Crash and Burn (23 page)

She knew that sound. Her feet moved. Before she knew what she was doing, she was on the driveway with her gun in her hand. She walked around the Honda and spied something dark slumped against the fence.

“Oh, God! Amber!”

Krista lunged toward her and dropped to her knees. White go-go boots seemed to glow in the darkness as Krista hunched over her.

“Hang on! I’ve got you.”

Amber made a wet, gurgling noise as Krista fumbled for her phone. She jabbed the button for 911, then pressed speakerphone to free her hands. She frantically stripped off her jacket and pressed it against the flower of blood blooming on Amber’s dress.

“Nine-one-one. Please state your emergency.”

“Gunshot victim! Four-twenty-five Sycamore in Newport Beach.”

Amber’s head lolled back.

“Shit, hang on.
Amber!
” The jacket was already slick with blood. Krista yanked her shirt over her head and pressed it against the wound. Her brain flashed to a dark Van Nuys warehouse that smelled of urine.

“Send an ambulance, ASAP. This girl’s bleeding out. Amber, stay with me!” Blood soaked through instantly, seeping warm and thick between her fingers. She couldn’t keep up.
Just like Scarlet, like Scarlet, like Scarlet.

“Hold on. Help’s coming.” Krista’s voice shook and as she pressed the shirt against the wound. Another wet gurgle.

“Amber, stay with me.
Stay with me!
”

Chapter Six

Krista sat in the back of a patrol car with her knees locked together. She stared numbly across the street at the huddle of onlookers behind the crime scene tape. Eight people. Before there had been twelve. The remaining gawkers seemed determined to stay until the last patrol car left the scene. They cast looks in her direction, indicting her with their eyes as she sat in the car, shivering. Seventy degrees out, and she was freezing cold.

“Ms. Hart?”

A detective who’d already interviewed her made his way over. Dan McMillan. Eight-year veteran. His wife worked for L.A.’s Hollenbeck Division and had been in Krista’s academy class.

McMillan stopped in front of her and gave a sympathetic smile designed to put her at ease.

“Just a few more details to go over.”

Krista stared at him.

“According to this—” He flipped open his memo book. “The back door was
unlocked
upon your arrival.”

“That’s correct.”

He stared at her. “You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

He consulted his notes again. Krista watched him, envisioning his wife. She was a tiny woman, but strong as hell, and Krista remembered her attacking the obstacle course like a rabid monkey.

“And you just walked in, and that’s when you noticed the smell?”

She cleared her throat. “And the stuff all over the floor. I stepped on some cereal right when I entered.”

He nodded. “Remind me again why you stopped by tonight?”

You mean re-tell my story for the fifteenth time, and maybe this time it’ll be different?

Krista took a deep breath to steady herself. She clutched her hands together. She was in shock. She knew that. Her thoughts were scattered, and if she wasn’t careful she was going to get her facts mixed up.

“I was looking for Lilian Daniels, the woman who lives here.”

“The former roommate of the vic.”

She flinched at the word. “That’s right.”

“And you know this how again?”

“Through my investigation. Lilian Daniels is supposed to testify in court tomorrow. I’ve been interviewing her friends and co-workers in an effort to locate her.”

He cocked his head to the side and looked toward the house as if considering this “new” information. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree with crime scene techs streaming in and out. Krista had been sitting in this patrol car, giving the same statement to investigators since the first van arrived. Two hours from now, she’d probably be giving the same statement again in some windowless interview room at NBPD headquarters.

“So Amber Sandusky was
aware
her friend was missing,” he said, “and yet she came here expecting to find her?”

“I don’t know what she expected.”
And it’s too late to ask her.

“Any idea why she’d do that?”

Because Krista’s visit had prompted her? Amber had been content to forget about her estranged roommate until Krista came along and stirred things up.

“Ms. Hart?”

Ms.
Very pointed. Not officer. Not detective. She’d left the club and no longer enjoyed the protection of the Blue Wall.

Krista cleared her throat. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what she might have wanted to see her friend about?”

