Lost Light

by Michael Connelly

  22

  At Burbank Airport I parked in the long-term lot, got my bag out and took the tram to the terminal. At the Southwest counter I used a credit card to buy a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas on a flight leaving in less than an hour. I kept the return open. I then proceeded through the security checkpoint, waiting in line like everybody else. I put my bag on the conveyor and dropped my watch, car keys and the camera’s memory card into a plastic bowl so I would not set off the metal detector. I realized I had left my cell in the Mercedes and then thought, just as well, they might use it to triangulate my location.

  Near the departure gate I stopped and bought a ten-dollar phone card and took it to a nearby bank of pay phones. I read the instructions on the phone card twice. Not because they were complicated but because I was hesitant. Finally, I picked up the receiver and called long distance. It was a number I knew by heart but had not called in almost a year.

  She answered after only two rings but I could tell I had woken her up. I almost hung up, knowing that even if she had caller ID she would not be able to tell it had been me. But after her second hello I finally spoke.

  “Eleanor, it’s me, Harry. Did I wake you up?”

  “It’s okay. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Were you playing late?”

  “Till about five and then we went for breakfast. I feel like I just got to bed. What time is it?”

  I told her it was after ten and she groaned. I felt the confidence go out of my plan. I also got stuck wondering who the ‘we’ she referred to was but didn’t ask. I was supposed to be long past that.

  “Harry, what is it?” she said into the silence. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t get to sleep till about the same time, too.”

  More silence slipped into the wire. I noticed that they were boarding my flight.

  “Is that why you called me? To tell me your sleeping habits?”

  “No, I, uh . . . well, I sort of need some help. Over there in Vegas.”

  “Help? What do you mean? You mean like on a case? You told me you retired.”

  “I did. I am. But there’s this thing I’m working on. . . . Anyway, I was wondering if you could meet me at the airport in about an hour. I’m flying in.”

  There was silence while she registered this request and all that it might mean. As I waited my chest felt heavy and tight. I was thinking about the single-bullet theory when she finally spoke.

  “I can be there. Where am I taking you?”

  I realized I had been holding my breath. I exhaled. Deep down in the velvet folds I knew that would be her answer but hearing it spoken out loud, the confirmation of it, filled me immediately with my own confirmation of the feelings I still carried. I tried to picture her on the other end of the line. She was in bed, the phone on the bed table, her hair messy in a way I always found to be a turn-on, that made me want to stay in bed with her. Then I remembered that this was a cell number. She didn’t have a landline, at least one that I had the number for. And then that “we” thing came up again, intruding like a telephone solicitor. Whose bed was she in?

  “Harry, you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Uh, just to a car-rental place. Avis, I guess. They try harder. Supposedly.”

  “Harry, they have buses that come by the airport every five minutes for that. What do you need me for? What’s going on?”

  “Look, I’ll explain when I get there. My flight’s boarding. Can you be there, Eleanor?”

  “I said I’ll be there,” she said in a tone I was too familiar with, as if she was relenting and reluctant at the same time.

  I didn’t dwell on it. I had what I needed. I left it at that.

  “Thank you. How about right outside Southwest? Is it still the Taurus you had before?”

  “No, Harry, it’s a silver Lexus now. Four-door. And I’ll have my lights on. I’ll flick them if I see you first.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then. Thanks, Eleanor.”

  I hung up and headed for the gate. A Lexus, I thought as I moved. I had priced them before buying the used Mercedes. They weren’t outrageous but they weren’t cheap. Things must be changing for her. I was pretty sure I was happy about that.

  By the time I got on the plane there was no room in the overhead compartments for my bag and only middle seats left for me. I squeezed in between a man in a Hawaiian shirt and thick gold neck chain and a woman so pale I thought she might detonate like a match the moment she was hit by the Nevada sun. I zoned out, kept my elbows to myself, though the Hawaiian shirt guy didn’t, and managed to close my eyes and almost sleep for most of the short flight. I knew there was a lot to think about and the memory card was almost burning a hole in my pocket as I wondered about its contents, but I also instinctively knew that I needed to grab rest while I could. I wasn’t expecting to get too much of it once I got back to L.A.

  Less than an hour after takeoff I walked out through the terminal’s automatic doors at McCarran and was hit with the oven-dry blast of heat that signaled arrival in Las Vegas. It didn’t faze me. My eyes intently searched the vehicles stacked in the pickup lanes until they held on a silver car with its lights on. The sunroof was open and the driver’s hand was reaching through it and waving. She was flicking the brights at me, too. It was Eleanor. I waved and trotted to the car. I opened the door, threw my bag over the seat into the back and got in.

