Virtually Dead

Chapter Thirty-Three

Traffic fumes rose infuriatingly into the cooling evening air, long lines of vehicles blocking the lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway as it came down the hill into Laguna Beach. The last of the rush-hour traffic.

Fading red light shimmered on the ocean as the sun began its inevitable descent toward Catalina, hidden tonight in a long line of purple haze on the far horizon. Traffic lights turned to green, and the lines of traffic began inching forward. Michael eased his way into the outside lane and pushed himself into the left-turn filter, patience finally giving out as the lights turned yet again to red. He flipped down his turn lights, and with a squeal of tyres, accelerated across the lane of oncoming traffic, turning into the narrow suburban street that would take him up the hill to Janey’s bungalow. Behind him, he heard horns venting angrily at the car, three vehicles back, that had followed Michael’s lead and jumped the lights for the left turn. He wondered, fleetingly, if the mobsters thought he was trying to lose them. But right now, he didn’t care. The motor of his SUV screamed at high pitch as he accelerated hard, ignoring the give-way signs at cross-junctions, before finally turning into Janey’s street, which ran at right-angles along the top of the hill.

Her car was parked below her house, a battered fawn-coloured Ford Focus, with its defiant bumper sticker, Fermez la Bush! Michael had no idea whether to read this as a good, or a bad omen. If she was at home, why wasn’t she answering her phone? He pulled in behind it and glanced back as his minders drew into the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He started up the steps, two at a time, to the veranda that ran along the front of the bungalow. Still breathing hard, he banged on the door with the heel of his fist then stood listening. But he could hear nothing except for the distant cry of the seagulls and the sound of someone mowing his lawn several houses along.

“Janey!” he shouted, and banged this time with the flat of his hand. But he didn’t wait for the responding silence. He ran along the wooden deck and tried to peer into the living room window. The blinds were down, and the slats almost shut. With the sun sinking behind him, he couldn’t see anything for reflected light. He ran back along the length of the house and around the side. A small gate opened into the back yard. Janey had never been one for spending time in the garden. Most of the yard was laid with concrete flagstones, weeds poking up between them. A small swimming pool had never been uncovered after the winter. A rusted grill still contained the ash of some long-forgotten barbecue. Bins lined up along the back wall were almost overflowing. French windows leading from the house to the patio stood open, and Chas paused, looking at them with a growing sense of misgiving. This did not look good.

Caution overtook him now, as he moved slowly from the patio to the interior of the house. He crossed a temperature threshold. The evening air outside was still warm, humming with the sound of spring insects. Inside the house it was cold and dark. He could hear the distant rumble of the air conditioning unit somewhere deep within and knew that no one in his right mind would leave doors wide open with the AC turned on.

He called out again. “Janey?” His voice cracked a little, and he became aware for the first time of his own fear. Still no reply. He was in her bedroom, her unmade bed a tangle of sheets and blankets, a smell of stale training shoes hanging in the cool air. Dirty clothes overflowed from a wicker laundry basket. He opened the door and moved through to the hall. The blinds everywhere were drawn, and the house stood in darkness, an odd sense of silence about the place. He glanced along the hall to the kitchen and then moved toward the front of the house and the main living room. This was where Janey had lain mock-dead on the floor the last time he had been here. But the room was empty, old beer bottles accumulating around the legs of her favourite armchair where she liked to curl up and read.

He began to relax a little. There was no one here, after all. And he began to wonder why her car was still parked out front. He moved back along the hall and pushed open the door to her den. The glow of her two computer monitors filled the room, and by their light he saw her lying on the floor by the wall, huddled like a child in the womb. A large, dark patch stained the creamy shag of the rug beneath her. Blood smeared the wall above her, and he could smell it in the chilled air.

“Jesus, Janey!” His voice came in a whisper that seemed to thunder around the room. He reached her in three paces and crouched to turn her over. There were two bullet holes in the centre of her chest, very close together. Most of the blood had leaked out through a single exit wound in her back. A dribble of dried blood had oozed from the corner of her mouth. Her lips were parted slightly, and her sightless eyes, still behind her thick-framed glasses, were wide and staring. She was cold, bloodless flesh as chilled as if it had come straight from the freezer.

There was a short trail of blood across the carpet as if she had not died immediately, but dragged herself to the wall and tried to stand up. Then slipped back down to her last resting place, where she had finally bled to death.

Her right hand was clutched tightly around something small and white. Rigor mortis had not yet set in, and carefully he prised her fingers apart to release what they held. It was a tiny plaster bust of a winged cherub, and he had a recollection, then, of noticing it on previous occasions, hanging from a picture hook on her wall. Janey was not a religious person, but she had been brought up a Catholic and had several religious mementoes around the house. For some reason she had made a determined effort to reach this particular piece, almost as if she knew she would die and wanted the comfort of it, or to ask for some kind of absolution for her sins.

