The anger blew out of Daniel in an instant, and in the void, a terrible sick feeling crept in. What had he done? He reeled back. The room spun. Where had that rage come from? And what had he—he had almost . . . He bumped into the desk, knocking over the framed photo.
“I— Robert, I’m.” He rubbed at his forehead, feeling the pulse throbbing. Think. He had to think. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The man wiped at his bloody nose with a shaking hand. “You broke my nose.” The magisterial tone replaced by a stunned trembling that filled Daniel with shame.
Get out of here. This is not you. You have to get away.
He looked toward the door. If he left now, the man would have every security station locked down. Guards watching. Police on the way.
The sick feeling in his gut grew as he glanced around the room. His eyes stopped on the phone, and Daniel unplugged the cord from the base, then yanked the rest out of the wall. It was about eight feet long. He walked back to Robert, who stiffened at his approach, simultaneously raising his fists and sliding farther away.
“Get out of here, Daniel.”
“I need to tie you.”
“Get out!”
“I’m sorry. I just—I couldn’t—the things you were saying, I couldn’t.” He sighed. “I can honestly say that I’ve never felt worse about something than I do about hitting you. But I still need to tie you.”
“No—”
Daniel grabbed one of the man’s arms, yanked it ineffectually. The actor was far stronger than he was, and Daniel doubted he would have had a chance in a fair fight. “Look,” he said. “I’m not going to hit you again unless I have to. But I need to tie you. So put your hands out.”
For a moment, it looked like Robert might resist. Then he held his arms forward, wrists together. Daniel lashed the cord around and around, threaded the rest around the leg of the desk, then tied a couple of clumsy knots. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would do.
“I’m.” He sighed. “I really am sorry, Robert. I . . .” What was the point of explaining? It wouldn’t undo the damage. Daniel walked to the door, opened it, then turned back and said, one more time, “I’m sorry.”
Outside, it was a perfect day, but laid atop the bustling lot and the beautiful people and the bright sky, Daniel could see Robert Cameron’s eyes. See the way they had stared as he closed in. The wet panic in them, the animal fear. Daniel walked for the parking deck as fast as he dared.
Thinking, It wasn’t the punches. He wasn’t scared of me as a fighter.
He was scared because he believes I’m a killer.
And as he remembered the blind red fury that had taken him, Daniel wondered if it might be true.
F
or a lawyer, Sophie Zeigler had remarkably little experience with cops. She was a negotiator, a contract maven, a front-woman, the person who said no comment. A hired fountain pen. On the occasions her clients got themselves arrested—DUIs, scenes in nightclubs, drugs—she held their hand, listened to the sob story, and then referred them to a criminal lawyer.
But in the last two weeks, she’d learned an awful lot about the police. Especially about Detective Roger Waters—I know, he’d said with a shrug, go ahead with a David Gilmour joke if you like—who had called her pretty much every day, asking the same questions. Where was Daniel? Why had he fled? Did he understand the serious nature of the charges? Did she?
She’d put up a stonewall. But it was getting harder to ignore the cracks. The worst thing Daniel could have done was vanish. And there was that phone call, just before he took to the road, his strange, guilty apology for a sin he wouldn’t explain. He was confused, she thought for the hundredth time. Drunk and hurting and confused.
And worst of all, there was the man who broke into her home. Asking questions about Daniel and smiling, always smiling, his face as bland and banal as a supermarket manager’s even when he talked about torturing her.
It was getting to be a bit much. And perhaps sensing that, Waters surprised her at her office that morning. A shortish, intense-looking guy with just-so hair and a blocky suit made blockier by the shoulder holster. Seeing the gun prompted a quick flash to the intruder pulling the pistol from his belt, asking if she watched movies. She fought to keep her face straight. “Good morning, Detective.”
“Good morning, Ms. Zeigler.” His handshake was dry and professional. “I heard about what happened, wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I’m fine.”
“You must have been terrified.”
Gee, do you think? The police who had responded had been very
polite. They had listened and taken notes and wandered around shining flashlights in the locks. But their expressions had been easy to read. They weren’t going to catch the guy. The whole process had taken about an hour, and then the police had left, promising to send extra patrols down her Palisades block, suggesting that she get a dog if she was still nervous. “I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“I already told—”
“That was LAPD. I’m with the sheriff’s department. Sometimes
communication isn’t as good as you’d like. We butt heads, you know.” He smiled. “We both have pretty big heads, tell the truth.”
She ignored the attempt to disarm her, said, “It’s not your jurisdiction, right?”
“No ma’am. But your intruder was asking about Daniel Hayes.”
Sophie leaned back in her chair, studied the man. Most people who walked into her office, those that weren’t in the business, they had a surreptitious voyeurism thing going. They took in the leather couch, the framed poster of Accelerant that Phil Hoffman and Parker Posey had signed to her, the picture of Bobby De Niro kissing her cheek, and you could see them wondering if there was a portal to Oz somewhere. Non-industry folks didn’t realize that making movies wasn’t the same as watching them, that a hundred minutes of fantasy took three years of mundane, even boring work to produce.
Waters, though, seemed not to care. Maybe he was a book guy. Regardless, he’d taken in her office at a glance, and his eyes hadn’t left hers since.
“As I’ve told you before, I have no information about Daniel Hayes’s whereabouts, nor have I had any direct communication with him since—”
“I know.” The detective held out his hands. “But what I’m wondering, maybe this guy was involved in what happened to Laney.”
Sophie met the man’s eyes, couldn’t read them. She pressed the intercom button. “Mark, could you bring me a cup of coffee?” Pointedly didn’t offer one to Waters. The tiniest crinkle around his eyes told her he’d caught the move, but otherwise he gave nothing away. “He was average height. In shape. He had on slacks and a black—”