Chris’s knees buckled and he had to grab the door handle to keep from collapsing. What was David doing here? In growing
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horror Chris turned toward Terry’s house just in time to see the front of the roof collapse in a shower of sparks and fl ame. A wave of heat rolled across the lawn, a fan palm beside the house curled away from the heat and burst into fl ames.
“No!” Chris lunged away from the car. A fi re truck careened around the corner, followed closely by a second.
Chris’s feet skidded on the wet grass. The front door was ablaze; he couldn’t get in that way. Instead he circled the house looking for another way in. A window, a door. Anything.
Had David gone in after him? Or was he tracking Terry?
David kept his business to himself. If he did develop a lead on Terry, he wouldn’t tell Chris. But what were the odds of him coming after Terry at the same time Chris was responding to Terry’s phone call? Or had the call from Terry come because he knew he was a suspect? Was that why he called Chris? Because he knew David was closing in on him?
It still didn’t explain who killed Terry. Or why.
Above the roar of the fl ames he could hear voices. Footsteps pounded after him and a bulky man in full gear rounded the burning palm and shouted. Chris ignored him.
His foot connected with something on the ground. It skidded away. Puzzled, he looked at what he had kicked. It was some kind of fl at dark material, which did not refl ect the nearby fi re.
He knew what it was even before he snatched it up. He blinked.
It was a gun. He traced the outline of the rectangular barrel and raised writing, knowing even without being able to see it what it said. Smith & Wesson .40. It was David’s gun. The one he had bought himself to replace his police issue Beretta. It cost him a small fortune, but he claimed the Smith & Wesson was a better weapon.
Chris raised his head and stared blindly at the burning building.
The door was a hole into hell. It was like staring down the maw of a dragon. He stepped toward it.
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A voice shouted. Chris spun around and found himself staring into the alarmed face of a fi re fi ghter.
“Sir, you can’t be here—”
“Drop the weapon!”
Chris twisted away from the fi rst man only to fi nd himself staring down the barrel of another gun. The deputy holding it didn’t look alarmed. She looked grim.
“Drop it, clown.”
Chris did as he was told.
“On your stomach,” the deputy said. “Hands laced behind your head.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Now!”
Chris dropped to his knees. The grass felt slimy and cold under the skin of his face. Rough hands grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. Hard metal cuffs snicked around his wrists.
“David’s in there!”
The deputy dragged him to his feet. She looked even grimmer.
“You telling me there’s somebody in the house?”
“No—yes, Terry, but that’s not who I mean. And his wife.
David’s in there!” Chris yelled when his arms were wrenched behind him. “David’s a cop!”
Something crashed inside the house. A gust of superheated air washed over them. Chris ducked away from it, only to be jerked back. His shoulders ached and his head swam.
“That’s his gun. You have to fi nd him—”
Under the watchful gaze of the fi re fi ghter, the deputy hauled Chris to his feet and shoved him toward the street. An ambulance had joined the fi re trucks and police cars. A kaleidoscope of multi-colored lights competed with the glow from the fi re. With half the population of Santa Clarita watching, the deputy pushed Chris into the back of the black and white idling at the curb.
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Hoses snaked out of the fi re trucks. Streams of high-pressure water poured into the glowing inferno of Terry’s house. Goggled and helmeted fi re fi ghters moved in with axes and hooks.
Chris sat in the back of the black and white staring blankly as chaos unfolded around him.
They left him sitting in the back seat of the deputy’s vehicle for over an hour while he watched bedlam reign and begged a deity he had never had much faith in before to keep David safe.
Only when the fi re had been reduced to sullen embers did the deputy return. She came back with a tall, hairless Latino man who slid behind the wheel while she took shotgun. Neither of them looked at him, nor spoke, during the ride to the Santa Clarita Valley station on Magic Mountain Parkway.
They led him into a small, well-lit room with four chairs and a steel table. The woman motioned at the chair. “Are you injured?
Do you require medical assistance?”
“What? No—” then Chris realized they thought he was bleeding. “It was on Terry—”
The silent Latino took the cuffs off and handed them to his partner. They did a few swabs of his hands, then they both left.
