City of Echoes (37 page)

“Please, Matt, don’t do this,” she said.

“Don’t do what?”

“What you’re doing. Where you’re taking me. Please don’t do it.”

Matt didn’t say anything. He made a left on Wilcox and another left into the rear lot at the station. Then he pulled up to the building.

“You said you loved me. You said it, Matt.”

“I said a lot of things.”

He pushed the gearshift into Park but left the engine running. He looked around the lot, then at the rear entrance to the building. No one was around. Unfastening his seat belt, he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and sent his partner a short text message. Laura’s eyes rose to his face.

“There’s still time,” she said. “We could get away. We could go to that place. That special place.”

Matt could see that place in his head. He could see himself holding her and loving her until the end of time.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered to her.

“We’ve been through a lot, Matthew. I know that. But eventually we’d get over it. It could all work out. We could love each other and be happy.”

He looked at those blue eyes of hers. Her dirty blond hair, her full lips, the near-perfect cut of her cheeks and chin. He could see himself making love to her on the stairs, on the kitchen floor, or on a blanket on the lawn by the pool.

“He was my friend,” he said quietly. “And you killed him, Laura.”

“But he wasn’t a good man.”

“Maybe he wasn’t, but somebody has to pay for his death. And since you did it, it may as well be you.”

“Please, Matt. I know that you love me.”

“That’s true, too,” he said. “I love you. But at the end of the day, when everything’s said and done, all I’ll have left is who I am and what I want to become. At the end of the day it won’t matter that I love you, that I want you, or even that I need you. At the end of the day it’ll come down to this: Kevin and I were brothers in arms. We fought the good fight and somehow both of us were lucky enough to come home. He had my back, and now I’ve got his.”

The station door opened and Cabrera started down the walkway with Lieutenant McKensie.

Laura looked at them, her hands trembling, then turned back to Matt with tears still streaming down her cheeks.

“Please, Matthew. Don’t do this. Tell them that you made a mistake. I’m in love with you. I can’t live without you.”

A moment passed with Matt staring at the fork in the road. Everything swimming in his chest, his guts. Everything ripped out.

“I’m not sure I can live without you either,” he said. “But our timing was off. It’s just the way it is. It’s just the way things turned out. Now let’s go.”

He met Cabrera’s eyes through the window and nodded. Then his partner opened the passenger door, unbuckled Laura’s seat belt, and helped her get to her feet. Matt popped open the trunk and grabbed the shaving kit, the Glock 20, and Hughes’s laptop computer.

“Here’s the murder weapon, Lieutenant. Inside the shaving kit you’ll find everything Hughes was carrying on the night she killed him.”

In spite of the fact that Matt had given both Cabrera and McKensie a quick heads-up text message more than half an hour ago from the bathroom off the kitchen, they were staring at him and still appeared to be deeply shaken by the new reality. The new way. When Matt handed over the computer, his lieutenant’s voice was low and imbued with emotion.

“What did you find on the laptop?”

Matt paused a moment, pulling himself together. “Hughes was cheating on her,” he said. “Check his e-mail. An old girlfriend from Austin. Sounds like it was going on for a long time. Sounds like he deserved some of what he got, but not all of it. I’ve gotta get out of here. I’ve gotta go.”

Cabrera grasped him by the shoulder and met his eyes. “Are you okay to drive, Matt? Anything you want or need, it’s done, man. Just say it.”

Matt still felt like he was in a vacuum, a tin can with no air, but lied. “I’m good,” he said. “Thanks.”

He turned and looked back at Laura one last time, hoping that if he ever did manage to forget the things that had happened, her face wouldn’t be one of them. The scent and feel of her skin. The sound of her voice. All of the things on that list of could-have-beens.

He’d fallen for her. He was all the way in with her.

He walked around the car and climbed in behind the wheel. Then he turned and watched her being taken away. When they finally vanished inside the station, he waited until the door snapped shut before rolling down the window and lighting a cigarette. Moments passed, the engine idling.

Where would he go? Who would he be with? How would he get through the night?

He took a hard pull on the cigarette. He was no longer able to think or feel. His body and mind had shut down and everything was gone. Everything was lost.

