by John Locke
I slammed the door shut, reversed my direction, and ran full speed back toward the concrete wall I’d spotted earlier, the one that bordered the courtyard. It was waist-high, and from this direction, I couldn’t just slide behind it like before. I’d have to dive over it like the commando I used to be.
So I did. I managed the dive. Then, laying flat on my chest, I pressed the left side of my body and head against the wall.
At which point, much of the hotel—and the upper third of the wall protecting me—vaporized.
CHAPTER 27
The explosion from the hotel left a residue of soot and dust hanging in the air like a mushroom cloud. I coughed what I could out of my lungs. My ears rang. All color had been blasted from my vision. I turned to check behind me and saw white sand and sky, black palm trees and water.
I shook my head a couple of times and blinked the color back into my eyes. I got to my feet, checked for injuries, but other than the nagging pain in my shoulder, I had nothing to complain about. I seemed to be moving in slow motion and wondered if I was in shock. I willed myself to snap out of it so I could focus on the devastation fifty feet before me.
The side walls of the hotel remained intact, but most of the back had been scooped out. The roof and outer walls of the penthouse floor were still there but were listing precariously. With the internal support structure weakened, it would only be a matter of time, probably minutes, before the overhang crashed into the rubble below. The balcony I’d jumped from, like the ones above and below it, as well as the adjacent ones, was history. The exterior of the hotel had been cleanly dissected in a half-circle running maybe sixty feet in diameter.
What remained looked like a scene from a war zone, with bodies and body parts everywhere. Leaping flames erupted sporadically, revealing ruptured gas lines. People screamed from within, but the massive wall of sweltering heat would surely hinder rescue efforts.
Locals, tourists, and even vagrants began rushing to the scene to rubberneck. I spotted a homeless guy heading my way wearing a decent pair of boots. I fished a fifty from my jeans and quickly traded for them. As I laced up the bum’s boots, I studied the roof. How long could it possibly hang there, defying gravity?
This was no time for heroes, I thought, and had I not felt directly responsible for the widespread destruction and loss of life, I might have walked away. Instead, I took a deep breath and entered the smoldering ruins. As my eyes adjusted to the soot and heat, I scanned the carnage and decided the far right edge of the blast perimeter offered the highest probability for survivors.
Disregarding the teetering roof structure above me, I picked my way through the mess. Within seconds I spotted the torso of an elderly man covered in soot. I tried for a pulse, but he wasn’t offering any. In these situations, you have to move quickly, put your effort where it can do the most good.
I had to focus on the living.
Working my way deeper into the ruins, I moved beyond the mangled bodies of the obvious dead. Since most surfaces were too hot or sharp to grab, I took a few seconds to search for something I could wrap around my hands. Strips of curtain remnants did the trick, and soon I was tossing broken furniture out of the way and pushing slabs of concrete aside in order to inspect the smoky air pockets below.
I found an unconscious boy with severe burns lying beneath the upturned bed that had saved his life. Next to him I found a girl, probably his older sister, who had not been so fortunate. I carried the boy out of the blast site to a clearing on the sand. Some people rushed to help. A lady said, “Bless you.” I nodded and went back to search for others.
Some who had gathered to view the scene became motivated to help. Better than nothing, I figured, but the devastation was formidable and the rescuers were unskilled and tentative. Some with rubber soles beat a hasty retreat when they felt their shoes melting.
I continued working and managed to uncover several bodies, but no survivors. Quinn appeared out of nowhere, carrying two children, one in each arm, both disfigured with horrific injuries but alive. Someone pointed and screamed when they saw Quinn’s face, mistaking him for a burn victim. We assessed each other with a quick nod and continued our search.
Soon police and fi refighters were on the scene, yelling at us to clear the area. Knowing these guys were better equipped to handle things, Quinn and I withdrew and began picking our way through the mass of people converging on the area where one of Southern California’s premier boutique hotels had stood majestically a scant fifteen minutes earlier.
“The whore did this?” asked Quinn.
“She did,” I said.
“On purpose?”
I’d been wondering the same thing while searching the blast site for survivors. She didn’t strike me as the type who would blow up a building on purpose, but she was obviously the type who would hide a bomb in my room.
Quinn’s cell phone rang with a text message. He read it silently, and his lips moved as he did so. “Coop followed her home,” he said.
“Text him and have him send us the address,” I said. “Tell him to stay put till we get there. Tell him to follow her if she moves but keep us informed.”
Quinn gave me a look that offered more attitude than a ghetto crack whore. “You see these fingers?” he said. “You know how long it would take me to text all that?”