  “Hi,” I said. “Thanks.”

  After a moment’s hesitation we both leaned to the middle and kissed. It was brief but good. I had not seen her in a long time and I was suddenly shocked by the realization of how fast time could slip between two people. Though we talked every year on birthdays and Christmas, it had been almost three years since I had actually seen her, touched her, been with her. And immediately it was intoxicating and depressing at the same time. For I had to go. This would be quicker than any of those birthday calls we made each year.

  “Your hair’s different,” I said. “It looks good.”

  It was the shortest I had ever seen it, cut cleanly at the midpoint of her neck. But it wasn’t a false compliment. She looked good. But then again she would have looked good to me with hair to her ankles or even shorter than mine.

  She turned from me to check traffic over her left shoulder. I could see the nape of her neck. She pulled into the through lane and we headed out. As she drove she reached up and held her finger on the button that closed the sunroof.

  “Thank you, Harry. You don’t look that different. But you still look good.”

  I thanked her and tried not to smile too much as I got my wallet out.

  “So,” she said, “what’s this big mystery that you couldn’t tell me about on the phone?”

  “No mystery. I just want some people to think I’m in Las Vegas.”

  “You are in Las Vegas.”

  “But not for long. As soon as I pick up the car I’m heading back.”

  Eleanor nodded like she understood. I pulled my ATM and American Express cards out of my wallet. I kept my Visa card for the car rental and anything else that might come up.

  “I want you to take these cards and use them over the next couple of days. The ATM code is oh-six-thirteen. Should be easy enough to remember.”

  It had been our wedding day.

  “Funny,” she said. “You know, this year it falls on a Friday. I checked. That’s bad luck, Harry.”

  Friday the thirteenth somehow seemed appropriate. For a moment I wondered what it meant that she was checking on when future anniversaries of a failed marriage landed on the calendar. I dropped it and came back to the present.

  “So just use them over the next few days. You know, go have dinner or something. If I were here I’d probably buy you a present for letting me stay with you. So go to the ATM and get some money and buy something you like. The AmEx still has my full name on it. You shouldn’t have a problem.”

  Most people don’t know what gender my given name Hiero
nymus is. When we had been married Eleanor regularly used my credit cards without a problem. The only difficulty that would arise now would occur if an ID was requested at point of purchase. This rarely happens in restaurants anywhere and especially not in Las Vegas, a place that takes your money first and asks questions later.

  I handed her the cards but she didn’t take them.

  “Harry, what is this? What’s going on with you?”

  “I told you. I want some people to think I am over here in Vegas.”

  “And these are people who can monitor credit-card purchases and ATM usage?”

  “If they want to. I don’t know if they will. This is just a pre—”

  “Then you’re talking about the cops or the bureau. Which is it?”

  I laughed quietly.

  “Well, it might be both. But as far as I know it’s the bureau that’s most interested.”

  “Oh, Harry . . .”

  She said it with a here-we-go-again tone in her voice. I thought about telling her that it involved Marty Gessler but decided I shouldn’t involve her any further than I already had.

  “Look, it’s no big deal. I’m just working on one of my old cases and it’s got an agent’s nose out of joint. I want him to think he scared me off. For just a few days. Okay, Eleanor? Can you do this, please?”

  I held the cards out again. After a long moment she reached up and took them without a word. We were on an airport road where all the rent-a-car complexes were lined up in a row. I wanted to say something else. Something about us and about how I wanted to come back over when all of this nastiness was finished. If she wanted me to. But she pulled into the Avis lot and put her window down to tell a security man that she was just there to drop me off.

  The interruption ruined the flow of the conversation, if it even was a conversation. I lost my momentum and dropped any thought of saying anything further about us.

  She pulled up to the Avis pickup office and it was time for me to get out. But I didn’t. I sat there and looked at her until she finally turned and looked at me.

  “Thank you for doing this, Eleanor.”

  “It’s not a problem. You’ll get the bill.”

  I smiled.

  “Do you ever go back to L.A.? You know, to the card rooms or anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not in a long time. I don’t like to travel anymore.”

  I nodded. There didn’t seem like there was anything else to say. I leaned over and kissed her, this time just on the cheek.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day, okay?”

  “Okay, Harry. Be careful. Good-bye.”

  “I will. Good-bye, Eleanor.”

