City of Echoes (36 page)

“So let me have it,” Matt said in a quiet voice.

“It’s all about body type,” Rollins said. “The picture’s bright enough that we can see it now.”

“Tell me what I’m seeing.”

Rollins cleared his throat again. A long moment passed.

“The shooter’s a female, Jones. Look at her hips, her arms. Look at the way she’s running. The shooter’s definitely a woman.”

It didn’t really need to settle in, but it did. Hideous and devoid of any light or any hope. Matt switched off his phone and looked away from the screen, still drowning in that ocean at the end of the way. Still unable to tell the difference between up and down or where the surface might be. He could hear words playing in his head. A single string.

How much time would it take to forget?

As much as he had. As much as he would ever get. As much as there was or ever would be.

A picture came to mind. Driving through the heat of the desert on a road that had no end. And then another. Kevin Hughes’s unrecognizable body lying on the front seat of that black SUV, his entire corpse covered in blood and slivers of shattered glass. He could still smell the blood, the meat.

He looked out the window. Laura wasn’t in the backyard anymore. He moved closer and didn’t see her by the pool. When he turned, he found her standing in the doorway. Her eyes were locked on the video playing on the laptop, then all over his face.

CHAPTER 58

“You did it,” he said in a quiet voice. “You shot Kevin. You murdered him.”

Laura couldn’t look him in the eye any longer. She lowered her head and started weeping, pleading.

“I didn’t, Matt. You have to believe me. I didn’t.”

Matt shrugged it off and kept going. “You found out that he was doing this woman, and you killed him for it. Now tell me the truth, Laura. Tell me that you shot Kevin.”

“But I didn’t shoot him. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”

She fell onto the couch, still weeping and trembling and struggling to catch her breath. Matt fished through his briefcase, dug out the pack of cigarettes he’d bought after his confrontation with Casper, and lit up.

“You have to believe me,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill anyone. I couldn’t kill anyone. I’m not that kind of person.”

Matt gave her a hard look. “Yes, you are,” he said. “You could, and you did. You shot Kevin. It doesn’t matter what he did. You murdered him. That’s all that counts right now.”

“No,” she said, burying her face into the pillow. “Please, Matt, stop it. I loved him. He’s all I ever wanted.”

Matt took a pull on the cigarette and moved closer. “What’s her name?”

Laura shook her head into the pillow but didn’t say anything.

“Come on, Laura. You’ve been writing to her and pretending to be Kevin. What’s her name?”

She lifted her head up and looked at him, her eyes wet and glassy. “Nicole,” she said finally.

“What’s her last name?”

“Jennings. She never uses her name in her e-mails.”

“So who is she?”

“An old girlfriend from high school. She’s in his yearbook.”

“And you got her to send you a nude picture. Why?”

“I wanted to see what she looked like now.”

Matt nodded. “You mean, Kevin’s lover.”

Laura straightened her back, her eyes turning inward, as if in a trance. “His lover,” she managed. “Oh, God, Matt. I loved him so much.”

“You did it, Laura. Tell me that you did it.”

“Oh, God.”

He shook his head at her in complete dismay. “You don’t get it yet, but you will,” he said. “The clock’s already ticking, and we don’t have time for all this back and forth. They know that Kevin was killed by a woman. They have proof that it was a woman. That means you’re at the top of the list. That means you’re the only one on the list. And don’t think that you’ve got what it takes to bluff your way out of it. The case will go to a couple of bulls in Robbery-Homicide. Bulls that have seen everything from every angle ten times over. They’ll see through your little act the minute you walk into the room. Even if they play by the rules, you won’t stand a chance. You’re still too close to it. You still can’t admit to yourself what you did. And that’s why it’s gonna be so easy to break you, Laura. They’re gonna break you down, and they’re gonna hurt you. You’ll be lucky if you get life without parole. Kevin was LAPD blue. He was one of their own. The way you shot him, the way you left him, I’ll bet the district attorney asks for the death penalty. And I’ll bet he gets it.”

She closed her eyes for a moment—fear and agony showing on her face, as if she were visualizing her own execution. Then she looked up at Matt standing over her. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible and she seemed panic-stricken.

