A wooden fence around eight feet high ran from the edges of the house to the properties on either side, meaning nobody could simply walk around to the rear. A gate was in place next to the garage, and there was little doubt a path behind it would go around to a backyard and maybe a swimming pool. I could probably have scaled it, but at that point I’d have gone from being an annoying person asking questions to a criminal. If a nosy neighbor saw me and called the cops, I was going to have a hard time explaining what I was doing. I decided against it. I didn’t know if Samantha was even here. For all I knew she’d gone back to work.
I got back in my car, watched the windows of the house for another two minutes or so, and then put it in gear and drove away.
Tracking down Samantha was still a priority. She was literally my last lead. I decided to head over to Second Star to see if she’d shown up there. This entire thing could be resolved in five minutes if I got lucky.
The moment I walked through the door at Second Star I guessed I wasn’t going to be lucky. Vanessa was at the reception desk. She gave me a wary look. “Detective James,” she said as I approached.
“Hi, Vanessa,” I said. I waited for a moment to see if she’d say anything else. Sometimes people were nice enough to fill in awkward silences and give something away that they might otherwise not have, but this wasn’t one of those times. “I don’t suppose Samantha has come back to work? I sure hope she’s feeling better.”
Vanessa shook her head. “She’s not back.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“No.” Vanessa sounded worried. “I’m not sure what…” She shook her head again. “No. She isn’t back.”
“She hasn’t called in to let you know she’s still all right? Maybe she’s still sick?”
“She hasn’t called,” Vanessa said. “I’m not sure what to think at this point.” She glanced back at the main office area. “Esther is pretty upset about it.”
“She probably is,” I nodded understandingly. “Would you be guessing she’s at home?”
“Guessing, sure.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I went out there to say hello and she didn’t answer the door.” I was trying to put a helpful quality into my voice, but I wasn’t sure it was working.
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “You went to her house?”
I shouldn’t have said that. “I did,” I admitted. “I just have a few questions for her, and the sooner I can get them out of the way, the sooner this will all be over. I just need a little information.”
“Okay.”
“Do you think I could get her phone number from you?” I asked. “Maybe I could give her a call and make sure she’s okay? Krystal Harris was involved with some bad people, like Esther said before, and it’s really possible Samantha’s in danger.”
Vanessa looked like she was trying to decide whether to take me seriously or not. Maybe I seemed like a crazy person to her. Well, that was fair. I was a crazy person. I’d known that for a long time.
“I don’t think I should give you her phone number,” she finally said. “It just seems like a violation of her privacy. I’ll keep trying her, though.”
“Sure,” I said. Something else occurred to me. “There might be something you can do, though.” This was going to be a longshot, but I was out of cards to play. “I have the names of two women and I’m wondering if either of them came in here…”
Vanessa’s hand shot to her phone. She pressed a button on it and I heard a chime. Esther Cromwell’s voice answered over the speaker. “Yes, Vanessa?”
“Nevada James is here asking questions,” Vanessa said quickly.
There was a brief pause. “I’ll be right out,” Esther said.
That certainly wasn’t what I’d been hoping would happen. “So I’m thinking you’re probably done talking to me,” I said to Vanessa. She didn’t answer.
Esther came through a door behind Vanessa a few seconds later. “Ms. James,” she said, nodding at me. “How are you?”
I shrugged. “Not fantastic, but that’s nothing new. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” She didn’t look fine. She looked annoyed. “What are you doing here?”
I was about to tell her I was selling magazine subscriptions when Vanessa spoke up. “She wants contact information for two of our clients.”
To be fair, that wasn’t what I’d asked for at all, but it probably would have been up next. But I’d never gotten around to telling Vanessa their names. She’d jumped the gun a little on that one.
Esther tried to conceal a scowl, but it didn’t work out that well for her. “Do you have a warrant for this information, Detective James?” She shook her head. “Ms. James, I should say. I do recall that you’re no longer with the police department.”
“You know I don’t,” I said.
Vanessa looked up at Esther, wide-eyed. “She went out to Sam’s house trying to find her.”
Esther gave me a cold stare. “Is that true?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but what was I going to say? That Vanessa had gotten it wrong and this was all a hilarious misunderstanding? “Yeah.”
“I see,” Esther said. “Well, I must tell you that there’s no information I can give you about our clients. Even if you were a police officer and did have a warrant, our attorneys would handle that process. Some information is protected, after all. But it’s irrelevant, as you are neither a police officer nor do you have a warrant. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
There was no point in making a scene here, but something Vanessa had said during my previous visit popped into my head. “One question first,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me last time that you help assault victims file police reports?”
“If that’s an option they choose,” Esther said.
“We don’t force anybody,” Vanessa said. “We do encourage it, though.” She frowned, and then gave Esther a look that suggested she didn’t know if she was allowed to say that much.
“That would all be in your files,” I said. “I mean, whether they did or not. Would anyone here have access to that information?”
