“Let him drown,” a man said.
Peering up through water-bleared eyes, he saw the men standing along the shore, just beyond the reach of the waves, their faces as craggy as the shelves of rock. They wore sneakers, jeans, and windbreakers, and looked like the only thing they had wanted for Christmas was a renewal of their exercise-club memberships.
“Yeah, let’s do the world a favor,” another said.
“Sure,” a third said. “He ran. He fell. We couldn’t get him out before he drowned.”
“But think about the lousy paperwork.”
Coltrane’s right hand gripped the shelf of rock. A wave thrust him toward it but as quickly tugged him away. His numbed hand lost its hold.
“The paperwork’s worth it,” the first man said. “Can you think of any better way to spend New Year’s than watch this prick drown?”
“Not me,” the fourth man said.
Aching from the cold, Coltrane got another grip on the rocks and strained to pull himself up. A wave knocked him against the shelf, making him groan. But despite the undertow, he mustered the strength to grip the shelf harder, pulling himself higher.
“Hold it.” The first man stepped forward and pressed the sole of his sneaker against the back of Coltrane’s right hand.
Coltrane winced.
“You didn’t ask, ‘May I?’” the man said.
“What do you think, Carl?” The second man turned toward someone approaching. “Do we let this jerk drown or pull his sorry ass out?”
Coltrane struggled as another wave splashed over him, his numbness worsening. He coughed and fought for air. Despite the bleariness in his salt-irritated eyes, he peered helplessly upward and managed to get a look at the person joining them, a man in sneakers, jeans, and a windbreaker similar to what the others wore, a man whose brown hair was trimmed to almost-military shortness and whose matching brown eyes had a no-nonsense steadiness, showing no reaction as he gazed down at Coltrane.
“Pull him out.”
“What kind a fun is that? At least let’s watch him splash around a little longer.”
“No, pull him out. This isn’t the guy we want.”
“How can you be sure.”
“I know him.”
“What?”
“He’s a photographer named Mitch Coltrane. He lives in Los Angeles, and believe me, he was otherwise occupied when all of this started. We’ve got the wrong man.”
The man who pressed his sneaker against Coltrane’s hand took a quick step backward.
Coltrane strained to get out of the water. The newcomer quickly grabbed him, raising him dripping from the waves.
“Are you all right?” the man who had saved him asked.
“Frozen.” Coltrane’s teeth chattered. “I didn’t know your first name was Carl.”
“That’s because I wanted you to think that my first name was Sergeant.”
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s exactly what I was going to ask you,” Nolan said. “And I can’t wait to hear your answer.”
5
“YOU CAN SEE WHERE WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE WRONG IDEA.” The first man gestured apologetically.
A blanket wrapped around him, Coltrane didn’t respond, only kept shivering as he sat in a white wooden chair in an all-white living room. The back wall was composed entirely of glass, providing a panoramic view of the ocean. The late-afternoon sun blazed in but didn’t warm him.
“You were peeking in her windows,” the second man said.
“Give me a break. I was checking the house from the road, trying to see if it looked like anybody was at home.”
“And taking pictures of the place,” the third man said.
“I’m a professional photographer. That’s what I do, take pictures.”
“Including of a woman you claim you’ve never seen before, while you’re trespassing?” the fourth man asked.
“Yeah, how come you were sneaking up on the house?”
“Sneaking up?” Coltrane asked.
“I suppose you’re going to tell us you walked all the way here from L.A. Where’s your car?”
Anger raised Coltrane’s temperature as he told them where he had left his car.
“Okay, okay, that explains why you were on foot. But you weren’t just sight-seeing. You didn’t just happen to pick this house. What are you doing here?”
“I could have hit my head and been killed. You threatened to let me drown. I’m not answering any more questions until I find out who you are and what the hell’s going on.”
The group lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
For the first time since entering the house, Nolan spoke. He had been standing in the background, shaking his head unhappily. “I think you already have a pretty good idea who the rest of these men are.”
“The same as you – police officers.”
“Not quite the same.” In deference to the all-white decor, Nolan and everyone else had taken off their shoes. His socks whispered on the thick wall-to-wall carpet. “Malibu doesn’t have a police department. Walt and Lyle here are with the local sheriff’s department. Pete and Sam are with the state police. The rest of these men are LAPD.”
“And how did you get involved?” Coltrane asked. “Since when do L.A. policemen work in Malibu?”
“They don’t,” Nolan said. “Unless it’s their day off and they’re here unofficially, doing somebody a favor.”
“Me,” the first man said. Nolan had introduced him as Walt. “I’m the one he was doing a favor.”
“It’s a stalker situation.” Nolan gestured wearily, having dealt with crimes of this sort too many times before. “The woman living here has been harassed for the past three weeks by someone who seems to know everything she does. Until a while ago, he phoned her constantly. Even though she changed her number five times and none of them was ever listed, he still managed to find out what the new ones were and keep calling her. Finally, she had the phone taken out of service.”
“That explains the computerized voice I heard when I tried to call yesterday.”
“So you did try to call,” the second man, Lyle, said. “I was going to ask you why you didn’t phone instead of paying an unexpected visit on New Year’s Day.”
“You still think I’m lying?”
“Just crossing the t’s.”
“Meanwhile,” Nolan interrupted, “she started getting photographs.”
Coltrane straightened.
The men studied him – he had never been looked at so directly.
“Photographs.” Coltrane understood. “So when I showed up with a camera and started taking her picture, you assumed…”
“The photographs she receives – there are hundreds – have been taken wherever she goes,” Nolan said. “No matter what she does, somebody manages to shoot pictures of her.”
Coltrane felt a return of the bone-cold sensation of having been in the water, except that in this case he was frozen because he remembered how violated he had felt when he learned that Ilkovic had followed and photographed him.
“And that doesn’t include the bouquets of flowers that are delivered to her a half dozen times a day. Not always when she’s at home. She’s been getting them at restaurants, at her dentist’s, once even at her gynecologist’s. A note read, ‘Thinking of you,’” Nolan said. “Love letters on the windshield of her car. Special-delivery proposals of marriage.”
“So, naturally, she got worried enough to call the sheriff’s department,” Walt said. He had a brush cut, a squarish face, a sand-colored mustache, and a slight scar above his right eyebrow. “I’m the one who came out and interviewed her. We’re not a big department. We don’t have a lot of staff and resources, but that’s what we were going to need, I knew, because right away it was obvious that the complainant needed surveillance, and not just in Malibu. We might care about jurisdictions, but the guy we’re after is free to roam as he pleases. The complainant has business in Los Angeles. She goes there often. So I decided to call the LAPD Threat Management Unit and see if they had any advice.”