“Oh, God, Matt. I did it. I shot him. I killed Kevin.”

He grimaced. Hearing her say it felt like she had just taken a sharp knife and ripped open his soul. Matt took another pull on his smoke, then flicked the ash into the wastepaper basket and sat down beside her to think. He was lost in a world of bitter disappointments. Lost in a world of fear and anguish. He wasn’t looking at her, just listening to her shaky voice, her hoarse whisper.

“I loved him, Matt. You’ve got to believe me. I loved him more than I ever loved anything or anyone. I wanted to have a child with him. A family. I wanted us to grow old together. I can’t tell you what it was like when you guys were overseas. How many nights I lost sleep because I was worried that Kevin wouldn’t come home. The dreams I had, the nightmares. The house felt so empty, so quiet and still. I couldn’t imagine living without him. If he died over there, if he did—well, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go on. When he finally did come home, it was like a gift, a sign that everything would be the way I wanted it to be. The way I dreamed it to be. And then one afternoon I found those letters on his computer. I found out that he was cheating on me. That he was writing to this woman. That she lived in Austin, and that they were seeing each other and meeting on weekends every once in a while. That they were loving each other. That all of my worries, all of my hopes and dreams, all of my prayers had been a complete waste of time. He was doing this other woman and making a fool out of me. He was humiliating me.”

“He betrayed you,” Matt whispered.

She wiped her cheeks, still looking back, still in the trance.

“He humiliated me,” she repeated in a firm voice. “He cheated on me and made a fool out of me. Not for a week or a month but for a long time. A real long time. I sat there and watched as everything we had together was swept away. Everything we shared turned to dust. When he touched me, when he fucked me, it didn’t feel good anymore. It felt dirty. Everything about him hurt. And so I killed him. I shot him with his own gun. I’d seen the news about the three-piece bandit. I knew what it needed to look like. And so I did it. I pulled the trigger over and over again because he deserved it over and over again. And when the blame switched from the bandit to those three dirty cops in Hollywood, I took it as another gift, another sign that everything would be the way I wanted it to be. The way I dreamed it would be.”

A moment passed. The way Laura dreamed it would be.

Matt took a last pull on his smoke, got to his feet, and doused the butt in his coffee mug. Then he turned back to Laura without saying anything. He was still chewing it over, still thinking it through. For several moments he tried to look at her without loving her but couldn’t seem to get the ball to go over the plate.

“What did you do with the gun?” he said.

Laura didn’t answer, studying his face as she mulled it over.

He shrugged. “Where is it?”

“I buried it under some flowers.”

“Which flowers? Where?”

“Under the oak tree out back.”

Matt glanced through the window at the oak tree, then sat down on the arm of the chair beside the worktable. “What about the things you took?”

“What things?”

“His wedding band was missing. His badge and watch and the gun he wore on his belt.”

She batted her eyes, no longer showing so much gloom on her face. “Why are you asking me these questions? What does it matter now?”

Matt tried to look at her without loving her again. The exercise seemed futile, so he stopped trying.

“You shouldn’t have written to that woman,” he said. “Not after Kevin’s death. It was a mistake. A big one. When she finds out that he’s dead, she’ll come forward, and they’ll put it together. They’ll have copies of what she wrote to him and what he wrote back. They’ll have proof that you knew.”

She was trying to get a read on him and seemed confused. “What are you saying, Matt?”

He paused for several moments, sizing her up. “If we’re gonna make a run for it,” he said finally, “if we’re gonna get away with it, we need to get rid of everything you took that night.”

“Oh, God, Matt. Are you saying . . . ?”

His voice hardened with determination. “You need to give me everything,” he said. “Then you need to pack a small bag, one or two days’ worth of clothing. Some of your makeup, but not all of it. And leave your toothbrush. If they think we’re still here, it might give us an extra day or two. While you’re packing, I’ll dig up the gun.”

He could see the joy showing on her face. The surprise and relief, the glimmer of hope. She ran across the room and threw her arms around him. She was still trembling. She still seemed overwhelmed by it all. He looked into her glazed eyes and smiled at her. And then he kissed her, gently at first, then deeper and deeper still.