CHAPTER 60

He knew a guy.

A small-time dealer who only sold high-grade weed. Victor Colon claimed his stuff was grown about fifty miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge outside Santa Rosa. Colon worked at a café in downtown LA called the Blackbird and sold his reefer on the side. The situation was perfect. The café was hidden in the middle of a narrow alley and catered to artists and musicians who wanted to relax without being hassled. Matt had discovered the place through Colon when he worked narcotics. He liked the mood of the Blackbird, the art on the walls, the books on the shelves, the view of downtown, and the fact that almost everyone sitting at the tables whispered as if they were in a library. There was a certain reverence for the place. A certain level of comfort that he couldn’t get anywhere else.

But even more than that, Matt liked the coffee. The Blackbird Café brewed the best cup of coffee he had ever tasted. And he really needed a decent cup of coffee right now. He needed to relax without being hassled. He needed everything to slow down.

He walked in but didn’t see Colon behind the counter. After ordering a medium French roast with two sugars, he passed through the café and stepped out onto the terrace, where he could look at the city and smoke. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. A woman was sitting three tables away. Even worse, the minute their eyes met, he sensed some degree of recognition on her face.

He sat down and tried to ignore her as best he could. The coffee was piping hot, and he took a first sip through the steam. Once he settled back in his seat, he turned to check on the woman again and found her staring at him.

He tried not to react and took another sip of coffee. As he pretended to gaze at the city, he wondered if he knew her. He guessed that she was about thirty. Her hair was light brown with blond streaks from the sun, her eyes a dusky blue, her face angular and refined. Mulling it over, he didn’t think she seemed like the kind of woman anyone would forget. Even at a glance, even in this state of complete turmoil, he could tell that she had too much going on.

He tried to steal another quick look at her, but her eyes were still pinned on him. Even more troubling, he thought that she might be carrying a piece underneath her jacket.

He tried ignoring her again. He tried to imagine that she wasn’t there. That she wasn’t fixated on him. That she wasn’t measuring him. He didn’t need this. He heard her clear her throat.

“Are you okay, Jones?” she said.

A long moment passed before he finally turned and gazed at her. No doubt about it, she had a semiautomatic underneath her jacket big enough to be a .45.

“How do you know my name?” he said quietly.

She parted her jacket to reveal an LAPD badge clipped to her belt and black jeans. “Everybody knows your name. The word’s out that you’re the best and brightest.”

He shook his head. “But I failed.”

“It sure doesn’t seem like it.”

“Baylor’s loose,” he whispered in a voice riddled with despair. “He’s free.”

“But it’s not over, Jones.”

Matt lowered his gaze and turned away. He couldn’t remember how the day got started. There seemed to be huge gaps in his memory. Did he make love to Laura before they got out of bed this morning or not? Did he really hear her admit to shooting Hughes? Didn’t he just turn her in to his partner? Before he’d read that e-mail on Hughes’s computer, before he’d read that love letter and
knew
, wasn’t he a man filled with hopes and dreams and a future worth fighting for?

“You don’t look so good, Jones.”

Matt’s eyes were wagging back and forth across the ground. “Leave me alone, lady. Please, just keep it to yourself, okay?”

He got up and staggered out, knocking over his coffee cup and spilling the hot liquid all over the table. He sensed that she had followed him out of the café. And even now, as he ran down the alley toward his car, he could feel her behind him. He needed everything to slow down. He needed everything to stop so that he could sort things out.

Who was he going to be with? Who would he talk to? Who was left?

He blinked his eyes and looked through the windshield at the traffic on the Hollywood Freeway. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten here, and the gap in time frightened him. He couldn’t tell if his memory had been damaged from all the stress and anxiety, or if he might not be experiencing short blackouts while driving.

He switched on the radio. A woman had just begun introducing the next cut, “Comfortably Numb”
—
not from a Pink Floyd album, but from a live concert David Gilmour recorded at the Gdańsk Shipyard to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the revolution in Poland. The concert had been videotaped, and Matt had watched the clip on the Internet more than a handful of times.

