The Timer Game (12 page)

“Not to me. But while she was leaving she kept muttering,
‘
I’m the keeper. I have to keep them safe. Hold them until the Coming.’”

“‘Keep them safe.’ Any significance?”

“None. Oh, here we go.”

Rosemary detached the card and passed it over to Grace. A phone number and an address on Pacific Highway near the Old Town trolley station. Grace passed it back. “Current. Anything you want me to tell her? I’m going over.”

“Yeah. Tell her she sets foot on this floor again, I’ll have her arrested, and not just by a security guard either. I don’t care what they say.”

Chapter 12

Jazz Studio lived near Old Town in a faded house tucked between ramps for 8 East and 5 North, cement overpasses arching like apocalyptic cathedrals, blotting out the sky.

He’s coming for you.

Eddie had been so
sure.
Yeah, paranoid schizophrenics usually were.

Cars whined overhead as Grace parked next to a late-model car with government plates. She got out and surveyed the yard. A bike stood chained to a willow shading the front of the house. A crate of desiccated geraniums lay tilted next to the door, like a UPS package waiting for pickup. She stepped around the geraniums and read the mail slots nailed to the siding. J. Studio was in 2C.

Grace tried the front door. It wasn’t locked. The living room was small and surprisingly cheerful, with scattered comfortable-looking sofas and chairs, and a shelf of novels and board games. A television muttered, tuned to a soap.

“Hello?” No answer. She stepped into the living room and glanced into the kitchen. An eight-burner stove stood next to an empty table holding an abandoned chess game. Grace took the stairs leading to the second floor. Voices and muffled crying came from a room closest to the stairwell. Two doors down, 2C stood ajar.

Grace rapped softly. “Jazz?”

She pushed open the door. A woman lay crumpled on a bed. She was in her midtwenties, skinny and East Indian, with glossy black hair and high cheekbones. She peered up at Grace, her stare vacant.

“Jazz? I’m Grace. You don’t know me, but I’d like to talk to you. You’ve had a hard couple of days.”

Jazz shifted, eyes red, unfocused. “Eddie. Eddie died. Shot right through the head. Splat. He was my boyfriend. Wanted to work on the railroad.”

“No kidding. I’m sorry.” Grace wet her lips. “Did he like to play spy games? Maybe with little cameras?”

“We were getting married. I was going to wear a dress. Pretty one. White.”

Jazz spoke mechanically, as if it were something she’d memorized.

Grace nodded, her gaze searching the room. “When he drove around in the van, did he like to spy with a camera?”

The room was a jumble of pill bottles, makeup, tossed clothes. A large, scratchy-looking stuffed lion with shiny button eyes sat on the bed, its smile faintly menacing. Grace didn’t see any medical charts but a photo lay in the debris on the dresser top.

It was a Polaroid of Jazz and Eddie, arms around each other. Jazz was gripping the lion. A faded wooden ramp jutted behind them. Grace recognized it immediately: the historic roller coaster at Belmont Park in Mission Beach. Katie wasn’t tall enough yet to ride it, but she loved the noise and caramel corn and crowds and how close it was to the beach.

The Eddie in the picture looked skinny and vulnerable. Not the Eddie in Grace’s mind. That one burned with insanity and juiced-up rage.

“Oh. The camera.”

Grace locked eyes with her. “You know about the camera.”

Jazz nodded. “He could see things with it. Just walking around. We were famous on the Internet. We were.”

“Who gave him the camera, Jazz?”

She shook her head “A secret. Can’t tell that one, no no no.” She took a deep, shuddery breath. “He was my boyfriend and somebody bad got him.”

Yeah, me.

“I’m sorry.” Grace waited until Jazz’s attention faltered and palmed the photo, apologizing silently for taking it. She slid it into her pocket and came over to Jazz’s bed. “Mind if I sit?”

Jazz didn’t answer so Grace sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. Jazz smelled like vanilla.

“I heard you had a fight with Eddie the other day.”

Jazz raised her head cautiously, like a cornered animal. The whites of her eyes were almost a milky blue, making the irises look black. “He told me it was my job. I told him no, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Really. What job?”

“The keeper. I have to keep them until the Coming. Eddie made me see. The Spikeman told him all about it.”

Grace smiled encouragingly but the hair on the back of her neck rose. “You know the Spikeman.”

