The skull and crossbones glowered at me from the match-book, preserved benignly in a Ziploc. I paced under my kitchen lights, glaring back. Like the cigarette smoke, the matchbook struck me as a contrivance. But how was I supposed to interpret it? That Mort had written Genevieve's address when first stalking her? I doubted that matches dating back four months had only just been used up. Had he jotted the address while planning the copycat killing? Maybe he'd been using Genevieve's house as a workshop, taking Broach there after the kidnapping to avoid leaving evidence at his apartment. More or less unoccupied, it would make an ideal safe house. My windshield kiss raised additional questions: If Mort was framing me for the murders, why run me over now? Because he knew I was onto him? Was he trying to take me out before I could get something concrete to the police?
I thumbed open my cell phone and dialed. Angela answered, accepted my apology, and handed off the phone to her husband.
As always, Chic sounded alert, as if I'd caught him on a morning stroll. He listened quietly. I finished filling him in and asked, "Can you meet me at Genevieve's?"
"Course. Why?"
"I don't buy the matchbook any more than I bought the bondage rope. Someone who's been this careful with evidence wouldn't pull up on my street, have a smoke, and toss a matchbook with a convenient address on it out his window."
"Unless they thought you was gonna be too dead to find it."
A reasonable point.
"I think I'm being led."
"And you gonna follow."
"Yeah. I think he planted something in that house for me to find. Something that incriminates me further. And I want to find it before the cops do and get out before the trap springs."
"Dangerous game."
"That's why I need blackup."
"Then blackup gon' be what you get."
I stood in the gutter, Chic and his brothers two I knew, one I didn't beside me, Genevieve's house looming over us. We'd finished checking the surrounding streets and land, and Fast Teddie had squeezed through a bathroom window with a gold-plated Colt. 45 and safed the house, making sure no one was inside.
Chic nudged me. "Ready to take a gander?"
I was.
We passed the strip of lawn with its broken sprinkler, made our way up the shifting pavers to the floating porch. There the philodendron, there the terra-cotta pot with the cracked saucer.
I had been here many times in my life, in reality, in dream, in memory. This late-night visit felt like a melding of all three.
Fast Teddie picked the front-door dead bolt in about three seconds.
Chic pressed the door open, handed me a flashlight, and said, "We'll be where we're at. Keep your cell phone on."
I moved inside, closed the door behind me.
Alone in Genevieve's house.
A memory attached to every object. Baccarat candy dish, sleek to the touch. Blank spot on the side table where a Murano paperweight used to rest. Pink-and-white striped scarf slung over the banister, bearing the faintest scent of Petite Cherie. The marble tiles of the foyer were hard underfoot. The knife block stared at me from the kitchen's center island, five stainless handles and one empty slit. Thinking about that bleach wash given to Broach's body, I checked the sink and the bathtubs and strayed into the dark garage. I searched the living room and the carpeted alcove that Genevieve used to refer to as a dining room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
Only the upstairs master remained. My legs tingled as I ascended. Adrenaline? Fear? The door had been left ajar. Even in the dim light, it was clear a broad-ranging blob, lighter than the surrounding carpet, where industrial cleaners had bleached the beige fibers.
The bed had been made, a detail that drove my emotion to the surface. Who had pulled it together during the aftermath? Genevieve's mother? Had a thoughtful criminalist turned up the sheets before withdrawing?
I blinked myself back to usefulness and checked the closet, the sink, the luxurious pink bathtub with its inflatable headrest, touched now with mold.
I returned to the spot on the carpet and sat cross-legged.
Here Genevieve had met the curved boning knife.
Here her life had been extinguished.
Here I had sat with her body, dipped my hands into the bloody well, tumbled into seizure and blackout.
Somewhere the memory lurked, lost in the coralline whorls of my frontal lobe.
I wanted answers. I wanted a sudden flash of recognition, the thunderbolt of epiphany. Instead it was just me and the stainless quiet of a deserted bedroom.