“Enough, Ms. James,” Esther said. “I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this harassment, but I do wish you’d stop.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Sometimes I wish I could stop, too. But I just can’t.” I shrugged. “It’s like I have a disease or something…”
“Perhaps you should seek counseling,” Esther said.
“That’s a great idea,” I said. I snapped my fingers. “Do you have any openings today? Maybe I should sit down with someone and…”
I’d thought that was pretty funny. Esther didn’t. Five minutes later I was standing on the sidewalk outside, having been escorted there by a large security guard who didn’t seem at all amused by my sense of humor. Maybe I needed to work on my material.
Chapter 18
I got a plate of Vietnamese noodles for lunch and ate in my car as I considered what I’d learned. It wasn’t too much of a longshot to connect the two assault victims and Krystal to Second Star. But what about the third murder? Krystal had been so insistent that there had been something wrong there. Maybe my idea about someone being wrongly accused was right, but how would Krystal have known about that? I’d have to wait until Sarah came up with something for me to be sure.
I definitely needed to talk to Samantha. I considered driving back to her house and knocking again, but I suspected she was avoiding me. That made sense. I’d probably avoid me, too. Even when I wasn’t investigating a murder, I wasn’t all that much fun to deal with.
I was all set to put the car in gear and head home for a nap when my cell phone rang. It was Dan Evans. I hesitated for a moment before picking up. What could he want? “Hey, boss.”
“Don’t start with me,” he said.
That hadn’t sounded good. He was already annoyed. “I hadn’t really gotten started yet,” I said. “I can, if you want. Hey, jerkface. What do you want?”
“I want you to explain something, Nevada,” he said. “Something really strange just happened. A few minutes ago I put a trace on your phone so I could come yell at you in person.”
Uh oh. “That doesn’t sound legal, boss. I’m a private citizen and I doubt you have a warrant to trace my phone.”
“I don’t care. You know what was strange, though? The tech guy got a hit right away. He told me you were in Buenos Aires.”
Abercrombie’s modifications to my phone made it nearly impossible to get a location on me. The NSA could probably do it, if they had enough time, but the police department didn’t have access to that kind of technology. I’d been hoping Dan would never have a reason to notice that. Apparently I’d given him one. “Weird,” I said. “I don’t think this is Argentina. Hang on, I’ll ask someone.”
“You’re not in Argentina, Nevada.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “I’m so relieved.”
“But it gets even stranger,” he said. “I told them to run it again, and this time it turned out you were in…” he stopped for a moment and I suspected he was reading something off a screen. “Some godforsaken village in the Ukraine I can’t pronounce the name of.”
“How mysterious!” I tried to sound shocked for comic effect. I wasn’t sure it had worked.
“What the hell are you doing, Nevada? What did you do to your phone?”
At least he thought it was me that had done something to it. He shouldn’t be trying to figure out who I was working with. “You know perfectly well the Laughing Man has always been able to track me,” I said. “I made it so he couldn’t anymore. It means nobody else can, either. Sorry about that.”
“How?”
“I’m never going to answer that question,” I said. “So fuck off, honestly.”
I suspected that if I were to crack an egg over Dan’s head right now I’d be able to watch it fry. Maybe I should get out of town for a few days until he’d calmed down. I probably wouldn’t, of course, but I was pretty sure he was close to going nuclear on me and it would have been the smart play. “Was there something else?” I asked.
“Oh, was there something else?” he asked. “Yes, Nevada. There is something else. Something else is what I wanted to come yell at you about.”
“Oh, boy!” I said.
“Do not fucking test me right now,” he said. “You do not want to do that, I promise you.”
I decided the best course of action was not to say anything, so I waited for him to continue. “Why are you poking around…” he stopped to read again. “Second Star Women’s Help Center?”
Shit. Someone there had made a call. I’d gone too far with that. “I wanted to ask if their name was a Peter Pan reference,” I said. “They get really mad when you ask, though. It’s weird.”
“God damn it, Nevada…”
I was on thin ice, but suddenly I just didn’t care anymore. “Because they’re a lead,” I said, “and a pretty damn good one.”
“A lead. You’re working the Krystal Harris case.” It wasn’t a question. He’d figured that out.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a full minute. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “Well?” I asked. “Come on. Get it out of your system.” I lowered my voice to imitate him. “Ooh, Nevada, you’re so bad…”
“I’m going to have you arrested,” he said.
“Oh, give me a fucking break,” I said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It’s a free country. I’m allowed to ask people questions if I want to. I told them point blank I’m not a cop. I never misrepresented myself. I didn’t show them some fake badge I got in a cereal box.”
“I told you explicitly that my detectives would…”
“You know what?” I interrupted him. “I don’t give a fuck.” And then I hung up on him.
I was feeling pretty smug about that until I got home and found two patrol cops waiting for me in my driveway. They were apologetic, and they were pretty clearly afraid of me, but they still put me in handcuffs and hauled me off to jail.