This time he waited for forty minutes. Finally the door reopened. A bull-necked Anglo deputy entered. He was sweating so profusely his pits were soaked through and his thinning hair was plastered to his pale skull. His eyes were pale gray pools.
“Sergeant Clay Ronaldson,” he said. “You mind if we tape this?”
“Yes,” Chris said. “I do mind. But I expect you’ll do it anyway.”
The deputy pulled out a chair and sat down. “Can you state your name and address for the record.”
Chris did so, then he leaned forward putting his arms on the table. Too late he remembered he was covered in blood. Terry’s blood. He snatched his hands away, even though he knew the cop had seen them. “Look,” he said quickly. “You have to tell me, did L.A. BYTES
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they fi nd anything in the house? Did they fi nd...anybody besides Terry and his wife?”
“Are you IDing the bodies we found in the front hallway as Terry? Terry who? What’s his wife’s name?” The deputy eyed him and scratched something on his notepad. “You’re saying there’s a third victim?”
“David’s a cop,” Chris said. “His car was there—”
“Cop, huh? What’s his name then? What unit’s he in?”
“David. Detective David Eric Laine. LAPD. Call his partner, Martinez Diego. At the Northeast Station. He’ll tell you.”
“And the car?”
Chris rubbed his damp hands along his thighs, remembering the blood and grimacing. “It’s a ’56 Chevy Two-Tone. Yellow and white coupe.” He rattled off the license plate.
Ronaldson scribbled in his notepad then got up and opened the door, handing the top sheet to someone on the other side. He came back and sat down.
“You want to tell me where you got the blood on your hands?”
“It was on Terry...” He swallowed past a stone that had settled in his chest. “Please, did you fi nd anyone else there? Carol? Oh, God, David—”
“What were you doing in Santa Clarita, Mr. Bellamere? You here on business or pleasure?”
Chris knew better than to talk to cops. He leaned forward, knotting his fi ngers together to keep them from shaking. “I’m not talking to you until you call Detective Martinez Diego. He needs to know about David. They’re partners. Maybe you’ll believe me then.”
“Believe what, Mr. Bellamere?”
Chris shook his head.
“Where did the blood come from?”
Chris stared stubbornly at his lap.
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Ronaldson sighed. A gust of sour breath wafted across the table. “I’m here right now, Chris. Talk to me. It’ll go easier for you if you do.”
“You want their number?” Chris asked.
“You’re not helping yourself by refusing—”
“Not refusing, just delaying.”
“By refusing to answer my questions, you’re only hurting yourself.” Ronaldson shook his head. “I’m sure Detective Martinez would tell you the same thing.”
Proving this guy didn’t know Martinez at all.
Ronaldson kept scratching away in his notebook. “Who were you at that house to see? The dead guy or the woman? Was Terry the owner of the house?”
Chris shook his head, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over him. He blinked and forced his eyes to focus. He had to stay alert, when all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep for a week.
He was seriously beginning to regret leaving the hospital. Even Dr. Finder looked better than this guy.
“Something wrong, Mr. Bellamere?” Ronaldson didn’t sound overly alarmed. “You don’t look so hot. Something happen to make you feel sick?”
Chris dug his nails into the palm of his hand. His fi nger nails had crusted blood under them. The pain helped. A little.
“Have you called him yet?”
“Yeah, we called,” Ronaldson said. “He said the same thing I’ve been telling you. Talk to us while we wait for him.”
Another thirty minutes passed. Ronaldson went out and returned fi fteen minutes later. There was a commotion outside in the hall and Chris looked up when the door fl ew open. A lean-faced African-American woman wearing lieutenant bars leaned in the room.
“Sergeant,” she said curtly, only to be pushed aside by a fuming Martinez whose dark face was suffused with blood.
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“What the devil is going on?” Martinez’s scowl deepened when he saw Chris. His eyes narrowed into slits. “What the hell are you doing here, Chris? And where in the name of God is David?”
Wednesday, 12:00 am, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, Valencia
Chris jumped to his feet. “Ask them if they found anyone else in the house. They won’t tell me—”
“What house? What’s going on?”
