Fear

THIRTY-FOUR

A camera eyed him under the eaves of Celeste Brent’s porch, and Groote frowned. He had on his sunglasses and a cap pulled over his battered face to fend off the early light of Friday morning, but he didn’t like his picture being taken. He yanked the camera loose from its mount and smashed the lens under his heel.

Reaching up to grab the camera made his arm hurt – hell, his whole body ached. His left arm throbbed, his head pounded, his broken nose was taped. He looked as if he’d been in a car crash.

Frost was gone. Sorenson had betrayed him; all the deal making was for nothing, the man had just wanted a shot at killing Nathan Ruiz, for whatever unfathomable reason. Nathan Ruiz and Michael Raymond had vanished. Hurley was missing. A fed named Pitts had nipped at his heels the previous night. Life was bad.

But if he thought of Amanda, he could push on.

He tried the doorbell. No answer. Knocked. Waited. If Celeste Brent was a psycho-level recluse, she might not answer the door.

He slid a lockpick into the door, tested it, eased the tumblers.

The door opened. No alarm chimed. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him. He left the lights off.

He nearly tripped over Hurley’s body, sprawled on the floor.

‘Dumb-ass,’ he said under his breath. He drew his weapon, borrowed from an off-duty guard at the hospital, with a grimace of pain. Did a search. The house was empty.

He checked Hurley without touching him, but he didn’t need to touch him to see that the man was dead. The man who had been a pain in the ass but could have helped his Amanda.

‘I told you I should have come with you,’ he said to the dead body.

He searched the house. No one there.

If the cameras ran constantly, they could tell him a story. He found a computer in the bedroom, with a massive external hard drive attached and video cables that fed into the walls. He fired up the computer. No login password. Not a surprise: no one ever used this system other than Celeste Brent. He searched the external drive; she kept the cameras’ images in digital form for only a few days, then reused the drive’s real estate. He accessed the video files, starting with yesterday’s. The camera was motion-activated, saving frames when people neared the front door.

An older lady, matronly – probably a caretaker. Arriving, letting herself in with a bag of groceries, letting herself out. Then Michael Raymond showed up. Held up a sign.

I KNOW ALLISON’S SECRET.

Holy Mother of God. Groote’s stomach churned. He fast-forwarded. Michael waits, then steps in. Nothing. Then Hurley arrives, waits. Goes inside. More nothing. Then Michael and a woman – clearly frightened, as though she were unexpectedly walking on the moon – sticking close to Michael, stumbling out of frame. Damn. No sign of a car, no plates to trace.

He jumped back to the video files from Tuesday, the day Allison died. Fast-forwarded through the day until Allison appeared on the doorstep. Fast-forwarded until she left. Nothing else.

Celeste Brent had been in league with Allison Vance and so had Michael Raymond.

I KNOW ALLISON’S SECRET.

Four words to chill the bone.

He had to figure out where they had gone – because from the date/time stamp on the image, he guessed they had gone from here to the hospital. But first deal with Hurley. He couldn’t leave the body. Celeste Brent was a has-been celebrity, but she was still a known name to many people; a body found inside her house would earn national attention. The caretaker woman might come back tomorrow; Hurley dead might be more of a problem than Hurley missing.

He stripped apart the computer system; maybe there would be helpful information on the hard drives to tell him where Miles and Celeste might run. He carried the hard drives out to the car, put them inside the backseat of the rental. Now. The trunk for Hurley, then the desert.

He closed the door and there, on the other side of the low adobe wall that separated the yard from the dirt road, stood DeShawn Pitts.

‘Hello,’ Groote said. Calm. You can talk your way out of this, man, you have to, for your daughter.

‘What happened to you, Mr. Groote?’

‘An accident at the hospital. My own fault, I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs.’

‘You okay?’

‘Yes. How’d you find me here?’ He put a laugh in his voice.

‘I parked down near the hospital. Wanted to grab Doctor Hurley for a talk. Saw you leaving, saw your face all beaten. Made me curious. Followed you.’

Too much suspicion from the guy. It saddened Groote.

‘This your place?’ Pitts asked.

‘I wish. No, it’s a patient of Doctor Hurley’s.’

‘That’s Doctor Hurley’s car parked there. His plates. I checked. He normally spends the night with his patients?’

‘No, but last night was a special case.’

‘I get the feeling Hurley’s avoiding me. Is he here or not?’

Groote weighed the options, life or death.

‘I really have to insist, Mr. Groote. At the least Doctor Hurley can step outside and talk to me for five minutes.’

Groote decided, with regret. He slammed the car door closed and tried to seem embarrassed under his bandage. ‘Hurley talked to your person of interest; Hurley was the one at the hospital who called him. He’s been calling all of Allison Vance’s patients. A mild form of ambulance chasing.’

‘Excellent.’

Groote jerked his head toward the house. ‘Why don’t you come on in and we’ll talk?’