Perfect killer

CHAPTER 28

The heels of Jasmine's open-toed pumps drummed a light tattoo on the polished linoleum as we hurried toward my office. I checked my watch.

"I thought they'd never let me go," I muttered, "We're going to be way late. I hate being late. Really hate it,"

"You gave a remarkable presentation."

"You think so?" I checked my watch again.

"It's no wonder Mom talked about you so much."

"She did?" Surprise, joy, and the old regrets about the path not taken set me off balance.

Jasmine gave me a curious smile and nodded as we rounded the last corner. She seemed to have as many enigmatic ways of smiling as Sonia did for saying "Oy!"

"All the time. Mom said you were the smartest human being she had ever met."

"She must have met a lot fewer people than I would have imagined."

Sonia stood in the office doorway.

"Mom kept a file of articles about you."

I nearly stumbled over my own feet.

"You okay?"

"Fine," I lied. I visualized my Vanessa clip file, waterlogged at the bottom of the channel. "I need more sleep."

"You do know she was wildly in love with you."

"Oh, jeez…" My voice cracked. "You're kidding, right?"

Jasmine gave me a penetrating gaze.

"God's truth." She paused and I saw the puzzle pieces of some decision falling into place behind her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I understand why now."

As we approached my office, a small dark shadow passed over Sonia's face as she connected my expression with the fond look on Jasmine's face.

"I called Pacific Hills already for you and told them you would be a bit late," Sonia said. I was about to introduce Jasmine, but Sonia turned too quickly and stepped inside the door.

"A couple of the people who work with that nice Mr. Sloane brought your truck for you."

I stepped through the door as Sonia sat behind her desk. "He left it in your spot." She pulled open the middle drawer and pulled out a set of keys. I walked over while Jasmine hovered outside in the corridor.

"You need to hurry. The doctor won't be able to wait for long."

"Is everything okay?"

Sonia paused. Her eyes went to Jasmine, then back to me.

"She's beautiful. Be careful." Sonia whispered.

I had no good reply. "Of course," I said, and left.

Jasmine and I quickly found my truck and drove in silence, through campus and up to Sunset, where I headed west. Jasmine gazed up at the Getty Museum as we crossed the 405, which, even this early in the day, was already clotted with vehicles creeping to the beat of their own mysterious rush-hour drummer.

From the corner of my eye, I admired the strong, lithe muscles of her neck as she craned her head up. It was the first time I had seen her up close in the sunlight. The warm sheen of her skin and the way it tautly wrapped her elevated cheekbones and classic jawline captivated me.

Jasmine turned to me. "Where are we going?"

The realization hit me that we were rushing to visit my comatose wife and I had not told Jasmine anything. It also struck me as significant that Jasmine had not asked.

"Pacific Hills," I said, stalling to arrange my thoughts. "It's a

… long-term care facility."

The light at Barrington remained green as we came around the curve.

"Your wife," Jasmine said with no notes of a question in her voice. "I read about it in Mom's scrapbook."

"Amazing."

She nodded and retreated into a far-off gaze I recognized as grief and remembrance. She caught me looking and offered a small, understanding smile.

I concentrated on my driving then, guiding the big truck along Sunset Boulevard's infamously serpentine course.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Jasmine said finally.

I didn't, but instead of shaking my head, I surprised myself when my own words reached my ears, words I had not spoken since I'd related them to the policeman who had taken the accident report.

"Six years ago," I said. "Another life."

I concentrated on the road for a bit, easing off on the gas as the lateral g-forces urged us toward the outside of a clockwise turn.

"Around ten on a Saturday night; coming back from a birthday party in Westwood for a programmer who works for me. I drove Camilla's minivan. She sat next to me. Lindsey and Nate were strapped in their car seats behind us. We had the green heading south on Westwood Boulevard. I drove across Wilshire and up the hill when this big Lexus came out of nowhere heading north."

I shook my head and struggled with the emotions. For an instant, I saw the Lexus crest the hill and actually leave the ground. Witnesses testified that the Lexus's driver lost control when the car landed. It happened fast enough for me to see, too fast for me to react.

"The Lexus veered away, ricocheted off a parked car, and slammed into Camilla."

I remembered the Lexus again and the look of joy on the well-publicized face behind the wheel. I took a deep breath against the angry riptide that memory always triggered.

