Flight ik-8

by Jan Burke

  When he finished, Bredloe turned back to the windows, staring out with an unseeing look. “Is the family asking for—?”

  “No. Not a thing. They — they’re quite bitter toward the department, sir.”

  “Yes, I remember how difficult they were. Refusing to speak English, even though they obviously understood it. They clearly hated us. And yet you are invited to attend Lefebvre’s funeral.”

  “I asked to be invited,” Frank said.

  “Still—”

  “I’m sure they expect me to give the information to the rest of the department, so that any of his friends who want to attend—”

  “He had no friends in this department,” Bredloe said calmly.

  “So I’ve been told. But I don’t want to assume anything.”

  “No, of course not. Ask Louise to send out a memo. I’ll have Public Relations prepare a press release. Thank you for keeping me informed.”

  It was said in a tone of dismissal. Frank stood to leave. He had his hand on the doorknob when Bredloe said, “Matt Arden, perhaps.”

  Frank turned back to him. “Matt Arden?”

  “Friends in the department. Matt Arden was one. On the other hand, I always thought Matt lied to us.”

  “About what, sir?”

  Bredloe looked toward him. “About Lefebvre’s plans to visit him.”

  “I’m fairly sure he did lie, sir.”

  Bredloe seemed startled by this response. “What makes you say so?”

  “Lefebvre had no reason to tell you he was on his way to see Arden if he intended to disappear.”

  “It gave him an excuse to be out of town.”

  “He could have told you he was going somewhere else, to see someone unknown to the department. Made up a name, a place. Instead, he told you that he would be with someone you knew. Someone you could easily contact. Why didn’t he just disappear? Why not leave you waiting for him to return to his condo or make you search for his car? Instead, he tells you he’s flying his own plane — and he does take off in it. If you were planning to kill a witness in a capital case, would you act that way?”

  “No,” Bredloe said. “But—”

  “Would you make sure the guard saw you go into Seth Randolph’s room just before you killed the boy?”

  Bredloe shook his head, then said, “But Lefebvre made sure no one saw him leave.”

  “What if the boy was already dead when he went in?”

  “Then why not tell someone?” Bredloe said angrily. “Why not summon help immediately? Why flee?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank admitted. “This gets into pure guesswork. But maybe — maybe he felt he needed time or thought he was being framed.”

  “Framed!” Bredloe shouted. “By someone in this department?”

  “All right, all right,” Frank said, making calming motions. “Let’s back up a few steps. Arden lied to you. Why?”

  The captain fell silent.

  “There were three of you who heard Lefebvre say that he was going to visit Arden, right?”

  “I don’t recall,” Bredloe said.

  “According to the file, you, Lieutenant Willis, and Pete Baird were in the room when he called in, and you heard him say he was going to spend time with Arden.”

  “Yes — now I remember. On the speakerphone in Willis’s office.”

  “Right. Anyone else in the room with you?”

  Bredloe frowned in concentration. “I don’t think so. Why?” he asked warily.

  “I’m just wondering who or what scared Arden into lying.”

  “Scared Arden? Are you implying—”

  Frank held his hands up. “I’m implying nothing, sir. I’m just saying that Arden, who had spent years in this department and probably knew Lefebvre better than any of you, was extremely uncooperative when it came to helping you find Lefebvre.” A sudden thought struck Frank. “When you said Matt Arden lied, you meant — you thought he knew where Lefebvre was — that he was helping to hide him.”

  “Yes,” Bredloe said.

  “You thought a man with Arden’s reputation was hiding a man who had murdered a witness?” Frank asked incredulously.

  “We could understand how that might have happened! Lefebvre was his protégé, really almost like a son to him.”

  “But he made this protégé of his out to be a liar — and none of you questioned it at the time — or spoke up if you did.”

  “We thought Matt was lying. We had him watched for months, thinking he’d lead us to Lefebvre.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not saying I blame you for suspecting Lefebvre, Captain. Other evidence made him look bad — it still does. But you’ve had your doubts, haven’t you?”

  After a long silence, Bredloe said, “Yes. Yes, I suppose I have. But there was so much to indicate Lefebvre — believe it or not, at first I couldn’t accept the idea that he was guilty. But the evidence against him was overwhelming.”

  “I’m just getting my feet wet on this one, Captain. I have a long way to go. Like you, I think Arden lied — but for a different reason. I think he was scared into lying. And I want to know who or what scared him.”

  “Scared Matt?” Bredloe said with a small laugh. “That in itself is unbelievable. Matt Arden is probably the toughest old son of a bitch I know. Even now — and he has to be almost eighty.”

  Frank hesitated, then said, “With your permission, sir, I’d like to personally invite him to Lefebvre’s funeral.”

  “I can’t see any harm in that. Louise can give you his number.”

  “I’d prefer to get it out of the files, sir, or through the DMV.”

  “Detective Harriman—” Bredloe said angrily.

  “And I’d ask, sir, that you keep our conversation absolutely confidential. In fact, I’d prefer the others thought I whined to you about the silent treatment, or asked to be taken off the case, or better yet — that I told you I had no hope of learning anything more.”