Chapter 19
San Diego County Jail was on Front Street downtown, not far from the police station. I’d been there before, of course, but never in this capacity. The jail staff didn’t bother taking my mug shot or going through the booking process. Everyone knew this was a farce. I didn’t consider the experience much more than a nuisance, right up until they took my Glock away. Suddenly the whole thing was a lot less amusing.
I was left to steam in a holding cell. I had the place to myself; it was maybe six feet by eight feet and built entirely out of concrete that had been painted white. A bench ran four feet long against one wall. There was a lidless metal toilet at the end with a built-in sink for hand washing, and that was the entirety of the décor I had to deal with. The guards hadn’t brought bedding in for me, and I suspected they wouldn’t bother unless I wound up staying here overnight. Given that I was getting progressively angrier the more time that passed, and that my mouth had a tendency to get the better of me when I was angry, that was a distinct possibility.
I felt naked without my gun. I only took it off to sleep, and I could feel its absence physically, as if I’d left the house without wearing pants. Besides the sense of wrongness, anxiety was setting in and my skin was starting to crawl. Logically, that made no sense. I was completely safe. I was probably safer in this cell than I was in my own house, for all the security it had. It didn’t matter, though. I was good with my hands in a fight; I’d earned the black belt I wore in Molly’s dojo, but without my gun I had no chance of protecting myself against the Laughing Man. He was better than me. The fact that he couldn’t possibly show up here and attack me was irrelevant. Nor did it matter to me that even if he could, he wouldn’t. He’d consider it cheating. Not part of the game. But my mind was still going crazy.
I’d never had a panic attack in my life. I wondered how far off one was. I didn’t expect I’d enjoy it if it happened.
Sarah Winters showed up before more than an hour or two had passed. It was hard to tell. I couldn’t see the wall clock outside from the tiny window in the door of my cell. Without my phone, I no longer had any idea what time it was.
I hadn’t seen Sarah in months. She normally looked like someone who took good care of herself; not a hair would be out of place and her makeup would be understated, but perfect. Now she looked like I used to; she probably hadn’t brushed her hair in a week and she had dark circles under her eyes. If she’d been working long hours on a case I’d have understood, but I knew she hadn’t. Desk duty was running her down. That gave me one more thing to be angry at Dan for.
A guard opened the door and let her in, and then shut it behind us. Sarah gave me a sympathetic look. “Are you all right?”
“Where the fuck is Dan?” I asked. There was murder in my voice. I already knew I was going to have to remind myself during this conversation that Sarah wasn’t the one I was angry at. There was no reason to take any of this out on her.
“He’ll be down in an hour or so,” Sarah said. “He thought you should have some time to collect your thoughts.”
“He thought wrong,” I said. “The longer I’m in here the more likely I am to…” It was probably better for me to watch my words. “Stay angry,” I finished. “Does he have any idea you’ve been helping me?”
“No,” she said. “He never thought to ask, and I wouldn’t have told him, anyway.”
“Good. Don’t. At this point he’d probably fire you.”
“I don’t really care whether he does or not,” she said.
I looked at her. “Oh, come on, Sarah. You love being a cop.”
“I loved being a cop,” she said. “Now I push papers around a desk. Sometimes I do a little filing. That’s a red-letter day for me.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I told him I’d come down here and take your temperature before he talked to you, but I was just making an excuse.
” She smirked. “I got the third murder.”
I looked past her through the window. Nobody appeared to be watching us. It wasn’t like they could hear what we were saying, anyway. Not unless there were microphones in here? Were there microphones in here? I had no idea. “Tell me.”
“Brian Haskill. He was a tech startup consultant in La Jolla. Shot six weeks ago in a mugging.”
“Like the others.”
“Exactly. But three months before that, I found another Brian Haskill in the system. This one sells tires in La Mesa.”
“And he had a sexual assault charge?” I asked.
Sarah nodded. “Exactly. It was dismissed for lack of evidence.”
I exhaled slowly. “Well, that’s it,” I said. “I’ll be damned. Someone killed the wrong Brian Haskill.” It made perfect sense to me now. Krystal had told me that a wrong murder had taken place. That was what she’d been talking about. Someone had made a mistake and killed an innocent person, and somehow Krystal had found out about it. That led me right back to Second Star. There had been nothing else in Krystal’s world that connected her to rape victims.
“Looks like,” Sarah said. “I’m guessing it’s a vigilante killer who fucked up.”
“That has to be it,” I said. “Nice work, Sarah.”
“Thanks. It was nice to be doing something useful for a change.” She smiled. “You need anything else from me?”
“My gun.”
Sarah glanced at the guard station through the window. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to let you have that in here.”
“It’s just as well,” I said. “I’m thinking about using it on Dan.”
Sarah sighed. “He does mean well, Nevada.”
Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) Page 12