“No. But like I said before, Amber told me she thought Lily might have taken some money and possibly jewelry from her apartment. That could be why she came, but it’s just a guess.” Krista looked past the detective to the sidewalk where a woman in a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit stood holding a Chihuahua. If only the damn dog had been out, maybe it could have warned Amber before she stumbled into her killer—

“Ms. Hart?”

“Huh?”

“I said, we’d really like to talk to Lilian Daniels.”

“So would I.”

“Are you sure you can’t reach her?” The detective frowned. “Maybe through a relative or someone? Maybe a boyfriend?”

“I’m sure.” Krista looked away, biting her tongue on a string of sarcastic comments. It wouldn’t help to get crosswise with the lead detective. She was already a person of interest in this case and she wasn’t anxious to get promoted to prime suspect.

Besides, he was only doing his job. She took a deep breath and looked up at him.

“Are we finished here? Because I’d really like to go in now and get this over with.”

“You mean the station?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded. “I talked to the captain. We’ve got what we need for now, long as you come in tomorrow, go over some paperwork.”

“You mean I can leave?”

“That’s right.” He tucked his notebook into his pocket and stepped aside.

“You want to see me tomorrow,” she stated, still adjusting to the idea that she was free to go after four grueling hours of sitting in the same spot, recounting the same story over and over. She’d told the truth, repeatedly. She’d just left out a few details.

The art of the police statement.

“Preferably first thing,” McMillan said. “Don’t put it off.”

“Thank you.” She stood up on stiff legs and had the surreal experience of shaking his hand. “Give my best to Jodi.”

“Will do.”

She started to walk away and then turned. “What about my gun?”

“It’s at the lab. It’ll be at least a few days.”

Assuming her story checked out, he meant. They’d already checked her hands for gunshot residue, but they still needed to test the weapon.

Krista ducked under the crime scene tape and walked back to her car, ignoring the wary gazes from neighbors still lining the street. She slid behind the wheel and sat a moment, simply listening to the silence. Then she started up her car and wended her way home. She didn’t remember exiting Pacific Coast Highway or even turning onto her street, but suddenly she was in her driveway. Mac’s car was in its usual spot. The lights in his apartment were off.

Krista felt numb. Dazed. She got out of her car and walked around front. A pair of headlights zoomed up her street and a black 911 glided to a stop. R.J. peered at her through the window.

“Get in.”

She didn’t move.

“Now.”

She looked at her darkened house. She looked at R.J. She pulled the door open and slid inside.

He peeled away from the curb and whipped around the corner, thrusting her back against the plush leather seat. On the boulevard he took it to sixty.

“You should’ve called me.”

She didn’t answer. Wind whipped through her hair and she stared out the window at the blur of storefronts—surf shops, health food stores, trendy restaurants that would probably be closed in a year. Sushi Go-Go was an anomaly. It had been around nearly a decade. The pretty young waitresses attracted a steady clientele.

R.J. zipped into a parking lot and pulled up to a front row space.

Ruby’s Diner. Another OC landmark.

Krista stared at the sign, remembering countless late-night quests for pecan pancakes. If she saw one right now, she was pretty sure she’d hurl.

R.J. got out without comment. He came around and opened her door.

“What are we doing?”

“Re-fueling.”

With a sigh, she got out and trialed him into the restaurant. It was brightly lit and bustling with people, which was more than she could say for her house. Krista ducked into the restroom. She avoided her reflection in the mirror as she scrubbed the blood from her nails and cuticles. Then she joined R.J. in a moon-shaped booth. He handed her a menu that smelled like syrup and she skimmed the words without reading anything.

“You look like hell.”

She glanced up, then down at herself. She wore an oversized gray T-shirt one of the patrol officers had given her. By the smell, she figured he’d dug it out of his gym bag.

“What can I get you?”

Krista glanced up at the waitress. She had leathery skin and a platinum-blond pixie cut, and lines around her eyes that made her at least fifty.

Krista handed her the menu. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

R.J. shot her a glare. “Two Tortilla Scrambles,” he told the waitress. “And a pot of coffee.”