He had blood now on his hands and shoes, and bile rising in his throat. The room blurred as tears filled his eyes, and he blinked furiously to clear them and stop himself from crying. As he stood up, something glinting on the carpet caught his eye, an eye trained by practice to notice the smallest detail at a crime scene.

He stepped over Janey’s body and bent down to pick up a pair of broken reading glasses. And with a sudden start, he realised that they were his, missing from his desk at home for some days. One of Mora’s final gifts. He straightened up, looking at them in disbelief. What on earth were they doing here? Had Janey taken them? And why?

And then it dawned on him. He was being set up. This was supposed to look like he had done it. He glanced at the blood on his hands and shoes, and thought about the trail of fresh fingerprints he had left throughout the house. There were shards of broken lens from his reading glasses lost in the pile of the carpet. Shards that would be recovered when the FSS team arrived to do their work. He turned toward the monitors, and saw, on one of them, the figure of Twist O’Lemon, standing in the hangar at Abbotts Aerodrome where he had last seen him. Only there was no longer a gun in his hand, and his arms hung at his sides, head tipped forward as if asleep in the standing position. Next to his name tag a fragment of text read, Away.

Someone had sat right here, manipulating Janey’s AV, while Janey herself lay dead or dying on the floor. Someone who had shot her, then used Twist to try to erase Chas and blame it all on Michael.

Michael started looking around, panic rising now in his chest. There was very probably more incriminating evidence lying around. How could he explain any of this? And when they started to investigate, they would want to know how he had suddenly acquired more than three million dollars to pay off his home loan. If Janey’s killer had succeeded in erasing Chas, then there would have been no trail leading back to his Second Life account. No way of accounting for it. Even so, he was still in big trouble.

His eye was drawn to something white lying beneath the computer desk. He stooped to pick it up. It was a bloodstained white handkerchief, his initials embroidered on it in blue. MK. Mora had ordered them each sets of embroidered handkerchiefs when they first got married. His and Hers. He always carried one with him. Somehow, someone with access to his house, had taken one. Along with his reading glasses. And God knew what else.

But his search for further evidence was cut short almost before it began by the sound of an approaching police siren. There was no doubt in his mind that the police were on their way here. He had been set up and stitched up so tightly he really couldn’t see any way out.

As the sound of the siren grew louder, he went through to the kitchen and hurriedly washed the blood from his hands. He carefully wrapped his broken glasses in kitchen paper and slipped them into his shirt pocket. Then he took a deep breath, and walked to the front door as a police patrol car pulled up, lights flashing, immediately behind his SUV. He looked further along the street and saw that his minders had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and had embarked on an exit strategy. Their black Lincoln was turning right at the far end of the street, on a one-way road that would take them all the way back down to PCH.

Michael ran down the steps, snapping on a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, as two uniformed officers climbed toward him. They met halfway. The older man was an officer Michael knew from way back, which meant he wouldn’t have to explain himself.

“Hey, Mike. How did you get here so fast?”

“I was in Laguna on other business when they called, Sam.” It was amazing, he thought, how easy it was to lie.

“You been inside?”

Michael nodded. He didn’t need to look shocked, or grave, or pale. He was all of those things anyway. “It’s Janey Amat, Sam. She’s dead.”

Sam stopped in his tracks, eyes wide, and stared at Michael in horror. “Jesus Christ, Mike! That plain little FSS girl you worked with?” Michael nodded. Suddenly that’s what Janey had been reduced to. That plain little FSS girl that Mike Kapinsky worked with. “What happened?”

“She’s been shot. You’d better call in a full team. I’m going to get my stuff from the trunk.”

The younger officer said, “You’d better be careful there, sir. You got blood on your shoe.”

“Yes, I know. I wasn’t expecting... Well, you know. She was a friend. I had to establish she was dead.”

Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Tough break, Mike. Never good when it’s someone you know.”

Michael was nearly at the foot of the steps when he was struck by a thought. “Hey, Sam.” He called back up the stairs. “Who called this in?”

Sam turned at the front door. “No idea, Mike. Anonymous tip-off.” The two officers turned away again to move cautiously into the house, and Michael jumped into his SUV and started the motor. There was no sign of his mob minders. If they were doing a circuit, they hadn’t come back around yet. This was his chance to lose them. He took the SUV through a quick three-point turn, and drove off at speed in the opposite direction from the one they had taken. He had to hold the steering wheel very tightly to keep his hands steady.

His twenty-four hours were up, and now he was on the run from both the mob and the police. He couldn’t see any way for any of this to end, except in tears. Or worse.