I thought of the kids down the hall, asleep. Jimmy would likely wake up again, which meant that if I left, Grant or Ashley should be warned.
“No, she won’t come,” Reese said. “It’s not a party. No extra room in the squad car.”
“I’ll follow in my own car,” I said with sudden certainty, his hostility solving my quandary. “Where are we going?”
“Downtown,” he snarled.
“There’s really nothing for you to do down there, Mrs. Fields.” Shields spoke flatly but without anger, the senior man getting the job done. “But here’s the address if you really want to go.” He handed me a card, and as I glanced at it, the partners soundlessly whisked Dan out of the room. From the hall, I heard my husband calling, “Lacy!”
“I’ll be there, honey!” I hollered. “I’ll follow you and be there.”
I raced to Grant’s room, then, remembering that he needed a night’s sleep before the test, I moved on to his sister’s sanctuary. Fourteen-year-old Ashley, curled up under the flowing canopy on her bed, didn’t move when I burst in, so I shook her gently, telling her that Daddy and I had to run out and she needed to get up if Jimmy called. Only half awake, she didn’t ask any questions, and before she could think of any, I sprinted downstairs, slipping into the Lexus and pushing the button for the garage door to open. I gunned the car down the block and by the second stop sign — where I definitely didn’t bother to stop — I had the squad car within sight. I felt a surge of relief that at least the night wouldn’t end with my turning back.
The cop car was going fast but not recklessly, no sirens blasting or lights flashing, and I managed to keep the red taillights within easy view. They knew the neighborhood, winding their way through the dark streets without any hesitation. I kept expecting the squad car to stop suddenly and pull a U-turn in the middle of the road. I’d look in the window and see the faux cops laughing uproariously at getting away with a prank like this. Maybe they represented a medical fraternity doing a grown-up form of hazing. Or they had the starring roles on Cops 911, that new Fox show shooting on a nearby soundstage. We’d watch the tape tomorrow and laugh, and Dan would sign the waiver so the episode could air.
But the car kept going steadily forward. We turned onto Sunset Boulevard and suddenly, even at midnight, the traffic was thicker. A red Ferrari slipped in front of me, but I could still track the cops, and when we all turned onto the highway, the Ferrari zoomed ahead and I inched closer to the unmarked LAPD car. As I drove, a name kept repeating over and over in my head. Tasha Barlow. Tasha Barlow. Tasha Barlow. I waited for some bells to ring, but got resounding silence. I’d been married to Dan since we were kids just out of college, long enough to read his facial expressions pretty accurately, and nothing had registered when he’d heard the name, either. If this wasn’t all a joke, it must just be a case of mistaken identity. Dan was right. The whole mess would get cleared up as soon as he got to headquarters.
From my car phone, I dialed Jack Rosenfeld again, got the same message, and this time left my cell phone number, too. If only I knew his. I flicked on the radio to an all-news station, wondering if I might hear something about Tasha Barlow. But no, just more of the usual — mud slides in Malibu, a loss for the Lakers, and a Brinks truck overturning on the 110 freeway and spilling a million nickels on the road. How to get rich in L.A. I turned the radio off, and when we exited the highway, I focused on negotiating the now unfamiliar back streets.
After some fast turns, the cops pulled into a spot marked POLICE VEHICLES ONLY, and I realized we had arrived at headquarters. Of course I didn’t see any place to park, so I rolled down the window. “Okay if I leave it here?” I shouted to Shields, who was pulling himself out of the passenger seat of the squad car.
“No, ma’am. Police cars only. You’ll have to find parking around the other side of the building.”
Instead of dumping the car and telling them to tow it if they damn well wanted, I drove off and wasted five minutes cruising around the ugly block, squeezing my car into a too-small space in front of what had once been a deli and was now a boarded-up store-front. Courage is not exactly my middle name, but I hardly thought about the unsavory characters lurking around as I slammed my car door shut and clicked the remote lock. I started running back to the station house, my shoes making an eerie, clinking sound against the broken sidewalk. I looked down and realized that in my haste to grab footwear as I left the house, I’d slipped into a pair of purple snakeskin Manolo Blahnik mules with high, spindly heels. My Wild Berry Chanel–manicured toenails peeked through the open toes. Above the ankles, I was still wearing pale pink Lycra workout gear. Charging down the street in this getup, I was probably pretty safe — anybody would assume that some pissed-off pimp was chasing me.