The woman left and Krista closed her eyes and leaned back against the vinyl seat. She couldn’t think about food, but she was too tired to argue.

“Thanks for leaving my name out.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. For the first time she could remember, there was nothing smug in his expression. No twinkle in his blue eyes, no hint of teasing.

“Maybe I didn’t.”

“If you didn’t, I’d have Newport PD crawling up my ass right now.”

She looked away, uncomfortable with his gratitude. “I kept it simple.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She gave him the nutshell version, starting with everything she’d observed as soon as she’d stepped onto the property. It was the same statement she’d given earlier, only she didn’t omit the part about bumping into him. By the time she reached the detectives’ interviews, the waitress was back with their food.

R.J. peppered his eggs and dug in. Krista nudged her plate away and heaped sugar into her coffee. Usually she drank it black, but her adrenaline was crashing.

R.J. watched her take a sip. His gaze was direct. Disconcerting. She’d never seen him so serious.

“Yesterday I did a phone dump on Lily’s old number,” he said. “You get around to that?”

She slurped coffee. It was so sweet it made her teeth hurt.

“I pulled the new one yesterday.”

He frowned. “Where’d you get the new one?”

“I’m a detective.”

He watched her silently.

“So, what’d you find?” she asked.

“Over a two-month period around the date of the Sheffield murder, Lily Daniels had one-hundred-twenty-six calls to the residence of a Robert Beech.”

“That’s two calls a day.”

“Only she wasn’t calling every day. She’d go in bursts. You know who Beech is?”

“Her boyfriend?”

“He’s a director. Does commercials, pretty well known around town.”

“So I take it that’s who she was meeting at the seedy motel at midnight?”

“Not quite,” R.J. said. “He was meeting someone
else
that night.”

Krista stirred her coffee as her brain started to function. “So I’m guessing this man’s married—hence, all the sneaking around. And I’m guessing Lily found out he had another woman on the side and started, what, stalking him? Harassing him?”

“Harassing, extorting, it’s not totally clear.”

“Walker doesn’t know?”

R.J. shrugged. “I’m sure he does, but he finessed the deposition. You read it?”

It had been in the files DeSilva sent over.

“Lily said she was meeting a friend who never showed, which was why she was cooling her heels in the motel parking lot at midnight.” Krista said. “She didn’t mention she was a dissed lover who was stalking a married man, maybe shaking him down.”

“Walker could drag the truth out if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to discredit his star witness.”

“What about the prosecutor? He’ll blow her out of the water.”

“If he puts it together,” R.J. said.

“You don’t think he will?”

“The investigator he’s using for this thing’s a lightweight. He could very well miss it.”

Krista sipped some more coffee. It was helping her feel human again.

“Let’s walk through this,” she said. “Lily’s at this motel, watching her lover cheat on her with some other woman when she sees a man park Sheffield’s black Mercedes at the end of the alley. According to the depo, she was there from midnight to one and heard no gunshots.”

“That’s because there weren’t any.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “How can you know she’s telling the truth? She already lied under oath.”

“This is corroborated by two other people,” R.J. said. “The crime scene tech, who’s going to testify there wasn’t enough blood at the scene for Sheffield to have been shot there, and the coroner.”

“Livor patterns?” Krista asked.

“That’s right. Looks like the body could have been moved after death, then staged in the alley.”

Krista went over it in her still-fuzzy brain. “And the Mercedes—”

“A bait car. It was sitting there, keys inside, wallet probably out in plain view. In that neighborhood, it was only a matter of time before someone came along and boosted it, making themselves a prime suspect in the murder.”

“So you don’t think this thing is about framing Saurez?”

“I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The car thief should’ve been some run-of-the-mill street punk who happened to come along. Even if he didn’t steal the car, he would’ve stolen the wallet and started using the doc’s credit cards, making himself a suspect. Way it was probably supposed to go down, some dumb kid would get crucified and some piss-ant public defender would try and make a case for him and fail. The kid would go away for a few years, open and shut case, no problem.”