After a few moments, I picked up on the faintest hiss. I stood, spinning to source it, wound up with my ear pressed to the built-in speaker beside the headboard.
I moved downstairs to the edge of the dining room, where a wall of fine-wood cabinets arced toward the kitchen. A picture window, the largest in the house, showed off a view of the hillside and intervals of the street below as it twisted down to Coldwater. The leftmost cabinet, where through some flight of bizarre Gallic logic Genevieve hid the stereo components, opened readily under my touch, releasing a wave of electronic warmth. Glowing from the dark stack of hardware, a green pinpoint. The CD player had been left on. Playing something the night of her death? Maybe that music I'd heard in my dream-memory as I'd stumbled up onto the porch hadn't been merely in my head, like the sharp scent of smoldering rubber. The digital counter showed that the CD had run its course. I clicked "eject," the tray sliding out to offer an unlabeled disc, something Genevieve had burned from her iTunes library.
I was about to thumb the tray back in to play the CD when my cell phone chimed, breaking the tense silence. My gaze rose to the window.
Down the hill two dark SUVs with tinted windows and no running lights turned off Coldwater onto Genevieve's street, starting up the hill.
Chic's voice came rushing through my cell phone "Get outta there."
I flew from the house, the pavers rocking violently in my aftermath. Leaping into my car, I slid Genevieve's unmarked CD beneath my floor mat. As I zoomed away from the curb, I popped in my headset, watching Chic's taillights blink on the stretch of road visible down the hillside to my left.
"Where are they?"
"A block down from me," Chic said. "Teddie just executed the world's slowest three-point turn to hang 'em up. Can't see who through the tint. You got your piece?"
I set the. 22 on the passenger seat. "Yep."
"Nice and easy. You drive right past 'em heading down. The road's narrow they'll need time to turn around. We hit the bottom of the hill, we go in five different directions."
My grip tightened on the steering wheel. I wedged the. 22 in the gap in the seat break; if chaos ensued, I didn't want it sliding out of reach.
Blind turn followed blind turn, and then finally, a sweep of headlights illuminated a thicket of chaparral on the left shoulder. I slowed, hugged the wall of the canyon, and two black Tahoes flew by, rocking my car. No time to see a license plate. The windows looked uniformly black.
I was almost around the curve when, in my rearview, I saw the back Tahoe's brake lights flare. My stomach surged.
Accelerating down the dangerous road, I said to Chic, "They spotted me."
"Okay. Keep me in your ear. Tell me where you are."
I skidded onto Coldwater, sending a spray of rocks and gravel across the opposing lane, and rocketed up the hill, blowing the light to veer left onto Mulholland. "I'm heading for home."
"I'm right behind you."
The lead Tahoe nosed into my mirror, but I lost it around a turn. The light at Benedict Canyon was yellow; I saw another dark SUV waiting at the intersection and hit the gas, squeezing through as it pulled forward to block me. Three cars in pursuit? The FBI? Gangsters? The mob? Maintaining a dangerously heavy foot, swerving into opposite lanes to shave turns, I kept my pursuers one bend of the road behind me.
Chic said, "What's your cross street?"
Approaching Beverly Glen, Mulholland added a few more lanes, opening up for the intersection.
The wind brought me wisps of sound from a bullhorn: "Your vehicle over now " Hitting the brakes, I careened around the turn and saw the blockade ahead six police units parked nose to nose, lights strobing, doors open, firepower aimed at yours truly. A few confused drivers cluttered the intersection behind them, starting to reverse away from whatever was coming.
When the screech of my tires faded, I heard the sirens harmonizing behind me.
I said, "It's the cops."
Chic said, "I'm gonna go home now."
In my rearview I watched the distinctive cherry red pickup veer right and ease calmly down a side street. I turned on my dome light, placed both my hands on top of the steering wheel. One of the Tahoes pulled up next to me, the dark window sliding down.
I said, "There's a loaded. 22 on the passenger seat."
Over the aimed sights of his Glock, Bill Kaden said, "Yes, I believe I'm familiar with it."