Inside the station house, everything seemed surprisingly quiet. A sleepy-eyed cop at the front desk munching take-out from Taco Bell stared at me when I walked in, and when I told her I was looking for my husband, Dr. Dan Fields, she waved toward some chairs at a far wall.
“Better siddown,” she said, sounding like a transplant from Brooklyn.
“Can I join him, please?”
“Nope. Siddown.”
“He is here, correct? I’m in the right place?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“I told the policemen who took him that I’d be following in my car,” I said, persisting. “I’m sure they’re expecting me.”
“Yeah, they set an extra place,” she said snidely. She swung her beefy jowls around until she was barely a taco’s length from my face. “Siddown, lady. Or leave. I don’t care which.”
I sat. Antsy, I crossed and uncrossed my legs. My shoes stuck to the floor and made an odd sucking noise as I tried to pull them up. There weren’t any magazines around, and the only newspaper was four days old. I ran my fingers through my hair and contemplated the gouges in the wooden floor, trying not to think about what could be making it so sticky. I stared at the policewoman, wondering how much tighter her LAPD uniform would be after that taco. She caught my eye and sat back heavily in her chair, chewing thoughtfully on the taco and gazing at my Manolos. I got up and approached the desk.
“Listen, this is all a misunderstanding,” I said, trying to sound calm and friendly. “Please, please tell me where my husband is.”
She shrugged without putting down the taco. “Don’t really know.”
“Your detectives have the wrong person. He doesn’t know anything about what they’re investigating.”
“Heard that one before.” She laughed through her nose and took another big bite.
“No, really.” I took a deep breath, trying to win her over. Maybe if we became friends, the taco lady could send Dan home. “My husband is Dr. Dan Fields. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
“Nope.”
“He’s a plastic surgeon. He’s in the newspapers a lot.” Impress her, but still sound modest. “Actually, he’s pretty well known.”
“Right. Everybody in L.A.’s so important. I’ll add him to my list. Let me guess — your husband gives second-rate actresses first-rate boobs.”
“Not at all,” I said, slightly offended. Then, trying to get back on her good side, I added, “Actually, he spends most of his time doing reconstructive surgery on people who’ve been seriously hurt.”
“Yeah? So he’s a good guy?” She looked up, vaguely interested.
I nodded eagerly. “A very good guy. He does facial reconstructions and skin grafts on burn victims. Last week he reattached a teenager’s finger after a car accident, and the boy’s going to be able to play hockey again — or maybe lacrosse. Whichever he did before, I can’t remember,” I said, talking faster and faster. “Oh, and cleft palates. Did I tell you about cleft palates? Two years ago Dan went to Chile and started a free clinic and taught all the doctors there how to do the surgery. He’s so good, really good.”
I paused in the midst of my rant — running out of breath and coming to my senses at almost the same time. If the
cop wanted Dan’s résumé, she could click onto his website. But probably all she wanted was to finish her shift and go home to her own husband — whose fingers were all attached, and who wasn’t in jail tonight.
I kicked off my shoes and sunk about four inches. The cold tile floor of the police station stung my bare feet. “Look,” I said, “my feet hurt. I have blisters. My husband’s back there somewhere when he shouldn’t be. My kids are home alone. I want all this to be over. What do you think I should do?”
“Go home, Mrs. Fields.”
For a moment, I wondered how the taco lady had managed to say that without moving her lips from her synchronous chewing. Then I realized that the voice was from the other side of the room, and I got into my shoes again and spun around to see Detective Reese standing there. From across the room, he looked a little like Jimmy Smits in his NYPD Blue days, but there was a hardness around his eyes that no actor could simulate.
“I’m not going home without my husband,” I said firmly.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to.” The detective gave me a lazy, contemptuous smile. “He’s been arrested, ma’am. Not going anywhere until his arraignment.”
“Which is when?”
“Within forty-eight hours, usually.”
“Forty-eight hours? That’s two days.” I was seething, trying not to scream. “You have no right to do that.”
