Void Moon

33

KARCH watched through the window of the taxi as it went by the Porsche dealership. He didn't care about the assemblage of police and television news vehicles surrounding the glass walls of the showroom. His eyes scanned the numerous people standing on the sidewalks. He was hoping to see Cassie Black but knew he was too late. His cell phone had failed to get a signal up in the hills. He'd had to hike up to Mulholland and then over to the Hollywood overlook, where he'd remembered seeing a pay phone earlier. It took him nearly an hour to cover the ground. Then it was another twenty minutes waiting for the taxi he called for to show up.

The taxi driver said something in very bad English about what had happened at the dealership but Karch paid no attention. The taxi continued another few blocks and turned onto Wilcox. Karch had him stop in front of a Hollywood memorabilia store. He paid and got out. After the taxi took off and had turned back onto Sunset he crossed the street to his Lincoln, which was parked at the curb. On its bumpers were a set of fresh plates he had picked up that morning in a long-term lot at LAX.

Karch got in and fired the car up. But before pulling out of the space he looked up Selma in the map book. He saw he was in luck. He was less than five minutes away.

There were no cars parked in front or on the driveway of the bungalow on Selma where Cassie Black's driver's license said she lived. The house was on a dead end and Karch decided on a direct approach. He pulled right into the driveway and parked. Breaking and entering in daylight was not his idea of a wise move but he had to get into the house to see if Cassie Black had been there yet. He decided the safest way to go was straight in. He pulled into the drive, honked the Lincoln's horn twice and waited. Finally, he killed the engine, got out and went right up the front steps, spinning his key chain on his finger. When he got close to the door he bent over and raised his lock picks. He quickly went to work on the deadbolt, acting as though he were a man having trouble with his keys. He had no idea if he was being watched but he was putting on a good show.

He picked the lock in about forty seconds. He then turned the knob and walked in.

"Hey, Cassie?" he called loudly and for the benefit of any neighbor who might have been watching. "Come on, I'm waitin' out here!"

He closed the door, pulled out his gun and quickly attached the silencer. He began a quick room-to-room check of the house.

It was empty. He began a second and slower sweep, looking around to try to determine if Cassie Black had been to the house in the time since she had escaped from him up on the hill. The home, though sparely furnished, seemed to be in neat order. He became convinced that she had not been there yet. He sat down on the couch in the living room and thought about what this could mean. Did she already have the money or did she not have the money? Had it been at Leo Renfro's and he had somehow missed it during his all-night search? Worse yet was another possibility that poked through: that Renfro had been telling the truth when he claimed to have already given the money to his Chicago contacts.

Karch felt something lumpy beneath the spot where he was sitting. He moved down the couch and then pulled up the cushion. He picked up a clothes hanger with seven padlocks attached to it. It served to remind him of how formidable Cassidy Black had turned out to be. He decided in that moment that if he found out she had the money and was gone, he would chase her to the ends of the earth. Not for Grimaldi and definitely not for the faceless group that pulled strings from Miami. He would do it for himself.

He left the hanger on the coffee table and got up to start his third sweep of the house. This one would take the longest.

The bedroom was the logical place to start. Karch knew people liked to sleep with the things dear to them close by. The white-walled room was furnished with the basics, a four-poster bed, two bed tables, a bureau and a mirror. A framed poster of a beach scene from Tahiti was taped to a wall. He studied it for a moment and quickly realized it was a duplicate of the poster he had seen in Cassidy Black's office when he had stepped in while looking for her in the showroom. He had been looking at the poster when the manager had stuck his head in and asked if he could help.

Karch stepped over to the wall and studied the poster, wondering if it had any significance for his mission. The woman on the beach did not look like Cassidy Black. He finally decided he would have to worry about it later and turned to the nearby bed table and opened the top drawer.

The drawer contained a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that looked as though they had been bought at a yard sale. They were all in poor condition and were several years old. Still, he flew the pages on every one of them in case there was a note or maybe a hidden address. He found nothing and dropped the last magazine back in the drawer and kicked it closed.

The bottom drawer of the table was empty except for a little net bundle containing cedarwood shavings and dried rosemary. He slammed that drawer closed and came around the bed to the other night table.

Before he opened the drawer he had a feeling he would have good luck here. This table had a lamp on it and the pillow on this side of the bed had an indentation from someone sleeping on it. He knew this was her side of the bed.