“Do you mean it, Matt? Do you really mean it? Do you love me?”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her again, but he was really thinking about Hughes. He was doing what Hughes would have wanted him to do. What a friend expects from a friend in a time of crisis.

“I’ll go get the gun,” he said. “You need to hurry.”

Matt watched her run down the hall into her bedroom, then packed up both laptops and carried them downstairs into the kitchen. The plastic bags were in the top drawer by the fridge, and he pulled two out of the box and headed outside. As he hurried down the steps, he became overwhelmed by a feeling that someone was chasing him, that he was watching himself from a great distance. Everything before him seemed so far away. He could see himself grabbing a trowel from Laura’s garden caddy. He could see the image flickering as he rushed over to the oak tree and started digging up the flowers.

The soil was fresh and loose. He found the Glock 20 about six inches down. As he stared at the pistol lying in the dirt, the oversized semiautomatic that had killed Hughes, he knew that it was yet another image he would never be able to shake. Another image just as hideous as seeing the sheet being pulled away from Brooke Anderson’s ruined face at the morgue.

He pulled himself together, digging the Glock out of the earth with his hand inside the first plastic bag and dropping the weapon into the second.

He shivered and turned. A gardener was watching him from the property next door. Matt guessed that he hadn’t seen the gun yet and stared at the man until he turned away. Then he replanted the flowers and rushed back to the kitchen, shielding the gun from view with his body.

Laura was just entering the room. She was carrying a knapsack and Kevin’s shaving kit, which she handed over to Matt.

“It’s all there,” she said. “Everything.”

Her eyes went to the Glock 20 inside the plastic bag, and she looked uncomfortable and anxious. Matt unzipped the kit and found the pistol Kevin carried on his belt, his watch, and his badge.

“Where’s his wedding band?”

She looked back at him but didn’t answer.

“Where is it, Laura?”

She took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she reached around her neck, unfastened a chain, and handed it over. Matt dropped the chain and wedding band into the shaving kit and zipped it up.

“I’ll grab the laptops,” he said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

CHAPTER 59

Matt raced down the hill on Pacific Avenue, then slowed some as he passed Glenoaks Boulevard and another cop hiding in the lot at the Jack in the Box. Once he reached the entrance to the 134 Freeway, he gunned the Honda up the hill and slid into heavy traffic. The entrance to the Golden State Freeway was just ahead, and as he steered into the curve, he glanced down at what was left of the Los Angeles River. It wasn’t much to look at even before the heat wave dug in and the wind picked up. But now it seemed more like a dry creek bed walled in with concrete that had been scarred by layer after layer of graffiti.

He looked back at the road. He thought that he could hear Laura saying something, but he couldn’t make out the words. He couldn’t seem to focus. In spite of the clear blue sky, it seemed like he was rolling through a thick patch of fog. Everything felt like it was upside down. He was still drowning in that ocean at the end of the way. Still watching himself from a distance. Still thinking about what it meant to be a decent friend when everything he knew and wanted had burned up before his eyes.

Laura touched his arm. “Where will we go?” she said. “What will we do?”

“I know a place,” he said.

“Will we be safe?”

He nodded. “It’s a special place.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“Is it in Mexico?”

“No,” he said. “That’s the first place they’d look.”

“Then we’re going to Canada?”

He shook his head. He felt dizzy.

“It’s here in California. If we’re smart, if we take it easy, it’ll all work out.”

Matt exited off the Golden State onto Los Feliz Boulevard and started up the hill toward Hollywood.

Laura seemed concerned. “Why did you get off the freeway? Why here?”

“My bank,” he said. “I have a safe-deposit box. We’re gonna need cash. At least in the beginning.”

Laura sat back in her seat and appeared to relax. Matt wheeled the car up and around and down again, until he reached Sunset Boulevard and made a right off Western Avenue. He was cruising. He was on autopilot.

They drove past the movie studios on Gower, then Denny’s restaurant on the corner. As the street sign to Wilcox Avenue came into view, he heard Laura crying softly and turned to her. She was staring at him and appeared hurt and wounded and extremely nervous. He could see tears beginning to drip down her cheeks.