  I got out and watched her drive off. I wished I had been able to spend more time with her and wondered if she would have let me if I’d had the time. I then put those thoughts away and went inside. I showed my driver’s license and credit card and picked up the key to my rental. It was a Ford Taurus and I had to get used to being low to the ground again. On my way out of rent-a-car row I saw a sign with an arrow pointing the way to Paradise Road. I thought that everybody needed a sign like that. I wished that it was that easy.

  23

  Four hours and a nonstop drive across the desert later I was in the tech lab at Biggar & Biggar. I took the memory card from my pocket and handed it to Andre. He held it up and looked at it and then looked at me as though I had just put used gum in his hand.

  “Where’s the case?”

  “The case? You mean the clock? It’s still on the wall.”

  I hadn’t figured out yet how to tell him that the clock was broken and probably the camera as well.

  “No, the plastic case for the card. You put the spare card I gave you into the clock when you took this one out, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Right.”

  “Well, you should have put this one into the spare card’s case. This is a delicate instrument. Carrying it around with your pocket change and lint is not the proper way of —”

  “Andre,” Burnett Biggar interrupted, “let’s just see if it’s going to work. It was my mistake for not schooling Harry on the finer points of care and maintenance. I forgot he’s such a throwback.”

  Andre shook his head and walked over to a workbench with a computer set up on it. I looked at Burnett and nodded my thanks for the rescue. He winked at me and we followed Andre.

  The son used a pneumatic air gun that looked like it was from a dentist’s office to blast dust and debris off the memory card I had mishandled and then plugged it into a receptacle that was attached to the computer. He typed in a few commands and soon the images from Lawton Cross’s sitting room were playing on the computer screen.

  “Remember,” Andre said, “we were using the motion sensor so it’s going to be a bit jerky. Watch the clock in the corner and you’ll be able to keep track.”

  The first image on the screen was my own face. I was staring right at the camera as I adjusted the time on the clock. I then backed away, revealing Lawton Cross in his chair behind me.

  “Oh, man,” Burnett said, seeing his former colleague’s condition and situation. “I don’t know if I want to see this.”

  “It gets worse,” I said, confident in what I thought was ahead on the surveillance.

  Cross’s voice croaked from the computer’s speakers.

  “Harry?”

  “What?” I heard myself ask.

  “Did you bring me some?”

  “A little.”

  On the screen I flipped open the toolbox to get the flask.

  In the lab I said, “Can you fast-forward this?”

  Andre nodded and used the computer’s mouse to click a fast-forward button on the screen. The screen blinked black for a moment, indicating the camera had gone off for lack of movement. It then came back on as Danny Cross entered the room. Andre switched the playback to real time. I checked the time and saw this was just a few minutes after I had left the room. Danny stood with her arms crossed in front of her and stared at her invalid husband as though he was a misbehaving child. She started speaking and it was hard to hear because of the television noise.

  “This is amateur hour here,” Andre said. “Why’d you put it next to the TV?”

  He was right. I hadn’t thought about that. The camera’s microphone was picking up the voices from the television better than those in the room.

  “Andre,” Burnett said, quieting his son’s complaint. “Just see if you can clean it up some.”

  Andre used the mouse again to manipulate the sound. He backed the image up and played it again. The television noise was still intrusive but at least the conversation in the room was audible.

  Danny Cross spoke with a sharp tone in her voice.

  “I don’t want him coming back here,” she said. “He’s not good for you.”

  “Yes, he is. He’s fine. He cares.”

  “He’s using you. He pours booze into you so he gets the information he needs.”

  “So what’s wrong with that? I think it’s a good trade.”

  “Yes, until the morning, when the pain comes.”

  “Danny, if one of my friends comes here, you let him in.”

  “What did you tell him this time, that I’m starving you? That I abandon you at night? Which lie this time?”

  “I don’t want to talk now.”

  “Fine. Don’t talk.”

  “I want to dream.”

  “Be my guest. At least one of us still can.”

  She turned and left the room and the picture held on Lawton’s motionless body. Soon his eyes closed.

  “There’s a sixty-second cutoff,” Andre explained. “The camera stays on for a minute after motion ceases.”

  “Fast-forward,” I said.

  We spent the next ten minutes fast-forwarding and then stopping to watch mundane yet heart-ripping scenes of Lawton being fed and cleaned by Danny. At the end of the first night he was wheeled out by his wife and the camera went
dark for nearly eight hours before he was wheeled back into the room. A new round of feedings and cleanings began.

  It was horrible to look at, made more so because the clock was positioned just to the left of the television. Lawton Cross spent his time looking at the TV but the angle was so close it almost looked like he was staring up at the camera, looking right at us.