Then she shut herself within.
He bent down and started tugging at a boot. Then another boot. Finally he sprawled out on the bed. He was there a while. Long enough for his erection to lose interest.
When the bathroom door did open, the light wasn’t on. Danny had no idea how long she had been gone. Had he drifted off awhile? Might have been ten seconds or ten minutes. In the darkness, all he could make out was curly hair, the ivory skin of one shoulder, and the fact that she was holding something.
In this light it was impossible to tell what. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she was hauling over a pair of those big garden shears, like the ones back in his folks’ garage. The ones the old man to this day used to trim the hedges. No Mexican gardener for his old man...
But in this pitch-black room, he’d seen very little, really, and the thought that had registered seemed absurd. Garden shears — really...
She was coming to him now, cooing... or was it more like... purring, even... growling? He tried to reach out for her, but his arms felt leaden and he wondered if he could even lift them.
The wooziness seemed worse now; then the figure was towering over him, only he could no longer focus, his eyelids heavy, so very heavy. He would swear she was holding garden shears. He tried to focus on the point of the object, but it dropped out of sight.
There was a quick, terrible, sharp, excruciating pain at his gut, forcing horrible momentary clarity upon him, followed by warmth, all-encompassing liquid warmth, spreading over his stomach, dripping onto his legs.
That feeling was followed by overwhelming cold in his upper body, as if all his body heat were being siphoned off. He worked hard at keeping his eyes open, but could not. Thoughts flitted through his brain, butterflies on a sunny day, but he couldn’t catch them, not any of them; then the butterflies were gone and so was the sun and any other light.
As the coldness seeped through him, Danny Terrant thought, I think those were garden shears.
Then the world turned black.
Chapter Fourteen
Harrow’s take on Lieutenant Anna Amari was this: she was efficient and smart and tough; and she smelled really good for a cop.
Tuesday, she’d brought over the sketch of the John Doe victim and a copy of the security video from the Star Struck. Apparently not content to leave them with Harrow’s assistant, Amari had handed them over personally.
They had discussed the drawing briefly, then took a pass through the grainy footage. She was a knowledgeable cop and provided some insights.
“Real planning went into this,” she said, as they sat together at Harrow’s desk before his computer screen. “Killer did his homework. Knew where the cameras were, not just in the hotel, but along his route.”
“You’ve checked the traffic cams, then.”
“Yes, and every convenience store and other business that might have a view on the streets approaching the Star Struck.”
“Were you able to tie him to a car?”
“No.” Abruptly she rose. “Okay, gotta get back at it.”
And she was gone.
On Wednesday, she called. She grilled him pretty hard about his team and their capabilities. Not nosy, exactly, but clearly up to something. He had no idea what.
Now here it was Thursday, and Vicki had just buzzed him to say that Lieutenant Amari was on line two. If she was stalking him, he didn’t think he minded.
“Harrow,” he said.
“What’s your opinion of the Dodgers?”
He smiled. “I never thought about it, Lieutenant Amari. Are they suspects in the Star Struck investigation?”
“What kind of straight male has never thought about the Dodgers?”
“We can talk later about how you made that deduction. I’m an Iowa boy. We don’t have any big-time professional teams. I always kind of dug the Yankees, though.”
“That’s just sad.”
“What is? That Iowa doesn’t have a big-time baseball franchise, or that I’ve watched a Yankee game in my time?”
“Yankees. Just so obvious. You need retraining. I’ll pick you up at your office.”
“Okay. When?”
“Six-thirty. Dodgers and Cards tonight. That’s the Cardinals?”
“Yeah, I know that much.”
“Prepare to be reborn, J.C.”
“Sounds messy.”
“Just be out front at six-thirty.”
“Okay — dinner after?”
“Dinner during. Dodger Dogs.”
“What’s a Dodger Dog?”
“Jesus, J.C., you really were born in a barn.”
She hung up.
He smiled. He hadn’t been bossed around by a woman like that since... his smiled faded a little. Since Ellen.
Funny thing, he caught himself checking his watch as the afternoon rolled by. Did he actually have a date? Beyond his life at Crime Seen, and the colleagues who’d become his surrogate family, he had no real friends in California. He knew people out here, of course, had neighbors he spoke to, retail businesses where he was friendly with staff, but that wasn’t much of a social life...
Back in Iowa, he had work friends extending from the sheriff’s department to the DCI, and through his wife and son, other friendships had been forged. None had lasted beyond the Christmas-card level, after he moved out here. He’d heard that when couples divorced, friendships with other couples fell away; but he’d never have guessed the same was true when a spouse died.
So he found himself oddly excited by the prospect of an evening out with Anna Amari. But was it because she smelled good (for a cop)? Or because he was hoping to get an update on Don Juan? Probably both, as he really did have that madman on his brain.
Since the snuff video on Monday, they had received no further communication from Don Juan; and the Killer TV team’s discreet efforts to track him down were getting nowhere.
Other than the video, the police had a lock on all the evidence, so there just weren’t that many directions to go. If the LAPD had made a victim ID, they hadn’t shared it with the media. And Crime Seen, like the rest of the press, had acquiesced to the chief’s request to keep the details of the murder to themselves. For now.
On her Tuesday visit, Anna had responded to Harrow’s seemingly casual inquiry about Don Juan with a single piece of information: “The dead woman’s fingerprints aren’t on file anywhere.”
Which meant not in any applicable database — law enforcement, local licensing, federal government, you name it.
As the afternoon wound down, Harrow stopped by Jenny Blake’s office and found the small, tidy space empty.
Jenny had reduced the standard desk, filing cabinet, and trio of chairs to just desk and chair. If not for the open laptop on her desk, Harrow might have thought the office vacant.
The laptop, however, meant she was still at work — it was an appendage of hers, and you don’t leave an arm or leg behind.
So he was not surprised when the petite blonde appeared in the doorway, popping the top of a diet soda.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked.
“The Hollywood sign victim — still unidentified?”
Jenny, with her hacking skills, was always the first to know.
“Yep,” Jenny said. She passed Harrow, moved behind her desk, and sat. “Why?”
He stood opposite her, folded his arms. “How good is our facial recognition software? By ‘our,’ I mean yours.”