“Oh no? Tell it to the judge, as the saying goes. But just to calm you down, a good lawyer can probably get the case heard in the morning.”
“Can’t we get it heard right now?” I asked, picturing the dank cell where Dan was probably cowering right this minute.
“I don’t think we could find a judge who’d consider this an emergency worth getting up for.”
“So why did you arrest him at midnight? He told you he’d try to help you out in the morning. He doesn’t know anything about this case. This woman. Whoever she is.”
Again, the contemptuous smile. “We knew where we could find him at night. Now as I said, Mrs. Fields, you’d better leave. Your husband is being photographed and fingerprinted and we’re running a check on his criminal record.”
“He doesn’t have a criminal record,” I said. “You can’t count the parking ticket from last Sunday because it was my fault. Dan always puts in plenty of quarters. He’s the most honest man you’ve ever met.”
Reese cleared his throat. “Then he’ll have a clean rap sheet.” He turned and began strolling away, but his studied casualness was interrupted by a door flying open and a commotion erupting in his face as two cops dragged in a grotesquely bloodied creature, barely recognizable as human. Howling like an animal, he flailed his emaciated arms and legs, then collapsed in a heap, quite literally at Reese’s feet. Reese tried to step back, but two blood-caked hands grabbed at his ankles.
“Let go!” Reese hollered, but the man’s own wailing drowned out the words, and suddenly the other two cops descended on him with nightsticks, beating him away from Reese. Blood spurted onto the floor and Reese leaped away as the other cops pinned their prey. The howls changed in intensity from plaintive to pained, and the dissipated mess on the floor writhed like a half-dissected frog pinned to the table for a seventh-grade biology class.
“Get him to the back,” Reese yelled, and with stunning viciousness, the cops yanked their victim out the opposite door, in the very direction I’d been staring since I arrived.
“No!” I shrieked, running after them. “My husband’s back there!”
The door slammed with a convincing thud, locking in the bloodied, the victimized, and the criminal. I crashed against the handle with wild fury, but a lock had snapped into place, and nothing budged. I kicked at the door with the piercing high heel of my left mule, pounding until something seemed to give, but it was the heel, which I felt break away from the sole, dangling like a half-amputated limb.
Reese. Maybe he had a human side. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I twisted around to face him. I would have thrown myself at his feet if I thought it would help — but I’d just seen how much good that did. “Officer, I need you to help me. Whatever you can do, just get my husband out of there. Please, I beg you.” My terrified plea ricocheted around the squad room with such high-pitched anguish that Reese actually stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to look at me. He blinked a few times, as if trying to figure out who I could be.
“I can’t release your husband,” he said finally. “He’s in jail. A very serious crime, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay! Please don’t lock him up all night!” Maybe the room turned humans into wild animals, because my bellows suddenly sounded identical to the cries of the creature who had just been dragged away. Reese didn’t bother answering me this time; he just disappeared out the door where he had first come. Despite my broken shoe, I charged after him, but the taco cop stood up with more speed than I would have thought possible and planted herself in front of me.
“Sorry, lady. Nobody leaves this area.”
“I’ve got to help my husband,” I said, my voice suddenly shaking.
“Ya not gonna help him here.” An edge of sympathy had crept in under her Brooklyn accent. “Look, just get home. Come back first thing in the morning.”
“Do you think Dan’s in a cell with…” I gestured vaguely, indicating the wild man who had just come in.
“Nah. That was probably a drug charge. Your husband’s in on murder. Much bigger deal. Probably in seclusion.”
My shoe chose that moment to give up completely, the torn heel collapsing and my ankle twisting as I sunk to the floor. My husband was more dangerous than a bloody, drug-crazed maniac. I got up and without another word half crawled, half stumbled to my car.
Driving home, I wanted to think out the situation properly, preparing for constructive action, but instead I kept hearing a mocking voice scream in my head, Dan’s in jail! Dan’s in jail! Dan’s in jail! like some endlessly repeated child’s tape from the Brothers Grimm. My only images of jail came from TV shows and bad DVDs: I pictured a hostile cell mate, a smelly toilet, and a shaky, lice-infested cot. I tried not to think about the worst — Dan the doctor being beaten up by some nothing-left-to-lose killer, who’d turn his face into a bloody pulp and force needles into his arm.