We walked. Quinn called Coop and gave him the message. He had Coop order us a sedan from a local limo service and told him where to pick us up. Since no cars were moving, we’d have to walk at least a mile to get beyond the traffic jam.
Around us, news crews were scrambling to set up live cams. Television reporters rehearsed eye witnesses, prepping them for their big moment on live TV. Sirens blared from all directions. Above us, thwacking blades from a dozen helicopters sliced the sky.
“How’d she detonate it?” Quinn asked. “Cell phone?”
“That’s my guess,” I said. “Or maybe she just placed the bomb and someone else detonated it.”
Hundreds of locals rushed past us, jockeying for the best views from which to observe the unfolding drama. Shell-shocked tourists aimed cameras and video recorders at the human carnage, and I cringed, thinking about how these grizzly images would be played and replayed and plastered all over the news. Talking heads would speculate and argue, and politicians from both parties would point fingers and assign blame to the opposition.
I asked, “Any idea why she waited so long to detonate the charge?”
He thought about it a few seconds before answering. “She might have made me from the balcony,” he said.
I remembered how she made a funny smile when she arrived at the room, standing near the balcony. Could that have been what made her smile? Quinn? Would she have reason to know him? If so, the terrorists had infiltrated our organization much deeper than I’d thought. “She saw you behind the hotel and then made you in the car afterward?” I asked. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“No. When she came out the front of the hotel, we got stuck in traffic. I told Coop to just follow the beeps while I jumped out of the car to follow her on foot. She probably saw me getting out of the car ’cause she took off like a poisoned pig!”
“And you couldn’t catch her? Skinny little girl like that?”
“Runs like Callie,” he said.
“No one runs like Callie,” I said. “But I get the picture.”
Quinn said, “Last time I saw her, she was passing a Krispy Kreme Donut shop. Then I heard the blast and ran back.”
“What was that, two blocks? You call that a run?”
“Hey, you’re my size, two blocks is an Olympic event.”
“So Coop the driver followed the beeps, and we’ve got the address where she stopped,” I said, patting myself on the back for placing the tracking device in her purse.
“Might take us a while to get there,” Quinn said.
He was right. In fact, it took an hour to get the car and another twenty minutes to fight the traffic. Finally, after what seemed like
forever, we spotted the miniscule split-level ranch with the peeling yellow paint on Vista Creek Drive to which Coop had tracked Jenine. Coop had parked his car a block away from the house, so we had our driver park a block beyond that. Then we signaled Coop and waited for him to return the signal. He didn’t, which meant either he was sleeping or …
He was dead. We knew it the minute we saw the bullet hole in the driver’s window. Coop had been shot from the blind side, just behind his left ear. His head hung down, his chin resting on his sternum. His blood was everywhere. Quinn opened the driver’s side door and lifted Coop’s head.
“What’s that in the bullet hole?” he asked.
I hated putting my face that close to poor Coop’s, but Quinn was right; there was something protruding from the bullet hole. It turned out to be the tracking device I had placed in Jenine’s purse.
Quinn backed out of the car, stretched to his full height, and looked at the house. “Any guess what we’ll find in there?”
“Jenine’s body,” I said.
Quinn gestured toward Coop and said, “Good thing our limo driver didn’t see this. Might have spooked him.”
“Ya think?” I said.
“I think you picked up that expression from the new girl, Kathleen.”
“I think you’re right.”
CHAPTER 28
We entered the house and quickly found two bodies wrapped in thick plastic. Both were attractive young women, one being Jenine. The other girl seemed vaguely familiar. She could have been anyone, but with two bedrooms in the house, my money was on her being Jenine’s roommate.
What we couldn’t find in the house was anything else.
No furniture, dishes, pots, pans, or silverware. No mops, brooms, cleaning supplies, paper cups, toilet paper. No computers, printers, phones, photographs, or paper of any kind. It was mindboggling. To rid an entire house of so much evidence in such a short period of time—even a small house like Jenine’s—would require a large, experienced crew. These guys were consummate pros. One or more hit men had killed three people while a full crew of crime scene cleaners waited in the wings.
In the refrigerator, there were two unopened bottles of water.
“For us?” asked Quinn.
“Apparently,” I said.
Quinn started to reach for one. “You think they’re poisoned?”
“I do.”
“What do we do now?” Quinn asked. “Talk to the neighbors?”
I didn’t think so. Surely someone spotted the dead driver before we did. They’d have called the cops. Fortunately for us, most of the police were either at the hotel or heading there. Whoever they could spare to check on our dead driver was probably on their way but likely stuck in traffic. Still, I figured we didn’t have much time.
“You got a laptop in your luggage?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Let’s get out of here and drive somewhere we can get Wi-Fi.”