Karch sat down on the bed and put his gun down next to his thigh. With both hands he picked up the pillow and brought it to his face. He could smell her. Her hair. He wasn't good at identifying fragrances but he thought he could smell tea leaves, like when you first open a box of tea bags. He wasn't sure about it and put the pillow back down.

He opened the top drawer of the bed table and hit pay dirt. The drawer was crammed with personal items. There were books and hair bands and photograph albums. There was a still camera with a long lens and a video camera as well. Placed on top of everything was a small framed photograph. Karch picked it up and studied it. It showed Cassidy Black sitting on the lap of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. She was holding a pinkish-orange drink with a paper umbrella in it. Karch almost didn't recognize her because the smile on her face was so wide and bright.

However, he easily recognized the man in the photo. His was a face Karch would never forget. Max Freeling, the man who had permanently altered Karch's entire life in one moment of time. Karch knew he wouldn't be where he now sat if it had not been for Max Freeling and the decision he had made at the top of that hotel six years before. All these years, he had been under Grimaldi's thumb because of what happened in that room with Max Freeling.

He turned the picture over and hit the frame's glass harshly on the corner of the bed table. He heard the glass crack. He noticed something written on the cardboard backing of the frame. It said, I looked up and saw the outline of Tahiti and I realized this was the place I had been looking for all my life.

– W. Somerset Maugham Karch turned the frame over and looked at the photo again. A spiderweb crack started on Cassidy Black's face and branched across the photograph. Karch tossed the frame into a wastebasket that was next to the bed table.

From the drawer he removed a thick photo album with a soft brown leather binding. As he opened it he expected to find more photos of Max Freeling but instead got a surprise. The album was full of photographs of a young girl. Almost all of them were taken from a distance – he glanced at the long-range camera in the drawer – and at the same location, a schoolyard.

He leafed through the book and found one picture of the girl dribbling a basketball. Painted on the wall of a building behind the playing area was the name Wonderland School.

He closed the album and pulled out another. It contained more photos of the girl, though these were not taken at the school. They depicted the girl playing in a yard in front of a house. In some she was pulling a wagon or kicking a ball, in others she was going down a sliding board or laughing on a swing. A grouping of photos in the back of the book but not yet placed in plastic windows showed the girl on a trip to Disneyland. One of the shots, again taken from afar, showed her embracing Mickey Mouse.

Karch realized something and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out the two passports and opened the top one to the ID photo. It was the same girl from the photos in the albums. Jodie Davis, the name said.

Karch put the passports back in his pocket and let the photo album drop to the floor. He was having an epiphany, a moment when seemingly disparate memories and new pieces of information coalesced into a new truth. He now understood something that had tortured him for six years.

An idea started coming together, a plan for getting the money and Cassie Black, all at the same time. He closed the top drawer and opened the bottom. This one was less crowded. There was an electric hair dryer that didn't look as though it was ever used and a few old pieces of mail from inmates at High Desert Correctional Institution for Women. Karch opened one of the letters and saw it was just a howyadoin' from a former cellmate named Letitia Granville. Karch also threw these into the wastebasket and reached back into the drawer and underneath the hair dryer for a manila envelope that was address side down.

He turned it over and saw that it was addressed to Cassidy Black at High Desert Correctional. Whatever was in the envelope was something she had taken with her from prison. He ran his thumb under the return address and saw the preprinted envelope had been sent from Renaissance Investigations of Paradise Road, Las Vegas. Karch was familiar with the agency. It was mid-size, five or six investigators and an equal number of supposed specialties. He competed with them for the referrals from the Metro missing persons unit. Karch opened the envelope and pulled out a well-thumbed investigation summary. He was about to start reading the particulars when he was jarred by the screaming voice of someone in the doorway behind him.

"FREEZEITUPFUCKHEAD!"

Karch dropped the report and held his hands out in front of him. He slowly started to turn his head. What he saw further shocked him. Just inside the doorway of the bedroom was an enormous black woman. She stood in the classic Weaver stance taught at every law enforcement academy in the country. Feet spread, weight equally distributed, both hands up holding and bracing the gun, elbows slightly bent and pointed outward. Around her neck was a chain with a badge on it. She looked like no cop Karch had ever seen, but the 9 mm Beretta pointed at him won the debate.

"Take it easy now," he said calmly. "I'm on your side."