” Gish asked.

Lena met her eyes and shrugged. “I’ve got another question.”

The woman nodded, slipping Lena’s card into her pocket.

“Did Ms. Brant say she was afraid of her husband? Or is that something you sensed on your own?”

Gish met Lena’s eyes, her face hardening. “It’s a direct quote.”

“When did she say it?”

“Three days ago. After she confirmed her appointment with her gynecologist. I was in her office when she hung up the phone.”

Lena tried not to show any emotion. “Would you happen to know her doctor’s name?”

Gish nodded and looked down at the table, unable to speak as the reality of what might have happened to her friend seemed to pass over the building like a flock of black crows scouring the valley.

IT WAS ONLY
a hunch, but the fifteen-minute ride to South Pasadena seemed worth it. Novak kept his thoughts to himself, remaining quiet and ignoring the travel brochures piled up by his feet. From the look on his face, Lena doubted that he was thinking about Idaho or Seattle or even tomatoes grown with flounder genes.

Their break was over. Novak may have been a detective, but he was also the father of three daughters.

She pulled up to the light on Orange Grove and made a left on Mission. Three or four blocks later, she spotted the building across the street from a bookstore and turned into the lot. Elvira Gish knew who Nikki’s doctor was because they shared the same one. Close to work and not too far from the medical corridor supporting the hospital on Fair Oaks Avenue. Lena was familiar with the neighborhood because her brother had brought her to that bookstore across the street more than once. Book’em Mysteries was one of David’s favorite mystery
bookshops in the city, and over the years he’d become friendly with the staff. But as they crossed the lot and entered the building, Lena wasn’t thinking about her brother.

Dr. Sarah Colletti sat behind her desk, trying to remain professional while they asked about her former patient. Colletti had interrupted her examination schedule without protest the moment they’d walked up to the window at the front desk and explained who they were. She didn’t look much older than Lena and probably had a warm, confident smile on most other days. But that was long gone, shut down the moment the door closed and Novak told her that Nikki Brant had been murdered.

“Yes, she was pregnant,” Colletti said. “I gave her the news yesterday, and she was thrilled.”

The confirmation had a deadening feel to it that weighed down the room. Nikki Brant had been pregnant at the time she was stabbed to death.

“How often did you see her?” Lena asked.

“Once a month in the beginning, then every other week or so. Nikki really wanted a baby. She’d had a couple of false alarms.”

Novak back-paged his way through his notebook and stepped in. “Did you ever notice any welts or bruises when you examined her?”

Colletti turned to him but didn’t answer.

“A friend told us she noticed a bruise on her arm about three months ago,” he said. “You just told us that you saw her as a patient at least once a month. We’re wondering if maybe you saw the bruise as well.”

The doctor shook her head.

“What about her vagina?” Novak asked.

“I never saw any bruising. No tears or abrasions or indications of rough or forced sex. If you’re asking me if Nikki had a problem with her husband, she never mentioned it. When I told her that she was pregnant, she was dancing on air. I prescribed something for her nausea and that was it.”

Lena wrote down the name of the prescription, wondering
why they hadn’t found the pills at the crime scene. “How far along was she?”

Colletti almost broke but caught herself. She pulled a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to her. Novak moved closer for a better look. It was an image from the ultrasound. A picture of a fetus with verifiable fingers and toes, curled up in the womb.