“What about the water?” Quinn asked. “Should we leave them for the cops?”
“There won’t be any prints on them. On the other hand, some rookie’s liable to get killed drinking one.” We opened them and poured the water down the sink and took the bottles with us to the car.
When we got to Starbucks, Quinn remained with the driver and I took his cell phone and laptop inside. My first objective was to access the Web site where I’d discovered Jenine’s ad. I remembered seeing lots of girls on the site, and hopefully some were local. If so, I intended to contact them and see if they knew Jenine. Best case scenario, someone might give me a lead to follow.
There were two locals on the site, Star and Paige. Star wouldn’t be talking, since I recognized her as the other dead girl in Jenine’s house.
I called Paige and got her answering service. I left a message to return my call as soon as possible. Then I left the coffee shop and climbed into the front seat and waited. I looked at Quinn and tried not to smile. Times like these—his huge form crammed into the back seat, knees bent, head bowed, shoulders hunched—made me realize the effort it took just to be him. He was so large he could barely fi t in the back seat of the town car.
“You did a good job at the hotel today,” I said. “Probably saved a half-dozen people.”
Quinn shrugged. “I was on the clock.”
In time, we would learn that local hospital personnel labored for days to service the injured, and many of the bodies they received were charred beyond identification. The initial death toll was one hundred and eleven, but within a week the final count turned north of a buck fifty.
The phone rang, and I answered it.
“This is Paige,” she said.
“You sound gorgeous,” I said.
She laughed. “Maybe we should stick to the phone then, just in case.”
“Not a chance. I’ve already seen your picture.”
“Ah,” she said. “So what did you have in mind?”
“I was hoping we could meet for a cup of coffee, maybe chat awhile, get to know each other. If we’re compatible, we can take it from there.”
“My standard donation is five hundred dollars an hour.”
“I’ll double that if you can get here within the hour.”
“Don’t be offended,” she said, “but are you affiliated in any way with law enforcement?”
“I’m not. Are you?”
She laughed. “No, but I played a sexy meter maid in a high school play a few years back.”
“That might be fun to reenact some time,” I said, trying to guess where she might be heading with the comment. I wondered if her other clients sounded this retarded.
“I still have the costume, so maybe we can talk about it when I get there,” she purred. “You’re fun; I can tell. Where would you like to meet, and how will I recognize you when I get there?”
I told her and hung up. Then I told Quinn that Paige thought I sounded fun. He rolled his eyes.
Paige was plenty cute, but she didn’t look like an aspiring actress. She didn’t look like a hooker, either. What she looked like was a soccer mom, which, as it turned out, she was. I slipped her the envelope, and she palmed it and placed it in her purse. She excused herself and went to the restroom. When she got back, she said, “That’s way more than we agreed on. Did you want to book more time?”
“Not really,” I said. “I just wanted you to know I’m sincere.”
We talked about our kids and our divorces. She talked about how different grade school had become since she was a kid. “When I was in school, if I wanted to do something after school, I had to ride there on my bike,” she said. “Or I didn’t participate. My kids have it easy. They’d never believe it, but I actually used to be somebody. These days I’m a glorified taxi driver.”
“Well, I’ve probably got ten years on you,” I said. “But one thing that was different for me: my schools never had any moms like you!”
She winked. “Maybe they did and you didn’t know.”
I let that interesting thought fl oat around in my head a minute, but the only mom I could remember clearly from grade school was Mrs. Carmodie, Eddie’s mom—Eddie being the kid with the cherry bombs. What I remembered most about Mrs. Carmodie was she had a double-decker butt. While normal butts curve like the letter C, Mrs. Carmodie’s butt got halfway through the C, then extended several inches in a straight line like some sort of shelf before finishing the curve. The shelf on her butt was wide enough to hold two cans of soda. Yet try as I might, I couldn’t envision Eddie’s mom turning tricks during the day while we were in school.
The half hour flew by, and after we finished our coffees, I walked Paige to her car. Her silver Honda Accord had sixteen-inch Michelin tires with bolt-patterned alloy rims. She noticed the limo parked beside her.
“I wonder whose car that is,” she said. “You think it’s someone famous?”
“It’s mine, actually.”
“No way!”
“Want to peek inside?”
She did, and when
she did, Quinn grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her onto the seat. I followed her in and pulled the door shut behind me. Paige was breathing rapidly, and her heart was probably beating as fast as a frightened rabbit, but she knew better than to scream.
“Where’s the driver?” I asked.
“When you went in, I told him to take a walk and come back in an hour.”
That left us a half hour to find out what Paige knew. Turns out, we only needed five minutes to learn something that hit me like a left hook to the liver.