"The impact tore the minivan in half, killed my kids instantly."

Jasmine said nothing as I drove silently for a long time through the tunnel of the trees that lined Sunset, past the Riviera Country Club, and finally to the final steep hill that slinked down to Pacific Coast Highway.

"The Lexus driver, a famous producer tanked up on some outrageously trendy Napa Valley cabernet, gets a bruise or two." I used all my willpower then to loosen my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.

"So then, Mr. Studio Exec spends a wad on an entire law firm and a battalion of expert witnesses to fabricate this obscure metabolic disorder to explain his intoxication. It doesn't matter that he killed my family as long as his defense team can convince the jury he really didn't mean to and he couldn't help himself because he had this questionable physical syndrome supported by a bunch of quacks and expert trial whores. It also didn't help that half the jury had a talent agent or a screenplay in their desk drawer, so they suck up to this guy and he gets off despite a drunk-driving rap sheet longer than Pinocchio's nose."

"Hard to believe."

I nodded as I turned right onto Pacific Coast Highway.

"Didn't I read that he died in another accident a couple of years later?" I nodded again and could not hide my smile.

We navigated a strip of gas stations, shabby convenience stores, and odd, timeworn retail stores and made pretty good time before getting snarled a couple of miles later in a line of traffic oozing past a Caltrans road repair crew shoring up a concrete and metal-mesh rockslide barrier.

Jasmine looked up the steep slope, then over at the beach, then at the Pacific, and finally over at me.

"I don't know what to say."

I shook my head. "No need to say anything."

The deep growls of heavy machinery grew louder as we trickled past the work site and picked up speed. Behind me a black Audi two-seater flashed its brights, then pulled out across the double yellow lines, tailgated by a motorcycle, its rider clad in black leather. Blond hair trailed from the back of her helmet.

"So what do we do next?" Jasmine asked. "I mean, after you see your wife?"

Wife. She said it so casually but it rekindled all the guilt and indecision that had kept me orbiting the body of a woman I had once loved.

"I'd like to drop in on a friend of mine who lives down toward the end of Topanga Canyon." I told her about Chris Nellis and what he had found during his short dive. Without worrying about her discretion, I replayed everything Vince had said, overlaid with my opinions and fears and confusion over what was happening.

"That fits," Jasmine said.

"It does?"

"I took a look at the MicroSD memory chip from Mom's Blackberry last night." She pulled her own Blackberry from her bag and turned it on.

"I have the same model as she does"-her face lost its composure for an instant- "as she did." Jasmine concentrated on the screen for a moment. "From what I can tell, the MicroSD chip contains a test dossier of some sort, and I think it came from Darryl Talmadge's former defense lawyer, the one who got booted after the military claimed national defense jurisdiction and Patriot Act violations. Or it might have come from someone working with the lawyer."

"A test dossier?"

"Bait. Bona fides."

"I don't get it."

I slowed as we made our way into the southern end of Malibu.

"I think this is what got Mom interested in Talmadge's case. I think the lawyer promised her a taste of bigger things to come, something explosive that would make her commit to a deal and throw our legal foundation's muscle behind Talmadge's defense."

"Far-fetched, wouldn't you say? I mean, given the crime?"

"Not so far-fetched. Mom's been pretty out front about opposing the death penalty, especially in places like Mississippi where white people still get jail time for the exact same crimes that send blacks to the gas chamber. So, no-it's not all that far-fetched."

"Well, there is that." I stopped for a squad of surfers in wet suits heading for one of the few public access spots not already illegally blocked off by wealthy Hollywood scofflaws. "Or there is the issue of whether Talmadge was insane or suffering from some sort of detectable physical problem with his brain-the reason your mom first contacted me."

"Exactly. But I think it runs a lot deeper and reaches into some scary places that somebody will kill to keep us out of."

"Like what?"

Jasmine bent her head and looked at her Blackberry. "Well, Clark Braxton's name keeps coming up, and-"

"Whoa! Heavy-duty stuff. With the Democrats still out in the political ozone, he's gonna be the next president for sure unless…" My voice trailed off as the implication hit me.

"Unless something comes along to screw it up."

I glanced over at Jasmine.

"Whoa," I said quietly.