Luke looked up at the hospital’s third-floor administrative wing while trotting across the street. The lights were dark. Apparently, Barnesdale had given up on him and left.
As he jumped onto the curb, two black-and-whites sprinted by, passing behind him with lights flashing. They turned at the end of the block, probably racing to the hospital’s emergency entrance that was just around the corner on a side street. At this time of night it was a good bet that a gang banger had landed in their E.R. after catching a knife or bullet.
Twenty-five minutes later Luke pulled his Toyota 4Runner into the driveway of his duplex apartment. The air was soaked with the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine, and an aging oak tree on his neighbor’s front lawn flickered like a silent movie as fast-moving clouds crossed in front of a full moon.
He leased the upper unit of a two-story Spanish-style duplex, nestled in the Los Feliz area on the south side of Griffith Park. The duplex sat at the base of a tall hillside, and his living room window looked out over the red-tile roofs of his neighbors’ homes, and beyond that, the L.A. basin. He’d had sweeping views of the city when he first moved there, but the century-old trees along his street hadn’t been pruned in several years and his vista had shrunk to a few bare spots left by irregular growth patterns. He wasn’t thinking about the view as he climbed the brown terra-cotta stairs to his entry door.
A light came on in one of the first-floor windows. Walter, the owner and landlord, lived in the ground floor unit, but they rarely saw one another. In fact, they talked only when Walter inserted his sizable nose into their neighbors’ business and felt the need to share his discoveries with Luke.
As he came through the front door, Luke glanced at his answering machine on the entry table. The NEW MESSAGES display was flashing the number 1.
He pressed the playback button and kept walking. He was halfway to the kitchen when he heard the background hiss of a cell phone, then: “Luke…it’s Kate. I…I know it’s been a while, but I need to talk to you. I’ve been calling the emergency room — I hope you’re not ignoring my messages. It’s a little after nine and I’m going to try you again at the hospital. If you’re hearing this message and we haven’t talked yet, call me at home. I don’t care what time it is when you get this message. Please, we need to talk…”
There it was again, the fear seeping from her voice.
“…Check your e-mail. I’ll explain it when I see you.”
He walked into the living room and flipped on his computer. Luke was a holdout, refusing to use an e-mail-enabled cell phone. He was already tethered around the clock to his pager and phone. Knowing about every new hire, carpooling opportunity, and departmental bake sale in real time was something he could live without.
He grabbed a Mr. Goodbar from the desk drawer and bit into it as the hard drive groaned at him. A minute later he clicked on a small icon at the bottom of the screen. Two messages showed in the mailbox for his personal e-mail address. Both were advertisements.
He logged onto the hospital’s e-mail server. Four days worth of e-mail messages popped into his inbox. None was from Kate.
He checked again. Nothing.
Where was her e-mail? Kate was anything but careless about such things.
Again he asked himself why she hadn’t shown up for their meeting. The explanation he had settled upon earlier — that she simply changed her mind, stood him up for her own selfish reasons — now left too many unanswered questions.
Luke grabbed his jacket on his way out the door.
He took the stairs three at a time.
10
It was just after midnight when Luke turned onto Bronson Avenue, a quiet tree-lined street just south of Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The night air was wet, and the canopies of the jacaranda trees that lined Kate’s street were hidden in a mantle of fog.
Her home was a one-story bungalow, and Kate had always parked her car under the driveway overhang. After four years, he didn’t know what make of automobile he should be looking for, but it turned out not to matter. When he pulled up in front of her house, there was no vehicle under the overhang.
A light was burning in one of the rooms along the side of her house. Kate was into saving trees and whales, and small insects that he would sooner squash. She had never been one to leave a light on, even for security. She was naive in that way.
Kate was also a creature of habit, and Luke wondered why the living room drapes were drawn. He couldn’t remember her ever having closed them. It occurred to him for the first time that she might not live there anymore.
On the other hand, it had been several years. People change, habits change.
He got out, went to the front door, and knocked. Nothing.
He walked around to the driveway and peered into a side window.
A reflected image showed in the glass — a silhouette on the neighbor’s lawn eclipsing a street lamp.
He spun around and a flashlight beam hit him in the face. Below the light, a hand on a holstered gun.
“Police. Hold it — hold it right there,” the male voice said.
A second heavyset cop in an LAPD uniform moved quickly up the driveway, flanking Luke. “Hands on your head. Now,” he yelled.
Luke did as he was told.
The beefy cop patted him down, then cuffed him.
“Dispatch, this is One Adam Fourteen,” the first cop said into his radio. “We’re Code Five on the four hundred block of Bronson Avenue and may have a fly in the trap. Put me through to Detective O’Reilly.”
Luke spotted their black-and-white down the street, behind a large dumpster of the type used by construction companies. They’d been watching her property from there.
Something was terribly wrong.
The cops asked no questions and answered none of his. Luke’s temper was flaring by the time a blue unmarked sedan pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes later. The license plate bore the letters CA EXEMPT across the top — government plates, like those used on unmarked police vehicles.
A sloppy-looking man got out of the car, his right shirt collar hanging outside the lapel of his camel’s-hair sport coat. A large notepad protruded from his jacket pocket. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant O’Reilly, LAPD homicide.
Luke’s stomach went hollow.
Five minutes later he knew that Kate had been murdered, and that it had happened right under his nose, in a parking lot less than fifty yards from where he’d waited for her in Kolter’s Deli.
Detective O’Reilly hadn’t told him any of this, and would not confirm it, but the cop’s questions concerning Luke’s knowledge of her, his whereabouts between 10:00 and 11:00 P.M., and Kate’s physical description, left no doubt. It also told him that they were probably working from her vehicle registration and hadn’t positively identified the body.
O’Reilly flipped between two pages of notes he’d taken. “When Dr. Tartaglia called you at the hospital, you said she sounded upset.”
Luke was slow to respond. He was remembering the limp figure being carried across the street as he had looked on indifferently from inside the deli. “That’s right.”
“And you didn’t bother to ask what was upsetting her?”
“I did ask. Kate told me she’d explain it when we met.” Seeing a persistent wariness in O’Reilly’s eyes, he added, “Listen — it didn’t sound like she was in physical danger. It was more like something was troubling her.”
The detective scratched his ear. “I’m a little confused here. If her concerns didn’t seem like such a big deal to you, why drive out to her house in the middle of the night?”