The highway was empty and I revved the motor, driving eighty most of the way home. Forget the treadmill — my personal best tonight was going to be set in the car. I half hoped I’d get stopped so I could tell my story to some other cop, but nobody came near me. Maybe all the cops in L.A. were busy arresting innocent people tonight.
Back inside the house, I peeked in on Jimmy, but his bed was empty. I dashed down the hall to Ashley’s room — where my daughter was sound asleep, with Jimmy curled at the foot of her bed like some loyal golden retriever. I carried him gently back, grateful that he didn’t wake up. Making a final stop in Grant’s room, I found my oldest son also asleep, his long hair flung across the pillow, a small silver earring glinting in the moonlight that crept in from the edges of the shade. He looked like a Hollywood surfer boy, but under the golden tan was a smart student who had a physics midterm tomorrow. I somehow had to get him off to school in the morning without prattling on hysterically about the police. No use upsetting him before his test. With college applications coming, he needed good grades, and nothing mattered more. I took a deep breath. Nothing mattered more? If only. Whether Grant ended up at Stanford or Swarthmore suddenly didn’t seem as serious as Dan’s ending up at Sing Sing.
Heading back to my own bedroom, I decided I’d try Jack again at 6:30 A.M. or so. He should be answering by then — Los Angeles is an early-morning town. I lay down on the bed, trying to muster the energy to undress and wash my face, but instead I just closed my eyes.
And then opened them again.
Who cared about the time? With my husband stuck in a cell, I couldn’t worry about waking his lawyer. I fumbled in my closet for a pair of no-blister Hogans to replace the broken-heeled mules, then crept quietly down the stai
rs and back to my Lexus.
Jack lived in Beverly Hills, just north of Sunset on elegant Roxbury Drive, and at this hour, zipping along at a conservative seventy miles per hour, I was there in ten minutes. A thick hedge of trees blocked the neo-Colonial mansion from the quiet street, but Jack, less pretentious than his neighbors, had no gate. I pulled into the driveway, marched up to the front door, and rang the bell.
Nothing. Could they be away? No, his son attended the same private school as Grant, and no self-respecting family with Ivy League aspirations would leave town in March, during midterms of junior year. I rang again. And again. From where I stood on the front porch, I saw the faint glow of a light going on in a distant window, and then a woman’s voice over the intercom — at least theirs worked — saying uncertainly, “Who’s there?”
“It’s Lacy Fields. I need Jack. There’s an emergency.”
“Lacy?” The voice — Jack’s wife, Gina — seemed to perk up. “Hang on, I’ll wake him up.” The intercom went dead long enough for me to wonder if he was a sound sleeper or in a different bed, but then the front door was opening and Jack was there, tying on a thick terry robe.
“Geez, Lacy, what’s going on? Are you all right?”
Jack put his sturdy arm around me, and I felt myself trembling, ready to cry. But I held it together, sensing that if I collapsed now, I’d never get up again.
“I’m okay,” I said. “But Dan’s in jail.”
“What?” His voice ripped through the quiet night, and I envisioned neighbors bounding up from their beds, thinking they’d heard a shot. Jack recovered quickly enough to grab my arm and pull me over the threshold, closing the heavy door behind us with a thud. In the dim light of the foyer, he looked at me uncertainly.
“I want to hear this. Come on in. Do you need a drink? Should I have Gina put on some coffee?”
“Just water,” I said. Jack looked dazed, and since he was now dealing with a woman who had shown up unannounced at his doorstep at three in the morning, I couldn’t really blame him. We walked down a hall, past the sleekly modern dining room, and then Jack flipped on an overhead light in the kitchen. Gina had been calling me for months to get my professional opinion as a decorator on her room renovation. She had a good eye herself, and now that the kitchen was finished, I could practically picture Martha Stewart coming in to whip up some cream puffs. Good manners demanded I rave about the stainless steel stove and free-form granite counters, but in my current state, I simply wasn’t capable of making kind comments about custom cabinetry.
Looks to Die For Page 2