  Bredloe rubbed at his forehead, as if trying to relieve a headache. “For now, I will not discuss this with anyone. But I will use my own judgment about this case, Frank. If you are right, then of course we must consider that someone else has Seth Randolph’s blood on his hands, that someone else allowed Dane to escape punishment for the murders. And if that someone is in this department, I’ll want a full-scale investigation of the matter.”

  Frank looked up Matt Arden’s number in the file and dialed it. He got a phone company recording saying that the number was disconnected or no longer in service. But he remembered that it had been ten years since the number was entered in the file and thought the area code might have changed. He checked with information — and discovered he had guessed right. He redialed.

  On the fourth ring, an answering machine picked up the call. A gravelly recorded voice said, “This is Matt. Can’t come to the phone. Leave a message….” There was the sound of someone fumbling around in the background and a muttered, “How do I record the damned beep on this thing?” and finally the beep itself.

  “This is Detective Frank Harriman with the Las Piernas Police Department. Please call me as soon as possible.” He left his pager number and hung up.

  He looked up to see that although the squad room was more crowded now, he was still on the receiving end of the scowl-a-thon. He saw Bredloe leaving his office — even the captain frowned at him as he went by. Frank shrugged it off — Homicide was never a goddamned sunshine factory on the best of days.

  He felt restless, though, and made a sudden decision. He gathered the files before locking his desk. He headed down to his car, where he looked up Lefebvre’s old address on a Thomas Guide map of the city.

  He had seen the place where the man had died. Now he wanted to see where he had lived.

  8

  Monday, July 10, 3:15 P.M.

  Las Piernas Police Department

  Hidden in the shadows of the parking garage, hunched down behind the front seat of his van
, the Looking Glass Man stared into the rearview mirror — but not at an angle that would reflect his own face back to him. He watched Frank Harriman, who sat in his car with the dome light on. The Looking Glass Man had intentionally parked across the aisle from Harriman’s car when he learned that the detective was handling the Lefebvre case.

  Harriman troubled him. He felt a moment’s fury toward Bredloe for assigning Harriman to the case.

  Harriman wouldn’t rush things. He would be thorough. And he was just a little too good at his job to make the Looking Glass Man feel safe. Perhaps it would be best to simply remove Harriman from the equation.

  The Looking Glass Man had been fortunate this afternoon, lucky enough to be in the homicide room when Harriman had gone in to talk to Bredloe. Harriman had aggravated Captain Bredloe, and the Looking Glass Man doubted Harriman had done so by talking about funeral arrangements. The others knew about the funeral before Harriman had left Bredloe’s office, of course. The Wheeze, miffed that Harriman had shut the door to a realm she considered her protectorate, had immediately gone among the other detectives and told them that Harriman was trying to get the captain to provide an honor guard for Lefebvre’s funeral.

  This had caused some outrage — sadly, the expressions of it had not allowed the Looking Glass Man to make out Bredloe’s occasional muffled shouts while he stood near the wall of Bredloe’s office.

  Still, he thought he understood why Bredloe was upset. He was upset as well, though not for quite the same reason. Trying to discover what Harriman was up to, what line of investigation he was using, meant following him here. That alone had put some pressure on the Looking Glass Man to act hastily.

  He smiled to himself now, acknowledging that over the years he had become adept at handling such pressure. He preferred to plan in advance and had any number of contingency plans ready and waiting. But if he had to think on his feet, he could do so.

  The dome light in Harriman’s car went out, and the man heard the Volvo’s engine start. He was preparing to follow Harriman when his pager vibrated.

  He shielded the pager’s light from view and read the number on it. It was not a phone number, but a code. After checking it against a list of similar codes in his electronic organizer, he broke out in a cold sweat.

  Anxiety overtook him, his fears rising like a buzzing swarm of bees inside his head. He held his hands to his temples, lowered his face between his knees to keep from fainting. A neatly bundled stack of newspapers on the floor of the van — papers he had planned to take to the recycling center after work today — caught his eye. He calmed immediately.

  Under other circumstances, he would have mentally enumerated the reasons he found pleasure in seeing the bundle: (1) the papers faced the same way, with the folds neatly aligned; (2) the lengths of twine that bound them were exactly the right length to hold them neatly without creasing them; (3) the papers were stacked in order of date of issue, oldest to newest, with the most recent on top, and within each day’s issues the sections were in the proper alphabetical order; (4) it represented his good intentions, because recycling was the socially and environmentally correct thing to do.

  During that moment of high-pitched anxiety, though, this particular bundle brought him more than pride in good citizenship — it brought him inspiration. For the front page of last Saturday’s edition of the Las Piernas News Express carried a local news story that made him think of a place. He had already considered going there to further test a device he had recently made. It might hold the answer to his current problem.

  He would have to act quickly.

  Fortunately, not entirely without preparation.

  9

  Monday, July 10, 3:55 P.M.