He settled back in the seat and let Gilmour’s voice sweep him away just as it always seemed to sweep him away, along with his remarkable guitar, that black Stratocaster. He listened until the music stopped, then found himself gliding into the parking lot at Griffith Observatory. He tried to pull himself together. He got out of the car and started walking up the fire road. His mouth became dry, but he could see Dante’s View at the top of Mount Hollywood. He wasn’t sure how much time it had taken to reach the peak, but when he spotted a bench, he sat down and gazed at the city. He could see the entire basin, from the tall buildings downtown all the way to Venice Beach.

He thought that the view from the top of the mountain would ease his pain, or at the very least give him some breathing room.

But the heat was unbearable, and he could feel the sweat evaporating as it dripped down his spine. He turned and gazed at the Hollywood sign across the way. In spite of the distance, he could see a small group of people praying over the spot where Brooke Anderson had been murdered. They were dressed in black and appeared strange.

The sight triggered a series of grim memories that made him feel even more anxious. He wondered if he wasn’t in the middle of something he couldn’t get out of on his own. Maybe he should drive down to Chinatown and check himself in. Maybe he should talk to somebody and get some rest. But what if they saw him this way? What would they think?

He heard something and his mind floated to the surface. It was a popping sound, and he saw a man running down the fire road. As his brain fog lifted, Matt realized that it was Billy Casper, the man in his rearview mirror, rushing toward him with his .38 still hot and smoking in his right hand.

Matt swept his fingers across his shirt, then looked down at the blood splashing onto his jeans. He’d been hit twice in the gut. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t move. When he reached for his .45, Casper beat him to it and tossed the pistol on the ground. His eyes rose to Casper’s face. The big man had an even bigger grin, stretching from ear to ear, as he grabbed Matt by the shoulders and threw him off the bench.

“Your father sends his best,” he said. “Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

Casper aimed the .38 at Matt’s chest and pulled the trigger. Matt felt his entire body shudder as he took the bullet and groaned. Casper was laughing at him and hurrying off.

He turned and searched for his pistol. It was just out of reach, a foot or two ahead, but he couldn’t move his legs. He rolled onto his stomach, digging his elbows into the dirt road and dragging his lame body forward. When the pain rocked through him from deep inside, he screamed out in agony. He gritted his teeth, glancing back at Casper. Then he dug his elbows into the ground and pulled his body another half foot forward.

That feeling was back. He was watching himself from a distance again. He could see himself grasping his .45 and rolling onto his side. He could see Casper’s sweat-stained shirt just beyond the muzzle. He watched himself pulling the trigger and clicking through the mag until all the noise stopped. Until all eight rounds had found their home in the big man’s back. And then it was over. Casper’s body went limp and started tumbling down the steep hill.

Matt watched the corpse hit the rocks and settle in a patch of thorns.

The pistol fell out of his hand, and he rolled onto his back. He could feel himself hyperventilating. When the pain came back even harder, he took it this time. He ate it and winced.

He glanced at the three wounds in his chest, all the blood gushing out, and knew that his father would be pleased. He wondered where he’d be when he received news of his first son’s death. Maybe aboard his yacht, the
Greedy Bastard
, out of Greenwich, Connecticut. Or maybe on the terrace sipping wine with his cheap-looking wife and their twisted sons.

A shadow moved across his face. Someone was standing over him. He wondered if he had already died. He wondered if it wasn’t the undertaker, preparing to drain his body of what little blood he might have left. He blinked his eyes again. He couldn’t be dead. Death wasn’t supposed to hurt like this.

The figure stepped closer, then knelt down beside him. After a while he realized that it was the woman from the Blackbird Café. She had blood all over her hands and blouse, and she seemed upset. She was on her cell phone. Every few moments she would look into Matt’s eyes and say, “Hold on, Jones. Hold on and everything will be okay.”

Matt looked her over when it suddenly dawned on him that he knew her. He’d met her once in the elevator at the crime lab. Her name was Lena Gamble, a detective out of the Robbery-Homicide Division. She’d closed a big case last year—two prosecutors in the district attorney’s office had turned, and she put one of them down. The case made headlines for six months.