Ronaldson pointed a thick fi nger at Chris. “You, sit.” He glared at Martinez. “Detective, if we could talk.
Privately.
”
“You can use my offi ce, Detective,” the lieutenant said. “This way, please.”
Martinez backed out of the small interrogation room.
Ronaldson stood to follow.
“Hey, what about me?” Chris half rose again.
Martinez’s face softened. “Just wait here, Chris. I’ll sort this out and be back.”
Chris sank back down into his chair. While he’d put Martinez up against these sheriff bumpkins any day of the week, he still didn’t like it. Not one bit. He was desperate to know where David was, refusing to believe he’d been caught in that fi re. David was too smart to let Terry’s killer take him by surprise.
But worry gnawed at him. Unable to sit, he paced the narrow confi nes of the room, skirting the table and chairs in his need to keep moving.
Where was David?
§ § § §
More time passed. Even his watch slowed to a crawl. Chris kept staring at the door, and the glass wall beside it. Were they watching him even now? What did they expect him to do? Break out into spontaneous confession?
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No doubt they thought he had something to do with Terry’s death. Under the circumstances he would have suspected himself too.
Would they believe his story that Terry called him? What proof could he offer? The call he had made to Terry’s cell might help, if they bothered to trace where Terry’s cell was when the call came through. Ramsey could attest to the time he left The Nosh Pit, but unless they could pinpoint Terry’s death, he doubted that would prove helpful.
Chris threw his head back and rubbed his forehead with his jacket sleeve. He’d really fucked things up this time.
He spun around when the door cracked open. Martinez slipped into the room.
He shook his grizzled head. Ice formed around Chris’s heart.
“David—” he gasped.
Martinez came around to Chris’s side of the table and gripped the nearest chair. Hard. His knuckles were white. The chair creaked under his grip. “Where is he, Chris? I’ve tried calling his cell. He’s not responding. You have to tell us everything you know.”
“I don’t...” Chris wearily sank into the other chair, no longer trying to hide his exhaustion or pain. “Somehow he followed me—I don’t know how or why. I swear. He must have got there when I was in the house—”
“What were you doing there?”
Chris glanced at the glass, knowing they were watching on the other side. Ronaldson. Maybe even the lieutenant. Santa Clarita was a small, insular community. It wasn’t used to nasty homicides marring that image. They’d want to wrap this up as soon as possible. Even if they dumped it in the lap of an innocent man.
It didn’t matter. He had to tell Martinez everything he knew if it meant fi nding David.
“Terry called me.” Chris told him about the work he had done for Terry and the hospital. “He stumbled onto something. I just L.A. BYTES
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don’t know what.” He recounted the conversation he’d had with Terry.
“Could Bolton be the hacker?” Martinez asked. “I thought David had eliminated him.”
“He could be,” Chris conceded. “But I doubt it. Somebody was in the house with Terry. I heard them.”
“They found gas cans by the rear door,” Martinez said.
“How did Terry...die?”
“Gunshot to the right front temple. Exited out the back of his skull.”
Chris glanced at the mirrored window again. Nausea cramped his gut. Poor Terry. He didn’t ask about his wife. He couldn’t stand to hear it. Not right now. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“They want you to take some tests for combustibles. Your GSR test came back negative, you haven’t fi red a weapon recently. The blood’s problematic.” Martinez frowned. “They want a statement, but, the truth?” Martinez sighed. “They’re not quite sure what to do with you. They seem willing to believe you weren’t involved in Terry’s death, but...”
“They want me to be guilty of something,” Chris fi nished for him.
A ghost of a smile crossed Martinez’s face. “Something like that.”
“Can I leave?”
“They’re not arresting you for anything. I can’t guarantee that won’t change if they fi nd new information. The lieutenant wants to know if you’d take a lie detector test.”
“Uh, I don’t know...” Chris wished he could talk to a lawyer, but he knew what they’d advise him. No poly. But if it would get him out of here so he could look for David, then he’d do it.
“Sure, I guess. Right now?”
“It will have to be set up. Maybe tomorrow.”