Jazz clutched Grace’s arm. Her fingers were bits of damp seaweed. “I’m his messenger now, the only one left. Eddie was trying to warn her. Save her.”

“You mean at the meth house. He was trying to warn the tech.” Her.

“Bad spacemen were there, bad bad in space suits, and the Spikeman said kill kill kill, all the bad men in space suits, but not her, her you warn first, that one.”

Spacemen. Detective Sergeant Lewin and DEA chemist Chip Page were wearing Tyvek protective suits. Had someone told Eddie to kill the spacemen? Kill them and toss in the uniformed cop standing guard in the alley as some kind of bonus? Grace was in a Tyvek suit, too. Would Eddie have killed her next?

“You know the Spikeman?” she said again.

Jazz nodded slyly and a sheaf of black hair fell over her face.

“Jazz, this is important; does he have another name?”

“Does who have another name? What are you doing?” The voice came from a heavyset woman standing in the doorway.

She was middle-aged, with limp hair she wore skinned back into a navy blue bandanna. Coverall shorts stretched over her lumpy body, exposing creeping cellulite in her knees. She carried a mop like a rifle.

Jazz flinched and cowered on the bed. “I didn’t tell! I didn’t.”

“Who are you?” The woman banged the mop butt hard and it rang like gunshot. She looked vaguely familiar and Grace wasn’t sure why.

Down the hall, a door burst open and Grace heard the sound of feet coming fast.

“I asked you a question.”

Grace eased off the bed. She’d seen that woman somewhere. She rapidly added a different hair color, subtracted weight, put her in a suit. Something was on the edge of awareness, if only she could retrieve it.

“What’s your name?” Grace asked.

“I don’t have to tell you squat. This is private property. Get the hell off.”

A man appeared in the doorway behind the woman. It was Senator Loud. He looked twenty years older than he had in the helicopter, hollowed and gray.

He locked eyes with Grace and emotions flashed across his face: Recognition, followed by pained disbelief and an anger so raw it made Grace take a step back.

“I know who she is, Opal. I’ll handle it.”

“I don’t want trouble.” Grace inched toward the door. There was no way out. The woman with the mop was acting as a sentinel and Senator Loud stood right behind her.

“Trouble?” His voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “You killed my son. You come here the day Pat and I have to clear his things, how dare you.”

“I didn’t know he lived here! I was coming to see Jazz!”

Lighter footsteps pattered down the hall and a thin woman in her late fifties appeared, her head peering around the senator. Diamonds studded her ears. She wore a trim black pantsuit. Her hand stole to the senator’s arm and tightened, her nails turning white with pressure. Her eyes were slits in a face swollen with grief, and Grace could see her son in the dark hair, now streaked with gray.

On the bed, Jazz stared wonderingly at Grace. “She killed him? You killed my Eddie? And you come to my room? You ask me questions?”

“He was trying to kill me,” Grace said. It sounded small.

“Oh, God. Bert. This is the woman who killed him?” Shock coursed across Mrs. Loud’s face. The skin under her eyes creped into hairline cracks, as if her entire face had been made of flawed porcelain that was starting to crumble.

Senator Loud made noises deep in his throat, saying her name over and over: “Pat, Pat.”

Pat pressed a hand to her mouth. Her face convulsed and she ran into the hall.

“Honey?” Senator Loud followed his wife, and Grace saw her opening and ran. Senator Loud spun and shot his arm out, blocking her flight. “Not so fast.” He pushed Grace into another bedroom.

Pat slumped at the window, weeping. Cars droned up the cement arches. A dead tree stood in the backyard, cracked and broken. A faded yellow motel anchored the corner, and a kid on a skateboard practiced banging up the curb.

“Take a look. This is who you killed.” Loud’s voice was raw. “He didn’t have anything
,
understand? Look how small his life was. The littlest things…” He choked.

The bed was stripped. A Rubik’s Cube sat on the dresser. A clean uniform and fresh hat for his taco job hung neatly on a row of empty hooks. A cardboard box lay at the foot of the bed, half filled with folded clothes, a faded pair of jeans on top. Grace had interrupted them packing.

“You see? Eddie had health once and it went; he had dreams and they got smaller until the only thing left for him was here in this room, and now it’s gone.”

