Blindman’s Bluff

TWENTY-SIX

THE HOUSE THAT Grant pointed out was a 1960s modern perched on the crest of a mountain: low slung and built into the rocky crag. The exterior was glass, steel, and white stucco and was ringed with large camellia bushes in full pink bloom. Grant’s identification was confirmed when his key opened the door.

The first thing Decker noticed was a vertigo view of the entire L.A. basin. It was all glass with no seams, giving the space a greenhouse look. It was one story and sprawled from room to room: handy for someone who was wheelchair bound-as long as the person didn’t crash into the glass.

The wood floors were stained ebony but the rest of the house, including the vaulted ceilings and walls, were painted a deep taupe.

The furniture was also 1960s in style but looked too new to be original. There was a low-slung gray velvet sofa, a love seat fashioned from multicolored leather polka dots framed with aluminum tubular molding, a red plastic chair fashioned into the shape of a hand, and a psychedelic area rug.

Decker and his daughter exchanged glances. A quick once-over told them immediately that nothing appeared out of place. There was no obvious sign of a struggle. Vases and knickknacks stood upright on tables and shelves. The dining room chairs were neatly spaced around the table, and the kitchen counter with all its appliances and accoutrements looked undisturbed.

Off an open area that contained the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen were two long hallways-one to the left and one to the right. Grant was already seated on the couch with his eyes closed. He was wan.

Decker said, “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Go eat something. You’ll need to keep up your strength. Where’s Gil’s room?”

“To the left, all the way down. The house has two master suites, which is why Gil liked it.”

To Cindy, Decker said, “I’ll take the left, you take the right.”

“You’re going to go through my things?” Grant asked Cindy.

“Briefly.”

“Maybe I should come with you.”

“Go eat something,” Decker said. “Let us do our job.”

Surprisingly, Grant acquiesced with a nod.

“Come in when you feel better,” Cindy told him. Although she dressed for comfort, she still managed to look stylish: brown pants, a gold sweater, and an orange jacket that matched her flaming ginger hair. She had pulled back her mop into a ponytail and it swayed as she walked. Pearl earrings were her only concession to adornment. When she and Decker met back in the living room, twenty minutes later, the Los Angeles sky was tumbling in pinks and oranges.

Grant was on the phone. He quickly excused himself and hung up. “Anything?”

“Nothing seems out of place to my eye,” Cindy said. “You’re very neat. I tried to disturb your order as little as possible.”

Decker said, “Did you find the wheelchair?”

Cindy shook her head no.

“Neither did I.” He turned to Grant. “Your brother doesn’t have a lot of clothing. Three shirts, a couple pairs of pants, two pairs of pajamas, two robes, a pair of slippers, and a pair of loafers.”

“How many robes?”

Decker consulted his list. “A white terry robe hanging in the bathroom, and a silk maroon robe in the closet.”

“Gil had way more silk robes than that. That was his preferred mode of dress. Silk robes over silk pajamas except when we went out.”

Decker shook his head. “There were some spare hangers.” He took a seat next to Grant. “You’re not going to want to hear this, Mr. Kaffey, but to me, it seems that your brother packed up and left in your absence.”

“He wasn’t in good shape.” Grant appeared truly baffled. “Why would he do that?”

“You tell me.”

“Maybe someone had a gun to his head.”

“That’s a possibility.” Decker paused. “But everything in his room looked very neat. You’d think if he were packing while his life was being threatened, he’d drop a hanger or the drawers would look a little messier.” He turned to Cindy. “Did you find anything that indicates a kidnap, Detective?”

“Quite the opposite. Everything is really neat.”

Grant faced Cindy, his eyes wet with tears. “But why would he just leave like that? Without telling me? Without leaving me a note?”

Decker raised his eyebrows. “This may also be what you don’t want to hear, but it could be he doesn’t trust you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Grant sputtered out. “We’re not only brothers, we’re best friends. If anyone should be suspicious, it should be me. He left me all alone. That’s what you do when you’re trying to set someone up.”

Decker held out his hands and shrugged. “Until we know what’s going on, it’s smart to take precautions. Get a bodyguard. If you don’t trust Brady, find someone yourself. And you should probably move out. Wherever you end up, tell me, okay?”

“Do you think Wind Chimes in Newport would be okay?”

“If you stay at Wind Chimes, you’ll need a staff of bodyguards. If I were you, I’d go smaller.”

Grant said, “What do you think about Neptune? Should I trust him?”

“How about if we talk about it on the way back to the station house. Why don’t you pack up a few things and then we’ll go?”

“Is it safe for me to do that?”

“I’ll come with you,” Cindy said. “There are a lot of windows with no treatments. Just in case something’s lurking.”

It took Grant twenty minutes to pack his belongings into two suitcases. By that time, the view outside had faded to charcoal with starlight sitting above the twinkling city lights. Outside the air was mild with crickets chirping. The roadside was nearly black, with streetlamps being few and far between. Grant struggled to get the key into the lock, the sole illumination a yellow-tinged porch light. Because it was so quiet, Decker heard the pops and because it was so dark, he saw the blinding orange flashes. Without thinking he pushed Cindy into the camellia bushes on the right while falling on top of Grant Kaffey, rolling the both of them into the shrubbery on the left. As he lay sprawled out on Grant, he managed to extract his gun, while screaming to Cindy to ask if she was all right.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” she screamed back. “I got my gun.”

