The 5th Horseman

Chapter 127

A DOZEN MOBILE UNITS and the crime scene van had walled off Garza’s house from the main road. Yellow tape flapped in the breeze and was tangled on the railing going up the front stairs.

I stood under glaring sunlight, blinking at Jacobi as my hypothetical reconstruction of the homicide totally blew apart. Why was O’Mara’s car at Garza’s house?

Had she killed Garza? Could she have maneuvered his body into that Mercedes Roadster? Or was it the other way around?

Had O’Mara clipped Garza with that crystal vase, and he’d retaliated with killing force?

Either way, we had no body, a missing car, O’Mara’s car in the garage, and one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’d ever seen.

“Okay,” I said to Jacobi. “So where is O’Mara? Where is Redhead?”

While inspectors and uniforms canvassed Garza’s neighbors, Jacobi and I used our squad car as an office. He got out a BOLO on Garza’s Mercedes while I called O’Mara’s office and got her assistant, Kathy, on the line.

I imagined her sharp blade of a face, her big hair, as O’Mara’s assistant talked and ate her lunch in my ear.

“Maureen’s taking a week off. She needed a vacation,” Kathy said. “She’s earned it.”

“I’m sure. Where’d she go?” I asked, hearing the edge in my voice. Repressed panic.

“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”

“It’s police business, Kathy.”

“Maureen didn’t say where she was going, but I can give you all her numbers.”

“That would be a big help.”

I dialed O’Mara’s cell phone, got her mailbox. I left my number on her pager. Called her house and got a busy signal, again and again.

Jacobi punched out O’Mara’s name on the console computer, and got data from the DMV.

He read it out loud. “Maureen Siobhan O’Mara; Caucasian; single; date of birth eight, fifteen, seventy-three; height five nine; weight one fifty-two. She’s a big girl,” Jacobi mused.

He turned the screen so I could see O’Mara’s photo and her address.

“We can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Let’s try for ten.”

Jacobi backed the car away from the curb and, with tires scraping the concrete, cut around the scene-mobile and into the traffic lane.

I flipped on the grille lights and the siren as we shot up Leavenworth toward O’Mara’s house in the tony enclave of Sea Cliff.