A Polaroid wedged into the rim of the mirror, taken the same time as the one in Jazz’s room, his arms around Jazz and his face pressed against hers, a look of possession and joy on his narrow face. He was cradling the stuffed lion like a baby.

Grace looked from the senator to his wife and tried to steady her voice, but it was coming out as angry and cornered as she felt. “I didn’t kill three men. Your son did. You might not want to believe it, but he did. I have a life, too, and your son almost made me lose it. I’m sorry for what happened, but he was going to kill me.”

“He had a little sister. And a life and a girlfriend for the first time and a good job and people who loved him and you took it all away.” A line of white banded Pat’s mouth. “You didn’t have to kill him. He wasn’t very strong. He’s not even much taller than you are.”

Grace thought of Katie, and how much her daughter needed her. “Maybe he just looked taller slashing the air with a butcher knife.”

“That’s enough. Get out of here and don’t ever come back.” Loud shoved her toward the door.

She was almost at the car when she realized the hooks hammered into Eddie Loud’s wall to hold his clothes weren’t really hooks.

They were spikes.

Chapter 13

She had lunch in the Gaslamp district and parked in the employee lot at the police station, already feeling like a visitor. Katie’s school got out in forty-five minutes, and Grace took the stairs rather than wait for the elevator.

The homicide cube farm on four was a honeycomb of stalls, empty except for Detective Theo Sullivan’s partner, Stella, and a couple of detectives busy on the phones. Grace tried hard not to inhale. The room smelled like bad cheese and ripe gym socks.

Stella glanced up and went back to working the phones. Her hair was tied in a blond ponytail, roots gray. She was short, packed into a pinstripe suit. Trophies for bodybuilding competitions lined her desk.

“Theo around?” A crystal paperweight slivered with family photos sat on Theo’s desk. His day-timer was open and the cursor on his computer blinked. Coffee stains ringed a legal pad where Theo had picked up and put down a cup of Starbucks, now empty.

Stella shot her a look. “Oh, yeah. He’s armed, Grace. Better sit.”

The mood in the room was heavy. Killed yesterday were a rookie drug agent, a police detective, and a uniformed cop, and here was the tech who lived through it. Grace sat and leaned on her knees, staring at Theo’s navy and burgundy tie looped across the back of his empty chair.

“Grace.” Theo scowled over a partition.

Lines grooved his forehead and his jaw was clenched. He wore a soft blue shirt unbuttoned at the collar that set off his dark skin. An elegant man with silver threading his black hair, always in a suit, he held stapled papers and he smacked them against his palm as he came around the partition, yanked his chair back and sat. Last night, when she’d sat in the rear of his squad car and given a statement, his voice had been gentle. Now it rang with anger.

“What part of last night didn’t you get?” He leaned across the desk.

“I was only trying to—”

“You were under clear orders that this one goes through channels. And here you show up while they’re clearing out Eddie’s things? What was that? Do you have any idea how you’ve upset the senator and his wife? Senator Loud went all the way to the chief, Grace.”

“With what?” She could feel her face grow hot.

“With how his son was killed by an alcoholic with a documented post-traumatic stress disorder.” He delivered it low, directly at her.

She blinked. “That’s private, that’s not supposed to come out of my personnel file.”

“A little late, Grace. Reporters have chewed a hole in it, it’s all over the place.” He rubbed a finger violently into his eye. “If you had a PTSD going in, God knows what this is doing. That’s what they’re saying.” He scowled and added softly, “That’s not what I believe.” She couldn’t breathe. A beefy detective at a nearby desk banged down a phone and scooped up papers as he brushed past the American flag on his way out the door.

“That’s what this is? I’m getting thrown to the sharks?”

Theo slapped the papers down and squared them. “It’s a senator’s son, Grace. Lawyers are probably crawling all over this, smelling fame and movie deals and slots on Court TV.”

She felt faint. A tight band constricted her chest. She took a gulp of air. “Eddie Loud had a knife
,
Theo. It was justified. You know it and I know it.”

“Oh, yeah, and there’s the gun. Not certified to carry, and here you’re firing a police weapon. Good aim. Right between the eyes. And the shoulder. And the chest. And the—”

“I get it, I get it,” she said irritably.

A vein in his forehead pulsed and Grace wondered if he had high blood pressure.

“On the off chance you missed it, Senator Loud’s got a running battle with local California police departments, San Diego one of them—”