“Don’t shoot!” Decker screamed.

And then the night turned deathly quiet.

He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Don’t shoot. Let your eyes adjust.”

“I’m with you, boss.”

His own eyes were intensely focused, staring through the bushes, seeing whatever he could make out: some pinpoints of light but mostly shadows. Houses…parked cars…trees. Nothing in human shape appeared to be moving. To Grant he whispered, “You okay?”

“Yeah. My leg hurts.”

Grant was grunting. Not surprising because Decker must have outweighed him by fifty pounds.

“Bad?”

“I think I scraped it. I’m okay.”

Decker’s ears suddenly perked up to the sound of receding footsteps, but he couldn’t see any shape or form. Within a moment, an ignition fired followed by the screech of tires laying down rubber. The noise grew softer as the seconds ticked on.

“Can you reach your phone?”

“Yeah…I think so…”

Decker waited stock-still while his eyes continued to look for a change in the shadows. “Call 911 and hold it up to my ear, okay? You still there, Cin?”

“I’m still here with my metallic friend in hand.”

The crickets had started up again. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally felt the cell upon his ear, an operator saying those beautiful words.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

In a calm whisper that belied his rapidly beating heart, Decker explained that he was from LAPD, that shots had been fired, that one person may be hurt, and they needed immediate backup. He gave the address and the street to the operator and told her to tell the cruisers to stop any vehicle they met coming up the mountain. “Use extreme caution. The driver of the car may be armed.”

She repeated the address back to him.

Decker told her yes. He wasn’t even aware that he had memorized the street numerals. But such was the force of habit after thirty-plus years on the job. He had always made it a point to know where he was, had done so unconsciously.

Five minutes later, Decker could hear the wail of the approaching sirens. Using Grant’s cell phone, he pinpointed his location to the uniformed cops. It took a while to secure the area and extract them from the foliage.

All around were blinking black-and-whites. Curious neighbors stood behind yellow crime tape. As the three of them brushed dirt off their clothes, Grant discovered that his pants were torn and he was bleeding from his leg. Decker took a flashlight from a uniformed officer, knelt down, and carefully parted the torn cloth on Grant’s pants leg.

Could be a nasty scrape or it could be a graze wound. In better light, he could have discerned if the skin had been burned or not. He could see that it was oozing-wet and shiny-but it wasn’t spurting.

He looped his arm around Grant’s waist and asked Cindy to help him carry Grant to a cruiser. The best thing to do was to keep him settled and let the professionals handle this one.

As soon as Kaffey was seated in a black-and-white, Decker radioed for an ambulance.

“I’M HUNG UP at work.” Decker was trying to keep his voice neutral. “Do me a favor and stay overnight with your parents.”

“How late are you going to be?” Rina asked him.

“I don’t know. I’m at a crime scene. Maybe pretty late.”

“What crime scene?”

“Can’t go into that right now. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Call me when you get to your parents’.”

“Peter, you sound very tense. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I can’t get into that.”

Rina could hear voices in the background. One of them sounded like her stepdaughter. “Is Cindy there?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Obviously I hear her. What are you doing in Hollywood?”

“Maybe she’s in West Valley. I’ve got to go.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on. I’ve been a cop’s wife for seventeen years. I’m not going to melt. Tell me right now!”

Decker gave her the abbreviated version, hoping that would satisfy her.

“But you and Cindy are okay?”

Her voice sounded shaky. “Rina, we’re both fine. My face got scratched a little, but other than that, I am completely whole.”

“Baruch Hashem. I’ll bench Gomel for you.”

The prayer for surviving a dire situation. “Do it for Cindy as well.”

“I will.” Now her voice sounded teary. “What are you doing right now?”

“We’re trying to find all the bullets and reconstructing the trajectory.”

“So you can know how lucky you were.”

Decker smiled. “I just wish I could have seen something. You know how dark it is in the hills, and I was literally hiding in the bushes.”

“Could you hear anything?”

“Receding footsteps and a car peeling rubber. I’ve called in a tech to see if we can lift a tire print from the skid marks. Maybe we’ll catch a break.”

Rina didn’t answer.

“Are you still there?” Decker asked.

“I was just thinking about the blue Saturn that was parked across the street.”

“The one with the tinted windows and Popper Motors license plate. I had Marge check it out. They do sell new and used Saturns. Marge spoke to a salesperson named Dean Reeves. They’re checking the records. If it came from them, they have a record of the tires on the car.”

“It would be interesting if the treads matched your skid marks.”

“It would be more than interesting, it would be downright scary. I’ve got to go. Call me when you’re at your parents.”

“I will. You’re not so far from them. Maybe you’ll get off earlier than you think.”

“I’ll come over whenever I can.”

“Good to hear,” Rina said. “I’ll keep the night-light on and the sheets warm.”