  Lake Terrace Condominiums

  As he drove toward Lefebvre’s condo, Frank called several local television stations, asking if they had any footage of the press conference in Seth Randolph’s hospital room. None had much more than what he had seen in Bredloe’s office. Since no one actually went looking for tapes when he called, he thought he might be talking to the wrong people — getting the brush-off from production assistants who didn’t want to be bothered with his request.

  He needed help from someone inside the business. He thought of a friend of Irene’s, Marcia Wolfe, a news editor at an L.A. station. He remembered that she used to work for Channel 6 in Las Piernas. He gave her a call.

  “Try Polly Logan.”

  Frank groaned. “I’ve been trying to avoid her.”

  She laughed. “I know, she’s got more bad miles on her than a Baja road race, but she knows you’re married to Kelly, so she’ll leave you alone.”

  “She has some history with Irene?”

  “Yep, but I’m not even going to go there.”

  “Okay, but why should I talk to Logan? She’s just a face, right?”

  “And a very expensive face it is — and I’m not talking about what they pay her. Somewhere in Beverly Hills, a plastic surgeon thinks of her every time he starts up his Rolls. But aside from all that, if there’s anyone who has footage of Lefebvre, it’s going to be Polly. I know for a fact that she has a personal collection on the guy.”

  “A personal collection on Lefebvre?”

  “She had a major crush on him. Never took her camera off him if she could help it. I started out over at Channel Six, and believe me, I saw so much of that guy’s mug, we began sending crews out with her just so we could verify that more than one detective worked for the LPPD.”

  He thanked her and called Logan.

  “Yes, I can help you,” she said. “But what will you do for me in return?”

  “You know I can’t discuss the case itself with you,” he said. “Lieutenant Carlson—”

  “That pompous twit — never mind. I suppose you’d be in trouble if he knew you had called me about the tapes?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, we’ll have to be discreet, then. This will take some time, and I’m about to leave on an assignment. How can I reach you later?”

  He gave her his cell phone number.

  “It might be late,” she warned. “How late can I call?”

  “Anytime,” he said, envisioning Polly Logan thinking of his number as a personal hotline to the LPPD Homicide Division. Maybe he’d have to get a new cell phone.

  The condo was in a large, gated complex, but Frank had no difficulty following another car through before the electronic gate rolled closed. He figured that “gated community” ran second only to “one size fits all” when it came to phrases that offered Americans a false sense of security.

  He drove along the street that formed the outer circle of the complex, then made a series of turns that took him past a shallow, artificial lake with a fountain in the center. He passed an empty tennis court and then a fenced playground, where a half-dozen small children were playing on swings, a sandbox, and a slide under the watchful eye of young mothers. Not far from them, some slightly older children, perhaps fourth or fifth graders, were playing basketball.

  He parked in a visitor’s space near the playground, then walked some distance through the complex, until he found Lefebvre’s street. He could have parked closer, but he wanted to get a feel for the place. He wondered if Lefebvre had ever taken walks like this one — or had he simply parked in his garage and gone up to his bed each night?

  He should look up real estate records, he supposed. Get the names of people who had lived here for ten years or more. The files he had read indicated that not many of Lefebvre’s neighbors knew anything about him; those who did knew two things: he was quiet and he was a cop. Frank decided he would ask around, anyway.

  He had a hard time imagining a man as private as Lefebvre in such a place, with shared walls and a condo association. But perhaps it was all he could afford — at the time Lefebvre had bought his condo, a modest single-family dwelling in this part of Southern California went for the price of four houses in almost any other state.

  Perhaps Lefebvre had done more of
his living away from home. There was his love of flying — Frank decided he would try to talk to pilots and workers at the airport, people who might have been closer to Lefebvre when he was relaxed and enjoying himself.

  He came to a building that was somewhat set apart from the others, at the end of a cul-de-sac. The address matched Lefebvre’s. He was walking along a shrubbery-lined sidewalk, toward the last unit near the back, when a skinny, dark-haired boy rounded the corner at a run, pointed at Frank, and shouted frantically, “Stop him!”

  Startled, a second passed before Frank realized that the boy was pointing toward the ground near his feet, and looked down just in time to see a small reddish-brown mop of fur scurrying toward him.

  A guinea pig.

  He blocked the rodent’s path with a judiciously placed shoe, apparently confounding it, because it came to a halt. He scooped it up just as the boy came up to him. Frank thought he was probably about eight or nine. For reasons he couldn’t name, the kid seemed familiar. The boy stopped as suddenly as the guinea pig had and held up his hands, looking at Frank with pleading brown eyes.

  “You’ll be able to keep hold of him?” Frank asked as the animal began squirming, making high-pitched beeping noises.

  “Oh, yes,” the boy said softly, taking it from him. The guinea pig calmed immediately.

  The boy started to walk away, then turned and said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He walked a little farther, then came back a few steps and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “Won’t tell anyone what?”

  “About My Dog.”

  “Your dog?” Frank asked, looking around. “Is he loose, too?”

  The boy shook his head and sighed. “My guinea pig’s name is My Dog. I’m not allowed to have a dog, and so—” He shrugged.

  Frank kept himself from laughing — an effort he made because the kid was so serious. “So what is it I’m not supposed to tell?”